“Oh my God,” Vivian said, and I jumped when I realized she was next to me, clutching my arm. I swallowed my bile down before I emptied my stomach. “This is why I know how to do black magic,” I whispered.

Vivian looked at me as Ku’Sox finally ate enough of the woman to kill her. Vivian’s eyes were wide, her mind not yet having found a way to believe what her eyes were telling her.

“Even dead vamps remember pity,” Ivy said, coming up on my other side.

“He-he…,” Vivian stammered, white faced and unable to say it.

“You think I know black magic for kicks?” I said harshly. “I’m trying to survive.” I shoved the sight of a demon in a silver suit biting a woman’s throat out to the back of my brain to wake me in a cold sweat later. What can I do? I thought as I found Pierce throwing up behind a table. Burn him? Like the curse I almost did in the garden? Could Pierce, Vivian, and I kill a demon together? My heart pounded, and I took a step forward, feeling Ivy’s hand take my bicep. I doubted we could kill him, but it was all I had. Killing Ku’Sox wasn’t murder, it was survival. And if it made me a black witch, then so be it.

My memory flicked back to Pierce crouched over Al and ready to end the demon’s life for his freedom. Maybe there was no difference between us after all, and the reason I was mad at Pierce was because I was seeing reflections of myself in him, and I didn’t like it.

Ku’Sox looked to the ceiling as a cascade of red-tinted ever-after washed over him, rebounding at the outermost point of his aura and soaking back into him. Tucking the dead woman under his arm, he headed for the door. I could hear sirens out there, and my heart hammered. Black craft or not, I couldn’t let him leave.

“Are we letting him go?” Pierce shouted, angry as he wiped his mouth and came out from behind the table.

I glanced at Ivy to tell her we weren’t, then Vivian, who still didn’t understand the reality of demons. “Yep,” I lied, leaning back and crossing my arms over my chest and rocking back on one foot. “This is not my problem.”

“What?” Vivian said, and I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “You can’t let him walk out of here! He just killed two people!” she raged, her anger at her own naivete, her fear, and her disbelief finding an easy scapegoat in me.

I should have told her that this was all Trent’s fault, but I held my tongue as Ivy slinked away to take up a defensive position. “What do you want me to do, Ms. Coven Member? You’re telling me to do black magic? Huh? ’Cause that’s the only thing that he’s going to notice!”

She licked her lips, clearly at war with herself. Ku’Sox, though, was almost to the door.