“I don’t want it,” I protested for about the hundredth time, yanking on the ring.

“It won’t come off.” Rabbi Abrams’ face was so wrinkled up in horrified anxiety that he resembled a Shar Pei with a Dumbledore beard.

“It’s water weight. Bloating.” I ran for the kitchen, dumping half a bottle of dish soap over both my finger and the stainless steel sink. “Move, you motherfucker,” I muttered, pulling on it with all my might.

The ring spun round and round in the thick yellow goo, but wouldn’t move even a millimeter closer to my knuckle. A hamsa, a palm-shaped design with two symmetrical thumbs meant to ward off the evil eye, was engraved in the center of the band. The single open eye etched into the middle of the palm stared up at me with its tiny blue sapphire iris.

I swear it smirked.

Ari swaggered in. He’d abandoned the chalice and was now swigging directly from the bottle.

“Take it,” I hissed, grabbing his wrist.

“Fingers keepers.” He flicked my hand away with a painful snap. Soap splattered on to my shirt.

“That is enough of that.” My mother marched into the kitchen and snatched the bottle out of his hand, slamming it down on the counter with such force that a chip of white quartz flew off. “You, stop drinking. And you,” she whirled on me, finger wagging, “take that ring off right now.”

“Have at it.” I thrust out my hand at her.

Mom couldn’t get the ring off either. “Dov.” She smacked her hand on the dented countertop to get Dad’s attention. He hovered in the doorway with his mouth half open, in full brain short-circuit mode. Even my boob flying free hadn’t upset him this much.

Her second smack shook him out of his Medusa-victim impression.

“Right.” Dad hurried over and reached for the ring, but hesitated, his hand hovering just over mine.

I shoved my hand into his. “Get it off me, Daddy,” I said in a voice two-octaves too high.

He tried. God knows he tried.

As did Rabbi Abrams, who insisted on running the ceremony again. Of course, he had to do it with Ari sprawled in the recliner because he was now hammered. My brother, the light-weight.

I spent the ceremony holding my breath, my gut knotted into a pretzel as I awaited the outcome.

The rabbi got to the end and tugged on the ring. Nada.

“How could you?” Mom asked, back in the kitchen where we’d reconvened in a glum silence. She twisted her hands together so forcefully, I worried she might break something.

“What part of ‘chosen’ implies I had any say in the matter?” I bit down on the band, trying to budge it with my teeth.

It was cold and tasted of metal and imprisonment.

Ari belched. “Told you, you’d find your thing.” Having reclaimed the wine bottle, he now shook the last few drops into his mouth. “’Course, I didn’t expect it to be my thing.”

That hurt. I hadn’t done this deliberately and I certainly didn’t want to be part of a Brotherhood. I scrubbed a hand over my face, way too sober to handle taking the blame for this. “You didn’t even know if you wanted it, asshole.”

My brother wasn’t phased. “Too true. But,” he said, looking off thoughtfully, “I think that was pre-wedding jitters.” He met my eyes; those distinct blue-gray twins of my own that always let me know what he was thinking. Right now the sorrow in them broke my heart. “I think that in fact, I did. Want it,” he said.

I dropped my head on the counter.

“Fix this,” Mom demanded of the rabbi. “Nava isn’t a boy. She can’t be Rasha.”

My head jerked up. Ari’s sorrow and my parents’ incredulity were understandable. It just would have been nice if for one second, any of them had stopped to ask me how I was doing with all this. Because I wanted to run. Hide away until Demon Club proclaimed that this terrible joke had gone on long enough and we could all return to our regularly scheduled programming, where Ari was the bright shiny twin with a destiny and I most decidedly was not.

“Way to set women’s rights back two hundred years, Mom,” I snapped. For once, I was innocent of any wrong-doing, but no one could see that. No one cared.

“She didn’t mean all women. Just you, honey,” Dad said to me in his infuriating, even-handed way. He extended an arm to the rabbi, leading him to the heavily-nicked kitchen table. Twins were a bitch on furniture.

“Let’s be logical here,” my father said. “Does it matter if some ritual picked Nava? Ari is the one who is trained and competent. He’s devoted his life toward this goal. What if we simply ignored this as an odd blip and proceeded with the plan as is?”

Most of me cheered this sentiment. Was completely on-board. A tiny part of me desperately wished that one person had my back.

“Nava is the chosen,” Rabbi Abrams said. “She can do this.” Wow. Of all the people to champion me. The rabbi stroked his beard. “If Ari takes on demons without a Rasha’s power, he will die. Better to let Nava handle them, trained or not.”

That sounded suspiciously like “send out the expendable.” I snatched the dish towel off its hook and savagely dried my saliva off of my hand.

The rabbi was right. It was the magic that killed demons. Pumping one full of lead might slow it down, but then again, it might simply piss it off enough to rip your head off faster.

Obviously, Ari couldn’t go after a demon without having magic power. That was tantamount to a suicide mission, but I refused to believe that he was definitively out of the picture. This destiny fit him with a snug certainty.

“There has to be a loophole,” I said.

Dad touched his index finger to his nose then pointed at me like I’d brought up a valid idea. “You can’t expect the fate of the world to be in my daughter’s hands,” he said. “Might as well invite Satan to move on in and throw him a housewarming party.”

“Really?” I asked, tossing the towel on the counter.

Dad shrugged. “Do you think you’re capable of battling demons?”

I refused to confirm or deny, leaning forward to address Rabbi Abrams directly. “Do I have a say in this?”

The rabbi struggled up out of the chair, came over to me, and laid a gnarled arthritic hand on my shoulder. His knuckles were old-people-XL sized. I tried not to flinch–or think of demon claws. Good luck. A mélange of weirdo animal parts and other unholy bits fused into demony shape assaulted me in image form, courtesy of every nightmare bedtime story Ari had ever foisted on me. I shuddered.

“This situation is…” Rabbi Abrams frowned.

“Unfortunate? Unfair?” I supplied.

“A tragedy,” he said.

“Excuse me?!”

He dropped his hand, giving a sharp tug to his black suit jacket. “I need to inform the Executive. We must figure out how best to proceed.” He sounded like I’d murdered his favorite puppy and was asking him to shake my blood-drenched hand. Symbolically, that may have been true.

My hands tightened on the hem of my shirt. “Again, I ask if I have a say in the matter?”

Rabbi Abrams frowned, his expression stern. “You cannot ignore your power. Your destiny.”

I threw him a grim smile. Challenge accepted.

* * *

My first order of business was sneaking out of the house. Mom and Dad rehashing the impossibility of it, the tragedy of it, was bad enough. But Ari refusing to speak to me? He’d sent me a final look of absolute betrayal, staggered into his room, and locked the door.

He’d never locked his door against me before. Our twin connection was as necessary as oxygen. Ari had been my shoulder to cry on when my life had fallen apart, supporting me against the folks when I’d taken a time-out from university, while I’d spent my childhood making my brother laugh whenever I saw that his Rasha studies were getting to him. He protected and anchored me, while I lightened up his world. There was no place for locked doors between us.

The fact that there was now cracked my chest open for the black pain to slither in. If anything could turn me even more firmly against being a demon hunter than I already was, it was that damn door. I’d knocked until my knuckles bled. Begged and pleaded, but I was met with silence. I was dead to him.

It was worse than actually being dead.

Taking shallow breaths, I ran through one of my old exercises to get through pre-show performance jitters. Who knew being on stage and learning how to act happy would come in handy so many times in my almost-adult life?

I rummaged among the clean laundry piled on my desk chair for jeans and my favorite hoodie and got changed. Knocking aside the box in my closet filled with my most prized tap dance competition medals, I pulled my worn leather backpack out, haphazardly throwing in clothes and toiletries.

I allowed myself one last look around my raspberry bedroom: from the random photos of fun times hanging by now-limp tape, to the collage of speeding tickets spelling out vroom, to my unmade bed with exactly three pillows–two to sleep on and one to cuddle–and the clothes and books exploding over every surface.

My lucky sunglasses, the ones “liberated” from Ryan Tedder after I’d sweet-talked my way backstage at a OneRepublic concert, lay on my dresser, under my black and white poster of Gregory Hines. He wore an expression of sheer delight as the camera caught him mid-tap step. Somewhere deep inside me still lived the ghost of a memory where no matter what was wrong in my life, I could dance my troubles away. A one, a two, you know what to do. My mantra for dance and life.

Yeah, well. That was then.

I grabbed the glasses, stuffing them on my head. Then I hefted my backpack over one shoulder, and pushed up the window. Tap had been the one place I’d shone. My realm. Yeah, I’d readjusted my life around the void when the dream was taken from me, but why should Ari have to experience crushing disappointment and heartache? At my hands? Fuck that.

Maybe if I ran away, did something selfish, or acted unworthy of the power, the ring would decide I wasn’t the right twin after all and Ari could resume his path to destiny. The Brotherhood had invested twenty years in him, after all. Hopefully they’d work a little harder to bring him back into the fold.

Taking a deep breath, I swung my leg over the sill and reached for the gnarled tree branch outside my window. My stomach surged in that split second before my fingers connected with the rough bark but once they did, it was an easy climb down. I dropped the final few feet to the ground in a hard crouch, then commenced running away from home, trotting past well-kept family homes toward the main street.

Much as I hated to admit it, my dad was right. Demon Club and I were a terrible fit. First off, it had always been kept secret through the centuries, both to preserve its existence under the official “no demons here” stance of organized Judaism, and, since very few knew that demons existed, to keep mass panic from breaking out.

Sure, I’d kept mum about all of it, but let’s be serious. If magic powers could score me free clothes or booze, #MoveOverBuffy would be trending by dinner.

I slowed down when I hit the corner house two blocks over, just long enough to stop inches from the fence and do a little dance for the old Golden Retriever, sending her into a yappy frenzy of joy. Still barking, she jumped onto her hind legs, resting her front paws on the fence so I could scratch her between the ears.

The uptight gay couple that owned her twitched their curtain aside to move me along with a dismissive point of their fingers. I wiggled my ass one last time, snickering at their twin expressions of thin-lipped displeasure. Knowing Goldie would keep barking for another twenty minutes was just an added bonus.

Then I took off.

It might seem amazing that in this age of CCTV and camera phones, where every little transgression was posted to social media, that the Brotherhood and demons managed to remain a secret from both the Jewish community and wider world. As Ari had taught me, the explanation was simple: never underestimate humans’ desire to stay within our comfort zones.

Case in point, the yoga-clad mommy mafia clogging up the tree-lined sidewalk, venti lattes in hand. I swerved to avoid their race car pricey strollers and the judgmental stank wafting off them as they eyed me. We all sought affirmation. That’s why, as a species, we were such hypercritical assholes. We wanted proof we’d picked the right career or married the right person, even if said proof was of the at least we’re not them variety. We wanted our lives to tally in the positives column.

Only the whackjob paranormal bloggers sometimes got closer to the truth than everyone gave them credit for. Ari and I had spent a bunch of late nights being highly entertained by their theories.

While membership had grown since David’s time, the formal structure of the Brotherhood wasn’t put into place until October 10, 1871 with the great fire of Chicago. With the city destroyed, hundreds dead, and the entire thing being blamed on a cow, the Brotherhood had stepped up and gotten globally organized to make, well, order of the chaos. No more pockets of hunters fighting demons under a loosely affiliated umbrella. They were now ruthlessly efficient in the war on evil with chapters all over the world.

Which was the second reason I wanted no part of this. “Ruthless” and “efficient” were not words to describe me. If humanity was depending on me to be part of some protector squad, they were screwed. I’d be dead within minutes of my first demon encounter, destiny notwithstanding.

A horn blared at me, jarring me out of my reverie.

I scrambled across the busy retail street, narrowly avoiding getting pancaked, and stepped onto the far curb in front of the dry cleaners, my heart pounding. “A little respect for the jay-walker here!”

Where was this magic I was supposed to have received? Had there been a glitch because I was female? Because I was glitch? If I really had some cool new superpower, wouldn’t I have sped after the Mazda and flipped it on its side, mashing it to a pulp with angry pounds of my fists instead of standing here shaking? And if my magic did show up, would I have some stupid or embarrassing power like I’d teased Ari about?

I made my way to the bank machine, opening my wallet to sort through my credit cards. The Visa was bunk. I was scared to even stick it in an ATM for fear some collection agency bruiser would appear to hustle me off. But the AMEX? I tapped it against my chin. This baby was my emergency card, paid in full each month by Daddy Dearest.

Sliding the card into the cash machine, I punched in the ten thousand dollar limit. It made a beeping noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter, informing me in neat print that my cash advance limit was $500. Bah.

The money got tucked deep in an inside pocket in the backpack. Then I boarded the downtown bus, unsure of my destination. What I needed right now was a best friend I could crash with. What I had were tons of fellow partygoers and acquaintances.

The bus driver slammed on his brakes. I stumbled forward, whacking my head on the guitar case of the dude next to me. I’d had an awesome best friend in high school. Leonie Hendricks. It wasn’t as if we’d had a fight or anything after grad. We’d still hung out. But Leo had jumped headlong into university while I’d bounced around for a few semesters before withdrawing.

My hand went for my phone. Maybe I could call Leo. I snorted. Yeah, right. We could catch up. Leo could tell me about her criminology classes and I could tell her that in an impossible twist, I was the first lady Rasha and newest member of Demon Club. Oh yeah, and that demons existed. Then she’d roll her eyes sadly at me making a joke of everything, finish our social call with polite small talk, and that would be that.

Well, that decided where I should go. A drink was in order. I headed over to my favorite business district pub for their pint and burger lunch special. A girl had to have a decent last meal, and the football-sized patties this place served would keep me full for a good twenty-four hours. Plus, the barkeep was adorable and amenable to flirting for free refills.

I sailed into the dimly lit interior with its multiple screens offering various sports replays set to classic rock blasting from the speakers, and seated myself at the scarred wood bar.

Josh, my barboy, grinned his hello. “Hey, beautiful,” he said, all white teeth, platinum hair, and that unnatural level of pretty attained by certain actors. It was enough to give a girl an inferiority complex. “Haven’t seen you around in a while. What can I get you and whatcha been up to?”

“Burger special and becoming the chosen one,” I replied with a breezy flip of my curls.

“Sweet.”

His attention reaffirmed my determination to stay far away from all things demon and huntery. I was young. I had my looks. Why would I want to mess that up fighting nasty creatures from the bowels of Hell? Or wherever they came from, since they didn’t exactly leave a home address and weren’t just a Christian concept.

I know Buffy looked good killing vamps, but come on, even I could separate fiction from fact enough to know that a team of hair, make-up, and wardrobe experts were not going to be a perk of my gig. Besides, hunting would cut in to my important to-dos like be adored and get free refills.

I waggled my pint glass at Josh as he placed my burger in front of me, noticing he hadn’t skimped on the fries. Salt and grease good. “Thanks, barkeep. What’s new with you?”

Turns out he’d landed a small but pivotal role in Hard Knock Strife, some big-budget picture shooting here in Vancouver. Something about childhood buddies caught up in the lure of easy money. “That’s worth celebrating,” I said, raising my new full glass in cheers.

“Stick around till I get off?” He nodded at my backpack, stuffed on the seat beside me, which was ringing for the umpteenth time. “Or do you have plans?”

“Nope.” I pulled out my phone and turned it off. But not before glancing at the screen. Seventeen messages all from my home number. My parents, not Ari. With a sigh, I shoved it into my hoodie pocket and threw him a coy look from under my lashes. “I’m all yours.”

“I’m counting on it,” he replied with a wicked grin.

Ladytown flooded like it was time to start collecting two of every animal. Whoa, baby. Praying that Josh was my golden O ticket, I found myself back at his place hours later, half-drunk, partially naked, and totally giving him the hand job of his life. Doing it for him, in hopes that he’d be able to do it for me. Honestly though, my thoughts pre-occupied me more than his cock. That I could work on autopilot.

“Maybe they chose me because of my attitude issues.” I lay on my side facing Josh, my head propped in my free hand. “Though technically, the choosing happened when I was born so they didn’t have any way of knowing how I’d turn out.” I kept the details vague since there was no knowing if Demon Club would kill Josh for hearing top secret intel.

“Mmmm, yeah,” Josh moaned, kicking his jeans off. His movement made the thin mattress bounce. His sculpted abs jiggled not at all.

“But what if that’s why I’m such a dick? Such an epic failure. Because I was destined for something amazing and denied it.” You talking dance or demon hunting, Nava? “You think I could sue them for existential pain and suffering?”

“Full-on.” Josh thrust his hips in a rhythmic motion.

I rolled onto my back, my hand still working away. I’d always been a good multitasker. “I didn’t ask for it. It’s not fair for my brother to be so pissed off.”

“Uh, babe?” Josh poked me in my side. “Discussions of brothers while your hand’s on my junk? Kinda killing the buzz.”

“Sorry.”

He leaned over me, his eyes glazed with lust. “Think you could…?” He motioned for me to go down on him.

“Yeah, sure.” My hand was getting tired anyway. I slid down his body. “Thing is,” I began. With my mouth full, the words came out garbled and I guess I caught some skin because Josh flinched.

“Go back to the hand job,” he sighed.

Geez, make up your mind. I shimmied back to my starting position. “I don’t even want this. It isn’t some lady-doth-protest-too-much shit either. The pressure would be insane. Everyone would be watching me, waiting for me to screw up. Plus the possible death of it all. I’m not big on that either.”

A niggle of guilt prodded at me for dumping my problems on Josh, so I gave him a flirty smile. He shot me a heated look in response. Lust tumbled hot and furious down from my now-dry throat to much, much lower. I crossed my legs, squirming, as I stole another glance at him.

His face seemed to… flicker? for a second. The line of his jaw blurring, his skin suddenly much furrier than his five o’clock shadow warranted.

I blinked and the room snapped into a sharp clarity. Just me and a gorgeous guy. But his serious sex appeal had me so lightheaded that all the color in the room bleached out briefly. In fact, I felt like I’d bleached out briefly.

“As I was saying… ouch!” My hand seized up. I shook it out and switched to my right.

My fingertips tingled. I amped up the speed, hoping he’d finish already. More than ready for my turn. I’d give up a kidney for an orgasm after the day I’d had.

Josh’s eyes were closed, his breathing ragged. All positive signs for his happy ending.

Thank God, because my hand hurt. Had I pinched a nerve? I grit my teeth. Cramp or no cramp, I wasn’t about to break my personal record of every man left satisfied. A girl had to have some skill she could be proud of, even if she couldn’t put it on a résumé.

Josh let out a guttural moan.

Being well-versed in the nuances of guttural, I translated this one as “gold star, Nava.” But my smugness fell away at the tugging pull starting low in my gut. Not a virulent food poisoning, all-out cramping, but more like my soul was being manhandled. I slowed down my strokes, rubbing my belly with my free hand.

Josh’s eyes sparked like he was getting off more on my discomfort than on my expert dexterity. A prickle of unease danced across the back of my neck.

“Let yourself go, baby,” he growled.

Please. He was hot but coming by osmosis wasn’t a thing. I was overreacting. Josh wasn’t a threat, just a douche.

Sweat trickled down my scalp and a sharp pressure rose through the fingers of my right hand, now cramped tight around his knob. I hadn’t been jerking him off long enough to be this tired. Pain pulsed outward from the middle of my palm as if my synapses had starting shooting electric bullets.

“Almost there,” he mumbled. His hips were practically levitating they were lifting off the bed so high.

My belly twisted and I drew my knees into my chest for some relief, yet I couldn’t stop touching Josh. The more I tugged, the more he moaned lustily, and the more I grit my teeth. My abdomen felt like it was a leaking tire, but I wasn’t injured. More like with each stroke I was losing something essential, growing wearier, and I wasn’t able to explain why.

Sparks flew off my hand.

Holy. Shit.

Josh’s body flickered like a stuttering screen, revealing a ram’s head.

Oh, hell no!

I spasmed, engulfed by a snapping blue electrical arc that traveled through my hand to envelop Josh’s dick, momentarily gluing us together with a disturbing sizzle and a whiff of burning flesh.

His eyes snapped open in alarm.

Given how every blink caused sparks to dance in front of me, I figured I was lit up from head to foot, but before I could check, Josh convulsed with a hot spurt. Then his body exploded into gold dust.

Both the pain in my hand and the pyrotechnics immediately ceased.

I wiped my fingers off on the rumpled sheet with a grimace. The downside was that I’d just met my first demon. The upside? Not only was he not naturally better-looking than me, my record was intact. Another satisfied guy. Dispatched to oblivion, but not every date was a winner.