Chapter 4

"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 fazed. "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?"