Hello. My name is Paige Wardell. A few months ago, my brother, Cole, and I were at a party like the normal 16 and 17 year olds that we were. We left early for some reason or another, I don't remember. When we got home, though, the lights were on, and the front door was slightly ajar. My brother went in first, holding one hand out behind him, signaling me to wait. After a few minutes, he hadn't come back to get me, so I went in.

What I found was a shocking and terrifying sight indeed. The room was full of smoke, as if dinner had been started, but long forgotten. Then it all hit me at once. Cole was kneeling on the floor, silent tears running down his face. Next to him, in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, was our mother's body. She was lying in front of the refrigerator, a ornately jeweled dagger buried to the hilt in the door. I tried to pull it out, but it barely budged.

"What are you doing?!" Cole shouted so suddenly that I jumped, and nearly slipped on the growing pool of blood at our feet.

"The killer might still be in the house," I whispered. I pulled the knife harder, but it moved even less. "It's no use, we need our swords." But our swords were upstairs, well out of reach if the fiend who killed our beloved mother had still been in our home.

Cole stood and yanked the dagger out in one fluid motion, the knife slipping from the door as if the metal had been warm butter. "I'd like to see that bastard try to get near us," he had said. I had never been in more awe of my brother than at that moment.

"Wait, if mom's here, where's dad?" I asked, my despair doubling. We found our father's body in his workshop in the backyard. The killer was gone, and the police were called. The only thing the murderer left behind was the dagger. Not even a fingerprint was found.

With our mother and step-father dead, we had to live with our biological father, Loney. Loney was an abusive drunk, and lived in the middle of nowhere, so there was no escape.

Our only haven was sparring with our katanas. Cole and I were both practiced swordsmen, even though he was significantly better than I. We were also decent with battle knifes, daggers, and I was an artist with a bow. Our weapons were some of the very few things we still had from our old life, or more valuable possessions having been pawned by Loney for booze money.

Cole always had the jeweled dagger on his person. He even took it to school with him, and he got in serious trouble many times before he learned to hide it better. He was determined to kill the man who had murdered our parents with their own blade.

The days crept by, and Cole and I were learning to shape our routines and schedules around Loney's drinking. The trailer he lived in was five miles from the public high school, so we woke with the sun. It was just as well, because then Loney was fast asleep with a brewing hangover. When we got back, he was already at the local pub.

Cole was the perfect older brother in this situation. He always defended me, and protected me from Loney when we couldn't avoid him. He suffered quite a few punches for my sake.

I was 16, tall and had long, wavy, blonde hair that always looked like I had been at the beach all day. Cole was also tall, maybe an inch or two taller than me. He had shaggy dark brown hair, and he was one year my senior. And there was one other thing about us that might be of importance. We were witches. Well, actually we were Wiccan, but many people do not recognize the later term. We were very well practiced at making our will become reality. We were also very good at telepathy and telekinesis.

All of this was cool, and came in handy, but it was never really important or a vital as it was about to become.