Exploring the old estate put me on edge. I could feel a malicious force waiting to be set free deep beneath this place… a place that shouldn't even exist. Ordinarily I'd have left a place like this alone, but I knew that Ayumi and one of her friends had come here and I couldn't leave until I found them.

In what appeared to be a study, I found a wall of photos. Most of the photos were of a young girl and her mother… Sachiko and Yoshie Shinozaki. While there were a few photos of Yoshie's husband, his face was scratched out with pen in all of them.

I heard wood being broken and turned to face the direction of the sound. It seemed to come from a slightly open safe door, just large enough to crawl into. I opened up the door cautiously and heard two voices talking to each other. I took a deep breath and crawled in.

At the back of the safe was a rickety set of stairs that led into the depths of the estate. I could feel the evil presence much more strongly than before. I quickened my pace, hoping to find Ayumi and her friend before they found what was hidden here.

When I reached the foot of the stairs I saw Ayumi and another girl wearing the same uniform lighting candles and drawing a pentagram on the floor. Next to Ayumi laid a black book that radiated malice.

"Ayumi! Stop!"

I ran over to the girls, who looked up in shock and a bit of fear. I kicked one of the candles over and stomped out the flame before it could set the wooden floors on fire. I grabbed the book from Ayumi's side before she could react, knowing it could easily have seduced her with its power.

"Sis?! What… what are you doing here?" Ayumi seemed dazed. After a moment, her eyes narrowed. "I… I need that book!"

I looked down at the book in my hands. I was certain now that it was the dark presence I had felt when I entered the estate. It was bound in human skin and, after leafing through a few pages, I realized it was written in a combination of French and a vaugely familiar runic script.

Without warning, the book whispered its name to my mind: Book of Shadows.

I looked down at Ayumi. "This book is dangerous, Ayumi. You should know better than to trust such things without thought." I turned to her friend. "I understand you're not familiar with the supernatural, but you shouldn't allow Ayumi to bring you to places like this. If I hadn't shown up, both of you could have easily ended up dead."

Ayumi's friend nodded quickly, shifting from foot to foot. "I-I'm sorry, Ms. Shinozaki…"

I turned to face Ayumi again. She had broken down into tears. I sighed and tucked the Book of Shadows under my arm before kneeling next to her. "Ayumi… I'm sorry if I sounded harsh. I'm only trying to protect you."

Ayumi shook her head. "I… I just want my friends back…"

"…What?"

Ayumi and her friend explained to me that they had lost their teacher and some of their classmates to the cursed old Heavenly Host Elementary. Ayumi mentioned that she had found a spell in the Book of Shadows that could raise the dead.

I shook my head. "Even if this spell doesn't have some hidden cost, you'd need to be within Heavenly Host for it to work properly." I patted Ayumi on the shoulder. "I know you must be upset, but this isn't the answer."

Ayumi broke down into tears again. I stood up slowly, knowing there was nothing I could do to ease her pain. I let Ayumi's friend talk to her while I explored the room a bit more. I found very little of use, but I was curious when I found a Shinozaki geneology and pocketed the papers in question.

After Ayumi had stopped sobbing enough to stand, I led the two girls out of the estate. It was early in the dark hours of the morning when we left the estate, so I personally made sure both girls made it back home. When I returned to my own home I laid the Book of Shadows in a back room of the basement. Not high in originality, but it would have to do until I found a better way to hide the thing.

—

Weeks passed after I had confiscated the Book of Shadows from Ayumi. I spent most of my days trying to find a way to conceal the book so no one would be able to use its powers for their own gain. I ended up cancelling meetings with all of my clients for the next few months to give myself time to investigate a solution.

Meanwhile, the book itself began to tempt me with offers of fixing my problems. I felt a subtle desire to use it find a way to make up with Ayumi by saving her friends, among other, more selfish things. I eventually decided to make myself an amulet to ward off some of the temptations the book used on me.

I was meditating, trying to maintain control of my desires, when suddenly the doorbell rang. I felt an unusual amount of annoyance at the sound. Didn't I already tell all my clients I was busy?!

I stomped to the front door and opened it to see Ayumi. I tried to force my frown into a smile. "Hello, Ayumi."

Ayumi looked at me with a confused face for a moment. I made sure my face was smiling. She seemed to shake off whatever was bothering her and nodded at me. "Hey, sis. Are you busy?"

"Not really…" I motioned for her to come in and led her to a sitting room. "What brings you here?…"

Ayumi gave me another confused look. "It's almost Christmas. I always visit you this time of year."

I realized I hadn't been paying much attention to the date and forced a chuckle. "Right, right. I've not been paying much attention to the date, really."

Ayumi frowned. "Have you been working yourself too hard, sis?…"

"No, no. Nothing like that." I smiled at her, hoping she'd find a different topic. I'd change the topic myself if I could get a certain black book off my mind…

There was a long silence where Ayumi and I sat staring at each other. I coughed a bit to ease the silence. After a while, Ayumi looked me in the eyes. "Do you still have the Book of Shadows?"

I froze. "Why?" I hissed at her. She wanted it for herself, didn't she?

"Has it been calling out to you all this time?…"

"What if it is? I can handle it, Ayumi. I'm trained for resisting magic."

My snappy answer made Ayumi look away. "You don't seem yourself, sis…"

I stood up. "I have some things I need to do. Alone." I glared at Ayumi until she stood up.

"Sis… if it's that dangerous, you should get rid of it…"

She did want it for herself! "I'll decide what I do with it, Ayumi. Now you should go home before it gets late."

Ayumi seemed hurt, but she obediantly allowed me to escort her out of the house. Once she was gone I realized I was shivering. I decided to go back to meditating, hoping that would calm me down.

—

Another few days passed. I got some Christmas messages when I checked my email. My parents seemed to be mocking me for my lack of a boyfriend or husband for Christmas Eve while Ayumi talked about how some kid from her class that liked her bought her a cake this year. I muttered to myself in a way even I couldn't comprehend and shut the computer monitor off.

While I was going through my things I found the Shinozaki geneology I had taken from the esate over a month before. I decided to look it over to pass the time and get my mind off Christmas. After a few minutes of examining it I realized that Ayumi and I were related to Yoshie and Sachiko, who once lived at that old estate. I also noticed that most of the husbands of Shinozaki women married into the family and died after a daughter was born.

I chuckled to myself. "Sorry mom, but I don't have a boyfriend because I don't want the family curse to kill the man I love." I barely noticed that I said the mocking comment out loud.

I spent another few hours going over my notes about different ways to hide things with magic, but none of them felt secure enough. I was about to just take a nap when I felt the Book of Shadows calling to me.

Heading down to the basement, I wondered if the book itself was the key. I felt like the dark force within was just trying to get free… that using a spell from it would unleash it on some other part of the world. But maybe I could find a way to trap it with its own power…

I found myself leafing through the book. There were spells about resurrection, creating realms for the use of spirits of the dead, and more. I lingered a bit on the spell for seducing someone and even longer on the page describing a way to lift the curse on my family without lessening our power. I nearly cast some of the spells I found that I liked, but a small part of me still remembered that I wasn't here to use the Book of Shadows for personal gain.

I put the book aside and went back upstairs to clear my head. I decided to wash my face, and while I was in the bathroom I looked into the mirror. A pale, tired face stared back at me. I realized I hadn't changed my clothes in days and that my hair was a tangled mess.

Tugging on the amulet I thought would protect me, I realized what I had to do. I had to destroy the Book of Shadows.

—

The Book of Shadows resisted destruction. I started with the obvious method of trying to burn it, but that only singed the bindings. The pages were left intact, and the pages were where the power was held.

I kept trying different methods, but each of them failed. Each attempt after the first also caused a psychic backlash, as if the book was fighting back. I started to lose hope of ever being rid of the thing…

One day as I tried to get some sleep, something came to me. I had once heard a rumor that magic books were most vulnerable when a spell was being cast. It was a long shot… but at this point I felt like getting a spell's effects and being rid of the book was worth whatever havoc it would cause elsewhere. I would have felt sick I had sunk so low if I wasn't so tired.

I paged through the Book of Shadows again, trying to find a safe spell to cast. There was no spell I could use to save Ayumi's friends and ensure they'd be safe in our world, so I sighed and started looking for more selfish ways to use my one spell. I eventually settled on lifting the Shinozaki family curse… that way I would be helping someone other than just myself.

The spell required a full moon, so I made the preperations in the days I had to wait. When the time came, I finalized the pentacle I had drawn in my room under a skylight opened to the moon.

I opened the Book of Shadows to the page my spell was on and began chanting the spell. In my free hand was a lighter… my desperate means of ending the book in my short window of opporunity.

The spell took an hour to chant, but when it was done I felt something changing inside me. The spell really was altering me in some way… I just hoped it would actually lift the curse from me and my family.

Remembering my purpose, I flicked open the lighter and held it to the Book of Shadows. For a moment it didn't take and I worried I was wrong. But then the pages lit on fire… even the ones for other spells. I smiled in relief. I'd finally destroyed the book that had been haunting me for the past two months.

Suddenly, the book burst into a fireball. I jumped back, but as the book was destroyed a huge wave of psychic energy followed it and "deafened" me to my surroundings. When I came to, everything around me had caught fire. I tried to stand, but all my energy was gone. I felt smoke filling my lungs and I realized I was doomed. My last hopes were that the Book of Shadows was finally destroyed and that Ayumi would live a life without needing to fear of such a thing happening to her…

—

I woke up in a hospital bed, hooked to an IV. I wondered why I was here… I should have died in that fire. There was no way anyone could have called for help in time…

A nurse came in a while after I woke up and explained to me what happened. Apparently Ayumi was on her way to visit me for whatever reason (it was nighttime, wasn't it?…) and saw my house catch on fire. She called the emergency number immediately and that's how I was rescued in time. I was found under a pile of rubble that had happened to shield me from the flames and smoke long enough to be saved.

It felt too good to be true. Was I being rewarded for making sure the Book of Shadows was never used again?…

I soon realized I did make some sacrifice to ensure the evil book was destroyed. Over half of my body had been burnt badly, and I'd need to regrow most of my hair. I'd have disfiguring burn scars for the rest of my life. I almost chuckled when I thought of my spell now. Any man who could love me as I looked now deserved to live long enough to see his children grow up.

A few days after I woke up, Ayumi came to visit me. She held my good hand as she sat next to me.

"Are you going to be okay, sis?"

I smiled as best I could. "Aside from the burn scars, I think I'll be alright."

Ayumi nodded slowly and leaned close. "The fire started because of the Book of Shadows, didn't it?"

I nodded, as much as I could from my position. "Yes. It's gone now. Hopefully destroyed." I looked at Ayumi. "Did you… feel anything before the fire started?"

Ayumi thought for a moment and nodded. "I did. What was that feeling? Do you know?"

"I had to cast a spell to make the book vulnerable, so I tried to remove the curse on our family that causes men who marry into the family to die." I took a breath. "I just hope that's what the spell really did."

Ayumi shook her head. "So we don't know if the spell worked or if the Book of Shadows is destroyed?…"

I looked at her. There were tears in her eyes. I lifted my hand from hers and wiped a tear from her face. "We don't. But we can't let that affect how we life from here on out. I want you to be free of the fear that magic will harm you again. If you're worried that the curse may still be in place, I could find a way to check…"

Ayumi hugged me, causing me to grunt in pain since my burnt side wasn't healed yet. Ayumi pulled back and muttered an apology. "Err… thanks, sis. I… I've been trying to get past what happened in Heavenly Host. My… boyfriend has been helping, but I don't want to put his life in danger for my own sake…"

I smiled at her. "I'll do what I can to reassure you this is over when I get better. I promise."

Ayumi grabbed my hand and nuzzled it. "Thanks, sis. You're the best."

Seeing Ayumi's gratitude eased some of the pain I felt from the physical and mental scars of burning the Book of Shadows. I hoped it was gone for good, but I had no way of knowing for certain. But at least for the time being, my struggle with it was over…