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I chewed and swallowed on autopilot, trying to wrap my mind around what had happened the night before. Magic had been around me my whole life, so seeing the bright lights that were the hallmark of it wasn’t actually all that shocking. But the fact that the lights—the magic—had come from me?
That was another matter entirely.
From what I knew, you were either born with magic or you weren’t. The ones who were born with magical abilities were the direct ancestors of the people who had been gifted magic by the gods thousands of years ago. Then again, since I’d come from a non-magical family and had been busy just trying to stay alive for most of my formative years, I hadn’t paid much attention to the ins and outs of magical society.
And I wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to do now.
Was it safe for me to tell someone? What would I even say? Oh yeah, I was walking home last night and these four guys attacked me, so I whipped out some magic and beat them to a bloody pulp. Who knew?
With a deep sigh, I rested my spoon in the bowl and rubbed my face. This was starting to feel like some sort of incredibly vivid nightmare—one I couldn’t seem to wake from. Although I still held out hope that it’d been some temporary blip, some spell cast on me by an angry mage, I didn’t know where to go or what to do with it.
And even though I’d used it pretty effectively to fight last night, I didn’t really know how to control the magic. So I couldn’t just go walking around Boston. It wasn’t like the colored lights were hard to see when they decided to take over my body, bursting from my fingertips.
Sighing, I heaved myself to my feet and rinsed my bowl out in the sink. Then I stood there for a second, contemplating my next move. I was supposed to head to a training session with Vin around noon, but I wasn’t sure it was a very good idea.
A sudden loud knock reverberated through the apartment, and I jumped about two feet off the ground. Pressing my hand to my chest like it would keep my racing heart from crashing through my ribs, I let out a long, shaky exhale. Dammit. I wasn’t usually skittish, and shit didn’t usually take me by surprise like that. This strange new development had knocked me off my game.
Pulling myself together and sharpening my focus, I walked quietly across the apartment and pressed myself to the wall by the door, craning my neck to peek through the blinds. There were four people in black coats standing outside the door, crammed into the little stairwell that led up to the street. Two of them were women, their hair pulled back neatly at the nape of their necks, and the other two were men, middle-aged, with stern looks on their faces.
I pressed away from the wall and backed up a couple paces, raising my voice. “Who is it?”
They didn’t answer, just pounded on the door again. The ancient wood rattled in its frame, and I had a sudden fear that if they knocked hard enough, they’d break down the door without even meaning to.
Not that I’d let them know that.
“Tell me who you are, or I’m not opening the door,” I called, my voice hard.
No response.
My heart working its way up my throat, I crept forward and peeked through the blinds again. The guy in the front noticed the movement this time. He stepped up and flipped open his badge, holding it close to the window. It wasn’t a normal cop badge, and it had the sigil in the center that represented the magical community.
Nerves bound my stomach into a tight knot. If I didn’t open the door, they probably would break it off its hinges—on purpose. Swallowing hard, I unlatched the deadbolt and unlocked the door handle. I pulled the door open as far as the chain would stretch and shifted my gaze around at each of them.
“Aria Banks, we would like to have a few words with you about the incident you were involved in last night,” the man in front said sternly.
Nope. No way. Uh uh.
Adrenaline surged through me, my fight-or-flight instinct taking over. I rarely chose “flight”, but I was considering it now. I’d never trusted magic users, and just because I seemed to have suddenly become one of them, it didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy toward the people who gathered threateningly outside my front door. I was certain that at any moment they were going to wave their hands and poof me out of existence. If I let them get the drop on me anyway.
So I concentrated on the same feeling I’d had the night before and flicked my wrist, pulling the magic from my fingertips. Then I placed my hand behind my back, hoping they wouldn’t notice the magic tendrils I was gathering.
“I don’t have anything to talk to you about,” I said firmly. “Nothing happened. I have to go. I have training, and I have to get ready for it.”
As I tried to shut the door, the tall man stuck his hand out and stopped me. “If I were you, I would put that magic away right now.”
What the—?
I flicked my gaze down at myself and realized my entire body had taken on the subtle glow of a magic user. Dammit! I hadn’t been glowing like this when I’d eaten my breakfast, but even with my hand hidden, there was no way these officials wouldn’t know I had magic.
For several long heartbeats, we stood at a standstill.
Make the first move, Aria. Don’t wait.
It was a lesson Vin had instilled in me over and over, and it’d saved my ass in more fights than I could count. I barely had a clue how to control my strange new powers, but I felt certain that if I didn’t make a move, this man was going to make one instead—and he was probably much stronger and more skilled than I was. If he was a mage and worked for magical law enforcement, then he’d likely had his powers his whole life.
The only possible advantage I might have in this fight was the element of surprise.
Springing into action, I jumped back and threw my arms out, pouring magic from my fingertips. The guy in the front, the obvious leader, side-stepped and let one of the others use their magic to open my door. The chain snapped, and the door flew wide
