“Yeah, so now we know where Rebecca is, cocky pricks didn’t even bother keeping her some place more discreet. The problem is getting to her, do you think you might be able to work your way into Whitfield’s house?”
I slump back in the seat, letting out a heavy sigh. “I kind of had a fight with Ethan tonight and I’m really not in the mood to crawl back with my tail between my legs. He knows I don’t like Whitfield, so I have no clue how I might convince him to bring me into his house.”
Finn’s smile is intolerable. “Trouble in paradise, eh?”
“Shut up Finn. This is horrible for me, I’m going to have to put on a huge act just to convince Ethan I’ve changed my opinion of Whitfield. I really dislike the man, and I hate pretending to like people that I hate.”
Finn starts driving away from the mansion now, but he’s still laughing silently. I’m glad my discomfort causes him such amusement. I continue petting Wolf as we head back over to the North side. Finn’s phone is sitting on the dashboard and it begins to vibrate, I glance at the screen and see Gabriel’s name. I wonder what he’s calling about. Finn pulls over and picks up the phone, clearly he adheres to the rules that you’re not allowed to talk on the phone while driving. Perhaps he and the law are not so much at odds as he likes to imagine.
“Gabe, what’s up?” He answers and immediately his brow begins to furrow. I lean closer to listen in, and get a surprise at the amount of noise travelling from the other end of the line. I can hear shouting and crashing, and strange whooping sounds in the background.
“Hey, just calm down all right, I’m on my way. Do you think you can hold them off until I get there?”
Finn hangs up then and I raise my eyebrows questioningly, wondering what on earth is going on with Gabriel. Finn starts up the car again, one hand on the steering wheel, the other rubbing his forehead.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Rita’s house. Apparently the magical families discovered that she and Gabriel had been setting up their own little revolutionary magic school.”
“You knew about that?”
Finn nods. “Of course I did, Gabriel is one of my closest friends Tegan.”
I’d thought Finn and Gabriel were buddies, but I hadn’t realised they knew each other that well. “So what’s going on then?”
“They set fire to Rita’s house, they’re currently at a stand-off out on the street. You up for taking part in a fight the likes of which you’ve never seen before?”
My jaw hangs open in shock. Rita’s wonderful house full of trinkets and magic has been set on fire. Anger bubbles in the pit of my stomach. What right do these families think they have to destroy a person’s home just like that? I quietly scowl and nod as we continue the rest of the drive in silence.
When we approach Rita’s road I almost pull a muscle in my neck as I stick my head out the window to get a better view. All kinds of swirly, hazy splashes of colour are twisting through the air, bashing against one another in a beautiful, spectacular struggle. The word “wow” escapes my lips, a near inaudible whisper.
“How come the people who live in these houses aren’t going wild and calling the police?” I ask.
“Glamour.” Finn replies. “You and I can see the magic because it’s what we expect. Humans who are unaware of the supernatural world don’t even consider it possible, and therefore with a little glamour the magic users can make them see only what they expect to see. Which for many people living i
n this city is absolutely nothing at all.”
“Amazing,” I breathe.
As we get closer to the awe-inspiring battle that is taking place before our eyes, I begin to make out the figures of Rita, Gabriel, Alvie and Rita’s mother Noreen, standing in a semi-circle formation in her front garden. Their mouths are moving in unison as they chant some kind of spell, and out of their bodies float these huge swirls of colour, red and purple and blue and yellow.
Just across the road are about nine other people, standing in a similar position to that of my friends. Crap, they probably have the upper hand too, because not only are there more of them, there are nine of them, and nine is a multiple of three. My friends only have four, which is not one of those magical numbers required to perform spells correctly.
These are members of the elusive magical families I have heard so much about. All of them are strikingly tall, like Marcel, but that’s just about the only feature that sets them apart from normal humans. They aren’t particularly beautiful like the vampires or the dhamphirs. Colours rise from them also, but there’s something different about the consistency, their magic is condensed and heavy, but less vibrant. The magic of my friends is like a splattering of luminous paint, while that of the magical family members is see-through and dark, like you could move your hand right through it.
Above all of this are massive clouds of smoke, rising from Rita’s poor destroyed house. Flames burst out of one of the upstairs windows. Finn parks the car a few houses down from Rita’s and we step outside, Wolf padding along beside us, his head slightly lowered as if he’s on guard.
“I thought the vampires were supposed to be the enemies,” I say to Finn as we approach Rita and the others.
“The magical families can be temperamental, most of the time they’re okay but every so often they lose the plot. If you ask me it’s all that inbreeding.”
I raise an eyebrow in surprise. I’d always thought Finn didn’t have a bad word to say about anyone who lived on the North side, apparently I’d been wrong.
“Hey, you lot wanna try fighting the old fashioned way?” Finn calls over to the collection of warlocks and witches on the opposite side of the road. In response, a tall, dark haired man steps out of the semi-circle formation to make some strange hand gestures at Finn. A second later a tidal wave of mist comes seeping toward us, knocking both of us off our feet. The magic clings to my skin like the humid air in a sauna, but it drifts away just as quickly as it came.
“Thought not,” Finn spits. “Taking the coward’s way out it is then.” We both get back to our feet, but then I see the warlock make another hand gesture and a second, more powerful mist heads our way. Wolf’s growl resonates through the street. Panic sets in, because some instinct deep inside of me tells me that this mist isn’t simply going to knock us off our feet like the last one. It feels as though someone else is taking over my body, like a long lost incarnation of myself, a self both familiar and completely strange, is rising to the surface.
With a steady arm I push Finn out of the way and sweep my hand across my body and to the left hand side, it reminds me of the gestures that the witches and warlocks make. But it can’t be the same, can it? I have no clue where the gesture came from, it’s a memory I never knew I possessed.