A/N: 20%! I'll try to have another chapter up today.
The next morning, Tessa sat up in bed and yawned. Stretching, she checked the time- seven in the morning- and got up. She brushed her teeth, washed her face, and changed into black shorts and a black tank top. She slipped on her ring. The black facets glinted in the morning light, throwing a sparkling pattern around the room. She had made plans with her friend Kaia to go for sushi at twelve, so she had five hours to kill. Tessa decided to unpack without magic. She grabbed a burger she had bought at the airport from the fridge. Then she read a book. Her mom and brother each sleepily stumbled from their respective rooms at around eleven. "Morning," Tessa said over a mug of coffee.
"Morning, Tess," Mark said.
"Hello, daughter of mine," her mom said, ruffling her hair.
At eleven thirty, Tessa grabbed her purse and a plaid button-down shirt she wore as a sweater. "See you guys later," she said. She flew to the mall and waited for Kaia at the food court. Finally, she spotted Kaia's white-blond hair. Tessa walked over to her friend and gave her a hug. Not many people could pull off hair that was nearly white and onyx-black eyes, but Kaia was an exception. Tessa was slightly in awe of her friend's super-high and prominent cheekbones, but every time she complimented Kaia, her friend brushed it off.
"Tessa!" Kaia exclaimed. "How was India?"
"It was great!" Tessa replied. "But the rupee is such a small amount of currency! The exchange rate is something like 100 rupees to a drachma! Anyways, how was your trip to America?"
"Amazing. The drachma is worth one and a half dollars. I bought the new iPhone there. It's funny how the normals think that all their technology was invented by them, when really we're inventing it and giving the blueprints to them. Normals will do anything for money."
"Yeah, it's weird. I bought the new Mac and iPhone there because I worked at an Apple store. They have so many employee perks!"
"Lucky! We should order, though. Do you want to go shopping after lunch?"
"Sure. What're you going to get?"
. . . . .
Tessa came home at four thirty, shopping bags in hand. She'd been saving for a shopping trip, and as she put away her purchases, she felt content. She ate dinner, went to a friend's party, came home, and fell asleep. The ring had started to feel like an extension of her body, like her old ring was.
. . . . .
The next day came, Tessa went to work as an apprentice to a jeweler, came home, and slept. The cycle repeated for the next two weeks, only broken once. She was walking home from the TranRail station, taking a shortcut through the park, when a man grabbed her arm and told her to give him her money. Tessa tossed her wallet away from her, then when the mugger's back was turned, knocked him out with a flash of gold sparks. He put up his protection spell too late, probably thinking that a girl wouldn't want to knock anybody out, and Tessa grabbed her wallet and went home.
She slowly settled back into her regular life, meeting up with friends on the weekends, working long hours and saving up during the week, practicing making her own crystal rings with the leftovers from work that the head jeweler allowed her to have. Soon, she had an arsenal of rings stored up. She didn't know what to do with them, so she gifted them. She got promoted from an assistant. Tessa was slowly working her way up in her life, but she didn't know that everything she was building for herself was about to come crashing down.
. . . . .
A month after the ring was bought, there was a morning when the ring was ice cold when Tessa put it on, despite the Bermuda temperatures keeping the summer nights warm.
The day after the icy ring incident, Tessa could have sworn that there was someone in her room as she was opening the door.
The next day, the ring seemed to be much tighter.
After that, Tessa felt compelled to pull out her potion kit.
Still, she never suspected the ring.
She decided to make a potion.
She didn't know what the potion would be, she just mixed everything together. It seemed similar to the potion that made a mage into a spirit. Tessa recalled her Potion Science teacher's lecture about spirits. "A mage's average lifespan is 150 years, but if a mage wants to be immortal, they drink a potion that turns them into a spirit. Spirits can't do anything but move without magic, so the average spirit tires easily. However, unusually strong mages make unusually strong spirits. Spirits can possess living beings, but it is very uncomfortable for them. Spirits can be removed from the being possessed by touching the possessed with an enchanted opal or the tail hair of a unicorn. Spirits can be banished by pouring a potion made with enchanted opal, unicorn tail hair, and unicorn horn shavings through the spirit. Earlier in time, it was very hard to banish spirits, as unicorn products meant you would have to kill the unicorn, which was a very hard task, or persuade it to lose its horn, also a nearly impossible feat, but now, with responsible unicorn breeding..."
Tessa finished the potion. She decided to dunk her ring in it, just to see what would happen. The potion was a thick, multicolored liquid. Nobody else was home- Tessa's mother and brother had gone shopping. Tessa took off the ring and submerged it in the potion.
The second the ring touched the liquid, pain and cold shot through Tessa's body, but when she tried to pull the ring back, her hand wouldn't respond. She slowly rotated the ring against her will. Finally, her hand pulled the ring out. The pain stopped, and Tessa lay gasping and shivering on the floor.
A black shape rose from the dripping ring on the floor. It twisted and solidified into a human form neither masculine or feminine. "Thank you, Tessa Greythorne, for freeing me from this prison. I'll really enjoy destroying your world. I think that I'll spare you, partly in thanks for buying that ring and setting me loose, partly just for you to suffer as you watch what you've done."
"What the hell did you do!?" Tessa screamed at the apparition.
"Nothing, my dear girl. You did all the work for me. Thanks! Now, I've got to go... maybe I'll start by destroying everyone that you love! That'll be fun!"
The spirit disappeared, leaving Tessa alone on the floor.
A/N: Hope you guys liked it! Vote, comment, share, and follow!
-Deepio the Slytherin
Also: Tao_Potato134 was that character good enough for you?
