Of Stars and Wishes

Chapter Two

My parent's café, Aquilia, is the floor beneath my apartment. They bought it over when I wasn't much younger than I am now, and we've lived here ever since. It was the second permanent home I'd had. Before, we'd moved around constantly, afraid she would be on our heels. After a few years of safety, they'd decided to settle down and try to let me live a small semblance of a normal life.

After my mother disappeared, one of her friends took it over temporarily: I'm too young to own a café at seventeen. I still work there: I have to feed myself, and there's bills to pay.

The radio is on in the living room, playing a quiet Mozart symphony, symphony number forty if my memory serves. I reach out with a frail tendril of magic and switch it off with a gentle push. The exhilarating rush of the power sends a pleasant tingle down my spine.

I'm a telekinetic—I can move objects with my mind. I've always known this, my parents were 'magic' too, but they always hated their powers. I practiced without their knowledge for a couple of years. Even now, with all the time I could want on my hands, I can only do simple things. Without anyone to teach me, my magic is next to useless.

That's not to say I can't fight for myself though. I've been trained in weaponry and basic self-defence since I was a girl, for when our pursuer caught up to us and my parents weren't around to defend me.

Father told me that less than one percent of the population here are able to do magic, and only one percent of those are aware of it. I would seem insane to most others if they knew. The human mind will do anything it can to make sense of magic or blame it on trickery.

My cat, Carnelian, is curled up in the adjacent armchair to the one I'm sitting in. His amber fur ruffles as he breathes, a steady rhythm marking the passing of time.

I gaze over to the fireplace, and the framed picture of me and my parents. My father, who told heroic tales, and held me tight as we cried, and my mother, who baked the best chocolate cakes, and told me everything was going to be okay when the world was burning up from the inside.

The memory jolts my tears, and I'm sobbing, my body is quaking. I want to curl up their arms again, I want to listen to them tell me how their day went in their mediocre jobs, in their mediocre lives. But no. We're being hunted by someone who won't stop until she finds us, and every day where she can hurt me is an inferno that traps me in the eye.

My parents are alive, I tell myself. They've got to be. I don't know how I can live knowing she caught up to them for good.

There's a crash from the kitchen. Jumping up, I glance at Carnelian. Not him. I bolt to the drawer and grab a short knife and slip it in a sheath under my baggy jeans.

A bullet whizzes past my head and I can smell the acrid stench of gunpowder. The world goes as sharp as a blade. A bullet. In my home. She's found me. I knew I should have moved on. She's found me. My heart is squeezed in between my chest. I cannot move. She's found me, and I won't see another day.

The assailant turns around the corner, and I hold out my left fist. My knuckles are turning white as I clench them. My right hand is resting over the knife, ready to pull out in a moment's notice.

Another bullet, about to enter my neck, is suddenly jolted off trajectory and clinks to the floor in front of me.

Thank the skies my mother gave me my bracelet when she did. I would've died otherwise.

I clutch the bracelet. The car is coming towards me too soon, too fast. I cannot move. I'm rooted to the spot. The pavement is too far away. I'm going to die. The weak headlights draw closer, piercing the hungered dark enveloped by the fog. I'm going to die right here, right now. The car draws closer with a screeching, my frozen figure just being noticed.