Gifted Ones

Chapter 6 Haven

I awake many hours later to the sound of a knock on my door. My eyes crack open and I wince at the sudden light. It takes me a minute to adjust, but once I do I see the door open across the room. Chase is standing just outside, an uncertain expression on his face.

"Hi," I croak out, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

"Hey. I was just seeing how you were doing."

I blink at him blearily. "Are you kidding?" I ask. I think that my emotions right now are the exact opposite of "okay."

He gives me a sad smile. "Here." He walks over to the side of the bed and holds out his hand. Cupped in his palm is a small white pill. "Pain meds. For your headache. Your not allergic to anything, are you?"

I grab the pill and swallow it whole, not bothering to answer him. My migraine has been killing me for hours. I pick at the gauze my forehead, wondering when the medicine will kick in. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. Later would be torture.

"I'm sorry, about everything. After your parents contacted us we rushed there as fast as we could. Unfortunately Gabriel had a spy in our deepest ranks. Glen Hunter ran as soon as he heard about the Amulet. That's when we knew. Gabriel has more resources than we do: we could barely get there at the time we did." I shove down the sudden lump in my throat, my breath catching.

"Chase?" I ask.

"Yeah?"

"I have literally no idea what you just said. I'm completely in the dark about all of this."

"Of course you don't, I'm sorry. It's just. . . Strange to explain it to someone. I just want to say I know what you're going through, we all do. And I will explain everything I can."

For a moment we are both silent. Softly I ask, "who are the Gifted? Are they the people who do things like you? Like the flying and the lightning, and the animals. . ." I can barely wrap my head around the concept, but I've seen it with my own eyes. I have to allow myself to be open to the possibilities.

"Yes," he says, his eyes watching me warily. "That is generally correct. We are the Flyers, the Shifts, and the Mages. The Flyers are people like Matthew. They have the ability to levitate above the ground and get all the perks that come with that. Shifts are the people who can change their appearance into that of an animal. Then there are the Mages, like me. We can manipulate energy and matter to do what we want it to do." He snaps his fingers and a flame appears in his palm, hovering right above the skin. I gasp and leap away from him. He extinguishes it and waves his hand over to the bookshelf. Four books dislodge themselves from their places and float themselves over to Chase. They land on the bed in a beat stack. The titles are even in alphabetical order. I watch, fascinated, as he puts them back on the shelf without touching them once. It's remarkable.

"How are you doing that?" I ask.

"How? Magic. We don't know where it comes from, but Mages have a spark of it inside them. Some don't consider us people, but we are. Just people with a touch of the Supernatural. We are simply the Gifted, exactly like humans, but. . . Special. Gifted." He shrugs slightly.

"And regular people just don't know about you?"

"No. Not since the Gifted Empire. But that was a long time ago." He trails off. "And there were the exceptions, like how your mom was-" he inhales quickly, looking at me with a worried expression.

Pass tense. He used pass tense. And he's right. I lean back against the pillows, wrestling with my emotions. I need to keep it together and let him explain. I have to know what happened to my mom and my dad. . . Suddenly the pain in my chest flares up again and the tears spill over the edge.