Chapter 1
CHIARA
“Will you be at home for dinner tonight, Chiara?” Dad asked me over breakfast.
I was scanning the news feed on my tablet as I ate my grapefruit and bagel with cream cheese. My father and I made it a habit to eat breakfast together as often as possible despite of (or, actually, because of) our busy work lives. He owned a law firm and I worked as a senior editor in a prestigious publishing company. We tried to make our time together generally undisturbed by our professional lives.
I glanced up at him. My father was a very attractive man in his fifties and he had an innate grace I admired and adored. But I did not get my more prominent physical looks from him. I got my physical looks from my mother. I got his chin, though. My nose was half-mom, half-dad. My long neck was dad’s. My lips weren’t as full as mom’s but not as thin as dad’s. So, half-half, too?
My mother was a lovely woman, but I loved my chin. I gother eyes and hair so, yeah, I loved my chin.
I was often told my character and mannerisms were reminiscent of both parents. I would like to think I could be as solid and as strong as my father when I aged because while growing up, I exhibited more of my mother’s wariness, quirkiness, and fierceness.
I shook my head. “I’m afraid not, Dad. I’ve got a business dinner tonight and I’m not sure how late I will be out. I’m going to meet an agent of a reclusive personality Henry has been trying to get an interview with for a possible book deal of the client’s life. For some reason, this agent specifically asked to meet with me. I am curious so I told Henry I’d go.” Henry was my publisher.
“They’re keeping you busy lately,” my father observed as he ate his omelet. He loved his omelets. He would eat it all day if he could get away with it.
But now, his brows were knotted in that shape they did when he was thinking about something that disturbed him much. “You know you don’t have to work, Chiara. Your trust fund is there any time you need to use it. You can even create a new company of your own and can start learning to manage it firsthand, not in theory.”
“But I enjoy what I do now. I like working hard and I’m learning so much. And I like being among people who will not treat me like a boss. I have time.”
“Well, I guess that runs in the genes,” he reluctantly replied.
“I know, right?”
He smiled. Dad was dedicated to running his high-profile law firm—even though he never needed to work another day in his life, too. He was filthy rich. He did both high-profile cases and any other pro bono when a client belonged to the marginalized. He liked working with people, too, in his outreach programs that helped orphan kids and the homeless.
He was disappointed when I didn’t study law in college. He was looking forward to welcoming me into his firm and making me a partner after all. But the legal process and human laws bore me to death because the mundane way to solve misdemeanors and crimes was tediously boring. I could also be liable to serving whoever sat on the seats of power. It did not make any sense to someone like me who could zap left and right criminals caught doing crime before they managed to get their feet to land inside a courtroom.
I hadn’t zapped anyone, much less anything, in my entire life. But technically, I could do that.
That was my mother in me.
My mother was a Magickal.
My father was a Mundane (non-magickal blood).
I would be considered a Magickal, because anyone with magick in their psych no matter where it came from was called that.
I prefered living on my father’s side of the world, though, with the Mundanes. The way things were done on the other side intimidated me more than anything. My mother had a status that made her quite notorious over there. No, thank you. I rather liked my couch and my books and my quiet off-days. Not that I had to fight for this since my mother had not. Her job with the Council made her extremely busy. Quite unhealthy to be raising a child.
Oh, I didn’t fault her. No. I was as proud of her as I was of my father. She saved lives—both Magickal and Mundane—every day she was out there doing her job. But I didn’t mind not knowing the details, also. I had learned to be okay with both sides of my roots.
My father accepted my decisions… though most times we argued about them. He more than supported anything I did that he felt was important to me—the rest he argued with me about as he strived hard not to make it seem like he was not spoiling me.
He thought I didn’t know, but as much as he loved his estranged wife, he was more intimidated by her and her world than I was. So he argued as if he was convincing himself he, a Mundane, was doing a good job raising a Magickal child in his mundane world.
In his heart, he believed I could do so much more with my mother.
I argued with him because I wanted him to know he did way better than good in raising me. I loved my father to death. He might not have magick, but in his own way, he was a pillar of the Mundane world. And wasn’t that so much more intimidating? To be powerful and effective without having to do magick?
Don’t get me wrong. If you could meet my mother, she was quite intimidating as a personality.
But I felt they both were great people, if you know what I mean, in their own way.
And that intimidated me a whole lot, being their only child, and just starting to make my own way in this world my ‘big’ parents occupied.
“Have you heard from your mother lately?” Dad asked out of the blue, and he did so in a careful, casual tone.
“Not for a while,” I answered. “Why do you ask?” I asked bluntly.
“Well, your birthday is coming up soon. I just thought Sable will call you. She usually spends your birthday with you.”
“I haven’t heard from her yet but she will probably call in a day or so. Don’t worry, Dad.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, fighting his self-consciousness while I fought harder to hide my smile. He smiled at me, and I grinned so mischievously at him that he blushed.
Yup.
My father was still hopelessly in love with his ex-wife-now-secret-girlfriend regardless of the divorce.
He never paid attention to any other women because, technically, they were still together. It was just being divorced from his wife did not make him or her liable to questions about why she was always away for days, weeks, or even months.
And I knew he missed Mom every single day and I reminded him of her every time he looked at me.
Let me describe me again.
I inherited my mother’s gorgeous red hair and slanted green eyes. My mother’s smile, beautiful and uninhibited, always lit up rooms. I was often told I did the same, much to my chagrin, because I truly found my mother amazingly beautiful.
“Your mom ruined me for other women,” Dad told me before when I was confused about why he hadn’t dated when others would have moved on. This was two years after the divorce and I was fourteen, still not privy to adult goings-on. “I can’t look at any other woman and not compare them to her. Until she’s not with anyone else—I’ll wait here for her.”
How could I fault him? Not only was my mother beautiful, but she also had a personality that made others loved her, too.
Unfortunately, she also was a powerful witch.
So the magickal government needed her. The Magickals needed her, too. Things were going on that both could not control, which made these goings-on dangerous if no one was there to help curb the danger.
And this was why they couldn’t be together like normal husbands and wives did.
And that was why I viewed both of my parents heroes.
And I felt quite insignificant, really, between them.
Which I truly was fine with, thank you very much.
