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Four years ago

The first thing I saw in St. Daktalion was an angel. A statue twice my height stood by a coffee shop, a complex net of spiderweb thin cracks covering the folds of the angel's robe carved of stone. I walked into that coffee shop, bought a large cappuccino, and went wandering the streets until my legs ached.

I wasn't looking for something in particular, or someone, only wanted to forget why I was in the city in the first place. Today. Alone.

You should move to St. Daktalion. I'm sorry, you don't belong here.

I glanced at the people around me, but nobody glanced back, everyone passed by, too busy to even notice that my presence made them uncomfortable. There were so many heartbeats in every street, yet none of them seemed to be strong enough to parry my hold on their pulses, on their emotions. I made a few strangers smile at me, and they did, and then scattered away like puppets with loosened strings.

A little girl stood marveling at the ice cream truck while her mother was talking on the phone nearby, and I asked the girl why she wouldn't buy ice cream.

"I can't choose," she said. Then she began telling about the places and the days of her life she associated each flavor with. Her voice was so casual, so open-hearted, hope swelled in my stomach. And then my hope died when her mother dragged her away from me, apologizing, but also looking at me as if a black cloud was hanging over my head.

What had I done? Who was I now? Could I know how to start a new life in the city if I never knew how to make friends? I didn't even know how to be a friend to myself.

Obviously, I didn't expect to find a city full of vedmas and vedmaks, but I did expect to wander around long enough to be noticed by one. I couldn't be the only person with a sigil of magic, right? Vlad lived in this city, at least one family had to know what magic was like.

Nobody. Sauntering down every avenue and prospekt, wasting my money on hotels at nights, and reaching out to every heartbeat, I found nobody.

The city of St. Daktalion was everything I dreamed of: enigmatic old buildings with intricate facades, domed cathedrals glinting under the sun, bridges so long they faded into the fog each morning. Everything but not the people--I didn't find a single soul who'd be happy about living in this overwhelmingly magnificent place. The people were...ordinary. Hustling, working, arguing, laughing, and--avoiding me as a branded predator. Finer clothes and politer greetings, those were what made a mug of coffee three times more expensive than in my little town, nothing else.

No magic.

And how was I supposed to seek out a boy I'd seen twice in my life in a city of several million people? Knowing no phone number, no address, no friends of his. I tried to ask people, but there was no use; I searched online, but every website gave me a blank page result on Vlad Voskresenyev, just as before.

Of course, I thought about taking off, running, going back home, but I couldn't bear even the mere memory of Mom's melancholy and Tatya's consternation.

I needed to get rid of magic.

But till then, I needed to live somehow, too.

With that in mind, I spent the last of my money to rent a small room at the far end of the city, pay for a university's pre-med course, and buy the most delicious dinner in the most luxurious restaurant. The next day, with no money in my pocket, I got a job as a waitress in a bar that was in no way luxurious, yet took me with no experience and no questions.

That was the start.

And that, in a way, was the end.

Weeks bled into months, months trickled away. Almost half a year went by, and all the progress of mine was a salary barely enough to pay for my food and my room. No new friends, no people brave enough to admit I made them feel anxious with my mere presence either. No idea how to make anything right.

Sometimes, when the bar wasn't very crowded, I sneaked outside through the backdoor, into an unlit, narrow alley, and called someone. Tatya never answered her phone, Mom never picked up, and I was scared to call Bogdan--I still hadn't told him I'd chosen magic that night.

"Why are lonely girls always so pretty?"

Startled, I look up from my cell phone and saw a stocky boy leaning against the doorframe. I didn't remember his name, but I saw him at the prep school. He'd never talked to me before, but I caught him stealing glances at me during the lectures a few times. My presence, seemingly, didn't bother him like the others, even though his whole attention was focused on me now.

What if he knows? my mind whispered shyly. But I didn't have the guts to reach out to his heartbeat to see if I couldn't affect him--or to find myself disappointed.

"Because loneliness always catches us at night, and nights make everything prettier," I said instead.

He sucked on his lip, contemplating my answer. "And why are you always lonely?" he took a step over the threshold, joining me on the sidewalk.

I watched the door behind him creak shut, cutting us from the bar noises. Narrowing the world to this dead-end sidewalk. "What do you mean? I'm not."

"You always sit alone during lectures, always come to the school alone, always leave alone."

"Because I come there to study, not to have fun."

A crease appeared between his brows. "Do you have fun in this bar?"

The night was quiet and warm, and despite the dumpsters a few steps away and the dirty cobbles beneath our feet, the breeze made it easy to breathe. It was that kind of late-hour breeze that helped forget your worries and live in the moment. I was waiting for him to start teasing me or laughing. To say I was lying about not being lonely and ask how I got my magic. But something different flashed in his eyes when he took another step toward me, something savage.

"No, I work here," I said and was about to go back inside, but he suddenly thrust his hand against the brick wall, blocking my way to the door.

"And I think you do have fun," he went on, his voice low. "Only your kind of fun is not for everyone to appreciate. You are that sort of fun that pretends to be a good girl." With another motion, he pinned me to the wall, his body hardening against me. "Are you?" his words smelled thick of alcohol on my cheek. "A good girl?"

I shut my eyes, fear and anger battling inside me. Without thinking now, my thoughts stretched out to his pulse. There was no parrying, of course, no magic. Only drunk, filthy longing of a person testing their limits.

"They say crazy chicks are crazily hot in bed," he breathed, his hand sliding down. "Is it true?"

"Let me go."

"Why? Let's find out," his fingers trailed under my skirt.

Anger won, burning bright in my mind. I could sense my scar itching to hunt, to break, to destroy. Waiting for my permission to strike. His pulse hummed in my head, strong in anticipation, steady and ready for me to be squeezed lifeless. He chose a wrong victim.

"Let me go," I repeated, instantly calm as a serpent, my powers sharpening the world around me.

He did not let me go. "Don't play coy"--he pushed his mouth to my lips--"I can make you wet."

"I can make you wet, too." With blood.

And I squeezed. Pulled at his nerves, almost ripping them off. I'd never allowed myself to pull that fast. Fear me, I whispered to his blood. Blood never failed me.

He stumbled backward, coughing, his eyes brimming with terror. His hands clawed at his throat, but there wasn't much he could do as long as I wanted him to suffer.

"Wh--what--" his words drowned in wet rasping of his chest. Blood was filling his lungs, choking him. One blink, one thought, one letting go of the strings stood between me and his death.

Oh, now I understood the thrill of testing one's limits. I watched him fall to his knees, his face turning blue, a trickle of blood tracing down the corner of his mouth. But not his pain was what terrified me then. I chose this? This was not the life I dreamed of, not the power I asked for, not the place I looked for.

This was not the town where children threw stones at my back, this was worse. In Blakfait, nobody hid their faces; when people called you a freak, they did in the daylight. Here, people smiled at me under the sun and laughed at my back under the moon. This was not the fairytale I looked forward to for my whole life--this was a nightmare, a lie in a glittering wrapping.

I released his nerves a moment before it was too late, and took off. Intoxicated by the taste of my power, horrified of what that power was ultimately capable of. It had been so long since I'd felt it inside me, and the first time when I actually used it. On purpose. It seemed like my body could tear apart by the amount of magic it had stored. I ran and ran and ran until my knees wobbled and my chest throbbed, breathless.

Exhausted, I then dropped on the curb somewhere what looked like another side of the city, and sat there, staring at empty space. I would never return to that bar, I could never return to that school, I couldn't return home, not with my scar burning like liquid iron ready to sentence anyone to death.

I was dangerous. I was cursed.

An old man saw me and wanted to walk over to ask if I needed help, but I scared him away. I sensed his good intentions, but I gave his aged heart a soft push, shooing him away. I didn't need help. Only a miracle could save me now.

But there were no miracles ever known granted by wicked magic.

A few minutes later, a car lurched to a stop next to where I sat. The passenger seat window slid down, and a girl peeked out, her makeup black and heavy.

"What did you do to that old wrinkle of a man to toss him away with one glare?" she asked, curious.

I wanted to demonstrate her, but something left me stalling. The way she said it--she wasn't drunk or high, she realized I was what made her feel off. Still, she was asking. She didn't care for the danger--she looked for it. So that was what magic made me good for? For danger. A troublemaker and a cheater? A criminal.

"Whatever you did, you did it better than the nervous kid in the back seat," the girl clicked her tongue when I kept silent. "I'm Qing. That's Wayra and Euklas," she waved at her grinning driver and then at the hook-nosed boy behind her back. "And you? Do you want to make some real money, girl?"

"You stole this car." I was only guessing, relying on their agitated pulses, but that was all it took.

Wayra whistled, approving. "A smart devil," he said. "It was parked as if begging to be stolen, darling."

"So?" Qing's eyes shone with mischief. "Hop in, we won't invite twice."

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