CHIARA AS I watch the gorgeous man in front of me, I feel strange.In a bit of a quandary.Unbelievable.But in my first glimpse of him, giddiness and pure lust slammed into me.I’m a virgin, for pity’s sake. I’ve never felt anything like this for any man, even the sexually magnetic men I have encountered in my life as my father’s heiress. Or those beautiful men who modeled in shoots of some of the projects I undertook for my publisher.Never.I have dated but I never had a boyfriend.I had lusted, but never felt the desire to jump to bed with the man who triggered the yearning like this. I need something more. I need to know the man, need more time.Nothing like this.This is pure, undiluted lust, for a stranger.And it doesn’t make any sense.So I know it is the magick that’s doing this.And I know, without him saying, that he was Gideon Swan.He is the awakened warlock.And Jesus H. Christ… he is potent.It is all I can do to stay calm.I try to imagine what my mother will do in th
CHIARA GIDEON does not lie. There is a warm, cozy fire blazing in the elegant fireplace in his spacious living room where huge rugs scatter on the wooden floor that gives it a homey feel.I lead him towards the biggest couch that happens to be nearest the fireplace, and after settling him down there, I asked him where I can get a blanket and medicine for him.“There’s a blanket inside that door. It’s the den. I sometimes fall asleep there when working during the night and—”“I’ll get it. It’s not locked, right?”He shakes his head. My goodness, he is shivering all over now!I hasten as fast as I can. I see several blankets folded neatly inside a huge cabinet that has several throw pillows in there, too. I bring a thick blanket and a pillow with me and I go back to the living room.“Are you alone here?” I ask as I put the pillow under his head and the blanket over him after helping him lie down. He clutches at it right away to his chest. “There must be servants?”“She just went home be
CHIARA “SO I’m a warlock,” he says. “Or that’s what I’m called.”I nod. His short statement pulls me further from the sexual haze I share with him into the reality of our worlds merging now.I suspect this is the first time he is talking about this with anyone.“And you’re a witch.”“Yes… those are the labels used on us loosely. We’re actually both magickals, or what you call humans who are born from one or more Magickal bloodlines. My mother is a witch and my father is a Mundane—or who we call non-Magickals. So I’m half, but I ended up a Magickal on the Council registry, anyway.”“Why do you sound like you don’t like being Magickal?”“I love my mother—basically the only Magickal I know and like. I love my father and I grew up with him, here in the Mundane world. If my mother isn’t such a cool witch, I’d rather be Mundane.”“But there’s no choice about this? You can’t… deactivate it or something?”I turn to him. “Do you want to? Or, as it does with me, do you think you’d reach this fa
GIDEON “EON, this is really good. It helps. Thank you again,” Chiara says, looking at what remains of her sandwich and concentrating on chewing.“Good, I’m glad it passed,” I reply.She seems relaxed. The color is back on her cheeks, and I can see she has let go of the blanket like she is warm, now.“Chiara… maybe you lost energy because you’ve helped me from my fever?”She looks up at me abruptly. And I know she has thought of it. “Maybe.”“So…” while I can still control myself. While my power is yet just watching instead of screaming… “What can you tell me about magick? I suppose this is the reason why you’re here?”I watch her take a deep breath. “Actually, it is the Council of Magickals that sent me. They… I was told that magickal power was felt here in the past week and they have a hunch that you don’t even know about your magickal abilities. I thought the same and I didn’t know how I can start telling you before you did it yourself. Thank you for that. You provided an opening fo
GIDEON BUT then, I feel her.She is back, talking to me, calling my name, and piling more blankets on me.I am shivering so hard.“Chi-Chiara…? You’re… ba-back.”“I’m moving the couch nearer the fire so you can get more heat,” she tells me.I think I feel the couch… move.I open my eyes. I try. I can feel heat shooting out of them, electricity zinging through my skin. I see her, her hair rising in the atmosphere as her hand guided the couch.She isn’t lifting the couch and me with her hands, of course, as I think is going to do at first. That is ridiculous.She is using magick to lift the couch and me up, and move us toward the fireplace.“Cool…” I whisper. “Chiara…” I call when I see how scared she looks in the light from the fire in the fireplace.I am scaring her.I close my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Chiara…” I whisper next. I am clearly delirious, like going through two separate awareness… aware of what is happening outside, but is conscious, too, of what is happening inside that place
GIDEON “I THOUGHT I was going to die,” I continue. “He wants to kill me. when he sees that I’m awake, though, he stumbles back and begins to cry. He was begging… apologizing… and if he cared about me before, right at that moment it was just pure terror in there. He thinks I’m a spawn of the devil, but he knew I was a good kid. He knew I saved his son that day. And yet, he thought if he didn’t kill me first I’m going to kill his family.”She gulps. “You left?”“I ran away before morning,” I say. “I was scared… but they… he… was going to commit murder because he was more scared. It wasn’t the first time people got scared of me and I manage to avoid something like that situation before. But he’s… they’re especially kind than others before. I feel it was all my fault.“Since then, I couldn’t sleep in a house with others in there for a long while. I slept in abandoned houses, managed to slip my way here and there. Until I was collected back into the system again after a few months of livin
CHIARA “HEY. Have you ever noticed how hungry you get more than other people you know? It’s because magick uses a lot of our energy when we utilize it. I needed a lot of protein growing up.”I see him pause for a moment in my periphery, so I turn my head toward him knowing fully well he has experienced the same with food.It wasn’t just a pause.It was a flinch.“So you’ve noticed,” I state carefully.He nods slowly and releases me then to go to the fridge. He opens the doors and takes out several bento boxes of food.All have thick steaks on them.“My biggest motivation for getting rich is my fear of getting hungry,” he explains softly as he fixes them to go to the microwave for heating. “I was always hungry growing up. I mixed with street kids who knew how to filch their way around just so I could eat because, even with foster families, I always felt like I wasn’t eating enough. I’m always malnourished on my charts. I always eat more than others share, but I was always so thin and p
GIDEON NO one is hurt.There are a few barns that need mending and a few roofs a little battered. A tree did fall but away from the highway.No fatalities to humans and animals.I am grateful not just because of the fact, but also because it means I can go back to the mansion as quickly.I’m feeling feverish,I’m feeling emotionally unstable.I feel fine as I drive back home.When I arrive, she is still downstairs, sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace but she has magicked it back to its original spot.But she isn’t smiling.“Is everything okay?” she asks worriedly.“No one is hurt, minimal damage on properties that can be repaired quickly in the morning.”She looks relieved. “That’s good.”“Is there a problem? You look very serious when I got in,” I ask.She pats the spot beside her. “Yes, unfortunately. My mom called and so I have something new to tell you.”I sit down. “Something to worry about?” I ask.“Before I say anything, I just wanna make sure you are really on the s
CHIARA“HE did that, yes,” my mother replies as she walks towards us, a clue of her mirth still evident on her face. “And it’s very fascinating to watch someone else do it aside from our Head Elder.”She looks both fascinated and a little wary, her eyes taking in Gideon’s defensive pose as her eyes scanned us.I suddenly realize Eon is holding me against him as he stands behind me, and it happens because I have learned to trust him in the very short time we have met.And that isn’t like me.I am always so distrusting of people at first meetings, and my mother knows this because she is the one who taught me to be wary of others given the nature of our situation, as I live among the Mundanes.Later, I understood that as I am my mother’s daughter, which means I can be attacked anytime.Most importantly, my father can get hurt, too, since I live with him. She taught me to be careful from the moment I can be taught, and I took it to heart because of its significance to the only family I
CHIARA I GRIT my teeth as I fall down on the floor with Gideon, who twists to cover me with his body. Glass breaks from the windows above us and pieces fly in places, many landing on top of the magickal shield I made to cover us.“Whoa!” I hear him exclaim in surprise.“Call your housekeeper, Gideon!” I remind him as I also take my phone out to text my mother that what she warned me about has started happening.He is already calling his housekeeper who I worry might rush out to danger to find out what is going on.There is another ‘BOOM’ and I focus on maintaining the shield to protect us from pieces of sharp glass that suddenly become flying projectiles. I think, my assignment of finding Gideon Swan just became complicated, in the light of if we don’t survive this, there is no Gideon Swan for me to deliver to the Council.Gideon is warning someone named Amie to stay inside, lock the doors, and hide in a root cellar with her family, and that he will come to find them when this is ov
GIDEON NO one is hurt.There are a few barns that need mending and a few roofs a little battered. A tree did fall but away from the highway.No fatalities to humans and animals.I am grateful not just because of the fact, but also because it means I can go back to the mansion as quickly.I’m feeling feverish,I’m feeling emotionally unstable.I feel fine as I drive back home.When I arrive, she is still downstairs, sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace but she has magicked it back to its original spot.But she isn’t smiling.“Is everything okay?” she asks worriedly.“No one is hurt, minimal damage on properties that can be repaired quickly in the morning.”She looks relieved. “That’s good.”“Is there a problem? You look very serious when I got in,” I ask.She pats the spot beside her. “Yes, unfortunately. My mom called and so I have something new to tell you.”I sit down. “Something to worry about?” I ask.“Before I say anything, I just wanna make sure you are really on the s
CHIARA “HEY. Have you ever noticed how hungry you get more than other people you know? It’s because magick uses a lot of our energy when we utilize it. I needed a lot of protein growing up.”I see him pause for a moment in my periphery, so I turn my head toward him knowing fully well he has experienced the same with food.It wasn’t just a pause.It was a flinch.“So you’ve noticed,” I state carefully.He nods slowly and releases me then to go to the fridge. He opens the doors and takes out several bento boxes of food.All have thick steaks on them.“My biggest motivation for getting rich is my fear of getting hungry,” he explains softly as he fixes them to go to the microwave for heating. “I was always hungry growing up. I mixed with street kids who knew how to filch their way around just so I could eat because, even with foster families, I always felt like I wasn’t eating enough. I’m always malnourished on my charts. I always eat more than others share, but I was always so thin and p
GIDEON “I THOUGHT I was going to die,” I continue. “He wants to kill me. when he sees that I’m awake, though, he stumbles back and begins to cry. He was begging… apologizing… and if he cared about me before, right at that moment it was just pure terror in there. He thinks I’m a spawn of the devil, but he knew I was a good kid. He knew I saved his son that day. And yet, he thought if he didn’t kill me first I’m going to kill his family.”She gulps. “You left?”“I ran away before morning,” I say. “I was scared… but they… he… was going to commit murder because he was more scared. It wasn’t the first time people got scared of me and I manage to avoid something like that situation before. But he’s… they’re especially kind than others before. I feel it was all my fault.“Since then, I couldn’t sleep in a house with others in there for a long while. I slept in abandoned houses, managed to slip my way here and there. Until I was collected back into the system again after a few months of livin
GIDEON BUT then, I feel her.She is back, talking to me, calling my name, and piling more blankets on me.I am shivering so hard.“Chi-Chiara…? You’re… ba-back.”“I’m moving the couch nearer the fire so you can get more heat,” she tells me.I think I feel the couch… move.I open my eyes. I try. I can feel heat shooting out of them, electricity zinging through my skin. I see her, her hair rising in the atmosphere as her hand guided the couch.She isn’t lifting the couch and me with her hands, of course, as I think is going to do at first. That is ridiculous.She is using magick to lift the couch and me up, and move us toward the fireplace.“Cool…” I whisper. “Chiara…” I call when I see how scared she looks in the light from the fire in the fireplace.I am scaring her.I close my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Chiara…” I whisper next. I am clearly delirious, like going through two separate awareness… aware of what is happening outside, but is conscious, too, of what is happening inside that place
GIDEON “EON, this is really good. It helps. Thank you again,” Chiara says, looking at what remains of her sandwich and concentrating on chewing.“Good, I’m glad it passed,” I reply.She seems relaxed. The color is back on her cheeks, and I can see she has let go of the blanket like she is warm, now.“Chiara… maybe you lost energy because you’ve helped me from my fever?”She looks up at me abruptly. And I know she has thought of it. “Maybe.”“So…” while I can still control myself. While my power is yet just watching instead of screaming… “What can you tell me about magick? I suppose this is the reason why you’re here?”I watch her take a deep breath. “Actually, it is the Council of Magickals that sent me. They… I was told that magickal power was felt here in the past week and they have a hunch that you don’t even know about your magickal abilities. I thought the same and I didn’t know how I can start telling you before you did it yourself. Thank you for that. You provided an opening fo
CHIARA “SO I’m a warlock,” he says. “Or that’s what I’m called.”I nod. His short statement pulls me further from the sexual haze I share with him into the reality of our worlds merging now.I suspect this is the first time he is talking about this with anyone.“And you’re a witch.”“Yes… those are the labels used on us loosely. We’re actually both magickals, or what you call humans who are born from one or more Magickal bloodlines. My mother is a witch and my father is a Mundane—or who we call non-Magickals. So I’m half, but I ended up a Magickal on the Council registry, anyway.”“Why do you sound like you don’t like being Magickal?”“I love my mother—basically the only Magickal I know and like. I love my father and I grew up with him, here in the Mundane world. If my mother isn’t such a cool witch, I’d rather be Mundane.”“But there’s no choice about this? You can’t… deactivate it or something?”I turn to him. “Do you want to? Or, as it does with me, do you think you’d reach this fa
CHIARA GIDEON does not lie. There is a warm, cozy fire blazing in the elegant fireplace in his spacious living room where huge rugs scatter on the wooden floor that gives it a homey feel.I lead him towards the biggest couch that happens to be nearest the fireplace, and after settling him down there, I asked him where I can get a blanket and medicine for him.“There’s a blanket inside that door. It’s the den. I sometimes fall asleep there when working during the night and—”“I’ll get it. It’s not locked, right?”He shakes his head. My goodness, he is shivering all over now!I hasten as fast as I can. I see several blankets folded neatly inside a huge cabinet that has several throw pillows in there, too. I bring a thick blanket and a pillow with me and I go back to the living room.“Are you alone here?” I ask as I put the pillow under his head and the blanket over him after helping him lie down. He clutches at it right away to his chest. “There must be servants?”“She just went home be