✧ ✧ ✧

"Bogdan?" Yara whispers when her blue-haired friend calls her from another room. "Wait."

I don't wait. Taking a step back, I vanish within the shadows. To be seen only when you want to be seen is as much of a curse as of a blessing. I glide away, light as a breeze, moving through the darkness and the walls and the air itself. I watch Yara and Nilam sneak out of the restaurant and walk down the alley, I don't follow.

Not tonight.

Shadows don't follow, and I was a shadow long before I died. I was three when the accident happened, confining me to a wheelchair. Since then, my whole life was the four walls of my room, a road to the hospital where my granny worked, and a park with the river nearby. I couldn't climb onto a roof and watch the sunset, I couldn't take a bus and see the city. I ate at home, slept at home, studied at home. For my whole life, nobody expected me to be anywhere but at home.

Alone.

"You're not alone, my boy," Granny used to say. "God's angels watch over you, and God has a plan for everyone. This is a test of your patience and faith. Just wait, and you'll be rewarded."

I waited, I really did.

Every day I waited for my parents to visit, but they only visited me on my birthday. We're busy with our lives, they said. So busy that apparently it was easier to leave their crippled son with his granny. Then they divorced, and stopped coming at all. They called once or twice a year—until they stopped calling, too.

I waited, and a girl named Yaroslava once came to the hospital. Yet, she only came because she had a terrible bruise after a school fight and was worried that it didn't come off for too long. So that was the reward? The angels gave me a friend, but they also gave my friend bruises so we could meet?

Still, Yara hated the hospital, I knew, it reminded her of her fights and her bruises, and her pain. And I couldn't make her stay with me all the time anyway, she had her life, she could go anywhere she wanted. I couldn't come with her.

Reading was a good way of killing time--cheating on your own dull life, pretending you had another. Living a life a book's character did. Yet, books ended, books had plot and meaning, and my life seemed to have none.

What was the plan then?

Just wait.

Granny's answer was enough for me when I was nine. When her baked apples could brighten my day and another book of tales could shoo my loneliness away. But it was no longer enough when I was fifteen. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to meet people, to leave that damn chair behind, but all I got was apples and God has a plan.

For Granny, our peaceful, measured lives were a gift, for me--a torment.

I waited. Waited for a plan, for a change, an opportunity. I'd wasted eighteen years, waiting, and nothing had changed. Only Granny grew old, her apples oversugared, her prayers loud. And my world was but the four walls of my room, and a road to the hospital, and a park nearby.

Then Yaroslava left me, too. Just like my parents, she went on with her life, moved to the city, tore free from her childhood bruises. And I couldn't follow.

This is a test of your patience and faith.

When I first met Vlad, I thought of him as a test, too. I hated him. And it wasn't his broken leg that, for a while, made him just as useless as I was or his fancy clothes that looked more expensive than my entire wardrobe. No, I hated the audacity he spoke with. He questioned everything--heroes and villains, good and evil, God and Devil.

Yet, he believed in old stories, where magic was possible. Where dreams could come true, just like in books. I believed it too.

I don't know how we ended up being friends. Vlad just kept showing up at the hospital that entire summer as if he had nothing else to do, kept talking and telling me stories. And then one day, he brought a book with him, Silver Poppy Treatise, the one with the lore and rituals Yara would be telling me about later.

This is a test.

I told Vlad that book was evil, unholy, ungodly. I told him I didn't want any evil magic in my life--I wanted to be rewarded for my patience, no cheating. He shrugged and gave the book to Yaroslava. And she wasn't patient.

Only I didn't know that.

✧ ✧ ✧

Three years and six months ago

The last time I saw Yara, it was a cloudy early winter evening, the time of the night when darkness and chill descended upon the world.

"Wayra, wait a minute!" Her voice rang through the night, and a Porsche stopped by the hospital yard where, as always, I was waiting for my granny to finish her shift.

My jaw dropped when Yara hopped out of the car.

She was the girl I knew, yet she didn't look like that girl. Her red hair framed her face, untamed, no ponytail. Her eyes were outlined in thick black eyeliner, and all her clothes were just as black, her coat flapping behind her back as the wind blew between us. She wasn't a little town girl anymore, she was a girl from the city--stylish, superior, full of secrets.

We stared at each other in poignant, awkward silence, both waiting for another to speak.

"Hey, Bogdan," she said at last. She halted a few steps away from me, cautious, like a cat prowling around a bird. As though expecting me to get scared.

I wasn't scared, I was angry. "Why didn't you call me since you left Blakfait?"

"I was meaning to, but..." She still spoke like the girl I knew, though, heartfelt and self-conscious. "I had to tell you something, Bogdan, but I didn't know how, I--"

"Your sister dropped by."

Alarm flickered across her face. "She did?"

I fumbled in my pocket and then handed her a small wooden crescent Tanya had given me. The only time Tanya came to me was to give me that crescent. Everyone remembered of my existence just when it was convenient, right?

Yara stared at the pendant in my palm. She didn't admit it, but I knew what she was thinking. Her own sister doesn't want to see her. "What is it?"

"I don't know, she just said your mom was cleaning the attic and found it among her old stuff."

"It feels like there's magic in it."

"Magic?"

"Yes."

Maybe it was just the wind, but I suddenly felt cold and defenseless. Magic. The word shook me to my very core. It had been a while since I heard it. Since I thought of it.

This is a test of your faith.

Then it struck me, the truth I didn't allow myself to believe. Magic. Everyone at the hospital had been talking about Yara and all the ominous things happening around her, and I hadn't listened. People had always been gossiping--a neighbor cheated on his wife, a nurse got drunk at work, a doctor's daughter was caught kissing another girl. Who cared? Half of that wasn't even true, they'd been talking about Yara's mom being crazy, too, and it was bullshit.

Magic.

Be patient and humble, and you'll be rewarded. Fail the test, and your soul will be tortured in Hell.

"Bogdan, I--"

My hand clasped the crucifix hanging under my chin. "Stay away from me."

Dismay must have washed over my face, because Yara stopped midmotion, her hand frozen in the air as she wanted to touch my shoulder, or sit on the steps beside my wheelchair, or take the pendant that was still in my other palm.

Hurt shone in her eyes, even the darkness of the late hour couldn't conceal it. "I wanted to tell you, Bogdan, I'm sorry. But I knew you wouldn't like it."

She was right, I didn't. Superior, that's what I thought of her when I saw her. How did I fail to notice people's trepidation every time she was around? I thought it was nonsense, stupid fears of those whose faith was little...

"Listen, Bogdan," she went on, kneeling on the steps before me as though in the beginning of praying before a church. "I'm still me, and you're still my best friend."

Fail the test, and your soul will be tortured in Hell.

"No, magic is a sin, Yara, and you're going to Hell."

Shock altered her features, it was like watching ice melt and reveal deep waters beneath it. "A sin?" she repeated, a humorless laugh escaping from her chest as she rose to her feet again. "You see? That's why I didn't tell you. You could never understand. But my sinful magic can make you strong, take your fears away!"

Fail the test...

That was what the evil did, right? It tried to get under your skin, to lure you to the dark side, to convince you to sell your soul and stay damned forever. I looked over her again, over her red hair and black clothes. She looked like the night incarnate, indeed she did.

"Do you think Hell can scare me?" she went on, her voice brittle. "Do you know what it feels like when children at school call you loony? When they pick up a fight with you, just for fun, knowing you can't win because you're weaker? Do you think Hell is worse than when your head is shoved into a toilet and flushed, Bogdan?" Temper flashed in her pupils. "Yara the joke, Yara the plague! Yara's never a person."

I didn't know all that had happened to her, and I didn't know what to say. I'd thought of her as being weaker, I'd never thought of her losing her school fights...Was it all true or did she make it up to arouse sympathy and guilt in my chest? Why hadn't she shared all that with me before then?

A crooked smile, like a grimace, spread across her face. "And now you're judging me? Really, Dan?" she asked. "Maybe it's you who's going to Hell."

A test of your faith.

The evil is fickle, the evil is dangerous. The evil will try to manipulate you.

That was the problem though. I still wasn't scared, not of her, not of her powers, not of the evil. Why wasn't I? Why didn't I sense something off about Yara as her sister sensed since the day she had her sigil scar? No fear, all I found inside me was anger. Yara betrayed me, she chose power over our friendship. Magic was real. And she never told me! She was a person for me, she was my friend--and she lied.

"Please, leave." Without looking at her, I handed her the pendant. I was so angry, I wanted her to feel it. "You're a monster. You chose to be."

✧ ✧ ✧

Now

Hovering in the murk, I think about that evening as I watch Yara's silhouette disappear around the corner. She assumed I hated her for the magic. I assumed so too, only...I guess I deceived us both. Now I know why I was angry.

There's no plan.

No reward.

No torment.

Nothing but what you create yourself. I've wasted my life, being humble and patient, waiting for some divine miracle--stalling. Why? It wasn't Yara's choice that I loathed, it was my ignorance, my blind faith in something I knew nothing of.

Turning to leave the empty street, I toy with the idea of what they would have written on my headstone. Here lies Bogdan Weihen. He waited until he died.

There's no headstone though.

I was angry with Yara, because she was clever and bold and strong when I wasn't. She dared to want more, to change the rules. Not anymore.

The moon peeks from behind the clouds as though to smile with me when I glide through the night. Yara's not the only one daring now. She thinks I am a ghost, yet ghosts don't become the creatures of magic willingly. They believed I drowned, didn't they? But they never found my body. Of course, they didn't.

Demons don't leave their bodies behind.

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