Nobody tried to kill me for almost ten years. If I kept my head down, it might become eleven.

I sat down on my toilet's lid, leaned against the wall, and breathed. My backpack lay on the ground next to me. Ah, restrooms. Some of the best top secret areas ever invented. Besides ... the usual, people had all kinds of reasons for going to the bathroom. Some read magazines, traded insults about their peers, or cried about their lives' woes without being judged. All valid reasons. But, certain other people, needed privacy for different reasons.

Through the huge bottom gaps of my stall, I watched the other people going in or out. My heart skipped anytime the door outside opened. Right now, I had breathing room.

The smell was bad, but the solitude was beautiful. Day after day, I tried spells from my Mom's old books while nobody watched. Spells that would calm me down or build my strength. Day after day, I failed and always tried again. Now, I tried again.

Okay, let's start with the only move I knew: Tele-cat-nesis!

I clutched my pendant; a necklace whose thread carried a charcoal orb enclosing a golden star. Its knotted thread had been torn by my childhood bullies, but it was the only keepsake that remained from my mother. Closing my eyes, I broke an inner wall, released a decade of pent-up pain, and turned it into magic.

Shards of my life energy materialized into mist as white as the moon. Mana, qi, aether, quintessence, magic; human cultures developed various names for this mysterious energy filling our universe. You know it from fiction. Glowing swords, fireballs, runes, crystal balls; that stuff. This force of creation surrounded us as aether and sprang from our souls as life energy.

It's hard to explain its beauty to someone who never touched it. Magic followed rules, like physics. But it was also tied to thoughts, emotions, and the raw chaos of the human mind. To study it, it wasn't enough to be smart. Those called practitioners also needed cute, animal-like spirits called familiars bound to our souls which shielded our minds from aether corruption. Humans without one could still try magic, but it was like crossing the Pacific without a boat.

I tried anyway. I tried a vertical levitation spell on my backpack as this was the simplest magic of all out there. And I failed.

"Up!" I said.

The bag didn't budge. Instead, searing pain shot through my skull. I pressed my fingers against my temples and tried to harness the forces around me, but the aether disrupted my soul like a torrent breaking a dam. Vertigo tugged at the pit of my stomach and my vision fogged.

I jumped off the toilet's lid with a yelp.

Footsteps echoed as a looming figure approached my stall.

I sat back on the toiler's lid. Someone noticed me. Why couldn't I be more quiet?

The figure came closer and knocked on the door.

"Occupied!" I said.

"It's me, dunce," Isa said. "What's taking so long? Even I was faster."

Ouch. Considering how much she ate during lunch, that diss stung.

I opened the door. Isa already waited with her favorite food, a strawberry muffin, in her hand. Don't ask what dots on her face were freckles and what muffin crumbs. She wore her red hair in pigtails and sported fingerless gloves, black fatigue pants, and a tank top with so many heavy metal bands on it that I still hadn't memorized their names. Even before I transferred here last year, I knew her through paranormal-related online groups, although she looked prettier IRL than I imagined her. She had something "alternative" about her with those nose piercings and the chaos magic sigil tattoo on her neck.

"You know, I'm starting to suspect you have some kind of secret." Isa leaned forward. "C'mon, who is it that you're texting with so long?"

I winced.

"Hey," she said. "No need to take everything literally."

I forced out a laugh, not knowing what else to reply.

"Is everything alright?" Isa asked.

"Why should anything not be alright?"

"Dunno, people don't squeal when they're in fine fettle. Unless that was just a hiccup."

"A hiccup, yes. I ate very fast today."

Isa sighed. "Then, get out. Sitting too long is unhealthy!"

We walked out into the hallway. Crowds of students flocked around us, hurrying to their lockers or directly to their classrooms. As an urbanite, I wasn't used to those towns so small that high school seniors studied in the neighborhood of kindergarten kids. This school was smaller than my old one, but the people were nicer. And better-looking. Most of them still wore their sunburns from the summer break with pride. They looked so good in their comfortable T-shirts that I felt awkward hiding behind my oversized grey sweater.

Hiding was a good idea. I felt uncomfortable in my body. I liked the parts I inherited from my parents. The brown hair, the thin eyebrows, and the round face were my mother's while the nose, the brown eyes, and the curls were my Dad's, but the hunched, thin torso was mine. Oh course, the question was how much of that was true and how much was just my brain playing tricks on me.

I had to get through this. Dad sacrificed a lot to get me here. Since any magic school was a wet pipe dream at the moment, this was my future. Didn't make it any more comfortable when a girl almost bumped me and made me yelp again.

Isa turned around.

"Sorry," I said. "Happens often with me."

"I notice," she said once we arrived at our lockers. "Hey. Have you seen Simon today, by the way?

"Not really," I said. "I was about to ask you the same."

"Well, let's hope he isn't slacking off today. You've got no idea how often he messaged me 'PURR, DURR, WORLD ISSUES WILL BE SO GREAT!'"

"Don't worry, I'm a notebook freak, I'll write down everything he missed."

"Nah, don't think he'll miss much. Except that he can't lecture Mr. Weber about how he knows everything better. Anything you're looking forward to?"

I packed my books. "Being on time. We'll miss the spooky stuff if we don't hurry now."

Isa closed her locker. "Good point. How about a racetotheclassroomtoseewhostherefaster?" she asked and took off.

I followed. Isa was a weird person, though I liked that about her. I was also weird, as was Simon. Besides Isa, he was the second person from here that I already knew online. The interest in the paranormal drew us together. Simon liked to debunk it, Isa to believe in it, and I... well, guess why I was interested in the supernatural.

Fittingly, World Issues focused on that topic, particularly how claims of the supernatural increased in recent years. Mr. Weber showed two videos.

One was allegedly shot in Russia and showed a woman transforming into a werewolf. In reality, it was scrapped footage for a horror movie published in a "Behind the Scenes" video by a visual effects company. The hoaxers put a filter over it to obscure the filming location or the face of the actress and to make it resemble a cellphone video.

Another video, a zombie filmed at night in Mexico, could not be traced back to its original source. However, Weber explained that, had it been real, there would have been physical evidence and likely calls from the locals.

While these were clearly hoaxes, he admitted that some events lacked rational explanations. Events that increased with the turn of the millennium. Earthquakes or storms started and stopped contrary to scientific predictions. Towns disappeared from the map and reappeared after minutes. And the rate at which people went missing increased globally.

That last point caused a moment of quiet trepidation, even among students as chipper as Isa.

Everyone left the classroom hall with lively discussions I couldn't contribute to. Not because I didn't have anything to say. It was just, any time I tried telling people that creatures like those in the videos were real and that my mother was a practitioner, I got a headache.

Dad said a cosmic law called the Veil did this and enforced the old supernaturals-can't-show-themselves rule. But even if I said nothing, I still had headaches.

Was it due to poor aether control? Maybe, but practice didn't make it better.

Don't get me wrong, I still needed to practice magic. Headaches weren't even close to the top reason why.

Weber's course was the last I took this day. A schoolyard walk sounded like a decent reward for having survived the first week at my new school.

Whateley High enjoyed the presence of a vast and beautiful yard with a parking lot, a playground, evergreen hills, benches, and an orchard blooming with autumn fruits. Trees on both sides of the aisle showed off their final summer foliage. Only the occasional golden spot in the green color palette foreshadowed the coming autumn.

In the crown of a poplar, I saw the cutest creature I had ever seen. There's a reason cat videos get millions of views. The cat trapped in that tree was innocent enough that even a monster like Ted Bundy would have saved it. Its fur was as white as snow, its head the size of a baby's, and its button-sized black eyes half-closed from fear.

It shivered in the branches when it saw me. That's what I love so much about cats. Their emotions are so easy to read and they never judge you!

"Don't worry!" I said, "I'll let you down and find milk for you!"

I put one leg on a bench near the tree and grabbed a branch to inspect the shivering kitten more closely. What's eating you, sweetie? From up close, I saw how small it was and how it had a star-shaped black spot behind its right ear. And I realized it wasn't shivering from fear. It was convulsing. Almost as if it was sick. I wondered if it had eaten the wrong food, but that wasn't the issue. Something far worse happened. The cat leaned forward and vomited blood.

I almost fell off the bench.

The cat leaped from the tree and fully opened its eyes. Only now did I realize their full blackness. Black pupils, black sclera, black irises, black everything. Its head hung loose on its neck joints like that of a zombie and those eyes looked like pools of darkness that pulled you down with them the closer you looked.

It felt like ten years ago. The time when I encountered monsters for the first time and learned that the world's shadows reached deeper than most thought.

I had sworn to master magic if she ever ran into those abominations again. Was I prepared? Well, I didn't even know if this cat was someone's familiar or how to tell it was one.

All I could make were guesses based on the shows I watched. On TV, black eyes tended to have a specific meaning.

Which left one conclusion: This cat was possessed by a demon!