Eleven

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