Kiah and Casey stand up and go to Zakwan's room immediately. I set down the now empty keropok lekor plate and follow the two. Casey tries to twist the doorknob but it doesn't budge at all.

"Damn it, he must've locked it from the other side."

"I don't care if this door is made out of imported Italian maple, I'm getting it open." Without any hesitation, Kiah lifts her leg up and kicks the door open with a loud grunt. So much for telekinesis.

Splinters fly in the air and into Zakwan's sorry face. He jumps back, startled and starts to retreat into a corner with his phone in hand. His face becomes as pale as mine.

"Wah, apa–what are you all doing?!"

"Show us who you're texting now, Zakwan. You can make it easy or not so easy," threatens Casey. We inch closer and closer to him while he pushes himself further and further into the wall.

He trembles and stutters his words. "It's ju–just my wife! I don't know what you want from me!"

"Haiyaa, I was hoping you would pick the easy way out, uncle. You're a way better actor when you're not under pressure. You must've forgotten we're sorcerers."

Kiah extends her arm and performs a one-handed seal. The phone flies to her hands, away from Zakwan's and she waves it to us. "What's this say then, huh? 'they're here. the casey one, a chinese girl with short hair named harmony and another melayu girl too, masyitah'. The contact's name is JAKIS as well. Not very smart of you."

I notice a change on her right arm. Her inai's glowing red. Very, very red. It creeps up her arm, convoluting itself in vines and helices away from her own flowery design. It twists and turns through her shoulder, up her neck and stops just under her blue eye. It drips ever so slightly like wet paint. Or, blood...

"Kiah, what the hell is going on?"

She performs a choking motion with her hand, causing Zakwan to clutch his neck in a futile attempt to release the pressure.

"I don't take kindly to spineless snakes."

Kiah lifts him up in midair by the throat. She constricts her grip even more and taunts him in a screeching voice. "Beg for your life while you still ca–"

I take a step forward and punch her square in the jaw.

>>

Darkness. Darkness. Darkness. A voice emerges from the deafening silence.

"Woi, wake up Kiah. Kau okay tak?"

Ugh, my face hurts so much... where am I? Who's in front of me? The world nearly blinds my vision with how bright it all of a sudden gets, but it all dims down to show a friendly figure.

"Harmony...?" She's crouched in front of me with her hands on my shoulders. I find myself sitting down against the wall of a familiar room. "Wait, are we in the room I kicked down?"

"Phew, thank god you didn't lose your memory or something. Yeah, we are."

I look past her to see a slumped body with Casey checking its pulse near the neck. "What the hell happened to Zakwan?"

Casey looks at me worried and so does Harmony.

"Did... did I do that?"

"You don't remember? Like, at all?" answers Harmony with another question. I shake my head. "You were, I don't know, possessed or something. Never seen anything like it. Your inai went crazy and reached your eye then you tried to choke him out with your telekinesis like Darth Vader."

"How the hell did I do that?" I look at my arm and check my inai. It seems to have gone back to normal, though I don't remember this small swirly design just past my wrist. It's taken over a flower I drew on. The petals on this one particular flower are corkscrewed and the stem resembles an Euler spiral. It's... alarming and a bit atypical, but somehow beautiful.

"Zakwan's pulse is reading fine, but he's unconscious. We don't have time to figure out what on Earth just happened to you, Kiah. All we have to focus on now is making a run for it from JAKIS. Do you remember that much?"

"Yeah, it's all coming back to me. We were invited in by this guy, we talked a little, he excused himself and I sensed something wrong in the air, so I broke in and the rest happened."

"Good. Then let's move." Casey beckons us out, leading the way. We run out the main entrance, through the dozen units and into the elevator. It's all silent, except for the faint elevator jingle. 

"Sorry, by the way."

"Huh? What for?"

"I kinda..." Harmony mimes a fist to her face. "Fucked you up a bit to stop you from, y'know."

"Ah, I was wondering why my face hurt." I touch the part she punched on my left cheek and it stings back. "Ow. You didn't even hold back, huh? Did you at least hesitate?"

"Ehh..."

The elevator doors slide open and we sprint out following Casey's trail. He's dead set in following this direction along the sidewalk and doesn't slow his pace down at all. He only catches a glimpse of me with the wind blowing against his long hair.

"Remember that Grab driver? The one we gave 5 stars?" He nods to his front at a familiar car—a bright green Myvi subcompact with tinted windows. Harmony and I stuff ourselves into the back seats alongside our bags while Casey rides shotgun. I shut the door from behind me and catch my breath.

"Just drive, man. Through the city," orders Casey to our Indian driver. He nods and presses his foot on the pedal. He doesn't do that for long though, since traffic is heavy this time of the day due to it being lunch break. We resort to a crawl through the streets impeded by traffic lights, incompetent drivers and the pothole-filled asphalt.

A couple of police vans bolt past us on the opposite lane. No prizes for whoever guesses correctly what they're after. Harmony flips them off.

"Hahaha, bèndàn..."

We almost manage to go past the intersection before the dreaded yellow light appears, followed by the red. I become green with envy towards all the other cars moving past without a care in the world. Tsk. I tap Casey's shoulder.

"So what now?"

He rubs the back of his neck. "I'm thinking. Maybe we could rest at a motel."

"That's no good at all. They'd have our names on their records. When they catch wind of who we are, then we're one step away from ending up like Jaxon or worse."

"We have what a lot of others don't, so best we make use of it."

Our car gets moving again as the green light pops up. It's smooth sailing from here on out with no congestion on the road.

I tilt my head at Casey's vague statement. He's never one to shy away from indeterminates. "What do you think should we do?"

"Use your telepathy and control the receptionist's mind for a moment, then–"

I throw myself back-first into my seat and sigh as much as my lungs will allow me.

"We've been through this for God's sake. I won't mess around with an innocent person's mind. I've haven't mastered it. There's no telling what sort of permanent damage it'll cause and I haven't even started on the ethics of it."

"There's no black and white where we're standing, Kiah. It's not ethical, I know. But what good are ethics when we're gonna be behind bars or inside a shallow grave?"

Of course he doesn't back down. Damn it Casey, could you not be so stubborn this one time? 

Harmony shrugs her shoulders. "Sorry, but he's probably right."

All I reply with is a cursory glance. Casey starts asking the driver where the nearest motel is.

>>

Vista Alam Motel. Cheap, out of the way and hopefully comfortable.

I had thanked the driver and paid him his fair share. He had his earphones on full blast the entire trip to the point I could even hear some of the music he was listening to. He had good taste and and an even better respect for privacy.

Kiah shoots me a dirty look. I deserve it and then some. We had a heart-to-heart earlier this morning and my response is to force her to brainwash a civilian. Such is life with me at the helm of our posse.

The Sun shines down on us with her full wrath. Harmony doesn't waste time in pushing the creaky front door open. We're greeted by a short Chinese lady with very notable bangs and huge earrings.

"Selamat tengah hari."

"Good afternoon to you too, Miss. We're uh, here for a room to stay in?" I look around and see no other guests in the simple lobby consisting of a few couches, chairs and coffee tables. Lucky us. "Can you help provide us with that?"

She takes out a black pen from her breast pocket in one swift motion. "That can be arranged. Names?"

Kiah sighs from behind me. She becomes silent before forming a diamond shape with her hands, curving them both inwards and pointing them towards the woman behind the desk. The woman's pen falls down with a tink. Her body is frozen in place like a petrified victim. A blue aura engulfs Kiah's arms that gets channeled onto the woman's head.

"Harmony, grab her pen and write some fake names on the clipboard."

"Got it." She gives me a thumbs up and gets on with her task.

While she's busy with that, I jump behind the desk and grab the first room keys I see available.

"Write down Room 017."

"Wait ah... okay." She lifts the pen off the paper with a flourish. "Anything else or not?"

"We're done here." I give Kiah's arm a shake. Her inai glows a very strong blue and almost radiates off her skin, but it all stops and goes back to normal when she breaks her concentration. She gasps and takes heavy breaths. 

I put a hand on her shoulder. "You alright?"

She swats my hand off and stares krisses into my eyes. "Of course not."

The receptionist comes around, dazed and confused. "Uhh, who are you three?"

"Wah, forgot already ah? Check the paper la Miss." Bit rude, but that's Harmony for you.

The lady looks at the clipboard and reads out the aliases Harmony made up for us. "Ezekiel Jackson, Lee Yi Xi and Noor Sarah Azleena binti Kasim. Is that correct?"

The three of us nod in unison.

"Room 017 is on the second floor." She points to a staircase to our left with her thumb. As we get up the stairs, I could still see poor lady rubbing her head in confusion.

"Her head seems to be all there," I note to Kiah who's stomping her feet on each step along the way.

"Yeah for now, but a few days or a week later then who knows?"

Damn it, Kiah. Could you not be so virtuous this one time?

>>

I fling myself onto Room 017's twin bed. Oh, so comfy and soft. The springs have just the right amount of springiness. The fabric on the pillow caresses my sense of smell with warm hugs of lavender arms.

"Ahhh..."

"Harmony?"

"Yeahhh...?"

"Why are you moaning into the bedsheets?"

With my face still pushed against the covers, I reply. "I'm tired. All this travelling and eating's finally got to me." 

I drag my face to the side to see Kiah and Casey unpacking their stuff on the floor. Such responsible fellows they are. They're really not that different from each other, now that I look at them. They even take out and place their clothes with the same rhythm like a couple of siblings.

It's a shame, though. They obviously care for each other a great deal, but they don't always share the same ideas and I'm forced to pick a side whenever they butt heads. that hits a bit too close to home.

I shrug the thought off and reach for the television remote. I press the power button and the screen flickers. Eventually, the screen lights up and shows the national news channel airing.

"Wei, you guys, TV3 is on. Let's see what they got for us."

They stop unpacking and sit on the other twin bed available. I turn up the volume.

Eh, same old same old news for now. Some assholes got ran over by a car because they were riding their shitty modified bicycles at 3.00 AM in the morning against the flow of traffic in the middle of a dark highway. For some absurd reason, the driver got sentenced to jail while the victims' parents got away scot-free. The channel switches to a photo of the innocent driver as well as some of the victims. I then realise why she got prosecuted; because she's Chinese and the assholes are Malay.

Malaysia has always had its history deeply rooted in racism. My grandma was around during Peristiwa 13 Mei, or The Incident of 13th May. In short, it happened in 1969 when she was 20 years old. The Malaysian general election had just concluded, and this caused quite a ruckus between the Chinese and the Malays. Chinese people were shot or slaughtered with machetes (some even by the Royal Malay Regiment) and Malays were singled out and killed in retaliation. The cause of this was the economic disparity between the two races. A national emergency was declared until 1971.

My grandma herself was one of the few hundred who were injured. She was shot in the shoulder while tending to her own shop-house. To this day, it remains a dark period in Malaysia's history. Every time I see this sort of news where there's this obvious racial discrimination, I'm reminded of how quick and easy it can all revert back to that point in time. Fucking politics, man. Malaysia doesn't deserve to be tainted by this shit.

The channel cuts back to the news anchors. The smartly-dressed man on the left says something about an ahli sihir threat. I turn the volume up even higher.

"An anonymous informant has tipped to the relevant authorities about three ahli sihir on the run in Shah Alam and nearby areas. They reportedly assaulted the informant in their own private domicile. The perpetrators' names are allegedly Masyitah, Harmony and one Casey Reid. An eyewitness sketch was provided by the police, courtesy of the victim."

I always dreamed of being on national TV one day, but perhaps not like this. The camera switches to a rough sketch of Casey first. They got his face shape and his sharp chin down but messed up his hair. It's not nearly as flowing and long as in reality, but Zakwan managed to remember Case's eyebrow piercing and beauty mark. That could be rough.

It then switches to a drawing of me. My face has always been lowkey and hard to distinguish for a stranger. Lots of other Chinese girls have my hair too. I could blend in just fine with the public. 

Finally, it's Kiah's turn. Zakwan remembered her scruffy bangs and long ponytail on the back of her head. He even pointed out her blue eyes, crooked nose and inai, as well as her single front tooth that's turned all the way to the side. The face of the person that nearly killed you would be fresh on your mind.

"Well that's that, then."

I let the TV run for a few more minutes. When nothing of note comes up, I turn it off and fling the remote towards the carpeted floor with a thud.

I overhear the two discussing about Kiah's abnormal state when she encountered Zakwan. That's definitely a problem to add to our exponentially-growing pile, but we'll handle it after I've taken my nap. Even the greatest of minds need bedtime.

__

Haiyaa: An expression/interjection used to express frustrated disappointment

Euler spiral: A spiral where the middle is relatively straight, but the ends quickly get more curved into a spiral (I recommend searching it up to see how it looks like)

Bèndàn: Mandarin word for idiot

I just wanna say thank you for reading up to this point. I hope you lot enjoyed the History lesson provided by Harmony as it's important in Malaysia, leading to the formation of Malaysia's five principles in the pledge of allegiance. I also hope the growing challenges our trio is facing also hooks you in.

I have lots in store for you all, so stay tuned! Have a nice day :D