"Wait," I struggled to understand Risa's words, but since she'd already gone out the door, I had to follow after her, too.

"What do you mean you are an Enchanter?" I panted.

Risa looked at me sheepishly, uncaring of the fact that people could have heard me. I hadn't thought about it, because I was feeling a mix of things.

I was disappointed. The only person whom I considered a friend had been lying to me for years, perhaps since the day we met each other. She'd seen me struggle with being a hybrid and never told me she related to my words, not once.

I was also confused, because, if Risa was an Enchanter, why didn't she have powers? Or worse, did she have powers, but failed to mention when I went through puberty and developed my power over the air? Besides, why wasn't she going to the Academy?

And the more I thought about all of this, the more I realised I was also pretty angry.

Risa was the first to snap out of our stupor. At least she looked guilty. "Lower your voice," she said, as she scrutinised the street for a taxi cab. 

"When were you going to tell me?" I insisted, trying to keep my angry words in a whisper.

Risa shrugged, which could have meant 'never'. But then, she said something else. "I didn't see what use it would have been if you were to live amongst humans like your mother wanted. My parents... Well, they raised me as a human. I don't go to the Academy either, as you might have noticed. I've barely been to the Aether Realm before."

I wasn't going to settle for an easy explanation, but then again, I supposed it made sense. Despite the pain it always brought me, my mother had been clear she wanted me to have a life that was as normal as possible. Adrian Locksley hated everything that had to do with Enchanters with such a passion that I wondered if it'd been him to tell Risa's parents to let the matter go. After all, it might have been the reason Locksley disliked Jordan Bates so much. I had no doubt Uncle Jordan was going to tell me sooner or later. He was the worst at keeping secrets.

And, now that I knew Risa was an Enchanter, the only human I knew genuinely fascinated by everything magical.

"Okay," I finally replied.

"Are you just letting it go like that?" Risa deflated. It was as if she expected me to put up a fight, too.

"Well, what other choice do I have? At least now we're both going to the Academy of Space and Time. We're back at school together."

"Ah. About that..." Risa started to protest, when a taxi cab stopped to pick us up.

As soon as we closed the doors, I said, "Aether Realm, please."

The ride was really awkward, because the driver wasn't saying anything, but it was obvious what the question written in his eyes was. Why would someone want to go to the Aether Realm? And I didn't tell him anything, because I didn't want to blurt out that I was a hybrid, or my cousin a pure-blooded Enchanter.

The driver drove a few miles from the centre of the city. Right on the outskirts --- it was where the magical community lived. Some of the shops owned by Enchanters were above ground. 

There were a few shops that were so colourful and eccentric that it made the Aether Realm look a bit like my favourite Brighton neighbourhoods, the ones like North Laine where every house was painted in a different color. 

But there was a shop, in particular, that caught my eye. There was a huge tarot card painted on the sign-post. It represented a sleight of hand artist, playing with cups and balls. I recognized it. It was the old iconography of the tarot card for the Magician, the one that came from the very first set that was commissioned in Italy during the 16th century.

The sign-post of the shop read 'Magicae Items'.

In the windows of the shop, some of the objects were nicely exposed. One of them was a book. It looked ancient, and was very voluminous. The cover didn't look like any other I had seen before, as if a pattern of flowers had been woven into it. 

"Okay, stop there," Risa told the taxi driver. He asked us for more pounds than the ride was worth, probably to charge us for the audacity to bring him in the magical neighbourhood.

"Do you feel the air?" Risa asked me. "You can literally feel the aether."

I didn't know how to explain it, but she was right. The air was not heavier, but somehow lighter. I could breathe openly even though I was a little anxious. I imagined it was the kind of clean, open space where one wouldn't pant even after running. I suddenly decided that, for this feeling alone, it wasn't worth going back to the Human Realm.

Risa grinned crookedly at me. "The humans can't feel it. It feels like air, but the aether is literally magic, all around us. We are the only ones who can use it and transform it in spells."

I did know all of this, but it was a little overwhelming. "Have you been here before?" I pointed at the very colorful signpost. It was almost as wide as I was tall.

"Sometimes," Risa said. "And when you go to the Academy of Space and Time, this might be where you buy your school stuff. It's owned by Flora Wilson. If you see her, you'll recognize her --- she's a redheaded woman, very pretty and she's always dressed in a trendy but eccentric way."

"But mostly," she added. "I brought you here because the shops in this neighbourhood all have trapdoors for going underground. We could try the one in Magicae Items if Flora is here. I'm sure she'll let me through."

I wanted to ask Risa if the Enchanters were okay with her leading a double life, then I realised that not everyone went to the Academy. They must have thought she was home-schooled. It seemed I wasn't the only one she'd been lying to.

Risa rang the doorbell, for the door was closed, but no one was coming. I spotted a teal bench a few steps from there and I sat down. Risa did too, and I figured I could use that time for making small talk.

"Do you really believe my mother would be disappointed in me like Adrian always tells me?" I asked. "She didn't want me to be human."

Risa didn't look too sure, but I appreciated her effort when she replied. "Well, she died when you were ten. Your powers hadn't kicked in yet. I'm sure she would just want you to be happy, and safe, and my father said this is where you would be safest."

I nodded. While she kept her biological father's surname, Garcia, Risa referred to her stepfather as father. Something that I didn't do, while I'd never known mine. Barnes was my mother's surname, because apparently he hadn't even claimed me.

"I think so, too," I replied. "And it might be a little far-fetched, but I'd like to think she'd be happy I'd be studying magic. She did love my father, for some months at the very least, and he was an Enchanter. Was he so terrible that she doesn't want me to end up like him? I find it hard to believe."

I grinned. "Maybe she doesn't have the best taste in men, considering who she married, but I know at least an Enchanter who is also a good person, and that is you, Risa. What is your power, by the way?"

"I don't see why it matters," she faltered.

"Is it the air, like mine? Come on, I want to know! You were there for me when I found out. You reassured me when I couldn't control it."

She sighed. "It's earth, actually."

"Oh. Cool." I'd never seen it in action, so I didn't know how it worked. Of course, I'd never seen any power in action --- only air, and my kind was so uncontrolled it had been able to cause a storm so big it made a blackout.

I'd always been wary of that, because I knew that people didn't like the minor god Set, the one who just attacked the Human Realm, and he was the god of storms. Until a few days before I also believed the gods didn't exist, and they were a collective religion the Aether Realm worshipped. Something that came from primitive times when they had to find explanations for the natural events, that somehow was practised until present day. After all, they claimed this was where their powers came from.

However, after hearing that Risa was an Enchanter and listening to her stepfather's words, it was very hard to understand what was real and what was not.

"So, about the Academy..." Risa started pacing up and down the street. I noticed the pavement was not simple grey cement --- it had mystical drawings that had been done in blue chalk. I couldn't make them out, but I supposed they represented the elements.

"I'm not going," she finally blurted out. "I'm sorry, Ryan. I know you would have liked a friendly face. But living the way I have has always worked for me, and I'm not changing that. There's a bigger reason why I decided to stay in the Human Realm. My biological father is teaching me magic during the week-ends, but in the end he's not of the mind I should go to the Academy of Space and Time."

I thought about Locksley's words. As much as he hated anything magical, he always talked worse of the school. Even a distracted guy like me could understand when one plus one made two.

"The school... is there something you're not telling me? Everytime people talk about it, they're not painting the best picture of it."

Risa looked at the door of the shop, frustrated. She made a coily little plant appear in her hands and she thrust it into the lock. It started working its way around, like a key.

"I hate to break in, but after the news of this morning I don't feel safe being out in the street on our own," she explained. "As for the Academy, I'm sorry I cannot make you understand in such a short time. But let's just say the Aether Realm had a few rough years, lately."

"I know," I said, and I did. When, five years before, Enchanters claimed Set had came back to their council of gods, people had died. A lot of people. At first I thought it had been some crazy killer claiming they had ties with the god, now I was unsure.

However, it was the same year my mother had that car accident, and when you're grieving and something like that happens, you tend to give a lot of thought to the fact that the world is grieving with you. I'd never forgotten about what happened. I tried to read a lot about Enchanters, after that.

"Well, there seems to be some sort of civil war," she continued. "And people like my biological father tend to distrust those who were in opposite sides, like the headmaster of the Academy."

She opened the door, and motioned me to come inside. "My stepfather, instead, seems to be of the opinion you would be safer amongst our kind, and I think he's right. You are an Enchanter, and people might know who your father is. If something big is stirring, people might want to tell you to join one side or the other. If you stay amongst us, well, them, you will understand yourself what it is you need to fight for."

Risa's words sounded mysterious, and I wondered what she was not telling me. But I was drawn to the inside of the shop. Most of the items were curious stuff I'd never seen, and it was warm inside.

I didn't want to touch anything, because I didn't trust myself not to ruin it. But I couldn't help but notice a pack of tarot cards was spread over the mahogany table. They looked slightly different from the usual tarots I knew. There seemed to be about twenty of them, so I imagined it was Major Arcana, but the images and the names were the strange part.

They had names like 'The Sphinx', 'The Star of the Magi' or 'The Genius of the Sun'. I didn't stop to read all of them, because Risa started talking again.

"Let's wait here until Flora arrives," she said. "I don't like the look of the sky outside. A storm is coming."

Great, just great, I wanted to say. I knew things in the Aether Realm were chaotic at the moment, but I was expecting something different. Like being able to reach the Academy before another attack happened.

Well, actually, scratch that. I don't know what I was expecting. I had a certain feeling in my guts this could go wrong in so many ways. But let's just say I was hopeful that things would be easy every once in a while.

I looked outside the window of the shop. I didn't want to second guess Risa, but I wasn't feeling a storm coming. The air wasn't static. The sky wasn't grey.

"Can you feel how the air changes before a storm?" she asked me then, looking at my puzzled expression. "Because of your powers? I can tell that the negative charge in the middle of a thunderstorm causes the ground to be positively charged, and it's happening right now."

"But I can't feel the storm coming," I shook my head. "Perhaps I'm just not good at any of this. Your father is training you. I've been basically shutting off my powers for years, because of Adrian Locksley. I'm going to trust you on this."

"Right," Risa smiled. "I hope I'm wrong, though."

We waited for Flora for what felt like hours, but surely it had to be minutes. I've never been a very patient sort of person. Risa told me many times not to touch anything, but I opened a book like the one that was exposed because she also told me that books were safe, and they were just for reading.

The strange thing was that it was empty, inside.

"Is it written in some kind of magical ink? Should one perform the spell to reveal the words?" I asked. Enchanters had a basic set of spells every kind of element magician could do --- it was probably twenty or thirty everyday charms that we all could learn. But no one had ever taught me the right hand movements for any of them, so I was just a very sucky air magician at the moment.

"There isn't a spell like that," Risa said off-handedly. I was jealous that she knew the spells. I wished she would have told me, and taught me. "But there is a difficult one that reveals things for what they really are. Not everyone can manage that... I'd stop looking at the book if I were you."

I was becoming a little frustrated at the way she kept acting as if I couldn't be trusted around the shop, but at the same time I knew myself too well. I listened to her advice.

I looked out the window again, for there were no signs of a storm, and I noticed something troubling. "Is it just me or does the sky look... red?" I asked.

Risa turned her head quickly. Her mouth hung open when she looked at the sky. It wasn't tomato red, and not the color of a sunset either, but it was close. The usual light blue had started taking purple-ish and redd-ish tints. And what was worse, it seemed to be getting redder by the minute.

"This cannot be normal," Risa muttered. "Why, why isn't anyone coming..."

"We could use the trapdoor without telling Flora," I suggested. It was the only way I could see to escape from whatever was coming.

But Risa shook her head. "If somebody is still attacking the Aether Realm, there's no telling if we'd be safer once we descended the stairs. This could be some kind of magical rebound of what's happening down there."

My frustration grew. Everyone was always telling me how much safer I'd be in the Aether Realm, but so far I'd seen no proves of it. And if the people, or the god, who had attacked North Laine before was coming back, then I had no way to defend myself.

That was the moment we heard the door unlocking. I thought of a million terrible situations we could find ourselves in, but Risa screamed, delighted, "It's Flora! She's going to tell us what to do!"

The person who opened the door didn't look anything like the description Risa had given me. 

It was a boy about my age, maybe a little older, who looked part Japanese and part British. He was really good looking, with messy black hair, amber eyes and a youthful face.

"I doubt this is Flora Wilson," I said, helpfully. Risa almost covered her face in her hands. But perhaps it was because she was blushing.

"My name is Jeff Tanaka," the stranger said. 

"Ryan Barnes," I replied automatically. "I'm here to enroll at the Academy of Space and Time."

Jeff looked dubious. "Not everyone can do that," he said. "It's an honor to study there."

"Please, Jeff," Risa cut in, though I doubted she'd met the guy before. "It's sort of important... we're going to tell you everything."

But I could barely concentrate on her words. I was thinking about how strangely familiar Jeff looked, though I'd never met him before, and how dizzy I felt everytime I looked at his face.

"We better get moving," Jeff said, looking at the sky. "Though it's hard to tell if everything's safe down there." He pointed at the trapdoor. I hadn't even seen it before.

"See? I told you," Risa pointed out, grinning at me.

"This is a very serious situation," Jeff reminded her. "You two shouldn't even be here."

"I'm an Enchanter," Risa's mouth was a thin line. "And so is my cousin. A powerful Hierophant whose power of the air is not under control."

"A air Hierophant...?" Jeff seemed a lot more interested in me, now. "Just like me."

And then, I realised where I'd seen this guy before.

Jeff's face was one that, sometimes, recurred in my strange dreams.