If you really want to understand me and my life, the first thing you should know is that the luckiest hybrids were born without powers.

The second thing is that I've never been the lucky type.

Besides, they say that with powers come responsibility, and everyone knows I couldn't be trusted with responsibilities.

"Make yourself useful. Find a job or something. Don't sulk around the house watching TV all day," Adrian Locksley told me. My mother had married him a lot of years before, and he used to be a nice, well, nicer guy, but the real tragedy was being stuck in the same house as him when she died.

"No one wants to hire a fifteen-year-old who was kicked out of school at thirteen," I replied, looking for the remote to turn off the TV, but it must have sunk into the couch. I didn't add that he was the one who was doing all the moping and the sulking and I was the one who, to my great shame, was sort of taking after him.

Adrian shushed me. I turned around and looked at the TV. There was a storm on the screen, the likes of which I'd never seen in my lifetime. The whole sky looked grey and sort of static, houses were half-destroyed. I decided to turn on the volume.

There was a smart dressed man with clean cut hair telling the news. "...Area of Brighton evacuated... North Laine was almost destroyed by the terrible storm that took place today in the Aether Realm. The Senator Thomas Johnston assured me that the Enchanters' business wouldn't meddle with the humans living nearby, but the storm of today escalated the current crisis in the Aether Realm to another level. We are trying to contact Mister Johnston to hear his side of the story, as people on social media believe it had something to do with Set, the minor god of the storm that the Enchanters worship."

A woman took the lead and started speaking. "While we cannot meddle with the Enchanters' pagan rites, we are looking for the real culprits. A few people have been spotted on the crime scene. They were wearing robes, dark red robes with a hood that covered part of their faces. They seemed to be Enchanters, so their Senate will be contacted to make sure their internal politics do not have any other repercussion outside the Aether Realm. In the meantime, the local building division of the Aether Realm has offered to magically fix the damage that has been done to North Laine..."

"Turn it off," Adrian said, becoming deathly pale. Which was strange, because he was the one who'd asked me to shush in the first place. His voice had the hint of a hidden threat, and something more --- the disgust he usually reserved for the news from the Aether Realm.

Adrian didn't like Enchanters. I guess I'd never met a human who did. My mother, Brooke, was human, but she had a relationship with an Enchanter aproximately fifteen years before, which led to me being born. Ever since then, she'd gone lenghts to pretend I was a simple human child. She died before my powers developed, so perhaps she believed I was a lucky hybrid. One of those without magic in their veins.

I wanted to know more about the storm, because I'd always felt attracted to the Aether Realm. But I turned off the TV nevertheless. There was no arguing with Adrian. He became my sole caretaker after mom passed away, and while I disagreed with the way he kept the house, I also learnt the lesson I would never pick a fight just to prove a point with him. It didn't matter how much I hated the tacky and cheap flowery wallpaper that seemed eager to leap off the walls, and the fact that it was hard to find a clean spot unless I was the one who did a bit of cleaning. Not to mention that the house always smelled like cigarettes and the microwavable food that he ate for lunch.

That morning was very chilly for September, even for standard Brighton weather. I was suddenly reminded of the dream I had the night before. I'd been in an ice palace, and I'd walked for what seemed like hours in a snowy landscape. If I concentrated on it, I could almost feel the frosty air tickling my arms, the way I did in the dream, and the frigid breeze that made it almost hard to breathe.

I've always had very lucid and realistic dreams. Sometimes, in those dreams I was living in alternate dimensions and people referred to me as 'Patrick'. Other times, it was someone else who went by that name — my father, most of the time.

"I told you to make yourself useful," Adrian articulated through gritted teeth, as if I was really dumb. I guess he believed that I was. He'd always treated me rudely because of my Attention Deficit and Hyper-activity Disorder.

Still, ever since my powers came, he paid a lot more attention to the way he treated me, which, considering the huge row we got in the year before, was saying something. The thing is, the hybrids who had magic usually couldn't control it very well. And it didn't take a lot for my temper to go off.

It was also the reason why I'd been kicked out of school at thirteen. The headmaster seemed sympathetic, since no one could prove it was me who caused an entire blackout in the school, but Mister Locksley insisted that I'd done it. The truth was, most people did not trust an Enchanter to live with humans.

Even my mother had been of the same opinion. I knew that she wished I would turn out a human with her whole heart. One time, I blurted out that I was a hybrid, at school, when I was just a little kid, and she went through all the trouble of making me change school because it was 'better if people didn't know'.

"Did you even listen to me, boy?" Adrian taunted me. Sometimes, when I was particularly nervous, I didn't reply to what he was saying. I knew he would find a way to use it against me.

It's incredibly easy to space out for me. 

Luckily I was saved by the doorbell rining. Adrian and I were equally puzzled because we never got visits.

But when I went to open the door, I realised the middle aged man standing behind it was my step-uncle Jordan Bates. I always used to hang around my cousin Risa when I was younger, but for some reason we saw each other less and less through the years. I imagined it had something to do with the fact that Mister Locksley could never stand that his sister, Cornelia, had married such a lowlife and interesting character like Jordan, who was a teacher with little money and a frankly disturbing passion for palying the clarinet.

"We came to check on you after the news," Jordan said, panting, which made no sense at all, because I didn't live near North Laine, though I sometimes wished I did. Also, I could see that 'we' referred to him and Risa. I was happy to see her --- the past few years we went whole months without hanging out with each other. She'd grown, but she was still the same slim girl with brown skin and silky black hair. She was dressed in colourful sportswear.

If I hadn't known Risa all that well, I would have thought she stopped liking me after I developed my powers. But she's always known I was a hybrid, and always been terribly cool with it. She was the only human I knew who wasn't spooked out by the Aether Realm, in the least.

The Aether Realm was an elaborate name to explain a much simpler reality. It was how the places where the Enchanters lived and worked were commonly referred to.

The Enchanters lived in the outskirts of most towns, in buildings that were just a little below ground level. They said it was to contain their magic, but, truly, everyone knew it was just something the government came up with, to keep them separated from the likes of us. Still, some of them had gotten permits over the years to open above ground activities.

"Risa!" I hugged her. I was never one for physical contact, but with her it was different.

Jordan and Adrian sized each other up. For all his careleness, Adrian was beautiful, like those men in the Flemish paintings. He tried his best to be well-dressed and he always scowled at everyone. He made a horrid contrast with Jordan Bates' bleached yellow hair and tartan trousers.

"Why are you talking to Ryan that way?" Adrian asked, with a sneer. "As if he has something to do with what happened."

"Come, Adrian, you know as well as me what he is," Jordan was on the defence for the first time since I met him. "You made a huge mistake last year when you forbid him to study at the Academy of Space and Time. Now, things, dangerous things, are stirring up in the Aether Realm and it won't do the boy any good to try and blend in between humans with his newfound powers."

Technically speaking, I'd found my powers a whole two years before, but I could never practise them, and I knew that, with magic, practise makes perfect.

"And how do you know all of this?" Adrian seemed incredibly amused. 

Jordan didn't miss a beat. It seemed that they were fighting another conflict, too, a secret war between them that had been going on for years. "I've been to the Aether Realm sometimes. I am familiar with some of the Enchanters' ways. You see, even though most magic users start developing their powers around the time they're about ten, there are late bloomers. People who went through trauma, and so develop later in life. However, every single one of the Enchanters should start manifesting powers after they turn fourteen, and it is imperative they should study at the Academy."

"Ryan would have never found out about the school in the first place if it wasn't for you," Adrian said. "If it wasn't for that time that you told him that Enchanters were homeschooled until fourteen, and then they only studied magic. Of course the lazy boy thought this would suit him better than working his arse off and raising his grades."

"But I know," he added, a decisive set to his mouth. "That his mother didn't wish this for you --- to join them, and become one of them."

"But he is one of them! Why are you so against the boy being who he is?" Jordan asked. "It is proven with scientific tests Enchanters' DNA is only 10 percent different from ours, and that part is magic. Isn't that wonderful? They aren't dangerous. They aren't less, in any way."

"I'd like to go to the Academy," I blurted out. "If anyone wants to hear my opinion, that is." Sure, going back to school after my two years hiatus didn't seem like the best thing, but at the same time I had never seen myself working and carving a path for myself in the human realm. Not after my mother's death. Not after I wasn't trusted to go to school anymore. Besides, everywhere I went, I'd always been the outsider. I didn't know if I'd ever wanted to fit in. I just knew I couldn't.

Jordan Bates looked at my stepfather with steely eyes. "You should have known he'd say that. When they get a taste of magic, they want more. It's the issue with magic — when you have it, nothing is out of the question anymore. This is partly why people are afraid of the Aether Folk."

"Should I be afraid?" I asked.

"Well, you shouldn't, at any rate. They're your family."

"But if I go there, I might not be allowed to come back to the Human Realm anymore," I said. "Not in the same way I live here now."

Jordan Bates seemed a little sad. I realised that, maybe, he would miss me. I guess I've just never thought about that before. Me, being missed. It was like some part of my brain was trying to tell me that every one of the people I knew would find a replacement for the part I'd played in their lives. Risa would have found another best friend. Adrian Locksley wouldn't even know I was gone.

"I... I'd miss you, you know," Risa offered weakly. "I know how those things go. Once you start living with them, you won't come back here."

"Stop it, don't say that," I replied. I didn't want to leave her — she was my first and only real friend. Living in the Aether Realm meant you couldn't frequent the humans anymore. There wasn't a reason why — mostly, it was because the Aether Folk were not wanted.

"Maybe when you're done with school they'll send you back," she smiled through her tears. "You wouldn't get used to their underground infrastructure anyway. You're too claustrophobic."

"But why would they let go of me?" I grinned. "I am very skilled. Two years ago I caused a blackout that the media thought was caused by a solar storm."

"You know, at first I didn't really want to believe that it was you," she admitted. "I thought you'd been expelled over what happened with Southwart."

Darren Southwart wasn't only the most malicious classmate we had — he called me 'bastard' and other fancy nicknames — but he was also sour because I'd beat him at the school's Fencing tournament. You could pick one sport to play at our school, and the truth was, that, even though I wanted to play Rounders really badly, I was stealthy and quick and I did not have many muscles.

To get my meaning, just imagine the following scene — Rounders is like British baseball, but with a shorter bat, and when I told Risa I wanted to apply for the team, she laughed out loud.

Either way, from that moment on, Darren and I always picked at each other. He told me I was good for nothing and I reminded him that at least I was good at fencing, whereas it wasn't proved he was good at anything at all. That, obviously, turned into a huge fight one day.

"You just might like it there, at the Academy," Jordan tried to reassure me. "You're certainly weird enough."

"Uncle Jordan," I said. "You're not helping."

"If you want to take the boy to the damned place, just do it," Adrian finally conceded. "Just know that it's possible they will not accept him at all. Not everyone is qualified to study at the Academy or so I heard. Some of them are homeschooled all their lives, the TV says. And this one's never been the sharpest tool in any shed."

I grit my teeth and clenched my fists, but I didn't want to give Adrian Locksley the satisfaction to put up a fight. While he treaded carefully with me, most of the time it seemed like he was looking for it.

"There's just one problem," I admitted unhappily. "I don't know where the Academy of Space and Time is, and I cannot just google it."

Magical places, or places in the Aether Realm anyway, couldn't be found through an internet search. Most of the phone's basic apps went wonky in the Aether Realm because the net didn't mix well with magic.

Risa's dark brown eyes lit up. "I know where it is."

Now, it was a very strange thing to say coming from her. I could have pressured her to find out how she knew. But maybe she was like her stepfather, and she went to the Aether Realm from time to time. Or perhaps she'd been told something by a friend who dared go to the magical part of Brighton. While the two species living in the city never clashed, things like that were not completely unheard of.

Besides, she and Jordan were being so kind, I was having a hard time being standoffish about their ideas. While I didn't really enjoy the idea of studying, they were just giving me a chance to save myself from the trouble in the Aether Realm.

Even though, if I was at the Academy, the trouble would be closer. Still, even that might beat the idea of living with Adrian for a few more years.

"Even if you do, there's still another issue," I finally managed to say. "You'll have to drop me off, and then I'll have to descend underground alone. I don't even know what the headmaster looks like, or if I'll be welcomed into this school. I'll be on my own, between them."

"Well, I suppose you will not be," Risa explained sheepishly. "I'll come with you."

This definitely struck me as an even stranger thing to say. "You? But only people with Enchanter blood can pass through the spell they used to ward the underground doors that lead to the Aether Realm."

Risa nodded grimly. "Listen, I thought the time would never come to tell you this, but if the god of the storm is really stirring, you don't give me much of a choice..."

I was more confused than before, if it was possible. "The god of the storm? Risa, what are you talking about? Do you even believe in the gods, plural? And what is that thing that you thought you'd never tell me?"

Risa exchanged a worried glance with her stepfather. Jordan Bates nodded. 

"You see, Ryan," she said. "I'm an Enchanter too."