Chapter 1: Chapter One: Crossing The Road

There are, at any given moment, several thousands of children with magical potential in the world. In fact, most children have some kind of attunement to magic, which is why the world is so much more colourful for them. Magic is a little bit like lice, in that you’re more likely to pick it up when you’re in kindergarten, but it’s not at all like lice in the fact that it takes a magical spark for that potential to come into its own. A magical spark is hard to come by, especially as you get older, which is why adults can often look so dull and grey. Many of them would benefit from a magical spark, which might open their eyes to how bright and colourful the world can be when you’re not looking at it through an un-magical lens. These people often become more jaded and scared as they get older, and while it’s a reasonable response to feel sorry for them, you’ll spend a lot of time feeling sorry if you start doing that. 

Jonathan Rosewood was sixteen years old, and for him, the world was a dull grey. He adjusted his mask as he walked down the street, not really going somewhere, or escaping from anywhere. The walk he was walking was the kind where you put one foot in front of the other and keep moving because it occupies a little bit of your brain -- like not walking into lantern poles or other people -- that now doesn’t have the time to worry or stress out, which is why walking is considered a good thing to do when you’re in a bad place. However, there are limits to the therapeutic power of walking, and when your whole world is grey, all walking does is make the shadows a little less dark. 

He walked in a little circle around the lady taking donations for a nearby shelter, trying not to think about whether or not he’d give her any money if he had any to give, and then felt a bit guilty for wondering about that. Was he allowed to think of himself as poor? He didn’t have a lot of money, after all. Sure, his parents were well off, but it’s not like they spent much of their wealth on him, and he was glad about that. After all, it would mean they were home more often, which was a situation he’d prefer to avoid as much as possible. 

But then, he thought, if he didn’t have his parents, he would value money more, right? That would mean he wouldn’t want to give it away. He was lost in thought as he walked down the street, his footfalls a constant rhythm to his mind ticking away the minutes. His parents were home, because it was Saturday and Saturdays Were For Relaxing. For Mother, that meant two hours with a glass of wine, yoga and wine-assisted meditation, before being picked up and heading into work for some relaxing overtime. For Father, it meant tennis -- digital, of course -- weight-lifting and then two (2) power naps, followed by a conference call in the guest house out back, where he’d slowly get plastered on expensive whiskey and fall asleep in the guest bedroom. 

Jonathan was waiting for it to be three in the afternoon, when his mother would leave and he’d have the house to himself. Not that there was much to do in it for him. His parents abhorred what they called frivolous distractions like television, board games, distracting literature, computers, art and friends, and so he spent most of his time at home lying down, usually with a copy of Essential Sensory Deprivation next to him so he could pretend to be studying the merits of his own lack of entertainment instead of blankly staring at the ceiling, willing it to be anything other than grey and drab. 

But it was still more comfortable than not lying down. Despite the Rosewood household being a minimalist dream, his parents had, so far, not yet managed to make sheets and mattresses rough yet. Some comfort was allowed. Just a little bit. As a treat. 

He quite looked forward to lying down for a bit. For someone who didn’t really do much but sit, lie, stand and walk, he had surprisingly wild dreams, all swirls of chaotic colours burning through and around each other, noise and movement all around. He used to think of them as nightmares, but lately he’d found himself enjoying them. They were a good distraction from, well, nothing. But getting to them meant going around the block one more time and then walking home, or finding something else to do. 

A few years before, Jonathan used to go to the library when he had nothing better to do, on days like this, but he’d once made the mistake of telling his mother about it and had found himself on house-arrest for the rest of the summer. He’d gone once after that, after school, and had been caught. Any talk of him getting a phone at any point had shut down. Even now, he was the only kid in his entire school with a pager. He hated the thing, but if he didn’t respond to its message fast enough with a little ping, he’d never hear the end of it. 

Why his parents even bothered, he didn’t know. It seemed they wanted him to live the exact same life they lived, but he didn’t get why. They didn’t seem particularly happy, weren’t particularly religious, and barely even talked about anything other than work. He had heard the word ‘synergy’ a lot more than any sixteen-year-old should. 

Shaking his head, he rounded the corner and stopped for a moment. The sun shone on his face and for a very brief moment, there was some colour in the world. It was mostly yellow, sure, but the warmth of it, accompanied by a gentle breeze, was pleasant. Then the reality of his destination sank in again and, like a gritty, realistic action movie, the gentle yellows and oranges of the afternoon sun seemed to wash out, and reality became a little colder. 

He walked a little faster. There was almost always a little moment like that, when he went out. A brief moment, like coming up for air, where things were a little better. But they were always worse after that, and once the moment had happened he made sure to hurry home before grey became dark and that unreasonable lump in his throat started to form for seemingly no reason. He wasn’t going to cry in public. His father had berated him for crying in private; if he did so in public and his parents found out, they’d probably make him sleep in the living room again so they could keep an eye on him. 

His hands in his pockets, shoulders squared and eyes to the ground, he crossed the road and tried to bury his face in the collar of his jacket. It was eerily quiet when he almost bumped into a chair he realized was in front of a table. Already strange to see these things outside, but on a zebra crossing? He looked up and saw a woman sitting behind the table. She looked a little bit like one of those well-meaning middle-school teachers, who rewarded thirteen-year-olds with stickers (who would pretend not to be proud of them), all rosy cheeks and smelling faintly of incense and a minimum of two cats. 

She was wearing what appeared to be a dress from the Fifties; the only thing ‘off’ about the presentation was a tattoo of an eye peeking out of her dress at her collarbone. She smiled at him, and indeed, her cheeks were rosy and round. 

“Hello,” she said. 

“Um,” Jonathan responded. 

“Please, sit down. My name is Charlie. Charlie Ferman.” The lady’s smile was unwavering and eerily genuine. It wasn’t predatory or scary, just… disarmingly honest. 

“You’re in the middle of the street,” Jonathan said. 

The lady giggled, a sound like sleighbells ringing through the air on a christmas morning. “I don’t think that will be a problem,” she said, and rolled her eyes at her surroundings in an exaggerated display. Jonathan looked. The world had stopped. Cars had all braked for some reason, he thought, until he realized that people, too, had frozen in place. A man was trying to get a pigeon from pecking at his hotdog, and it was hovering just a few feet from his face. 

“I don’t understand,” Jonathan said. He sat down out of shock, more than out of any obligation to do as the lady asked. 

“Gosh, I do so hate this part,” Charlie said. “You’re dead.” Jonathan looked at her. 

“No, I’m not,” he said. “I’d know if I was dead. I wouldn’t be talking to you.”

“Well, you’re not wrong. But you also kind of are,” Charlie said with an apologetic little smile and then waved in the other direction. Jonathan only just now became aware of the fact that there was a sixteen-wheeler only a foot from the table. “You’re going to be dead,” Charlie said. “In just a few hundredths of a second. It’ll be fairly painless, if that helps. Would you like a sweet?” She produced a small piece of wrapped candy out of a little purse. 

Jonathan took the candy absent-mindedly. “Uh,” he said again. “What do… how… what… wh--”

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“Yes, that does seem to be the prevailing reaction a lot of the time,” Charlie said with a little smile. “So I have some good news and some bad news. Please, eat it. Make you feel better.” Jonathan unwrapped the candy and popped it in his mouth as she spoke. “I work for Afterlife Social Services,” she said and clasped her hands together, like a school counselor explaining something to stubborn parents. “Essentially, we find children with magical potential who are about to… hrm… pass on to the great beyond and try to… keep a little bit of that magic in the world. Don’t ask me why.”

“Why?”

“I just said…” She smiled. “Cheeky. I like that. Well, it’s something to do with balance, but, and you haven’t heard this from me, apparently someone just doesn’t like things going to waste. Especially people.”

“People die every day.”

“Well, yeah. That’s what the afterlife is for, dummy.”

“Is this a Jesus thing?”

“Um,” Charlie said, “not quite. I’m not supposed to talk about it to people who aren’t fully dead yet.” She scratched her head. “Let’s just say there’s a bit more to it. More paperwork. But what we’re here to do today, you and me,” she pointed at herself and then Jonathan, “is kinda like, well, recycling.”

“Recycling of what?”

“Well, if I have it right -- and I always do, I’m pretty good at my job -- you’ve got some untapped potential, and well, while we can’t fully unlock it anymore, we can still do some good with it.”

“Magical potential?” Jonathan frowned, chewing on the candy. Charlie leaned forward and frowned right back, but her frown seemed to be more like an apology. 

“It’s a lot, isn’t it? How are you feeling?”

“Confused,” Jonathan said. “Do you really work for an organisation named ASS?”

Charlie stared at him for a moment, nonplussed, and then burst out laughing. No cute sleighbells, this was a full belly laugh, head thrown in her neck. After she’d recovered she dabbed at her eyes. “Goodness. Hah! Yes, yes I do. Anyway, Johnny,” she said, and immediately noticed his apprehension. “Ah, sorry. I was trying something. It said in your file you don’t like your name, so I was hoping a nickname might… hrm, anyway.” She cleared her throat and sat up straight again. “We’d like to offer you the chance to not be dead.”

“Uh,” Jonathan said, “sounds good?”

“Well, there’s a couple of, uh, caveats.”

“I know about fine print,” he said, remembering mind-numbing legal conversations at home, as well as studying for a fake bar exam he’d taken (and failed) at twelve years old. 

“Good, well, um, the big one is that you won’t be living with your family for a while,” Charlie said and looked at him, waiting for a reaction. After a moment, he figured a shrug would have to do. He figured any place was as good as another. His parents would probably pick him up anyway. She shrugged back, smiling again. “The other is that we’re going to use your magical potential to help someone else.”

“How?”

“Well, I’m going to have to answer that question with two of my own.”

“Okay.” Jonathan stared at her. None of this was really sinking in. None of this felt real. Was he hallucinating? Had he been hit by a truck and is this what happened when you died? Or was this somehow real?

“Well,” Charlie said, raising a finger, “what do you know about witches?” A second finger went up. “And have you ever heard of a familiar?”