His Blazing Witch [PROMO]

#1: Silver City

Silver City.

A Megalopolis with around one hundred thousand inhabitants. Despite being rather modern, it's unique geographic location makes it rather isolated from any other big cities, as it's surrounded by a forest in the east, and the sea on the west. Its most unique feature, however, is probably one-third of its population being werewolves. That's right. Over thirty thousand werewolves, a hundred thousand humans, and... me.

I frown, staring behind the window once again. Silver City's dawn is pretty and quiet. The sky shines with the first sunlight, with shades of pink and purple in the clouds. I open the window, feeling some nice fresh air. It's really early, we're at the end of May. I wonder what all those people are doing, in the streets and skyscrapers. I'm fascinated by the tallest buildings. I wonder what it's like to see the world from up there. Do you feel like you belong in when you watch the streets from so high?

I'm on the second floor, and I can't understand what it could be like down there, or up there.

"Knock knock, I'm looking for the little witch in room five?"

I turn around, with a smile.

Kelsi is waiting, pretending to knock on my door with a little frown on. She's wearing her ugly mint green sweatshirt, the one with a big c*******t on it, some jeans, and her usual multi-colored backpack.

"Hi. They let you in so early?" I ask, a bit surprised.

"Yep. Apparently your sister gave them instructions that I could come in and out as I please. I'm pretty much a full-time VIP plus one now."

"Oh..."

Kelsi drops her bag and comes to hug me gently, being careful about my bandages. She glares at the big bracelet around my wrist, grabbing it with a frown. It's flashing with a little green light every ten seconds and quite heavy too.

"Still there?"

"Still there," I sigh.

"Mh..."

Then, she takes a step back, pulling her long black hair behind her ears, and takes on a falsely severe expression behind her thick glasses.

"Alright, miss Garnett, morning check-up."

"Oh seriously, Kelsi? again?" I protest.

"What's my name?"

I sigh, and nod, deciding to comply. I take a deep breath.

"Kim Eun-Kyung," I recite, "You've been my roommate for over one year and as far as I know, you're probably my only friend. You go by the name of Kelsi Kim because you hate hearing people mispronounce it. You're two months older than me, a photography student and a geek... and you like ugly cat sweaters."

"Good girl," she says with a big smile; "How are you feeling?"

"Still like a total stranger to myself," I sigh, sitting on my bed.

"Your temperature?"

I show her the black screen of my watch with a grimace.

"They deactivated the screen since they found out I used it to test..."

"Oh, crap. No more experiments, then.

"No..."

She nods, and suddenly grabs her bag with a spark of excitation in her eyes. It's an old and very used one, but apparently, she loves it enough to have covered the many holes with some funny patches. Kelsi takes out an envelope, barely hiding her enthusiasm.

"You found some new pictures?" I ask.

"Yep! Well, you already know we didn't take many together, but I found some new ones from a party you apparently went to, two months before we moved in together. I had to chat with some weird guy who was borderline a creep, but anyway, I got these and printed them out for you. Look!"

I take the pictures, a bit hesitant. This is already the sixth batch of pictures Kelsi as found for me, but just like the five previous times, I don't recognize anything on it. I spread them on my bed, and it even takes me a minute to find myself on it. It looks like some party in a big nightclub, with more people I don't recognize. In the pictures, I am wearing a white sequins top and some black leather pants, and I am dancing on heels in the middle of a wild crowd. My hair seems longer, too, and straightened. Kelsi only selected the pictures I appear in, but I never seem to be the main focus. I'm always in the middle of a random group, or in the background...

"Still nothing?" She asks, biting her thumb.

I shake my head. I only recognize myself, and that's because I've spent hours in front of a mirror since I woke up, trying to remember who I am. No one else in those pictures reminds me of anything. It's so infuriating. I can't put a name on a face, or on a place... Even what I'm wearing in those pictures doesn't remind me of anything.

"Did the guy say anything about me?" I ask.

"Not really", she sighs, shaking her head. "He had no idea who you were when I found you on his profile pictures. He's never heard of Clarissa Garnett, or a girl called Mara. He said he took a lot of pictures because it was his first university party, but he didn't even seem to know half of the people there."

"Okay... Well, thank you anyway for trying, Kelsi."

"I'm sorry it didn't work again, Boo."

"It can't be helped. It would be weird if my memory came back all at once."

I really don't want to make Kelsi feel bad about it. She's the only person who comes to visit me almost every day since she's been allowed to, and literally lightens my whole day up. She's been trying hard to help me fill in the gigantic hole of my past, bringing stuff that supposedly belongs to me, or the pictures she could find. She pouts, playing with her sweater's laces, still staring at the pictures.

"I don't recognize anyone from the university either, but I can ask my friends. Maybe someone knows someone from your department who knows more about you."

"Thanks."

"Well, at least you're sexy! I always noticed you had good tastes in clothes. Aren't you tired of the hospital gown?"

I nod. I hate it, but with all the bandages covering my burns, it's the only thing I can put on easily without grimacing all the time. Kelsi did bring me a bag of clothes, but trying to put on a pair of jeans was so painful I cried. She puts back the pictures in the envelope and leaves it on my bedside table.

"I'd definitely suck as a detective, I could only find thirty pictures of you in six weeks, and I took half of them. I officially suck."

"Don't say that, you're the best. It's not your fault I was a loner."

"I still can't believe you didn't have any freaking social media. You're an alien, or born in the wrong century!"

"You still haven't found my laptop?"

"No..." she pouts. "The last time I saw you with it was one morning before I went to Uni, you were in the kitchen, typing something. I don't think I saw you with it after that, and then there was the accident..."

It's so infuriating. It's already annoying enough that I have amnesia, but now, I can't even retrieve the biggest clues about my own life. I know the smartphone I had got burnt in the fire, along with any belonging I had, even my clothes. The police officer that came said they only found the remains of a leather bag and a matching purse, but more could have burnt, and they weren't going to spend time analyzing ashes...

"Did your sister come by at all this week?" Asks Kelsi.

"No... Too busy, they said."

"Damn, your family is weird. They are too busy to visit you, but they pay for a private room in this fancy hospital."

"I feel like the room is more of a security measure than special treatment. They probably don't have time to take care of their crazy younger sister..."

Kelsi frowns, and grabs my chin to lift it and have me look at her.

"Listen to me, Boo. You're not crazy. You're a gorgeous piece of woman, and a bad-a*s witch, okay?"

Her very serious expression immediately lifts my spirits up. I nod.

"With a crazy friend who says so," I chuckle.

She smiles back at me.

"Exactly. Do you want to show your crazy friend your magic trick?"

I hesitate a bit, checking the door. If I'm caught playing with fire again, they'd have an excuse to send me back to an isolated room, with the handcuffs and all that crap. They even put two fire extinguishers inside my bedroom, which is rather funny, I think.

Kelsi is waiting, looking a bit excited. Gosh, if it wasn't for her, it'd go insane locked up here. .. I take a deep breath, and lift my hand. One by one, I light a little flame on top of each finger. It's like I'm growing nails, and the flame is strangely redder than a normal fire, almost pinkish. My friend bites her lower lip.

"Damn, if only one of us was smoking, that would be so cool. It really doesn't hurt?"

"Not at all. It almost feels a bit cold, actually."

"Well, your watch isn't beeping like crazy like last time, so..."

"Mara!"

Kelsi and I jump, and I immediately make my fire disappear. At the entrance of my bedroom, the young nurse is staring at us, her hands on her hips.

"Are you crazy, you know you can't do that in here!"

"Sorry, Bonnie," I mutter.

Thankfully, it's only Bonnie. She's probably the only nurse on this floor who won't freak out with only this much. She sighs and comes in with a large tray, my breakfast.

"You're lucky it's just me... Everyone is scared that you'd do that again. Everything okay here?" She asks, putting it down on the little table.

"Still itchy from the bandages..."

She walks up to the bed, and checks my legs mostly, where the large burns are hidden under those damn bandages and layers of cream. I think Bonnie is the only nurse I like. She's just a bit older than us, petite, and very gentle. Her red hair is put in a high ponytail today, and she's rather cute with her freckles.

Kelsi grabs the coffee from my tray while Bonnie is not looking, busy checking my temperature, and sips it down. She makes a little victory sign behind the nurse's back.

"Kelsi, put that down, it's not for you," suddenly says Bonnie, still not looking.

I scoff, amused. Kelsi's jaw drops.

"How do you know I took it!"

"If you open the lid, it smells. I'm a werewolf, I can tell."

I always forget Bonnie is a werewolf. She looks like any normal human being, except maybe for that strange glow in her green eyes sometimes. Also, she never needs to turn on the lights at night, and her sense of smell is very good... Good enough to tell when Kelsi tries to get free food from the Hospital.

"Damn, I wish I was a werewolf," sighs Kelsi. "It must be so nice to get to shapeshift into a wolf anytime and get around naked."

"That's a bit weird to think about," I say, amused.

"First, we are not n***d since we have our fur, and actually, it's a real pain to take off your clothes and put them back on, when you don't rip it," replies Bonnie.

"Bonnie, any news of when I can go out?" I ask, a bit more seriously.

She hesitates a bit before answering, crossing her arms.

"Well, medically speaking, you're doing very well. Your skin is recovering from your burn marks very fast, which shouldn't even be possible with third and four-degree burns for a normal human or a werewolf."

"That's our little witch doing wonders..." whispers Kelsi with a smile.

Bonnie nods.

"We don't know much about witches, so, we can only observe, but yes, you're doing fine on that part. The problem is your amnesia. We have done every CT scan, MRI, or check-up we could, and there's nothing that could explain it. You apparently didn't hurt your head in the accident, so the underlying cause is still totally unknown. We think it's psychological. To be honest, even if your doctor says yes, your psychiatrist will probably refuse, saying you're still mentally unstable..."

"Oh yes, she's obviously some dangerous psychopath," mutters Kelsi, rolling her eyes.

I frown. I'm so fed up with that guy.

"I am stable, Bonnie," I protest. "I've been locked up here for weeks, and I only get to take a walk outside once in a while. I haven't lost control in a while, too. Seriously, I have enough, and my memory is not going to come back by having me locked up here either. Can't my older sister ignore that guy and have me out of here anyway?" I ask.

"I don't think so, Mara," says Bonnie, looking a bit sorry; "I think Ms. Garnett listens to all of your doctors."

"When is my next time with him, then?" I ask, unhappy.

"This afternoon..."

I nod. I'm so fed up. This time, this guy is going to have to agree to let me out of here, because I'm fed up. I need some real fresh air, not a walk around the hospital park once every two days like some dog! Bonnie doesn't say anything else, giving me worried glances, but Kelsi has a smirk on.

"Someone's fired up..."

Bonnie shakes her head.

"Mara, if you lose control again, you're going to be sent back to the isolation cell. You know that, right?"

"I know, but really, Bonnie, I'm done. That guy is signing my release form or whatever today."