1. NASH

There was something magical about midnight. Maybe it was the darkness, or the fact that I felt like anything was possible in the city never slept. Either way, I knew I'd found my people when I came out at night. There was a cool breeze in the air, washing over my intoxicated face. I'd sang so many songs on the karaoke, my voice was hoarse. I'd attempted to cast a spell, a simple giggling spell into a drink, and wound up turning their vodka into water. It was not my finest moment, but thankfully they were too drunk to notice.

Most nights I would find myself in a different penthouse of a different celebrity. The higher I was, the happier I felt. I did whatever I wanted in the few hours of the night when I felt like I was an immortal being, someone destined for something great.

But it was all play pretend.

I was an omega witch, a twin at that. Twins were said to be powerful in my community, and I got most of that power. My brother, who is ten minutes younger than me has power, but only on large celestial events, and we rarely spoke anymore. Rhone was a bit a hermit, and quite troubled. I suppose I was also troubled too, pretending I was someone I wasn't, someone worth these swanky penthouses.

The host tonight was Raynard Hoppin, a former A-list celebrity. In his late sixties now. Human, so less inclined to acknowledge my low social standing as an omega—or acknowledge it at all. Unless you were an Alpha or a fellow omega, you wouldn't really know about me. I fucking loved humans for that. And they were the only sexual experience I'd ever had. I didn't want to get caught in a mate bond.

"Sing!" Raynard's voice was heard over the speaker system. "La-la-di, la-di-da!"

On the terrace of the penthouse, I continued to embrace the air and breeze. It was delicate on my skin. It made me wish I had an affinity for air magic, to fly, or levitate, to create a breeze like this on me all the time was the dream.

There were several people on the terrace, all chatting, all drinking. I'd exhausted my spell casting for the night. And far too drunk to commit any magic out in the world. I was an aether witch, my magic was the connective tissues of the universe itself.

"Enjoying yourself?" a woman asked, approaching me from the side. "I saw you at the Dr. Egheart's party last week. He gave my face a full lift, and he did my nose. I bet you could never tell though. That man has magic fingers." She laughed and hiccoughed.

Humans knew about shifters, vampires, and witches, but they were told we kept to ourselves, and that we walked among them, we were harmless. It made some of the popular fiction from the era before we came out of the shadows a little less fictional now, like Dracula, and Frankenstein. So, I found it funny when someone approached me with talks of magic.

"You have a gorgeous face," I said, taking her hand. "And may I ask your name?" From a single touch alone, I saw her name, age, and the strings that pulled her life in all directions. A blessing and a curse of having my gifts and being drunk; my control was all over the place.

"You're not hitting on me, are you?" she giggled. "I could be your grandmother."

Flirting was a coping mechanism at this point. I didn't bat for the straight team. I could appreciate a gorgeous woman, at any age, their beauty through my eyes at least was always on show. Tendrils of magical threads reached out to her. I immediately pulled them back and stopped touching her. "Sorry," I said. "The wine. It makes me say things I know I shouldn't."

"Please," she laughed. "Raynard hasn't complimented me in years."

"Oh, Mrs. Hoppin."

She nodded and raised her nearly empty wine glass up. "The one and only. And if he thinks he's ever going to trade me in for a younger model, I'm taking all of this." She gestured. "This view alone is worth millions."

She was right about that. I'd seen many places around the city from all different angles. This one was in the top five. I didn't tell her that, because it was possibly the fifth spot on that list. "Mr. Hoppin loves you," I said. I felt it from him. I'd also felt how he'd lost his passions, and how his wife was suffering some of those consequences. "Let me ask you a question. What other parties have you and I both attended?"

"Well, there's parties nearly ever night dear," she said. "I couldn't possibly know that.Although I will tell you, there is a party tomorrow night. I shouldn't be telling you, it's really invite only, the elite of the elite, darling. I supposed since it is a once in a lifetime thing, I wouldn't want you to miss it. Our mysterious host never throws these things, but I've heard they're lavish. Wine is overflowing, the food is divine, I mean, I've never tasted anything so delicious in my entire life."

"Oh. Could I be so rude as to ask you who, when, and where?"

"Well, I've already given you the when, dear," she said, a light chortle in the back of her throat as she brushed a hand through the tips of her hair. "The who, well, nobody knows. Over the years we've called him all sorts of names, it's really a lot of fun trying to figure him out."

It sounded fun. I'd never heard of someone like it, but overflowing wine was like most of these rich people, but this time there a mystery begging to be solved. I needed to get the where so I could plan accordingly.

"And where?" I asked.

"I'll write it on a slip of paper," she said. "But you can't tell anyone it was me who told you." She winked at me, a sudden sparkle in her eye from the twinkle of the night.

"I promise," I said, extending a pinky finger. She'd already turned by that point, and thankfully too, I didn't know what type of magic my body was producing in my state of intoxication.I followed her back inside the large multistory penthouse apartment complex. It was loud with the screech of voices over the karaoke machine.

Most everyone here were famous in some aspect, they were either on reality TV or in movies, not big names, but a name nonetheless. I didn't care too much about famous people, I only cared about the lavish parties where I could find myself at the attention of humans with my so-called party tricks.

"It's only a couple blocks away, still in Manhattan, obviously," she said and snorted back laughter. "We'd never travel too far for a party. Oh, and there is a passcode. I'll write it down for you too, just in case of prying ears. And one more thing, the bubbles from the champagne earlier have really gotten to my head, it's also a masked party." But nobody was listening to her, everyone was focused on her husband's screechy voice as he sang a cover of a song I'd never heard before.

On the slip of paper, she'd written the apartment building name and also the passcode, nox amori , I knew a little Latin from some of the older magic texts. Nox meaning night and amori something to do with love. I supposed it was one of those kinds of parties.

It was getting late and the party was winding down fast. I made my getaway through a quick portal jump back to my bedroom at the compound. It exhausted me to use magic like that, and being drunk too, I was lucky to have not sent two halves of my body in differing directions. At the foot of my bed, I fell back and looked at the ceiling of old glow in the dark stars I'd had up there since childhood.

Witching families were close, we usually lived in large compounds with many rooms and sprawling floors. The richer your family were, the nicer the place you lived. My family weren't too rich, we lived in two brownstone houses, neither owned by my parents, but the two elders of the community.

A passing knock at my door roused me from sleep. "Breakfast is ready."

I'd only been sleeping for a couple hours. I needed more than that to feel fully rested. I forced myself out of bed and looked across at the wall. Rhone, my twin, he'd had posters up there for the longest time. Since there was a time when this room was shared. Now it was just me, but at least I got a double bed now.

I had a younger sister too, Melize, she was probably going to follow in the footsteps of Rhone and leave soon. And I would leave, but I felt like I owed it to my parents to stay and show the community that I was a team player.

There were five families. We were a coven. Each member family assigned and aligning with an element. Air, earth, fire, water, and aether. If both Melize and I left, my parents would be the only aether witches behind, and that could spell disaster for the coven.

I barely had enough time to take a shower before I was shouted to breakfast again.

There was a large dining table on the second floor. It ran across both of the brownstone buildings. In fresh clothes and smelling like a mixture of coconut and mango, I sat at the table across from Melize. We were the last to be seated it seemed. She had large sunglasses over her eyes and her thick brown ringlets half covering her face too.

"Mom's gonna tell you to take those off," I said.

She sank a little further into the seat. "Well, I don't want to."

"Late night?" I asked.

"Fun night," she said, smirking.

"You haven't even showered," I whispered across the table to her, noticing the smudged stain of red lipstick on her mouth. "Mom's gonna be mad. Weren't you supposed to be meeting her friend's son today?"

As we spoke about our mother, she came out with a dish of breakfast potato hash. She placed it in the middle of the table, right between us. She leaned in to kiss Melize on the cheek and whispered to her, and then walked around to me. "I heard you stumbling around this morning," she said. "Late, this morning. Please be quieter in future."

At least I wasn't being married off. There had been attempts at it, but in the end, I didn't click with any of the people she put in front of me. I couldn't be picky, I knew I would have to marry an Alpha witch, and there were all these strings attached to that. He must be from a line of aether practicing witches, and we had to marry up, marrying down was apparently, and ironically, beneath us.

There were eleven other children of witches at the compound, only half of them were old enough to marry, but they were like siblings. The idea of marrying within the compound triggered a flight response, and probably why Rhone left this place, but I was content with free accommodation and food in exchange for sticking around an alternate aether witch for their weekly blessing circles.

Melize kicked me under the table. "What are you doing tonight?"

Picking at the eggs on my plate with a fork. I couldn't tell her, and she knew what was about to come out of my mouth was going to be an absolute lie.

"Fine, don't tell me," she said. "But if it's fun, and you don't invite me, I'll be annoyed. You always get to hang out with fun people."

"People just like me," I said.

"People like me too, Nash," she said, tugging the sunglasses down the bridge of her nose to look me in the eye. "Don't they?"

"I'm sure they do," I joked with her. "But I don't have any plans tonight. I'm studying the old ways of the aether." Since there weren't omega schools to teach magic, only Alpha academies and universities, I was stuck learning from old dusty texts. Although I was lying to her as my plans for the evening involved visiting a mysterious masked party.

"Boring," she said, knuckle pushing her sunglasses up. "I heard about this dive bar in Brooklyn. Apparently, it's a hot spot for shifters. I fucking love shifters," she laughed, drawing eyes in her direction.

"Mel," I laughed with her. "You're gonna get yourself in trouble with the elders."

The elders were the most powerful in the coven, they set the rules and the laws of the compound. We were bound by them, and bound by a loose term because were weren't exactly locked in, but they could exile us if we broke them. Cyrus and Fayle were our elders. Cyrus the leader of water, and Fayle, the leader of earth. They were also the owners of the buildings we lived in.

Once breakfast was done, our parents cornered us. Firstly to chastise Melize, a freshly minted twenty-one year old enjoying her ability to drink legally in the city, and me, at twenty-six. I was in no mood to be lectured about my actions. I wasn't bringing shame on the family, if anything, I was bringing love, light, and laughter—all the things they had in bold print signs across the walls.

"I'll be studying all day," I told them. "And then I might take an early night. I really want to mentally connect with Rhone. He's been ignoring me." Mentioning our brother was always a soft and occasional sore spot for them, so I got away with a lot.

"I'm gonna be studying too," Melize said.

"Nope, you're coming with me to the market," our father said. "There's a witch I want to purchase supplies from, and you need to start learning more hands on experience from the world."

My mom patted my back. "Let us know how Rhone us when you find out."

"I will," I said.

"Thanks, sweetheart. Well, I'll see you both for lunch."

"Actually, I'm probably also going to grab a coffee and a pastry at lunch. It's a nice day, the park is great for reading," I said.

Any moment I could get out of this place was a huge bonus. When I was younger, having all these people around meant I was never bored. There was always someone and something to entertain me with, even if that was just my twin.

Now, I couldn't get a moment of peace because of all the noise. And they were overbearing. If it wasn't my folks, it were the other parents, asking me to look after or tutor their kids for a little while. I didn't want to do any of that. I didn't even want kids, at least not yet. So, the idea of being forced to teach them while they weren't listening was a hellscape for me.

Meliza pulled a face at me as I'd gotten away with what I wanted to do, and she was forced to go to the supernatural market with our father. Although now, I had to pretend to be busy until I could slink off into the night. I could keep myself busy trying to find a mask for the party. I was excited for this once in a life event, a new party destination, and maybe new guests I could entertain with my so-called party tricks.