Dirty Magic Sample

Chapter 1

“Could you try not to kill anyone this time, Rekia?”

I stood with my sister, Chanel, between two brick buildings, the light from the fading sun shining down on us. “You know,” I said, leveling her with a stare. “I think you’re aiming to be the only girl in the family.”

She scrunched up her nose, reminding me of myself sometimes when I looked in the mirror. My sister and I favored a lot and we were easily mistaken for each other sometimes, although I was twenty-five, and she twenty-eight. We both stood about five feet six, though she was slightly taller than me.

Today, like always, her black hair hung loosely around her shoulders, unlike mine, which was also black but trimmed with just a little covering my eyes. We were both slim of frame, and that, coupled with everything else, is why people often mistook us for each other or thought we were twins.  

Right now, she leaned up against the brick wall of the building opposite mine, hitting me with that ‘you’re so full of shit’ look she sometimes leveled my way. “And why do you think that?” she asked, going back to my earlier statement.

“Because,” I said, looking up and down the alley, making sure no one was in hearing distance. “You actually want me to stand still and do nothing as telekinetics try to rip my eyes out, empaths try to influence my emotions, telepath’s try-”

“Okay. You have to defend yourself but seeing as how you normally use your telekinesis to rip out eyes, I don’t think you have much room to talk.”

I did not do that. I protected myself, but I never started the fight. The problem was that my sister and the rest of my family hated what I did for a living. We all had the ability to open portals to other universes, me, my sister, and my two brothers. It was something we’d inherited from our father, that and a few other things.

Still, I was the only one who made a profit from it. Say you were on the run from the mob or the street gang around the corner, I could hide you where you’d never be found, in an alternate universe. Though I only ever took my clients to places where the people looked the same as us, and the language was the same or similar enough that they wouldn’t have a problem understanding it.

It was good money, and I loved doing it, enjoyed the rush it gave me, though I’d figured out a long time ago, that my family would never understand, much less approve.

I ran a hand over the bricks behind me, because I really did need to go. “I’m just going to Ricken to do a check on my client. Once I make sure that she’s alright, I’m out of there. No harm, no foul.”

Chanel shook her head. “You give mom about a million gray hairs a day, you know that? Dad may think it’s okay, but that’s because he has powers himself. Mom is different.”

I started to open a portal but stopped when she said that, feeling my shoulders tense a little. I didn’t want my mom stressed about this and I wished there was a way I could alleviate her fears. “Stop telling her stuff to make her worry.”

See, my mother was from the world we were on now, what me and my siblings considered our home world. My father was from the world Juelm, one of the few places with natural-born portal openers. There, everyone had powers, but here, where my mom was from, no one even knew that alternate realities existed or that telekinesis was something besides what they saw on the TV. 

Chanel let out a defeated sigh. “Just try to stay out of trouble and call me if you need help.” She would be the first person I’d call if things went awry. Unlike myself, she had the power of blood remedy, which meant she could control blood, even use it to heal others. It was very powerful magic, and my sister was excellent at it.

I gave her a hug, just because, then opened a portal to Ricken and stepped inside, hoping I wasn’t about to enter into a firestorm.

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