Witches Burn at Dawn ✔

18. Yaroslava

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Four years ago

The first thing I saw in St. Daktalion was an angel. A statue twice my height stood by a coffee shop, a complex net of spiderweb thin cracks covering the folds of the angel's robe carved of stone. I walked into that coffee shop, bought a large cappuccino, and went wandering the streets until my legs ached.

I wasn't looking for something in particular, or someone, only wanted to forget why I was in the city in the first place. Today. Alone.

You should move to St. Daktalion. I'm sorry, you don't belong here.

I glanced at the people around me, but nobody glanced back, everyone passed by, too busy to even notice that my presence made them uncomfortable. There were so many heartbeats in every street, yet none of them seemed to be strong enough to parry my hold on their pulses, on their emotions. I made a few strangers smile at me, and they did, and then scattered away like puppets with loosened strings.

A little girl stood marveling at the ice cream truck while her mother was talking on the phone nearby, and I asked the girl why she wouldn't buy ice cream.

"I can't choose," she said. Then she began telling about the places and the days of her life she associated each flavor with. Her voice was so casual, so open-hearted, hope swelled in my stomach. And then my hope died when her mother dragged her away from me, apologizing, but also looking at me as if a black cloud was hanging over my head.

What had I done? Who was I now? Could I know how to start a new life in the city if I never knew how to make friends? I didn't even know how to be a friend to myself.

Obviously, I didn't expect to find a city full of vedmas and vedmaks, but I did expect to wander around long enough to be noticed by one. I couldn't be the only person with a sigil of magic, right? Vlad lived in this city, at least one family had to know what magic was like.

Nobody. Sauntering down every avenue and prospekt, wasting my money on hotels at nights, and reaching out to every heartbeat, I found nobody.

The city of St. Daktalion was everything I dreamed of: enigmatic old buildings with intricate facades, domed cathedrals glinting under the sun, bridges so long they faded into the fog each morning. Everything but not the people--I didn't find a single soul who'd be happy about living in this overwhelmingly magnificent place. The people were...ordinary. Hustling, working, arguing, laughing, and--avoiding me as a branded predator. Finer clothes and politer greetings, those were what made a mug of coffee three times more expensive than in my little town, nothing else.

No magic.

And how was I supposed to seek out a boy I'd seen twice in my life in a city of several million people? Knowing no phone number, no address, no friends of his. I tried to ask people, but there was no use; I searched online, but every website gave me a blank page result on Vlad Voskresenyev, just as before.

Of course, I thought about taking off, running, going back home, but I couldn't bear even the mere memory of Mom's melancholy and Tatya's consternation.

I needed to get rid of magic.

But till then, I needed to live somehow, too.

With that in mind, I spent the last of my money to rent a small room at the far end of the city, pay for a university's pre-med course, and buy the most delicious dinner in the most luxurious restaurant. The next day, with no money in my pocket, I got a job as a waitress in a bar that was in no way luxurious, yet took me with no experience and no questions.

That was the start.

And that, in a way, was the end.

Weeks bled into months, months trickled away. Almost half a year went by, and all the progress of mine was a salary barely enough to pay for my food and my room. No new friends, no people brave enough to admit I made them feel anxious with my mere presence either. No idea how to make anything right.