Unfamiliar (Unfamiliar Series #1)

Chapter 1

The smooth, plastic disk sits quietly in the palm of my hand as I cradle it. The surface of it has already warmed to my touch from holding it for as long as I have. It's no bigger than a half dollar coin and it's just as heavy as I rub a thumb over the edge. I turn it over like I have so many times before, the blue, reflective paint flickering like a fish scale.

Hold this disk and ask it what your familiar is going to be and receive your answer, is what a set of instructions say on the back of it in a delicate, black font.

It's instructions that I've read at least a hundred times.

"It'll be fun, I did it and it was right for me," my friend, Tessa, had told me when she had given it to me as a gift over the summer.

I had asked the disk as soon as I had gotten home of course.

But I didn't get an answer.

"It might be defective," Tessa had told me when I had explained to her what had happened.

I look at the disk more closely now, the front of it decorated with sigils and tiny, silver outlines of animals as the disk is split up into triangular segments that number fifteen different animals.

In the center of the disk there is a small, circular patch of silver paint that is supposed to tell me what my familiar is, much like how the window on a magic eight ball would give me an answer.

"What is my familiar?" I ask it softly, though I don't expect an answer now.

The disk abruptly grows hot in my hand and I jolt. The plastic trinket clatters to the ground as I blink in surprise, not realizing that I had dropped it for a moment as I stare down at it. 

It didn't do this before.

I stoop to pick it up, my fingers gentle as I expect to feel heat but instead feel nothing but cool plastic. The paint in the center reveals nothing, instead, the sigils and animals flicker a bright shade of blue that glows in my hand.

What the-?

"Kara, it's time to get up, we're going to be late!" I can hear my mother call from downstairs.

Her voice is muffled behind the closed door of my bedroom as I'm interrupted and I glance up at the door.

When I look back down at the disk, the glow is gone.

Huh, weird.

In reality, I've been sitting by my bedroom door for the past three hours waiting for the sun to rise, though it hasn't been because I'm excited, but rather I've been afraid of what the day will bring.

I cast a longing look at my windows, where I've already opened the shades to let in the morning sunlight and debate if I should hide under the covers for the rest of the day. My mother calls for me again and I sigh as I get up and walk across my room. I set the disk on my dresser and study my reflection from the mirror for a moment.

This is it, Greenwood Academy, here I come.

I fidget with my dark hair and pull it away from my face to quickly braid it before I loop a hairband around the end.

I take a breath to settle my heart, which has begun to pound as I open the door and head for the staircase. I don't usually grab the railing, but today, I keep my hand firmly wrapped around it and drag my palm over the sigils that are carved into it. They are calming ones mainly, along with a few for protection as my palms read the divots that mar the wood's surface.

Protection, calming, reassurance, I list off the sigils and pause at a few of them to trace my fingers over the carvings to activate them.

After I finish tracing the carvings, they glow blue and I am cleansed by the power they hold and relief courses through me. This will probably be the last time that I get to trace them for a long time, and the thought makes me instantly uneasy.