The whir of the coffee machine pulled me out of my daydream.
“Emma?” I looked up.
“Yes. That’s me.” I shuffled over to the counter and took my warm cup of much-needed caffeine from the barista. I pressed a plastic lid down on it and took a sip.
Mm. That was good. Now I was ready to begin my day.
I checked my vintage wrist watch. It was 8.28 a.m. on a Monday. A day I hated. A time I hated even more. But priding myself as a morning person, I plastered a smile on my face and pushed through the mass of commuters doing the same thing as me—moving toward their place of work. Before I came here, I relished in the power of a good beauty sleep and mornings were my enemy. In fact, I once tried to make mornings illegal. It worked well for a few years until that unfortunate incident where a certain someone who shall not be named ruined my life forever. I was forced to flee, and who knows what happened to my kingdom after that. The bustling, fast moving city of Sydney was a big change from the pristine palaces of my old kingdom.
But if I was going to live here, I had to adapt. And adapt I did.
I got an internship at a national newspaper as a journalist and studied hard. Because of the age I appeared to be, no one took me seriously, but once they saw how good I was at my job, they soon fell at my feet. Well, not literally. I was still waiting for the day when they would—or when I could be bothered to make them.
I hated using my powers and hated magic even more. That was why I prided myself in keeping the existence of magic hidden here in the human realm.
I walked into my cramped office and immediately booted up my computer. I clicked on the mail icon and groaned when I saw the sheer number or unread emails clogging my inbox folders. This job was a cover for my real job, investigating the mysterious leads humans sent to the newspaper. Stories of the weird and the unexplained. The magical things. Things that shouldn’t exist but did. That’s why I had to put an end to Darcy’s campaign. But my boss would kill me, and I wouldn’t have a job. It was a double-edged sword. I had to keep doing what I was doing. If I put a stop to magic use and Darcy’s quest, I had no purpose in this world. I sighed and took another sip of my latte, repeating my mantra:
“I wanted this. This is my purpose.”
It was the only thing that kept me sane. That was hard when Darcy insisted on torturing me.
He was my enemy in more ways than one. Ever since my ancestor, Eva, banished the former ‘archaic’ laws of our secret world, much to my chagrin, the world in which all supernatural beings existed, my former kingdom, all magical and supernatural beings, were now free to come and go between that world and this one. But only under one condition—they don’t harm humans. And they had to answer to—you guessed it, him. Darcy. My vampire ex-boyfriend.
Darcy loved magic, also much to my chagrin. And he encouraged the free use of magic within the human realm. See where I’m going here?
I clicked on the first email and began reading.
My boss had heard reports from several sources of large wolves or dogs seen roaming the forests of New Zealand. The weird part was, these large dogs weren’t killing anything—not even pets or livestock or native animals, and only appeared to come out at night. What was also strange was wolves weren’t endemic to New Zealand.
Straight away, I thought of wolf shifters who had crossed through the veil. But wolf shifters weren’t nocturnal that I knew of. I had seen them out during the day. My ancestor Eva had befriended one named Henry and made him the new king of the eastern side of the supernatural realm. In all my immortal years, I had never heard of a creature that fit the description. I had to investigate… and try to ignore Darcy at the same time.