"Sorry, I'm late! Was at uncle's house!" Melvin hurriedly signed his friend, Alek, once he saw her outside an old but luxurious building.
Alek side hugged him and signed, "You are not late. Alex isn't even here yet."
"Thank goodness." He placed a hand on his chest and sighed dramatically. "Anyway, where is this place and what is this building?" The only time he saw this kind of building was in textbooks about the Victorian era or something.
It looked deserted and creepy but somehow clean. Like an old church.
"Are we even allowed to be here?" He frowned deeply as he asked Alek.
Alek nodded nervously and turn to look at the building, "Yeah..." Indeed it was tall.
When she first came, she didn't have time to admire the building since it wasn't a friendly visit and it was an emergency. And today, she was picked up by a portal and transported to the back side of the building. No time for tourism.
"This, umm, my grandparents kind of like umm, own this place." The girl avoided the look in her best friend's eyes when she said that.
"The f*ck!" Melvin shook her arms with wide eyes and disbelief, "You are from a rich family?"
"Yeah, no. I don't know."
"Bruh." The blondie once again examined the building, carefully this time. He couldn't even count the number of windows on one wall.
As he was checking out the window, he saw something move in the corner of his eye. When he looked at what he had just seen, he witnessed a previously closed curtain from one of the windows, open and moving.
Just as he realised that he began to feel a creep like someone was watching him. He felt several presences from the windows and even the surrounding woods. Were they animals? He doubted it.
He held onto the girl's sleeve and asked, "Are you sure this place isn't cursed?"
"What do you mean?" Alek immediately looked around the place for any ghosts or spirits but she couldn't find one. "You are creeping me out, Mel."
A sudden gust of wind circled around the two at the worst (perfect?) timing, making the two hold onto each other for dear life.
Melvin was about to drag Alek away from the cursed building when he saw something floating near the entrance. It was a tiny blue ball of light but that wasn't the one that stunned him.
The blue light looked like a person. A small person with wings. The exact definition of fairies from books.
He shrieked and froze on the spot. But when he violently wiped his eyes, the blue thing wasn't there anymore, but replaced with a woman.
When Alek span to find the thing her horror-movie-loving best friend, she saw Pari standing at the entrance in her human form.
"That's my friend, Pari. She's one of the people I wanted you guys to meet."
Melvin nodded vigorously hearing that to erase the memory of what he saw a split second ago, trying to convince himself that it was just his mind and his imagination running wild because of the situation they were in.
"Got it. Let's go meet her." He led the way to the fae with Alek right behind him. He then greeted her with his friend translating, "Hi, I'm Melvin. Nice to meet you."
Pari checked up and down the boy before she greeted back with a smile, "Hi. I'm Pari. Nice ti meet you too." She held out a hand and they both shook the hands.
"That's kind of intimidating." Mel signed quietly to Alek after he greeted the woman, "And to someone who dyed the hair, it looks nice as if she was born with it. So natural.
Alek only nervously laughed. It was natural but if she told him that now, that would really creep him out.
Before Pari could ask what the two were talking about in sign language, a bundle of joy came in like a tornado.
"Is this who I think it is?" The queen of pixie's eyes was shining with excitement.
Alek nodded, "Yes. This is Melvin. Mel, this is..." She paused and looked at the second woman with an apologetic smile.
"Go on," Tinka allowed.
The girl continued, "This is Tinka."
Melvin greeted her the same he greeted Pari and later told his friend, "It's not so creepy here anymore."
[Should we start?] Abruptly, a voice of a woman sounded in Alek's head. When she looked around, her eyes met with the pixie and knew what she meant.
[Depends on how you want to do it. Are you guys going to do it all together or do you take turns, one by one?] Alek asked back in the mind link.
[We can just do it now and later the other boy can join. Depending on the state they are in, it can take a long.]
Sensing the pixie and the shifter talking in minds, Pari said, "I'll call the others. You, follow me."
Mel pointed at himself confused and looked at Alek worriedly.
"It's okay. I'm right behind you." She assured him and let Pari take her friend to other supernaturals waiting for his arrival.
As she promised, she followed the two people after she ended the conversation short and linked her cousins that one of the two was there.
Alek and Melvin didn't know where they were being led to by the pixie and the fae in the front by as they walked, people joined them from here and there and by the time they reached the destination, everyone apart from the troll, Quinlan, was there.
They were standing in front of a massive black iron gate with carvings of snakes, sting rays, bees, scorpions and every single animal or beings with venom or poisons.
To an outsider or non-supernaturals, they would just think that it was just a beautiful but harrowing piece of art. But to an insider or anyone in the supernatural world, it was a warning to let them know that they were stepping into the property of Mutsuki.
"Come on in." After Rin unlocked the five golden palm-sized locks on the door, he opened it and ushered the people in and when Alek was going in, he whispered in her ear, "This place is our old training hall. Nobody comes here nowadays."
Melvin had his mouth open, making people have the urge to shove an egg down his throat from how round it was. Everybody who saw the inside would have the same expression.
Many curving of venomous animals, real swords and arrows, punching bags, scratches from unknown material and occasional stains on the tiled floor and white walls.
He then went to the other twin who didn't open the door and asked, using his phone, "By any chance, are you in a family of mafias? This kind of situation happens only in books."
Jin laughed reading that and replied, "Not a mafia but a leader of a big community."
Melvin nodded after reading and went to his friend, "So what are we doing here?"
Before Alek could answer, Mago, the warlock, swiftly stood in front of the boy and placed his fingertip on the forehead. The boy didn't even get time to say anything before he lost consciousness.
Quinlan joined as soon as the boy slept. She couldn't show up earlier because she didn't have a human form and she would have been busted.
His body didn't fall to the floor but instead floated parallel to it. The supernaturals surrounded the body of a boy round apart from the three shapeshifters.
Alek felt like she was watching a magic show witnessing the seven magical users chant the same spell in unison which created a beautiful harmony and have butterflies in her stomach.
She was enchanted by the colour variations different races and individuals could have. She had already seen Pari and Tinka's power but not the others.
Paleine had a black veil twirling around her white clothing, Terence had dark green strings of light, Destiny had orange bubbles, Mago had the same as Destiny but with purple and more bubbles, and Quinlan had countless small grey lights like they were magical fireflies around her.
After all of them were ready with their magic, the magic that circled them now flew straight to the boy in the middle as fast as an arrow and let it get into his body.
The shifters were on the edge of their seats watching but everything stopped when Melvin's body rejected the magic coming into the body as if there was an invisible barrier around him. The way it reflected the magic was like a bullet hitting the bulletproof window.
Every single supernatural in the room had the same expression; what in the world happened?
They all looked at the sleeping boy in shock and wonder. Most of the people there were strong magical users that had lived for hundreds of years with experience and were one of the most powerful supernaturals and yet none of them succeeded in touching the boy, to begin with.
"Let's do it again," Paleine spoke and others just wordlessly repeated the process of bringing out their powers.
They again shot their magic at the floating boy but were repelled, more powerfully this time, apart from one, Tinka's.
That hot pink smoke light was straight into Mel's right ear like a string but without the blood or any pain.
Mago looked unexpectedly impressed and said, "Well, that explains everything." Others nodded and stopped using their magic apart from the pixie. They acted like they were done for the day.
Alek was the only one who looked confused and agitated. "What do you mean?"
"He's a pixie," The queen of nymph answered.
The leader of elves continued, "We, supernaturals, can't break spells, especially powerful ones, placed but people not from our race. That is the reason why your cousins gathered all of us to see what he is and if he was suppressed by a spell, we'd know where he belonged to."
Quinlan nodded, "Whoever put the shield and suppressed his powers must have been powerful. It managed to repel the queen's power. Even for once means a lot."
The girl asked the troll with a slightly shaking voice, "Why are you saying 'have been'? Why is it in the past tense?"
"It's a dead man's spell."