“…magic?” I asked for clarification, “Not sleight of hand Vegas shit, but…like…actual magic?”

              “Of course” Mom said with a nod, “Your father is not magical, but he is a rarity in humans called a Seer, the heterochromia is a sign of one, they are born with the innate ability to dismiss and see past illusions and glamours magical folk like myself use and the ability to travel to the magical cities within other cities with ease. We did meet at the riots and all, but…I think because he saw my actual face is why he stuck to me.” she said with a shrug

              “What do you mean your…actual face?” I asked

              Mom just flickered her fingers upwards past her head as these magenta colored flames emanated from her fingertips as her entire form seemed to shift, she was…even taller, her skin deepened and got warmer till her arms faded to black mid-forearm and…she had four arms, each adorned with large gilded claws, her eyes turned solid glowing yellow with slit pupils, her hair fell out of its knot and became this wild mess around her head, like a cloud of smoke, a pair of sculpted lava-stone like horns curled off her temples and golden jewelry covered her, she was dressed in swaths of red and warm toned paisley fabrics, her usual snug nose ring replaced with a large one with multiple chains leading to her huge bat like ear, she was far more muscled than I’ve ever seen my mother and as I watched, the last third of her hair lit into magenta flames.

              “This is how I actually look” she explained as she showed off sharp teeth, all of her canines these dagger-like fangs. “My family is a long, long line of rakshasa, because I am female, I am a rakshasi, but because you are male, you are a rakshasa.”

              “Rakshasa…the malevolent man-eating demigods in Hinduism?” I asked, she nodded with a chipper smile

              “Magic is odd at times; the weave gives and takes as it pleases and all of us bend to its will as it instructs. In children like you, mixed that is, magical blood and nonmagical, sometimes the child is born magical or born showing elements of their magical parent…sometimes the magic blood takes over during puberty, but there are rarer cases of the magic becoming present due to a traumatic event or something.”

              “I’ve not gone through anything like that.”

              “True, but there have also been cases where the child doesn’t show magic until later in life…it gives them a form of…second puberty almost, but instead of hormones going crazy, the innate magic inside them went crazy and caused the transformation” she explained, it was…it wasn’t hard to look at my mother, but…I just couldn’t believe that I was seeing properly.

              “And you’re telling me all of this now?” I asked

              “We didn’t know how to broach the subject earlier, over time you just didn’t show any magic for so long that…we thought that maybe you were never going to” Dad added, resting a hand on Mom’s shoulder, “After you turned seventeen, we were disheartened in the idea of you showing magic for time, we thought you were in the group of something traumatic would unlock your magic.”

              “You knew…all this time? That Mom wasn’t human?”

              “Of course,” he said with a nod, “the glamour she uses to appear hella-human doesn’t work on me, I have always seen her like a double exposed photo, with her actual face being the clearest part of the image.”

              “And…magical city? Double backing to that, what do you mean, magical city?” I asked

              “Almost every city has a magical underside; Los Angeles has Arbor, Phoenix has Ashdale, Dallas has Brightstar, New York has Anex…pretty much everywhere there is a largest city, there’s at least one. A lot of them have smaller off-shoots as well, like Anex or Camelot over in London. The city has Pearlbay.” She explained

              “How…?” I asked, my question dying off because I had no idea how to continue it

              “Magic can keep anything hidden as long as you know the right spells.” She offered with a kind look, “I’m…sorry we couldn’t, or rather didn’t tell you earlier”

              “We were worried that if we told you all of this when you were a kid and it just…didn’t happen, that you’d become depressed and extremely disappointed that it was never showing in you” Dad added

              “Well…thank you for thinking of my mental health in that regard, just…” I said before raking my hands back through my hair, my hands smacked into my horns though which made me remember they were there, it was odd how used to them I got.

              “I’m here to teach you everything you need to know” Mom said, “And if you want, Pearlbay has a magical college of its own if you’d want to transfer somewhere that’ll help you more.”

              “A magic college?” I asked

              “We both attended Berkely, but when I wasn’t there, I was at the college in Pearlbay, the Arcane Institute of Mystic Raven, it’s a beautiful campus and an incredible school too” she said, wistfully thinking back. “Of course, that was after Paradise Academy and all.”

              “…what’s Paradise Academy?” I asked

              “Oh, it is a special college, it’s pretty much bottomless in terms of students; about 90-95% of all magical children in the world attend there, that is what the school was made for, but as for that 5% that doesn’t, there’s lots of other smaller ones out there, there’s some that are for specific people like dragons, vampires or the various sort. Mystic would do you well, show you everything that you’ve missed”

              “…dragons?” I asked

              “Of course, there’s dragons” she said with a nod, “I mean, two of the warlords are draconic.”

              “Warlords?”

              “A group of magical people who are as influential in the magical world as they are the nonmagical, they’re half-archdemon and half-something else, there’s eight that are considered the most powerful beings on the planet and therefor are considered the protectors of the continents, except for Kálmán Varga who holds dominion over all of the world’s water.”

              “…Kálmán Varga, the CEO and tech-giant of 6V?” I asked

              “The very same” she said before sliding her phone across the table, “See this is what he looks like to humans” she said pointing to a photo of the CEO; he looked the same as whenever I’ve seen him on TV or something, then she swiped the photo, “And this is how he actually looks” the photo showed the same man, but heavily covered in scales of blues and black, glowing yellow eyes, huge pearly horns and a huge stone set into the center of his forehead. “There’s also Nickolas Andreas, Sammy Sovereign, Travis Nel, Sultan Ahmed, Cassandra Vita, Juliana Vesta and Heather Greenspan, all of them are cousins through their arch-demon blood and they hold dominion over huge swaths of land: South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and northern Asia, southern Asia and Oceania, North America and Australia in that order with Kálmán Varga holding control over all of the world’s water.” She explained

              I had no idea how to respond, my mind was full of questions and with every question I came up with five more came up.

              “I have my old books from Paradise I’ll give you so you can…work some things out yourself, we’re beings of illusion so making yourself look human should be easy, but…I’d like it if you got to attend my magical school as well.” She said, holding my hands in both of hers again as she looked at me.