After that, everything was kind of a blur. First the neighbors showed up. Someone picked me up out of that mess and took me outside to the sidewalk. Then the police showed up, and lights were flashing and strangers were asking me questions. At some point I was sat on the back bumper of an ambulance and a blanket was wrapped around my shoulders.

I sat there rocking back and forth. For some reason it made me feel better.

“Mommy~ Daddy~,” I kept chanting in a sing-song voice.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

An officer came running out of my house and bolted to the detective in charge.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

“Um, detective? We got somethings twitching in there,” the breathless officer said.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

More police rushed out of the house.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

“Get a witch on scene! Get a witch on scene!” someone in the group of panicked police was shouting.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

“Shit!”

The detective in charge was the first to notice me and charged in my direction.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

“Hey, is there any record of magic in this family?” he yelled to no one in particular as he hurried across my front lawn towards me.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

“Get that kid out of here!” he was bellowing at the paramedic.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

The medic was flustered and confused by the angry bark, and just kind of stood there.

“I said, get that kid the hell out of here!” the detective yelled again.

“Mommy~ Daddy~.”

Still not getting the response he wanted, the detective lifted me by my armpits, carried me to the nearest police car, and threw me into the back. In an instant he had hopped into the driver’s seat and was pealing out of the nest of emergency vehicles surrounding my home.

As he was driving at high speed as far from my house as he could get, the detective got on his phone. I guess he was calling back to the officers still at the crime scene.

“Have things calmed down back there?”

“Good.”

“Yeah, looks like we have a little necromancer on our hands.”

There are three ways that a magic user awakens to their powers. Some are born awakened and have all their powers from day one. Those people are very rare, almost no one is like that. The most common is that during puberty their powers very slowly awaken bit by bit over years and they don’t fully awaken until their about twenty. And then there’s the last group, who’s powers awaken all at once after a sudden shock or trauma. It’s a self defense mechanism. A way for the magic user to protect themselves from whatever it is that's threatening them.

Guess how I awakened.

After spending a couple months in a mental hospital, I learned that my parents had been murdered by a necromancer serial killer named Mortis Rex, that had been active in the area. Of course, the killer’s real name isn't Mortis Rex, no one knows what it is. Mortis Rex is just the name the local news stations gave the serial killer that made so many headlines. The name means Death King. Classy, right?

As B-horror movie as his nickname might sounds, Mortis Rex does fit the killer. When he was on his killing spree eight years ago, he was known for his high body count and messiness. In fact, I was the only one that had ever seen him and survived.

The lead detective, Detective Sweeney, was the one that had grabbed me, and got me out of there. He kept me up dated on the case from time to time.

So far, the killer has never been found. My parents seemed to be his last victims before he completely disappeared.

I know what everyone thinks. They think I must blame my self for my parents deaths.

I don’t.

I was twelve! How could I have any control over the actions of a serial killer? I’m crazy, not stupid. Or at least not that stupid.

Of course, the whole my-parents-getting-turned-into-talking-glowy-balls-of-light thing, yeah that was totally on me.

I hadn’t even noticed what I’d done until after spending a couple weeks at the hospital. It wasn’t something I did consciously. Evidently in the first moments of being a brand new, freshly minted necromancer, I had reached out my power and grabbed a hold of the spirits of my parents, and I never let go. Grabbing spirits is something that necromancers do naturally. That’s how we stuff them into dead bodies. Too bad for my parents, they had no bodies to go back to, so now their spirits are a couple of talking glowy lights that have followed me around for the past eight years.

In the first months of learning about my newly awakened necromancy, I had asked my parents if they hated that I had grabbed them with my powers, and their reply was just so – so my parents!

They said, “Honey, we want to be right here by your side for as long as you need us.”

Seriously. Shit. My parents are just so damn supportive! I don’t think I could have survived without them all these years.

Of course, from the very beginning doctors, and then counselors, and then therapists have been telling me that I really needed to let them go. I wasn’t going to be able to move on, if I kept clinging to the spirits of my parents like this. My parents had somewhere else they were supposed to be, and I was keeping them from it.

And for the past eight years I’ve been telling them to, “Shove it, they didn’t have to grow up with dead parents!”

Part of me knew they were right. It’s not like my parents had a great life these past eight years. I mean, how fun could it have been to watch their kid struggling over and over again, and they couldn’t do anything about it, all they could do is watch everything.

They did give me emotional support. I mean a ton of emotional support. Gods, they kept me going so many times when I wanted to quit.

But they had no bodies, or anyway to interact with the world. In fact, most regular people couldn’t even see or hear them. Only people with enough magic even knew they were there.

What kind of life was that for them?

I knew the only reason they were trapped like that is because I was too weak to let them go.

But I wasn’t a twelve year old little kid anymore, I was twenty.

And it was wrong and selfish of me to insist that they stay.

They had been waiting for me to be strong enough, for a very, very long time. They had never complained. Even when I asked about it, all they had ever said was, “When you’re ready, Baby.”

“Kari?,” Doctor Elise asked, getting my attention again.

“I think you’re ready today.”

I nodded.

Releasing my parents’ spirits from my magic wasn’t difficult. I didn’t need to chant some mystic spell, or do anything flashy. It was really more like just finally relaxing a hand that had been clenched tightly around them for all these years.

Once my magic was gone, their spirits floated upwards towards the ceiling like two balloons that had their strings cut.

“We’ll always love you, Baby!,” were their final words and then their lights disappeared.

I cried a whole lot in Doctor Elise’s office. Once our time was up, she guided me out to the lobby.

“You’ve taken a big step today Kari, a really big step. I’m so proud of you.”

I nodded, still feeling dazed.

I was alone, completely alone for the first time in eight years.

Yukarina “Kari” (Car-ree) Volka

Age: 20

Height: 5.2

Build: Skinny

Hair: Black, shaggy, neck length

Eyes: Black

Skin: very pale

Nationality: Romanian

Looks: average/ slightly creepy

Job: Necromancer