Pitch: Second Season

Still, I was good at magic. Was I good at hunting leprechauns? No, but writing spells was getting easier. I had at least 5 of my own spells, not to mention the ones I helped Beth with. The other interns had maybe one or two of their own, with BJ being the exception only because she never stopped writing.

I was lucky enough not to have been fired yet. I told Beth I was recovering, but that excuse would only work for so long. I needed to decide if I would stick with it. Magic had some dark history I was still becoming aware of. It felt horrible even considering the prospect of continuing my journey as a magician, but I couldn"t ignore the thought.

"Enchanted paper is made from Elf ears, and fairy"s blood can cure E.D," I said.

"Why are you looking this stuff up?" Velmer asked.

"Because I hate not knowing," I said, scrolling through a website on my phone that gave too much information I couldn"t stop reading.

Velmer and I were on our way home from a movie. Wes and I weren"t talking much, so I hung out with the goblin next door while I sorted through my dilemma. Once again, "choice" was my mortal enemy. A choice between whatever Wes and I were building together and whatever magic was building me up to be laid waiting.

"I can"t believe I never knew this stuff," I said with my eyes so glued to my phone screen I almost couldn"t walk without tripping over my own feet.

"Don"t be so dramatic," Velmer insisted as he s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone from my hands and turned it off.

He gave back the cellular paperweight without missing a step. The whole point of us going out was to get my mind off things, but once we left the theater, I couldn"t help but go back to guilting myself. Had Velmer not shut me down when he did, our walk home might have been little more than ranting over the world"s ever-growing dark side.

"How are you not?" I asked as I slipped my phone into my pocket rather than turning it back on.

"I"ve known my whole life what kind of s.h.i.t could happen to me; maybe I"m desensitized," he said.

There was something to be said about how nonchalantly he and I walked around town together. When Wes and I were out in public, it didn"t draw nearly as much attention as Velmer and I did together. Danger Rabbit and someone beloved like Wes was fine, but Danger Rabbit and a creature like Velmer, who only recently joined human society, was a little more threatening. It was ironic how people saw Velmer as an alien when he was probably more normal than Wes, BJ, or myself.

"People need to know about this," I said, protesting to myself and someone who likely knew better.

"You keep looking stuff up online, so anyone who cares knows already, and everyone else," he paused.

"What?"

"Humans aren"t about to stop any time soon," he said with an ironic grin.

We made it to our street. It was that time of day when the sunset made clouds look purple on an orange haze. Everything was a silhouette.

"Were you ever hunted," I hesitantly asked.

He didn"t stop walking. He didn"t give me a face, but the way he spoke and kept his eyes front told me he felt something. It may have been too big a question to ask, but it was an obvious one if nothing else.

"Of course I was," he said.

There was no irony, ego, or sarcasm to his tone. There was nothing extra of any kind, and that made his answer heavier than air.

"Is that what you meant when you said you have bad luck," I pressed further.

For us to have such a conversation out in the open was tone-deaf on my part. I was too caught up in the moment to realize I was pushing us down a rough road, but he didn"t seem to care enough to stop me. Maybe it wasn"t that he didn"t care. Perhaps he was just comfortable enough to talk about anything. We"d only known one another for a short while, but Velmer made strides to solidify our friendship faster than most. I doubt there were many people in town brave enough to even talk to him, so I could understand if he was making a big push to get me on his side simply so he could have someone on his side. That didn"t make his openness any less stark.

"I was too smart. You"re not supposed to draw attention when you"re trying to stay off the grid, but I"ve always been good with technology. Every time I made a new robot or invented a new machine, my family had to move. If my people hadn"t decided to come out of hiding, I would have gotten us killed," he said.

We made it up the porch steps of his family"s home. He started to open the door.

"I"m sorry," I said.

"Pitch, Danger Rabbit, Friend, at least you give a s.h.i.t, that"s more than I can say for most humans," he joked as he twisted his door key unlocking deadbolts on the other side.

Could I still call myself human anymore? I"d all but given up on trying to reverse my curse. In a way, I embraced my curse, bad luck, and all. The thought of being "human" again hadn"t crossed my mind in weeks unless someone else brought it up first. I was still as naive or possibly complacent as any other human despite my reasons to be better.

"I can"t be a magician anymore," I said.

"Why not?" He asked.

The door was open, but he held himself between the threshold to talk to me longer.

"Because enchanted paper comes from elf ears," I said.

"So?"

He leaned against the door frame.

"You don"t care?" I asked as he crossed his arms.

"It"s not like they go around cutting off elf ears anymore, they harvest everything from dead bodies, like organ donors. They hunt creatures who don"t live with humans, that"s the real problem that needs to be stopped," he corrected me.

We were watching the sun go down, that might have been the only reason we talked on the porch rather than inside.

"So you don"t think its wrong to be a magician?" I asked.

"Pitch, you and me, we"re prodigies, we can"t stop because of little things like shock value," he said.

I wouldn"t call myself a prodigy. It was nice to hear someone else say, and I did beat Santa in a magic fight, but I"d never say it myself.

"Harvesting organs is a little more than shock value," I debated.

He sighed.

"Why are you asking me? I"m not the one whose opinion you care about."

"I care about your opinion," I argued.

"But you care about the satyr"s more," he said.

The last light from over the mountains faded, and finally, the street was in shade. I let Velmer go inside, and I retired back to my own home next door.

If I weren"t with Wes, what would I have done? The answer wasn"t easy. If not for Wes, I may never have known anything that tested my morals, much less my juvenile ethics. Would knowing have stopped me? I wanted to believe it would, but there was no way to be sure. I faced a similar problem at the start of my summer and got out of it by splitting myself in half, but I couldn"t do that for the current situation. I had to make a decision.

As I walked inside, I was greeted by the familiar silence of an empty house. It sucked that I couldn"t help Dad. In hindsight, the idea of using a leprechaun wish to make him the owner of the drive-through was too far fetched to have ever been pulled off. At least with my job as Beth"s a.s.sistant I had the potential to make money and help out more. That if nothing else was an unselfish reason to remain employed by Beth, but was it enough?

I didn"t want to think anymore. When I got to my room, I locked myself in it with the intent to stay there for as long as possible. After guilting myself with more research into magical creatures and how they were used in magic, I shut my phone off yet again.

How were so many people utterly complacent. They kept using magic knowing creatures had to suffer for it. I may not have known before Wes told me, but I was still naive enough to have never asked the question. That might have been just as bad, if not worse.

It was relatively early, but dreamland felt like a better alternative to my thoughts on reality. I should have waited for dad to get home. Laying in bed, I blinked my eyes, and like magic, everything changed. One moment I was laying in bed staring up at the ceiling, but in the next moment I was standing in a hallway

The endless hallway.

"What the f.u.c.k!"