While Tansy and I drove to Crystal's, I tried to get the cat to dish more details about my mom.

  "Yes, she used magic when she was younger," Tansy confirmed with a swish of her tail. "Until she was a little bit older than you, it looked like she was following in her parents' footsteps. Then at age 20, she changed. Dropped out of college, stopped smiling, grew quiet. And she refused to use her magic."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Tansy said, with the cat version of a shrug. "I haven't seen her in 12 years. I assumed she would have gotten over it by now."

  Tansy confirmed that my mother kept me from my grandparents for so many years to keep me away from magic. Mom saw Grandma's encouragement to change my name as a first step toward introducing me to our family heritage. She didn't mind if I thought my grandparents were like so many other nonmagical families with sprawling gardens and many pets living in the areas surrounding Madison, so long as it never went beyond that. When Mom stopped trusting my grandmother to keep it at that, she severed our relationship.

  But Tansy did not know what happened to make my mother change. The only other detail I could pry out of her was that when my mother gave up magic, she also changed her name. As a child, she went by Laurel Buckthorn. After she gave up magic, she asked people to call her by her middle name, Holly. Soon after that, she met Jo and legally became Holly Moore.

  What happened to my mother when she was 20 to make her all but kill her old self off and reinvent herself as Holly Moore, nonmagical accountant? Was the magical community homophobic back then? (Are they now?)

  When Tansy and I pulled into the Wus' driveway, their front door was already open. Tansy hopped out of the car and stretched, then bounded into their house. I followed.

  Crystal and I met in kiddie yoga at age eight and we've been inseparable ever since. Although Crystal's ancestry is Chinese, her family has been in the United States for generations. She did kung fu as a kid - excelled at it, really - to connect to her heritage, and she started going to yoga to improve her flexibility. As a young dancer, I started yoga for the same reason. Crystal's headed to Artemisia College, a small liberal arts college in San Diego. I guess there's no shortage of yoga in her immediate future. Southern Californians love their yoga.

  Crystal greeted me at the door, leading me into the kitchen after I took off my shoes. In the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Wu already had water boiling for tea and a selection of my favorite foods on the table: vegetarian dumplings, Chinese broccoli, braised eggplant, and "homestyle" tofu (that's what Crystal says the name translates to from Chinese).

  I collapsed into Crystal's arms for a hug, no longer able to hold back my tears, and then after a long moment, I sank into a kitchen chair. Struggling to reclaim my composure, or at least hide my face, I ducked down to find the right herbs from my bag and carefully arranged them in the tea ball. I looked around and saw Crystal and her parents already had tea; a pot of oolong and three teacups were on the table.

  "I'm so sorry I'm like this," I managed to say. "Can I use your boiling water to make tea?" I placed the tea ball in the otter mug as Mr. Wu passed me the kettle. I poured the boiling water over the herbs and felt a small sense of comfort. Relief wasn't here yet, but it was going to come. I was with my best friend and her parents, and I would soon have a soothing cup of tea and my favorite Chinese foods.

  Wait a moment. I turned to Crystal's parents.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Wu, your door was open when I arrived, you have all of my favorite foods on the table, and even though you already have tea, the kettle was boiling just as I walked through the door with herbs and a mug. I hate to question your hospitality but what's going on?"

  Mrs. Wu looked at Crystal and nodded. Then Crystal spoke.

  "We're diviners. That's a form of magic. I've wanted to tell you for a long time, but our magic told us that the right moment was now. I don't know what's going on that has you so upset - we don't use our magic in ways that violate a friend's trust by prying into their business - but we knew you were coming, you needed comfort, and this was the right time to tell you the truth."

  Yeah, today definitely couldn't get any weirder. Can one overdose on truth? I think I've had an overdose.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  The one thing that Crystal's confession resolved was whether it was OK to reveal my magic to her. "Well, I just found out that my whole family is magic too, including the cat," I said, giving Tansy a pat, "only my mom gave up using magic before I was born and then kept it a secret from me. Better yet, that's why she never let me see my grandparents, who are dead now, so I'll never see them again."

  The Wus were patient and kind as I cried, and Tansy gave me comfort too just by being a warm, soft presence in my lap. Once my tea finished steeping, Crystal passed me honey before I asked for it, I sweetened the tea, and I felt a little better as soon as I took a sip.

  Wait. If Grandma Juniper grew these herbs and I made them into tea, was the tea magic? Can I do magic without realizing it?

  "Crystal, Mr. and Mrs. Wu, I didn't know magic existed until today, and what little explanation I've gotten came from a telepathic cat."

  "Hey! I resemble that remark," Tansy's indignant voice interrupted in my head.

  Ignoring her, I continued. "I know nothing. Can you help?"

  What followed was a long conversation. Some of what they told me confirmed Tansy's story, but it was more human-centric. Yes, some people can do magic, and there is a magical society that exists alongside nonmagical society, hidden to those who cannot do magic. I needed to learn a lot if I was going to participate in magical society.

  Crystal's "small liberal arts college"? Yeah, that's actually the most prestigious magical college in the United States and Crystal's major is not "undecided" like she told our whole high school. She's going to study divination, which she already kind of knows how to do because her magical parents trained her since childhood.

  "Shit," I said. "I just returned my form selecting my dorm for University of Wisconsin."

  "I don't want to rush you into any major life decisions," Mrs. Wu said, "But it's probably possible to transfer to a magical university, if you wish to. Even if it's too late for this year, you can transfer next year."

  "Won't I be too far behind, with no training? Do they have remedial classes in magic?"

  "Tell me this," said Mr. Wu. "Are you feeling better now that you drank your tea?"

  I nodded.

  "And you learned about your magic by having a conversation with a cat?"

  I nodded again.

  "You won't be far behind anyone."

  "Your aura is orange," Crystal added, implying a meaning that went over my head.

  "I'm sorry, what? I think you'll have to explain."

  "Your aura color changes as your mana pool expands," she replied. "You know about mana?"

  Umm... I read fantasy books. How real are they? And mana works differently in each book or series. "Explain it to me like I'm ignorant," was the best answer I could come up with.

  "It's like in all of those fantasy books you read. When you are small, you have very little mana. As you use your mana, it's like exercising a muscle. Your muscles get stronger when you use them and your mana pool grows when you use it."

  She looked at me to make sure I was following before going on. "As your mana pool grows, the frequency of light waves in your aura increases too, from infrared, through the visual spectrum, all the way to ultraviolet for the most powerful mages."

  I nodded. I knew fuck-all about magic, but I did get an A in physics. Barely. Color is determined by the frequency of light waves, but humans can only see colors within a range of frequencies. As frequency increases within the visual spectrum, colors go in rainbow order from red to violet.

  "Sooo... you can't see color in the auras of the least powerful or most powerful mages and everybody else looks like a pride parade?" I speculated.

  "Pretty much," Crystal confirmed. "And your aura is orange, Angelica. That means you've been using your mana. A lot. My aura is orange too and I had training you lacked and intentional practice. You aren't behind."

  Oh.

  Over food and lots more tea, Crystal and her parents told me about divination, Artemisia College, and what little they knew about nature magic. Then they cautioned me about mind magic.

  Looking at Tansy apologetically, Crystal said, "It might be a better idea not to tell people about Tansy's mind magic."

  "Okaaayyy," I said slowly. "Why not?"

  "In this country, people are a bit nervous about mind magic. It's a little taboo. They are scared that a mind mage could read their minds or control their thoughts," she replied. "Where my parents went to college, it was more accepted."

  I looked at Mr. Wu and he answered my unspoken question. "Sabrina and I went to magical college in China, even though we grew up here. We wanted a chance to strengthen our language skills, and Chinese universities are known for strong divination programs. But, to Crystal's point, Chinese magical society is also more accepting of mind magic."

  "The universities there actually teach it," Mrs. Wu put in. "Here, if anything, they'll teach mind magic for healing - the magical version of psychiatry - and defense against mind magic, so that other people cannot use mind magic on you without your consent. But that's about it."

  Mrs. Wu took a dumpling with her chopsticks and went on. "It's really a shame because, as Tansy shows, there are other ethical uses for mind magic. Communication, for example." I felt smugness coming from the cat when Mrs. Wu said that.

  Finally, the plates of food were empty, the remaining tea was cold, and all four of us were talked out. I offered to help with the dishes but Mr. Wu waved me away. He had some enchanted gadget to do the dishes for him. So, while gawking as my dirty dishes lifted themselves from the table and flew to the kitchen, I followed Crystal to her room to go to bed.

  Tomorrow, we would go back to my grandparents' house to see what we could find. I kind of felt like I was suddenly a character in one of my fantasy books and we were going on a dungeon run - only it was going to be no monsters and all loot. Do real mages delve dungeons? Damn, I had so many questions.