*Chapter 2*

I'm doomed. I've been that way ever since the day I was born. At first I thought that the near- death experiences, and seriously bad luck was just a phase. I actually even believed the doctors when they said "Don't you worry you'll grow out of it."

Oh please, I knew they had lied. I surely hadn't 'grown out of it'. It had just been sleeping inside of me for a while waiting to pop out and shout gotcha! And it had because now I was expected to run off and play magical Faerie girl or whatever the hell I was.

Hmm, what was I?

I was pretty sure I hadn't grown wings, not that I was brave enough to check, or fangs so I guess I wasn't a Vampyre (thank god! Cause the whole blood sucking thing is totally gross).

Witch, someone whispered in the back of my mind.

I quickly glanced between my foster 'rentals shocked faces and thought; well hell, hand me a broom stick and lets ride off into the night. As long as it gets me away from here!

Still on my knees I sat up. My achy head pain was gone and now I was feeling sorta light headed. And my palms stung, bad, like I had left them on a hot stove top and burned myself.

"Oh, god no!" Laura said finally getting over the shock. Robert still wasn't as caught up. "Oh, please no! No, it can't be!" she started to sob.

"Mom," I started to crawl toward her worried that if I stood up my legs would get up and I'd fall right back down again. "It's okay, I'm okay, don't cry."

"Roxana I don't see how this could ever be okay! Do you have any idea what this means?"

I shook my head. "I have absolutely no clue what this means, but I think that we should just discuss this calmly and rationally," I said also trying to convince myself not to freak out. I looked over at the peanut gallery, "You okay?"

Robert blinked looking like he was trying to figure out whether this was real or if he had fallen asleep and imagined it all. Laura continued to sob.

Not knowing what to do, naturally I started to ramble. "Okay, well, so I'm a witch or whatever. It doesn't change anything-I'm still me! So what that I can throw fire from my hands…" I shuddered, but continued on. "Maybe this just some strange mistake, I mean, it has to be. I'm not a Witch- I eat coco puffs, and watch old reruns of The Cosby Show and Buffy the Vampire slayer," I said anxiously as if any of that mattered. "Plus, for me to be a Witch that would mean that my parents would've had to be witches too, right? So it was probably just some weird paranormal thingy like what we see on T.V and stuff-."

I broke off when I saw the identical guilty looks my parents shared. I looked at Laura then at Robert then Laura again. When they didn't speak up I asked "What?"

Laura gulped. "This isn't a mistake," her voice broke in two places. "You are a Witch."

I felt confusion on my face.

"Acacia and Blake Malone, your biological parents, were wiccans also," Robert explained somberly.

I gasped. "W-wait rewind, so you're saying that-."

"We wanted to tell you," Laura added quickly. "But you never showed any signs of having powers as a child so we thought we'd never have to.

At least not until you was old enough to handle it."

I blinked. "So you lied to me?"

"No! We protected you; if people knew they wouldn't have understood and treated you differently or worse try and hurt you. We weren't about to let that happen so we covered it up."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "What do you mean 'you covered it up'?"

They didn't say anything. Instead they both stood and walked right up the stairs.

At first, I thought that they were being totally rude by going to bed and ignoring my questions, but when I saw that they had walked pass their bedroom and up the second flight of stairs I followed.

When I got to the attic door I hesitated. I didn't particularly like the attic; it was cold and dusty and spider infested, but something in my gut was telling me that I needed to go in their and face whatever was in there.

In the corner was a stack of old boxes filled with photo albums and old toys. Under those boxes was a big, wide something covered by a dusty gray blanket. Robert pulled the blanket off and I saw that it was a chest. It was long and wooden and had a weird lock keeping it shut.

The reason I had called it a weird lock is because it wasn't one where you'd use a regular key. Instead the key hole was in the shape of a big circle.

I had opened my mouth to ask what was in it or more importantly where the key was when Laura walked over to a cabinet drawer and pulled out a long, silver, star shaped necklace. The longer I looked at it I soon realized that it wasn't just a star, but a Pentagram.

"It's beautiful," I whispered absently.

"It's yours."

"Mine," I said excitedly rushing up to take it from Laura. I held the five pointed star centered in a silver ring in my hands and for a second it looked like it was glowing- like it recognized me or something.

Robert nodded. "That's yours too. It was all your mother and father left for you."

I walked over to the chest, still grasping my necklace with my right hand, and on the top written in old fancy lettering were the letters M-a-l-o-n-e."

"We've never opened it before," Robert said behind me "So we're just as in the dark about what's inside."

I sighed and knelt down to match my necklace in the key hole it was meant for. I pushed and the top popped open. Inside was a lot of weird unrecognizable stuff. There were candle sticks and little bottles of more weird stuff. There were also theses pieces of paper with dollar signs and A LOT of zeroes-

"I'll take those," Laura said snatching the checks out of my hands. "These are going straight into a college fund." She looked down at the amount and gasped. "Oh my! I better start up a trust fund as well," she said stuffing my inheritance in her robe pocket.

I rolled my eyes and continued with my exploration. Under all the randomness I found this big black book with a picture of another pentagram on the front. I wonder what it is. Was it like some sort of spell book?

Curiously I tried to open it, but was disappointed when it wouldn't budge and I turned it over and over looking for a lock. When I didn't find one I muttered "Dammit," under my breath and tossed it aside.

When I looked back into the chest I gasped and pouted adoringly. It was a powder pink baby blanket. It was soft and thin and smelled like roses. I hugged it close to me, breathing the scent in. Out of the corner of my eyes I noticed there was something on the corner of the blanket. It looked like the letter V.

"Hm, wonder what the V stands for," I said.

"It could stand for Vera," Robert said.

I frowned; who the hell was this Vera person and why was her initial on my blanket.

"Vera was the name your mother gave you," Laura said matter-of-factly. She reached in and picked out a white card. "Yep, it says it right here on your birth certificate."

I reached up nearly snatched the paper from her hands and looked down at the name Vera Serenity Malone- my name at the top with the names Acacia and Blake Malone as the parents."

"Why the heck did you change it?" I asked my voice edging toward anger.

"Well, I'm sorry, I'd just thought that you would like the name Roxana Elizabeth Hughes a lot better," Laura said defensively.

I retracted my claws. She had been right, I mean, Vera Serenity was a beautiful name and all, but I couldn't imagine being anything other than a Roxy.

I smiled. "Good thinking mom." Then another thought popped into my brain. "What a minute then what was with the birth certificate that had said my real name was Roxy and that my parents names were Erica and Peter Campbell?"

"We had to tell you something," Robert shrugged and then chuckled. "What were we supposed to do say you didn't have any birth parents? And if we had told people who your real birth parents were they would've made the connection."

"Yes, Malone was almost practically a household name."

I looked at them disbelievingly. "Really?"

They nodded.

"Huh," I said absently taking pride in the fact that my parents were basically celebrities. "What exactly were they known for?"

Laura deliberated and pursed her lips. "Um, I'm not sure really, but I heard they did a lot of charity and volunteer work."

I smiled. "Well, it's nice to know that I came from good wiccans and is not descended from the Wicked Witch of the West or something."

Mom and Dad laughed.

"You know what I still don't get though?" I asked.

"What?"

"If you guys knew about all this stuff then why did you act all surprised like hell had frozen over or something?" I hoped that they would ignore the hell reference.

"It wasn't that we were surprised just…" He trailed off struggling for the right words. "Caught off guard. Like we said before we never saw any signs of you having powers as a child so when suddenly you, er, you know, I guess it as you would say 'freaked the living crap out of us'."

I raised an eyebrow. "You were scared of me?"

"Ha!" Laura snorted. "Not even."

I narrowed my eyes at her and went back to my search inside the chest. In the corner under some more of those checks that I would totally save for myself, was a turned over wooden picture frame.

After I had made the picture face me I almost immediately recognized the two people standing with their arms wrapped around each other under the starry night sky. My parents. They weren't looking at the camera, instead they were lovingly gazing into each others eyes like they were about to kiss when the picture had been taken.

Acacia was a beautiful brunette with chocolate brown eyes, my eyes. She was dressed in a long flowing black dress with a matching butterfly clip woven into her hair. It was formal, but still casual. Blake was wearing a long sleeved black sweater and pants. Blake obviously wasn't white. He was more of a light caramel color and his hair was dark and curly on top of his head.

I grinned. "Hey, I'm half black. Cool!"

"Actually you would be one fourth black. Your father was half black," Laura said mathematically.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," I said dismissively. This totally would explain my crazy long, super curly dark hair that I basically had to straighten day and night for it to act right.

Suddenly this strange fuzzy warm feeling started to build in my chest. It was really nice to know where I came from, it made all this less confusing and even candy coated most of the major panic I was starting to feel.

I gave my blanket, book, and picture one last hug before I put everything except my necklace back inside the chest and locked it up. I took a deep breath and asked. "So, where do we go from here?"

"We continue on as if nothing has changed and it really hasn't. You are our daughter and we'll love you and protect you no matter what you are," Robert said.

"Exactly," Laura agreed.

I shook my head. "But it won't be like nothing has changed. I still have this…this…this power that I'm pretty sure I won't exactly be able to ignore."

Robert sighed and nodded finally acknowledging this. "She's right Laura, we can't ignore this, whether we want to believe it or not this is a part of her."

"And will always be a part of her," Laura said.

I stared at them wondering why they were talking about me like I wasn't in the room anymore. I thought I should cough or clear my throat to let them know that I was still sitting right in front of them, but instead I just kept listening.

"What should we do?" Robert asked.

"The only thing we can do," she whispered and in a voice I could barely hear said "let her go with love."

"What did you say," I blurted before I could stop myself.

Laura turned to me and smiled. "Nothing honey, I'm just tired that's all, but before we go to we have something else to show you."

"More stuff?" I asked perkily.

She chuckled "Yeah, just come downstairs when you're ready," and then she laid her hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

I instantly froze as this really weird feeling came over me. I can't really describe it except that it felt bad. Really bad. Then I realized that that had been the first time either of them had touched me all night.

I nodded not looking at either of them. They left and I continued to sit there thinking.

Something just didn't add up.

Downstairs I found Laura and Robert in the kitchen. Laura was warming up some water in the tea kettle and then shuffling around trying to remember were she had put the tea bags. Robert had decided to eat another slice of devil's food cake. My favorite. Of course if I hadn't missed dinner I would've had some already.

Apparently they were oblivious to my standing in the doorway. "Hey," I said and their heads snapped up.

"Hey, honey, I'm making tea- do you want some?" Laura asked sweetly.

"Nah, that's okay," I bit my lip and went to sit up on the counter. Something that Laura had told me a thousand times not to do, but she didn't seem to mind now so I went with it. "Um, you guys never did answer my question though."

"What do you mean?" Robert asked around a mouthful of cake. Neither of them looked at me.

"The one about you covering up that I was a Witch; you never told me how," I tried to keep my voice nonchalant, hoping that none of the suspicion was leaking through my words.

"Oh, I guess we forgot," She said in an off hand tone of voice.

I shrugged, "Okay, whatever, just tell me now."

Laura sighed and reached up to one of the cabinets to get a coffee mug. Robert had finished his cake and now was rinsing his plate off in the sink. "Before we tell you this we won't you to know that we love you and always will."

I nodded.

They looked up at me then and I realized that their eyes were filling with tears. "I'm so sorry that you are what you are, I wish there was another way."

I sprang of the counter and started to back away. "Another way to what?" I asked my voiced strained.

"We're so sorry."

Run. A voice whispered urgently in my head.

Then before I had time to gasp they lunged at me and heard the distant sound of thunder booming.

---

Uh oh, what's gonna happen next? And what's with that creepy little voice Roxy keeps hearing? Tell me what you think will happen next in your review. Okay, I already know what's gonna happen, but it will be really nice to hear your predictions, and you never know- you could be right!