The smooth, plastic disk sits quietly in the palm of my hand as I cradle it carefully, much like how I'd hold delicate, glass figurine. The surface of it has already warmed to my touch from holding it for as long as I have. It's no bigger than a half dollar coin and it's just as heavy as I rub a thumb over the edge. I turn it over like I have so many times before, the blue, reflective paint flickering like a fish scale.

Hold this disk and ask it what your familiar is going to be and receive your answer, is what a set of instructions say on the back of it in a microscopic, black font.

It's instructions that I've read at least a hundred times.

"It'll be fun, I did it and it was right for me," my friend, Tessa, had told me when she had given it to me as a gift over the summer.

I had asked the disk as soon as I had gotten home of course.

But I didn't get an answer.

"It might be defective, or you could have a familiar that's not included," Tessa had told me when I had explained to her what had happened.

I look at the disk more closely now, the front of it decorated with sigils and tiny, silver outlines of animals as the disk is split up into triangular segments that number fifteen different animals.

In the center of the disk there is a small, circular patch of silver paint that is supposed to tell me what my familiar is, much like how the window on a magic eight ball would give me an answer.

"What is my familiar?" I ask it softly, though I don't expect an answer now.

The disk abruptly grows hot in my hand and I jolt at the sudden change. The plastic trinket clatters to the ground as I blink in surprise, not realizing that I had dropped it for a moment as I stare down at it.

It didn't do this before.

I stoop to pick it up, my fingers gentle as I expect to feel heat but instead feel nothing but cool plastic. The paint in the center reveals nothing, instead, the sigils and animals flicker a bright shade of blue that glows in my hand.

What the-?

"Kara, it's time to get up, we're going to be late!" I can hear my mother call from downstairs.

Her voice is muffled behind the closed door of my bedroom as I'm interrupted and I glance up at the door.

When I look back down at the disk, the glow is gone.

Huh, weird.

In reality, I've been sitting by my bedroom door for the past three hours waiting for the sun to rise, though it hasn't been because I'm excited, but rather I've been afraid of what the day will bring.

I cast a longing look at my windows, where I've already opened the shades to let in the morning sunlight and debate if I should hide under the covers for the rest of the day. My mother calls for me again and I sigh as I get up and walk across my room. I set the disk on my dresser and study my reflection from the mirror for a moment.

This is it, Greenwood Academy, here I come.

I fidget with my dark hair and pull it away from my face to quickly braid it before I loop a hairband around the end.

I take a breath to settle my heart, which has begun to pound as I open the door and head for the staircase. I don't usually grab the railing, but today, I keep my hand firmly wrapped around it and drag my palm over the sigils that are carved into it. They are calming ones mainly, along with a few for protection as my palms read the divots that mar the wood's surface.

Protection, calming, reassurance, I list off the sigils and pause at a few of them to trace my fingers over the carvings to activate them.

After I finish tracing the carvings, they glow blue and I am cleansed by the power they hold and relief courses through me. This will probably be the last time that I get to trace them for a long time, and the thought makes me instantly uneasy.

I shudder and adjust my gray, pleated skirt and fidget with the silver buttons on my jacket to make sure that they're buttoned in the right holes for the hundredth time this morning. I try not to look at myself again as I walk past the mirror hung on the wall at the end of the staircase, but I can't help it and stop to check my reflection.

The glimmering insignia for Greenwood Academy flashes back at me from its place over my heart in shimmering silver thread as I readjust the tie for my uniform. The black length of fabric glistens like snake skin, like it isn't quite sure if it wants to appear to be blue or black as I tighten it so it's snug against the collar of my white dress-shirt.

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I turn away and cringe as my black pumps tap against the hardwood floor in the hallway, I've never been one for making noise, but it's something that I'm going to have to get used to now. I gnaw on the corner of my lip as I walk out into the tidy kitchen where my mother is pouring a bowl of cereal for me.

"Here," she says as she lifts the bowl and I take it from her.

I walk over to the eat-in bar, which is the only place in this house that is messy since it's cluttered with papers that have sigils and gibberish scrawled across them in varying colors of pen. I move a few of the papers out of the way so I have a place to set my bowl before I hop up onto a barstool.

A pile of newspapers moves suddenly as my mother's familiar, Daisy the opossum, pokes her head out from beneath the newspapers that have been stacked around her. She blinks sleepily at me before her mouth opens into a yawn as her form shivers slightly like she's not quite there. And she isn't, not really, no familiar is solid all the time.

I pluck a piece of cereal from my bowl and offer it to her as she grabs the treat and ducks back into her newspaper house.

"So what's the weather going to be like today?" I ask my mother as I try to interpret some of the gibberish written in purple ink on a nearby scrap of paper.

She pauses mid-step from where she has started to walk in the direction of the front door as the click of her heels cease. Her head tilts to the side the way it always does when she's predicting something, like someone is whispering in her ear as she listens intently to them. She has yet to tell me exactly how it feels like to be a Seer, which is her special ability as a witch. Though I've yet to find an interest in impulsively writing stuff down so I can rule out the fact that my ability is a Seer.

I would find out soon enough at Greenwood though.

"It's going to be sunny, but cold," she tells me before she keeps walking toward my bags that are stacked by the door.

My father opens the front door and enters suddenly to grab one of my bags and turns to head back out to the car that he is likely loading. He stops when he sees me sitting at the bar and smiles.

"Big day today huh?" he asks me as he abandons the bag and walks over to me.

He plants a quick kiss on my forehead as he smoothes the hair on top of my head. His familiar, a sparrow he's named Clark flits in through the open front door and flies over to me and lands on my shoulder.

"You'll do great sweetheart," he reassures me, "Indigo loves it there."

I offer him a weak smile as I reach up and pat Clark on the head. Even though my father is optimistic, I still shudder at the memory of my sister, Indigo, calling me in tears to tell me that her familiar was a rabbit. Laughable familiars is all my family has ever gotten, every single one of them leading back for generations that make up a mixture of small, weak creatures that the Zen family is well known for.

Now Indigo is a senior at Greenwood Academy and she's top of her class (top of many of the academies worldwide really), but she's still taunted mercilessly for her familiar, which she's named Melchizedek of all things. A noble sounding name for a weak creature that only made her bullying worse, but she'll never tell mom or dad about it. I won't be the one to tell them either.

She didn't come home for the summer, opting to instead shadow one of the teacher's in alchemy over in Salem so I would only see her a few times a week and she never stayed the night.

"I can't wait to see her again," I tell him, and it's the truth.

He grins and pats me on the back, "That's the Kara I know. Finish your breakfast and brush your teeth, I'll have the car ready when you come back down."

With a slight bounce in his step, he heads back out the front door with one of my bags in tow and shuts the door behind him. Even though I want to hold off going to Greenwood for as long as possible, I still finish my cereal in a timely manner and climb the stairs to brush my teeth.

Clark flutters after me, his soft wing-beats soothing my rapidly fraying nerves as I head for the hallway bathroom. I can't help the fact that my hands are shaking when I run my toothbrush over my teeth, but I try to remain calm and breathe evenly.

This has already been put off as long as it possibly could be.

I spit into the sink before I rinse my brush and put it away and step out into my room. My heart flutters as I cast a longing look at my bed, my moon patterned quilt perfectly smoothed from when I had made my bed early this morning. I already miss my room even though I'm still standing here and haven't left yet.

I quietly shut my door and start walking when I hear the front door open and close as I take a deep breath in the hall. Clark lands on my shoulder and stays there as I descend the stairs and stop in the entry hall.

My parents glance up at me from where they stand waiting at the door and in that moment they couldn't look any more different than one another. The both of them are opposites, my father having the same dark, straight hair as me, along with dark eyes that can look nearly black in low light. He's also lanky and tall while my mother is shorter and stouter and keeps her light hair tied back in a loose bun.

The only thing they have in common is their love of music and the fact that they both look pale with anxiety in the early morning sunlight that is streaming in through the window on the door.

"Ready to go?" my mother asks as she steps over to stand in front of me.

"Yes," I whisper as I stare down at the floor.

She suddenly cups my chin in her hand and tilts my head so I'm looking into her eyes, which are framed by a set of silver-rimmed glasses. Her eyes are a bright shade of green that makes her look young, even with the wrinkles that line the corners of her eyes as she smiles at me in a way that makes me feel a surge of loneliness.

I'm going to miss her.

"It's just for the school year and then you'll be back for the summer," she reminds me, almost like she can read my mind.

Being a Seer doesn't let her read minds, but she can see some possibilities and futures of situations, maybe in one of them I admit to her that I'm going to miss her, or maybe she can just see it on my face. Either way, she draws me into a quick hug before she pulls away.

"Come on, you've got a lot to look forward to," she promises me as my father opens the front door. "Connor! It's time to go!" my mother calls over her shoulder.

My mother frowns as she hears the hurried footsteps of my younger brother on the floor above us before he bolts down the staircase. His dark hair is sticking up in several patches and he's in casual clothes that are rumpled as he skitters into the entry hall. He has a cereal bar clutched in one hand that he takes a bite out of and his Nintendo switch in the other as he runs past us and lunges off the stoop for the car.

"I swear he's never ready to go in the morning," my mother mutters.

"I'm just glad he grabbed something to eat," my father counters as we step out onto the stoop and he shuts the door behind us.