Chapter 1

Sitting in the waiting room of Baneasa Airport of Bucharest is seriously no fun. You can watch people talk, walk and glare but when you're alone you just end up looking at the glass sealing wondering "How much will the plane be delayed! Please...I was supposed to be in Venice by now..." but well...what can I say, I always have bad luck. So returning from the muddy glass sealing I pick up the book I left on the bench next to me. My favorite. Harry Potter. Which really makes me one big lousy masochist. Do you want to now who's my favorite character? You'll never guess...its Filch. Yeah you heard me right. Miserable, evil, ugly Filch...but he's so loveable because I can so relate to him. Poor tiny baby born in a world of magic without even a tiny bit for himself, it's bound to make you crazy. I should now. Everybody laughs at you and points at you and says mean words about you just because some idiot error the heavens produced at your birth. And the worst part is the greed and jealousy and anger because you want to be part of that thrilling wonderful and mysterious world. But you'll just be the outcast or "persona non grata" as the Italians would say.

I sighted and began to read for the tenth time how Harry forms Dumbledore's Army. My favorite part really because he shows the courage I lack, the strength to do something about his situation. I admire him. Ironic really because he embodies everything I hate about the magic world. Strength and power and nobility and blah, blah, blah...But as it turns out I can't focus on Harry and my thoughts return to the reason I'm here. It's quite simple. The person I'm in love with has disappeared. Now that wouldn't be enough reason for a depressed teenager to sit and wait for the Venice airplane, who by the way IS LATE, but Sebastian was the reason that kept depression away from me for years.

Everything started ...when I was born. I'm not the problem, THE WORLD IS! At least my world, which is commonly known, in some circles, as Underwelt. This world is based on magic. Not quite what you read in the books or see in the movies but not far away. Our magic-no, their magic consists on the six basic elements: fire, water, earth, air, light and darkness. Of course each element consists of other tiny elements like metal or wood or winds or solar fire, really...boring stuff. Of course each element has six clan families that can use the elements in their purity and all that is subordinate to it.

My mother was one of them. She was part of the Aquarian Clan the first family of the water element as you'd had guessed. They're not very original. She could manipulate water, any kind of water from the ocean or rivers or lakes, but she also had powers on the waters from the air or the water in the human body, something that only some branch families of the clan had. You either had this or that but not everything. Only the Aquarians had everything. My father wasn't an Aquarian. He was from a branch family named Plaga. They had power only on the rivers and they controlled the Danube. All powerful families and look at the result. The all mighty me! Ah well, nothing can be changed now!

They weren't bad parents. Actually I don't know how they were. My mother died when I was born and my father died after two years after, on a mission to fix the waves of the Danube at the Bulgarian border. So at two years I found myself all alone with no one to care for me. My mother's family rejected me. They called me "vid", meaning empty. They despised me for my lack of control on the water. The same thing happened with my father's family. Strangely enough my father's best friend family found kindness enough to give me a shelter. The Darian family, a branch family from the Lucia Clan, the clan that controls the...darkness. Yeah, I know, I don't get them myself. They weren't overly nice, but strangely enough that was ok, because I had Sebastian, their son. Sebastian was tall and handsome and talented and nice. He took care of me and protected me from the others and naturally I fell in love with him. But of course he couldn't see it and I didn't had the courage to tell him and now he's gone. Disappeared. Just on my seventeenth birthday leaving me a cryptic note: "Il Conte de Venetzia". Well that solves it all. So basically that's way I'm stuck here waiting to leave for Venice.

You could ask me and you would be right why am I the one to leave the Darians to search him. Well that's because they don't know about the note. I didn't tell them not because I wanted to hide it from them but because Sebastian asked me not to tell. He didn't say that directly, but the note was hidden behind my vase of flowers with just one tulip put in front of it. It was a sign from when we were children and we used to send each other secret messages. So he left me a message that he didn't want his parents to know and I did the only thing I could think of. The note said Venetzia and here I am going to Venice.