Chapter 4

November 1st. What a night Halloween had been. Kyoko had awakened and felt like 20 miles of bad road. If one were to think about it, they would think that she had a hangover, but that was clearly not the case. She had not taken even a tiny sip of alcohol the prior night, yet she couldn't remember a single thing after Ren offered her a ride home. Every muscle in her body was sore and her mouth felt like she had eaten a stuffed animal. Not like something like that was a common occurrence.

The bedding pooled around her as she fell into a long cat-like stretch before getting up to prepare for her day. Whatever she did, drank, or ate the previous night would be washed away once she showered and brushed her teeth, and ate breakfast.

After all was taken care of, she headed downstairs to where her little adoptive family shared their meals. "Oh my, that's frightening." She heard Okami-san comment.

"What happened, Okami-san?" Kyoko asked as she placed her things on a small table next to the door before helping the older woman set the table for breakfast.

Okami-san glanced at the television. "Someone reported two lions in the park last night. They think they're escaped exotic pets." Okami-san shook her head. "Why would anyone keep dangerous animals like that as pets?"

Kyoko couldn't agree more that something like that would be a bad idea. Lions weren't meant to be kept as house pets, they were wild dangerous animals that needed their freedom. She shook her head in agreement to the assessment. Granted yes, Lory Takarada did keep exotic animals as pets, but he was very careful about it and there was no chance at all of any of them escaping from his menagerie.

"How was the party last night?" Okami-san asked as she passed Kyoko a dish before sitting next to her.

Kyoko looked up in thought. From what she could remember of last night, it had been fun and the fact that Ren had stayed close to her for the entire evening didn't bother her as much as she'd initially thought it would. "Hmm, I had fun. There were a lot of people there, and I was able to network quite a bit." She told her as the Taisho entered to join them.

"That boy didn't show up and bother you again, did he?" Taisho asked, referring to Sho. The couple had found out that Sho had been harassing her instead of watching over her as he had claimed to them. There were quite a few things that his parents had cleared up when they had visited and Taisho was not happy about being deceived by him.

Kyoko giggled. "No, Sir. He's still on tour. He doesn't have time to bother me right now."

Taisho grunted. "Good. You let us know if he does those sorts of things again." He reminded her. He would make sure that boy kept his lips and hands to himself or he would lose them. He could still remember what his wife had told him about the night that she had seen her mother on TV.

~xoxo~

"Ugh…" Ren rolled over and slammed his hand against his innocent little alarm clock. His head was pounding and his mouth was as dry as the Sahara. He groaned a little and looked at the time. He honestly really did not want to go to work today. I know I didn't drink that much last night. He thought. He knew if he had, Lory and Yukihito wouldn't have let him leave the villa. Although, he truly couldn't remember anything after he started up his car to take Kyoko home.

"Coffee, I need coffee." He grumbled, throwing the sheets off and sitting up. First, I need something to get rid of this headache. He groaned once again and raked his fingers through his hair, then sighed.

It had not once crossed his mind that his bedroom was completely pristine. One would expect that after such a party with costumes and such, there would at least be a trace of it, but the clothing, makeup, and costume from the prior evening were nowhere to be found. Not that he actually remembered to check on something like that. In fact, it was the same for five others that morning. One would think there would be several more instances; however, the website that Maria purchased their costumes from didn't pop up for just anybody. One needed to be a talented individual to be lured into that particular little trap. One also needed to be a very special person for the costumes to be effective, otherwise they were just normal, everyday, ordinary costumes.

~xoxo~

Timid eyes peered into the darkened bedroom, carefully checking their surroundings. She was worried about her Grandpa. He had always been the first to wake up. He had dismissed her from the party at 10 pm the previous night, and sent her off to bed not long after. She wanted to stay up and make sure that he and the others were okay, but he never gave her that chance and now she just couldn't stop worrying about what she'd discovered.

She quietly snuck into the bedroom to find him soundly asleep, as if nothing had ever happened to him. She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard him faintly snoring. It was a good sign. At least his health hadn't been affected. The thoughts that she'd actually put him in danger had weighed heavily on her little conscience until she fell asleep last night. Of course, that's probably why her eyes popped wide open so early and he was still asleep.

Now that that issue was taken care of, and her mind was much clearer than the night before, she needed to research this predicament. First, she planned to call the credit card company to see who exactly charged her credit card. Hopefully they would be able to tell her something about the strange company and give her a point of contact or something like a phone number for them. After that, she wanted to make sure her dearest friends were okay, but before all of that she needed to take care of her usual morning routine so that her grandfather wouldn't suspect anything strange. Hopefully she could get all of this mess straightened out without any major incidents. Most of all, she needed to keep calm or she wouldn't accomplish anything at all.

Shower first, get ready for the day, it was the weekend so no school, then double-check everything to make sure that everything that had happened hadn't been just a bad dream. Maybe it was just a bad dream after all; however, that thought was shoved to the side when she entered her bedroom and saw the glowing grimoire lying quietly on her desk, awaiting her rapt attention.

As soon as she turned away from shutting her bedroom door and saw the enchanted educational material, she collapsed to her little knees and landed squarely on her teddy bear-pantied bottom. She slowly regained her composure and pulled herself up from the floor to stand on shaky legs. Carefully she approached the glowing book, and hesitantly touched the leather cover. Tiny little shocks coursed through her delicate fingertips.

As she pulled back in shock, the book flew open to the first page:

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Magic.

The page flipped once again:

Chapter One.

Introductory to Magic.

Basic Spells, Potions, Charms & Familiars.

She tried to turn the pages before reading them, but all that would show were blank pages. Unless she actually read the words on each page, she would get nothing. She groaned in frustration, this was going to take a while and she needed a solution quickly; however, it didn't look like the book was going to cooperate with her in the way she wanted. She would have to actually sit down and study the material before her. The book was at least 15 centimeters thick.