Chapter 209 - New Beginnings

No, it wasn't all bad. People protested against any change, and a change of a kind "actually magic exists and always did" was certainly huge, so the protest was a violent one. But, and I hoped it was thanks to my actions as well, there were many of those who welcomed it.

Younger generations mostly, of course. Dreamers and teens who read too many urban fantasy novels. A lot, a lot, a LOT of people wanted to become immortal and powerful vampires just for the sheer coolness of it—and thank God that creating new vampires was a really serious business and they didn't just accept anyone into their elite club.

Others wanted to join shifters and witches elite club, but you could only be born as one of these. That didn't stop people from trying to at least get closer to supernaturals. Nightingale Coven, I watched myself, had a sudden influx of people who wanted to work there as one of the many servants who cleaned floors and cooked food in this place.

Well, if we went back to the protesters, I imagined that vampire hunters also now had many new recruits, fresh and enthusiastic, but the only person whom I could ask was Panda, and Panda balked at the idea of talking with any of her hunter relatives.

I've seen her hiding under the counter from one of them, and had to interfere and shoo him away, convincing him that Panda left the job. She told me it was her twice-removed cousin "or something".

The weeks passed, turning into months. Summer turned into autumn, and the gears of society shifted. New laws were created and debated upon, but passed. Vampires with no legal documents now had an option to register for a passport, which gave them about nothing, but didn't obligate them to anything, either.

JJ got one, and spent more time that it was appropriate, in my option, just marvelling at it. I let him and marvelled at him as he did so.

I had my own things to marvel upon. Money, specifically.

First, my fame and infamy brought not just people to me, it brought business. People who wanted to buy something from the store just because they hoped the items there were magical, or people who heard my name and thought of it when they decided to buy an antique to put in their living room.

And those weren't just normal people, there were plenty of witches, too, who heard about their city's arch-witch exploits in PR department. Hell, maybe there were vampire servants, but they didn't introduce themselves.

No shifters, though, but that wasn't surprising—Avarice wouldn't have let them walk past her without draining them dry.

After my skills in restoring the state of items to what they were like when new grew enough to not break anything, my business really bloomed. First, I sold Avarice the sofa, and the chairs set she wanted. Second, I set my eyes on getting as many relics discounted because of their poor state as I could, restoring them—much faster and easier than any restorer could—and selling them for full price.

I didn't need my grandma's help in this anymore, but instead could proudly share with her my accomplishments. At first she looked at the restoring magic as some sort of cheating, but soon the sheer possibilities of it caught with her.

I could've earned a lot from just restoring things. With magic, it wasn't a matter of putting them together bit by bit, sometimes even under a microscope. It was all about digging into their informational aspects and finding out what the items were and how they were.

Sometimes, the item was so old or broken that there wasn't even that in it. Then you could mend it by reshaping its physical aspects… Though, that wasn't true restoring. It was more of remaking of an item with an attempt to guess what it looked like originally. From a historical standpoint, this made item worthless.

But I still got more than enough cash from the ones that weren't. Enough to repay all my dept to Avarice and finally breathe free of her. We still contacted, though—a few times she hired my services for one thing or another, always paying handsomely. It was nothing criminal—sometimes she asked me to appraise an item, or repair one. Sometimes items were magical.

I wasn't good at making my own magical items yet. Of course, technically magical item was anything changed unnaturally with it, and I could switch aspects in something to make it very, very unnatural… But real magic items, amulets and such, they were beyond my scope.

Still, I progressed. I studied books and the piece of a seal Ghost gifted me. It didn't open to me its secrets, but it revealed how many secrets there was—plenty. Just like there was still plenty to learn, and never enough time for it.

"Patience, Diana. You are doing fine! You still have good forty years in you at least, or even sixty, while your mind is sharp enough for studying. These are all the time you should bother yourself with," Ghost told me when I said that to him, but it did the opposite of calming me.

"What about you, Ghost? How much longer you have while your mind is sharp enough to teach me?" I asked with a good deal of worry. Magical corruption had started to affect Ghost probably before I was even born. He looked young, but if he kept looking young, how long he had until he turned into a raving lunatic?

"Why, as much as you will have me, Diana! You will just have to assist me when I revitalise myself next time!" Ghost beamed at me.

I gasped. Why didn't this came into my head sooner? "Could I help you revert the magical corruption you already have? Fix your memory? Your emotions, if you want that?"

"That would be harder. After all, these were accidental. I don't know how to restore this. But that's the thing, Diana—time, we have it now."

Time.. It didn't feel like I had it when, one of the other days, I found JJ gone.