[Present Day]

  I didn’t get much sleep yesterday; I spent the rest of the evening dodging Jabari and the day I spent trying to find the building I woke up in. Once I found it, I had to wait until night time to search through it. Now that I’m here all I’ve gotten is a bunch of ashes in my lungs and no real signs to give me leads on what happened. The entire process is frustrating. My memories are my own, yet I’m sitting here with nothing but fragments. Here I am, knowing I’m me, knowing I’m missing something, and I can’t even recall my own name.

  Was I the only person caught up in the building collapse? There aren’t any remains of bodies or weapons. Unless they managed to clear the site in a day, which is unlikely, I didn’t go out in a fight which doesn’t make sense. The last thing I remember is Destiny and I being on the run from The Marson House and some of their allies. Ending up in Detroit without a fight, just doesn’t make any sense to me. My thirst for blood has subsided and I’m not suffering withdrawal effects either. Still I’m wondering if more blood would help clear up my memory loss. Blood can rapidly speed up recovery from injuries when it comes to vampires, but is memory loss an injury? Maybe I’ve got a brain injury.

  Most of what I find is just old documents, most of them too distorted by flame, water or ash to be readable in any sort of manner. I come across a laptop that seems mostly undamaged, some ash, but no fire or water damage. I should be able to use it, try to gather some information. I wipe away the ash and toss the laptop into the air on instinct. I watch as it begins to rapidly fall from the air, wondering if I’m an idiot. Just before it touches the ground, I snatch it into my dimensional pocket, or magic backpack as Destiny called it. I laugh at myself for forgetting that I could do that. I probably have all kinds of clues as to what was going on and didn’t even realize it.

  “You’re a wizard Harry,” I recognize Jabari’s voice call out to me.

  He’s making his way through the rubble, stumbling and holding his phone towards me. I thought I dodged this kid but he’s persistent.

  “How did you find me,” I ask.

  “You’re broke so you don’t have money to get around so you couldn’t go far. There’s a limited radius you would be able to get on foot and only so many interesting places. Vampires are fast, but you’re hurt. A burned down building on the news? Perfect place for amnesiac vampire, or wizard. Both,” he smiles as if he’s Sherlock Holmes.

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  “Did you take a picture of me on your phone?”

  “No, I took a video,” he’s gleeful.

  “Why?”

  “I’m going to show the people in my afterschool club. They won’t believe it.”

  “Can I see the video,” I lean in.

  “Sure,” he taps a few times and hands me the phone.

  I press the big play button and sure enough he’s got video of me performing magic. Camera phones have come a long way since I’ve been on ice or whatever. The resolution is almost perfect, even to have been recorded at night. I can’t let him show this video to anyone else. I imagine things spread like wildfire, the same as they did back in my day. Phones are a lot better these days, but somehow much simpler. I don’t have to navigate through folders using numbers as arrows. Once the video finishes playing I’m right back in his photo gallery. He seems confused by my tapping, but I continue to scroll through the pictures and videos in his phone. Blackberry was all the rage last time I was around phones, this thing called the iPhone had just come out and it was supposed to be ground breaking. Then came Windows phone, but I never actually got to use one of those before whatever happened, happened.

  "Are you gay," I ask bluntly. I regret the question immediately after all the bullying I endured, it’s stupid to ask in such a callous way.

  "No," he responds in a hushed whisper. "But if I was, there would be nothing wrong with it."

  "No, of course not. I just asked because you have a lot of, penis portraits," what else would I call it?

  "Don't look at that," he gets visibly embarrassed and tries to rush me.

  "Oh, so this is you," I laugh and side step him.

  “It’s not me,” he rushes at me, tripping in the process.

  "Shut up," he stumbles through the ash trying to keep up.

  "I might show this to my club,” I mock him. “Is this one a video? Do you actually send these to people? I'm not watching that one," I step over him as he falls through the ash again.

  "Stop," he yells more like an angry child this time.

  "There is so much porn on here. Back in my day nobody really watched internet porn because it took forever to load. Had to buy DVDs and hope nobody found them. You, well you'd put the entire city of Chicago to shame with your collection. Does your depravity know no bounds? Is this cartoon porn?"

  "Hentai," he stumbles with me just out of his reach.

  "Are these vampires? Take my advice kid, you're too obsessed to be so young. You’re going to give yourself carpel tunnel."

  I’ve figured out how to delete the video; jokes over now, I pretend to snap the phone in half and fling it in different directions. In reality, I just threw a fastball right into my pocket. The kid looks upset and takes off running after pausing to decide which way to run. It'll come in handy later, all that technology in your pocket. While he's out searching it gives me a moment to make an escape without him watching over me. I need to start putting things together and I can't do that with a teenage stalker.