12. Velma Doomweaver #4
The sconces along the walls dimmed, then brightened again. A soft creak ran through the floorboards, not threatening, but present. Listening.
“The cards suggest a bond forming,” Velma continued, her gray eyes meeting Gabriel’s with uncomfortable directness. “Rookgate Manor responds to you not because you command it—you have not accessed that power yet—but it helps because it recognizes something familiar in you.”
The air grew thin in the room, or perhaps just in Gabriel’s lungs. He didn’t want to be recognized by a house. Didn’t want another creature looking at him and seeing the shape of what Madaze had carved into his bones.
But the chandelier’s crystals chimed softly overhead, and he thought of the floor opening to swallow the man who would have killed him. Protection offered without being asked. Without strings.
Velma placed the final card. The Seed. A small sprout breaking through dark soil toward distant light .
“The future position indicates illumination. Discovery. A productive fate.” She straightened the card with elegant fingers. “To simplify: transformation rather than relinquishment or compulsion will yield beneficial results.”
“Transformation,” Gabriel repeated slowly. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning the path forward requires change of purpose. Not abandonment. Not domination.” Velma began gathering her cards. “The reading is concluded.”
Gabriel leaned back, conflicted emotions washing through him.
On one hand, the reading suggested something positive.
A “productive fate” sounded promising. On the other hand, there was nothing about escaping this place, nothing about returning to Briarleigh with Miles and continuing their life far from Averdon.
“That’s it?” he asked, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice. “No riding off into the sunset? No ‘and he never had to set foot in this cursed city again’?”
Velma closed her ledger with a snap. “The cards show changes here, not departure. Your connection with this place is... significant.”
“But I don’t want a connection,” Gabriel protested. “I want to be done with it.”
“The cards show what they show,” Velma repeated with her characteristic flatness. “That will be fifty gold pieces. Would you like a receipt?”
Gabriel waved a dismissive hand at the fortune teller’s finality. “No, no, that can’t be all. Pull a few more cards. There must be something about leaving this wretched place behind.”
Velma packed everything into her satchel. “The cards have spoken what they wish to speak.”
“I’ll pay double,” Gabriel offered, leaning forward.
“The cards don’t respond to financial incentives,” Velma replied. “Section four, paragraph three of my consultation agreement clearly states that readings conclude when the cards cease providing relevant information.”
“But—”
“Thank you for your business.” She extended her palm. “Fifty gold pieces.”
Miles stepped in before Gabriel could argue further, placing the coins in Velma’s waiting hand. “Thank you for your insight, and for the timely warning about our unexpected guests. ”
The fortune teller counted the coins before producing a small slip of paper from the satchel. She made a few quick notations, handed the receipt to Miles, and stood to leave.
“Wait!” Gabriel called. “What about—”
But Velma was already walking toward the door, which swung open for her without prompting. She paused only briefly to say, “Future consultations available by appointment. A violence surcharge will be applied to subsequent visits.”
When she had gone, Genna settled into the chair Velma had vacated.
“Well,” she said, “that was certainly... illuminating.”
“It was rubbish,” Gabriel grumbled, slumping back in his chair. “A connection with this place? Transformation without destruction? What does that even mean?”
Miles traced patterns on the table’s surface with his finger. “Perhaps that selling or abandoning the estate isn’t the solution. That there’s something to be gained by... reshaping it somehow.”
“Into what? A slightly less horrible reminder of personal torment?”
Gabriel gazed around the dining room with undisguised distaste. The heavy dark wood paneling, the faded burgundy wallpaper with its garish gold accents, the oppressive chandeliers...all of it screamed Madaze’s pompous self-importance.
“I mean, just look at this place,” he continued, gesturing expansively. “It’s hideous. The colors alone are enough to drive one mad. Dark red and gold everywhere. As if we’re dining inside someone’s infected wound.”
Miles’s lips quirked upward. “Would you be happier with both the helpfulness you witnessed and Velma’s positive predictions if the place were… pretty?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Gabriel played along, grateful for the shift toward humor. “Change these ghastly colors to something actually livable. Cream walls with blue accents, perhaps. Something calming and elegant, not this... ostentatious nightmare. Maybe then I could tolerate being in this—”
He broke off as a strange sound filled the room, like the rustle of dry leaves mixed with the soft scrape of sand shifting.
Before his astonished eyes, the wallpaper began to change.
The burgundy faded, bleeding away like watercolor in rain, replaced by a soft, warm cream.
The gold accents morphed and shifted, thinning and changing to a lovely blue .
The transformation spread across the walls like ripples in a pond, moving outward from where Gabriel sat. Even the dark wood paneling lightened, taking on a warm honey tone that complemented the new color scheme.
“What. The. Actual. Fuck?” Gabriel breathed, his eyes wide as the entire room transformed to match exactly what he had described.
***
Miles
Miles hurried after Gabriel, who had burst into manic motion like a cork from a bottle of champagne. The delight on his lover’s face would have been heartwarming if it weren’t so concerning.
“Let me see if I understand this,” Miles called as Gabriel practically danced down the corridor, gesturing wildly at walls that shifted from crimson to sapphire blue behind him. “This house is a sentient magical construct that responds to your whims?”
“Apparently!” Gabriel’s voice echoed from around the corner. “Come see what else it can do!”
Miles turned the corner to find Gabriel standing in the grand ballroom, arms outstretched like a conductor before an orchestra. The gaudy gold-trimmed red wallpaper was shifting before Miles’s eyes, transforming into an elegant silver-gray pattern with subtle celestial motifs.
“Now the floor!” Gabriel commanded, and the worn parquet transformed into polished white marble veined with silver.
“Gabriel, perhaps we should—” Miles began.
“The ceiling! Make it look like the night sky!” Gabriel called out, completely ignoring Miles’s attempt at caution.
The ornate plaster ceiling rippled and darkened, transforming into a perfect replica of the night sky, complete with twinkling stars that seemed to shimmer with actual light.
“This is most unusual,” Miles said, his mind racing through various magical theories. “I’ve never encountered this level of transmutative capability. ”
Genna, who had been following them with Nikka, pressed herself against the wall as Gabriel raced by. “I think we’ll observe from the entry.”
“Can you make windows appear where there were none before?” Gabriel asked, and immediately a magnificent bay window formed in the ballroom’s eastern wall, showcasing the nighttime view of Averdon.
“Gabriel, wait!” Miles hurried after him as he darted toward what had once been Madaze’s ridiculous throne room. “We need to understand the limitations and properties of this magic before—”
“Make this hideous throne disappear!” Gabriel commanded.
The throne remained exactly where it was, but the dais beneath it sank into the floor, creating a shallow depression that made the throne look askew and diminished, then a hole opened as it had for the bodies, and the throne dropped through.
“I wonder where it’s putting the objects it swallows?” Miles asked, catching up to Gabriel. “How deep does its influence go? Can it bring back the bodies for a proper sea burial, or has it absorbed them somehow?”
“Let’s try the kitchens!” Gabriel was already on the move again, leaving Miles to chase after him.
In the kitchens, Gabriel had the heavy stone countertops transform to quartz, the walls shift to a cheerful butter-yellow, and the floor tiles rearrange themselves into a geometric pattern.
“Look, Miles!” Gabriel laughed as cabinets opened and closed of their own accord. “It’s dancing!”
“Gabriel,” Miles said, finally managing to catch his lover by the arm, “this is fascinating, but shouldn’t we take a moment to—”
“Oh! Let’s see if it can create secret passages!” Gabriel slipped from Miles’s grasp and was gone again.
Miles’s concern grew as Gabriel dashed from room to room. The manic energy was reminiscent of their early days together when Gabriel would oscillate between terror and elation at his newfound freedom. This wasn’t healthy excitement. It was the frenzied activity of someone avoiding deeper thought.
“Gabriel!” Miles hurried after him. “We need to consider something important about this house.”
“Important? What’s more important than ridding this monstrosity of Madaze’s aesthetic crimes?” Gabriel’s voice drifted from the next room, where brocade drapes were transforming into lush velvet fabrics.
Miles caught up and positioned himself in Gabriel’s path. “The nature of the house’s response to you. Is it acting of its own will, or are you compelling it?”
They were in the hallway leading to the entry, and Genna and Nikka were watching them. Genna wore the same frown Miles felt carving deep lines into his own forehead.
Gabriel’s smile faltered. “What do you mean?”
“According to Velma, this house is sapient. It has awareness and will. Yet it’s responding to your every command like—” Miles hesitated.