Chapter 2 #3
He climbs up into the truck bed with easy strength, unhooks my car’s trunk with practiced movements, and starts pulling things out with the competent efficiency of someone who fixes problems for a living.
Ezra stands beside me, his eyes fixed on the house. His posture appears relaxed, but his attention feels razor-sharp, like he’s analyzing something the rest of us can’t see.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” he says finally.
I glance at him sideways. “That is not remotely comforting.”
Ezra’s mouth twitches again, almost a smile. “It’s honest.”
Lucien steps closer, his eyes tracing the mansion’s architecture like he’s reading a story written in wood and weathered paint and accumulated years. The afternoon sunlight catches his profile, and that’s when I notice something I somehow missed in all the earlier chaos.
His ear is pointed.
It’s subtle, not the dramatic fantasy-novel version. The shape is slightly different from human normal, the tip more refined, like nature designed him and then decided to add an elegant detail for aesthetic purposes.
My stomach drops, then flips entirely.
I look at him properly for the first time, really look, and everything about him suddenly feels definitively non-human. Those violet eyes hold depths that don’t match the apparent age of his face. Even the way he stands seems to take up space differently than it should.
My voice comes out lower, more careful. “Lucien.”
He turns his full attention to me, calm as ever. “Yes, Sweetness?”
“What are you?”
Lucien’s smile is slow and genuinely pleased. “I’m glad you finally asked.” He pauses, letting the moment build. “I’m Fae.”
My breath catches, sharp and involuntary. I’m going to ignore the fact that he just called me ‘sweetness’ later, because this man just casually informed me, he’s Fae.
I turn to Ezra, eyes wide with growing understanding. “You?”
Ezra watches me carefully, like he’s measuring whether I’m about to bolt or have some kind of breakdown. “Wizard.”
My head snaps to Maceo, who is currently tossing my heaviest suitcase onto the sidewalk like it weighs absolutely nothing. “Maceo.”
He grins over his shoulder, flashing white teeth. “Wolf.”
I blink once, twice, three times. My brain tries to reboot, except there’s no convenient restart button.
My mother’s stories flash behind my eyes in vivid fragments: Witches, Shifters, Wizards and Fae. Wards and Warlocks and hidden towns where magic runs through the streets like water. It has always existed as a world at the edge of mine, close enough to glimpse but never quite real enough to touch.
Now it’s standing in front of me, smiling at me, handing me my luggage with supernatural strength.
A laugh bursts out of me, “Of course,” I say, because what else is there to say when your entire worldview shifts in the span of thirty seconds. “Of course you are. Why am I not surprised?”
Maceo closes my trunk and steps closer, bending to collect three of my largest bags in one hand like they’re filled with feathers. “You’re taking it pretty well,” he observes.
“I’m taking it like someone who is too emotionally exhausted to process this properly,” I answer with complete honesty. “My inevitable breakdown is scheduled for tomorrow morning between breakfast and lunch.”
Lucien eyes me with obvious amusement. “Practical.”
Ezra glances toward the town center, then back to the house. “Do you have a way to contact anyone? If you need anything?”
I lift my dead phone like evidence in a court case.
“This is currently a very expensive paperweight until I find a functioning electrical outlet. I’m not even sure if the power is on in there.
The lawyers said everything should be connected and working, but given my luck today.
. .” I trail off with a gesture that encompasses the general disaster of my existence.
Maceo reaches into the pocket of his work shirt, pulling out a pen with casual familiarity. “Give me your hand.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”
His grin turns completely unapologetic. “You want help or not, Ki-Ki?”
I hesitate for approximately three seconds, then hold out my palm because my life has already derailed so completely that resisting feels pointless.
Maceo takes my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world, steadying it with careful fingers. His palm is warm and calloused from years of manual work, rough in a way that makes my pulse jump unexpectedly.
He writes on my skin slowly and deliberately, pen scratching lightly against the sensitive center of my palm.
The contact sends electricity up my arm.
When he’s finished, he releases my hand with obvious reluctance.
A phone number sits there in dark ink like a promise I didn’t ask for.
“If you need anything,” he says, eyes locking on mine with startling intensity, “you call me.”
My lips part around words I can’t quite form. “What if my phone stays dead?”
Maceo’s grin turns absolutely wicked. “Charge it.”
“That’s not helpful. . .” I start.
He lifts his shoulders in an elegant shrug. “Figure it out.”
Lucien’s laugh is soft and approving. Ezra just watches, something unreadable flickering behind his dark eyes.
Maceo points a finger directly at me. “If a big black Wolf shows up on your porch tonight, don’t scream.”
My eyebrows climb toward my hairline. “That sentence should not need to exist.”
“It exists,” Maceo says, entirely too pleased with himself.
Ezra clears his throat meaningfully. “He’s completely serious.”
“That does not help,” I say flatly.
Lucien steps closer again, his eyes drifting over the house with something that looks almost like nostalgia. His expression shifts subtly, like the manor represents more than just wood and nails to him. Like it’s living history he’s watched unfold.
“It will be good to see life in this place again,” he says quietly.
The words land heavier than they should, like they mean something I don’t understand yet, but feel anyway.
Maceo hoists a few more of my bags over his shoulders and carries them toward the porch with easy strength. Ezra follows without being asked, grabbing two smaller bags before I can protest. Lucien walks beside me as if escorting me is simply what he does, a natural extension of who he is.
The front steps creak ominously under Maceo’s boots. He sets my luggage down with gentle care.
Ezra looks at me directly. “Do you want us to stay?”
The question surprises me so much it steals my words for several heartbeats.
I stare at the house with its peeling paint and watchful windows. At the ivy claiming the walls. At the deep silence waiting inside.
Then I glance at the three of them, Maceo’s confident, easy grin. Ezra’s careful steadiness. Lucien’s calm, knowing presence that seems to settle the very air around him.
I want to say yes. The word sits right there on my tongue, ready, but my pride wins, the way it always does.
“I’ll be fine,” I lie smoothly.
Lucien’s violet eyes narrow just slightly, like he can taste the dishonesty. He doesn’t call me on it, though, and I’m grateful.
Maceo steps back from the porch, hands sliding into his pockets. “We’ll check on you,” he says like it’s an established fact, not an offer up for negotiation.
Ezra nods once, decisive. “Tomorrow.”
Lucien watches me for an extra beat, intense enough to make my skin warm. “Keisha,” he says, voice softer now, careful. “Welcome home.”
My breath catches again, sharp and completely traitorous. This man and his welcomes.
“This doesn’t feel like home,” I manage.
Lucien’s smile is almost gentle, understanding something I don’t. “That doesn’t matter.”
Maceo heads back toward the truck with easy strides. Ezra follows, moving with that same quiet efficiency. Lucien is last to leave, pausing just before he climbs into the cab.
He looks back at me one final time. The corner of his mouth lifts in an expression that’s equal parts knowing and entertained, like he’s already anticipating the beautiful mess I’m about to make of this situation.
Then he climbs in with easy fluidity.
The engine roars to life, loud and steady and somehow reassuring, and the truck pulls away from the curb with a smooth rumble, rolling back down the street toward the main road that leads to the rest of the magical town.
I stand alone on the weathered porch, soaked to the skin and exhausted down to my bones, holding my dead phone like it has personally betrayed me. Maceo’s number sits inked into my palm like a tether I didn’t ask for but find myself grateful to have.
The tow truck disappears around the bend, taking its three impossible passengers with it.
Silence falls around me as Thorne Manor waits at my back, patient and expectant.
I turn slowly, facing the front door with its faded paint and brass hardware that’s probably older than I am. The key is in my bag, waiting. Heavy and cold and real.
My hands plant firmly on my hips, wet dress still clinging uncomfortably, boots squelching with every small movement, hair probably completely ruined under this makeshift plastic-bag situation that I’m refusing to acknowledge.
A laugh slips out of me, quiet and disbelieving and tinged with the kind of hysteria that comes from too much change happening too fast.
“Alright,” I tell the house, because talking to inanimate objects seems to be my brand now. “You win.”
I glance toward the empty windows, toward the porch rail wrapped in determined ivy, and I blow out a long breath. I’m already tired just thinking about all the work that needs to be done to restore this place to anything resembling livable condition.
I reach into my bag for the key. It slides into the lock with a decisive click.
My fingers curl around the doorknob, cold brass warming under my palm.
“Tomorrow,” I say, voice steadier now, making a promise to myself and the house and maybe the town beyond, “I find my shop.”
Then I push the door open and step across the threshold into my inheritance.