Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
One Year Ago
A boy sits on the kerb opposite my gate, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth as he sketches me in chalk: the front bay window, the curve of the garden path, the oak tree. When he draws the chimney too tall and runs out of room for the smoke and clouds, I surreptitiously enlarge the paper.
His little sister hops from paving stone to paving stone, careful not to tread on the lines.
“Come on, Noah,” she huffs. “Mum said not to linger by the spooky house.”
“It’s not spooky—it’s cool.”
Three adults cross the road rather than pass my gate; one glances up and shivers.
Thirty-eight years ago this was little more than a graveyard of burned-out shells—riot-scarred streets mottled with half-finished construction and scaffolding. A rough sort of place, where a magically appearing house, of course, did not go unnoticed.
The Ministry of Magic wanted to investigate the anomaly, but the shifters never permitted them to enter their sector.
I have come to respect the shifters deeply. Their Alpha Prime unites a business community of mixed derivatives with remarkable skill.
Instead of the quiet residential street where I nestled for more than a century, a modern city has emerged—buzzing, beautiful, alive. The entire area has blossomed into a vibrant blend of sleek skyscrapers and riotous greenery, flowers in every imaginable hue—impressive even to me. It is wonderful.
Vehicles are banned; apart from the occasional delivery van, people walk or cycle.
The streets bustle with life, and they seem happy.
Yes, problems remain—vampires still hunt at night—but the shifters are fiercely protective of the vulnerable, especially pure humans, and their vigilance makes a difference.
The place satisfies the nosiest parts of me and is the first location I have ever chosen.
For years everything is normal—my version of normal, at least—until I make a mistake.
I know I should not have done it, but I had to save her, I had to, and I do not regret it.
Last week, a woman, bitten by a shifter, crashed into my gate.
Lark was bleeding. Dying. Like Beryl, she had all the derivatives in her blood, and I might have performed a little magical tinkering.
I plucked out the shifter fragment in her blood, did something I certainly should not have, and…
well, I healed her. I twisted the magic a little more than usual and, to make it work, gave her a small slice of myself.
Then, to replace and fill in the gap, the magic gave me a small slice of Lark in return.
Then she left—or rather, ‘left’ is the wrong word. I easily found out where she lived, in an apartment building down the road, so I tucked her into bed as though nothing had happened. I lied to myself that everything would be all right.
Yet every action has consequences.
That lesson is hammered home when the mage arrives.
The children see him and run for their mother; I cannot blame them.
White-blond hair. High cheekbones, pale skin. Pale celadon-green eyes, such an unsettling green, the exact shade of greenware pottery. Tall, all lean muscle, dressed like a hunter in black combat trousers and a T-shirt.
He stands beneath the oak tree, leans against it, arms folded, one leg propped, head tilted as he stares straight at me, at my wards, assessing. Curious, dangerous.
His magic resembles spiky black tendrils. It coils around him like smoke, bleeding from his skin. He keeps his power locked down tight, yet it still leaks. He is that powerful—so powerful I dare not reach out with my magic; he would feel it the moment I did.
I watch him.
He watches me.
It takes only moments to discover who he is: Lander Kane, the Magic Hunter, a council-level member of the Ministry. He is arrogant. Beautiful. Which is ridiculous, of course. I am a house, with no business noticing mages and finding them attractive.
But he is.
It would be easy to underestimate Lander Kane—dazzled by his handsome features and oblivious to the intelligent, patient predator beneath. The most beautiful things are almost always the most dangerous.
I wish Beryl were here. She would know what to make of this, would know what to do. She is away, vampire hunting.
For more than a century, I have been a novelty, a myth. I have hidden behind my wards, hidden behind the impossibility of my existence. The Ministry of Magic has never taken me as a threat, and now, they send one of their top magical officials.
A council member.
This time, I have really messed up.
For the first time in decades, I feel fear.
He terrifies me.
Another realisation follows: the Enterprise Zone is no longer safe—not if Shifter Sector officials are letting such a powerful magic user through.
He straightens and strolls towards me, hands in his trouser pockets as though out for a walk in the park. He stops beside the wooden gate and looks up.
“A magical house,” he says, his voice warm and smooth.
If I had a human body, my heart would thunder in my ears. If I produced adrenaline, I would be dizzy with panic. But I do not. I have no human biology to hinder me. I bury my emotions and become a blank sheet of paper, waiting for its first mark.
I watch.
“A sentient house that turns humans into shifters,” he continues, casual, matter-of-fact. “You have been busy. You have broken our laws.”
I groan.
He is here because of Lark.
This time, my ego and my magic have got me into trouble. My luck—if you can call it that—has officially run out. I have ruined everything.
“What do you think happens to magic users who decide to circumvent our laws? If people learn a magical object can change humans into derivatives, into shifters, what do you think will happen? Mages will vanish from our streets; their bodies will turn up soulless. Carnage—outright war. The question is,” he says, “just how sentient are you?”
Quick as a whip, he reaches out and touches my ward.
His touch makes me want to crawl away, to draw back my wards, lift my garden like a skirt and flee as though he were a poisonous spider.
I do not react. I do not blast him, though I could.
He is testing me. Controlled. Calculated.
I will not show him the measure of my magic, not yet. Not at all if I can help it. I have already made too many mistakes.
He chuckles softly. “Very clever. Show me your magic, and I will show you mine.”
He smiles, then circles the ward, fingers drifting inches from the boundary as though he can see the barrier itself—a man feeling the edge of a cage, deciding how to pick the lock.
“I heard you threw someone into a tree,” he says conversationally. “Caused some… disruptions. The Ministry has an entire file on you now.”
He stops.
I wait.
He nods. “Yes. You are the one we want: the sentient house.” He says it as though it is a title, a bounty, a prize.
“You have hidden in plain sight for what—forty years? Remarkably clever. But technology has changed, and I can track you down. By the time I’m finished, I will know everything about you.”
His voice is infuriatingly calm.
“I’ll discover who your master is, who forged you, and who you were.
Creating a sentient object the size of a house would have demanded extraordinary magic, and there are few mages of that calibre.
Within hours I’ll know your identity, your family, your origins—and precisely what makes you tick. There is nowhere left for you to hide.”
And that is when I know, after one hundred and sixty-one years of peace, it is over.
“You need to drop your wards, Abomination. Otherwise you are not going to like what happens next.”
He waits around sixty seconds for my response.
Without warning, his hand dips into his pocket; the wand, his focus, is already in his grip. His wrist flicks towards me.
I brace my wards, pouring extra power into them.
Black streaks of his magic strike—
and it burns.
Oh my gosh, it burns.
Pain—real pain—lashes through me. I have not felt anything like it for a very long time; I had not thought I still could. Whatever he is doing, it hurts, though I cannot tell how.
If my ward were ordinary, he would have torn it apart.
Spiky black meets a lilac glow that sparks on contact—lilac, then indigo, blue, green—until the air fizzes white with smoke.
And for an instant, the current runs both ways, my power through him and his through me, completing a single circuit. The contact feels almost… right, like two halves of a pattern seeking to lock together—then it twists, forced into opposition, and the wrongness makes me want to scream.
Something in me strains towards that connection even as I wrench free.
He tilts his head, watching the display, and nods as though I have confirmed something for him.
He knows nothing. I have existed a very long time. I have read more books than he can imagine, studying every form of magic within reach. And he thinks he can prod and poke me into a mistake?
Not a chance.
I do not attack. I hold my calm and study him back.
I try to analyse the spell, but it keeps shifting. One moment he attacks; the next he withdraws and changes tactics entirely.
He does everything he can to provoke me.
Then the magic shifts again. It feels as though he is siphoning my power into himself, only to hurl it back at me with twice the force.
My own magic recognises his, and without attacking, I absorb what I can, but he continues. His pale eyes blaze with blinding white light, his pupils gone.
His assault is relentless.
And then—finally—he stops.
For a wild moment, I think he must feel this twisted link too—but if he does, his face gives nothing away.
He nods once, like a man ticking off a conclusion in a notebook.
Then he does something I do not expect.
He steps back.
He tucks away his wand with a hint of triumph. “You should have given up,” he says. “I’ll be back, and next time I’ll block the street and bring a full coven.”
Only when he turns away do I realise I am shaking. Those emotions I buried come back with a vengeance. Every door and stick of furniture rattles with fear. Drained, wrung out—were I human, I would be on my knees, sweating and in tears.
The Magic Hunter, by contrast, has barely lifted a finger—just a few lazy flicks of his wand. He whistles as he walks down the road towards the Shifter Ministry building, no doubt to seek permission for that coven.
I cannot let that happen.
He knows I am a sentient house but assumes I am ‘almost forty years old.’ He does not imagine I predate this site by more than a century. When he traces me with modern technology and finds nothing, he will realise I am far stronger than he thought. If he returns with a coven—
I cannot allow it.
I am out of my depth. I must leave—now. Better to risk folding myself again than be captured by the Ministry. They are corrupt and would find a way to exploit me. I would become nothing more than a puppet on strings, and that fate is far worse than the half-life I now endure.
Thirty-eight years was plenty of time to rebuild the power I need to fold. It only took five years to recover the first time around, and even though I spent much of my strength saving Lark, I will manage it.
Thank goodness Beryl is absent; I can warn her to stay away and give her our new address.
My contingency plans are ready. There is a plot I purchased between the Human and Vampire Sectors, on a barely used street. It will serve. They will not find me for a while, if at all.
I cannot spare the magic to relocate my sentient objects, so I draw everything I care about tight to my core. I summon every fragment of power, gather it against myself, and prepare to fold the entire house once more.
I ready my magic—and disappear.