Chapter 4 #2
I should probably be freaking out—it doesn’t even cross my mind she’s lying or messing with me; I know her too well for that—but when the words inevitably sink in, I find my lips curving instead.
“Magical girl.” I say it in Ibiiom, in the exact way I used to.
Rosemary blushes. Her scent grows sticky hot, and her lashes flutter. She sways forward like she can’t help it, back to being my clueless little moth, and those two words are the flame.
I kill the smile on my face. Rosemary’s expression shutters.
Good.
She delicately clears her throat, staring down at the table.
It’s covered in a lacy white tablecloth, which I’d only vaguely noticed earlier.
I frown down at it. Maybe Rosemary had found it in the cabinet, the one in the corner between the front windows and the kitchen’s archway.
She’s never been one to do anything by halves.
“I told you earlier, I was here for my … holistic services. Well, that’s what that is.
” Her shoulders stiffen when she looks up at me, like she’s bracing herself to meet my gaze.
I hate that I’ve made her so guarded. But it’s for the best. “I definitely got a call from here. If not from you, then from something, or someone, that’s already here. ”
“Like I said before, there’s no one else here but me. Unless you count the house.” I tack on that last part on a whim.
Rosemary catches it, her eyebrows flying. “The house?”
“The house is sentient.” My lips twitch against my will. She looks so flabbergasted.
“So you …?” She doesn’t seem to know how to complete the question.
“… know about sentient houses?” She nods stiffly. “I only found out about it a few days ago. I’m still coming to terms with it myself, to be honest.”
She stares at me like she’s waiting for the punchline. When one doesn’t come, her eyes widen. I’m not sure what I’m seeing in her gaze—relief? Hope? Either one would be dangerous.
She glances around with new eyes. I can practically feel the house preening. The lights brighten the tiniest bit. The marble floors gleam unnaturally. The sofas and armchairs have never looked more comfortable and appealing. I inwardly roll my eyes.
“Wait. Had you been talking to the house? Earlier? Outside?”
I grow a little self-conscious, even though she isn’t staring at me like I’m losing my marbles. Far from it. She looks excited. Intrigued.
So fucking dangerous.
“Yes,” I admit reluctantly. I don’t tell her the house had teleported me—though I’m still not sure how—outside from the study, coincidentally at the same time Rosemary must’ve arrived.
Her lips part slightly. I stare at the fullness of them, glistening with a touch of lip balm, the seams wet and pink.
She’d stopped using lip gloss in second year, the first time she’d splurged on some fancy, expensive Aloe Vera thing and never looked back.
She’d been drawn to the bright green packaging, I recall, and feel the exact same pulse of fondness now that I’d felt then.
I want to suck that full lower lip into my mouth, make it glisten with my saliva instead. Dig my blunt human teeth—because, psychotically, it would take more effort—into that soft flesh until I taste blood.
My hands drop into my lap as my claws pop out. I fist them tight, ignoring the way they dig mercilessly into my palms. Blood seeps from the wounds, soaking into the thankfully dark material of my shorts.
“Has it always been sentient?” Rosemary wonders, oblivious. “Do you know for how long?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I tilt my head, trying to parse her expression. “I take it it’s not a common thing?”
“Not at all.” She takes a breath. “It’s not even … allowed.”
I snort. “Who has the authority on that?”
She shrugs. “Powerful coven in Lagos—the largest and most influential in Nigeria. They dole out magical “law”, and have mediators in each state sent to execute those laws and maintain the “balance” between the magical and not.” She says it sardonically.
I make an amused but understanding noise.
I guess, like every other organisation with power, they sling that power around without a care for who it might hurt, and rarely do what they’re supposed to.
“And they hate sentient houses for some reason.”
It’s Rosemary’s turn to look amused. I want to see her full radiant smile so badly it has me digging my claws in harder until they meet bone. Pain has been such a constant in my life for the past few months that I barely flinch.
“For a house to be sentient, that means a lot of really old, really powerful … eshé.”
One eyebrow lifts. “Spiritual … current?”
“If you want to be literal,” she says with a smile. She leans forward, then back. Uses her middle and pointer fingers to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Her scent is fizzy like popped champagne. “Sorry, I’ve never told anyone about this before.”
“Have you not?” I say casually, trying not to let the confession affect me. It means nothing in the grand scheme of things, but the ever-possessive beast covets it, a precious first that belongs only to me.
“I haven’t.” Her glasses are sitting properly, but she still gives them a little tap with the same fingers as before.
I catalogue the new nervous gesture with barely-masked greed.
“On the surface, eshé might literally mean spiritual current, but for oerhwus, it goes deeper than that. It’s the element that creates, sustains, and surrounds all life.
It’s the air we breathe. It’s energy or vibrations or auras.
Some oerhwus believe it’s the presence of the gods all around us.
Everything, both alive and not, has its own eshé to varying degrees.
The ability to sort of, tap into this current and harness it, is what makes an oerhwu. ”
“And you’re saying the house has enough of its own … eshé, to make it sentient?”
She nods. “The issue is, eshé that ancient and concentrated can often be … unstable …” Her eyes widen.
“Your house must’ve called me here.” Her voice is bright with wonder and a little bit of accusation.
Then she frowns. “Wait, no. That makes no sense. Unless … does the house have a rotary phone? It needs to have a strong connection to whatever it used to communicate with me—possibly something attached to the actual building that it can manipulate since it doesn’t have a mouth,” she explains with a barely-there smile.
My eyebrow lifts. That sounds wild as fuck. “Not that I know of, no.”
“Why would your house call me here?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. I don’t know why this house does anything. If my grandmother hadn’t warned me, I’d have thought the place was haunted. Granted, it’d be the least threatening haunting on earth, but still.
“If the house did call me here, then it isn’t going to let me leave until I figure out what it wants.
” Rosemary already looks lost in thought.
“It would make sense why my call to the shannko didn’t work,” she mutters to herself.
I feel another deep pulse of fondness—a sweet ache underneath my breastbone.
“But if the eshé doesn’t belong to her but the house instead, then—”
I stop listening. My heart has started to pound, and sweat forms on my temples as I come to my own realisation.
What if the house had called her here—because of me?
But why would it do that? And how can I be sure?
Why would it even care?
I think of sticky floors when first I’d arrived yesterday afternoon and tried to go up the stairs, each step more adhesive than the last. When I’d first felt that strange presence coming from the attic, but the hatch had refused to budge—the wood refused to even dent or crack, no matter how hard I’d punched and clawed at it using my supernatural strength.
Then last night, when I could’ve sworn I felt a powerful pressure around my throat, threatening to crush my windpipe.
A root, serrated and jagged, sawing through my chest. I’d choked and clawed at frail, invisible hands, but the grip had been unrelenting, the pain in my chest so unbearable tears had spilled down my cheeks.
I’d woken up sweaty and shaky but completely fine.
The bruises had rapidly faded into my brown skin in the bathroom mirror as I’d watched, like it’d been waiting for me to check just so I’d feel more out of my mind with every blink.
And indeed, I’d told myself it had been a nightmare, the fading bruises a trick of the light.
My chest ached with phantom pain, my throat, despite looking outwardly fine, felt bruised and swollen, a small flake of what had to have been anything but dried blood clinging to the top of my right breast.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m starting to suspect performing this ritual and understanding my ancestry isn’t the only reason my grandmother had sent me here. It isn’t the reason she’d warned me about the house being alive.
Since I’d stepped foot in it, I’ve felt like it knows why I’m here.
What I don’t know is whether it’s trying to help me or stop me.
“Well, good luck with that,” I say, indirectly speaking to both the house and Rosemary, needing to leave, right the fuck now.
I can’t let anything stop me. I can’t—I won’t fail.
I’d spoken on the heels of the radio’s latest song, just as the next one starts to play.
The familiar sound of strummed guitar strings makes me freeze. I try not to otherwise react, but I can’t help the way my eyes immediately fly up to meet Rosemary’s, my hands twitching in my lap.
Something in her scent changes as our gazes lock, making all the hairs on my body stand on end, my breathing speeding up. My claws have retracted, and it takes everything in me to keep them that way.
I’m drowning in memory. In the two of us, standing beside each other in the corner of a darkened hall, staring enviously out into the swaying crowd of our coursemates. Free to kiss and touch and grind with absolutely zero care in the world. Free to simply be.
God, I hadn’t even been able to hold her fucking hand.
She’s glancing at me from underneath her eyelashes, her pulse skittering nervously—obvious, waiting, but all I can do is swallow, too overwhelmed and afraid to move. Wanting to, but knowing I shouldn’t.
I need to stand up. I need to leave. Now. End this moment before it grows into something wild and unmanageable.
I don’t move.
Then, looking like a literal dream, my lovely, brave Rosemary stands and strolls to my side of the table, hips swaying softly in her silk skirt, and holds out her right hand.