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, Iwillmanage 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.
Chapter Ten
One Year Ago
The world tears.For one blind instant I am nowhere—no bricks, no beams, only magic stretched so thin it might snap.
Then gravity slams back.
My foundations punch into new ground, pipes bite soil, and the garden unfurls in a rush of roots and turf. Flowers: not a single petal lost. Wards sting as they re-knit. Windows: intact. Roof: whole. Spells and sentient objects: present and accounted for.
I sigh through my joists. I have done it again.
“Where did the sentient house go?”I almost wish I could see the Magic Hunter’s face when he returns with a coven and finds nothing but an empty plot.
All around sprawls wasteland: broken glass glittering among thistles, a rusted washing machine half-sunk in mud, scrubby trees twisted by wind. A road curls away through miles of scrub. A few miles to the east it meets the official crossing between the Human and Vampire Sectors. Entry to the Human side demands visas and permits; the Vampire side offers only tarmac and a sign that might as well readCome for dinner. We won’t bite… much.
With no buildings nearby, I stretch my wards wide, casting for information. The sudden quiet jars after the city’s bustle—loneliness aches.
I dispatch a note to Beryl.
Beryl,
Do not approachthe Enterprise Zone.The Magic Hunter, Councillor Lander Kane, visited. Do not worry, and please do not hunt him. I folded. Here is the new address…
—House
I am tempted to drift, to let time wash over me for a decade.
Then I remember his voice and what he said:“Technology has changed, and I can track you down. By the time I’m finished, I will know everything about you.”
Very well, Councillor Kane—let us see what your technology can do when the words themselves do not like you.
Those rescued slivers of soul I have gathered over the years have fused with my magic. Technomancy brushed against me and stuck. Once I could read only ink; now computer text appears exactly like print, and phones too.
My magic has adapted.
