“My home is very safe. The only people who ever come here are the ones looking for a bird.” Elissa twisted her hands together and gestured toward it. “I have very few clients these days. The new king doesn’t fancy birds, so it’s unlikely that anyone will be coming to see me for a while yet. Bird buying has a season, you know.”
Jessamine crossed her arms over her chest. “Didn’t you think we were a client when we first came here only a week ago?”
The witch went pale. “Well, that was a rare lapse in judgment.”
Elric had never been more entertained. The other witches lit into Elissa like sharks scenting blood in the water. All of a sudden, they wanted to know everything about the house. What spells protected it? Her mother had been the one to build it, but how good of a witch had the old bat been? Far more questions than Elissa knew how to answer. Of that much, he was certain.
He watched it all with a bemused smile on his face before shaking his head and looking at Hugo. “I don’t suppose you know of a home that would be discreet for all of them?”
“There aren’t many abandoned buildings in the Pleasure District. A few, yes, but not many. And they’re all old.”
“That doesn’t matter to me. I’m a god, Hugo. I can conjure whatever I want.” Elric flexed his hands, savoring the new power from the two witches who had joined his coven.
The stronger the coven, the stronger he was. As a god, he had control over shadows and the realm of the dead. He could conjure spirits to do his bidding, and he could stop a soul from ending up in the realm beyond. But with a coven? Especially a strong one? Ah, he had many more skills than that.
“Where is one of these homes you speak of?”
“One is at the corner of First and Seventh.” Hugo shrugged. “Lots of people walk past that house often, but it’s the largest one.”
“We don’t need large. There’s only six of us.” But there might be more soon. With the way Jessamine was building her coven, he wouldn’t be surprised if there were six more in less than a week. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he shook his head. “We’ll need more than that, though.”
“There is another house. Still large and fairly falling apart. No one goes near it, but that’s at the very end of Rose Street.” Hugo shrugged. “If you’re powerful enough to turn that into a home? No one ever looks twice at it. Said to be real haunted.”
“Haunted, you say?” He snorted. “That’s the place we should be, then. No one will go into the building, and I have a soft spot for wandering spirits.”
“Whatever you say, mate.” Hugo looked at the witches and then back at him. “You know where Rose Street is?”
“I think that’s fairly easy to find.”
“I’ll manage the ladies until then.”
Elric watched as Hugo approached his grandmother and laid a hand on her back. With a few words, he cajoled the old woman into Elissa’s home, even though they all knew she wasn’t going to like it any more from the inside. It would start an argument that would last a few hours, though, and that was all Elric needed to get their new home set up.
“Rose Street,” he muttered.
He strode away before any of them noticed he’d left. The streets were filled with people, so if Jessamine came stomping after him, she would lose him eventually.
In the meantime, it let him feel out his powers so he could get an idea of what he could do.
The new sacrifices had done more than he’d expected. Elric was used to an entire coven being required to get his power back to godly levels. But these women had been heartfelt in their need, and their magic ran through his veins with more strength than he’d expected. If the haunted home was in shambles, he was quite certain he could fix it.
Rose Street didn’t take very long to find. And as he strode down the sidewalk, seeing the stream of people ebb into little more than a trickle, he felt the tug in his stomach that was Jessamine. She wanted him to come back, likely because the argument was getting out of control. But he had never lived with his coven. They were always the ones to figure out their own arguments.
Besides, she’d always said she was going to be their queen. She would need to live up to that legacy soon enough.
Finally he was at the end of Rose Street, staring at the building Hugo had remarked would be perfect. From the outside, he had to agree. The wooden exterior had likely once been vibrant and waxy, but time had aged it. The wood grayed and pieces were tearing off from all ends that he could see. Nearly every window was broken, although not many were still on the house. The rest were boarded up. But it had lovely turrets on either side, and a shape that looked like it was out of a horror novel. The grounds were hardly cared for, little more than yellowed dead grass surrounded by a wrought iron fence that tilted forward slightly after the ground had shifted during their long winters.
As he stared, he heard the distinct sound of a wail. The haunting sound echoed, perhaps just the wind, or perhaps more than that. All the hairs on his arms rose as another cry whipped through the home, and he swore he saw a figure standing in one of those shattered windows.
“We couldn’t have asked for a better house,” he murmured before striding toward the building.
He felt his power already boiling. The shadows inside of him wanted to stretch. It was almost like a living being inside of him that he’d consumed from only two sacrifices. Such power for such little things, and yet, he couldn’t stop himself from using it.
The door screeched as he yanked it off its hinges, and already the shadows were pouring from his form. They dripped from his hands like ink, covering the worn floor with holes throughout. With every step he took, the holes were fixed. The wood gleamed with new life and the faded, peeling wallpaper regained its vibrant floral pattern. Its swirling labyrinth of deep colors led him through the halls.
It was a large home with easily fifteen bedrooms, more if he gave some thought to where he would put them. A large kitchen that his magic soon cleaned entirely until it looked more like a working kitchen. Already he could imagine Sybil in the corner, hanging bundles of herbs from the exposed beams.
There was a comfortable library, and a room that might have once been an attached greenhouse for Elissa to keep all her birds in. And still more that his magic found, healing every single nook and cranny until the inside of the house was finally befitting a coven.
