“Is there a magician who can beat you?” Laurent asked. “Because as far as I can tell, there isn’t.”
“In the right circumstances, anything is possible. Under expected conditions, no.”
“Not even Ian?”
“I thought you said he was clearly toast.” She raised a brow.
“Sure, but the desire for vengeance can do funny things to a guy.”
“I appreciate the concern, but I forfeited to Prospero after Miranda was injured, which means House Prospero officially won. Even if I wanted a rematch, completed challenges can’t be refought. So I think I’m in the clear there.”
“Then no. I’ll let you out of the contract if you think working for me is too risky, but I’m not terminating it.”
“You’re stuck with me, then,” she said. “There’s no one else I trust to keep you safe. And I’m not done yet.”
He wasn’t at all sure she was only talking about the Turning. “Okay. I’ll send the challenge over. Deal with it however you want. That includes forfeiting, if you’re sick of all this bullshit.
“And speaking of challenges, I know this might not matter since you have a House now and can make them yourself, but if you ever need to challenge anyone—you know, because you have some sort of plan or something going on with all of this—just let me know. I’ve got your back.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sydney said. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The great Houses of the Unseen World, the buildings that bore the names of the families who lived in them, were more than just constructions of wood and stone, brick and mortar. Suffused with magic, they were themselves ongoing spells. The doors that opened only for blood members of the House were just the beginning. The older Houses, the ones that had seen generation upon generation, developed further magical links with their families. It was rumored they could even reshape themselves according to the desires of the people who lived within them. House Prospero was one such House.
Sydney had wanted no part of that. “I have an apartment,” she had told Madison. “It’s nice. You know it’s nice because you helped me find it. Here are some of the things I like about it: Except for you and Verenice, no one knows where it is. It doesn’t talk to me, or fetch my food, or fucking redesign itself when I’m not looking—I had more than enough of that in Shadows. Also, did I mention that no one knows where it is?”
“Look, I’m not the best person to explain this to you, but from what I’ve been given to understand, ‘holding the House’ is one of those things with hidden layers. You must formally introduce yourself to the House, and you must visit on a semi-regular schedule. Or it stops being yours.”
“Must,” Sydney had said.
“I’m sorry, Sydney, but yes.” Madison had scribbled down a note. “I’ll see what I can do to find out the specifics, but for now you need to go claim your House. You don’t have to live there; just let it know you’re paying attention.”
And so here she was. Sydney laid her hand against the door. Something sharp pierced the pad of her finger, deep enough to draw blood. The scent of smoke and oranges rose in the air, and the door opened.
“Let’s do this thing,” she said, and stepped across the threshold.
On the surface it was nothing like Shadows. There were no dark and cramped spaces, no pockets of coldness that lurked and followed. No sense that a misstep could mean death. No weeping or screams or bloodstains left as warnings. As a place, House Prospero was everything Shadows was not: soaring ceilings, polished blond wood, ornate carpets. The gleam of brass and scent of beeswax. Warmth and quiet. White everywhere, as if dirt would be afraid to land.
She could feel the House’s attention as she walked hallways, up and down stairs, as she opened doors and cupboards. She saw nothing of herself there. Not in the chairs around the kitchen table, the paintings on the walls, the open well-lit spaces that were scented with beautifully arranged flowers, not in the bitter taste of broken magic. This was nothing of how she’d grown up, of what she’d lived.
And yet she was afraid. Afraid to make a sound and disturb the blanket of silence that lay over the House. Afraid to touch anything, to move a chair or a glass and leave it a hair away from precision. Afraid that the slightest mistake would risk the wrath of the House. She’d had more than enough of living like that.
Miranda had checked herself into a hotel. Sydney had made it clear that she had no desire to live in Prospero, that Miranda could certainly remain there and have the place to herself, but Miranda said that wasn’t it. “The House, it’s like another part of me. Or, at least, it was. Living there cut off from magic, not being able to feel the connection, the presence, that’s not something I’m ready for. I don’t know if I ever will be.”
But for Sydney, that awareness, that sense that the House was watching, waiting, was the one place this House did come close to what Shadows had felt like, and that closeness was too much. A brighter mirror, certainly, but a reflection all the same.
And there was one more issue. The magic, all of the magic in the House was, like so much of the magic in the Unseen World, contaminated by its connection to Shadows.
Miranda had explained about the mirrors. Sydney stood in front of one. “Can you hear me?”
Yes.
“I need to change your magic. To give you mine.”
Why?
How to explain morality to a House. She would have laughed if it hadn’t mattered.
Are you unhappy with my service?
“No. No. But—you’re my House now. This magic that I want to give you is who I am.”
Very well.
Will it hurt?
She hadn’t thought about it. “I don’t know.”
A pause. I am ready.
Sydney hoped she was. She set her fingers on the mirror. Felt its surface liquefy around her hands, felt her hands sink in. A sharpness that scraped over her skin, a cold that etched itself into her bones.
The flutter of the beating heart of the House. The wrongness of the magic from Shadows that wrapped around it. She felt nauseated touching it, but unwound and unwound and unwound that magic until it was gone from the House. From her House.
She pulled her hands from the mirror, leaving it shimmering liquid silver.
Took a small knife and the ragged edge of her shadow and peeled a further piece of it away. Shadows were, like finger bones, a concentrated source of a person’s magic, and since she had no plans to live here, this was the fastest way to get the House to acknowledge her magic and build its own around that. She dropped the fragment of shadow into the mirror, then spoke a word that smelled like burnt glass and watched as the mirror’s surface resolidified.
“Are you okay?”
She waited. Silence. Then:
Yes.
The word not the elegant cursive of before, but her own rushed scribble.
“Good,” she said. Then she looked around—at the white, at the polish, at the formality of the House.
She walked back through the hall, down the stairs, and paused, just before the front door. Said, “This isn’t my place. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here.”
And left.