The molten iron dripped onto the gravel, cooling into black shards before it could touch Coyaa's boots. She didn't let go of the bars until the gap was wide enough for a person to walk straight through without scraping a shoulder. Alistair took a half step back, his polished oxfords crunching on the ruined metal. His dead eyes didn't blink once as the crimson glow from the sky caught the edge of his silver cuff links. “You think a little parlor trick changes the deeds filed at the town hall,” Alistair said, his voice dropping into that smooth, glacial register that made Keshia's violet sparks flare brighter.
“Hand over the key,” Coyaa said. She stepped past the melted threshold and into the overgrown yard, her fingers twitching with a strange, heavy heat she hadn't felt back in the city. Alistair didn't move to reach for his pockets right away, letting the silence stretch between them while the distant town clock finished its ninth stroke. A low, wet thumping started up somewhere beneath the wooden porch boards, like a large dog throwing its weight against a cellar door. Alistair smiled then, a small, humorless curve of his pale lips that reached nowhere near his eyes. He tossed the brass key through the gap in the ironwork so it landed right at Coyaa's feet in the dirt.
“Take the house and every cursed square inch of these grounds,” Alistair said, snapping another dry twig between his fingers with a sharp crack that echoed off the manor's boarded windows. “If you last three days against what wakes up in this town after dark, the title is yours to keep. If you don't, the council takes the bloodline and the land both.” He turned on his heel without waiting for an answer, his expensive coat snapping around his knees as he walked back toward the fog at the edge of the woods. He moved with the easy stride of a man who believed he had already won the board.
Keshia hurried through the melted iron gate, her boots clicking against the flagstones while she stared after the retreating figure. “We are not taking advice from a man who looks like he was built in a taxidermist's shop,” Keshia muttered, raising her hand again as the violet sparks danced across her knuckles. Charmaine stayed back by the car for a second, her fingers brushing the teal braids at her neck while she eyed the dark windows of the house. “He left the gate open for us, which usually means the trap is already locked from the inside,” Charmaine said, her voice dropping as she hoisted her heavy leather satchel. Coyaa bent down and scooped the brass key out of the dirt, its metal freezing cold against her palm.
“Let him think he won,” Coyaa said. She walked up the stone steps toward the grand double doors of the porch while the strange thumping noise grew louder beneath her feet. The heavy timber cellar doors on the side of the porch shuddered violently, the wood groaning as something large dragged itself against the panels from the dark below. Coyaa slid the heavy brass key into the front lock, her hand steady despite the way the red moonlight bled through the glass panels around the frame. The lock turned with a sound like a gunshot, and the massive door drifted inward on silent hinges, spilling a smell of old cedar and damp earth out onto the porch.
“Get inside,” Coyaa told them, not looking back as she stepped over the threshold into the dark hallway. Keshia slipped past her first, her eyes scanning the shadows with a sharp, assessing squint while her magic hummed in the air. Charmaine followed right behind, pulling the heavy door shut against the crimson night with a solid click that cut off the worst of the howling from the woods. They stood together in the vast entryway, surrounded by tall ancestral portraits whose eyes seemed to follow them through the gloom. Coyaa reached out and touched the wall, feeling the old wood pulse beneath her palm like a sleeping animal taking its next slow breath.