Jesse made his way up the driveway to the door, hoping he was remembering the right house, and knocked.
Zarah, who was, Jess thought, Deanna's mother but he might be wrong, opened the door, and smiled. “Hello, Jesse. Come on in, I'll call...”
She didn't need to; Gisela came racing down the stairs and narrowly avoided hitting Zarah.
“Hey, Jess! You're back! Took you long enough.”
He couldn't help grinning. “Well... despite things trying to keep me busy, you're irresistible.”
“No I'm not, just crazy.”
“I went out to the house, but there's no one there. They moved?”
“Mmhmm. Cynthia's been working on it for months trying to get a loan on her inheritance from her grandmother to buy it. She died a couple of years ago, but Cynthia's not supposed to get it until she's twenty-one next year. Nobody said anything 'cause they wanted to surprise you. Wait until you see this place! And it has lots of bedrooms so you get your own room. Bye, Zarah. Let's go, Jess! She really wanted this one because it was built like two hundred years ago, it was one of the first in Haven, and it was built by her ancestors and Kev's and it's made to be perfect for the kinds of magic they do.”
She kept on, telling him the historical reasons why Coven Sundark deserved it, and the practical reasons why they wanted it—it had been designed to house an entire substantial coven and their children, among others. She refused to describe it, though.
Outside the village proper, of course. It seemed like most houses were, around here, like everyone valued the private space. The village itself was primarily devoted to stores and schools and library and similar such public places.
Gisela stopped in front of a six-foot grey stone wall. Or, actually, a greenish metal gate in it with a high arch overhead. The archway was large enough for the van to drive through and then some.
“Here,” Gisela pronounced.
“You're kidding.”
“Nope. Go in.”
How long must that wall be, if it surrounded all of this, and how much stone had it taken? Snow covered the ground yet, but he could still see trees in clusters, with clear space around them. Straight ahead, there was another sizeable arch, framing a view of the lake; there was another to the left, with trees beyond, but smaller and the gate was closed. There may have been to the right as well, but the house blocked that. The house belonged perfectly, huge and grey and sprawling irregularly across the landscape, in some places only one story, in some places three or possibly four, all porches and balconies and windows.
“See?” Gisela said in delight.
“Good god. Just how much is this inheritance of hers?”
“She won't tell. Not even her coven, I think. But it paid for the van and now for this, and I don't think it's all gone. Aren't you going to go in? Or just stand here? Wait until me and Cynthia and Dia and Naomi and Nick and Liam get to work on the yard once the snow's all gone!”
“Where's the door?”
“Follow the driveway.”
Past a two-car garage of similar stone set apart from the house, up onto a porch the size of the apartment he and Shaine shared. Double doors, of course, rich tawny wood, each carved with a crescent moon, horns facing outward, the two crescents flanking a six-armed star.
“Just open it,” Gisela urged.
“I feel like I should be expecting ghosts or something.”
“No ghosts. We checked.”
He glanced at her to see if she were serious. She was.
The door was heavy, he found, pushing it open.
There was a hallway right inside, with hooks for coats. He kept going without stopping, and stepped through a doorway into a larger hall with rooms all around it. The doors, all wood-trimmed glass, French doors he thought they were called, were all closed.
“Hey, guys!” Gisela called. “Where are you?” It echoed eerily.
“Upstairs,” Kevin called back. “Stay, I'm coming!”
“Jesus. You could get lost in this place, I bet,” Jesse said.
“I have a couple of times,” Gisela admitted. “It took me a while to find my way out. We'll get used to it.”
“In a hundred years or so.”
Kevin came around a corner, paint splattered all over him, and grinned. “Hi, Jess. Thought I felt you come in. So. What do you think?”
“Can't you guys ever do anything on a normal scale? I mean, a big house, okay, but this is ridiculous!”
“Does that mean you like it?”
“That means I can't believe it.”
“Oh, it's real. Nobody's lived here for eleven years. It needs too much work to not be real. We started with right here, but the rest is still like something from a ghost story. Except bedrooms and a bathroom and a kitchen. We did those already, too, between everybody. Well, five bedrooms, one's yours.”
Gisela laughed. “Just wait 'til you see it!”
Jesse shook his head. “This place is unreal. Even more than the rest of Haven.”
Kevin echoed the laugh. “Help us work on it for two days and you'll never think again that it's not real. It's going to take us months to finish it inside.”
“Good. At least you didn't just step into a perfect mansion.”
“It will be. Grand tour?”
“Sure.” He shed backpack, jacket, and shoes, and followed Kevin. Gisela trailed along behind.
He got lost quickly. Everything was old-looking, and dingy with disuse, but he thought that the house must once have been beautiful. There was surprisingly little dust.
Kevin saved the bedrooms for last. Deanna's was on the ground floor, with an enormous window that had a red maple outside that might be as old as the house. Bane's second-floor room had its own small balcony, Bane's familiar belongings not entirely filling the space. Cynthia's, a short distance away, was bright with windows on three sides beginning two feet off the floor and continuing to the ceiling.
“And, of course, yours and mine. You weren't here to choose, so we thought about which one you'd like best and set it up just for you.”
Up to the third floor. A broad hallway that went straight ahead, with a door at the end, and a doorway on each side.
“Our territory,” Kevin said. “As in, our own bathroom, or it will be, right now I keep thinking something will come to life and try to drag me down the toilet, and there's nothing else here but it and two rooms. Mine's the right one, yours is left.”
Jesse touched the handle of Kevin's door. “Can I look?”
“Sure. But you might want to see yours first.”
Jesse hesitated, and decided to take the advice. He opened the other door.
Kevin's hand steadied him when Jesse dropped back a step in sheer disbelief.
“You're not serious.”
“Completely. We've had a wonderful time. What you're seeing is the contributions of a lot of people. This coven and 'Sela, Covens Dandelion and Winter, Sam and Caitryn...”
“Well? Go look around!” Gisela prompted.
The room seemed like it should have been a small dance studio or something—well, other than the slanted ceiling that reduced the headroom along the far third of the space, broken by two windows that each had an honest-to-god window-seat. The walls were painted, he was sure freshly, in a plain soft creamy not-quite-white, a contrast to the dark shining wood floor and the dark curtains and the black-and-glass furniture.
In the far end, head to the wall under a smaller window, stood a double bed; two small tables flanked it, a lamp on one and a clock-radio on the other. On the inner wall, overlooking the bed, were three shelves, and on one sat an expensive-looking compact stereo. At the nearer end, built out from the wall, was a sizeable closet of wood that almost matched the floor and near it a free-standing full-length mirror. Even the addition of a loveseat, more or less balancing the bed, failed to make it look crowded instead of comfortable.
Everything, the rugs, the blankets on the bed and thrown over the loveseat, the curtains, was black or dark purple or grey or silver or combinations of them. Anything not upholstered was black metal and glass and silver. His favourite colours.
“Jesus. That the size of our whole apartment!” And what was in it would have paid the rent on that apartment for at least two or three months, he was sure.
“Like it?” Gisela asked.
“Like it? It's even more unreal than the rest! Let me believe it first! I've only been gone for four or five weeks, how the hell did you manage to do everything you just showed me? And why the hell would you...” He ran out of words.
Kevin chuckled. “Because you're special and we wanted to do something special for you. It's absolutely and totally yours, everything in there. As for how... a dozen or so people working together, with a little magic thrown in, can accomplish a lot.” He gave him a gentle push into the room.
“This has to have cost a fortune!”
“Not as much as you think. Money wasn't a big consideration anyway.”
Jess collapsed on the loveseat, sinking in deeply, trying to assimilate this.
“You don't like it?” Gisela asked, frowning.
Kevin laughed again. “I think he's overwhelmed. Maybe nobody's ever given him any good surprises before. Mine's a mirror image, more or less. Tell you what. You stay here and come to grips with the fact that this is really truly yours, and I'll get back to painting the bathroom downstairs.”
“And I'll go get your stuff,” Gisela said, darting away.
“Why?” Jesse repeated.
“It's not an attempt to bribe you into staying, although the thought crossed a mind or six. Just to do something nice for you. You deserve it. And since you don't have anyone else to do it for you, we did.”
“That doesn't make sense.”
“We wouldn't've done it if we didn't want to.” The blonde departed, and Jess heard him on the stairs down.
Gisela came only long enough to deliver his backpack before she was gone again.
Jesse ran a hand over the blanket under him, thoughtfully. There was a lot of the silky stuff in the house, used for everything from clothes to sheets to curtains, like in this room... his room. It still made his skin tingle faintly, less so now than on his first visit to Haven; not an unpleasant sensation, but a little unsettling.
What was it, anyway?
More calm now, he explored more closely. Behind the closet doors that folded back like a curtain of dark wood, there were hooks and shelves and drawers and bars and hangers—and clothes. A few things he knew he'd left here on his last visit but others he'd never seen, made of that silky stuff in the wild styles he'd seen Coven Sundark and others in Haven wearing, all black, purple, or silver-grey.
He hesitated, but temptation won. He shed his jeans and T-shirt, and tried on a pair of loose black pants made of the silky material. They fit perfectly, unsurprisingly, though a drawstring waist did leave a lot of leeway. He found a grey shirt, with loose gathered sleeves, and pulled it on. Whisper-light, and totally seamless, like the pants. And a vest, also black. He gazed at himself in the ornately-iron-framed mirror, smiled at his reflection. It made him look abruptly younger, really seventeen. The slight tingling of the material was a distinctly sensual thrill, all over his skin...
If he wanted to, while he was here, he could forgo his usual clothes entirely, stay entirely with the new stuff...
Could, except he lacked the courage to even leave it on long now. It felt too much like deception, trying to pretend that he belonged here.
I could be like them. I could learn, if I stayed here always.
Damn it all, even though I've been telling myself over and over not to care, admit it. I care. Very much. They're my friends, even if they don't know everything about me. Well, I don't know everything about them, either. That's fair.
He liked the Jesse looking back; that was the Jesse that should have been. He laid the fingertips of one hand against the glass, wishing with all he was that he could step through and trade places.
Could you wish on a mirror? Maybe it was a magic mirror.
“Hey, mirror,” he whispered. “Do you grant wishes? Can you make me like that Jesse instead of me?”
The other Jesse just gazed back, but his dark eyes, grey-blue-green with a blue starburst around the pupil, looked very sad and lonely, and much older than the face they were in.
Jesse shook himself. “What am I doing, talking to a mirror? I'm losing it. The insanity around here is getting to me.” He started to turn away; motion in the mirror made him turn back. Somewhere in the shadows behind the other Jesse, something was moving. Startled, he glanced behind him. Nothing there. Only in the mirror, a night-coloured wolf formed from the shadows, and pressed its head to the other Jesse's thigh.
Although Jesse stood frozen between fear and surprise, the other Jesse glanced down, laid a hand on the wolf's head, and met Jesse's gaze with a smile utterly and quietly content. His other hand he reached out to lay flat against the glass. Jesse, instinctively, feeling tears in his eyes, laid his own over it.
It wasn't his new bedroom behind the mirror Jesse, but a hilltop, with a dark lake visible behind it. A place that turned up constantly in Jesse's dreams, though he had no recollection of ever having been anywhere that looked like that.
“God,” he whispered, and it was a prayer. “Please...”
The wolf whined. Jesse could hear it, not quite audible, like a memory, but very clear. It stirred restlessly, then turned and ran off to one side.
“Can I hear you too?” Jesse whispered. “Can you talk?”
The other shook his head slowly, still with that gentle smile, but the contentment was gone, with the wolf. His eyes were sad again, as he bowed his head, and let his hand fall.
The reflection shivered, like a stone dropped into a pond. When the ripples stilled, it was a perfectly ordinary reflection of him and his new room.
“This,” he told the mirror, “is getting freaky. And part of why it's freaky is that I've been around this weird place so long that a mirror that does what it wants isn't enough to make me want to run screaming back to the city. Can you show me Shaine? Are you that kind of magic mirror?”
No response.
“Guess not. Should I ask Kevin about this, I wonder? Nah. If he doesn't know already, then it can be my secret.”
He spent another moment just gazing at his reflection. As oddly natural as it looked... He sighed, switched back to jeans and T-shirt. It simply wasn't him.