Zoe's only wish is to be able to run barefoot through grass, but she knows it'll never happen. Ever since she was born, she's been unable to touch anything living without it instantly dying. It's a curse she would do anything to get rid of, but that...
Not until I saw the fence around the house did I remember what would happen as soon as I entered. It was also then that I remembered the house belonged to a witch hunter and my stomach was immediately in knots. So much for a day with no problems.
But he wouldn't be home, I reminded myself, and it was not like I had ever used magic in front of Felix anyway. Well, except for on the claw machine. I still felt weird as we drove through the gate.
I could feel it, the moment I registered as being inside the perimeter. The energy inside of me shifted, lessened. A bit like it became hard to breathe, only that it wasn't air my body tried to breathe, but magic, and I knew I wouldn't be able to use any magic anymore.
"Home sweet home," Felix said next to me and I could hear that something was slightly off about him as well.
I looked at him, and he seemed tense. Nervous, perhaps. To avoid my brain for spiraling and making up a thousand unlikely reasons for his tenseness, I decided he looked nervous and that it made sense. He was taking the woman he liked to his place for the first time ever. Any normal person would be nervous about that.
He parked the car to the side of the house, and we went out. House really was the wrong word. It was a mansion. Probably at least three floors and every floor bigger than the house I lived in with my father. It looked creepy, though, or rather, it looked lifeless. The fact that the really big garden just was an empty green lawn probably contributed to it. But even though the bricks were red, the house looked grey.
We had bought a lot of food, but we managed to take it all before walking to the door. Each step felt like a bad omen. What would I see inside the house? I hoped different equipments weren't on display. Or that there weren't historical paintings or so from the witch hunts hanging in every room.
My eyes darted everywhere as soon as I walked in, and I let out a sigh of relief. The inside had a depressing feeling to it, just like the outside. The walls were of stone and the furniture dark wood. I walked further in and saw a few windows and none of them had flowers in them. There was absolutely nothing in the place to bring life. No decoration that felt personal, no photos, and a general severe lack of color. But it looked like a regular home, albeit a dull one.
"The kitchen is this way," Felix said and nodded towards the left. "Let's put away the food and then I'll show you around."
The bottom floor was just general space with the kitchen, dining room, living room and parlor. There wasn't anything remarkable about them, except that it all looked old and dead.
When we got up the stairs to the second floor, my eyes landed on a portrait that made my blood run cold.
If it wasn't for the illustrations in the book I had read in the Library to find Harry Jackson, I wouldn't have known the person in the portrait. But I knew now.
Ralph Oakes.
The believed first witch hunter in Felix's family.
"That's my oldest known relative," Felix said, having obviously noticed what my eyes were glued on.
I nodded and tried to disperse the feeling of wanting to puke. But the eyes of Ralph Oakes penetrated me, and his hard face and the dark colors of the portrait seemed to want to eat me up.
"He looks a bit creepy," I said and forced a smiled. A valid reason for my weird stunnedness.
"Yeah. Most old portraits are, I think."
I swallowed and followed as Felix walked forward. There were a few rooms that weren't used for anything in particular, and those rooms reminded me of going on tours in big castles. The rooms all had furniture, but it was all just put on display. No one had sat on the couches for decades and perhaps the desk had never been used as one.
But then Felix opened the door to the biggest room on that floor and I felt my jaw drop.
It was definitely the room that I had seen so far that seemed most alive. It wasn't because it was any lighter than the other rooms. In fact, it was probably darker. But it did clearly feel like a place that was often frequented. It might have been because there was one table on which several books lay opened. Or the sofa that had a blanket haphazardly thrown over one of the armrests. Or the coffee cup on a smaller table next to an armchair.
I was also just surprised by the massive collection of books that spread around all the walls. It would take maybe a year at least to read through all of them, even if the only thing you did was reading. I walked to the closest bookshelf and took down a book at random. It looked old and when I opened it, I could see that it was from the 16-th century. But it was in a surprisingly good state.
That room and the books were probably the heart of this cold home.
"This is amazing," I said and turned back to Felix.
"Thought you would like it."
I turned back to the book I had picked at random. When I saw the title, I almost wanted to laugh. The Truth About Vampires. I turned to a random page and read the first sentence my eyes fell on. Or I didn't even read the full sentence before I actually started to laugh.
They crawl out of their graves...
"Is this for real? I can't believe people actually thought this was true," I laughed and showed the page to Felix.
He frowned and then laughed, but it did sound awkward, and I bet he had actually been taught that it was true. At that moment, I didn't bother with that fact, though. Instead, I put the book back and picked out another at random to read another random sentence.
Witches would sacrifice female virgins under the full moon to remain young and beautiful.
I snorted. If that was the type of things that Felix had grown up being brainwashed into believing, I couldn't blame him for thinking witches were evil. I couldn't even blame Harry Jackson for murdering witches if that was truly what he believed.
I read a few more sentences at random in different books. Most made me laugh. There was a couple that actually was true, but they were generally very broad things. Like one book did correctly state that vampires required to drink blood to survive, but then it was also followed by that they were constantly uncontrollable in their thirst.
I read a few things in a book about unicorns and, from what I knew, it seemed mostly correct. Same thing about a book on faeries. It entertained me a lot though that among all of these books there were some about creatures that definitely didn't exist, such as the Loch Ness monster and Big Foot and the boogeyman.
"I guess I can take you in here if you ever need cheering up," Felix said as I closed a book on werewolves.
"Sorry, but a lot of this just sounds like bad superstitions," I said while controlling my laughter.
"As long as it makes you laugh," he smiled. "But come on, there's one more floor to see."
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