The Beginning Of The End

Chapter 7

The grand tour turned out to be not so grand at all. The house was grand and enormous, and spectacular. Every room we went through was like something out of an old-fashioned movie or a medieval castle. Some were more modern, but everything, although in perfect condition, seemed so old.

He lead me around the bottom floor quite quickly, showing me the kitchen, an enormous sort of living room area, the ceremonial room which was the big hall I'd been in, and a couple of other rooms on the ground floor. He didn't show me the chamber of the silver coven again. He showed me the way to get around, and I managed to get my bearings a little. I learnt the way to my room, and to his room which was just down the other end of the hall from mine. He showed me a couple of other rooms, but most were bedrooms. Apparently, there were twelve sections of the house; four per each floor that contained bedrooms. There were six floors in total in this place, which I found unbelievably huge but Jaylon just shrugged off like it was nothing.

There had been twelve families when the house was built, and each family had their own section like their own little home in this enormous home. The first floor didn't have any bedrooms, but the second floor had four sections, including the one Jaylon and I were in. There were around four to six bedrooms in each section, depending on how the family designing it had wanted it modelled. Each one had a couple of bathrooms, and a living room a bit more of a reasonable size than the one downstairs. The third floor held the library, and that was all on that floor. It was crazy big. The two floors above that had more family sections, and the last an final floor was off limits, Jaylon said. I asked why, but he refused to say. He didn't spend much time in each room either, it wasn't much of a tour really. He just pointed things out and kept going. The only place we really stopped was the library because I was interested in finding something to read, and the kitchen because Jaylon was hungry.

"Why can't you just conjure up some food with magic?" I asked, still trying to get used to magic being real.

"It loses flavour" he replied with a shrug. "I did that for a while, never came down here. Then I did one time and it was like tasting heaven. I'd forgotten how good food could be."

"So, how old are you exactly?" I asked as we were coming back downstairs after the end of his tour. I wanted to find out how long he'd been alone, but didn't really want to bring up the whole alone thing.

"I'm twenty-one," he said with a glance over his shoulder at me as he paused for a moment on the staircase then carried on down. So, fifteen years. Fifteen years he'd been on his own in this place.

"And you've been here ever since them?" I asked softly.

"I used to go out and try to meet people" he replied, a slight edge to his voice. "Everybody knew who I was though, that I was from this house. No one ever wants anything to do with anyone from this house."

"How come?" I questioned, "Do they know how you're, you know, a warlock?"

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "They know there's something funny up with us though. I think they think it's some kind of cult. The police wouldn't even talk to me when my entire family went missing. People avoid me. No one will look at me."

"That sounds awful" I murmured. And he'd brought me here. So now I could be one of the freaks too.

"I got used to it," he said, his voice hard, full of anger. "Anyway, you feel like doing anything in particular?"

I shrugged, then had a thought.

"Hey, in the library you said something about me being connected to all of this. That I might be able to help you bring something back together. What was that about?"