Keeper of Enchanted Rooms(6)

Approaching the door, heavy tool bag hanging off her shoulder, she took up the brass knocker and rapped four times. Loudly. Hulda preferred not to repeat herself.

For a moment, all was silent. Then she heard the sound of something thick crashing onto the floor—several somethings—followed by a brief shriek. Pulling out her folder, she glanced at her information one last time, just to be sure. Merritt Fernsby.

“Hello?” His voice was pitched high on the other side of the door, and desperation leaked through the wooden fibers.

Hulda pushed up her glasses. “Mr. Fernsby?”

“Please help me!” he cried. “It won’t let me out!”

Oh dear. Hulda opened her bag. “How long have you been in residence?”

The doorknob jiggled. “Who are you? I tried breaking a window, but—oh God, it’s looking at me again.”

“Please refrain from damaging the premises.” She pulled out her crowbar. “What is looking at you?”

“The woman in the portrait!”

Hulda sighed. Houses like this really should be run through BIKER before they were handed out to average citizens. “Stand back, Mr. Fernsby.” She wedged the crowbar between door and jamb, then murmured, “Really, little house. He’ll never take care of you if you behave like a child.”

She tugged a few times before the latch gave and the door swung in, and then she returned the crowbar to her bag.

Four fingers wrapped around the door and wrenched it open.

He stood just shy of six feet. The document said he was thirty-one years old—three years Hulda’s junior—though with the bags under his eyes, he looked older. He had light-brown hair that hung unfashionably about his shoulders and was in need of combing. His nose was straight save for a slight widening in the center of the bridge. His clothes were of good make, but he wore a multicolor scarf instead of an ascot, and the scarf had certainly seen better days. The first two buttons of his pale-yellow shirt were undone—no, all the buttons were off by one, something that niggled at Hulda’s brain, demanding to be fixed, but she was a housekeeper, not a valet. The poor man had one foot bare and one socked, and his panicked blue eyes looked at her with an eagerness that suggested he hadn’t seen another human being in years.

Not entirely unexpected.

“Hello, Mr. Fernsby.” She extended her hand. “My name is Hulda Larkin. I’ve been sent here on behalf of BIKER, or the Boston Institute for the Keeping of Enchanted Rooms. As you have recently inherited an enchanted home—”

“Oh thank God.” Mr. Fernsby tried to shake her hand, but the moment his fingers reached the doorway, part of the doorjamb detached and bent, barring his path. Closing his eyes, he slumped against wood. “It won’t let me leave.”

“I see that,” Hulda remarked. She reached forward herself, her hand passing easily into the house.

“I wouldn’t, if you want to be able to go home,” he warned.

She offered him a firm smile. “I am a professional, I assure you. May I come in?”

He gaped at her. “You want to come in? By all means, it’s yours! Just get. Me. Out.”

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to do that until I’ve done an assessment of the abode.”

He blinked like she was the one going mad. “Assessment of the abode? Just”—he thrust his hand at her—“pull me out!”

She frowned. “I’m assuming you paid enough attention in school to know magic doesn’t work like that.”

He blinked at her. “What school did you attend?”

Hulda frowned. It was true that most education boards in the United States included instruction only on magic’s historical importance, not the craft itself, such as the seizing of British kinetic ships during the infamous Boston Tea Party. Hulda had spent several years studying abroad in England, where the categorization and use of magic was much more prevalent, both in the schoolhouse and in the country at large.

Mr. Fernsby scrubbed his eyes. “It’s haunted—”

“Possibly, likely not,” she interjected. “Haunting is only one possibility for an enchanted—”

“Blazes, woman.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine! Come in, and see how it treats you.” He stepped aside, allowing her entrance, but cast a wary glance at a portrait on the north wall.

The house groaned as she strode in, her shoes clacking against the hardwood floor. Whether or not the house would keep her confined had yet to be determined. She glanced around—it was light outside, but the sun struggled to permeate the windows. Shadows clung to the stairs and walls, casting the rooms—as far as she could see—in incomplete swathes of darkness. The eyes of the portrait to her right were following her, she noticed, so she nodded a greeting. “It seems to be in very good repair, considering its history. Granted, that is typical for strongly spelled structures.”

Mr. Fernsby wiped a hand down his face. “A-And how do you know about this place?”

“It is our business to know.” Reaching into her pocket, she retrieved a card and handed it to him. The information for BIKER—save its address, which was seldom given out—had been stamped upon it, along with her name.

“Has the house spoken to you?” she asked.

He gaped. “Spoken to me?”