by Viola Grace
Working in a niche market was not her intent, but the community has need of her. No one can clear a house like she can.
Hannah’s life has taken a weird turn. She has survived an attack by an ancient entity, gotten transformed into a dark elf, and shacked up with the first guy to possess her mind. It has been a really odd few weeks.
Now that she is stable and settled in, she finds herself in XIA custody, more or less. Neekil moved in.
With one dark elf on the surface, Neekil’s family asks him to guide his brothers into the modern world. Getting a place for them to stay is easy. They have volunteered to replace the enchanted mantlepiece at the mansion, and it is rather uncomfortable to watch them work.
Hannah has to adapt to new circumstances again when the mayor requests her help in clearing uninhabited homes. The problem is, their inhabitants aren’t human or extranatural; they are something else entirely.
She had better get started.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Open-Haunted-House
Copyright © 2020 by Viola Grace
ISBN: 978-1-989892-48-0
©Cover art by Angela Waters
All rights reserved. With the exception of review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the express permission of the publisher.
Published by Viola Grace
Look for me online at violagrace.com
Open-Haunted- House
An Obscure Magic Book 11
By
Viola Grace
Chapter One
First, Hannah fidgeted and paced in the ballroom. She didn’t have good associations with the building, and only the exposed plaster and lathe gave her pleasure. Nothing remained of the entity. Well, nothing remained in this room or on the property. Inside her, there were still the traces of the invasive wood god that had tried to claim her as its sacrifice.
Neekil was in the garden, trying to explain the situation to his four brothers. They kept craning their necks to stare at her over their older brother’s shoulders. She didn’t wave at them. She paced and waited.
When the gathering of shadows made their way into the room, she looked at them, and they lined up and bowed in a smooth move in unison.
“Greetings, sister.” They all waited.
Hannah nodded. “Greetings, brothers.”
Neekil cleared his throat. “Hannah, these are my brothers Krisfel, Morith, Aberan, and Benko. They are here to build a new mantlepiece for you.”
Hannah smiled. “They are here to see if I can introduce them to compatible women.”
The four men grinned.
“I can introduce you to women. I have no idea if they are compatible or not. I think two might be trolls.”
The guys blinked.
She grinned. “They are very nice women, but you might not want to arm wrestle with them. So, this is the space where the mantlepiece was. Do you think you can craft something to take its place?”
Her new brothers went to the wall, and Morith asked, “Do you have any images of the original?”
She grimaced and nodded, looking at the images on her phone. She found one with the mantlepiece and used a little magic to cast the image onto the wall where it used to be.
Morith blinked. “You are a mage?”
“Not really. My skills are very limited. I can do a few very specific bits of magic and nothing else.” She nodded to the wall. “Is that what you wanted to see?”
The other three were examining the projection. Morith nodded and turned to look at it.
Aberan smiled. “If we can find the right stone, we can have the bulk of it in place within a few hours. The carving will take a week after that to get proper detail.”
Neekil nodded. “I can help.”
Benko chuckled and started using his hands for measurements. “Aren’t your hands going to be busy, brother?”
Hannah blushed, and Neekil took her hand and kissed the back of it. “That is weird reinforcement, Neekil.”
He smiled. “And yet, it works to let me get close to you.”
“Tricky bastard.” She continued to hold his hand and leaned against him. He squeezed her fingers, and she noted his brothers staring at them. “Why are they staring?”
He snickered. “In a normal dark elf bride, that light kiss should have had you reeling into my arms.”
“Oh. Shall I swoon?” She raised her brow.
“Um, no. I don’t like that look in your eyes.”
She grinned.
“Now, I am really terrified.”
She was laughing when she turned to his bemused siblings. “What do you need to work on the mantlepiece?”
The men looked at each other and shrugged. “Stone,” they answered as one.
“Oh. That we have. Come with me.”
She walked out into the darkness, grinding her sneakered heel into the spot where she had smitten the last of the wood god. Dropping the hammer on him had been satisfying, and hitting him with a tiny lightning strike had calmed some of her irritation.
Neekil asked her, “Where are we going?”
“There is granite on the premises; there is also soapstone and a jade deposit. The original builder was a geology mage. He transported the stone here to create his dream quarry. Here it is.”
She put her hands on her hips, and the dark elves made approving sounds as they headed into the depression. “Will this work?”
Her four new brothers scattered through the wedges of rock, and they began to speak to each other in a language that Hannah had heard before.
Neekil wrapped his arms around her, and he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “They are talking about the patterns they will make in the stone to maximize the effect of the carving. The motifs will be traditional dark elf motifs. I do hope that it won’t shock the mayor.”
“I doubt that anything shocks him, except his assistant. She’s a focused woman.”
Neekil muttered, “They had sex two hours before our arrival.”
She turned in his arms. “How do you know that?”
“If there is one thing my kind know, it is the scent of sex.”
“Aw. All this self-control must be killing you.”
“My kind go centuries looking for the right woman. I can wait weeks or months.” He kissed her softly. “As long as I get to hold you in the night, I can wait.”
“I do seem to see night around us now.”
His brothers started to move past them with heavy burdens. Hannah kept her gaze locked with Neekil’s as he kissed her again, and she kissed him back. Her eyes crossed, so she closed them.
The kiss was slow, his hands on her back were warm. The taste of him was intoxicating, but it was the same draw as a really good dessert. She might crave it, but she wasn’t going to get lost in it. She just wanted to visit from time to time, maybe stay over on weekends.
By the time their kiss concluded, his siblings had passed them several times without comment or a snicker. Neekil threaded his fingers through her hair and combed the strands out. “So, do you want to see what they are up to?”
She brushed her fingers over her lips. The hot pulse that was still going through them was distracting. “Um, sure.”
He steered her back toward the house, shepherding her as if he was aware of her disorientation.
“I am not an invalid.”
“And yet, you don’t have night vision. We will just blame your unsteady gait on that.”
She elbowed him in the rib
s, and he laughed.
The dark elves were working with focus, and Hannah had to close her jaw with a snap. They had shaped the stone into a framework, and it appeared that they were using their hands to carve the stone.
Hannah lifted Neekil’s hand and examined his nails. She glanced up at him. “You can do that?”
“Sure. The interior walls of all of the clans are marked with engravings. We start when we are children and work our way up to the public spaces.”
Benko took a chunk of stone and pressed it to the area where the mantlepiece was taking shape. He whispered some words, the connection points changed colour, and the stone melted until it was one. He continued with the next piece and built out an impressive ledge that he then raked into shape with his hands.
The bulk design of the mantlepiece was already done.
Neekil murmured to her, “They have sunk the stone deep under the workspace to support the new mantlepiece. Underpinning things is an important part of our society. Nothing stands on its own.”
She responded softly, “So, if you are not accepted back by the XIA?”
He chuckled. “I suppose I will have to study for a real estate license. I might do that anyway. I believe we might make excellent partners.”
Hannah made a face, and then, she thought of something. “Do you think I should order dinner?”
He grinned. “I think that would be interesting. Barbeque.”
She lifted her phone and started looking through her options. Knowing how much Neekil ate and combined with how much energy the guys were expending, she ordered enough for fifteen adults and banana pudding. That was for her.
The company called her back. “Um, Miss Lee, about the address?”
“It is the Grunwald mansion. I will meet your driver outside the gate.”
There was relief. “Right. Great. See you in forty minutes.”
“Thank you.”
Hannah smiled. “Dinner in forty. I will head down in half an hour.”
Neekil was curious. “Why do you have to meet them? At home, the food comes to the door.”
“Home isn’t the most notorious building in the city.”
“Ah, but we fixed that.”
“Yeah, but until someone moves in here and starts living here, no one is going to believe it. So, until it has been made common knowledge, I will be hiking to the gate when I am here.” She smiled. “Unless I bring a picnic.”
He smiled. “And today was a busy day.”
She nodded and set her alarm for thirty minutes.
She sat down and watched the dark elves carving around the fireplace. It took a while, but she noted that the figures that were coarsely taking shape under their hands were men and women in close proximity.
She clapped her hand over her eyes. “Right. Of course.”
Neekil chuckled. “There are currently only three artworks created by dark elves on the surface of the earth. This will be the third and add ten million to the value of the house.”
She stared. “Is Morith tonguing the stone?”
“He’s carving in the fine details.”
She exhaled in a gust. “Well, there goes any anticipation of oral sex.”
Neekil looked at her, turned her toward him, and kissed her, demonstrating a non-damaging dexterity with his tongue. He raised his head and stroked her cheek. “Just for reference.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Noted.” Her heart was still pounding, and she knew that he knew it. There was something about having someone in your head even for a short period of time that stripped away pretense. He knew her attitude toward relationships, men, family, sex, and dessert.
She grinned. “But if anyone unzips for final details, I am out of here.”
He barked a laugh, and his brothers stared at him and then her for a moment. They smiled and got to work on the astonishing details that they were putting into the different tableaux that were being carved into the stone.
When her phone chirped, she got to her feet. “I will be back in a few minutes.”
Neekil joined her. “I will come with you.”
“It isn’t necessary.”
“I saw how much you ordered. You can use extra hands.” Neekil smiled and offered his arm.
She curled her hand around his forearm and let her left breast rub against his bicep. “I might not be able to carve stuff, but I can turn things to stone.”
He groaned and covered his eyes. “You are a blessing and a torment.”
“Shouldn’t have jumped into me then. Come on. The delivery is on the way.” Hannah pulled his arm, and he walked with her.
The winding lane that led to the main gate was a romantic walk. Hannah found that she had a smile on her lips the entire way to the pedestrian entrance.
“Why are you so happy?”
She chuckled. “I think we are having a second date.”
“Why are humans so hung up on the pace of things?”
Hannah opened the pedestrian gate with a key. “We don’t live long compared to a lot of other species that we exist with. We need to put an order to the short flicker of our existence.”
The car pulled up as she put on her human face. She greeted the driver, took the bags, and handed them to Neekil.
She locked up the door and ignored the flash of the camera. She had resumed her dark elf appearance as soon as they were back on the mansion property.
“So, your appearance doesn’t freak you out anymore?” Neekil paused, and she took his arm again.
“Naw. I just didn’t want it being splashed on the news until my family knew. Anyone else can go suck themselves.” She sighed. “If the company fires me, I will open my own business. If folks don’t want to do business with me, I now have the mayor’s contract and all his leads. So, I will wear the human face for takeout and dealing with delivery personnel. You know, the panicky ones. I don’t want to have to use the hammer on them to dissuade them from annoying pursuit.”
“Pursuit?”
She smiled. “How many times were you asked about dark elf women when you were on active duty?”
He winced. “Fair enough. I now understand what you are referring to.”
“So, you were asked.”
“Only two to five times per shift.”
She was grimly smug. Her honour was in her own hands. It was a good thing. Her hands had hammers.
Chapter Two
Hannah sat cross-legged on the floor with her plate, and she watched her new brothers discover the wonder of spicy barbeque sauce.
Morith and Benko moved on after a sampling. Hannah could almost see their pointy ears smoking.
The other two were egging each other on to see which one of them would give up first. Currently, they were tearing up, but it was a tie.
Hannah asked Neekil, “So, do you ever go to Taco! Taco! Taco!? Dem-rah is pretty good about spicy food.”
He was comfortably settled to a mid-range heat level on his pulled pork. “I eat there, and when I am with the guys, we do challenge shots of his special sauce.”
“What fun.” She laughed.
“How do you know about Dem-rah?” He nudged her with his elbow.
“Contractors eat there almost as often as the XIA.” She grinned. “We just frequent it during daylight hours.”
“So, you have always worked with extranaturals?”
“Sure. We have done a lot of business with them over the years. We also use a lot of extranatural tradespeople.” She shrugged. “If they win the bid and do good work, they get called next time there is a job, the same as a human tradesman.”
“That doesn’t cause you problems?”
She grinned. “Not when we insist on high-quality work and our trades make sure that we get it. It is a good relationship.”
“So, are you still involved in the company?”
She laughed. “I still have a stake in Lee Builders, Inc. All of us kids have a percentage. If we want to buy anyt
hing or do any flipping, we can use our profits for it, but we never touch the percentage.”
“Right. I don’t know much about home buying, but what is flipping?”
“Buying a crappy or badly maintained property and then stripping and repairing it to code for sale. Sometimes they are abandoned or foreclosures.”
“Ah. So, there is a market for strength and dexterity in building?”
“Sure.”
He looked toward his brothers. “What if they chose to remain in the city?”
She smiled. “They don’t want to join the XIA?”
He shook his head. “They don’t have my sense of adventure... yet.”
“Have they been away from the clan before?”
“No. Never on their own. After tonight, they will return home and think about this city and what it has to offer. If they like it, I will need to care for them and assist them in finding an occupation above ground.”
She glanced over at the mantlepiece’s progress. “I have a few ideas.”
“What are they?”
She suddenly noted the eager audience. “Well, there are always sculptures to be created for parks and memorials. If you can cut through stone like butter, that is definitely a desirable trait in a sculptor. There are basic stonework and carpentry that could be taught. The subs are also looking for grunt work, but most of them are day labour. There are sound ordinances that prohibit work at night, and it can get very hot here during the summer.”
The guys looked at each other and smiled. Aberan chuckled. “I would like to try growing flowers.”
Hannah whistled. “Right. So... what about you three?”
Morith grinned. “I like the sculpting idea.”
Benko nodded. “Me too.”
Krisfel said, “I would like to try my hand at keeping animals.”
Hannah whistled again. “Would you like to remain together?”
The guys nodded.
“If we are successful, we will work toward gaining our own domiciles.” Morith smiled.