Home
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Jim Butcher. He is an amazing autor. I am the copycat.
To rebuild your life is hard work, but I am kind of used to hard work by now. And at least you can set your own timetable when you don't have a raging demon or something even more grotesque hanging over your shoulder, trying to destroy everything.
After I evened out Mabs debt with Nicodemus I planned to stay in town, after all I had promised my little girl to be her dad, and that was not a promise I planned on breaking. The decision had actually been a simple one, if I was not going to hide anymore; I had to do everything in my power to create a secure home. I had a family now; we may be a strange little family, with a wizard, a vampire, a spirit, a temple dog, a big tomcat and a little girl. But nonetheless family! And I was damned if they could not even feel safe closest to me.
The first decision was kind of the hardest, where should I choose to settle down. I knew Chicago inside-out, literally had I walked every street, touched every building in the city centre. It was several factors to consider, it had to connect to a safe place in Nevernever so that path could be both used and protected and the house in Reality should not be too far from the Carpenters, so that Maggie could easy wander between her two homes and families. And most important it had to be placed so neighbours or other innocent bystanders could not be hurt if someone tried to destroy it, I had a hunch that that was going to happen sometimes in the future from the experience of my recent years. My old boarding-house had attacks from daemons, zombies, magic and lastly fire. As I mused about my different criteria it was one more that stood out, it had to be my own, no renting this time. You know threshold and all that; I wanted to have all possible protection I could get. The money should not be a problem, the diamonds left a shuddering amount of money, even when I had shared them with everyone that deserved or needed them.
After a few months when both I and all my friends had looked into houses for sale, looked like everywhere I started to think I should just give it up. Remembering one time when I felt absolutely misplaced going on a house-viewing and the broker talked on and on about secure neighbourhoods and low crime rates. Unknowing that I was a crime-magnet that would destroy all those nice numbers if I settled down there. I had all but given up hope on ever finding something settable.
One early spring day with surprisingly dry weather, Michael called and told me in an exited voice that he had found the perfect house for me. I felt really sceptical because perfect was a very hard thing to achieve, but after all it was Michael so I promised to come to his house as soon as I could, to let him show me whatever perfect he had found.
I was surprised to find that not only was Michael waiting on me when I turned around the corner to the Carpenters home as my rented car hacked and its engine died... Again.
Murphy, Butters, Will and my brother, all sat together in the carpenter garden chattering away happily with each other.
"Come on"
Michael said as soon as I was close enough. They rose and went out the house's white fence gate together. We did not jump into the cars as I had expected but instead walked for about 15 minutes to the edge of the nice suburban area where Michael lived with his family.
Soon we arrived to what looked like a very old and very unkempt, enormous garden at the end of the road, right where the streetlights ended. It was like a pocket of darkness in the approaching evening, like no modern technology dared to touch this place.
Michael pushed the half rotten log gate to the side with a huff and went in, cane in hand. The rest of us followed him slowly with the whole scale of facial expressions from highly sceptical (me) to calm knowing (Butter) Soon we could spot what mostly looked like a haunted house between the shrubs and trees in the darkness. That is unfortunately the nicest description I can give to the shack in front of us, I don't know the first thing about houses and even I could see it was far from liveable.
In the back garden stood an overgrown hedge of something pine like, standing like guardians bending slightly over the house towards us, the house itself was made of old granite piled on top of each other, one and a half floor high with a tiled roof sloping down on both sides, the stones only interruption was the 3 gaping empty windows and the heavy oak door in the middle of the front.
I moved to one of the corners to be able to see the side of it, just in case the rest of it was as much ruin as the rest. The walls stood strong with some more empty windows, in the back was a small strip of tufty grass between two heavy trees and the high hedge. The path between them went to a hole where a backdoor had once been before if fell out of its frame and now lay on the grassy ground, abandoned and alone. Everything smelled of mould and moist.
I looked at Michael and the rest that had started their discussion again as soon we got inside the gate.
"What is this place?" I said at the same time as I started stretching out my wizard senses to take a better look at it and at the same time be ready for an attack. My senses told me this place was old, grumpy and did not like visitors, but to my surprise I did not feel the vibe of evil I had expected, only pride, loneliness and sadness. Actually it almost reminded me a bit of Demonreach... It felt strange. Very strange.
"We will rebuild it" Michael said in a calm voice as his eyes expertly swept over everything from the roof that was probably in dire need of a retiling to the sturdy empty outer walls.
"What!" I asked again, mortified "You know damn well I can't build anything, especially not a house! And as my life has been to this point, the world will probably start burning around me before I even get a chance to start!"
"We will all do it together." Butter said.
The small man now had a straighter back and a new light in his eyes that hadn't shone in a long time, his new responsibilities seemed to fit him just fine. I made eye contact with all the other present and saw them nodding in approval, it seemed like this was something they had decided on by themselves.
Butters continued; "Think about it Harry, your conditions was to not risk bystander and still be in the city and close to Michaels place. How many houses do you think it is that fit those specifics, and by building it yourself you should get a threshold that is strong as he...ck"
He smiled at his near slip of tongue. I smiled back at the man; he had a point about the threshold. But something still seemed strange, why had I not known of this place before. Sure it was outside the grit I made to little Chicago but not that far.
Michael came to stand close to me again, saying in a hushed voice, "Uriel pointed it out to me, I don't know exactly what its history is, but we should be able to change the place with our joined effort. The grounds work is sound and the walls sturdy so it should not be so much work that we can't finish it." I nodded and a small ray hope lit inside my chest despite my effort to crush it, this may actually work!
To find out who owned the place was a workload of its own. Luckily I had lot of practise at that kind of work. It was still early spring when I got the house for a ridicules small sum from a shady firm that had owned it and filed it away in a forgotten drawer in a back office. Almost before the ink had dried on my contract the place swarmed with my friends who started taking apart the parts that had gone bad. Mostly the wooden parts as the bearing house structure still was steady, build of heavy boulders of granite. Who actually builds a house in granite?
I had started prepared a lot of things by my own as soon as I decided to go through with this crazy plan. I began with carve small seals and runes all over the walls, one on every stone, they wowed into each other and looked a lot like a chain mail when I finally took a step back and admired the finished work. I had gotten blisters on my hands from the heavy work with the chisels and would probably never have been able to finish in time if Molly had not offered her help. But if I had done this thing all right it should prevent the place from catching fire, keep the stones strong, to safeguard from evil intentions and lots of other stuff.
My year at Deamonreach had not been wasted; I had studied Merlins guards for months and definitely got a bigger understanding for it. I will not lie, this was not close to Merlin's level but it was the most complex thing I had ever completed, it made me proud. Next step for me was to put a ward on every buildings part they fastened, weaving the wards inside the very fabric of the house. It too was hard work but the whole rebuilding went faster than I had expected, mostly because Michael directed everyone and kept trace so all the material we needed was delivered in time. Not to mention he had helped me and several other of us with a considerate strength and agility to do some of the heavy lifting.
The house even had a small basement with an old wood fed heating boiler that transferred the warmth it produced all over the house with a kind of water system. It was self-preserved so no gas or fiddle electronic that could blow up just by being close to me. As we learned more of all these different things I felt more and more that this house had been made for a wizard from the beginning.
Next to the boiler room in the basement there were two small rooms that had been used to store a year's need of fire logs. One of the rooms I rebuild and put up extra protection in to make it work in the same way as my old basement, complete with a pentagram on the floor. The hardest part was to build an escape tunnel out in the backyard, digging it between the thick roots, for this work I found out that wolf pawns was incredibly fast. It was necessary to build the tunnel; I was not going to be trapped again. We also put in new steel doors to both the back and front frames, changing out the old murky oak doors. As one part in the building after another became rebuilt I was able to start to see in my fantasy how the finished house would look.
The ground floor would have an office, kitchen, an extra bedroom, bathroom. (With hot water thanks to the century old boiler!) The second floor would fit mine and Maggi's bedrooms and a panic-room, like the one at Michael's place, except this would have an escape shaft out on the roof so one could climb down from the house in one of the big trees standing close to the backside. I was not going to be trapped! All paint was mixed with ghost dust to make the house secure from that kind of attack too.
Even the garden we took great care of, the murky logs in the low fence trailing all around the garden was replaced with new ones from Deamonreach, we also took one ship with soil from the island that we spread out in a big circle in the garden to work as more protection. Both to boost my magic and to be able to activate a direct link to the island if that were ever needed. I really tried to rake my brain for all kinds of threats we could face and how to defend against them. Functionality came first, I was not planning to die in an assault. Been there done that, not a great experience.
I could feel the energy in the place slowly changing during the sweaty summer days we worked hard to finish everything. The place still did not like strangers, but everything and everyone likes to being looked after and taken care of from time to time. The place was not a Genie Lokus, but it was close. My intuition told me that one day in the future I was likely to see it change into one.
I opened a way to the Nevernever at the end of summer and was not surprised to find it go to winter territory. After all I had put lot of both my energy and the winter mantles energy into this building, both magically and otherwise. No matter where it had connected too before all our changes in reality had also changed the Way. I worked around a week on the other side together with Molly and my fairy godmother to make that spot in Nevernever hostile to strangers but to still have a safe house if I or someone close to me ever needed to run there. As we worked I remembered without pleasure the insectoid things in the flower garden that tried to kill me when I fled to Nevernever from my old boarding-house. That had not been a nice experience.
Every evening I was tired as hell after all the magic and energy I put into the house and the surroundings, but it was a good tiredness of a work well done that let me sleep dreamlessly. The days we did not work on the house we kept the streets safe, answering calls from the Paranet and did some preventive hits and rescue missions on some of the Fomor-bases in the area. No one should think they could kidnap children in my town and get away with it!
Just the rumours of my presence in town had driven a lot of the Fomor away, the talk of a new knight of the cross helped to. Between all actions I had long conversations with Bob and Nala. That was the name my second daughter had chosen for herself. She learned at an exceeding speed, now free of the cramped space in my mind she could really stretch her wings, figuratively speaking. And to say the least, Bob was happy as a child to have another spirit of intellect to speak to. I had not known how alone he felt in his exile from the Nevernever.
All in all I felt more peaceful than I had done in a long time. Maggie and Mouse were visiting me regularly and Molly did what she could to keep Mab off of me, no one was ripping my throat out or tried to start a war. I knew that it could not last, but that didn't matter as much as it had before. I now would have a safe place to back away to.
One evening in one of the last warm late summer days I had invited everyone that had helped me renovating the house to a party to celebrate the finished work! The carpenter's children, Wills little cub and Maggie had tumbled round the garden all afternoon, as small mountains of food had slowly disappeared into hungry mouths. Now all children snored inside the living room in a big pile on Mouse's thick rug in front of the fireplace together with the dog.
The rest of us sat and talked about small stuff and I felt something close to serene peace. A rosebush that Murphy had donated from her own garden smelled sweet in the evening air and I was looking in awe at my home. My Home! It was amazing, I had had a hand on every stone, every log and tile. Even the windows glass was engraved to not shatter and to keep magic out.
Suddenly I heard a car coming down the road in the quiet evening and going to a halt in front of the house, the car was hidden from my view by some of the shrubs which purpose was to block the garden from view from snipers and spies, there were no place for a good shoot from the street. The sound of the engine was familiar. I looked around but did not see that any of my friends were missing. As I went up and carefully got closer to the road everyone did the same. I started to feel nervous and prepared a spell in my mind, ready to be thrown. Something was of and my paranoia painted picture after picture of horrible scenarios for me.
Out on the street stood Mike, my amazing car mechanic, next to him was a grey VW Beetle. I just stared at him, at the car and to everyone that stood behind me smiling.
"Happy birthday Harry" Murphy said in a soft voice giving my hand a gentle squeeze. My chest felt too tight, it was still at least a month to Halloween and they had all done way too much for me already! I tried to say something but noting came out of my mouth except a strange sound, their smiles became wider and soon turned into laughter at my stupid expression.
"Thank you! Thank you all" I said. Finally able to talk, I beamed at Mike as I went out to touch my new car as the last sunrays disappeared behind the roof at my new home.
The end!