Light Dragons 03 - Sparks Fly

stop a few yards away from the closest end of the house.
    Baltic squinted at the house for a moment before opening the car door. “It needs some work.”
    “Needs some work?” My mouth hung open as I stared at the looming monstrosity before me. Oh, it was a mansion all right, and it looked as though it had seen every single moment of time that had passed since it was built three hundred years before.
    “Told you it has mice,” Maura said with grim satisfaction as Savian, wordless at the sight of the house, slid out of the backseat, pulling her after him. “Probably rats, too. And given the state of the house, I wouldn’t be surprised to see badgers, foxes, and bears inhabiting it, as well.”
    “Cool,” Brom said as he stared wide-eyed at it. “It looks haunted. What’s behind it? That looks like a building back there. I’m going to go see.”
    I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the steering wheel for a moment, wondering if it was possible to gather everyone back up to whisk them away to England and civilization.
    “Mate?” Baltic stood with my door open, his hand outstretched for mine.
    I looked up at him, then over to the house. I have no idea what the original color of the paint was, but now it was basically the color of putty. Mildewed putty on which a dog had thrown up. The ground-floor paned windows had tall, elegant dimensions that you see in homes of its age; the second floor bore gabled windows of a lesser stature, but topped with ornate hemispheres. The upper floor had more gabled windows, but without the prettiness, obviously belonging to the servants’ quarters. The roof, dotted with chimneys of varying colors, was solid green with moss, as were the gables. Unkempt, scraggly grass the color of straw surrounded the house, along with some depressed-looking bare trees that drooped claustrophobically over the far end of the house, no doubt making the rooms at that end of the house extremely dark.
    It looked like a deranged special effects master’s idea of a house sitting over a portal to hell.
    “You don’t seriously expect us to live there,” I told Baltic as I slowly emerged from the safety of the car. “If it’s not infested with mice and bears, or haunted-both of which are frankly quite likely-then it’s got to be nothing but a giant mold and mildew pit, and completely uninhabitable.”
    “You like fixing things up,” he said, his fingers twining through mine in a gesture that I suspected owed more to a desire to keep me from running away than one of affection. “This house will satisfy your need to be domestic.”
    I tore my horrified gaze from the house and let it rest on him. “You’re joking, right?”
    “Consider it a challenge. Or if you like, practice for how you will furnish Dauva once it is completed. Ah. There are Pavel and the others.”
    “I found a building I can use,” Brom said, running around the house toward us, as happy and excited as a boy could be. “It’s got a big door and windows, and everything. There’s no glass in the windows, but that’s OK. It even has a sink, although there’s something brown that growled at me living in it.”
    “This is a nightmare, isn’t it?” Maura said, staring at the house with the expression I had a feeling was also on my face. “I’m having a nightmare to end all nightmares, and this is just the capper on that, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a house I’d use the word ‘rancid’ about, but this one fulfills just about every meaning of the word,” Savian said, likewise staring at it.
    I was about to tell Baltic that there was no way I would ever consent to live in such a horrible parody of a house, when one of the two double front doors opened up, and a man emerged onto a short, split verandah.
    “There you are,” Constantine said, gesturing grandly toward the house. “Welcome to Valmieras!”

Chapter Ten
    “Y ou did this on purpose!”
    Faded and tattered wallpaper rustled forlornly in the wake of an agitated dragon.
    “Not in the sense you mean. Baltic-”
    “You went behind my back to call that bastard traitor!”
    A little breeze came in through the window I’d thrown open, but even the fresh air wasn’t strong enough to battle the horrible combined scent of mildew, abandoned house, and things I’d really rather not identify.
    “Ysolde, my beloved one, would you like me to strike him down?” a disembodied voice asked. “He looks as if he is about to do you bodily