The house rises like something from a pop-up book, a narrow Georgian rowhouse with cinnamon-colored stucco in four levels, all fudged together with gobs of white paint that drip down unevenly like icing. The roof is trimmed in red and green scalloping. Warm yellow light pours through tall casement windows, illuminating the frosting ledges to show off how they sparkle, and all the way at the top, faint gray smoke puffs from two (out of four) chimneys in the shape of hearts. The whole thing inflates as far as the two flanking buildings will allow, bursting until the squeeze is so tight that there’s a loud, painful scraping of bricks that makes me wish my eardrums would pop. Only once half the shingles have peeled from the Blue Moose Café and all of Teller City Trading Company’s shutters have fallen off does his creation give an audible sigh and fall to rest.

It’s a gingerbread house. An inedible, goddamn gingerbread house.

My throat is dry. “What.”

I check the street to see if passersby caught any of this spectacle (no one is around, thankfully), then turn to him. He’s wearing a Holiday Realty badge on a lanyard around his neck, clipboard in hand. “Let’s have a look!” he says brightly.

My scowl burns holes in the ozone. “This is not a Hawaiian villa. This is the opposite of a Hawaiian villa.”

“I think my magic wants you to live here instead.”

“Your magic, or you? I don’t want to live here! I thought you were supposed to grant my wishes.”

“I did! But I made it better. You’ll thank me, I promise.”

“I will not.”

I don’t appreciate the euphoric glitter in his great, big, I’m-loving-everything-about-this eyes as he forcibly leads me on a tour. A gate materializes in the fencing, which goes cling! as he pushes through, arm looped in mine to prevent me from running away. “It’s a new build, got state-of-the-art plumbing and a Never Runs Out water heater. Catslide roof in the back.” He gestures, grinning dazzlingly. I’m distracted by the cute swoop of his hair, how the ends curl. “Multi-pane sash windows with timber pilasters. What a nice touch! The architect considered a thatched roof but deemed it too ostentatious.”

I emit a murderous grunt.

Christmas string lights, large 1960s bulbs, zigzagging across the front of the house blink intermittently. “I only put up four visible-to-humans strands,” he says, “because I didn’t want to overwhelm you. I did add a few extra strands that only I can see.”

“Extra?”

“Yes. Thirty yards of lights invisible to mortal eyes.”

I poke at one of the enormous Dots candies bordering the pathway up to the front door, which is painted red, with a gold mail slot (made redundant by the milk truck toy, which he’s perched on the fence post and fashioned into a mailbox) and a green wreath with the letter H on it. I don’t ask if the H is for Hughes or Hall because if he gives me the wrong answer I might kick him.