“I thought we were,” she responds with a shrug. She seems completely unbothered by the fact that this house is flickering around us. “He lives just down the hill.”

Pushing aside the fact that Isla is apparently fine with casual breaking and entering, I try to focus back on the house. There’s a pressure building in my head and it feels like I’m moving through heavy jello as I head to the door. My movements are slow, delayed, like I’m being stuck in place.

This house is sticky.

I should check the loft where Owen slept — sleeps, maybe? When we last talked I was under the impression he was still living here — but nausea is rolling thick through my stomach, and the idea of climbing the ladder seems impossible. I’m stuck to the floor where I stand, and I’m struck with the absolute certainty that should I attempt to climb the loft, I’ll simply slide off like oil on water.

“Does this… does anything feel odd to you? Or different?” I choke out, reaching for the door. Isla steps away and down the cement steps and lands in the grass, and I stumble out after her. I feel like I’m pushing through a membrane to leave the house, but once my feet are on the stairs, I can breathe again.

I almost drop to my knees to gulp in the briney air, but I don’t go that far. I’m not that dramatic.

“No. I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been here. Do you feel magic? I mean, you did magic here, didn’t you?” Isla says, unwrapping a small packet of ginger biscuits that she must have dug out of a pantry. She bites into one with a loud crack, and then spits it out immediately, looking bereft.

“It’s stale,” she says quietly, like this is the biggest issue we’re facing today.

I survey the house behind me. The windows look like they’ve moved slightly to the left. The stain of dirt against the white roughcast is almost too deliberate. It’s my childhood home in broad strokes, but wrong in the details, like someone tried to recreate it from a picture but went too fast. Everything is just a bit squinty.

“Cormac never did magic like that,” I respond, shaking my head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s probably just my… condition.” I turn toward the sea and take another deep breath.

It’s a lie, though. My visions have never been like that before. I never feel them at all, not unless I’m dreaming. “Alright, where’s Kit’s house, then?”

Isla leads us to the sloping track that winds down the hill, skirting just along the edge of the cliff as it snakes around to the base of the shoreline. Cars don’t typically use this track, but I remember bumping along in Cormac’s old jeep one rainy night, speeding down to John Andrew’s house because he’d broken his leg and had called us for help.