"Nothing overtly magical," he says. "The wards on the house, I set myself, and planted protective species along the borders of the garden, but there was nothing there to precede it."

Black Elm looked like it should carry some kind of enchantment--a portal to another world at the back of the hall closet, a shelf full of ancient and arcane tomes in the library or a chest of strange artifacts in the corner of the attic. That had always been its blessing and Darlington's curse, the thing that molded him as solidly as anything his grandfather did or that the Layabouts hadn't. If he'd grown up in the sun-soaked West like Alex, in a house of clean lines or suburban conformity, maybe his life would have taken a different track. He'd never really know, and he hadn't ever wanted to.

"The magic of it is in the history, really," he adds. "That it was built, and lived in, and imbued over the years with everything my family was and is. And could be."