Ok, so I’ll admit I was definitely blind to a lot of this place’s happenings at first.
Admittedly a bunch of that was intentional. Ya’know, it happens. You just figure that people are messing with you with some kind of running joke or meme.
Anyway, when did I figure out that I wasn’t living someplace normal with quirky, but otherwise normal people? I’m glad you asked.
It was the first new moon, two weeks after I moved in. So far, I’d mostly been settling in, trying to figure out what an alternative to this WWAN card would be that wouldn’t cost me a small fortune, since apparently the cable company couldn’t or wouldn’t service this place.
It was weird. I just keep talking to different people. Several of them refused to acknowledge the address was even an option in their system. Others said it was there, but was hardlocked due to a special code and I’d have to talk with their legal department via mail if I wanted answers. Others further said that the address was blocked by the city and I’d have to take it up with the relevant department.
In short I was chasing my tail and still being blind to a lot of the obvious hints. So the great big obvious decided to pay a visit.
The screaming started about the time that the sunset. And I don’t mean like a single scream and then it ended. No, this went for so long, I wondered how the person making it was even still making sound.
I tore open my door to the hallway. The sound was clearly coming from Warren’s apartment. If anything, just opening the door made it 10 times louder. I wanted to wince at it. It sounded like the kind of scream that a person might make while being slowly quartered by wild tortoises while being held over fire kept at just below cauterizing temperature.
I went over to the door and tried to open it. The door didn’t budge even a fraction of an inch in the frame.
The screaming continued and I turned to go back into my apartment to grab my phone and call 911. Lucy was standing behind me. She gestured towards my apartment and we both retreated inside.
“I have to call 911,” was what I managed.
“Why?” Lucy asked.
I looked over at her, my phone already in hand, like she had just asked why a vehicle couldn’t be driven home after having been struck by two trains going opposite directions.
“It’s his monthly change. Didn’t the super tell you about getting silencers?” Lucy said, matter-of-factly.
I did recall the old man saying something about that, but I’d never really thought about it. It was just another one of those ‘details’ that I’d skimmed over.
“Well, yeah, but…” I started as the scream seemed to intensify for a moment, despite the fact that any normal person would have long since run out of breath and passed out from whatever pain this must be causing Warren.
“But nothing. I can dampen it a bit, but I’m no mage, so silencing isn’t one of my tricks,” Lucy said and snapped her fingers.
A bit more red mist appeared and the volume of the scream dampened considerably. It was still audible, but at a fraction of a fraction of what it had been.
It was strangely enough in this moment that I finally got that I was living someplace not normal. I like to think I took it pretty well.
I looked at Lucy. She looked at me.
“So you’re really a djinn?” I managed after a few moments.
“Yup. Keeps things interesting, but not as interesting as with Warren around. I was a bit surprised to find a lycanthrope in a safe house,” Lucy said, flopping down on my couch. I heard it creak slightly as she did so.
“Why’s that?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around all that I had heard, but hadn’t actually bothered to process in any sort of detail.
“Well, most lycanthropes tend to stick with their own. Prepared spaces for dealing with the change, that sort of thing. And Warren coming from a noble house, well, that means something,” Lucy gestured vaguely.
“What? Like kicked out maybe?” I took a stab in the dark.
“Exactly! It doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but it does still happen,” Lucy said. “By the way, any more of that strawberry fizz? He’s going to be about another hour or so before he’s done screaming and I’d just as soon not wait it out in my place.”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Over the course of the next hour, Lucy filled me in on all the details I’d managed to gloss over. I did my best to not look too shocked or amazed at the various details.
Apparently safe houses were a kind of for-rent haven for all beings supernatural and even magical people. Even fae (hence no ironwork on the staircase or the doors). The exact mechanism was a kind of artifact that every safe house had. It wasn’t hard to make, but it was special enough that the makers of them didn’t have enough for all the different places that all beings supernatural might want to reside (especially among baseline humans). So the safe houses got a kind of perceptual filter on them. A kind of “if you know it’s there, you know about it, but otherwise, it’s just a kind of blindspot”.
I asked about how it works with cameras (since I had since looked it up on a few map apps and seen just as Sean had said - a pile of old bricks and some trees). Lucy wasn’t sure about the details, but it’s more or less the same with baseline tech. It’s not perfect, but it’s still a kind of camouflage that is uninteresting enough to anyone looking that they aren’t going to stop and look.
Which of course made me question how I’d managed to find this place.
It wasn’t until Warren had stopped screaming and a light, polite knock at the door that I got my second helping of obvious.
The being on the other side of the door was unlike any that I’d ever seen in pictures. There could be no doubt that it looked like a weasel (or perhaps a dry otter), except enlarged to Warren’s normal size and looking rather more carnivorous (given the rather more obvious teeth and claws). If I hadn’t known, I might have mistaken him for a strange derivative of a giant honey badger (something that would have been equally terrifying to find on your doorstep).
But there was also no doubt that it was Warren, even though he appeared to be incapable of speaking. It was the way this dire weasel carried himself. There was a kind of slicked back pride and capability that was undeniably felt about it/him.
However, this image was not helped by Lucy, who hopped up from the couch and dashed over to pet weasel-Warren. Despite the fur and clearly different form, Warren appeared exasperated by the act, but stood there, letting Lucy do her thing, simply looking at me as one does when they are faced with a force of nature that they can do nothing about, but clearly still feel wronged in some way.
Lucy and weasel-Warren wandered off shortly after, all of my bubbling questions for Warren needing to wait until he had a voice capable of speaking to me with.
As the door shut behind them, I chose this particular moment to have a mini panic attack.
Somehow, I had now figured out that I, a baseline human, had managed to find a rental in a building that didn’t exist because of magic, living next door to a magical being and across the hall from an actual lycanthrope. All kinds of questions flooded my mind.
What if I was found out?
How had I found out about this place in the first place?
Why was I able to see it?
What was this artifact?
Weren’t weres or lycanthropes the type to feast on stray humans?
What was to stop weasel-Warren from killing me?
Who or perhaps what else might be in this building with me?
Would I even make it through the month?
These were just a fraction of the questions that went through my mind, which was at least partially busy looking up gruesome horror images from movies and various books and pointing them out as “look, see, this will probably happen to you, or maybe like this”. Helpful bits of wisdom and caring like that.
I didn’t start to calm down until one particular thought hit me.
Did it matter if I was baseline or not since I had found this place?
Well, the lease hadn’t said anything against it. In fact, the lease had been very explicit - all tenants were to respect all other tenants.
And given that I had signed in what I now realized was my own blood, if even a fraction of a fraction of what was in my library about magic and wizards and the supernatural was true, then that meant that a contract like that couldn’t be broken. Not easily and certainly not without serious repercussions. And I’d wager that lease forfeiture was just the start on a contract like that.
So I started taking stock of what I knew, or thought I knew.
Somehow, I was able to see this place. Check.
This place was called a safe house and it was made possible by some kind of artifact, of which there are a number of, but not too many. Check.
My next door neighbor is a djinn. Well, only kinda check there because I need to go read up on something more than the Wikipedia listing and my D&D monster manual.
My across-the-hall neighbor is a lycanthrope that is apparently some kind of noble who is cast out for one reason or another (or possibly on holiday). Again, only kinda check because I still have no idea of all of what I’m dealing with.
The old man I met is apparently not the landlord, but the superintendent of the property. And thinking back to the way he was holding his cane, it made me wonder if there’s something else going on there too. I won’t worry about him for now. Supers and landlords are best kept at a distance. Useful when you need to deal with them, but otherwise, nope.
Silencers… Ok, so I probably can’t get my hands on whatever it is they’re talking about, but what if I came up with a non-magical solution? I mean, I’ve worked with clients on creating quiet zones away from equipment before. Usually, the solution involves a lot of insulation. That’s probably not going to work here (not to mention would be outside of my budget). So what’s that leave?
--
“It’s a what?”
“It’s a prototype silencer,” I said.
“It’s a stereo that you appear to have hooked up to an o-scope, a computer, and a couple of microphones. Cheap ones by the looks of it,” Warren said, looking at the set-up skeptically.
“Look, if it works, all you have to do is leave it plugged in,” I tried.
“I’m not fond of the idea of someone being able to listen to my private words,” Warren said, a small scowl forming.
“That’s why it’s one way. Those mics feed the o-scope the waveform so it can generate the negative. It’s technically called acoustic damping, but you crank up the volume enough on the stereo with decent quality speakers, and it’s basically induced silence,” I explained.
“Won’t it lag behind me?” Warren asked.
“A bit, but only once you pass a certain decibel range, it’ll kick in,” I said.
“I still don’t like it,” Warren muttered.
“Try it for a cycle and get back to me. If it works, I’ll see if I can make you something a bit more refined,” I tried a client facing smile.
Warren looked over it again and back at me.
“Very well. And Sam… thank you.”