The bus gave a reluctant cough before coming to a full stop at the edge of a crooked wooden sign that read:
WELCOME TO WESTWOOD – POPULATION: A LITTLE MAGICAL
Please don't feed the gargoyles. Again.
The sign was hand-carved, slightly singed and entirely unhelpful.
Elara Finch squinted out the fogged-up window, her breath making half-moon shapes on the glass. The weather, it seemed, had conspired with fate to make sure her arrival was as miserable and dramatic as possible.
The bus doors wheezed open with a sigh that felt oddly final…like a retiring butler bidding farewell after a particularly disappointing party.
Elara steps down and into a puddle that had been waiting just for her. Her left foot sank in with a squelch that could have scored a horror film.
"Perfect," she mutters, glaring at the puddle like it owed her money. Her sock squelched in her boot with every step.
The driver…a bored-looking troll in a plastic rain poncho and a cap that read "Don't Ask Me Anything"...gave her a grunt that might have been sympathetic or amusing. Or indigestion. Hard to say exactly.
"Cheers," she says flatly.
The bus gives a resigned hiss in response and trundles off into the mist, leaving her alone, with only her regrets, her possessions and the unknown.
Elara adjusts the strap on her satchel and takes a long deep breath. The air here was different. It smelled of damp leaves, wild herbs, and something faintly sweet…like honey and lightning. Comforting in a way that made no sense.
Westwood didn't look like a town so much as a bedtime story that had gone feral. The cobblestone path ahead curved like a question mark, framed by hedges that trimmed themselves and trees that leaned toward one another like they were whispering forest gossip.
Floating lanterns bobbed above the road, glowing golden and warm, occasionally bumping into each other like tipsy fireflies. Somewhere, a wind chime laughed.
Elara blinks.
This was not a city. This was not a bureaucratic environment, nor broken copier machines or overcaffeinated spell registrars yelling about font sizes on application forms.
This was...
"Whimsical in a vaguely threatening way," she mutters, trudging forward.
She hoists her satchel higher on her shoulder. The weight of her belongings and the life she'd left behind…pulls at her with every step. Inside the bag a slightly charred journal (casualty of her last spell gone wrong), a travel mug still leaking ink (don't ask), and a brass key wrapped in waxed paper that smelled faintly of lilacs and, suspiciously, danger and the letter with instructions on how to get here.
The buildings of Westwood emerged slowly through the mist. There was a teardrop-shaped apothecary with a crooked chimney, a bakery that seemed to exhale flour with every breeze, and a shop called "Enchanted Housekeeping Services" where broomsticks hovered outside like sales associates on break.
One house had tiny wings and flapped them occasionally, as if bored or out of frustration that it could not lift off.
Elara stops in front of a red post-box and its opening has teeth. Yawning, burping, and muttering, "Nothing for you today, love. Try again tomorrow."
Freaked out, she walks away faster.
There was no one on the street. Not really. But she felt watched. The town had a hush about it. A pregnant pause.
She turns a corner and almost trips over a garden gnome who scowls at her and hobbles off with a cane fashioned from a liquorice stick.
Elara rubs her eyes.
"What have I gotten myself into?" she whispers to herself.
As if summoned, a voice floats from the mist.
"Well, finally. I was starting to think you were going to ghost us like your Aunt Isadora's third husband."
Elara jumps. Her satchel sliding off her shoulder with a thump.
She spun around…but there was no one there.
Just an empty bench, making her wonder if the benches here in Westwood talk.
Nope, not empty.
On the bench sits a sleek black cat with eyes like old gold and a coat that shimmers faintly, like someone had woven moonlight into velvet.
It flicks its tail with the kind of disdain only cats and tax auditors can truly master.
"You...you just talked," Elara stutters.
The cat rolls its eyes. "And you just stated the obvious. What a pair we make."
Elara opens and closes her mouth. Words were apparently on strike.
"I'm Moony. You're Elara Finch, great-niece to Isadora Finch, suspended from the Metropolitan Library and recent cause of a dessert-based explosion involving a ghostly goose and five counts of mild arson and chaos."
"The goose was provoked and I did not summon it," she adds quickly.
"So the egg salad sandwich and rich donor were a fluke? Or is that just another mishap or misfortune of being in the wrong place."
Elara scowls. "You're awfully snarky for a cat."
"I'm awfully snarky for anyone. Comes with being right most of the time. Now, if you're done gawking, follow me. Your inheritance awaits."
Moony jumps down and begins trotting off into the mist. A path uncurls ahead of him, cobblestones knitting together out of moss and fog.
Elara hesitates.
Looking back. The road behind her has already faded into the swirling mist. The city was still an option, she supposed. She could go back to the noise and the bills and the mildly cursed refrigerator in her old flat.
Or she could follow a talking cat to claim a haunted house left by a possibly-dead, possibly-missing, possibly-deranged great-aunt with a flair for chaos and glitter.
She picks up her satchel.
"This is how horror stories start," she mutters under her breath.
"This is how good horror stories start," Moony calls back.
The mist parted ahead of them, revealing a house that looks like it had grown from the very bones of the earth.
It was three stories tall, made of honey-coloured stone and twisting ivy. The roof was a patchy thatch, the windows blinking sleepily like the house was just waking up from a long slumber.
The chimney puffed out smoke rings in the shape of cats in different poses.
The garden had passed whimsical and landed somewhere between chaotic neutral and outright menace. Lavender bushes argued with thistles. Night-blooming roses twined around what looked suspiciously like a sundial made from enchanted spoons.
Foxes played cards under a yew tree.
A brass plaque on the gate read:
13 WESTWOOD LANE – FINCH PROPERTY
TRESPASSERS MAY BE HEXED INTO TEAPOTS
Moony leaps onto the gatepost. "Home sweet haunted home."
Elara stares at the property. "This place looks like it's held together by moss and sarcasm."
"Add fairy glue and ancestral spite and you've got the full blueprint. Come on. Before the welcome mat gets snippy."
The gate creaks open with a sound like a sigh and possibly a complaint about back pain.
Elara steps through.
The garden is buzzing with energy. It crawls up her arms, tickling the base of her skull. Like the land itself had been waiting.
The door swings open before she touches it.
Inside, the house is not empty. It is aware.
Sunlight streams through windows that hadn't been cleaned in decades but still manages a golden glow. Dust motes swirl around like lazy fairies.
Bookshelves groan under the weight of leather-bound volumes, crystal jars filled with suspicious substances, and framed photographs that blink. One of the younger Isadora, windblown on a broomstick with a cocktail in hand, winking at her.
The furniture is all mismatched and proud of it: velvet chairs, a sofa that growls when she gets too close, a footstool shaped like a sleeping wolf.
And there, above the fireplace, sits a snow globe.
Her snow globe.
She steps closer, breath caught in her chest. Inside, the miniature house nestled inside looked exactly like the one she was standing in, though a much newer home, one that looked well kept.
And with closer inspection, in the window…a tiny figure.
Watching her.
She touches the glass of the snow globe in wonder and awe.
It is warm.
"Are you sure this place is mine?" she asks quietly.
Moony hops onto the mantle. "Isadora left it to you. Said you'd come when the time was right. Also said you'd bring trouble."
"I am not trouble."
"And I'm a vegetarian. The lies we tell ourselves."
Elara turns slowly, taking in the room again.
The house hums. Not loudly. But lowly. A thrum in the floorboards. A murmur in the walls. Like the house is listening and alive.
The front door closed behind her with a soft click.
It sounded like it was relieved.
"Welcome to Westwood, Elara Finch," Moony says, his tail curling with satisfaction.
Elara tightens her grip on her bag.
She doesn't know if she belongs here. She doesn't even know what "here" really is.
But for the first time in a long time, that uncertainty didn't feel like fear.
It felt like a possibility.
And something old, and magical, and undeniably stirred in the walls.
The adventure has only now begun.