“Bastard.” The notification sound was the same in each world. A light cheerful jingle that reignited the flames of agitation in Michael’s heart. Someone had replied to his Board Call posting. If it were scammer, he would flail the man. If it were Alexander, he would flail the man.

“Hold on you little shit.” Michael hissed at the boggart who was trying to wiggle free from its binds. He stepped on it and pulled out his phone. The boggart was just confused. A few moments ago, it had been in a life or death battle, but now it felt forgotten as the human checked his phone.

The response easily caught his attention. Over the last few days Michael had gotten a few odd replies. Each one made his heart pound only to be cooled by another wrong message. But it looked like his streak of bad luck had ended. This reply, even as it annoyed him, was at least correct.

“It only took him two fucking day.” Michael growled, wanting to bite his dumb slow husband. “Can you believe him?”

Michael didn’t know what he expected from the boggart as it made a grunting noise and continued to squirm beneath his boot. It bit at his boot but couldn’t even make it through the thick black leather as he just rolled his eyes and pulled the creature up. Ruthlessly he stabbed through it. A high pitch whine filled the air as black curls of soot rolled off the edge of the wound.

“Sorry, I have other matters to attend to.” Dragging the blade up, he didn’t have to wait much longer for the creature to give up and die. Thankfully, this job had no blood, instead just the thick smoke of decay as the he pulled out his blade and wiped it off on his dark jeans. Left with creature’s corpse, he found it to be quite light in his hand even if it was the size of a medium dog. The thing smelt though as he took a quick picture and tagged it before heading out.

However, he stuttered to a stop as something flickered across his mind. Turning back around he headed into the bedroom.

The mess of boxes still sat on the floor as he reached into the closet to grab the box it had hidden in temporarily. Normally it wasn’t their job to dig through people’s personal effects, but the creature seemed to be interest in this box. So, he did his due diligence and pulled it out.

Inside was an old battered toy house and a faded photo. The house came up to about his shins and was made from wood. Once it had been a beautiful recreation of a two-story gothic revival style home. With delicate hand carved decorations and cute little spires, it looked like a fairy tale even with peeling mint green paint. Just looking through the small glass pane, Michael could see that the inside had individual rooms and once was well organized and decorated. Now everything was dusty and in disrepair. The wood was cracked in several places and a few panes of glasses had been broken. On top of everything the house was magical as Michael took out the photo that had been packed with it.

Two figures filled the dusty sun-bleached polaroid. He easily recognized Harold though he was several decades younger. Even with less wrinkles his stout expression and stone eyes seemed a permanent feature as another woman held his shoulder with a bright smile. A classic hippie. Large black reamed glasses made her dark eyes massive as long semi dreaded fine hair ran over her shoulders. Her face shape was far prettier than the square jawed man, but they share a number of other features, such as eye shape and lips. Michael could only guess it was his sister. While one arm was occupied, she snapped the shot with the other causing it to be a bit sloppy and off center. But the woman’s energy made up for it as the snapshot still radiated joy. Michael flipped it over.

On the back a date showed that the image was over 40 years old and taken at their father’s house. The woman’s name was Margaret.

Michael looked around the bedroom once more and saw something hidden behind pictures of family and grandchildren. Pulling it out he found an eccentric funerary booklet. On the front was the name Margaret Miller surrounded by poorly pixelated fairy and nature assets. The low-res images seemed to be a general theme as fairy clip art filled the inside of the booklet along with photos of the woman at various ages. Even the back couldn’t escape the fairy theme as a supposed fairy pray for the dead filled the back panel in curly dark green font.

According to the booklet, the funeral had happened almost two and a half years ago. He returned the booklet and walked back to the house. Lifting it up he flipped over the building and heard items rattle around inside. On the bottom of the house he found a written message. The paper was yellowed from age, but the writing was in crisp blue cursive, easy to read even after all this time.

‘To my favorite brownie

You have helped me through dark days and heart break. I hope this new house is to your liking. Let us have many more years of partnership!

Margaret’

The picture was now quite clear as he put the house down and looked back out to the living room. There was a high chance she never saw the brownie, but she still believed in it and took care of it. But when she died, it was willed to her unbelieving brother. The disrepair and disrespect corrupted it into a boggart.

Sad fate isn’t it? Michael sighed, it wasn’t like he could change it. Once a brownie turned into a boggart there was no go back. He returned the photo to the box and picked up the house as he walked out to meet the Millers.

Mrs. Miller sat waiting with her husband as she nursed an iced tea given by her neighbor. Over 45 minutes had passed, and they had worried that Hunter had gotten up to something. But each time she wanted to enter her husband stopped her with a stern head shake. Now that Hunter appeared before them with the old doll house in his arms, her heart leapt in excitement.

“Has it been dealt with?”

Michael simply nodded and put down the doll house before pulling out his phone to show the corpse. It had already been shipped to the HQ. On top of that he felt it would be weird to show off the actual body to these civilians. “There will be no more problems. But while I was chasing it, I found the source of your problem.” He nodded towards the wooden house which made Mr. Millar scowl deeper. “This was its home. It was originally a brownie, but it turned violent after it fell into disrepair.”

“Damn old coot.” Mr. Miller hissed under his breath, but Michael said nothing and put his phone away.

“I’ll take it away. You should have no more problems from now on. With the bounty complete, please give me the rest of my pay.” He didn’t want to spend much more time around these people who caused their own troubles.

Again, he could see Mr. Miller want to haggle, but Mrs. Miller stopped him and paid the remaining $75. They said a few passing pleasantries before Michael picked up the house and went to his car.

The house sat in the back, wedged in the floor well as he drove for a little before pulling over in the shade and finally got back to the message he had received. He pursed his lips and typed out his reply.

‘If you took one more day, I would have filed for divorce.’ He skipped their normally coded back and forth as he tapped furiously at the phone. To tell the truth, his annoyance was not just because of his husband. He spared another look at the doll house and sighed.

‘Baby, baby I’m sorry. Let’s exchange numbers alright?’

Even with quick apology, Michael still felt annoyed and uncomfortable.

‘Don’t baby me.’ He still sent Alexander his number.

Within seconds his phone rang, and he picked up only to be greeted with a deep pleasant voice that lazily filled the air. A hint of a romantic southern accent hung on the edge.

“Michael, baby, I’ve missed you.”

A slight blush ran across Michael’s face, but he quickly was reminded of what a fuck up this man was as he bared his teeth. “Baby me one more time and I’ll cut your dick off.”

“Ah, don’t be like that. It would just upset the both of-“

Michael hung up before he could finish. Why did he even call him? Turning his phone off he counted to ten before cooling down and began the drive back to HQ. Though as he took his deep breathes, he couldn’t help but notice his emotional state seemed to be getting more erratic. A slight frown replaced his grimace as he looked at the road ahead of him. Even in the past when Alexander did frustrating things, it normally took a lot for him to feel like murdering the man. But right now, this slight inconvenience was triggering some old blood lust. It was kind of concerning, but he would chalk it up to the unexpected transfer for now.

A semblance of calm returned as Michael did the hour and a half drive in silence absorbed in his thoughts.

Behind the HQ, Leonard along with the newbie hunter Tyler stood a few feet back from Michael as he finished drawing out a magical circle in salt. The pattern wasn’t too elaborate as the circle took up a compact two-foot area. Still it took him a few minutes to complete as the two extras chatted in the background.

“Why does he need a circle to burn it?” Tyler asked. She had come over since Leonard had said it was a good learning opportunity. Being a necromancer, she normally specialized in undead cases, but she couldn’t turn down a chance to learn more about the hunting craft.

“An add precaution in case the magic of the house didn’t fully dispel with the boggart’s death.” Leonard had a large glass of lemonade in one hand he casually sipped it. He didn’t step out of the HQ often. It had reached the point that some people thought he was a ghost who just haunted the front lobby. But when he heard that Hunter was going to burn an old brownie house, he was amazed that the coward could do such a competent thing and had to see it for himself.

“I see. Why not just cast an anti magic spell on it?” It seemed Tyler got the wrong idea of Hunter as Leonard just laughed.

“That boy over there can’t even cast a vision spell. How is he supposed to do that?”

“What do you mean?” Clearly confused she looked over Hunter. She could sense that he constantly had an anti-magic spell on. For a mage it half felt like he didn’t exist, a blank spot to the magical senses. Anti-magic fields were not easy spells to maintain.

“I can’t use magic. It’s easier for me to just use practical means.” Michael yelled back from his crouch as he finished the circle. Dusting off his hands, he stood up and walked over to the two. “What your sensing isn’t a spell, it’s just my constitution.” Hunter had been born with a rare skill, he had a natural anti-magic aura. While it wouldn’t save him from everything, it helped a lot. It is one of the reasons he had become a hunter and specialized in fae. Most of their spells would not work on him. Now they could rip his head off or tear out his heart, but they couldn’t make him think a tree was his lover and illusions won’t work on him unless they are high level.

“Oh, fascinating!” Tyler poked at his arm like he was some sort of new animal.

Michael just shook his head with a smirk and turned to the old hunter. “Leonard, Sir, do you think the circle is good?”

After slowly walking around the circle, he eventually gave his approval with a slight head shake and grunt. That was enough to make Michael sigh with relief. He wanted to be on the good side of this old man as he was filled with all sorts of information about this supernatural world. While Michael had his own past life experiences, every world was slightly different and without his System Administrators he had to cling to whatever available sources of information he had.

“Alright, let’s lit this bitch up.” Michael cheered and pulled out a match book. He had laid kindling down under the house before starting the circle. Walking forward he circled the house three times clockwise and another three times counterclockwise before saying a minor fairy prayer that Leonard had told him. Satisfied that he had respected the fallen brownie well enough, he struck the match and threw it onto the kindling. It quickly caught fire and enveloped the old wooden doll house.

Taking two hops back he still caught a slight hit from the sudden release of magic. It made a quick harsh noise that was sucked up into the air as the flames grew. He was very happy he had drawn the circle as the magic of the house flared heavily and feed into the flames. A 6-foot pillar of flame shot into the sky as it remained contained within the circle.

Michael’s skin was covered in goosebumps from the intensity of the contained magic. After a minute, the cyclone of flame calmed to a minor smolder as the house was reduced to nothing but soot.

“Boy, you really took out the boggart that lived in that house?” Leonard’s voice remained calm, but his expression showed a subtle appreciation.

“I didn’t think it was that powerful.” Michael clicked his tongue and realized he had undersold his service. The amount of concentrated magic hidden in that house was at least that of a lesser fae. He had only been paid the price for the lower tier minor fae. Fortunately, the hunt wasn’t hard and it had been a $150 for less than an hour of work.

Leonard just gave a stone face chuckle and headed back in. Tyler watched a little longer, fascinated by the green embers of the ash. But once those died down her interest went with it and she headed back into the building. Michael was the only one left outside as he kept watching the remains until they cooled and were carried away by an unnatural wind. Leaving only a scattered salt circle.

A/N

I'm going to start splitting chapters that are over 4K in half just to make editing a bit easier and to be able to keep up on a schedule. But I will try to get both parts up within a day of each other. This time around the chapter was around 4500 words, so I split it at the half way point. As for why this being posted earlier, it's in the author's note of the the second part.