Millie zipped through the traffic, but Dara was focusing on some paper she’d pulled out, muttering every time the car bounced.

How could a genius loci form so easily? They were catalyzed out of mana spikes, but that didn’t make sense. Even with all the people it—

Oh. Oh, no. On her world it wouldn’t work, because the manasphere was the product of thousands of years of individuals, human and otherwise, using their magic. Workings, both small and large. Rituals, some something to cool a home, to a great ritual to create a river.

Her world was suffused with magic.

This one wasn’t, and it didn’t take a lot to create a spike if you were talking about a little puddle on the floor.

Is it because there’s a gem fragment nearby? Dara frowned. Bad news, that would mean the genius loci could potentially be very powerful. Good news, it might see her getting another fragment before very long.

Regardless, once a genius loci came about, it wouldn’t change, not quickly.

“You know, we have a lot of horror movies. Is this gonna mean we get crazed killers showing up every Halloween?”

“I…” Dara paused. “I don’t know. Maybe not? It might take the right kind of belief and attention, coupled with it happening at the right time. I don’t think say, a movie about scientific fiction would create something like this. The fact that the people weren’t thinking about magic would poison the spike, cause it to collapse. Maybe.”

“Awful lot of maybe’s in there.”

“I’m not an archmage!” Dara snapped, then bit her lip. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem. Things are pretty scary right now, aren’t they?”

“Yes. If there are kids in there, if they haven’t—“

“Okay,” Millie said. “First of all, you can’t change any of that. If there are kids in there, worrying about it right now isn’t going to help ‘em. So tell me, genius loci, what do you need to do to stop it?”

“Normally the easiest way is to set up a ritual outside of the genius loci. Depending on how old and powerful it is, that could be enough but…”

“Yeah?”

Dara sighed. “That’s about three years ahead of where I am now.”

“Right. Then what can you do?”

“Walk in, find the central focus and disrupt it.” Dara shook her head. “The good news is that if I’m there, and since this is a spontaneous locus, I won’t need anything that special. The bad news is that genius loci, even non-sapient ones, will defend their central focus. And once I’m in here, it’ll be able to do things, change the terrain, illusions, things like that, within the theme that has been imposed upon it.”

“And nobody’s seen this?”

“I think that it's a temporary genius loci. It forms when someone’s near, then disperses. Maybe because it isn’t powerful enough to stay active or because it’s playing a role.”

“Role?”

“The stories. The house is a trap, right?”

Millie signaled and got out from behind a slow moving truck. “Sort of, I mean, it’s pretty common in the 1980s. House full of supposedly friendly people who lure you in and then murder you for Satan or some such bullshit. Usually they also play D&D.”

Dara looked confused for a moment then forged on. “So the concept is a trap. I expect that it’s retreated within its… home? Dimension?”

“Wait, this thing can hide out in a pocket dimension?”

“I think so, yes, but the good news is I don’t think it can act in that dimension. If the children are trapped, they’re safe.”

“Oh. Oh. Crap.”

“What?”

“Some of the stories, and a big part of the movies, in this kind of thing are a bunch of clueless friends dropping by to rescue the kids and getting murdered themselves.”

“Right. That would be in-theme for the genius loci.” Dara licked her lips. “So it’s probably waiting for us.”

“Lovely,” Millie muttered. “Still not too late to call the police.”

“And they would believe me?”

“Probably not, and getting a cop killed by a crazy spirit cultist wouldn’t look good. So, the plan is to walk into the trap, find the kids, find the center and then beat the crap out of it?”

“More or less.”

“That’s a crappy plan, Dara.”

Dara didn’t have an answer to that.

When they pulled up to the empty lot, some police tape still blocking it off, Dara got out of the car.

She could feel the energy. Not an avoidance working, or anything of the sort. The genius loci had retreated, waiting for another. Dara could feel its presence.

Its hunger.

“I don’t see anything,” Millie said.

Dara nodded, as she used her staff to mark out sigils on the sidewalk in front of the house. The neighborhood was spread out, the nearest house beyond the curve of the road.

An owl hooted in the distance, and Dara could see the moving rivers of light. People heading home, or out to a party, all of them completely oblivious to what was happening.

“I can call it out. I hope. But once I do, it’ll know we’re here, and we have to go inside, quickly.”

Millie paused. “What’s to keep it from just vanishing and trapping us like the kids?”

“Will. Magic.” Dara finished her work, the sigils glowing with a soft blue light. “I can’t dismiss it, not like an archmage, but this will… connect us to the outside world?” Dara frowned. So many words that English doesn’t seem to have an equivalent for. “Anyway, it has to kill me before It could sever the connection.”

“Kill us, you mean.”

Dara blinked, staring at Millie. “Millie, you’re not a mage!”

“I’ve got a broom in the back of the car.” The older woman cocked her head, staring at Dara. “And what happens if you trip and knock yourself out?”

“I won’t do that!”

“You also weren’t going to fall from the sky and get hit by a car.”

Dara glared. “That happened once! And it was something that never happened before in history!”

“So? A magic haunted house appearing in the hills over Orange County has never happened here. For all you know, it’s not a normal, um, spirit? Ghost?”

“Genius. Loci.” Dara stared at Millie. “You’re going to come with me no matter what I say?”

“Yap.”

“Phones might not work inside.”

“Don’t care. I’ll send a message to Mike, let him know where we are.” Millie shrugged. “He can send the cavalry or hack an A bomb for special delivery, depending on what seems best.”

She doesn’t know magic and she’s coming in. Dara took a deep breath, then exhaled through her nose. “Fine. Give me your broom.”

“Gonna make a magic broom?”

“Yes.” Dara waited until Millie handed her the broom. She took out her scriber and stared marking out the sigils on the wood, before she sent energy into the broom, the wood starting to dimly glow.

“So, what’s it do? Call down the lightning?”

Dara shook her head. “No. The house isn’t made of real matter, but ectoplasm. Ectoplasm can feel like real matter, can act like real matter, but it’s ephemeral. Whatever is using it has to keep putting energy into it. And that energy can be disrupted. That’s what I just did to the broom. It’ll hit harder and do more damage. But remember that ectoplasm, because it isn’t real matter, doesn’t really have the same vulnerabilities. You can take an ectoplasmic construct’s head off and it can still kill you.”

“Good to know. What about you?”

Dara hefted her staff. “The staff is already enchanted, I can put energy into it to do more damage, but it’ll serve me.”

“No fire or lightning?”

“No.” Dara glanced at Millie. “I may be able to work a short ritual to cause it problems, but I wasn’t expecting this, so I didn’t make any foci for it. But we have one advantage.”

“What’s that?”

“Ectoplasm isn’t flesh. What I did to your broom won’t be any more dangerous to the kids than a normal broom.”

“Good point. Dara?”

“Yeah?”

“Costume.”

Dara blinked. “Millie, nobody is in there but—“

“But a pair of kids who might have good memory. And who have a social media presence.”

“Fine,” Dara said, checking to make certain the bag with the costume was close enough. She raised her arm and touched the bracelet. In a flash of golden light, she was clothed in…

My college uniform. If I known I was going to have to do this, I’d have dressed in something a little more practical. She cast the cantrip, her hair fading from blue to brown, and then nodded. “So, how do I look?”

“Let evil houses beware,” Millie said. “Speaking of that… No house.”

“I’m going to complete the ritual now. Any last words?”

“When did I become a fantasy hero?”

“You?”

“What do I look like?” Millie asked.

“A woman in a sweater and pants, who is holding a broom.”

“And what could be more fantastical than beating up a spirit with a broom?”

Dara paused. I do not have an answer for that.

Then Millie deflated. “Right. Do your juju and let’s hope like hell that there are some live kids at the end of this quest.”

“Yes.” Dara took a deep breath and then touched the center of the diagram she’d drawn on the sidewalk. There was a flicker of light and then the air shimmered and…

A house appeared in front of them.

Millie stared at the house, then looked down at her phone. “Uh-huh…noticing anything?” She held the phone up to Dara.

The image on the phone was of a two-story house, built in the generic style that Dara had come to take for granted in this strange, new world.

This house wasn’t. It was tall, three stories up, the last story twisted, tiny windows peering down at the street like empty eye-sockets.

“It’s taken on more of the form that would be expected of it.”

“Too bad it didn’t pull this earlier,” Millie muttered. “Even a kid wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Oh help us! Please!”

Millie and Dara looked up at the panicked cries coming from the house.

“Not the kids,” Millie said, hefting her broom.

“No.” Dara raised her staff up, a bright globe of light forming on it’s tip. “Stay close.”

They walked up to the door… which opened before they got there.

“You know, if not for the whole ‘kill kids’ thing, this’d be a great haunted house,” Millie said. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

“That makes one of us.”

Dara led the way in, Millie behind her, and when they crossed the threshold, the door shut behind them.

Now let’s find those children, Dara thought.