The entryway was shadowed. Our steps were muffled by the long Persian rug that ran the length of the passageway to the staircase at the end.

Dark wood panels absorbed the light that managed to penetrate through the slits of shaded windows around the front door. Harvey pulled out a rod and ignited the end with a flick of the wrist. Connor muttered some strange words and a glowing orb appeared in his palm. I took out a flashlight. The new light revealed the rustic paintings lining the walls. Big oil paint murals depicting scenes of old English hunting parties, or scenes of Greek mythology. Some tables along the sides displayed some nice bowls with fake fruit.

To the magic guys’ credit, a little surprise like being locked into a house that should not have any functioning locks at all (and a door slam worthy of a jump scare movie) didn’t rattle them, or make them stupid. No bluster about how there was nothing to be afraid of, followed by some stupid decision that got someone injured. We grouped together and moved carefully to clear the rooms. Lucas was in the front, and Connor conjured a light for him. Zack and I were in the middle, while Harvey watched our backs. We opened the first door on our right and cleared the room to make sure there was no one waiting to ambush us.

The room was a simple study. A desk was in the back right corner. A big old hunk of wood with a leather wingback chair behind it. On every other office wall, there was at least one bookcase full of leather-bound books and weird knick-knacks. The room on the opposite side was a dedicated library; shelves full of books took up all four walls. Then they cleared a lounge room with a large TV. Finally, all that was left was a game room with a pool table and bar. All seemed to be perfectly ordinary at the time. Connor muttered something in each room before declaring it clear. However, as we entered the room, the lights turned on.

Not just the overhead lights, everything that could emit any kind of light turned on: the lamps, the overhead lights, the chandelier, the TV screen. Then the brightness began to increase. Lucus’ vampiric traits started to recede, and Zach’s illusions couldn’t solidify. I turned from the light just in time to see the door about to slam in my face. Luckily my shoulder took the hit and I managed to slow the door just enough for the other guys to help me stop it. Lucas had just enough juice left in him to force the door open enough for us all to get out before we went blind.

Zach had been the slowest to look away. He could still see, barely. But because of the new spots in his vision, he needed to keep a hand on Harvey’s shoulder in order to move with us. I’m not sure how Lucus’ half a vampire stuff worked, but it looked like he would be walking around as a normal human for a while.

I could tell that the situation had gotten much more serious than they thought it was going to be, but I wasn’t too worried at that point. We had all been in sticky situations before, though I had managed to avoid them for longer than most. These guys may not have been on the highest rung of the magical crowd ladder, but they knew their stuff. And they were ready to keep going. I don’t bother panicking until the experts start showing tells.

After the ‘bright’ lounge room, we decided to forgo entering the other rooms to clear them. We found a coat room and a library on the other side of the hall and decided that the more interesting stuff would be up the stairs. So we skipped checking the rooms past the stairs and headed to the second floor. We were right and wrong about things being more interesting upstairs.

The stairs led up to a kind of entryway with a single door. When we walked through we found ourselves in a hallway just like the one at the front door. The same shaded windows on either side of the door gave hints of light, and the same rooms were down the hall.

Conor reacted with an understated, “Oh Bugger.”

“Sh!@” said Lucus. “I’m sorry, I didn’t believe that they could have set up such elaborate wards without someone noticing. How did they do this?”

That was a good question.

“It could have been a piece-by-piece job. Add a layer here or there whenever all of the more powerful magic users are away dealing with something out of the country.” Guessed Harvey.

“Or maybe it was a one-time dimensional teleportation trap. Something quick that would activate and then they’ll reset it later.” Said Zach.

“Either way, we’ll have to figure out what we’re dealing with if we want to get out. We’ll scan the hall first. See what we can find. Leo, you stay in the middle just in case. Watch for anything weird while we work, make sure we don’t get ambushed.”

I figured they’d give me a job like that. But we were all pretty sure that the house was empty except for us. There wouldn’t be an ambush, only reactions to ‘traps’ triggered. Now some sort of magicy phantasm could jump out at us, but that would only happen after one of the four did something to set it off. Which they wouldn’t do, because they were being very careful now in the way that magical investigators were. What they wanted from me was to keep my hands in my pockets and not touch anything. Or accidentally get myself, killed or poltergiested. I was the obvious weak link and they had to make sure that nothing went after me first.

And not that I was going to leave them a bad review online or anything, but it is not good business to have your agency team up with another investigator and then have them end up dead. Best for all that everyone who went out today came back intact.

But they all started to get a little twitchy after the first half hour of ‘magic probing’ revealed a lot of nothing.

“Not a trace. Nothing. I can’t see the magic at all.” Conor grumbled.

“Then there must be something interfering. Zach how are your eyes.”

“Still not good enough to see fully. Maybe I’ll be able to in a few hours, but right now I can’t see anything more than what Conor has been able to sense.”

Harvey started to pace around as he worked it out in his brain. “There must be a source somewhere. We’ll just have to explore the rest of the rooms.”

“Last room we entered blinded Zach and defanged Lucus,” said Conor, reminding us that they had tried to be careful and still lost some of their strongest magical abilities in one room.

“Then we’ll be more careful. There’s not much else we can do at this point.”

This was the point that I actually started to get worried.

“Hey Harv’, tell me straight. How much trouble are we in?”

“Truthfully Leo, it doesn’t look good. The Black Cabal has set up something here that no one expected. It looks like they’ve set something up here that keeps us on this first floor of the house. Plus, when we go into a room we trigger something designed to weaken our magical abilities. If we keep doing that we’ll get to the point where there’s not much we can do but hope that we’re either rescued or we’re still alive when the Black Cabal comes to collect us. Maybe then we can try something.”

Harvey had enough experience dealing with people experiencing weird stuff for the first time to follow up this grim truth with some optimism. “Now it’s not entirely hopeless, we could be rescued. There’s a chance that someone friendly in the magical community sensed whatever this was when we triggered it. Plus, the four of us might not be the most powerful magic users on the block, but we know our stuff. If we put our heads together there’s a good chance we can find a way out of here.”

“Well, that’s not so bad then,” I replied with only a little bit of sarcasm.

“Sure. as long as the time in this space isn’t running faster than normal for some reason. We’ll be fine.”

“That’s a thing that can happen?”

“It’s a super rare thing, Leo. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

That phrase has never worked as intended. Never. Now I operated under the assumption that we were on a ticking clock.