“We have to move the bed, Charles, because when this house falls it’s going to crush us into the ground!” The slender woman shouted, pointing a single angry finger behind her.

One… Two…

Three ominous crows in the sky.

Just my luck.

The man’s enormous shadow seemed to draw in a slow inhale, pinching the bridge of his upturned nose as if to stifle a breath of fire… But this man wasn’t a dragon, we didn’t have those in North America.

“Norma! For the last time, woman, the house is not going to fall!”

His last seven words were harsh, punctuated into finality.

Because men always just know.

Despite being quick to laugh at a woman’s intuition.

It had taken me four days of hiking through the Dark Wood to get to this tilted house, and I’d heard their bickering long before I’d caught sight of their fierce bodies, stomping across the yellow glow spilling through the windows.

A strange site…

Even supernatural beings couldn’t escape the harms of human hands on the planet.

We’d recently been forced to add new ground level lamps and carve a door into the basement brick to keep up with real estate code.

See, the height of the property had always sat on a lovely green hill, but record temperatures caused by global warming had dried and cracked the soil around it, leaving jagged bedrock exposed beneath the part of the house that had once been underground. All within the last three years of the ten the couple had lived there.

“Well if you won’t let me move our bed…I’m going to my mother’s,” her voice peaked with the threat of her scream, which she unleashed anyway, “I deserve piece of mind, Charles!”

The earth trembled with the banshee’s wail and I almost lost my footing.

Her silver hair, whipping as she spun on her heel.

“Norma!”

Two massive hands simultaneously karate-chopped the air between them. “Be reasonable! What are you going to do in Chicago among humans?”

I was close enough to catch my other, much larger, tenant’s fury in the creases of his hairy face. Lucky for the both of us, the full moon was still days away.

“Guys! Hello!” I cried.

My voice carried easily out here.

“Fuck… Our landlord’s come for his rent too— For this piece of shit, no good, rundown…“

Charlie’s grumbling boomed louder as he neared the door, shriveling my stomach like a emptied balloon.

“God dammit, Issac, now’s a shit time!”

The hulking man in loose red plaid and dark blue jeans met me downstairs, thick, black hair covering his exposed arms as they crossed in front of his chest.

Above us, his ghoulish girlfriend peered down from the window, blue almond-shaped eyes, beaming at me. A truly dangerous vision that—

“Isaac! I’m right here!”

“Hi, yes,” I cleared my throat, twirling the long red wires of my beard, “well, unfortunately I have some… news…” Sucking in a breath, my gaze met with the narrowed yellow eyes of the man almost triple my size. “The property has been condemned.”

“What’s that mean, Charles? What’s he saying!”

Charlie pinched the bridge of his nose again between two beefy fingers.

“You see, uh— a city inspector came unannounced at some point last week, not sure if you happened to see someone on the grounds… Anyway… turns out it’s a miracle this thing is still standing, they expect it to… fall. At least that’s what this letter says. I’ve been asked to inform you that effective immediately, the property must be… vacated.”

“You gotta be shittin’ me…”

I could feel victory, cascading from the window overhead before I even managed to look.

“Pack your bags, baby, look’s like we’re going to your Mother’s!”

The werewolf was gone in all of an instant, his growl evident in the undertone of his voice.

Tension evaporated from my body, and I turned my back to the house, patting the white envelope in my coat pocket once as I began my return hike—

Holding in a chuckle of my own when a fit of eerie, vindicated, feminine laughter coiled through the crispy autumn air.