Of average height and build, Jax wasn't a very imposing figure at first glance. That coupled with his dark unkempt hair, youthful appearance, and old worn clothes made it very easy to mistake him for some local college dropout. Despite this, few in the magical community didn't at least know of him. No one knew what his real name was, instead using the mononym he insisted on introducing himself as. In fact, no one really knew all that much about Jax at all. What was known was that contrary to his youthful appearance he'd apparently been in the city since its founding. That he was as powerful a practitioner as one of the Archmages, possibly even stronger. And that he was extremely dangerous to deal with and extremely manipulative. Jax was never a crime boss, instead being the one that the crime bosses and every other influential player in the city went to when they needed something. He also happened to be the man that raised me after my father died. Not that he did much aside from giving me food and subjecting me to harsh lessons in magic and survival.

He sat there perched on the hood of some car as if it was the most normal thing in the world. As usual, he looked like he hadn't seen a barber in months and his t-shirt was so faded that it was impossible to make out what was originally on it. He just sat there smiling and waiting for an answer. When it became apparent that I was not going to provide one he continued "I'm just saying. You up and disappear for years. The only times I hear where you've been are when I get calls from people saying you dropped my name in this conversation or that. Then I get word that you're back in town. That you've been back for close to three months now. And in all that time you never once reached out to me. So, I give you a call, but you don't answer. So, I call you again, and again, and again. Finally, I decided to just go out and find you myself."

I proceeded past him saying "Go away Jax. I'm not in the mood for whatever game you're playing."

His smile didn't falter but he did say "Hey now, is that any way to treat the man that raised you? I feel like that should get me a little bit of good, won't you?"

Rounding on him full of anger I replied "My father is the man that raised me! I don't think you're even a man to begin with. You're some monster that preys on people's weaknesses. Sitting in your chair and holding court like some demented king. Making deals with whoever is desperate enough to seek you out."

Even still that ridiculous smile remained, as if he was having the time of his life "Be that as it may. It doesn't change the fact that when your old man kicked the bucket you had no one and nothing. Your only options were to scrounge to survive on the streets or get stuck with some family of morons who don't know the first thing about magic. I saved you from that, took you in, and helped you develop your gifts. And you can insult me all you want but it doesn't change the fact that when you had nothing, I was there. You made a deal with me of your own free will, and I more than upheld my end of the bargain. And reluctant as you may have been at the time, you fulfilled your obligations as well."

I sighed as the anger drained out of me then said "Did you hear about Ulysses?" at his silent nod I continued "Do you know who killed him? What am I saying of course you do. You know everything that goes on in this town. The question is, did you have anything to do with his death?"

"Come on kid, we both know I'm not much interested in murder. In fact, I abhor it. After all every death is one less potential customer."

We both knew that his words weren't entirely true. Jax may not have been interested in killing people, but he had no problem taking a life if he needed to. But I let it go knowing that even if he could provide some clues as to who killed Ulysses it wouldn't matter because there wasn't a person alive that could hope to get a straight answer out of Jax. Deciding a change of pace was needed I surprised him by saying "Why do you go by Jax?"

He laughed at the ridiculously random question but replied anyway "Seriously, are you still hung up on that." With a shake of his head, he continued "You know that's the same question you asked me the first time we met right? My answer hasn't changed. Because it's easy to remember."

"Yeah, but it's not your real name. I've heard you get called dozens of names. But for whatever reason you always insist I call you Jax. Why?"

His smile turned to a grin as he said three simple words "Rule number five."

I rolled my eyes but dutifully recited the rule pounded into my head all those years ago "Never give your true name."

"That's right. To freely give another your true name is to give them power over you. There are a lot of nasty things that can be done to someone when you know their true name. I like the name Jax but it's as far from a complete name as one can get. Which makes it perfect for when some practitioner needs to call me something."

Knowing that he was just enjoying messing with me I got into my car but stopped just shy of closing the door. Feeling exceedingly vulnerable and unable to look directly at him I asked somewhat hesitantly "If I asked you to help me with this mess, would you?"

A moment later I heard the reply, a note of amusement in his tone "For the right price."

I let out a snort at his predictable answer, the same answer he'd given me dozens of times growing up when I'd ask for his help with something. If there was one thing I knew about Jax it was that he didn't believe in helping someone unless he stood to benefit from it. So I just said, "Be seeing you Jax." I took one last glance at the enigmatic mage but found that he'd seemingly disappeared. All I could do was simply shake my head and drive away. Knowing full well that whether I liked it or not, I would definitely be seeing him again, and probably soon.

Checking the time on my watch I found that it was still fairly early in the evening. I considered returning to the office to get some more work done but ultimately decided that after the day I had been forced to endure, I deserved some rest. So, it was but a short while later that I pulled into the garage of Grey Manor. The sprawling estate just outside of town which was far larger and more expensive than what someone working for a small newly formed security company would ever be able to afford, was one of the few things left by my father which the rest of the family hadn't been able to claim. Not for a lack of trying, however. Uncle Ulysses had argued for days after my father's passing that as a child, I couldn't possibly be expected to maintain such a large estate, especially one so integral to our family's history. Fortunately for me, however, my father had been smart enough to put the manor alongside a few other things into a trust account of which I was the sole beneficiary. Unfortunately, the bulk of my father's estate was taken by my uncle and various other family members. The only things left to me were the manor, the land it sat upon, and the contents of the barn. As for the barn itself, it was normal-looking enough for something of its time. With the only oddity about it being the state-of-the-art scanner which served as the only way to unlock the thing.

I got out of my car and entered the manor waving a hand and muttering a quick spell to flip the lights switch. Technically speaking I didn't need to utter anything for such a minor bit of magic, but I had to keep up the practice. After all, there were extremely few among even the most accomplished mages who were capable of using magic without any. And given the nature of my family and most practitioners in general, I always found it more beneficial to keep the exact extent of my abilities secret. I made a beeline for the kitchen of the place and as I did caught movement out the corner of my eye. Turning I came face to face with a life-size humanoid made almost entirely out of wood. The thing had a gentle smile on its inorganic face.

"Johann good to see you, any trouble while I was gone?" I said smiling at the golem which my father had supposedly made in his younger days.

"No trouble at all Master Grey. You will be delighted to know that Tyr managed to fix the boiler this morning, so we once again have hot water."

"Speaking of, where are Tyr and Sarah?" I asked interested in the whereabouts of the house's other inorganic occupants.

"They are in the kitchen at the moment preparing your supper. I had them start on it when I saw you coming up the drive."

I let out a chuckle and patted the wooden man on the shoulder "Thanks for that Johann."

"of course, sir"

Seeking out the place's remaining two servants If they could even be called such, I made my way to the kitchen. Inside I was greeted by the sight of a stone man missing his right hand and a wooden approximation of a female with a face crudely carved to resemble Sarah Michelle Gellar. Every time I saw that face I felt slightly embarrassed. Although in my defense I had made Sarah when I was twelve and obsessed with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show. Making a golem had been one of the last things my father had taught me before his death. Tyr, I had made on the fly years later when I was caught up in a particularly dangerous situation. His right hand had been broken protecting me then and so I had named him Tyr after the Norse god of single combat who lost his hand to the wolf Fenris.

"What's for dinner?" I ask the golems casually and am rewarded by what I assume is a smile from Sarah.

"Fish!" she announces with some glee, "I caught it myself!"

I smile slightly at the childlike joy in her voice. Sarah and the other golems in the house were extremely unique as they had all been imbued with intelligence by a special rune that my father had developed. Runecraft as it was called, was a field of magic which had been lost to time. My father had been obsessed with it, however, and had largely been responsible for rediscovering the art. The bulk of his notes and research on runecraft had been well hidden by him to prevent it being stolen by rival towers or even by his own family. The only person who knew where those notes resided was me. And while most would understandably have assumed that the research notes were kept in the barn hence the heightened security, they would be wrong. Grey Manor was a very old house and like many old houses had its share of secret rooms and passages. One such room was where my father would conduct the bulk of his more dangerous research.

I elected to head to my room and change before dinner, and by the time I had returned to the dining room, there was a plate of food waiting for me. As was custom in the house I ate while the golems sat at the table with me providing company. I took a bite and watched as a shadow on the wall across the room seemed to stretch and change shape before stepping off the wall entirely. The creature was large, pitch black, and in the approximate shape of a canine with striking mismatched eyes. As the massive hound stalked towards me, I scooped up a potato with my fork and flicked it in the beast's direction. He swallowed it whole and then closed the last of the distance to headbutt my arm. Mephistopheles or Mephy as I was prone to calling him was the last of the manor's strange residents. Technically speaking owning a hellhound as a pet wasn't against any laws. If for no other reason than that they were normally far too aggressive to control and impossible to restrain. All the same, I kept Mephy almost as much of a secret as I did my father's notes or my own unusually strong talents.

After dinner, I grabbed a glass of water and went upstairs to the manor's library. At the back of the library sat an ornate fireplace and to the left of the fireplace on the second shelf of the bookcase nestled between Grey's Anatomy and Dante's Inferno in the original Italian rested a worn copy of the Malleus Maleficarum. The book was a personal joke of my father's and even as I reached out and pulled it causing the fireplace to swing open, I found myself chuckling slightly. No one would have ever thought that the switch to open the hidden room my father and now I used as an office and research room would be an old racist book about witch hunting.

Once seated in the hidden room, I checked my messages and found a text from my business partner Tommy which read "Hey Man how did the meeting with Mrs. Anderson go?"

My reply consisted of a single emoji of a middle finger. I chuckled at the thought of his reaction to my simple message and pocketed my phone. Then I turned my attention to the task at hand and began searching through my father's notes hoping to find some mention of the rune that was found carved into Uncle Ulysses' chest. I searched for hours scouring one notebook after the next for anything even remotely resembling the rune. But it was no use. The only document I knew had anything to do with that rune burned up the day my father died. Sitting there I couldn't stop myself from thinking back onto the day my father died. The day my world came crashing down.

It was a normal day by all accounts. Back then as was the case for most of the children of the Grey family, I didn't attend a regular school. Instead, I attended classes with a private tutor at the tower's headquarters. That particular week, the tutor had taught us about compound crafting. Magic involving the use of two or more elemental forces to create something new. After hours of practice, I had managed to combine fire and earth magic to create miniature figures from almost nothing. I was eager to show my father as it had only been a few months since he had personally introduced me to his personal hobby of creating golems and I thought that with the compound spell, I'd be able to make golems with a lot better detail than I could by hand. I ran to my father's workshop in the tower's headquarters only to find a gruesome sight. My father was dead in a chair, his body seemingly untouched by any violent attack but dead all the same. The strength and kindness that marked his very existence was gone leaving his face hollow and pale. I looked around the room but back then all I could think of was that the place looked like someone had detonated a bomb inside it. The shelves and tables which were once marked by my father's almost obsessive need for order were in disarray. Most of the documents which had ended up scattered around the floor were burned beyond recognition. My mind reeled and I couldn't think straight about anything. But even then, I was the dutiful child. I did exactly what my father told me to do in the event that anything ever happened. I activated the magic device which he kept by the door to the workshop, and which would keep anyone except he and I out. Then I called the police, being careful to make sure that I didn't raise any alarms in the Tower. At the time I found it to be a strange request. After all, even among the thirteen towers, the Midnight Tower stood out as being home to some of the best mages alive. Looking back, it made perfect sense. Even if no one in the tower was connected to the death, there wasn't a mage there who could be trusted. So, I did exactly as I was told and made the call to the police discretely. I greeted the two detectives sent by the ECPD, Detectives Harris and Peters. I deactivated the magic device in the room and reentered the workshop with the detectives in tow.

They did their job inspecting the scene until eventually Harris turned to me and asked "Son, could you tell me what kinds of things your father was researching here? Is there anyone who may have wanted to harm him because of his work or maybe any arguments you saw him get into?"

I shook my head and told him in the soft voice of a young boy who had just experienced a life-changing tragedy but hadn't quite processed it yet "No. Dad didn't talk to people very often. And He didn't like doing work here. He said it hurt his process."

It was Peters who upon further inspection of the body found the page clutched in my father's hand. The page was written mostly in code to prevent someone from stealing and reading his notes. But at the top of the page was an odd rune. It was clear that whatever had happened in the workshop, that rune was a major part of it. Unfortunately, just as Detective Peters pulled the page out of my father's lifeless grasp it immediately went up in flames burning to a crisp, one last defense mechanism placed by my father to ensure his work would never be stolen.

As I slipped back out of my memory I threw a notebook across the room in anger. My father was meticulous, every part of his research was record twice. The result of one of the earliest runes he had found. The rune was simple, when placed on two objects it would link them so that whatever changes occurred to one would occur to the other. Using this rune alongside a complex magic circle he had made it so that every note written while in his workshop at the tower would also appear in a notebook in his secret research room at the manor. Which of course meant that there had to be a copy of the page holding that mystery rune somewhere in those notes. In the days after his death, I had been too consumed with grief and with trying to figure out how to avoid having the manor taken by my uncle and having myself thrown out on the streets to think about the notes.

That night mine was a restless sleep marked by hazy nightmares, the sort that left you panting and drenched in sweat but unable to remember what exactly it was that you dreamt. Finally, as the first rays of morning light began creeping in through the window, I pulled myself out of bed and made my way to my shower remembering Johann's mention of the boiler being fixed. The shower of the master bedroom was the only part of the manor that I had made any efforts to renovate or otherwise change. Originally there was just a modest-sized glass-walled cube of a shower. But now the shower easily filled half the space of the master bathroom. The shower walls were made to look like stonework chiseled out of a mountain, and instead of one showerhead, there were three placed at specific angles so that an even rain fell upon me. I took longer than usual, enjoying the feeling of the warm water cascading over me. When I had finished with my relaxing shower, I went down to the dining room to find a plate of food waiting for me. The plate held a fresh omelet alongside some potatoes, toast, and fresh fruit. I could never figure out how Johann always knew exactly when I would be needing to eat, but like always the food was hot proving that it must have just been brought to the table. I sat and ate in silence with the three golems joining me at the table shortly after I began.

Like usual Johann droned on about the state of the manor ": The grounds have become infested by rodents who have begun attempting to get into the garden. There is a hole in the roof of the east wing where it caved in partially, we also seem to have had a minor uptick in visitors to the estate."

At this last part, I looked up sharply and said "Wait visitors? What are you talking about?"

"There have been men watching the estate over the last few days."

Tyr interjected to add "I've also seen signs of people in the woods out back. But I haven't seen whoever's making them yet."

"Next time any of you see one of these visitors, or anything else unusual let me know. Make sure they stay away from the manor and the barn but try to avoid any overt or flashy actions unless there's no other choice. The last thing I need is to explain how three golems possess intellect and autonomy."

All three golems gave their acknowledgment of the command, and I finished up my breakfast. But as I exited the estate grounds, I couldn't help but notice what looked suspiciously like tire tracks in the dirt directly across from the front gate. I hoped deep down that whatever was going on, wasn't connected to the other nonsense that seemed to be plaguing me all of a sudden.