To say she sounded underwhelmed would be a criminally gross understatement.
“We could do that,” I said, “or we could live in the auxiliary buildings.”
Arabella squinted at me. “What auxiliary buildings?”
I turned my back to the mansion and pointed with both hands to the sides.
The family turned around. On both sides of the driveway, separated by the hedges, lay a labyrinth of buildings and greenery. On the left a round tower rose three floors high. On the right, half hidden by landscaping, sat three two-story casitas, each sixteen hundred square feet, joined by a second-floor breezeway. Between them and us lay gardens, benches, gazebos, and water features. Stone paths, designed by a drunken sailor, meandered through it all, trying to connect the buildings and mostly failing.
Leon spied the tower. His eyes took on a faraway look that usually meant he was thinking of flying ships, winged whales, and space pirates. “Mine.”
“It needs a bit of work,” I warned.
“I don’t care.”
Bern took a step forward and rumbled, “I like this place.” He waited for a moment to let it sink in and walked to the right, starting down a stone path toward the casitas.
“Where are you going?” Mom called.
“Home,” he called out without turning.
She looked at me. “Does Runa like the casitas?”
I nodded.
My oldest cousin and my best friend were slowly but surely moving toward marriage. Runa and her siblings lived with us, and it was harder and harder to ignore Runa slinking out of Bern’s room to the bathroom across the hall first thing in the morning.
I could relate. Alessandro and I slept in the same bed every night, but both of us felt awkward about him moving into my room for completely different reasons, so we settled for him staying in the side building and me keeping my window open. For him, climbing in and out of the window was infinitely preferrable to having to run the gauntlet of my family just to get to my door.
“Where am I going to stay?” Arabella asked. “Am I going to stay in one of the casitas?”
“I think they’re spoken for,” Mom said, watching Bern double-time it down the path. “Bern and Runa will take one and the Etterson children will take the other or others.”
“There’s a shack in the back, behind the main house,” I told Arabella. “You can live there.”
She marched around the house. Mom and I followed her along a narrow path, flanked by Texas olive trees, esperanza shrubs, still carrying the last of their bright yellow flowers, and sprawling clusters of cast-iron plants with thick green leaves.
“So Bern and Leon get their picks, and I get the leftovers,” Arabella called over her shoulder.
“Yep.” I nodded. “You’re the youngest.”
She mumbled something under her breath. Torturing her was delicious.
“What did you say this place was?” Mom asked.
“A failed resort. The first owners built the main house, Leon’s tower, and the bigger casita. Then they sold it to a man who decided to make it into an ultrasecure ‘rustic’ hotel for Primes and Significants. His website called it ‘a country retreat for the Houston elite.’”
Arabella snorted.
“He owned this place for about twelve years and built all of the auxiliary craziness. His business collapsed, and now he’s trying to unload the property to settle his debts.”
Nothing about this estate followed any kind of plan. To add insult to injury, the second owner thought he was handy and did a lot of the renovations and maintenance himself instead of hiring professionals. According to our building inspector, his handiness was very much in doubt.
“How much does he want for this place?” Arabella asked.
“Twenty million.”
“That’s out of our budget,” Mom said.
“It’s not if we get financing,” I said. We had already put in an application through a mortgage company Connor owned, and it was approved in record time.
“We can afford to put half down,” Arabella said. “But this place isn’t worth twenty mil. I mean I don’t even get a house. I get a shack . . .”
We turned the corner and the path opened, the greenery falling behind. A huge stone patio spread in front of us, cradling a giant Roman-style pool. Past the luxuriously large pool, the patio narrowed into a long stone path that ran down to the four-acre lake. Between the pool and the lake, on the right-hand side, stood another three-story tower.
Where Leon’s tower looked like something plucked from a Norman castle, this one could have fit right into the seaside of Palm Beach. Slender, white, with covered balconies on the top two levels and a sundeck on the roof, it had a clear vacation vibe. A narrow breezeway connected its third-floor balcony to the main house. Of all the places on the property, it was the newest and required the least amount of work to be habitable.
“Your shack,” I told her.
Arabella took off across the patio.
Mom and I strolled down past the pool toward the lakeshore. An exercise track circled the water, and the roofs of three other houses poked out from the greenery at random spots along its perimeter.
“The southern entrance is there.” I pointed at the other end of the lake. “We can put Grandma’s motor pool in that spot, facing the road.” We would have to get her a golf cart to get to it. Grandma Frida was spry, but well past seventy.
“Can we really afford this place?” Mom asked.
“Yes. If we put twenty-five percent down, we will have enough for a year’s worth of business expenses and have half a million left over to renovate. We’ll have to stagger the repairs and we’ll need to invest in some livestock for the agricultural exemption. The place already has solar panels, so we’ll be saving some money there, but we will need a yard crew and probably a maid service of some sort.”
Mom bristled. “I never needed maids in my life. If you’re old enough to have your own space, you’re old enough to keep it clean.”
“I agree, but the main house is huge, and we have the barracks and the offices. We are all going to be really busy. There will be an army of people to supervise, renovation decisions to make, and we still have our regular caseload and then there is the other business . . .”
My time was no longer completely my own. A chunk of it belonged to my family and the running of our House, but another, significantly larger part, belonged to the State of Texas and the complex entanglements its magic families created.
Arabella burst onto the third-floor balcony. “Do I like it? No. I love it!”
Mom grinned. “Well, you got her vote. Where would you and Alessandro stay?”
“Over there.” I pointed to the left, where a two-story house sat by the lake. “He’s probably over there right now. Do you need me to walk through the main house with you?”
Mom waved me off. “I’ve got it. Go check on him.”
I gave her a quick hug and took the stairs from the patio to the path leading to the two-story house Alessandro and I picked out for ourselves.
Hopefully he was still there. I had texted him when we were pulling up, but he hadn’t answered. He might have fallen asleep.
In our world, Primes like me packed a great deal of power. Even average magic users could unleash a lot of devastation, especially if their magic was combat grade. Nobody wanted the chaos that would happen if mages were allowed to run around unchecked. While everyone was subject to laws, when it came to mages, the civilian authorities left the enforcement of said laws to the magic community itself. The magic users of each state were governed by an assembly, which in turn answered to the National Assembly.
The National Assembly appointed a Warden to each state, a single law enforcement officer whose identity was kept confidential for obvious reasons. Wardens investigated crimes committed by the magical elite and sometimes rendered judgment. Our Warden was Linus Duncan, I served as his Deputy, and Alessandro functioned as our Sentinel. Sentinels were to Wardens what bailiffs were to judges. While Wardens investigated, Sentinels guarded them and applied force when force was required. Just like me, Alessandro was always on call, and Linus called him a lot.