“Even if you don’t go to college, you have to interact with people outside the family eventually. I don’t want you to be alone, Catalina. If you want to be alone, that’s fine, but I don’t want you to be forced to be alone because you think you have no choice. If it was just about magic, then you could’ve gone out with Alessandro. He is an Antistasi Prime. He could’ve resisted you.”
She had to bring that up. “He had been exposed to the full power of my magic.”
Arabella grimaced. “Oh don’t give me that. I’ve seen people after you charmed them. He had none of the symptoms. All he wanted to do was take you for a drive in his fancy car and to talk to you. You threatened to call the cops on him. Seriously, what are you afraid of?”
“That it wouldn’t be real.” The words dropped like bricks. “Nobody ever likes me for me, Arabella.” And I had really wanted him to.
Silence stretched.
Arabella reached out and petted my hand. She kept petting it, like I was a dog.
“Quit it.”
“There there.”
“I said quit touching me.”
“How can they ever like you for you if you never talk to them? Who outside of the family knows you? It’s a serious question. Are people supposed to telepathically scan you to make friends?”
I groaned. “If I give Xavier a chance, will you shut up?”
“Yes!”
“Then fine. If he comes up to me again, I will talk to him. Happy?”
“Ecstatic.”
“Good.”
She had a point. I couldn’t keep complaining that nobody liked me for me if I didn’t give anyone the opportunity to see who I was. Maybe if I started small. Just one boy. Just one conversation. I would keep a steel hold on my magic.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
I liked Rogan’s house much better than his mother’s mansion. It was still filled with expensive furniture, but it felt different—simpler, rugged. More like a home and less like a palace. Being here was almost like being in the warehouse. I had called ahead to make sure Rogan would be there, but we could’ve just showed up and nobody would have been surprised.
I rang the doorbell. The door swung open, revealing a sturdy man with broad shoulders and short blond hair. Like most of Rogan’s people, he was ex-military.
“Ladies,” Troy said. “I’m authorized to tell you there is sushi in the kitchen.”
“Ooo.” My sister veered off and made a beeline for the kitchen.
“The Major is waiting for you in the office,” Troy said.
“Thanks.” I climbed the stairs, crossed the balcony, and entered the business part of the house, where Rogan conducted his affairs. I waved at people I knew on the way until I got to the surveillance room, where a thin wiry man with dark hair sat in front of nine monitors. He spun his chair around when he heard me coming. His face twitched.
“Hi Bug.”
“Hi.”
Bug was a swarmer. Swarms existed in the arcane realm. Nobody knew much about the arcane realm or the creatures within it. Summoners and other arcane mages could reach into it and draw things out, but they didn’t really understand it.
For example, it was an established fact that implanting a swarm in a human would skyrocket their surveillance capabilities, allowing them to process visual information at an insane rate. It was also an established fact that these augmented humans died within a couple of years. Bug had volunteered for the procedure during his time in the Air Force. Everything went as planned. He survived the implantation process, became a swarmer, and received a substantial bonus. There was just one snag—Bug didn’t die. When Nevada first found him, he was borderline insane. Somehow Rogan managed to fix him and now Bug presided over all of Rogan’s surveillance.
“Xavier Ramírez Secada,” he said. “Age 19, first son and heir of Iker Ramírez Madrid and Eva Secada Escudero. Rated as a bottom tier Significant Telekinetic. He likes to tell people that he is Rogan’s Sobrino .”
“So?”
“He is not Rogan’s nephew. His father, Iker Ramírez, is Rogan’s cousin, which makes Xavier Primo Segundo or first cousin once removed. Hard pass, Catalina. Hard pass.”
“Stay out of my life, Bug.” I kept walking.
“His Instagram is called Boss Moves,” he yelled.
“Stay out!”
I took another turn and came to Rogan’s office. Most of the time he used the room adjacent to Bug’s nest, but once in a while he hid in the back, in his study. I knocked on the heavy red oak door. It swung open, inviting me inside.
Like his mother, Rogan devoted the entire wall, floor to ceiling, to books, but here the wood was dark, the chairs were soft chocolate leather, and the floor was old weathered wood. Rogan sat behind a large desk, his fingers dancing over the keyboard of a laptop. A chair slid out for me. I sat. A large glass with an extra wide straw floated over and waited in empty air, motionless. I took it and sipped. Mmm, lychee boba tea. My favorite.
I didn’t know if Rogan genuinely liked us, or if he treated us well because we were important to Nevada and he loved her. I liked to think he liked us.
Rogan looked up from his laptop. “Budget update?”
“In your in-box.”
He checked the file. “A bedazzler for $19.99?”
“It’s a small gun that attaches rhinestones to fabric.”
He frowned. “Is that for her veil? Because you know I can’t have anything to do with that.”
My sister and Rogan had reached a compromise. Neither of them had wanted an expensive wedding. Our family couldn’t go half and half with Rogan either, not on the scale this wedding was happening, so it was decided that since Mrs. Rogan wouldn’t be denied, we would buy the dress, veil, shoes, and the bouquet, and Rogan would pay for everything else. Rogan would’ve been happy to pay for all of it, but Nevada insisted, and if she found out we went around her in any way, there would be hell to pay.
“No, the bedazzler isn’t for the veil. It’s for Mia Rosa García Ramírez Arroyo del Monte’s stuffed unicorn.”
“Okay then. Next?”
“Sealight is missing,” I told him.
There was a second of silence.
“Those assholes stole it,” he said.
Wow. He went right to it.
“Mrs. Rogan asked me to look into it. She wants it handled quietly, and she doesn’t want Nevada involved.”
Rogan sighed. “Of course. The less my future wife has to do with those dickheads the better.”
“Are all of them dickheads?”
“No. Uncle Inigo, his wife Emilia, and their three kids have my complete confidence. Same for Uncle Mattin and his family. I don’t agree with his politics, but he would never dishonor the family name. We can scratch them off the list. Aunt Miren and her daughter, Cousin Gracia, are women of impeccable integrity, and I trust Gracia’s wife and their two children. But the younger of my mother’s siblings are perfectly capable of stealing from the bride at the wedding.”
I leaned back. “Tell me about it?”
He sighed. “My grandfather is one of those men who believes that children belong to their mothers until they are old enough to contribute to the family business. He is an old cantankerous bastard. He married my grandmother and had four children, including my mother. When mom was ten years old, her mother died, leaving my grandfather with four kids and no idea how to raise them. As soon as he was done with mourning, he remarried. The second wife was only twelve years older than my mother. He married her because she had the right pedigree, the right set of powers, and was young and healthy. I’ve met her. She was very young when she married, and she had dreams of a loving husband and a beautiful family, and instead she found herself relegated to the role of a glorified babysitter, whom my grandfather mostly ignored.”
That wasn’t fair.
“My grandfather had three children with her. By the time the last one was born, the older children were grown and assumed their responsibilities, so they received the lion’s portion of his attention. The three younger ones were left to fend for themselves and their mother denied them nothing. They grew up hedonistic and entitled. They have a deep disdain for our side of the family and once the old man dies, the family will likely split. But my mother remembers them as the cute babies whom she looked after. She is determined to forgive them their faults, and they are perfectly willing to use her. The only time I hear from them is when they want something: money, influence, guarantees, and so on. Aside from that they don’t even bother with basic maintenance like sending her Christmas cards. So you have Inigo, Mattin, Miren, and my mother on one side and Markel, Ane, and Zorion on the other.”