Ruby Fever

Prologue

“Is it haunted?”

Oh, for the love of . . . “No, Arabella.”

My sister squinted at the monstrosity of an estate growing closer as the SUV sped up the gently climbing driveway. “Look at all the towers. It looks haunted.”

“It’s not,” Bern said.

“How do you know it’s not haunted?” Leon asked from the back.

Because ghosts didn’t exist. “Because Trudy is a nice person, I like her, and she wouldn’t let us buy a haunted house.”

“Yes,” Arabella said, “but did you ask if it was?”

“I did, and Trudy said no.” Our poor, long-suffering Realtor had answered more bizarre questions in the last couple of months than she had during her whole career.

My little sister whipped out her phone and bent her blond head over it.

The entire Baylor family was in the car with the exception of Grandma Frida and my older sister and brother-in-law. We were going to buy a house.

When I was very young, we lived in a typical suburban home. It was just the five of us: my dad, my mom, my older sister Nevada, me, and my younger sister Arabella. Then our two cousins, Bern and Leon, came to live with us because their mother wasn’t worth two cents and nobody knew who their fathers were. Then Dad got sick. We sold the house to pay for his treatment and moved into a warehouse with Grandma Frida, my mother’s mom. Dad died. Nevada, who was seventeen at the time, took over Baylor Investigative Agency, our family business, and she and Grandma Frida, who worked on tanks and mobile artillery for the Texas magical elite, put food on our table and clothes on our backs.

Eventually Nevada came into her magic, and we became House Baylor, one of the prominent families that boasted more than two living Primes, the highest ranked mages. Nevada fell in love and moved out, I ended up as the Head of the House, and one of my first achievements was to blow up the warehouse all of us called home. The fact that said blowing up was completely accidental did nothing to put a roof back over our heads or to decrease my guilt.

For a while we made do with an old industrial building we sort of converted into a habitable home, but all of us hated it. And our needs had changed. All of us, including my little sister, were now adults. We wanted to stay together, both because we loved each other and because House Baylor was a new House and every time we left our building, we sported lovely targets on our backs. Safety in numbers was very much true in our case. But we also desperately needed privacy.

We wanted to live together. Just not together-together.

Finding the right house in our price range had taken forever, but I had my hopes pinned on this one. I really liked it.

“I heard Realtors have to disclose if the house is haunted,” Leon said.

I looked at Mom in the driver’s seat. She gave me an amused smile. No help there.

“Apparently only four states require you to disclose paranormal activity,” Arabella reported. “Nine states require you to notify the buyer if a death occurred on the premises. And Texas does neither.”

“There were no deaths on the premises. Nobody died in the house, so it can’t possibly be haunted,” I told them.

“How do you know nobody died?” Leon asked.

“Because I checked the records,” Bern rumbled.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Arabella said.

Clearly, there were two teams in this vehicle: Team Facts and Team Facts Be Damned.

“What if they hid it?” Leon asked.

Bern gave his younger brother a look. When it came to uncovering facts, Bern had no equal. If there was a record of something and that record was at any point entered into a computer connected to the Internet, he would find it.

We had run out of driveway and came to a stop atop a low hill. Mom eyed the ten-foot wall that wrapped around the estate. Directly in front of us a short, arched tunnel cut through it, allowing entry to the inner grounds. Normally the entrance was blocked by a heavy metal gate, which right now was retracted into the wall on the left side. On the right side, enclosed within the wall’s thickness, was a guardhouse.

“That’s a lot of security,” Mom said.

“I like it,” Leon said. “If the infidels choose to storm the walls, we can unleash a rain of arrows and boiling pitch.”

Ha. Ha.

Mom maneuvered our armored Chevy Tahoe through the entrance and into the front parking lot on the right side. Alessandro’s silver Alfa Romeo already waited in one of the parking spots.

Everyone piled out of the car. The inner driveway, a wide paved road flanked by thick, mature oaks, unrolled straight ahead, leading south to the main house. To the right of us was a large stone-and-timber pavilion with huge windows.

Mom nodded at it. “What’s that?”

“That’s a wedding pavilion. The beam work inside is really pretty. I thought that if we insulated it properly, we could use it as our office building.”

Leon frowned. “You mean like a separate office building? One where we could conduct business and then leave and not be at work? People have such things?”

I sighed.

“Leon,” Mom said. “She and Alessandro spent the last two weeks trying to get this place inspected. She barely slept and barely ate. As I recall, none of you helped except for Bern. How about you holster that razor-sharp wit and try to be less you for the next hour?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Leon stood up straight and appeared to look serious. It wouldn’t last, but it was a good try. My younger cousin was twenty years old, and he showed zero interest in changing his ways. And that was fine with me. I liked Leon just the way he was.

Mom squinted at the two-story rectangular building on the other side of the main driveway. “And this?”

“‘Cuartel,’” I said. “According to the listing documents.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Barracks?”

“Yes. The lower level has a kitchen, a mess hall, and an armory. The upper level has room for ten beds and a bathroom with four toilet stalls and three showers.”

“Hmmm.”

Normally interpreting Mom’s “hmmms” wasn’t a problem, but right now I had no idea what she was thinking.

We strolled down the driveway. The dense wall of ornamental shrubs framed the oaks on both sides, hiding the rest of the grounds. The tree limbs reached to each other above our heads and walking down the driveway was like heading into a green tunnel.

“Nice driveway,” Leon said.

“Enjoy it while you can,” I told him. “It’s the only straight road in the place.”

“How many acres did you say this was?” Mom asked.

“Twenty-three point four,” Bern said ahead of us. “Sixteen are walled in, the rest is deer-fenced.”

“We’ll need to continue the wall,” Mom said. “Deer fence won’t cut it.”

“Question!” Arabella raised her hand. “If we buy this, can I get a golf cart?”

“You can buy a golf cart with your own money,” Mom said.

The driveway brought us to a large forecourt in front of a two-story Mediterranean mansion.

“The main house is five thousand square feet,” I said. “The bottom floor is split into two wings. Each wing has a master. Four bedrooms upstairs, all en suite.”

“Four bedrooms?” Arabella asked. “So, Mom and Grandma take the downstairs, and we take the upstairs?”

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.

To top it off, in Alessandro’s mind, he was bringing only himself and his skills to this relationship, and he had thrown himself into our family business trying to contribute. He was efficient and smart, and he had raised our income by almost thirty percent, which was in part why we were able to gather money for our down payment so quickly. Only Leon earned more.

But there were only so many hours in the day. Alessandro couldn’t cut his Sentinel hours, he didn’t want to cut his House Baylor hours, so instead he cut his rest and ended up falling asleep in random places. A week ago, after I found him asleep on the stairs with a half-eaten fajita on his plate, I told him I would lock him out of my bedroom if he didn’t stop. He swore to me he would get at least seven hours a night.

I reached the house. It was a cute two-story place, charming and just right for the two of us. The lawn in front of it was green and pretty despite winter. Houston’s understanding of winter was rather limited. Shadow, my little black dog, would love this lawn. Right now, her outside consisted of a paved lot and leashed walks down more paved sidewalks bordered by a narrow strip of grass. If we bought this house, Shadow would be the queen of everything.

The front door stood ajar. I walked up the steps onto the covered porch and stepped into the foyer. All the curtains had been stripped from the windows, and the house was full of light. My steps sent echoes scurrying over the travertine floor.

The floor must’ve cost a fortune and the money for it clearly came from the kitchen, which needed help in the worst way. I walked into it and stopped. A dozen blood-red roses bloomed in a simple glass vase on an unfortunately large island, which I would replace as soon as I scraped enough money for it. A bottle of Giulio Ferrari rosé and two wineglasses waited on the counter by the fridge.

Alessandro had bought wine and roses for me.

I grinned.

A man I’d never seen before stepped out into the hallway on my left, his hands glowing with crimson. In the split second it took me to send a surge of magic toward the intruder, Alessandro loomed behind him like a vengeful ghost, clamped his hand over the man’s mouth, and slid a knife into his side. It was a quick, precise stab, so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t been looking straight at them.

Alessandro twisted the knife. His face was calm and relaxed, his eyes focused, but not frightening. The man’s eyes rolled back, and he sagged slightly against Alessandro. The man I loved picked up his target like a toddler and neatly placed him on the island, the knife still between his ribs. The vase slid off and I caught it by pure reflex.

A person had just died in front of me without making a single sound. It was both beautiful and bone-chilling.

“Arkan?” I asked.

He nodded.

Arkan was the monster in the closet, the bogeyman under our bed. A former government agent from the Russian Imperium, he’d set up shop in Canada and built a cadre of assassins around himself. He plotted, killed, and meddled with political affairs all around the globe but especially in North America. He was so dangerous, the Warden database gave him a black tag, usually reserved for dictators of small countries and heads of worldwide terrorist organizations.

Linus Duncan wanted to kill him because Arkan had stolen a sample of the Osiris serum from the United States. A century and a half ago, the discovery of the serum led to the emergence of hereditary magical talents which shaped our world. The use of the serum was now banned by an international treaty, and protecting it was one of the Wardens’ highest priorities. Alessandro wanted to kill Arkan because Arkan had murdered his father. I wanted to kill him to keep Alessandro safe. We had clashed twice, and both times Arkan lost operatives and allies, but the man himself remained out of our reach and our jurisdiction.

The assassin lay motionless on our kitchen island. Arkan hadn’t sent his best. He sent someone just good enough to sneak up on me, and he didn’t expect this man to survive. He threw a life away just to tap us on the shoulder and say, “Lovely house. I haven’t forgotten about you.”

Alessandro took the vase from my hands and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to him. “Catalina, don’t let it worry you.” His voice was intimate and warm. “We’ve got this. This is nothing.”

I leaned my head against his chest. We had to deal with Arkan. Until he was eliminated as a threat, we couldn’t be happy.

He would never let us alone. Last year, right after we destroyed that construct in the Pit, Arkan, who had been connected to the whole thing, sent his pet telekinetic, Xavier Secada, to warn us to back off. We told him where he could shove his offer.

Xavier hated House Baylor and particularly me with the fire of ten thousand suns. He was once a member of Connor’s extended family on Connor’s mother’s side, but after I exposed the fact that he was actively trying to sabotage Connor and Nevada’s wedding, he was kicked out. I had expected Xavier to retaliate after the Pit. He didn’t. Instead, he went to Spain and attacked his former family. He didn’t target the adults. No, Xavier had gone after Mia Rosa, a ten-year-old child, because she was a future Prime and the pride of her family.

If she had been a little less trained or if his power had been a little more stable, he would’ve killed her. She survived but spent months in the hospital. To say that Connor wanted to get his hands on Xavier’s neck would be an understatement. And Arkan, who had sanctioned the entire thing, sent Mia Rosa flowers at the hospital with a card that said, “See you soon.”

This was the type of opponent we were dealing with. That’s who stood between us and our happiness.

“This won’t happen once we move in,” Alessandro said.

“I know.” Our private guards were top-notch, and our security chief was exceptional.

I wouldn’t let Arkan taint this house for us. No, this would be our home, and I would make it safe and warm.

“Would you like some wine?” he asked.

“No.”

Alessandro’s expression darkened. “This didn’t quite go the way I wanted it to.”

“What do you mean?”

Alessandro looked at the dead killer. “But then, maybe this is better. More honest.”

He took a step back. A small box appeared in Alessandro’s fingers as if by magic.

Wine, flowers, new house, jewelry box. My brain connected the puzzle pieces in a lightning-bright flash, and I caught his arm just as he started to kneel, keeping him standing. “No kneeling. Please.”

He opened the box. A gold ring rested on black velvet, crowned with an oval ruby.

“This is not an heirloom,” Alessandro said with grim sincerity. “I didn’t take it from my family. I designed it for you and had it made. Nobody else has ever worn it and if you say no, nobody ever will.”

The faceted stone glittered like a star caught in a drop of blood between us.

“I love you with all of my heart,” he said. “I can’t promise you a calm life, but I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make you happy. Will you marry me?”

He fell silent, and I saw uncertainty flicker in his eyes. Despite everything we’d been through, he didn’t know what my answer would be. This was the part of the road where our two paths either converged or parted. One word, one tiny little word, and our lives would be irreversibly changed. The moment was so deeply intimate that it almost hurt.

I stood up on my toes, wrapped my arms around his neck, and looked into his eyes.

He waited for my answer.

I kissed him and whispered, “Yes. The answer is yes.”