That didn’t surprise me. Houses entered alliances based on family ties and mutual benefit. Runa wanted to hire Augustine, which meant she suspected that her family was murdered. If she was right, both she and Ragnar could be targeted. Runa was alone and inexperienced, which made her vulnerable. Sheltering her, aiding her, or associating with her brought no advantages. It only put you in danger.

“I spent the night in a hotel,” she said. “Ragnar flew in the next day. I met him at the airport and his face just fell. He must’ve expected me to tell him that it wasn’t true, but it is, and then he shut down. He went limp on me right there, and he was too heavy for me to carry. Then airport security called the first responders, and I let them take him to the hospital. I didn’t know what else to do. I was late to my appointment with Montgomery, but he agreed to meet me at Memorial. You know the rest. When Montgomery offered to see me at the hospital at one o’clock in the morning, I really thought he would help. I should’ve known better.”

“What did he quote you?” I asked.

“Twenty million. Even if I sold every financial asset the estate has, I couldn’t raise enough money.” Runa shook her head.

Even for MII, that was a high price tag. But then Augustine came and got me to help her. He had a moment of compassion. Unfortunately, telling her that wouldn’t make anything better.

Runa looked down at her hot chocolate. “Thank you again. I’ll be out of your life as soon as Ragnar wakes up.”

The responsible thing to do, the Head of the House thing to do, would be to send her on her way. This wasn’t our fight and there was no profit to be made here. We were an emerging House, and we had neither the financial resources nor the manpower of MII. If I helped her, I would be putting all of us in danger.

But she was a friend. She’d kept us all from dying at Nevada’s wedding, and when I looked at her, my chest hurt.

“You’re not going anywhere,” I told her. “We have more than enough guest bedrooms and if you don’t want to be alone, you can crash on the media room couch. Someone’s always in the media room.”

She stared at me.

“It’s a very special couch,” I told her. “Mad Rogan once fell asleep on it. We’re thinking of having it gold-plated and donated to a museum . . .”

Runa’s composure broke like a glass mask and she cried.

I got up, took away her hot chocolate before she sloshed it all over herself, and hugged her.

Morning came far too fast. Normally I got up at 7:00 a.m., but Ragnar didn’t finish draining until a little past 4:00 a.m., and when my alarm blared, I turned it off and slept for another hour. That proved to be a mistake. I had a nightmare and woke up scared out of my mind. When I finally made it downstairs, bleary-eyed and carrying my laptop, Mom, Grandma Frida, and Bern were already there, finishing their breakfast. Grandma gave me a zombie look from above the rim of her coffee mug. Neither one of us did well with little sleep.

I landed in my chair. Mom put a cup of tea in front of me and I drank it. It was so hot, it made the roof of my mouth wrinkle, but I didn’t care.

“Easy there,” Bern said.

“Let me have my drug.” I drank more tea. “Mmm, caffeine. So delicious. Where is everybody?”

“Leon left last night to close the Yarrow case,” Bern said. “Arabella has an appointment with Winter, Ltd.”

“Let me guess, they still haven’t paid us?”

“Yep.”

Occasionally, clients were slow to pay. We reminded them once, then a second time, and then we sent my sister in an Armani suit, armed with her laptop. None of us had any idea what she said, but the payment usually arrived within twenty-four hours.

My phone chimed. A text message from Nevada. Landed safe. Everything ok?

I texted back. Everything is great. Selfie or it didn’t happen.

“They landed in Barcelona. They’re okay.” I couldn’t keep the relief out of my voice.

Bern raised his tawny eyebrows. “You do realize that you’re more likely to die in a car going to the airport than to get into a plane crash?”

“Yes, but I can influence the outcome of my car ride. I can drive myself or hire a driver. I can choose the type of car and the route. I can’t influence the plane.”

When Bern boarded a plane, he relaxed in his seat and looked out the window, because “Woo, technology.” When I got on a plane, I calculated my odds.

My phone chimed again. My sister stood against a backdrop of green mountains, smiling, her big brown eyes laughing. She was beautiful, with a golden tan and blond hair the color of light honey. Next to her Connor Rogan loomed; huge, muscular, dark-haired, his blue eyes piercing in contrast to his bronze skin. He was smiling too, a genuine warm smile. Looking at them made me so happy. I could almost feel Spain’s sunshine.

“About the Ettersons,” Bern said.

I sighed and opened my laptop. Bern had sent me an email titled “Etterson.” I clicked it.

House Etterson:

Sigourney Etterson, Prime Venenata, 50, single;

Runa Etterson, Prime Venenata, 22, single;

Halle Etterson, Prime Venenata, 17, single;

Ragnar Etterson, Prime Venenata, 15, single.

James Tolbert, Significant, purifier, 52, ex-husband and father of the children; whereabouts unknown.

As I thought. Both Runa’s mother and her siblings were Primes.

No known House alliances. Estimated worth: $8 million.

In the sea of Houston’s elite, the Ettersons were a relatively small fish and they swam by themselves. No strong ties to other Houses, no patrons of great influence. It wasn’t unusual. Many smaller Houses preferred to operate independently, unattached to a larger family. Powerful Houses had powerful enemies, and when you allied yourself to one, you inherited their friends and their rivals.

Bern took a slow swallow of his coffee. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me. “Our grace period runs out tomorrow. I don’t need to remind you of the statistics.”

He didn’t. I could rattle the numbers off the top of my head. Ever since the invention of the Osiris serum over a century ago, magic and power became synonymous and intrinsically linked. Arcane talent was hereditary; those who had it bred to keep it, and bloodlines and families became the new power units of society. When a family produced two Primes in three generations, it could petition for and be formally recognized as a House; an honor that came with life-changing benefits and drawbacks.

On average, seventeen new Houses emerged every year nationwide. Of those, a quarter survived the first eighteen months after their grace period was over, and only a third of the survivors made it to the five-year mark as an independent entity. As soon as they were fair game, their competitors killed them off or the more powerful families dismantled them, scavenging their Primes for their own uses. Some voluntarily entered alliances, like the one Augustine had offered me, and became vassals, eventually absorbed by their patron House or killed, used as the first line of defense in House warfare. A grand total of 1.42 families lived through the melee.

The next year would be crucial. Our first case with me as the Head of the House would be equally important.

This morning, sometime between turning off the alarm and jerking awake, I had dreamed that Arabella burned to death. In my nightmare, I was holding her charred corpse to me, looking at her picture on my cell phone, and crying. I woke up with my face wet. For Runa, it wasn’t a nightmare, it was reality.

“Venenatas are combat mages. Runa Etterson would make a formidable ally,” I said. “I’ve looked at our schedule, and if Leon closes the Yarrow case today, we’re wide open.”

We were wide open because for the first time in the last three years we had decided to lighten our load for the holidays. We had mostly succeeded, except for the Yarrow fraud and the Chen case. The Chen case was a nightmare. Someone had stolen a van with three prize-winning boxer dogs in it on Christmas Eve. The van was found abandoned the next day, all three dogs missing, and the breeder was beside himself. Cornelius, an animal mage and our only nonfamily investigator, had taken that one, and we hadn’t seen him or Matilda, his daughter, since the day after Christmas. He’d emailed me yesterday to inform me he was still alive and working.

Bern smiled. “That’s a solid argument, and if I wasn’t your cousin, I would totally believe it. You’re making an emotional decision. You would help her if her magic consisted of conjuring up cute garden gnomes.”

“Bernard,” my mom said in her Mom voice.

“I want to help her as much as anyone,” Bern said, “but my job in this family of Care Bears is to provide logical analysis, so humor me.”

“I understand your point. It’s valid.” I sipped my tea to buy time. Bern could be swayed, but you had to present your arguments in a methodical fashion. “You’re right; the grace period is almost over, and I’m an unknown commodity. It would be different if Nevada was the Head of the House.”

“If Nevada was here, I would give her the same assessment,” he said.

“Either way, we’ll be watched and our first case with me in charge will be scrutinized. I considered it carefully and I like the message this case is sending.”