I showered, got dressed, and - now accompanied by a slightly sulky but teenager-sized Sparkle - retired to my father’s office for the afternoon’s study. Rather than dive into the (frankly terrifying) pile of deeds and investment documents, I asked Ken more questions about the deals that had been made with Ariana Pendragon, Gabriel O’Connell, and the as-yet-unnamed Australian woman. After some pushing on my part, he surrendered and admitted that the deals that had been made weren’t simple handshakes but had signed documents of their own.

I went looking. My father had evidently taken the time to carefully preserve, sort and file literal centuries of paperwork in relatively modern wooden filing cabinets, so it was just a matter of figuring out how they were sorted.

Alphabetically, it turned out, by what type of document they were.

I found the agreement with Ariana first, and what a work of art it was. Hand-written in gloriously detailed and flourished handwriting on actual parchment, illuminated scrollwork along the edges…it was genuinely beautiful. According to the document, it had been drafted in early 1645, and agreed that in exchange for her defense - when needed - of the the Reid family (I was fascinated to learn that my family name went back that far) and home, Ariana Pendragon and any immediate companions were allowed access to the House's doors for quick transportation. The document referred to the House as "Oakwood Hall," which was the second or third time I'd heard that specific name used. I quite liked it…it felt right, somehow.

The really important thing was that Ariana Pendragon would come to help if I called for aid, and if she could. That was good to know. I hoped I'd have a chance to get her to know her a bit before that, though.

Imagine that for a moment. Having an opportunity get to know King Arthur’s daughter. If I hadn’t already been over my weirdness saturation point, that definitely would’ve tipped the scale.

I found the agreement with Gabriel O’Connell next. It was much more modern, having been typed up and loaded with surprisingly gentle legalese in 1983. It specifically named him and two others - Mikaela Ornmolik (which sounded like a made-up name to me) and Vlad Tepes (…that couldn’t be the Vlad Tepes, could it?) - in a deal that was pretty much identical to the one made with Ariana.

I found it interesting that just those three people were named, and not the entire organization, which sent me off on a tangent going through drawers and cabinets until I found a very nice and completely unused hard-sided pocket notebook. Once I had that, I spent several minutes transcribing my mental To Do list into the notebook, ending with finding out - if I could - why the entire United Nations Supernatural Defense Agency wasn’t listed for access.

It just bothered me a little, and I wasn’t sure why. It was probably just a matter of not wanting the entire organization tromping through the House in an emergency. But still…

Mr. O’Connell, it seemed, was another person of interest to learn about, as his date of birth was listed on the document as July 4, 1742. There seemed to be more immortals around than you could shake a stick at. Since Ariana had been cursed to immortality, I wondered it there was a safe way to achieve it with magic.

I mean, honestly, how could I not wonder about something like that?

It took me a bit longer to find the contract for one Kelly Walker, resident of Australia and - it seemed - a modern alchemist and healer of some note. She had made a deal with my father (using largely the same contract that had been used for O’Connell) to gain access specifically to rare plants grown in Dara’s garden in return for aid to the House (I really did like the name Oakwood Hall better than this emphasis on ‘house’ all the time) if needed. Her date of birth was in the 1950’s, so I suspected she wasn’t another immortal. At least, not yet.

I made a note in my new notebook to get in touch with her and re-establish her access to Dara’s garden, assuming I liked her and assuming she was still interested. Then, taking into account the fact that Ken's memory of her had been locked away, I added a note to go and ask Dara about her before making contact…if Dara trusted her, I saw no reason not to.

While I was doing my research, Ken had been drilling Sparkle in ways to help her maintain her teenager size for longer than an hour or two. She wasn’t a particularly attentive student, demonstrating a naturally short attention span by becoming distracted first by what I was doing, then by the inner workings of the beautiful antique grandfather clock that was wedged in between two bookshelves on one side of the room, then by watching her own wiggling toes. I had to admit it was rather amusing to see Ken getting a little frustrated by this particular student.

Finally, I interrupted just before Ken might’ve actually spoken harshly. “Now, Ken, let her be. She clearly knows how, and you say that time spent in that form will help her build up the stamina to stay in that form for longer periods. She’ll improve at her own pace, and nobody else’s.”

Sparkle gave me a grateful look as Ken raked his fingers through his hair and took a completely unnecessary deep breath to calm himself. “You’re right, Caley…of course. I’m being foolish.” He smiled wryly. “It was almost like teaching Mistress Chessie again.”

That made Sparkle giggle and beam at him. “Thank you!”

Ken gave me a long-suffering look that clearly said ‘that’s not what I meant.’ I smiled back serenely and returned to my research.

By mid-afternoon, I was confident that I understood what each contract required of me as the Guardian of Oakwood Hall (I really, really loved the sound of that and resolved to use it from then on), and moved on to the first stack of property deeds that Ken wanted me to review. But good lord, my family owned land all over the old British Empire.

There were properties in England, of course, as well as Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. But there were also houses in the Northeast United States, Jamaica, Malta, Egypt, South Africa, India, New Zealand, and even some undeveloped land in Fiji. I wondered if the Brownies - or perhaps relatives of theirs - took care of those properties, or if they were just sitting there gathering dust, and placed a call to Summers & Winters.

“You have reached the offices of Summers and Winters,” the now-familiar voice on the phone said, “this is Margrave speaking. How may I be of assistance?”

I smiled. “Hello, Margrave, it’s Caley. I’m going through the family deeds, and had a couple of questions about the properties I’ve found here.”

“It’s wonderful to hear from you, Miss Reid. What questions do you have?”

I ran down the list of deeds I’d found with houses attached to them. “Are they still standing, and are they being cared for?”

“I’m afraid the house in South Africa was lost, under…unfortunate circumstances,” Margrave said. “If you would like, I will see to the disposition of the property. I believe it is worth a substantial sum.”

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, please. See to it that three quarters of whatever you get for the sale of the property goes to a good South African charity that will actually help people and not end up in greedy hands.”

I could almost hear his smile when he replied. “Very good, Miss. A wise decision. You certainly do not need the money, but keeping a portion of it will cover our services and look to outsiders like you’re being both charitable and frugal. I will present you with a list of suitable charities when it is time to decide.”

“Thank you,” I said. “What about the rest?”

“The rest are kept in excellent condition in much the same way that the House - “

“Oakwood Hall,” I interjected.

He paused a moment, and I heard approval in his voice this time. “ - that the Hall is maintained. And may I say that I applaud your resumption of the Hall’s traditional name, Miss.”

“Thank you,” I said again. “Are the various houses protected and open for…vacations, I suppose?”

“Very much so, Miss,” Margrave said. “Though the last person to inspect them was your maternal grandfather before his untimely demise. While Summers and Winters could send a specialist to do so for you, I would advise waiting before visiting them until you have sufficient skill to inspect the wards personally.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Hopefully that won’t be too much longer.”

“Indeed. Is there anything else I can do for you today, Miss?”

“Yes, what about the property in Fiji?”

“Your grandfather said it was a lovely spot, Miss, big enough for a modest vacation home. Though he never had a chance to have it built.”

I thought about it for a moment, then decided it would be silly to sell the land sight unseen. “All right. I’ll have to find the time to go look at it at some point.”

“A wise decision, Miss.”

“I think that will be all for now, Margrave. Thank you very much.”

“You are most welcome, Miss Reid. Do call on us any time, day or night. We are here to serve.”

I hung up the phone and sat back in my chair…then realized that I had just thought of it as my chair, and not my father’s chair. Another sign that I was really starting to think of Oakwood Hall as mine.

Sparkle returned then, ushered in my Ken, carrying a tray of drinks and snacks and in the middle of complaining, “ - not a servant!”

Ken smiled. “No, you aren’t, but this was good practice for you.”

She huffed, set the tray down on the desk, and with a startling pop of in-rushing air was suddenly fairy-sized again and sitting on the tray. She flopped over rather dramatically, happening - purely by coincidence, I was sure - to land half on a chocolate chip cookie. She lay there, arms out-flung, eyes closed.

“Not buying it,” Ken said cheerfully.

She shrugged, rolled over, and started eating the cookie.

I laughed, reached over and picked up the glass of apple juice that she’d brought for me and sipped it. “Thank you, Sparkle. I just got off the phone with Margrave. Guess we should add wards to my training at some point.”

Ken nodded and ‘sat’ in one of the chairs across the desk from me. “Wards are on the list already, after we’ve done ritual circles. A lot of the basic mechanics transfer over.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said with a lopsided smile.

From that day on, my nights were spent studying theory in my dreams, settling into a rhythm where we took a break every third night to let my brain rest naturally, and my days were spent on practical magic lessons and learning to fight with the smallsword Ken had picked out for me. My spare time was divided between exploring the house, and going over my family’s other deeds and financial records. I wasn’t quite ready to tackle my father’s journals yet, and so avoided them for the time being.

I also gave up on the extended pile of property deeds after a while and simply filed them away again. Until I knew how to get to some of them - including one that claimed to be for a luxurious home in the kingdom of Helium on Barsoom, and another for a townhouse in central London…but in Albion, not England - knowing that they (supposedly) existed was sufficient.

I still liked to do my morning yoga and Tai Chi practice in the clearing outside my bedroom windows, where I made a point to refill the bird bath and soda feeder every morning. Doing that seemed to have endeared me to the wild fairies, resulting in some truly glorious displays of color at night.

Oakwood Hall also provided me with a magnificent room in which to keep up my exercise. In addition to mats for my yoga and Tai Chi, it had a fencing mat which Ken and I made extensive of, a ballet barre - which I began using for stretching - and a couple of weight machines for building upper and lower body strength. I didn’t want to use them, but Ken insisted.

“It’ll help build your physical stamina, which will improve your magical stamina,” he said one morning when I was lying exhausted on the leg machine. “You’ll see.”

I did, too. He was right, though it took time…as such things will.

As the weather grew colder, I began jogging inside Oakwood Hall instead of going to and from town. The third time I did that, the Hall presented me with a room that was distinctly designed as an indoor jogging track. It wasn’t quite as much fun as jogging the halls, but I got the point and made good use of it.

I also got into the habit of going into town every Thursday evening to have dinner at the Oak & Ivy Pub. I didn’t go for the darts game as much as I did the warm, friendly company of the older locals, all of whom seemed determined to treat me like a long-lost daughter or granddaughter…and, of course, Judy O’Day’s home-cooked meals. I was regaled with story after story about my parents, especially about my mother when she was a little girl, how they’d kept my father company after her death, about my grandparents, and about the quietly bizarre history of the town itself.

It seemed that everyone who lived there for any length of time was in on the open secret that my family was magical, and that it was our job not merely to watch over the town, but to protect something contained within the Hall from ‘the forces of darkness’ - a phrase which was often spoken in hushed, superstitious whispers. I wondered what the International Consortium of Organized Arcana (from whom I had yet to hear, and whom I was not actively seeking because they sounded a little scary) would think about that if they found out.

I never did develop a taste for beer or hard liquors, but Malcolm always had a pot of water on for tea, and I found that a small glass of mead or wine could be very relaxing after a stressful day of lessons. Even if I hadn’t found drinks to drink, I still would’ve gone for the food and company.

In early November, with a few weeks of magical lessons under my belt - including basic circle magic and the use of runes - I began actively constructing my first staff focus.

At Ken’s recommendation, I started by practicing carving the runes on blank, unprepared lengths of wood first, and I was very glad that I did. The magical runic alphabet itself - a stylized offshoot of Elder Furthark, which I had seen before but had precisely no experience with - was often shockingly complex in its design, being made up of whorls and conjunctions of lines at odd angles. On top of that, the act of carving the runes into wood - which I had naively expected to be simple - was quite a lot harder than I’d anticipated.

But I persevered, and by the middle of December (seriously, good wood carving is hard) I had managed to reproduce the pattern of runes I’d chosen to Ken’s satisfaction. Then it was time to carefully…very, very carefully…carve them into the white waxwood staff that I’d chosen from those that had been prepared for me ahead of time.

Even with all of the appropriate tools at hand and tons of practice, it took me two whole weeks, working on it at least a couple of hours every day, to do so. Not just because the carving itself was hard work, but because I had to imbue each rune with energy while I was carving it, which made the process doubly tiring. And I was continuing my normal magic lessons at the same time.

I was certainly building some magical stamina.

I had chosen a pattern of runes which Ken told me was very basic but very useful, and commonly the first one used by many young wizards. The design - which wound in complex spirals from one end of the staff to the other - was meant to build a magical matrix through which energy could be more efficiently and effectively gathered and channeled. Basically, it was the Swiss Army Knife of magical tools…not very powerful, but very flexible and useful.

Once they were carved into the staff, an extra layer of preservative sealant went on (how very mundane!), and I bound it top and bottom with rings of silver and platinum at Ken’s recommendation. He said that doing so would help it contain and store more energy within the wood, as well as providing stronger contact points for the energy to flow in and out of the staff.

In a fit of whimsy that I hadn’t expected from myself - it had been a long time since I’d been whimsical in any way, really - I capped the top of the staff with a stylized representation of a phoenix with its wings lifted upward to take off. It was made out of copper, and I’d found it among my mother’s knick-knacks in the master bedroom. I’d fallen madly in love with the silly thing…it represented me, I felt, as I spread my wings for the first time and grew into my new life.

Ken approved of it, saying that not only was the metaphor apt, but that it would improve my affinity for the staff if parts of it had deeper meaning for me.

I finished assembling it on Christmas Eve and collapsed into bed that night, exhausted and expecting another day of lessons the following day. I woke up the next morning to find…Christmas.

“It wasn’t like this when I went to sleep,” Sparkle said, astonished.

“I didn’t do it,” Ken insisted as he wheeled in my usual breakfast cart. “The whole House is decorated.”

Overnight, Oakwood Hall had decorated itself. There were sprigs of mistletoe scattered around the house, connected by trailing garlands of ivy woven with oak leaves, all of it as lush, and green, and alive as if they were still on the trees. Strings of tiny lights were intertwined with them, twinkling and dancing merrily like the fairies outside my windows at night.

An enormous Christmas tree had been set up in the foyer, so tall that the star atop it brushed the bottom of the chandelier. It was covered top to bottom with the sort of ornaments that I had - as a little girl - expected every Christmas tree to be heavily laden with: gleaming red and green balls, twinkling lights, icicles that - upon close examination - turned out to be real, candy canes, and even strings of popcorn.

“I would say,” Ken said, sounding awed, “that the Hall is showing its approval of your residence.”

I smiled. “Welcome home, eh?”

Ken smiled back at me. “Indeed. Welcome home.”

By mutual agreement, we kept working on the days between Christmas and New Year’s. I studied, I practiced, I reviewed piles of financial documents. I explored, spent hours curled up on my bedroom’s window seat with with books, and even managed to convince the Hall to place an outside window in my room - over the desk - so that I could watch the snow falling in the yard.

I went into town to attend the Oak & Ivy’s New Year’s Eve party, which was a lot of fun, and fell into bed…once again exhausted, but this time pleasantly so…early in the morning on New Year’s Day feeling more alive and happier than I could ever remember having felt.

The next morning, I went back to work.

I might be a workaholic.

With my staff completed, my practical lessons now focused as much on learning to draw in ambient energy from outside of me as on the actual casting of spells. The creation of additional foci was put off until I’d learned to use my first one proficiently, but I quickly began to see why Mom had been experimenting with more compact - and, I guess, less traditional - focus designs.

The staff was cool, but boy was it cumbersome.

Granted, in a pinch I could beat the hell out of somebody with it - and Ken was beginning to teach me staff fighting - but still.

Anyway, magic lessons and exercise took up my mornings, and with additional foci in the future I was free to begin reading my father’s journals in the afternoons. The first one chronologically started a couple of weeks before he and Mother were married, and was largely full of his hopes for the future and some vague comments about frustrations in dealing with the International Consortium of Organized Arcana.

Sadly, there were no specifics, so I remained largely in the dark about the organization, something that I complained to Ken about more than once.

There were also mentions in Father’s first journal about having left his master at last. He seemed glad to have done so, and expressed - again, in vague terms - more than a little dislike for the man, who went unnamed. That surprised me…my own master/student relationship with Ken was the only benchmark I had to go by, and it was a good (if occasionally frustrating) one. My father - reading between the lines - seemed to have actively hated his master.

I wondered about that, but just kept reading. I ended up skipping some long passages, as they occasionally became embarrassingly personal. He talked at length about his dreams, how much he loved my mother and the House, and - after I was born - how much he adored his baby daughter.

That, and some notes about shoring up the House’s defenses and bits of research errata, plus the occasional to do list, made up most of the content of the first four volumes. Then, they changed.

The fifth volume (he’d left almost half of the fourth one empty) began with a notation about Mother’s death in a detached, almost clinical way. Of course he didn’t include how she died, so it appeared that would remain a mystery for a while longer.

After that point, his final journal was considerably more clinical than his previous ones. It focused primarily on his research, and new spells and foci he was working on. He wrote at greater length - but still without details, I’d have to check the shelves in the workshop to see if his actual notes were there - about the improvements he was making to the House’s defenses, and how it seemed to approve of his efforts on its behalf.

He briefly mentioned having sent me to the orphanage, and that it would be safer for me there than staying in the House. But again, he didn’t go into any detail as to why, which was incredibly frustrating. A few times after that, he noted having receiving letters from the orphanage about me, and once he even wrote about how desperately he wished he could bring me home safely.

I wondered how lonely and depressed he’d been while writing that entry, considering how otherwise devoid of emotion his final journal was.

Finally, in the last few pages of that final journal, he began to mention the man named Bellinus von Einhardt, who’d been called out as a danger in his letter to me. Von Einhardt, it seemed, had begun turning up with increasing frequency whenever my father left the House, no matter where in the world he had gone. Father mentioned being convinced that von Einhardt had played a part in Mother’s death, and firmly believed that the man represented a threat to me if he ever learned of my whereabouts.

My father also wrote - towards the end - about his fears for himself, and about encounters he was having with strange creatures that he believed had been summoned specifically to assault the House. His last entries described some of their attempts to break down the House’s defenses, but only once had one been able to pass the property’s boundary line. He also mentioned going out to confront and destroy them before they could cause problems for Oakwood.

Reading those entries was when I really began to understand why Ken was so insistent that I learn combat magic. Not merely to defend myself, but to be able to defend others and act appropriately should violence be called for. And it seemed that it inevitably would be, as he, Sparkle and Dara had all said.

I am not ashamed to admit that it frightened me more than a bit. But my growing ties to Oakwood and the certainty that I would act in their defense if I knew how soothed those fears. If anything, those feelings strengthened my resolve.

Once I finished my father’s journals, I threw myself into my studies with a devotion that startled Ken. The entire day was now spent exercising, in practical spellcasting lessons, and working on my fencing and staff fighting. Ken also began to refocus my morning Tai Chi into actual martial arts practice (no offense to Tai Chi). He chose to teach me Jeet Kune Do, saying that its lack of formalized style would serve me better in real life than one of what he rather derisively called the ‘tournament’ martial arts.

As January passed into February, I became aware not just that I was learning to defend myself…but that I was really going to be able to do so. The extra exercise had the benefit of improving my muscle tone in areas I’d never really worked before, which also helped my stamina.

Not just my physical stamina, either. Ken had been right…as my physical fitness level (already pretty good) improved, so too did my magical stamina. As the weeks passed, it became easier and easier for me to cast the spells Ken was teaching me.

I learned to create shields in different shapes and sizes, and for different purposes: to block or deflect physical attacks, to absorb and redirect the energy of fire and electricity, or to insulate against cold. I became proficient at throwing tiny bolts of lightning, and learned to condense water out of the air - or even conjure it outright, which was harder but sometimes more practical - to make ice. I began to study the casting of invisible shapes of force, similar in a way to casting shields but with many other applications, from knocking people down, to prying open closed objects.

But what I enjoyed most was starting to learn the art of Transfiguration - changing one thing into another. I found it endlessly fascinating being able to reshape one object - or even one substance - into another, perhaps because it was a genuinely constructive use of what I was learning. Ken promised that when I had reached a level of proficiency where he thought I was ready, he’d even teach me to change my own shape…to change my physical appearance, or even become different types of animals.

When he mentioned that possibility, I questioned him ruthlessly about where a person’s mass went when they made themselves smaller, or where the extra mass came from when they made themselves larger. After a weak series of explanations involving theories about pocket dimensions, plane-shifting, and conservation of mass, I broke down laughing at the look of uncomfortable consternation on his face.

“In other words,” I said once I had my laughter under control, “you don’t actually know.”

He shrugged and smiled ruefully. “It’s one of the great mysteries of magic. Mass has to come from somewhere and go to somewhere, but…”

Honestly, I loved the mysteries. I had never realized how mundane and easily understood my life was before coming to Oakwood Hall. Every day had been the same, routine, obvious, and boring.

Now I was living a life where there was literally always something new and fascinating waiting for me to learn every day.

But my father’s unhelpfully vague warnings of danger loomed in the back of my mind. Even as I thrilled to every new lesson and every new spell that I successfully learned, I knew that I was preparing to defend myself and Oakwood Hall. From what, I didn’t yet know…but I had a bad feeling that I’d find out eventually, whether I wanted to or not.

So I worked on preparing myself. What else could I do?