Since all of us were ready and just derping around, we decided that it would be best to start heading towards our rendezvous point with Alessia’s realtor contact.

“Is everyone strapped in safe and sound?” Alessia asked before she turned on the engine.

“Yes mom.” I replied, I got to sit next to her as we were driving towards my appointments after all.

Alessia smiled, rolled her eyes and started the car, after which we started zooming through the streets at completely legal speeds. We don’t want the police to investigate a car with not one but two vampiresses. Not that they would notice… but police scary and I’d probably say something stupid. Then again, we do have a masterful actress in our midst.

“Where are we going first, Alessia?” Em asked from the back seat.

“I agreed with the realtor to first go and look at a couple of houses in the outskirts of the city before working our way to the center. The first house is a villa with a small vineyard on the eastern outskirts.”

“A vineyard? That’s fancy.” Claire commented. “Do make sure to sell the correct kind of wine if you decide to go for that one.”

“Yeah…. That’d probably pull the attention of several health inspectors if we accidentally sell the wrong one…” I shook my head, already imagining the situation.

“That’d require one heck of a cover-up, too. We could pull it off though.” Alessia nodded, full of confidence.

“That’s kinda scary… but also kinda hot.” Claire’s comment made Alessia laugh out loud, as it clearly was a joke.

I looked over my shoulder at the back seat, with a grinning Claire looking back at me. “You’ve got Anja, Claire. Please don’t flirt with my dear, dear mother.”

“You were getting off pretty well with my mom, too, though.” Em quickly replied to me.

“Oh? What happened? I don’t think I’ve been filled in on this yet.” Claire said with a smirk.

“What? No! She’s just… you know… a bit like a mother figure I never had I guess. Your mom is just cool, you know…”

“She is! Em’s mom is super cool!”

“Is this all implying that I’m not a good mother figure? You girls are making me very insecure about this, you know that, right?” Alessia started to chuckle.

“No.” I shook my head with a smile. “You are the best vampiress mother a vampiress could wish for.”

“Ah, then it’s good.” We all continued to laugh while we drove closer towards our first house.

The drive was relatively short, if I’d go from here to school though, I’d probably need a bike. Walking would take just a little bit too long for my liking.

When we drove up to the large gray stone house, a young lady got out of her own car. She had a nicely styled blonde pixie cut, as for an outfit, she was wearing a neat black suit and pants combination. If I had to guess, that was going to be our realtor for the day.

“There she is.” Alessia smiled, which confirmed my suspicion. She drove up until next to the lady and then rolled down the windows. “Can we just park behind your car?”

“Yes, go ahead.” The lady smiled and then looked at me. “You must be Aurora?”

“I am.” I gave her a friendly nod. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too, my name is Madeleine, but you can call me Maddy.”

“Let’s keep the rest of the formalities for after we have parked our car.” Alessia winked and then slowly drove off to go and get parked.

We orderly left the car once we did and met up again with Madeleine.

“Hello once again.” She smiled. “My name is Madeleine and I’ll be your realtor for the day.” She expectantly looked at my girlfriends and Claire.

“These are Emma and Ria, they are my girlfriends and this here is Claire. She’s just a friend who wanted to come along. I hope that’s okay.” I introduced them to Madeleine.

“Of course. It’s nice to meet all of you.” Madeleine gave each and every one of us a hand.

“Oh, before we continue.” Alessia started. “Madeleine is fully aware of our nature so you don’t really have to hide anything from her.”

“Ah, alright.” I nodded. “May I ask how you know each other then?” I looked at Madeleine.

“Through my parents, actually.” Madeleine replied.

“Madeleine’s family is one of those that has been affiliated with the Conclave for a very long time. Her family has been in the art trade for a little more than five centuries. A lot of art pieces in the castle have been bought and commissioned through her family.”

“Wow.” Claire really looked like she was in awe. “And you decided to switch it up by going into real estate.”

Madeleine nodded. “My brother and sister are going to take over the art trade. While I do like art, I do like architecture and selling houses more.”

“It’s definitely an interesting profession.” Em agreed.

“Mhmm.” Madeleine hummed. “But since we’ve got a lot of houses to visit today, would you mind if we move on to the real estate part of the visit?”

“Right, of course.” I nodded.

“Alright, feel free to ask questions after we’ve visited everything, though.”

And so we went on to visit the first house. Summarized, this house was okay. Of course, compared to where I lived now, it was incredibly impressive. It had only just been renovated and had a great view and a very nice garden that was attached onto its small vineyard. But I just couldn’t really imagine myself living in a house like this. You couldn’t really hop over to the store real fast as it was quite some distance away from any real concentration of houses. There was a very rustique bakery nearby but any other store would be at least a ten-minute cycle. Which arguably isn’t that much, but I’m a city girl. From what I could tell, Em wasn’t really that interested either, although Ria definitely seemed to enjoy the countryside.

Madeleine had noticed that this wasn’t really my jam. “There’s plenty of houses left for us to see. And if you don’t find anything to your liking today, we can look for other houses on other days.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it.” I replied. “It’s just not really my thing. It is a beautiful house, though.”

“Okay. Are you ready then to go to the next house?”

“Yep, let’s go.”

We all moved on to the next couple of houses, but they were all pretty similar to the first house we’d seen. Others were a little too modern for my taste. While still very nice to look at, modern villas with their minimalistic design, I did not really care much about those.

Then we arrived at the second to last house for the day, this one was pretty much in the center of the city and was part of the historical city center. We parked nearby in an underground garage and walked up to it. When I saw it, I was almost immediately sold on it. It was a 19th century mansion that was flanked by two other mansions that looked slightly differently, but were still from the same era. With its imposing four stories high beige Art Nouveau facade with green window frames.

“Wow.” I didn’t even try to hide my admiration of the building.

“This is definitely your style.” Em chuckled.

“I don’t come to this part of the city too often. I didn’t know this house was here at all.” I admitted. “But this is an interesting house for sure.”

“Calm your horses, Aurora, we haven’t even seen the inside yet.” Claire chuckled and gave me a pat on my shoulder.

Ria was also looking very interested at the facade but she didn’t really say anything.

“Would you like to see the inside as well?” Madeleine asked, or have you already made a decision.

“Of course I want to see the inside too!” I replied enthusiastically.

“Alright, follow me.”

We walked over to the front door, before we entered though, Madeleine pulled our attention to the steps. “You see this little stone ramp here? This has been an addition from the previous owners to make it easier to put their bicycles inside, so you don’t have to carry them up the stairs.”

“So we can park our bikes indoors?”

“Yes, the hallway is wide and long enough for at least four bikes.”

“In the hallway?”

“You can put them in the underground garage too, that comes with the house, but if you want to, you can put your bikes in the hallway. This hallway isn’t really used for other things except for hanging the coats of yourself and of guests.” She opened the door and indeed, it was a meter or two wide and pretty long, it was only connected by two doors.

“This door goes into one of the tearooms while the other one enters into the kitchen.” Madeleine said. “All the rooms are connected inside of the house itself, so apart from leaving and entering the house, you don’t really need this hallway.” Madeleine paused and let us take in the hallway for a second before she would continue the tour.

-Hmm… I do wonder if it’s wide enough for a cargo bike, but I do think it is.-