The next week was, frankly, a bit crazy.

It started not long after I woke up the next morning. Sparkle, bless her, was so exhausted that she didn't even hear me wake up for once. She remained dead to the world, snoring softly (and rather musically) in her night light hanging above my bed as I staggered into the bathroom for a long, hot shower.

Which was interrupted after far too short a time by a polite knock at the bathroom door and Ken's slightly muffled voice saying, "Sorry to interrupt, but D.T. has arrived for breakfast. I showed her into the kitchen and made her a cup of coffee. Shall I say when you'll be down?"

I turned off the shower and called back, "Twenty minutes. Ten if you come back and dry my hair."

"I shall return anon," he proclaimed grandly, and I heard the bedroom door close.

Halfway through having my hair dried and braided, I woke up enough for thoughts to start trickling through my brain and said, "Oh bugger. Margrave thinks the gate still needs to be fixed. Let D.T. know I'll be delayed a few minutes?"

Ken finished plaiting my hair and headed for the door, smiling. "Of course, Caley."

Sparkle yawned and stretched. "Would it be okay if I had breakfast with the fairies instead?"

I smiled. "Of course, Sparkle. Don't forget to refill the soda feeders, and why don't you take a plate of cookies out for them."

She was instantly in her teenage form beside the bed and heading for the door. "Okay!"

"Sparkle," I said gently.

She turned and smiled at me. "Yes?"

"You might want to get dressed first."

I myself dressed in jeans and a green silk blouse - either the Hall was willing to bend on fashion only so far, or I just loved the feel of silk against my skin too much for it to give me anything more casual yet - and hurried to my office. There, I placed a call Margrave and let him know that new front gates had been taken care of, and that now all I needed was some modern security equipment. He assured me that an installation team would arrive that very day, and politely didn't ask any questions about the new gates.

Then I hurried down to the kitchen, where D.T. was just tucking into a pair of Belgian waffles covered with blueberries and strawberry slices. Ken slid a matching plate onto the table across from her just as I entered the room.

"Bless you, Ken," I said as I sat down. "And good morning, D.T.."

She smiled, saluted me with her fork, swallowed, and then said, "Ken, these are delicious."

Ken, standing by the stove, bowed politely. "Thank you."

"Sparkle blew through a few minutes ago," D.T. said as Ken brought a plate of bacon to the table. "She firmly ordered the refrigerator to give her two bottles of soda and a plate of chocolate chip cookies, collected them from said refrigerator, kissed my cheek and said something about the fairies in the clearing, and was gone again before I could say two words."

I laughed. "She's very excitable."

"You have a magic refrigerator?" She asked, spearing another bite of waffle on her fork.

I gave her a whimsical smile. "D.T., everything in this house is magical in some way, even if it's not literal magic. But yes, I have a magic refrigerator."

"And the fairies in the clearing?" D.T. asked.

So I explained about the clearing outside my bedroom window, and my clan of fairies. Or, rather, I explained as much as I could, since there was still quite a bit I didn't understand myself.

"Now that sounds like a sight to see," D.T. said with a grin.

"Once they're completely settled in and have gotten comfortable, I'll invite you 'round to meet them," I replied.

Then our breakfast was interrupted by the arrival of the security team from Summers & Winters, who were almost falling over themselves in their eagerness to figure out the best way to secure the grounds. D.T. bid me an amused farewell and wished me luck before heading back into town and leaving me to the security team's tender mercies.

She did promise to come back in a day or two to give their installation a once-over, which made me feel better about the whole thing. I knew nothing about modern security equipment, and she did. It's always good to have an expert available.

Fortunately, the security team was led by a friendly young man who appeared to be about my own age. Once he had his team - a dozen men and women all of whom looked perfectly normal to me - crawling along the wall and pulling out installation tools and gear that might as well have been from a Science Fiction movie for all I knew about them, he wandered over to where I was standing and offered me his hand.

At which point I noticed that his ears were pointed like Sparkle's, only a bit more subtle.

"Doyle Winterborne," he said. His eyes were a bright shade of amber, and when I shook it his hand felt warm in mine. He was wearing jeans and a polo shirt with the Winterborne Security logo in an oval on the left breast. "My company is a subsidiary of Summers & Winters…any work we do for you is covered under their security contracts. Nothing we see, hear, or do here will be documented for or spoken of to anyone except you."

"Good to know," I said. "Caitlyn Reid. Call me Caley. Are you…?" I gestured to his ears.

He beamed. "I'm a changeling. Half-Sidhe, on my father's side. Dad works for Summers & Winters, so I built the security company as an extension of their available services."

I parked the concept of changelings in the back of my mind to ask Ken and Sparkle about later and nodded. "Sounds like a natural growth opportunity. Do you think this is do-able?"

Doyle turned back to the gates and wall, and nodded seriously. "No problem at all, really. We'll put an obvious camera at the gates, along with a couple of more discrete ones on both sides facing the gates to get full coverage. Cameras at each corner of the property and at intervals along the walls set up the same way - obvious and discrete - will cover visible security. We'll install a remote control system for the gates…that'll take a bit more doing, but it's not terribly hard. That plus an intercom will make it easier for you to know who's out here and decide if you want to let them in or not.

"We'll also install an alarm system tied to the gates and wall with a mix of motion and pressure sensors," he continued, folding his arms as he stared at the gates. "That'll report to a master control panel inside the Hall, as well as alerting the local police if it goes off." He looked at me. "I understand we're not allowed in the Hall to do the interior installation?"

I nodded. "Sorry. It's…weird. If it's a lot of gear, I'll just have you wheel it into the foyer and leave it there."

He shrugged. "We'll get everything set up out here. These days it's mostly wireless anyway, so there's no digging to install conduits and wires or anything like that." He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Nothing to interfere with the wards that way." He straightened again and said in a normal voice, "You have an interior specialist to set up everything inside?"

I hesitated, then nodded. I suspected that work was mostly done by the Brownies, but I wasn't certain and I wasn't supposed to mention them.

My nod was apparently enough. He smiled and nodded in return. "Enough said, then. And before you say anything, don't worry, I don't take it personally. You're far from the first client for whom we've had to do things this way."

"That's good to know," I said earnestly. "It makes me feel a bit less weird."

Doyle beamed at me. "We say eccentric, but never weird." He winked. "I'll get to it. If you have other things to do, we'll probably be out here most of the day. Maybe two or three, depending on how long a setup it turns out to be." He grinned. "Margrave said to give you the works."

And they really did. They were there for three days getting all manner of things I didn't understand set up. I recognized surveillance cameras when I saw them, but there were other, more sophisticated devices installed and well-hidden, that I didn't recognize. Doyle explained that they were different types of security cameras, microphone pickups, sound and motion-sensitive devices, and so on…but I'm afraid I tuned out a bit during the explanation.

It was enough to know that they were there and would work. I had other things to deal with, spending most of those three days sequestered with Ken, Wadsworth and Dora, learning about the Hall's magical wards and how I could go about fixing and strengthening them. It was a lot, eating up all of my time during the day and spilling over into Ken's magic lessons while I slept.

A 72-hour crash course in ward construction.

When Winterborne Security was done, the pile of equipment left to be setup inside was impressive. Doyle and two of his people carted the stuff into the foyer, taking several trips to do so…and none of them so much as blinked at or commented on the room which could not possibly fit inside the Hall's exterior.

I was impressed, and a little relieved. It was kind of nice to know there were other homes out there in the world as strange as mine.

As soon as they left, and I closed the door behind me, Wadsworth materialized beside the pile of equipment and gave it a long look. Then he turned to me and smiled. "Not to fear, m'lady. Me kin and I will get this all squared away and learn how to use it. Don't give it a second thought."

He tipped his little pork pie hat to me and gave a piercing whistle. A dozen other Brownies, all dressed similarly to him, materialized around the pile of electronics and began popping away with bits of it. For several minutes they appeared and disappeared so quickly that I never got a good look at any of them, and before I knew it I was alone in the foyer with Wadsworth.

He waggled his eyebrows at me comically, tipped his hat to me again, and vanished.

So I put the whole thing out of my mind until I went for a run the next morning, when I discovered a new door off the foyer, not far from the front door. I stopped in my tracks, quickly turned in a circle to count doors, and stared at the new one. On first inspection, it looked rather like a closet.

I walked over, opened the door a crack, and peered into what looked like the bridge of some Sci-Fi starship. There were monitors and banks of equipment that I didn't recognize everywhere, monitored and fiddled with by a veritable army of Brownies. I caught a glimpse of four monitors showing different views of the front gates before I quietly closed the door again.

None of them saw me watching them, or at least pretended they hadn't. I went for my run, secure in the knowledge that my home's defenses were improved.

When I returned, having met D.T. along the way for a shared jog, she examined the new security measures. I carefully didn't tell her where everything was, and was weirdly pleased when she couldn't find all of the cameras and other sensors that had been installed. I thought that was probably a good sign.

D.T. especially approved when I told her that if an alarm was set off, it would ring her at the Oakwood station. She liked that so much that she didn't make a fuss when I told her I couldn't let her see the interior setup, and was content with a light breakfast before heading back into town.

I spent the rest of the day walking the length of the wall that surrounded the Hall and its immediate property, repairing the damage that von Einhardt had done to the wards and strengthening them as best I could with the knowledge I had. I would learn more and grow stronger in time, and as I did I would add to the Hall's defenses.

I fell into bed that night utterly exhausted, and - courtesy of Sparkle's gentle radiance - slept dreamlessly.

The next morning, things got strange on me again.