Julie’s eyes lit up. “Can I ride Hugh’s horse?”

“I’ll think about it,” Curran said.

I thought she’d be upset about leaving the Keep. Instead, she’d shrugged and announced that as long as she could go to the same school, she didn’t care.

“Shall we go in?” Nina unlocked the door.

Julie went inside.

“It’s kind of big,” I said.

Curran grinned. I tapped him on the arm.

“That’s good. Plenty of privacy.”

“Can we afford this?” I asked Curran. It had to cost an arm and a leg.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m loaded.”

“Well, aren’t we smug, Your Furriness.”

“Technically, you can’t call me that anymore.”

“I’ll call you whatever I like.”

We stepped inside. Sand-colored tile lined the floor. The house was bright and open. Light streamed through the windows. The air smelled like freshly baked cookies. Here we go. It felt so comfortable here. And the office was less than twenty minutes away by horse. It was like it was tailor made for us.

“Four thousand square feet. Open floor plan,” Nina rattled off. “Tile on the first floor, hardwood on the two top floors. Beautiful windows throughout, state-of-the-art grates with high silver content . . .”

We followed her into the kitchen. It was almost as big as my old apartment. A platter of cookies waited for us on the counter with a small white note.

“The cookies are a nice touch,” Curran said.

Nina paused. “I didn’t do that. I had no idea I was going to show this one today.”

I plucked the note from the counter.

I like this one. Plenty of room for the grandchildren and a sizable guest suite.

PS. The wards on the north side need to be reinforced.

~R

MAGIC TESTS

A Short Story in the World of Kate Daniels

Ilona Andrews

SOMETIMES BEING A kid is very difficult. The adults are supposed to feed you and keep you safe, but they want you to deal with the world according to their views and not your own. They encourage you to have opinions, and if you express them, they will listen but they won’t hear. And when they give you a choice, it’s a selection of handpicked possibilities they have prescreened. No matter what you decide, the core choice has already been made, and you weren’t involved in it.

That’s how Kate and I ended up in the office of the director of Seven Stars Academy. I said I didn’t want to go to school. She gave me a list of ten schools and said to pick one. I wrote the names of the schools on little bits of paper, pinned them to the corkboard, and threw my knife at them for a while. After half an hour, Seven Stars was the only name I could still read. Choice made.