We walked home through the cold. “You didn’t tell me,” I said.

“It wasn’t my place to tell.”

“I don’t understand why they didn’t tell me either.”

“All of them were part of our inner circle,” Curran said. “They knew exactly how much you wanted to be away from the Keep and the Pack. They wanted to give you space.”

“Did they think I would throw a tantrum?”

“Baby, you’re not the tantrum type. You are the scary-smile-and-stabbing type.”

I looked at him.

“Hard-stare type.” He grinned. “They knew you wanted privacy. They didn’t want you to feel like they chased us down. But it was getting a bit ridiculous, so it’s good Christopher gave them a nudge.”

I waved at our side of street. “How many of these houses do you own?”

“We own, and all of them.”

“Do we own anything else?”

“We also own the woods directly behind us.”

Those woods extended for quite a while. There used to be a huge golf course and a shopping center behind us, but trees and brush had swallowed it long ago. “How many acres?”

“Five hundred and twelve.”

I opened my mouth and nothing came out.

“I thought of calling it the Five Hundred Acre Wood,” Curran said.

My mouth finally worked. “How much did you . . . ?”

“Three million.”

Oh my God.

“It was a steal. They kept trying to clear it, but the trees there seem to have a really high affinity for magic. Every time they clear something, the woods grow back in weeks, which is perfect for us. Once we allow the woods to develop, the growth will self-regulate.”

“Is this why we’re out of money?”

“Yes.” He smiled at me. “We’re not out of money. We just have a firm budget.”

I laughed quietly. Somehow it all completely made sense.

“I did tell you about the woods. On three different occasions.”

No, he didn’t. “I don’t remember that.”

“Beginning of February, I told you that I was thinking of buying a little extra land with our house.”

I had no recollection of that conversation. Also, a little extra land meant another acre. Not a forest five times the one Pooh Bear lived in. “What did I say back?”

“You said, ‘You want to talk about this now?’ And then you said, ‘Can’t you just bite him in half?’”

Ah, now I remembered. “We were in a half-flooded garage with a deranged lunatic who was shooting lightning at us.”

“And then I brought it up again the second weekend after we moved in. We were in our bedroom. You were doing paperwork and I came out of the shower and I said . . .”

That I had a perfect recollection of. “You said, ‘Hey, baby, come here often?’”

“Before that.”

“I don’t remember what you said before that. You made it difficult to concentrate.”

“In my defense, you were doing paperwork naked.” Curran grinned.