Our families are joined by history and by a friendship that has lasted hundreds of years, but hers is the one that leads the Order. I’ve asked my grandfather many times why that privilege is hers. According to him, in Europe they were much more consistent with the Cult of the Shadow than we were. Plus, Argentina is very far. Far from what? I asked. It’s the ass-end of the world, he’d reply. We can’t participate in the organization the same way they can. Still, at crucial moments, there has always been a Bradford present. We are important, though secondary at times. Money is a country where some cities are more prosperous than others, but they are all rich, he told me.

What I learned over the years is that the nation of affluence is monotonous. The properties, the land, the companies that others manage for us, the old, dark houses and the new, luminous ones, the leathery skin of women who spend summers in the south of France or Spain or Italy, the silver, the Gobelins tapestries, the paintings, the art collections, the gardens, the people who work for us about whom we know nothing. Doesn’t matter if it’s Buenos Aires or London. It doesn’t matter either that our families are founders of the Order. Being rich makes us like all rich people. Being founders of the Order differentiates us from the whole world.

It was my grandfather who told me the story of the Order. The descendants of the original families are called blood children, and we all learned our history thanks to the stories of the elders. My grandfather, Santiago Bradford, sat us down—me and my cousin Betty, his two granddaughters—in the yard at Puerto Reyes. Of all our properties that’s my favorite, my beloved house in Misiones, uncomfortable and hot and absolutely beautiful. It’s the house my mother hates, because she hates everything beautiful and wants to destroy it; that is her true faith and her nature.

He told us the first story near the orchid garden, lit by a lamp that lent his dark eyes a yellowish gleam. My grandfather Santiago was born in Argentina and inherited all the fields and yerba plantations and sawmills and ships from the family, which had gotten rich in the nineteenth century. How did they get rich? The usual: looting, partnerships with other powerful people, understanding what side to take during the civil wars, and allying with powerful politicians. The first Bradfords came to Buenos Aires in 1830 or 1835, versions differ, but that date isn’t the important one. Our year zero is 1752. My great-grandfather, William Bradford, was a bookseller and owner of a printing press back in England, and his best friend, Thomas Mathers, was a landowner. The social difference between the two was important—I think that origin continues to mark the positions of our families—but they became friends because they shared a passion for folklore and occultism. In their free time they traveled the country together, buying books and collecting the stories that interested them. They were educated men, researchers and collectors of stories and testimonials of people with magical abilities, people who were gifted or cursed.