“I wouldn’t count on Tim having a whole lot of schnapps in the cupboard,” he said, smiling and laying a hand on her knee. “Going German does have its limitations, you know.” He was in a good mood, she could see that—their troubles were over, or about to be. They both stared through the windshield a moment, as if to be sure the fairy-tale gatehouse hadn’t vanished in a puff of smoke. “I’d settle for a martini,” he said. “Actually, at this point, I’d settle for anything.”

She was thinking about unloading the car and getting things settled and what a trial that was going to be after a long day on the road—she had a headache already—when the high whine and blat-blat-blat of Dick’s little sports car came to them over the drumbeat of the rain on the roof, and then Dick was there and the gate was opening and Corey was sprinting across the road to them. Dick grinned, waved, then climbed back into his car and led the procession through the gate and up the long tree-lined avenue to the house.

So often, when you’ve built something up in your mind, the reality can’t come close to the fantasy, but that wasn’t the case with the Alte Haus. The minute it came into view, she was enchanted. Even through the rain-smeared blur of the windshield, she could see this was no ordinary house but a vision out of a storied past, the past of princesses, ogres and castles—and the myth, replayed a thousand times, of good conquering evil that every little girl in the Western world battened on. The style was late Victorian, though Tim was to describe it as Bavarian baroque, whatever that meant, and it was three stories high with towers on either side that extended it to four, and as they drove up in their procession, the spires that capped the towers seemed to take hold of the clouds and split them into long gauzy streamers as if the weather was just another facet of the house. “Wow,” Fitz said and gave a low whistle. “Can you believe it?”

Inside, it was even better—all tapestries and rich dark wood hand-tooled by the German craftsmen the original owner had brought over to make gingerbread of the banisters and carve fanciful figures into the mantels of the outsized stone fireplaces that were tall enough to step into. Tim had greeted them at the door, his grin as big as the house, and he wouldn’t hear of anybody unpacking anything until they each had a drink in hand and took a tour of the place. Martinis went round. Everybody seemed to be talking at once. And then Tim, pitcher in one hand, glass in the other, led them through the halls and up and down the staircases, pointing out the salient features in his crisp tutorial way.