There were about a million different sections, room after room after room, dormer windows and bay windows and balconies and columns and cornerstones, fancy French windowpanes and a mixture of curved and boxy rooftops. The brick was a cool, calming shade of purple-gray, which, paired with the bluish roof and cream detailing, gave it an overall fairy tale feel. The front yard was immaculate, with trimmed hedges bordering a sprawling, two-lane driveway.

Come on.

There was no way I was taking my car up that driveway. It felt like eating a work-of-art cupcake. This driveway was meant to be observed, not used, right?

So I pulled over to the curb outside the gate instead. Brougham, who had driven straight up the driveway to park near the entrance, leaned against his car and watched me trek up the winding path with raised eyebrows. When I finally reached him, he gave me a pointed look, then led me to the front door.

“Do you have a butler?” I asked as we entered, suddenly excited. “Or, like, a chef or something?”

Look, it’s not that I could necessarily be bribed with food, but let’s just say if Brougham had a chef who could bring us tastefully presented after-school snacks like crustless sandwiches or dragon fruit salad, I’d be a lot more amenable to afternoon mansion visits.

But to my boundless dismay, Brougham gave me a look of disdain. “No, Phillips, we do not have a butler.”

He was really not in a rush to forgive me for calling him Alexander, was he? “Sorry,” I said. “Just, it seems like a lot of work to clean a mansion by yourself, that’s all.”

Brougham had the nerve to sigh at me. “Well, of course we have cleaners,” he said, the same way someone might say “of course we have a roof,” or “of course we have a kitchen sink.”

I hung behind to make a face at the back of his head. “Well of course,” I muttered. “Naturally. Who doesn’t have cleaners? Pfft.”

“And it’s not a mansion.”

“Bullshit it isn’t a mansion,” I said with a flash of irritation. How was it Brougham managed to come across equally grating when he was bragging about his wealth and when he was underestimating it?

“It’s not. Maybe it’d be considered one in, like, San Fran. But it wouldn’t cut it in a town like this.”

The look on his face was half pitying, half judgy. Well, excuse me for not being well versed on mansion politics before speaking, ever-so-sorry about that.