After we’d moved here last year, Sydney had been ready to throw herself into the job market to support us, and that’s when we’d had our first real fight that didn’t involve something supernatural. I’d been insistent she finally go to college. She’d said it could wait until our finances built up. Fortunately, another good friend had come through for us: Clarence. With his ample fortune, he’d been more than happy to send us regular stipends—in fact, we’d had to limit him so as not to attract too much attention. But between those payments and student loans, Sydney had finally achieved her dream of studying ancient art at a local university. She’d even nabbed an internship at their museum.

Recently, I’d also been able to help our family income with . . . my own job.

Sometimes that seemed like the most surreal part of all. Me, Adrian Ivashkov, earning an ordinary living. After all the bizarre ups and downs I’d had with money, going from a spoiled kid with unlimited funds to a guy cut off by his father, it seemed unreal sometimes that I now got by with an hourly wage like everyone else. Equally astonishing was how much I’d grown to like it. I’d honestly never expected to get a job with my art degree—if I even finished it. There just weren’t that many jobs demanding artists and certainly not ones that needed people with incomplete art degrees. While helping out a neighbor one day, though, I’d learned her daughter’s preschool was looking for a part-time art teacher. At that level, my degree didn’t matter so much, just my enthusiasm for teaching art to kids. Incredibly, I’d turned out to be pretty good at it—though maybe it was just my natural-born immaturity that allowed me to relate to kids. I’d found a few other preschools and pitched myself to them too, eventually gathering enough part-time positions to contribute substantially to our family’s income.

The original place liked me so much that the director had told me if I finished a bachelor’s degree in education, I could come work a full-time teacher’s position with better pay and solid hours. Sydney hadn’t pressured me to go back to college, but when she’d heard that, her eyes had lit up, and I had a feeling she’d be working my college tuition into her master budget.