“Ian’s the best cook in the house,” Ken said to Mika in an undertone. “But don’t tell him I said that. It’ll go to his head.”

Lucie had pink cheeks, wrinkles clustered almost exclusively around her eyes, brown hair with grey roots, and what looked like a sloppily made paper tiara sitting askew on top of her head. Flicking the switch that would turn the kettle on, she smiled warmly at Mika. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mika,” she said. “Goodness, your smile is even prettier than it is in your videos!”

“Isn’t it just?” Ian said, so proudly that you would have thought he’d had a personal hand in the architecture of Mika’s smile.

Mika laughed, then addressed the man by the French doors. “You must be Jamie. Hi.”

He turned, his lean shoulders shifting almost grudgingly. He wasn’t quite as tall as Ian, so Mika put him at about six feet or so, a full head taller than her. The mortifying phrase devastatingly handsome flashed across Mika’s brain before she promptly banished it. His brows were dark and straight, his face all hard, angular planes, and he had short, untidy hair somewhere between dark blond and brown, a beard shadow of the same colour, and unsettlingly sharp grey eyes. Considering the scowl, she thought it was downright impolite of him to look as good as he did.

“Jamie Kelly,” he said. He had a rough voice, like it had been sandpapered. And was there a bit of Irish in there? “Hello.” A perfectly polite reply, but not friendly. Not even a little friendly. There was none of the easy warmth and enthusiasm that the others had offered.

Mika refused to take it personally, so she simply smiled at him. “Did you used to live in Belfast?”

“Yes.” He didn’t smile back.

Mika turned back to Ken, more than ready for the answers she’d been promised. “I should probably mention that the only experience I’ve ever had working with children is this one time I had to extract a pea out of a toddler’s nostril on a train, but I assume that’s not the kind of thing you asked me here to do.”

“We have most of the children’s education covered,” Ken explained. “They’re homeschooled. They have a few online lessons, but for the most part, we educate them ourselves. Jamie teaches them English and history, Ian teaches them theatre, cooking, and unwise things like how to climb trees, Lucie teaches them maths, and I teach them Japanese, science, gardening, and whatever else I can come up with.”

Mika looked from one face to the next, bewildered. It all sounded extraordinarily normal. “It doesn’t sound like there’s anything left. What do you need a live-in tutor for?”

There was a pause, as if a collective breath was taken, and then Ian said: “To teach them magic, of course.”