“Well, yes. Sometimes you’ll be busy with matters of justice. I want to be occupied so that I’m not tempted to constantly disturb your concentration.”
“What happened to books and treasures?”
“Monitors are treasures.”
I turned to Maeve. “Can you put a child lock on the programming so it doesn’t become a porn den?”
“I don’t know what that is.” She sniffed like she might not know what it is, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was distasteful. In this case she’d be right.
“She was joking,” Keir told her before turning his smile to me. “She does that a lot.”
I leaned toward him and lowered my voice. “I wasn’t joking this time.”
With a laugh, he said, “I don’t know what I did for fun before you came.”
Impatient with Keir’s public acknowledgement of affection, Maeve said, “Are we done here?”
“I have a daughter who might visit from time to time. I need a place for her.”
Maeve blinked and out of the corner of my eye I saw a smaller building emerge from the mist. It was a miniature of my house, about one quarter the size and cute as could be.
“Living, bed, bath,” Maeve said. “When you want it to appear, you can just look in that direction and say, “Evangeline.” She waved and the house disappeared. “Do you want to test it?”
There was no point in asking how she knew my daughter’s given name. She’d done a walkabout in my head. I looked toward where the house had been and said, “Evangeline.”
I must say nothing can make you feel godly like seeing whole buildings manifest with a thought and a word. It was gratifying all the way to the pit of my stomach. But…
“What will happen if I say ‘Evangeline’ and don’t want the guest house to show itself?”
Maeve sighed deeply. “When was the last time you uttered the name, Evangeline?”
“Just a second ago.”
With undisguised exasperation, she said, “Before. That.”
I thought back. I’d had flighty romantic notions about naming a daughter Evangeline, but she’d become Evie before she could learn to recognize her name. There was a chance that the last time I’d said it out loud was when I told the hospital what to put on her birth certificate.
I smiled. “I take your point. Evangeline was a good choice. How do I get it to go away?”
“Think of a word you’re unlikely to use under any other circumstances.”
“Abracadabra.”
“Done,” she said. “Is our business concluded?”
“Almost,” I answered. To Lochlan, I said, “I want to borrow Aisling for a minute.”
Lochlan turned to the dogs, who were sitting prone on haunches under one of my shade trees. “Aisling. Go with Rita.”
Aisling trotted over like she’d understood perfectly.
“Everybody else wait here, please,” I instructed.
Aisling followed me into the house then looked to me as if to ask, “Why am I here?”
“Will this be okay for the little ones?”
She looked around, lowered her head and began sniffing. She followed her nose through every part of the house, stopping now and then for something of interest. When she’d thus canvassed every room, she stopped by the dog door and wagged her tail. As soon as I raised the panel that covered the multi-flap opening, she was outside and barking happily, from the sound of it, running to the front of the house.
I replaced the panel, smiling. Life wasn’t going to be good in Hallow Hill. It was going to be grand.
The little cluster of magic kind was waiting for me at the gate to my new house.
“Well?” Maeve said in her curt and demanding way.
I smiled. “It’s perfection. What about a key?”
She scoffed like I was an idiot. “You don’t need a key. It’s your house. When you leave it will lock. When you return, it will unlock.”
“I have a housekeeper.” I glanced at Keir surreptitiously. “And I might want to give a friend access.”
“The house serves you and will do what you want. Just say out loud, ‘House. Give Olivia and Keir access when I want them to have it’.”
I thought about suggesting that Keir wasn’t the friend I’d had in mind, but that would be pointless. My secrets were common knowledge.
“I can change that directive at any time?” With a look of exasperation, she didn’t bother to answer. She simply vanished. “Okay. I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”
Keir chuckled. “Old fae who live in the bubble of the upper echelon are frequently pompous, impatient and haughty.”
“Not into manners.”
He shook his head, chuckled more, and repeated. “Not into manners when