We are preparing for the holidays at Casa Andrews and we will be a bit scarce over the holidays. Here is a small snippet of RUBY FEVER.
“Is it haunted?”
Oh, for the love of… “No, Arabella.”
My sister squinted at the monstrosity of a house growing closer as the SUV sped up the gently climbing driveway. “It looks haunted.”
“It’s not,” Bern said.
“How do you know it’s not haunted?” Leon asked from the back.
Because ghosts didn’t exist. “Because Trudy is a nice person, I like her, and she wouldn’t sell us a haunted house.”
“Yes,” Arabella said, “But did you ask if it was?”
“I did, and Trudy said no.” Our poor, long-suffering realtor had answered more bizarre questions in the last couple of months than she had probably done during her whole career.
My little sister whipped out her phone and bent her blonde head over it.
“I heard realtors have to disclose if the house is haunted,” Leon said.
I looked at Mom in the driver seat. She gave me an amused smile. No help there.
“Apparently only four states require you to disclose paranormal activity,” Arabella reported. “Nine states require you to notify the buyer if a death occurred on the premises. And Texas does neither.”
“There were no deaths on the premises. Nobody died in the house, so it can’t possibly be haunted.”
“How do you know nobody died?” Leon asked.
“Because I checked the records,” Bern rumbled.
Clearly, there were two teams in this vehicle: Team Facts and Team Facts Be Damned.
“What if they hid it?” Leon asked.
Bern gave his younger brother a look. When it came to uncovering facts, Bern had no equal. If there was a record of something and that record was at any point entered into a computer connected to the internet, he would find it.
“What’s that building?” Mom asked.
She slowed as we passed a large stone and timber pavilion on our right.
“That’s a wedding pavilion. The beam work inside is really pretty. I thought that if we insulated it properly, we could use it as our office building.”
Leon frowned. “You mean like a separate office building? One where we could conduct business and then leave and not be at work? People have such things?”
I sighed.
“Leon,” Mom said. “She spent the last two weeks trying to get this place inspected. She barely slept and barely ate. As I recall, none of you helped except for Bern. How about you holster that razor-sharp wit and try to be less you for the next hour?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Leon set up straight and appeared to look serious. It wouldn’t last, but it was a good try. My younger cousin was twenty years old and he showed zero interest in changing his ways. And that was fine with me. I liked Leon just the way he was.
“It’s big,” Arabella offered, looking at the walls. “Looks a bit like a Spanish fort with all the towers.”
“That’s a hell of wall,” Mom said.
The ten-foot-high stone wall was positively medieval in its thickness. It ensured that all you could see were the top floor on the main house and some red roofs, so on the drive up, the 21,000 square foot “mansion” appeared neat and orderly. But as soon as you drove through its massive gates into the 16 acres that made up its inner grounds, you realized that it was all a giant scam.
The driveway brough us to the arched entrance that cut through the wall. The huge gates stood open, and Mom guided the armored Chevy Tahoe through them and into the front parking lot on the right side. Alessandro’s silver Alfa Romeo already waited in one of the parking spots.
Arabella and Leon got out.
Bern leaned forward and rumbled, “I like this house.” He paused to make sure his point sank in and followed the others out.
I knew exactly why my oldest cousin liked it. The reasons were many but could be summed up by a single word: privacy.
Mom squinted at the two-story rectangular building in front of us. “What’s that?”
“’Cuartel,’” I said. “According to the listing documents.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Barracks?”
“Yes. The lower level has a kitchen, a mess hall, and an armory. The upper level has room for ten beds and a bathroom with four toilet stalls and three showers.”
“Hmmm.”
Normally interpreting Mom’s hmmms wasn’t a problem, but right now I had no idea what she was thinking.
We got out of the car. My cousins and Arabella had walked across the parking lot back to the main driveway. Mom and I joined them. The gate was directly behind us. The parking lot and the barracks were to the right, and the driveway stretched deeper into the estate, rolling between rows of old oaks to a paved forecourt and the two-story Mediterranean-inspired mansion beyond.
“Nice driveway,” Leon said.
“Enjoy it while you can. It’s the only straight road in the place.”
We started toward the mansion. The dense wall of hedges framed the oaks on both sides, hiding the rest of the grounds. The tree limbs reached to each other above our heads and walking down the driveway was like heading into a green tunnel.
“How many acres did you say this was?” Mom asked.
“Twenty-three point four,” Bern said ahead of us. “Sixteen are walled in, the rest is deer fenced.”
“I saw a metal gate retracted into the wall when we drove in,” Mom said. “How is it controlled?”
“There is a guard room built into the wall. The gate can be opened from there, from the office in the barracks, and from main house.”
“Question!” Arabella raised her hand. “If we buy this, can I get a golf cart?”
“You can buy the golf cart with your own money,” Mom said.
The driveway ended and we walked onto the forecourt.
“The main house is five thousand square feet,” I said. “The bottom floor is split into two wings. Each wing has a master. Four bedrooms upstairs, all en suite.”
“Four bedrooms?” Arabella asked. “So, Mom and Grandma take the downstairs, and we take the upstairs?”
To say she sounded underwhelmed would be a criminally gross understatement.
“We could do that,” I said, “or we could live in auxiliary buildings.”
Arabella squinted at me. “What auxiliary buildings?”
I turned my back to the mansion and pointed with both hands to the sides.
The family turned around. On both sides of the driveway, separated by the hedges, lay a labyrinth of buildings and greenery. On the left rose a round tower three floors high. On the right, half hidden by landscaping, sat three two-story casitas, each sixteen hundred square feet, joined by a second-floor breezeway. Between them and us, lay gardens, benches, gazebos, and water features. Stone paths, designed by a drunken sailor, meandered through it all, trying to connect the buildings and mostly failing.
Leon spied the tower. His eyes took on a faraway look that usually meant he was thinking of flying ships, winged whales, and space pirates. “Mine.”
“It needs a bit of work.”
“I don’t care.”
Bern started off to the right.
“Where are you going?” Mom called.
“Home.”
She looked at me.
“He really likes the casitas,” I told her. “Runa likes them too.”
My oldest cousin and my best friend were slowly but surely moving towards marriage, and it was harder and harder to ignore Runa slinking to the bathroom across the hall out of Bern’s room in the morning.
I could relate. Both Alessandro and I wanted to stay together and both of us felt awkward about him moving into my room, so we settled for him staying in the side building and me keeping my window open. Him climbing in and out of the window was infinitely preferable to having to run the gauntlet of my family just to get to my door.
“Where am I going to stay?” Arabella asked. “Am I going to stay in one of the casitas?”
“I think they’re spoken for,” Mom said, watching Bern double time it down the path.
“There’s a shack in the back,” I told Arabella.
She marched around the house. Mom and I followed her along a narrow path, flanked by Texas olive trees, esperanza shrubs, still carrying the last of its bright yellow flowers, and sprawling clusters of cast-iron plants with thick green leaves.
“So Bern and Leon get their picks and I get the leftovers,” Arabella called over her shoulder.
“Yep.” I nodded. “You’re the youngest.”
She mumbled something under her breath. Torturing her was delicious.
“What did you say this place was?” Mom asked.
“A failed bed and breakfast. The first owners built the main house, the Tower, and the bigger casita. Then they sold it to a man who decided to make it into an ultra-secure “rustic” hotel for the magic heavyweights. His website called it ‘a country retreat for the Houston elite.’”
Arabella snorted.
“He owned this place for about twelve years and turned into this, and when his business completely dried up, he sank the last of the money into that wedding pavilion we saw outside.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound?” Mom said.
“Yes.”
To add insult to injury, the owner or someone he employed thought he was handy and did a lot of the renovations and maintenance himself. According to our building inspector, his handiness was very much in doubt.
His greatest failure wasn’t his eclectic taste or his haphazard home improvements, however. The previous owner simply didn’t understand the psychology of the magical elite. Weddings between Houses, the most powerful dynasties, served to cement their alliances. They didn’t want a neutral ground for their ceremonies. They wanted a public show of trust. And the visiting Primes didn’t trust third party security. They brought their own.
“How much does he want for this place?” Arabella asked.
“Twenty million.”
“Ha! Ha. Ha.”
“That’s out of our budget,” Mom said.
“It’s not if we get a loan from Connor.”
“We can afford to put a third down,” Arabella said, “But this place isn’t worth twenty mil. I mean I don’t even get a house I get a shack…”
We turned the corner and the path opened, the greenery falling behind. A huge stone patio spread in front of us, cradling a large Roman style pool. Past the luxuriously large pool, the patio narrowed into a long stone path that ran down to the four-acre man made pond. Between the pool and the pond, on the right-hand side, stood another three-story tower.
Where Leon’s tower looked like something plucked from a Norman castle, this one could have fit right into the seaside of Palm Beach. Slender, white, with covered balconies on the top two levels and a sun deck on the roof, it had a clear vacation vibe. A narrow breezeway connected its third-floor balcony to the main house. Of all the places on the property, it was the newest and required the least amount of work to be habitable.
“Your shack,” I told her.
Arabella took off across the patio.
Mom and I strolled down toward the pond past the giant pool. The coping and the plaster were in excellent shape, but the water had gone green from neglect. It almost looked like a quiet corner of the Pit. I shivered. I still had the nightmares. Except now when I woke up, Alessandro wrapped his arm around me, and I snuggled into him and went right back to sleep.
“Can we really afford it?” Mom asked.
“Yes. We will put 25% down. It will need a lot of repairs, and our bills will go up. We’ll need to invest in some livestock for the agricultural exemption. The place already has solar panels, so we’ll be saving some money there, but we will need a yard crew and probably a maid service of some sort.”
Mom bristled. “I never needed maids in my life. If you’re old enough to have your own space, you’re old enough to keep it clean.”
“I agree, but the main house is huge, and we have the barracks and the offices. We are all going to be really busy. There will be an army of people to supervise, renovation decisions to be made, and we still have our regular caseload and then there is the warden business…”
Mom hugged my shoulders. “We’ll handle it.”
“Does that mean you like the house?”
Mom sighed. “I haven’t seen the house yet.”
“It’s … interesting.”
“I thought so. We can put it to a vote.”
Arabella burst onto the third-floor balcony. “Do I like it? No. I love it!”
Mom grinned. “Well, you got her vote.
Which team are you on?
Wow, that is some property! Trying to visualize it all. Yes, buy it so everyone can remain together and have room to not drive each other crazy.
Thank you for the snippet! Wishing you and yours the best Christmas and an amazing New Year.
Thank you. I LOL’d at “Torturing her was delicious.” I can hear my siblings or myself saying that. Merry Christmas.
Thanks so much for this snippet! This place sounds much more like a “Baylor” house than any of the other House mansions we’ve seen in the books. Someone wondered where Grandma Frieda would have her workshop. There’s bound to be a huge garage somewhere on the grounds, and probably bigger than the Baylors need for their own cars. Maybe a stable as well, that can be converted for either regular car parking or for Grandma Frieda.
I’m on Team Facts for real life, and Team Facts Be Damned for fictional worlds. Happy Holidays to all, and may next year be much, much better than this one has been! 🙂
The problem is, Grandma doesn’t need a garage, hotel-style, she needs a mechanics shop that can accomodate a (light) tank. That’s a lot of heavy equipment – hydraulics, cranes, welding, fuel and ammo storage, and also requirements to the building’s foundation and the roads.
They will probably build the shop next to the parking lot, but it will be a lot of work, and it will clash with the powerful-Prime-mansion image. It’s hard to be rich.
Team Facts for life, though TFBD sounds interesting to play in at least once a month.
I wonder, where are Runa’s brother and sister?
And Merry Christmas 💖
Merry Christmas! Great snippet!
Oh, GAWD! I LOVE IT!!!
I just started Emerald Blaze last night. Reserved it as a Christmas present to myself, and broke it out early. (Christmas Eve is ok for one gift, right?)
So … now I’m back to addicted again, and am THRILLED that House Baylor is getting such a fab new home! Yay, House!
Ilona & Gordon – hope you and family are having a lovely day. Thanks for the snippet gift. Truly making my day!
Merry Christmas and have a happy new year.
Team “This is going to be awesome!”
Thank you and Merry Christmas!
I’m a big fan of rambling and wacky and walled in. I also like the hypothetical farm animals. But that’s a lot of money!
Thinkin’ of You Both Tody.
Christmas Hugs and Many Thanks for All Your Wonderful Stories
Cheers
Be Safe Be Well
Mar
Hehehe Meant Thinkin’ of you both today
Doh!
I love it.
Fun! Thanks! and have a great holiday!
Buy it !
And Merry Christmas !
And thanks for all the fish … er… wonderful stories !!!
Merry Christmas! Thanks for the snippet. I vote for the house.
Thank you- love this snippet ❤️ It’s the topper to a great day! Merry Christmas🎄 and hope everyone has a healthy, happy, and much better year in 2021🎉!!!
Thank you for this lovely glimpse into Ruby Fever. Getting very excited.
I hope that you & the family had a happy, safe and Merry Christmas.
I can’t wait to see the back of 2020, and prying that 2021 will bring better things. Thank you for the stories, your views on life & family and the many pitures of animals. Happy!
Merry Christmas and thank you for this really fun snippet!
Lots of love and wishes for health, happiness, and prosperity for the New Year.
Thank you and happy holidays!🎄⛄️🎉
I vote for whoever gives me a Tower of my own
This excerpt has made me positively happy. Thank-you sooooo much for the christmas present. Can I please go live with them?
It sounds like just the oddball place for their diverse family needs! I’ll take a tower by the pool any day (and I’ve seen many pools cleaned up to look like new on house flipping shows.) But then, I haven’t had to deal with the Pit.
I’m with Arabella, in fact I want her tower! LOL
Does this place actually exist somewhere? It sounds like something that would be in Texas. Bigger is better.
When do we move in? 🙂
Merry, happy new year, complete with towers and casitas. What’s not to love? Just hurry a little, okay?
Hope your Christmas was merry and bright. Love the house. I foresee many home improvement episodes in the book(s). Sign me up for a ground floor casita. And, yes, they will need an army of cleaning and upkeep. The upkeep in the 8000 square foot house will be enormous. The grounds? Yowsa! I figure those who inhabit the casitas might be able to care for them, but -go for it. Bring on people who like housework and yardwork. Does no one have a magic for housekeeping?? Something much more useful than monster making?
Animators should be able to make magical equivalents of roombas, automated lawnmowers, etc…. Probably a question of cost effectiveness. Patricia’s rate (with discount I hope) vs cleaning staff salaries.
When can I move in. Lol.
Happy Holidays!
Such a wonderful gift you gave!
Wishing you two and all of your family a wonderful winter time.
Hope everyone had a great Christmas or if you don’t celebrate- hope you had a great day!
I love this new house idea and I’m Team Facts although I love Team Facts Be Damned too 🙂
Thank you so much for the snippet! It was sooo wonderful! I can’t wait to read more! I love the whole Baylor family!!! But I really have a soft spot for Catalina, Alessandro and Leon.
So true for the last 8 months.
Leon frowned. “You mean like a separate office building? One where we could conduct business and then leave and not be at work? People have such things?”
Thank you, Ilona Andrews, for the post and snippet. I am for buying it if professional structural engineer report shows salvageable. If it says not, then no. Interesting can mean many things as different people perceive differently depending on background. But professional engineers have a national inspection code so what they see in California is understood by engineers in Florida or wherever.
Thank you for all the stories and posts this year. You and Gordon and the menagerie made my world a better place.
Goats will pretty much eat anything that isn’t tied down and even then… hopefully they are covered in the referenced agricultural exemption as being okay. Self reproducing, self propelled, organic and inorganic substance recycling… notice I said nothing about vet bills. Either annual or emergencies. Some communities/ places are funny about what livestock is allowed ie no chickens but as many turkeys or ducks as you want.
My Dexter bull, Rhodesian Labrador and 10 cat aka the black panther to non family visitors have my security down pat. We are On our, hmm, PC, so “multiple” delivery driver as they deliver once and never return. Except the Amazon guy owned by Great Danes — he delivered twice. Amazon is up to 12, UPS 2, FedEx guy never returned after he got pulled out of ditch down the road so I had to drive into town and pick up package of sheets. (Neighbor has pigs of the non pet 100s of pounds variety that were not thrilled with vehicular presence in ditch. Poor traumatized city guy.) Same mail carrier as had in January 2019. Continuity. Of course some of my packages have toured the USA before being delivered.
Thank you!❤️
Sorry, I`m team Facts.
Thank you so much for the snippet. 😀
On team Arabella!
One of my best Christmas presents was an empty box from my younger son. It contained a note that my present will arrive on or after January 12th. I can scarcely wait!
I might add that he’s the on who introduced me to Kate and Curran, though I had already met Kate when she was still a merc and she met Saiman.
I’m so excited they get their own house and since i’ve been pouring over landscaping ideas for my house (small, ugly house, definitely not worth 20 mil) I could just picture the pool and surrounding areas mentioned.
Not having to work this week and a snippet makes this the best Monday ever!
I hope you all are having a nice downtime as well!
As large as this property is, does it come with mineral and water rights? There would be better security if it has all the rights. The mineral and water rights owners will have access to them.
Homeowners in Texas do not know and are surprised to find a door knocker saying, “I’m going to start drilling in your front yard. I’ll pay you the going rate for the access. I won’t pay for your house because you can still live in it. If you want to sell it, I’ll buy it for less than the Tax Value.”
If you don’t know who owns the water and mineral rights, ask your Title Company. In West Texas, a railroad probably holds the water and mineral rights.
Thank you and Happy Christmas!
Team facts for me please as we got screwed by our surveyor who missed the dodgy roof which had to be replace in less than 2 years!
I love the towers though- did I imagine you showing us a house for sale with towers in the not too distant past?!
Being a Brit I’ve googled casitas and I’m till not to sure what these but sounds nice and private, just what Arabella and Bern need.
A casita is a small house in Spanish, so in this case it probably means a fancy guest house.
I want to go there. Now.
Hello ilona, I hope you have been well?
Being that you hinted to multiple dimensions in sweep in peace, is there a possibility of telling a story where the abitrators (George and Klaus) visit the Kate Daniels and Nevada universe?
I strongly believe such stories will be amazing. And I believe you can pull it off.
What an awesome idea! Pretty please with a bow on top?
I love love LOVE it! Thank you thank you THANK YOU for this! I’ve missed the Baylors 😍
Ooooo! Thanks for the fabulous gift, House Andrews and a very happy holidays! Love the snippet and can’t wait for more!
At this point I will point out 13 days 9 hours and 20 minutes till ryder and maybe 365+ days till Ruby Fever.
Not counting …. really…..
Thank you for the snippet and happy holidays!
Enjoy your holiday. Keep safe. Thanks for the snippet. I Love this family.
Thank you! Best Christmas present this year. Wishing a safe, peaceful holiday season to all members of Casa Andrews.
Yes please!!! I love it too.
Thank you
Thank you! Hopefully your holiday season is peaceful and healthy.
Test for Mod R
Thank you for the holiday snippet, I am so looking forward to the next instalment
This was a WONDERFUL way to end the year!! Thank you to House Andrews for helping us all through a tough year!
One question that I’ve had through Emerald Blaze and really both Catalonia books is this … when did Arabella get good enough at math to be in charge of the House Baylor finances? One of my favourite moments was the epilogue of HL3 when Arabella has to do math in her “alternate form” and writes “this sucks” – it makes me laugh every time! Did she go to university or college or something or get an interest along the way and is self taught? Arabella always makes me smile so I’m so curious 🙂
2020 has been quite the year, but made more bearable thanks to House Andrews. You guys really are amazing. Thank you so much! Happy holidays, take care, stay safe and sane!
#BUYTHEHOUSE #TEAMFACTSBEDAMNED
I’m so glad they’ll get a beautiful house & I love that the place has its own personality. Thank you & Happy Holidays! E
Wow! What a super Christmas present. I loved reading this. A place like this will give all the family members scope to develop. It sounds exciting. I wonder where Grandma Frieda will set up shop. So many possibilities.
I appreciate the practicality of considering who will clean and maintain a place like this. Of course, for myself, I personally would prefer a place without monsters and paranormally gifted human predators. This place looks big enough to host a few. For myself, ghosts like the ones in Busman’s Honeymoon (Dorothy Sayers) would be welcome, no Amityville Horrors need apply. But that’s for my real life, not for my reading.
I was re reading Sapphire Flames after reading this.
Is anyone else terrified at the thought of Catalina’s alarm clock? Chapter 9, paragraph one “my alarm clock went off and dragged me out of bed”. What sort of mad and bad ass clock physically drags someone out of bed? How? Does it wait for you to wake up or does it just yank you out? Why would you buy something like that or was it a gift? What if you hit the snooze button, would it smack you back?
Thank you for the snippit and hope you all had a great holiday period!!! I can’t wait for the next book in this series. Can I just check am I the only person that thinks that linus could be caesar???
So much fun to be had!!
I have a weakness for a home that needs a some work- my grandfather was a contractor and I practically grew up on construction sites – so I was sold pretty much from the moment they passed the gates, lol. I want to visit the property so badly!
I’m more a Team Facts for everyday life, but in books…. anything goes 😛
Yes, I vote buy it!
I’ve read this snippet so many times already 🤣
Best view i have ever seen !