16. Jagger #2
The farmhouse sits at the end of a dirt road that hasn't seen maintenance since the last Dwarven administration.
Potholes as large as cauldrons. Weeds pushing through the gravel like they're staging a slow, patient revolution against civilization.
The rental car, a compact sedan Sabine selected for its fuel efficiency rating, bottoms out twice on the drive in.
Each time, the undercarriage scrapes and groans, and Sabine's grip tightens on the dashboard.
She hasn't asked where we're going.
Not once during the forty-minute drive out of the city.
Not when the buildings thinned and the strip malls gave way to feed stores and fencing suppliers.
Not when the highway narrowed to two lanes and the cell signal dropped to one bar.
She just sat in the passenger seat with her hands folded over a manila folder containing the signed purchase agreement and stared straight ahead like a woman being driven to her own sentencing.
I should have told her sooner.
Should have mentioned it three days ago when the realtor called to confirm the closing.
Should have brought it up over dinner when she was reorganizing my savings into a colored budget spreadsheet.
Should have said something, anything, before loading her into a car on a Saturday morning with nothing but "trust me" and a thermos of the oatmeal she likes.
The road curves. The trees open up.
There it is.
Two stories. White clapboard siding gone grey from weather and neglect.
A wraparound porch with four missing railings and a support post that leans like a drunk leaning on a lamppost. The roof sags in the center.
One upstairs window is cracked. The front yard is more dandelion than grass, a yellow-white carpet stretching from the porch steps to a leaning wooden fence that separates the property from six acres of overgrown pasture rolling toward a tree line.
Beyond the trees, the Greenvale hills. Blue-green in the morning light. Quiet. So quiet I can hear the fence creak in the breeze.
I bought it for nine thousand gold. Cash.
The realtor, a goblin with three phones and an expression of permanent disbelief, processed the paperwork in under a day.
No mortgage. No lien. Just a direct transfer from the savings account I've been feeding for twelve years, one dangerous bounty at a time.
Twelve years.
Every broken bone. Every cursed bolt dodged. All of it funneled into a savings account I never told anyone about. Not my former partners. Not my clan. Not the Licensing Board. A private number on a private ledger, growing slowly in the dark like a seed buried too deep to sprout.
Until now.
I pull the car to a stop in front of the porch. Kill the engine. The silence rushes in. Not city silence, which is just quieter noise. Actual silence. Wind in the grass. A bird somewhere in the treeline. The tick of the cooling engine.
Sabine stares through the windshield.
I cannot read her face. The sharp line of her jaw.
The slight narrowing of her eyes as they track from the sagging roof to the broken window to the dandelion yard.
She is performing an assessment. I recognize the look.
It's the same one she wore when she opened my tax files for the first time and found three years of receipts organized by "vibes. "
My hands are on the steering wheel. I realize I'm gripping it hard enough to creak the plastic.
I let go. Open my door. Walk around to her side. Open hers.
She steps out. Her sensible shoes hit the dirt. She looks down at them, then up at the house, then out at the six acres of overgrown pasture stretching toward the hills.
"The foundation is fieldbrick," I say, because I need to fill the silence with something before it swallows me.
"Original to the structure. Solid. I checked the inspection report twice.
Roof needs full replacement. Porch needs rebuilding.
Plumbing is copper, which is good, but the well pump is thirty years old. "
She says nothing.
"Electric is updated. Previous owner ran new wiring five years back. Kitchen is gutted but the bones are good. Two bedrooms upstairs. The master has a view of the hills."
Nothing.
"Six acres. Mostly pasture. Fenced on three sides. The back boundary runs along Millcreek, which means water access. Soil is clay-heavy but workable with amendments. I looked it up."
The breeze moves through the dandelions. Seeds lift and scatter across the yard in slow, drifting constellations.
Sabine walks toward the porch and climbs the steps. The second one groans under her weight, and she pauses, testing it with one foot before committing. She runs her hand along the remaining railing and looks at the dust on her fingers.
"The property tax rate out here is one point two percent," she says. "Assessed value on a structure this size, even distressed, puts your annual obligation around one-ten."
I stop breathing.
She opens the manila folder. Then pulls out the purchase agreement and studies the price line.
"You paid nine thousand cash for a house with a cracked window and a thirty-year-old well pump."
"Yes."
"In a county with no supernatural infrastructure, no transit access, and one grocery store."
"There are two grocery stores. One opened last spring."
She looks at me over the folder. The morning light catches the sharp edge of her bob and the dust motes floating between us.
"Where would I put my desk?"