Chapter 17: Home

I borrowed mum’s car on Monday morning.

My first stop was a real estate agency. I asked about a particular property. The agent agreed to meet me there with the keys. The house was in good nick, and it matched the basic requirements of what I wanted. We had driven past it the day before. Ryan had passed the comment that he had always liked that house and that it was a shame about the land.

The house was a little closer to the road than mum and dad’s house. The block was twelve acres and shaped like a trapezoid with the angled sides longer than the base or top. The sea was on one angled side, and it was concaved by the beach. The other angled side was the road. The house was fenced off on the narrower top two acres from the way to the sea.

It would be an easy block to split into smaller parcels of land if they ever decided to do that. The only problem with splitting it up was that in the middle of the ten-acre section was a swamp. It was why the house had been built where it was. It also had several large rocky outcrops that surrounded the sandy swamp. This was why it didn’t drain well.

In summer the sand-flies were that thick they could cart you off. They were also about the only native wildlife I’ve seen on the properly. Even the toads wouldn’t live on it. The swamp was so saline it was almost toxic. Dad hadn’t purchased it because he didn’t want the house and he couldn’t put cows on the land.

I asked the agent how much. When he told me the price, I laughed and said, “Mate, see that driveway down there?” He agreed that he could. “My folks live there; do you want to have another stab at the price?”

His shoulders sagged, “Look it’s been intestate that long the government is ready to give it away to get it off the books. It’s costing them a fortune to maintain the house.”

“What’s the current land valuation?”

He told me and said that if they split off the house block, they could possibly get more, but then they had to clean up the swamp because it was a detriment to the health of the people in the house. It would become council land, and they don’t want it, so they won’t approve the split.

That’s pretty much how I understood it. I offered him forty grand cash ‘as-is’. Having that much in hard cash those days wasn’t that unusual. He gaped at me. He asked if I was serious. I told him that I was. He took me back to the office, and I placed the cash on the end of his desk.

His eyes went wide, and he made a phone call. I went outside and enjoyed a durrie while I waited. I only smoke about five or six a day as it was only every so often that I’d just feel like one. I could give them up easily now I had the bling, but the bling also meant I didn’t have to. The agent came out and got me about fifteen minutes later.

In his office, he handed me a pile of forms and explained them to me. I told him the property was to be put in the name of my brother Ryan Watson. He asked me if I hated my brother that much. I laughed and told him it was to be a wedding gift and I planned to do a bit of work on it before I gave it to him. He shrugged as he was getting it off his books, so he was happy.

I had waived a solicitor, so it was an ‘as is’ sale, meaning I took full responsibility for fixing anything the council didn’t approve. I signed and added that I was the responsible party, not my brother. While he was the owner, all council issues were to be directed to me via my brother.

The agent was happy and wrote me a receipt for cash and said if I gave him two hours, he’d have the deeds sorted out for me to pick up. I thanked him and headed off to the Public Trustee, where I signed my life away again.

Mr Walters said my parents would need to come in and sign some documents relating to the custody of the children. He had already spoken to Family Welfare and given my parents a ringing endorsement. He knew one of the directors, so he didn’t see any difficulties.

Mr Walters was also committing his reputation, and the director knew he didn’t do that lightly. He asked about Ryan. I said that as soon as he had completed his apprenticeship, he would be coming home to marry Tanya. They already had a house, and Ryan was thinking of starting his own business.

“Ambitious,” Mr Walters said.

I shrugged, “Not really, you haven’t tasted his cooking. If you thought mums was good, just wait until you have eaten Ryan’s,” I told him. He was still sceptical, but I just smiled, he would learn. I happily concluded my business with him. Mum and dad would come in later and do their bit. After thanking him, I went and collected the deeds for Ryan’s new house.

I then tried something that had me a little worried as to my success. I had been going through dad’s filing cabinet looking for my birth certificate and found my uncles file. He had disappeared about five years before, and we don’t know what happened to him.

He had dropped his Holden V8 Panel Van off at dad’s and left him a note that said he was going fishing. The weird bit was all his prized possessions were in the car. Dad thought he had been living out of it for a while, as Uncle Travis liked to travel a lot.

He had been hit in the head with a cricket ball when he was seventeen, and dad said he had never been right in the head ever since. Dad often didn’t know where he was from year to year, but he often turned up around Christmas to tell us some wild tales of his adventures. We are still waiting for him to turn up.

Travis was ten years younger than dad was and I’d used a face of similar age for my Mark Sinclair persona. I now had Travis’ driver’s licence, tax file number and birth certificate. The other advantage was none of the documents had a picture on it. I just hoped my uncle hadn’t been in any trouble that caused him to disappear.

So, I went to a post office and asked if I could open a post box. I had enough identification, so I now had a postal address. Then I went to a bank that my parents didn’t use and opened a new account. I told them I was an artist and I often needed to deposit cash from my sales, so was it okay if I deposited twenty grand into the account.

I had removed the wrappers, mixed the notes up and put them into a couple of envelopes. They took my deposit and let me fill out the forms for a Visa card. I now had a name for my jewellery sales and somewhere to keep my extra cash. It does feel weird carting it around even if it was in my magical box.

I went to my parent’s shop, happy with my day’s work. I picked up the kids for mum so she and dad could go sort out their paperwork. Mum was working shorter hours while Sarah was at school and Tommy just went to work with them, as we had when we were little kids.

They had fixed up the playroom for Tanya’s boy. Robbo often had his two kids with him, if his wife, who was a nurse, was on dayshift. The room was set up off the reception area with a glass wall, so all the adults could check on the kids, and it now had a baby monitor in it too.

My parents were happy when they came home as Mr Walters had passed them onto the appropriate people to start the adoption process. They had gone through the paperwork and said it would take a while, but at this stage, they saw no problems since they were also the legal guardians of the children.

When I’d gotten home, I’d had a camp for an hour with the kids and then got up and started dinner. Sarah came to help me. We had fun, and I taught her how to make Spaghetti Bolognese. Tommy loved dinner and loved sucking the noodles down. He made a bit of a mess, but it was worth it to see him happy.

I enjoyed some time with my parents and told mum she had to launder some money for me. She thought I was joking. Then I gave her the shoe box. I told her I’d been selling some jewellery that I had designed with the help of my magic.

Mum is pretty quick on the uptake. I told her it was to help cover the cost of the kids. She knew I felt responsible for them, and she didn’t argue with me. She did say the money would be spent on the kids, and I was happy as I knew she would spend it on them. I then told her I’d purchased the old Patterson’s place for Ryan.

She looked at me in horror. I laughed and hugged her. I told her not to worry about the strange earthquake later tonight. She was trying to work out what I was on about, but I didn’t enlighten her.

I had to be up by four to catch my flight, so I retired early after reading the kids a bedtime story.

Just after midnight, I walked down the road to the property.

I then did a little landscape work. I even made the earth shake a bit so people would believe it. This was really cool magic. Basically, I moved some of the sand and compressed the rest under the swamp to create a huge sinkhole. I rolled the closer outcrops into it.

I flattened the others into smaller rolls except for the big deep oblong seawater lake now in the middle of the supposed sinkhole. I’d collected up a lot of the salt and put it back into the sea. I also create a tunnel, so fresh sea water could fill the lake, and it became tidal.

If Ryan split off that section of the property, he could sell it as fifteen half-acre blocks that surrounded the lake. He should do okay out of it and dad would help I was sure. They may want to pretty them up a bit, but I didn’t envisage them doing it in a big hurry.

I was sure nature would help us out, given a year or so. I couldn’t do too good of a job, as it had to look like an act of nature. Happy, with the alterations, I went back home to grab a couple of hours of shut eye before I had to get up for real.

Dad was amused when we drove past Ryan’s new place in the morning. He loved the new salt-water lake. I told him what I did, and he said that it was an excellent plan. Those blocks would be worth him putting up the money to sub-divide it himself with Ryan’s help.

It would give Ryan and Tanya a comfortable nest egg. I was happy as I was sure mum, and Tanya would put just as much effort into making the new blocks of land worth buying. I hadn’t done much with the house except drop a little repair spell on it and embed a couple of crystals to keep the spell working.

It was a tidy four-bedroom home with a double carport. It had a big four bay shed out the back that I knew Tanya would love. They even had access to the sea for her boat. I knew who would be the kitchen-bitch, in their relationship.

It was just light enough in the pre-dawn to see what I did. Dad said that mum was going to love having Tanya and Ryan just down the road. I thought so too. Plus, it meant the kids would be close enough that they could play together.

I hoped they have as much fun growing up here as Ryan and I did.

I arrived at the Mackay Airport around 6 am.

I was dropped over to where the smaller planes took off by a cutesy bus. The sheila at the counter said I had half an hour until boarding, so I went back out the front, unbuttoned my shirt, lit a durrie and lay on the bench in the early morning sun.

I had used a lot of magic energy last night, and the warm sun on my skin and bling was awesome. I happily dragged the smoke into my lungs as I soaked up the rays. I must have dosed after I finished my durrie as I woke with a start to find a man standing over me.

I think it was his eyes caressing my body, was what had woken me. I was getting a woody. I put my arm over my sunnies, so I see him better without the halo around his head. I sucked in a breath. He grinned as he watched my abdomen contract as my chest rose.

I got the distinct impression he liked what he saw, and it didn’t help my cock behave. I’m damn sure he noticed that as well as he licked his top lip and I had a squelch groan of desire. Then he spoke, and I shivered.

Bloody hell! How many people had he picked up with that voice alone? The body, cheeky grin and sexy dimple were devastating enough, and then he used that weapon to bludgeon you to be his slave.