The process, after things were in motion, went remarkably quickly.  The Wyrd was really working overtime since Less’s contacts were able to find the birth certificate of a “Simon Daniel Beal” who would be about Simon’s age, but who had died minutes after birth in a town in Iowa that had subsequently been destroyed in a freak windstorm some years ago.  So that information would be pretty hard to uncover unless you were looking, and the Wardens of the Bleak Seal promised to make it more difficult still.School records were similarly easy to forge, and Simon took a day to go take the driver’s test, so “Simon Beal” officially had a New Mexico state driver’s license.  He didn’t have a college degree, but that wasn’t going to hold Simon back.

A gun license would have to wait, so he hadn’t replaced his pistol yet.

In three weeks, Simon was a legitimate individual who had the necessary documentation and paperwork to manage the finances of Cassandra McArthur Inc. through the auspices of his own company, Bellwether Enterprises,LLC.

The Queen of Spring had quite a bit of money, but it wasn’t managed very well.  She lived pretty much hand to mouth, just with thousands of dollars a week.  Residuals and licensing fees on some of her modeling work brought in continuous money, along with sizable infusions from work she still did once in a while.  But she spent it almost as fast, on charitable donations and payments into various accounts that Simon eventually found out belonged to the Bleak Seal and another group that was working to help Changelings adjust to the mortal world.

But even with his limited knowledge, he knew there were ways to make a stake like this produce a lot more than Cass was getting.  He spent a week collecting information, talking to a financial adviser and some business counselors who volunteered their time at the local library.  He also talked to Juliani to see what the Draconic changeling had in mind, and it looked good on paper, but something made him nervous and a voice in his head told him there’d be better way.  The way came to him a few days later.  He was just walking around, doing some shopping for himself when the idea hit him like a bolt of lightning and wouldn’t leave his thoughts.  He could feel the Wyrd working on his destiny, almost crawling across his skin, wrapping him in its threads and dragging him where it wanted him to go.  Simon had worked out, with a lot of headache, a pretty good operating budget for the Court, and set aside enough money for it to keep going at a moderate level for six months.  The rest was going into a special project.

Before Simon made any decisions, he talked to the Rose Council again to see if they approved.  Even Juliani agreed, once he’d seen Simon’s numbers.

So it was decided.  The very next day, Simon started the process…