Avon

There wasn’t going to be more snippets, but we received a message from Tina, one of our readers, who has been in the hospital for five days due to pneumonia.  She’s been checking the blog page every day and she wanted how she could better if there was never a new snippet.

Here is a new snippet.

The Office of House Records occupied a short tower of black glass on Old Spanish Trail, across the street from the Bureau of Vital Statistics. The asymmetric building leaned back, textured, its profile odd. As Rogan pulled his gunmetal- grey Range Rover into the parking lot, I saw the front of the tower. It was shaped like a feathered quill. The setting sun played on the dark glass. Only a handful of cars waited in the parking lot.

“Are you sure he will be there?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s Christmas Day.”

Rogan turned to me. “He will be there, because I called and asked.”

I gripped the zippered file so hard, my fingers went white. Last chance to back out. Rogan reached over, his magic curling around me. He took my hand and held it in his.

“Do you want me to turn around?”

“No.” I swallowed. “Let’s do this.”

We got out of the car and walked to the door. It slid open with a whisper, and we stepped into a modern lobby. Black granite sheathed the walls, grey granite shone on the floor, and in the center of the lobby, thin lines of gold traced a magic circle. A guard looked at us from behind his desk and bowed his head. Rogan led me past him to the elevators.

The folder seemed so heavy in my hands. All my doubts bubbled up and refused to disappear.

“Am I doing the right thing?”

“You’re doing the only thing that makes sense to keep your family safe.”

“What if I don’t qualify?”

“You stood toe- to- toe with Olivia Charles, a manipulator Prime, and you won.” His voice was steady. “You will qualify.”

“Thank you for coming with me.”

He didn’t answer. He’d made it clear in the past that he expected me to walk away from him the moment our family became a House. He didn’t think our magic was compatible. If we had children, they might not even be Primes. He viewed this as the beginning of our end, but he came anyway. He was also a complete idiot if he thought I’d let him get away. He was mine. My Connor.

The elevator opened. We stepped into a hallway, with a dozen doors branching off from it, all closed. At the very end of the row of doors, large double doors stood open. We walked toward those doors, then through the doorway, into a huge circular room. Books lined the walls, thousands of books on the curved wooden shelves, three stories high, each floor with its own railed balcony. A grouping of comfortable couches upholstered in dark leather occupied the center of the room. Directly in front of it, between us and the couches, a round counter rose.

An old man sat behind the counter, reading a book. His skin was a warm brown, pointing at a Latin American heritage, his hair was white, and he wore a three- piece grey suit with a tartan bow tie. He raised his head, smiled at us, and hopped off his chair. His eyes, behind large glasses, were very dark, almost black, and shiny like two pieces of obsidian.

“Ms. Baylor,” he said, his voice soft and cultured. “Finally.”

“I’m sorry to trouble you on a holiday.”

He smiled wider, showing white teeth. “Don’t mention it. It is, after all, my job. I would’ve done it anyway. I was in downtown Houston, in the tunnels, when the Old Justice Center fell. I owe you and Mr. Rogan my life.”

A man emerged from a shadowy alcove in the side wall, moving silently across the floor. In his mid- twenties, he wore expensive shoes and a sharp black suit, with a white shirt that looked even whiter against his light bronze skin, and a black tie. Black and grey tattoos covered his hands and neck. His dark brown hair, cut short on the sides, but longer on top of his head and slicked back, defined a long handsome face, with intelligent eyes the color of whiskey. He looked dangerous and slightly mournful, like a Prohibition- era gangster at a funeral.

“It’s not every day one gets to register an emerging House,” the Records Keeper continued. He leaned closer and smiled at me, as if sharing a secret. “Especially one with a truthseeker in it. I’m so very excited to meet you. Michael is also very excited, aren’t you, Michael?”

Michael nodded.

The Records Keeper put on a pair of linen gloves and turned around. Behind him a massive book lay on a pedestal under a glass hood. He raised the hood, picked up the heavy volume, bound in marbled leather, and placed it on the counter. An elaborate gold crest decorated the front panel.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It is. Eighteenth- century Dutch binding. The Houses of Texas have been recorded in this book since before statehood.”

He opened it gently and showed me an empty page. “If you pass the trials, your House will be written here.”

He turned the heavy pages to the red bookmark. Four columns of names written in beautiful calligraphy covered the page. Some were crossed out.

“Are those the people who failed the trials?”

He nodded. “Indeed. Now then, do you have the necessary paperwork?”

I passed him the folder. He opened it, scanning the pages.

“Where is the second witness?” Rogan asked.

“Running late. Given the circumstances, I wanted to make sure to select someone whose reputation is beyond contestation. Someone whose name commands respect. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“A witness to the emergence of a House has certain obligations,” Rogan told me quietly.

“Like what?”

“We’re expected to offer advice and guidance.”

The Keeper checked the signatures and raised his head. “You’ve presented us with a conundrum, Mr. Rogan. Finding a suitable test for a truthseeker was challenging, but identifying the younger Ms. Baylor’s magic was even more so. I must say, your sister’s power is something truly remarkable. It is, of course, a mental branch, but what subset? One would naturally lean toward a psionic, but a psionic who evokes a genuine love has never manifested. Michael and I had to dig very far through our archives and other archives. Favors were called in, access to databases had to be requested, and foreign Keepers of Records were consulted. But we persevered, didn’t we, Michael?”

Michael nodded again.

“We had to reach very far, and we finally found what we were looking for in Greece. There is a single House— just one, mind you— whose record showed the emergence of a similar talent. Only in female offspring. The last verified manifestation was in the 1940s. Apparently, there was some unpleasantness.”

It was brought to our attention that Comey is testifying, and, for the love of all that’s holy, a snippet is needed.  It is here for you, when you are ready for a real life break.

“I agree,” Bern said. “We’re not doing that.”

“We can fight,” I said. “Victoria has more money, more troops, and more of everything.”

“But Rogan would help us, right?” Arabella asked.

I struggled with the right words. “Yes. But we can’t always count on Rogan.” Strictly speaking, that was a lie. Rogan would do anything and everything to help me.

“We shouldn’t always count on Rogan,” Mom said.

Everyone looked at her.

“This isn’t his problem,” she said. “It’s our problem.”

“If we let Rogan save us, we’ll be tying ourselves to him,” I said. “We’d be viewed as his vassals. We’d have his protection, but we would inherit his enemies, and he has some powerful ones.”

“And if your relationship with Rogan sours, things will get complicated,” Bern said.

“Yes.”

“So we don’t want to give up and we can’t fight the Evil Grandma. Is there a third option?” Arabella asked.

“Yes. We can become a House.”

My sisters and cousins stared at me. I’d brought up this possibility once before, but we were kind of busy at the time trying to solve a murder and accomplishing other important things like not getting killed.

“Whoa.” Leon blinked.

“No,” Mom said. “There has to be another way.”

I leaned back. “Becoming a House would grant us provisional immunity from any attacks by other Houses for three years. That’s long enough for us to establish a power base.”

“Would Victoria follow that rule?” Catalina asked.

“Rogan says she will. It’s in everyone’s best interest to protect emerging Houses, because otherwise inbreeding would become a real danger. Apparently, this is one of those rules Primes won’t break under any circumstances. It would buy us time to build up our power base and make alliances and do all the things Houses do.”

“You can’t be serious,” Mom said.

“I am.”

“She isn’t going to obey any rules. That woman is a monster. You can’t be that naive, Nevada.” I met my mother’s gaze. “Yes, she may still attack us. But she will have to do it in a way that can’t lead back to her. Becoming a House would make it much harder for her to hit us.”

And once we became a House, we could make alliances as equals.

“You’re filling their heads with visions of being a House. Why don’t you tell them what it’s really like? Tell them about Baranovsky.”

“Mom is right,” I said. “Houses are vicious. You remember that charity gala I went to in the black dress? It was very exclusive. The man who hosted it, Gabriel Baranovsky, was drinking champagne at the top of the stairs in the ballroom. David Howling froze the wine in Gabriel’s throat. He turned it into a blade that sliced Gabriel’s neck from inside out.”

“Badass,” Leon offered.

We all looked at him.

“It’s elegant,” he said. “The ice melts, and there is no evidence. There are no prints, no murder weapon, there is nothing.”

I had to tell him about his magic. There just wasn’t any escaping it. That’s the way his mind worked and there was no way to rewire him. Maybe I could just get it over with now.

My mother cleared her throat and hit me with a warning stare. It’s like she was telepathic or something.