I needed to contact someone in House Brown so I could send a message to Neds. He said he knew people who could help me disappear. Maybe they had other resources that could help find Quinten. But Abraham and the others were waiting for me and they’d get suspicious if I wandered away again.
So I pulled the small journal and pen out of my duffel and scribbled a note. When I got my chance to pass the note, I would be ready.
I tucked the note into my pocket and walked back into the room.
The warm roll of conversation and laughter made me pause a moment. Abraham spotted my entrance and stepped away from the stunningly beautiful blond woman he had been talking with.
January Sixth, House White, Medical gave me a cool appraisal and did not seem pleased with the results.
All right. We weren’t going to be friends. But I could be polite to her until the end of the world. Or at least until I was announced at the gathering.
“Matilda,” Abraham said, as he escorted me over to January, who looked like she could model if she didn’t have white stitches running a line up her left cheek. Forget that. She could model even with the white stitches running up her cheek.
“This is January Sixth. She’s House White.”
She raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Hello, Matilda,” she purred. Sounded like she was hungry for fresh meat.
“Hello,” I said with the same I-can-take-you-down tone I used on feral beasts.
Okay, so maybe I was a little rusty on my polite.
Abraham must have noticed the tension, and quickly stepped between us while guiding me over to the other side of the room.
“You’ve met Buck Eighth, House Black, Defense.”
He was sitting across from Loy and Vance. Just as when I’d first seen him, he wore a black T-shirt and dark denim, both stretched over a lot of muscle. Those light green eyes of his set in a face that was pleasingly angular gave off a big-cat look.
“Nice to be properly introduced,” he said, standing up and offering his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Matilda.”
“And you,” I said, shaking his hand.
He grinned at the contact, which I assume allowed him to feel full sensation. “I was just telling the others about you taking Abraham down with one kick.”
“For the love of . . .” Abraham started. “It wasn’t just one kick.”
“I was there,” Buck said. “I know what I saw.”
“This,” Abraham said, changing the conversation, “is Helen Eleventh, House Silver, Vices.”
Helen sat on the couch between Vance and Loy, a beer in her hand. She was compactly built, with a sweep of short black hair ragged across her forehead and just below her ears. Her almond-toned complexion was set off by wide, heavily made-up eyes. Silver threads swirled across her face and down her neck in intricate, lacy patterns, as if stitched there for decoration.
She stood and walked around the coffee table and stopped right in front of me. She was a couple inches shorter than me, but carried herself like she was my superior.
“I’ve been hoping to get my eyes on you,” she said, her smile attached almost as an afterthought.
“Pleased to meet you too,” I said.
She put some teeth in her smile. “If you need anything, you remember that my House is always open for business.”
“Relax, Helen,” Abraham said. “We don’t do business here.”
She walked back to her place on the couch. “I’m just being friendly. Everyone has their vice, even our little country cousin. Don’t you, Matilda?”
“Naw,” I said, leaning into my accent. “Clean living and the occasional killing before breakfast keeps me fine.”
Buck glanced up at me, then tipped his head down to hide his grin.
Abraham pivoted me around toward the rest of the room, so that Helen was at my back.
