Strange Aeons [Book 1]

6. The Lion's Charge [part II]

The little house was as pretty as a picture. A two-story building with a dark blue roof over white walls with tall arched windows decorated with colorful flower pots, a white picket fence and a nice front garden. A bicycle, a princess castle and a soccer door lay in perfectly trimmed grass, with purple flower bushes on the sides, slightly illuminated, like the small brown gravel path, by solar lamps.

The interior was tidy and polished, with blinding white walls punctuated here and there with modern artists prints or black-and-white famous photographs posters.

«I'm home.» he called. From a door at the end of the corridor, a tiny head peeked out. A slim kid, with a luscious mop of brown hair and his father's hazel eyes, greeting him with a composed nod and went back into his room.

«Oh, finally! The dinner is served. Michael! Come!» Francesca smiled. She was holding a little girl in her arms, not a day older than four years old, as she exited the kitchen. The girl looked just like her mother: an angelic face framed by long and thin blond hair.

Garaham couldn't help but smile, following his wife towards the dining room.

They had a metal and glass square table, on which everything had its coaster and its place. Michael arrived in the room some seconds after them and sat on one of the black, slender design chairs. The little girl was already seated in a white high chair, happily chewing.

Garaham looked at his seitan steak with cauliflower flan and sighed.

They started eating in what looked like a comforting silence. From the ceiling speakers came a soft hot jazz soundtrack, making the ambient slightly warmer. The only other noise to be heard was the ticking of the silver cutlery against the china.

«So, Michael.» Garaham said, once the cake had been finished. «How was school, today?»

«It was all right.» answered the boy, his face still buried in his plate, his hair half-covering his thin face.

«Michael got a B+ in his history test.» chimed in Francesca, with a note of reproach in her tone. The kid seemed to bury his face in his cake even more. Garaham exchanged a glance with his wife. And sighed.

«You should have studied more.» he said, with his best serious voice.

«But the whole class got a C or less!» protested the boy, with just a smidge of vehemence, that subsided the second he crossed the disapproving gaze of his father.

«I don't care what the others did, Michael. You should always be prepared at your best. This week you'll concentrate on your studies.» he sentenced.

«But father, I have the school play rehearsals!» pointed out the kid. «It's in two months and I have a very big part!»

«You'll resume rehearsals when your grades will go back up.» Francesca intervened, lifting the girl up from her chair and putting her on the black carpeted floor. «Now take Joan and go to your room.»

Michael opened his mouth to say something but gave up. He took his blond sister by the hand, shot a glare at his parents, and walked towards his room. Garaham looked towards Francesca, but his wife's face had turned darker.

«So, was it your Coven?» she asked, abruptly. Taken aback, Garaham jumped on his chair.

«I beg your pardon?»

«This is the last drop. You can't continue to put your name in the hat with them, they're dragging you down.» her voice remained calm, as she moved the white wine around in her tall glass. «A trial! We're lucky if your father won't have a heart attack!»

«Well, since it's your father who handed me the task and then hung me out to dry, we shall not drag families in this discussion, shall we? I know what you're going to say, and you know what I'm going to say, and we both know none of us would ever change their minds about that.» grumbled Garaham, who truly didn't need another discussion in that never-ending day.

«Only this time there will be no discussion. Tomorrow you'll turn in your request for a transfer.» Francesca had the voice of someone who had been preparing this for a long time: matter-of-factly and controlled.

Garaham suddenly stiffened.

«I will do no such thing! I tremble at the thought of what my Coven would do if handed to someone who didn't know them, or how to keep them under control exploiting their annoying quirks!» his voice raised a bit, and his posture went suddenly defensive. «Plus, with this trial issue...»

«Oh, this trial is just another excuse for Justin to mess with Algernon, and you know it!» Francesca interrupted him, dryly «They hadn't bickered in a showy way for some time, and you know that Justin grows restless if he can't pinch the Smoke Lion publicly, every now and then.»

«I hardly doubt that he'd need a common Coven to spark up his feud with the Leshracs.» Garaham growled, not completely convinced of his own words. But he would never give Francesca the satisfaction of telling she could be right, in the middle of a discussion. «And even if it was, we're in the middle of it, nevertheless.»

«Oh please! You really think that they'll go through with it? Algernon Leshrac will pull some strings to be able to remain in his castle in Australia, the Trial will be called off, Justin will have the satisfaction of making the other Househead do something and happy ending for all!» Francesca waved the problem away. «I grew up in enough Order politics to see what's going to happen, and so have you! In my eyes, this is just you trying yet once more to delay the inevitable goodbye to your bunch of freaks.» her tone was strangely calm, almost icy, but dabbed in light desperation.

«Francesca, I mean it, I'm not transferring, and that's final! I was considering it, as I told you, but you brought this too far. Again.» he answered, his voice now raised to a mild shouting, that didn't seem to upset her one bit.

Francesca rolled her eyes.

«You can be such a pain, sometimes. Can you imagine how hard it is for me to see you underestimated like that? It's frustrating, for a wife, to see her husband dragged down by those three useless brain-dead criminals.»

Francesca marched in a calculated manner towards him. Her arms crossed on her chest, her long legs moving with perfect, fast paces, until she reached him, right under his nose.

«Even River's Coven has more proficient members than yours, now.» she hissed, her eyes filled up with a challenging light, admiring with cruel satisfaction the weight of those words light up Garaham's anger like a torch.

It ended like it always ended. With them entangled in an angry, rabid mass over the bed. Francesca's suit skirt rolled up her thighs and Garaham's pants fallen at his ankles, his face buried in her neck as they moved furiously against each other, channeling their resentment in violent sex movements. The best and worst way to end any argument, especially when they knew, as they knew when it began, there was no getting out of it on the same side.

But Francesca was sure of something, as she clasped Garaham's hips with her perfectly manicured hands.

She would win one day.