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And ran into Marco, as co out of jokes"

"You could always feed theer"

"Not if the quality of the cuisine is anything like last time," the Valkyrie said, from across the room "Or was that deliberate?"

She sank a ball

Marco looked at , I s like that, he mouthed back

"And your wards are shit," the witch added, causing Marco to"I heard that"

I sighed and walked over

"At leaston her stick and watching ave us so it"

"Woven with holly all around," the sht and lightened by air, call on water, call on fire, call on wind--protect, protect, protect" She took a swig of her beer "Three eleot past it," her co it"

"The guy who usually does is out of town," I said evenly

"Well, you need to get hih it would be easier to do that if they’d go away, so I could track down Casanova and find out what he knew about the council But that didn’t appear to be happening And since I’d already pissed off the witches asto have to practice my diplo up another gah they’d barely started the last one

I looked over at the little witch, who grinned at ed "Okay"

Marco looked surprised, probably because he’d never seenon a weekly basis took the fun out of it "I used to work in a bar," I re what?" the Valkyrie de so tarot"

"The Pythia read tarot in a bar," the witch said, as if she thought I was lying to her

"I wasn’t Pythia then And I like eating"

"You must have been quite the draw," she said dryly

"Not really" I paused as she lined up the break, which she’d taken without bothering to flip me for it "Most people didn’t like what I had to tell them"

"And as that?"

"The truth"

Her cue stuttered on the velvet, and she flubbed the break She scowled at me, as if I’d done that deliberately I fished the cue ball out of a corner pocket and tossed it to her "Redo it"

She looked surprised that I was giving away ht now And I doubted they’d broken into my suite and trashed the lobby in order to play pool

The witch racked ’e herself a couple of easy shots to start with She took one of thes "Didn’t expect to find you so polite"

"Why? Because I didn’t talk to you after you broke in here?"

"No But we have plenty of other reasons Care to hear the to anyway "Sure" I walked over to the wall and chose a cue stick

"You didn’t invite us to the coronation, despite the fact that the damned Circle were there--in force" She sank her first shot with a savage little s or otherwise acknowledged our existence, despite having h time to do so" She sank two balls with her second shot, clack-clack "And you’re living with a bunch of goddah bank shot, and missed--barely

She swore andher a second advantage after that I took a moment to size up the table

"Who I live with is reetings because I didn’t knoas supposed to" Or that you existed, I didn’t add, because I decided it was barely possible that the head of a whole coven o "As for the other, well, if it helps, I wasn’t invited, either"

"Wasn’t invited to what?" she demanded as I bent over the table

"My coronation" I took the shot It was an easy two ball in the side pocket It went in--just I was rusty