"Well, now, all old business bein' taken care of, is there any new business?" Etienne asked.
Terence raised a hand. "I want to know, do we have us a king? Griffen? You've been listening to us beat our jaws for hours. What do you think? Are you in or out?"
"I'm in," Griffen said, trying not to look as eager as he felt. "I want to do it."
The others burst into applause. "See, I told you," Etienne said, his thin face alight. "Welcome, Griffen. Well, then, let's get the membership festivities going."
Griffen felt every eye fix on him again. They looked like lions at feeding time. "What festivities?" he asked.
"Well, to start with, you need to enter your membership and pay for it, here if possible," Terence Killen said, flipping up papers on his clipboard and detaching one. "I've got the form to fill out right here. It's not too long. I'll take a check or cash. We're not set up with the credit cards yet, just PayPal online."
"How much?" Griffen asked.
"The basic membership is four hundred dollars for the first year," Terence said.
"No problem," Griffen said, reaching for his wallet.
Terence went on. "But there are higher fees for the officers and honorees of the krewe. We pay a premium for our ranks. As you are the king, and we are a smaller krewe, we ask only twelve thousand dollars."
Griffen blanched. "Twelve thousand ?"
Terence nodded. "Yes, sir. That covers your costume for the parade, and an allowance for throws, ball ticket, and some of the cost of striking you into doubloons."
"What?"
"Well, one of the throws that we distribute is a doubloon. An aluminum coin. Sometimes plastic, but we prefer the feel of metal. Used to be wood, or bakelite, back in the old days."
"I know," Griffen said. "I saw some on display at the Presbytery."
Terence seemed pleased that Griffen knew. "That's right. Rex started it. The parade theme is depicted on one side, and the face of the king is on the other. That's you. It's a great honor. You've got a good profile, and it'll look pretty handsome. We'll make sure to give you a presentation case with at least one of each color for your wall. I know it's a bunch of money all at once. I can take a deposit against the rest. We know you are good for it. At least, that is what Etienne tells us." Killen chuckled, and the others shared the laugh.
Until he said that, Griffen was going to give them a few hundred, but then he felt stung by pride to show he was a person of consequence. How much could he spare? He did a quick calculation to make sure he would have enough left to cover his taxi fare home and dinner. Dinner! He would have to go to an ATM to withdraw enough to pay for dinner with Harrison the next day and live on savings the rest of the week. But he was able to hand Terence Killen two thousand dollars, a sum that pleased the others.
"Thank you, sir," Terence said, removing a handsome deerskin billfold from his inner pocket and tucking the money away. He took the application that Griffen had hastily filled out and signed at the bottom and put it back on the clipboard. "Well, now that you have agreed to join us, there is an ordeal to seal the commission."
"An ordeal?" Griffen scanned the room for a means of quick exit. "I don't like the sound of that," he said.
"It's not a true ordeal," Callum said. "We've got rituals. Pete? He's Keeper of the Mysteries of Fafnir." He signed to a wiry man with tightly curled brown hair and pale blue eyes, who took a metal box off the floor. From it, he removed a scroll, an actual scroll of yellowing material that crackled when it was unrolled. Griffen hadn't seen anything like it since the last time he had visited a Renaissance fair. Matt stood up. Griffen got to his feet. The man began to read.
"You wish to join us as a member and king of the Noble Krewe of Fafnir, Griffen McCandles. Do you declare that you are of pure dragon blood?"
"As far as I know," Griffen said. He suddenly felt that every eye in the room was on him, peering at him as if they were looking into his bones. Even Lucinda Fenway, not included in the circle of lieutenants, was staring at him avidly.
"Will you manifest your power here and now, to prove without a doubt the truth of your bloodline?"
"What do you want me to do?"
"Anything you can, son," Callum said, his eyes fixed on Griffen. "You've surely been exercising your abilities by now. Give us a small demonstration. Anything you can."
"I . . ." Griffen hesitated. The tension that the others displayed drained out of them like the air from inflatable beach toys. Doug groaned.
Mitchell scoffed. "Etienne, you are full of it," he said, flicking a hand at the captain. "You bring a kid here that you swear you dreamed about as the big, all-powerful one true dragon, and he don't have no more power than a burnt-out lightbulb. Shouldn't have expected no better of a moon-howler who's got about as much dragon in him as a lizard."
That lit Griffen's temper.
"Are you calling me a phony?" Griffen asked, dropping his voice to just above a whisper.
Mitchell looked taken aback at Griffen's tone, but he held his ground. "I am saying that maybe Etienne is mistaken. I have known him since we were together in school, and sometimes he lets his visions get the best of him."
"That's not what it sounds like to me," Griffen said, meeting the other man's eyes. Mitchell leaned back and folded his arms.
"You take offense at what I say? Well, then, prove I'm wrong!" he said.
"Now, don't rush him," Etienne said. "Don't you worry about a thing, Mr. Griffen. Go ahead. Just relax."
The lieutenants looked skeptical and amused, not unlike a tableful of poker players meeting a rookie at his first game. Sometimes, Griffen would play the innocent until he had figured out just how good his new opponents were, but this time he wanted to prove he knew what he was doing, for his own reputation's sake and that of Etienne, who had brought him there. He decided to give that bunch a taste of a skill that he had learned but seldom used: that of animal control. He didn't have to close his eyes to concentrate. He reached out into the walls and under the floor of the mansion, and sent out an irresistible summons: "Come to me."
Most people in the South called them palmetto bugs. Griffen didn't doubt that there was a fancy Latin name giving genus and species, but as far as he was concerned, they were hypertrophied cockroaches that lived everywhere in New Orleans unless one sprayed the living hell out of one's apartment to keep them at bay. The Fenways probably had an exterminator come in monthly or even weekly to hold off the arthropodia, but no insect could withstand the call of a dragon's control. Griffen waited. He heard a slithery noise begin at a distance. Some of the other men glanced up. The sound got louder and more complex as more palmetto bugs joined the throng. By the time the first of the three-inch-long cockroaches stuck its antennae under the door of the conservatory, thousands were at its back. They swarmed into the room, filling the floor with a roiling carpet of brown. All of the krewe's lieutenants jumped to their feet. In spite of her tight pencil skirt, Lucinda leaped onto a chair. Griffen stood in an empty ring of floor as his inquisitors stomped, kicked, and brushed at the army of insects. Etienne didn't seem particularly bothered as the giant bugs raced over his shoes, but Mitchell beat at them with his hands and feet. His eyes showed the white all around the irises.
"Get them off me! Get them off me!" he bellowed.
"Griffen, get those things out of my house!" Lucinda shrilled from her post.
"Yes, ma'am!" Griffen said. He let the summoning energy die down and replaced it with an order to retreat. As smoothly as a wave receding, the brown insects turned around and fled the room. Some of them seemed to melt into the crack between wall and floor, but the majority slipped underneath the doors under which they had entered. In seconds, there were no palmetto bugs left except for the few that the flailing feet of Etienne's lieutenants had crushed.