Months Later

Chapter 256: Tuesday, Months Later. LUCIAN The flat in Seattle had the particular quiet of a typical Tuesday evening. In the four-week stretch between the close of competition season and the next round of obligations. It had a rare suspended pocket of time where nobody needed to be anywhere except exactly where they already were. I was at the kitchen counter, watching the dining room and the living room. There, Lake and Cameron were sitting cross-legged on the floor with a deck of cards spread between them. The cards were in an arrangement that bore no resemblance to any game I recognized. "Okay," Lake said, with the gravity of a man delivering settled law. "If you draw a red card, you have to say a fact about birds. If you draw a black card, I get an extra turn." "That seems unbalanc