The Andre Miller Saga

Andre Miller 11 The Strain

It had been four months since Andre Miller, master summoner, and the rest of his found family, Caleb Murry, summoner and lifelong friend, Frankie Hernandez, apprentice defensive mage and a man with a destiny, Tilly Rhodes defensive mage and specialist inward and talismans, and Kyle Rhodes, defensive mage, and instructor of Frankie, moved to Birmingham, Alabama to escape their enemies and chase Frankie's destiny.

Three months ago, the group had learned that in order to help Frankie peel away the dark stain upon his soul they would be required to summon a truly powerful celestial, a Virtue. To do that they had to retrieve at least one legendary item to act as an offering to the spirit just to get its attention and hope for a meeting.

During the three months, they had also been working full-time with their company, Infinity Brand Ltd., and summoning creatures to find leads to legendary items. It was costing almost as much as they were making in components. They were keeping their heads above water, but just barely.

They had been butting heads with the Home Owners Association Monitor Mrs. Martha J. Merriweather over just about every little detail of the HOA's requirements. They were well within the requirements of the HOA, but Merriweather always wanted a little more perfection out of the group. She couldn't point at anything that was wrong, and they followed all her restrictive rules, but she nitpicked every little thing. It had gotten to the point that the only one who could deal with her was Caleb, everyone else was to the point of wanting to strangle her.

"Your lawn could be a little greener, Mr. Murry." Was her latest complaint.

"Ma'am, we have one of the most vibrant lawns in the HOA, it is weed free, well-trimmed, mowed in pattern once a week, and fertilized twice a month. If you take a color wheel and set it for your own standards, you'll find that we're right on target if not above, and considerably greener than many of the other lawns." He produced the color wheel, set it on the lawn, and he was right, it was greener than the requirement by a good amount.

"Well, you don't concern yourself with the others, we're talking about you. You're right, your lawn falls just within specifications, please make sure it stays that way." She huffed and turned on a heel, got into her obnoxiously pink Cadillac, and drove away.

Andre came out as she left, "You know she thinks we're gay, don't you? That's why she's crawling up our butts all the time, looking for any reason to kick us to the curb."

"Oh, I know. To her mind, we're an interracial married gay couple, in Birmingham, Alabama. Three of those things don't fly in her mind. No matter how many times we assure her we're just old friends sharing a house with our younger friends she's going to continue her crusade to get us out of the neighborhood. But fear not my supposed husband, I have a plan."

"Last time you had a plan, it required bail money." Andre laughed as they walked back to the house.

"In my defense, it was a great plan, it just had unforeseen circumstances. How goes the search for artifacts?"

Caleb had tried helping with the search, but the Elemental Courts didn't have the same rank structure as the Celestial Union or the same requirements for summoning the truly powerful spirits.

"It's going. We have a lead on a saint's halo. There is supposedly a secret tomb in the Florida Keys of a modern saint known for miraculous healings. If we can find the tomb, we can invoke the spirit and ask it politely, downright beg, if need be, for its halo. I have a contact today with a celestial who was supposed to have worked with the saint and may be able to lead us to the tomb. How did the last summoning of the elementals go?

"Fine, but hiring earth elementals to keep a lawn green and a garden prosperous seems a waste, but if they're willing to pay $100 per elemental, per hour I'm not going to complain. The elementals think it's an easy way into fossils so I have no complaints."