The Andre Miller Saga

Andre Miller 22 The Gala

It had been 2 weeks since Ms. Fontaine, the infernal lawyer, had come to Birmingham, Alabama and the minor harassment had begun in earnest.

At first, she tried to get Conroy removed from his retirement community. That failed due to a lack of physical paperwork to back up the computer-generated documents.

Then she filed a failure to provide services complaint against Infinity Brand Ltd., the family-owned and operated business, which was dismissed when none of their clients would sign onto the suit.

She filed a harassment suit against Andre but was unable to provide Andre's location during the alleged times.

She tried 3 times, to coerce or goad Tilly into assaulting her. While all three were prevented by Kyle, they were close things.

She attempted to have Frankie kidnapped 4 times, each failing spectacularly and leading to the arrest of 19 attackers who had been hired anonymously thus being unable to point the finger back at her, but everyone knew.

She had a series of scathing reviews posted against Caleb in an attempt to have him ousted as homeowners association monitor. The complaints were filed by fictional people who had never lived in the HOA and the chairman of the HOA Mr. Brooks had basically taken to ignoring them.

She had vandalized or damaged the vehicles which did nothing but make them pay their deductibles early.

She had attempted to have demons break the Pinson Line, a truce-created line between the celestial forces of heaven occupying the Pinson area and the Infernal House Tchecha, in hopes of inspiring a celestial counterstrike. They failed as the demons were from house Retaletan and were so overwhelmed and outclassed that no celestials were injured.

While all screamed of incompetence, they all did what they were meant to do, distract and harass the group.

"I've had just about enough of her crap." Said Conroy at the family's weekly dinner, "I've never hit a woman in my life, but I would deck this witch were we to ever meet."

"See! I'm not the only one!" said Tilly as she passed the breadsticks to Frankie.

"Oh, I think at this point she wouldn't be safe from most of us." Said, Andre.

"I wouldn't hit her," said Frankie with a laugh, "but I'd use the shove rune to launch her into low orbit."

"The Houseton, Reba, and Kline gala ball for the opening of their new branch in Birmingham is in two days. Andre and I will attend and see what we can do to," Caleb made air quotes, "convince her to stop with the children's games."

"I still say we should just let Tilly go with Andre and deck her." Said, Conroy.

"See!" replied Tilly.

"That's exactly what she wants. Other than the kidnapping attempts, which were laughable, it's all been minor harassment. She's playing into Tilly's anger, and the anger is well placed, don't get me wrong, to try and get one extra layer of protection off the field so that she can get Frankie which is her endgame." Andre said, "She's been hiring our company to go deeper and deeper into Birmingham where it will take us longer to respond to an emergency if one arises, and where we won't have celestial backup. Our best bet is going to get her to agree to some form of truce or ceasefire, which I honestly have low hopes of."

"Then why bother?" asked Conroy, "Honestly, I say figure out a way to summon a warrior Power and turn it loose on her company and see what shakes out."

"Well, although it would be fun, it would require a legendary item of power in order to summon a Power. It took us almost a year last time and nearly killed us all." Andre answered, "We need a piece of leverage against her to stop the harassment, but I have no idea how we're going to get it."