The Andre Miller Saga

Andre Miller 54 The Ex

"OK, who do we have on our is trying to kill us today list?" said Frankie.

"Well... There's House Retaletan, they have a growing self-help cult. Then there's Houseton, Reba, and Kline, you can bet Rhinehart is still gunning for us, I'm sure. Entole and the rogue celestials haven't popped up in a while. You know Artifax hasn't given up their grudge against us. Then there's the Unhallowed Court, they still want lists that don't exist, and dads hide on a wall. Did I miss anyone?" replied Andre as he ticked off points on his fingers.

"The remainder of House Tchecha and Brigon haven't forgotten us I bet." Chimed in Kyle.

"Fontaine is still out there somewhere." Answered Conroy.

"Right! Can't forget the wicked witch of the south." Andre said with a smile.

"Oh, and don't forget the impending apocalypse." Replied Tilly.

"Good God people, I was being facetious!" said Frankie with a laugh.

"Oh, and random competition in the business field. I doubt those will try to kill us, but I figured I would throw that out there." Said Kris.

"So yeah, plenty of options. Why do you ask? I'd prefer not to kick a hornet's nest if we can avoid it." Asked Janice.

"Again, was being facetious. It's been 3 weeks and no one has tried to kill us, drag us into a conspiracy, betrayed us, or any other general type of disaster. I'm just not used to the peace and quiet. It's making me edgy." Frankie commented.

"Boy, if you jinx this peace, I will personally beat you senseless with a frozen bag of steaks." Said Conroy.

"On a different subject, I've managed to isolate the actively magical properties of the seeds from Peru. I think I can synthesize them if needs be but I would have to brew a batch and then someone would have to test it. We still have over a pound of seeds, I only used 17 seeds in my experiments." Said Kris.

"How are you doing Pops?" asked Tilly, "Ready to face your ancestors?"

"Not really. The shaman said I needed to get right with my past before I tried to commune with the spirits. I don't know that I'll ever be there. I have 75 years of bad acts to come to terms with and some of them are hard as hell to face. When we did the vision thing in Peru, I got everything brought right back like I'd just done it. It was pretty horrible." Said Conroy.

"I can attest to that." Said Frankie, "I don't have nearly the baggage that Pops does, but it took me months to come to terms with it."

"OK, if that's a temporary hold, where are we with the essence mining?" asked Andre.

Caleb answered, "We're slowly making progress, but at the rate of accumulation it'll be at least 3 years before we have the amount we need. I've still got the auction houses keeping their eyes out for any that pop up on the market, but we pretty much cleared that out."

"And we're avoiding the karma plucking because of the side effects of that." Said Frankie.

Andre gave a large sigh, "So we're not making any headway there."

"I'm sorry son. I know how much you all want to save me, but it may not be possible. I accepted that when we started down the path of trying to find options." Conroy stated.

"Kris, are we missing any options to help Dad?" asked Andre

Kris flipped a card from her ever-present black and red deck. Black. "I'm sorry, but no. You have figured out the only routes to removing bad karma that I can see. If I went off my potions for a day, I might be able to see more, but you know how I feel about that."