She braces like he'll say something dire, but that's more credit to the whole civil-war theory, right? House against House. Bone against bone and not in a sex way.

But she's Cohort, so she'll be cool about this. Relatively speaking. He's holding out hope.

"Not Second, not Third, not Fourth or Seventh or Eighth." He spreads his hands like ta-da: the big reveal is some guy with a mundane goth outfit and a boring name, anticlimactic enough to be kind of hilarious. "First House, founding member."