Felix Caelus

"I'd like to show you sometime, if I could. I daresay it's about the only way you'd believe me about some of the depictions of where I work." Even with Nereus and Stratos gone from the room Jim's careful to keep his voice down as he talks to Uncle Terentius, aware even with the haze of drink that he's got a part to play here and he'd best stick to it. "Felix can tell you I--Felix?"

Jim looks up from his seat and cranes his neck but the conjurer has disappeared from the kitchen. Figures he'd insist Jim not help and then disappear himself so that he didn't have to do any chores. Jim 'tsk's before heaving himself back out of his seat to try and give their uncle a hand but he's a difficult man to dissuade once he's made up his mind.

It ends in Jim holding up both hands in a show of surrender, shirt slightly wetter for the splash of water that was thrown his way. He ducks back from another warning shot and backs into the hallway with a laugh in his throat that dies the second he turns and spies the somber faces on all three of the Caelus men. Adrenaline spikes through him but Jim keeps his expression carefully friendly.

"Here everyone is." He wants to ask what he missed, but a chill passes through him the moment Stratos meets his gaze. The expression on the man's carefully guarded face tight in a way Jim hasn't seen since Rielle.

"Oh shit." It's quiet, his slip back into Federation Standard, unintentional but there all the same.