"Griffen, please," Griffen said.

"Thank you, Griffen," Etienne said, formally. "Y'know, everyone is excited to get Fafnir roarin' again. Been a hole in the festivities, you might say, since it stop rollin' wit' the others. A lot of people have put a lot of effor' into bringin' it back, countin' on you to agree to be dis year's king. Even arrange for the permits and everything. You have no idea how tough that was, pullin' off a permit wit' only half the details in place. But it went like . . . magic." Etienne grinned.

Griffen grimaced. To him, "magic" was more than just a metaphor. But his companion wasn't throwing the word around as part of a lame metaphor. In spite of Etienne de la Fee's delicate-sounding name, he was a werewolf. He had a small amount of dragon blood, but the rest of him was lycanthrope. Griffen had recently run a conclave at a local hotel that had been attended by a number of shape-shifters, werewolves included. They were mostly decent people, even including the loup garou. The part of the conclave he had enjoyed the most was meeting beings that he had only read about in books of fiction. The reality was a lot different than the stories. Werewolves weren't the scary menaces that the movies loved to depict though they weren't tame or predictable creatures, either.

"Taking on the kingship sounds like a lot of work," Griffen said, considering the proposal that Etienne had made, talking it up all the way to a nondescript yellow stucco building on Napoleon Avenue. It was hard to keep perspective in mind when he was faced with the glorious concept of riding at the head of what was going to be a pretty spectacular parade, but he had promised Jerome that he was going to pay much closer attention to the business he was supposed to be running. "I'm pretty busy, you know."

"Bring in more business to ya," Etienne said, promptly. "Folks woul' take it well that you support Mardi Gras. They'd feel real generous. Gettin' de Fafnir parade back on track's been a special dream of mine. 'Course I couldn' do nothin' about it alone, not bein' a pure-blood dragon myself. But once word got around I was goin' after you for king, people from the best families jumped on in."