05-11-2020, 02:41 PM
The question of why the hell a hidden “ritual room” existed anywhere in the Farr family’s ninety year-old summer house could almost have a rational answer in the Freemason business Near had never been inducted into. As rational as Freemasons were. And then, maybe not, but he decided to stick with that conclusion. Of course The Reaches had a “ritual room,” all the really nice houses had one, and only a loser acclimated to cheap apartments would think having one was strange.
“Counterpoint,” he said, choosing semantics over pragmatics because he was pretty sure it would be more satisfying to argue Jude out of looking amused with himself than worry about whether Daddy had gone to the trouble of installing a room for whatever he was doing with the damn kid, “you can have sex in any dungeon, but that doesn’t just make it a sex dungeon. And not having sex in a sex dungeon doesn’t turn it back into a standard dungeon. If I … ritual right here, is this a ‘ritual room’ now, too? It gets down to the intrinsic nature of the thing; you can use a screwdriver to pound a nail into a board, doesn’t make it a hammer. And I can drink Courtland’s wine, doesn’t make me a wine guy, so I don’t really give a fuck. Whatever has the most interesting label or the Frenchest name or the most promising magical emanations. Christ ...”
“Counterpoint,” he said, choosing semantics over pragmatics because he was pretty sure it would be more satisfying to argue Jude out of looking amused with himself than worry about whether Daddy had gone to the trouble of installing a room for whatever he was doing with the damn kid, “you can have sex in any dungeon, but that doesn’t just make it a sex dungeon. And not having sex in a sex dungeon doesn’t turn it back into a standard dungeon. If I … ritual right here, is this a ‘ritual room’ now, too? It gets down to the intrinsic nature of the thing; you can use a screwdriver to pound a nail into a board, doesn’t make it a hammer. And I can drink Courtland’s wine, doesn’t make me a wine guy, so I don’t really give a fuck. Whatever has the most interesting label or the Frenchest name or the most promising magical emanations. Christ ...”