Don Juan only knew a handful of people who would certainly be at this second party, since he hadn't been formally invited; three friends, two friends-of-friends, and half a dozen others he might know or might not, but wouldn't discover until arrival. He didn't know anything about Hudson's social group, he realized, and didn't know if any of the people invited would be people he already knew... and if not, would they be the right sort of people for Hudson to get along with? Don Juan ran the known ones over in his mind. Fred Slegspittle was a fair partner for any card game that was played with doubles, and had good taste in liquor and tobacco, but his jokes were on the crass side and he told them in a conspiratorial tone that sometimes annoyed Don Juan. Aviv Kapoor was good company for the first four drinks of the night but then had a tendency towards maudlin naval-gazing that often led to him being abandoned by the more raucous groups, which then left whoever had been stuck with him pinned down with no hope of escape from his droning philosophizing. One of the friends-of-friends had just gotten engaged and was a bit of a killjoy now, being too desperately obsessed with his fiancee to talk or think about much else.

He didn't want to introduce Dean Hudson to any of these people, Don Juan realized. He didn't want to be responsible for them; didn't want Hudson's first impression of him to be tied up in whatever antics they might get into tonight. He was the one who had recommended they leave the first party, and now he was responsible for making their subsequent activity an improvement. The house party had seemed like a fine idea at the time, because everything had seemed like an improvement over being stuck in that ball any longer, but now that he was actually forced to consider the details Don Juan didn't like this. Of course, this left him in quite the predicament, since he'd already gotten his new companion on the road to it. If they were going to divert course he needed to think of something sooner rather than later.

He wanted to lie, at least for now; he wanted to tell Hudson they were going to meet poets and artists and playwrights, the sorts of people that would make Don Juan seem interesting just for knowing them... but if he lied now then he was really on the hook for finding a way to divert the pair of them before his lie could be found out.

"You don't want to keep it a surprise?" he asked. Fortunately he was practiced enough at the teasing, half-flirtatious tone that he could put it on without letting any of his underlying turmoil show through. "Where's your sense of adventure? Something and someone new, you just said — though I suppose in English magical social circles there's only so much new to go around," he admitted. "Maybe if we wanted to be adventurous we ought to go off the beaten path a bit more."

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