Thom didn't have much involvement in his social calendar these days, since he was traveling so frequently. Between his wife and his assistant, much of his time spent back in the country was planned out for him, and engagements were pleasant (or sometimes less than pleasant) surprises that he was introduced to as they became relevant. He'd learned about this fundraising dinner a few days earlier, but hadn't bothered to look into any of the details — including what the fundraiser was actually for — until he'd arrived at the ballroom early that evening. So far the evening had been perfectly pleasant. He'd mingled, then sat down to a catered dinner with a table of people he was only mildly acquainted with. After the dessert plates had been cleared, they'd turned to the actual money-making event of the evening: a card game.

Generally, cards were far preferable to silent auctions or those transparent pay-for-a-ticket sort of activities that no one was really interested in partaking in. It was a simple game, played against one opponent where each had their own deck of cards and the object was to get to the bottom as quickly as possible. In order to keep things interesting, the hosts had created a twist: after the game began, the tables magically rotated every few minutes to change the partners. Since that changed the cards in play as well, it was meant to make the game more difficult and prolong the match — and raise the amount of money the players were willing to bet on the various card combinations the longer it went on.

Thom's luck was mixed. His first few minutes, it was difficult to play anything at all and his opponent was soundly beating him. After the first shift, the table opened up and he was able to quickly dispel his entire hand and get halfway through another. The conversation was fairly pleasant, to boot, which meant perhaps he wasn't taking as much advantage of the table as he might have. The third shift unexpectedly brought him face-to-face with someone he hadn't even known was in attendance: Ursula Black.

"Oh," he said as he settled in to the new table. There was no way to avoid talking to her without drawing attention to the two of them, but luckily he would only be here a few minutes before moving on. "Hello."

Ursula Black