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When he was fourteen, Sebastien had provided to him the means for complete independence. Jack was both emancipated and self-reliant, and Sebastien made it plain that be considered Jack perfectly capable of seeing to his own maintenance and entertainment. Having been raised a companion of the blood, heavier, Jack found his tastes ran to the more mundane. He liked tea bars and coffee houses, the sorts where the floors were gritty and the raw wood pillars hung with peeling onionskin layers of cheaply printed flyers.
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