Текст книги "Midnight blue-light special"

Автор книги: Seanan McGuire

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None of us had expected too much of Kitty, but she proved to have a good head for business and, better still, a good sense of showmanship. Dave operated the club on a sort of “If we put hot naked girls on stage, they will come” theory. Kitty looked at that and said, “Well, yes, but how are we going to get them to come back?” Dave’s Fish and Strips closed its doors for good a week after Kitty took it over. Two months after that, the Freakshow was born.

Have a prehensile tail? Wear a miniskirt and use it to carry an extra tray when you’re serving drinks. Got wings? How do you feel about swinging on a perch suspended from the ceiling? Cryptids of every race and creed were invited to come and show off the things that divided them from the human race—and every one of them who did just helped to raise the Freakshow’s cred a little higher. There was even a review in the New Yorker, calling it a “cunning use of smoke and mirrors,” and “a fantastic example of the misuses one can manage with a degree in theatrical makeup and costuming.” In short, it was so in-your-face that everyone assumed it had to be fake, and the human populace of the city was all but busting down the doors for the chance to dance with the monsters they still didn’t believe in.

Still, every gimmick has its shelf life, and Kitty knew that if she wanted to keep the Freakshow running, she would need to have more than just a few strange but pretty faces on staff. She’d need actual entertainment. Well, that, and some of the stiffest drinks in the city, courtesy of our bartenders, Ryan and Angel.

All of which goes to explain why I scrambled to the middle of the stage less than a minute before curtain, wearing a corset, a ruffled black-and-red cancan skirt, high heels, and enough glitter to start my own David Bowie tribute band. In the end, no matter how tight the timing, the show must always go on.

* * *

“Ladies and gentlemen, honored guests and less-than-honored neighbors, the Freakshow welcomes you to a night of thrills, chills, and sweet surprises that can be found nowhere else in this fairest of all fair cities.” Kitty always did her ringmaster act from the center of the stage, despite the fact that she’s a bogeyman, and should hence want to avoid the light whenever possible. I guess she never got to that page of the bogeyman edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves. She strutted back and forth between two precisely placed marks as she used her womanly wiles to get the attention of a rowdy crowd.

Her luck was usually good in that regard. Something about her wearing an outfit that looks like a classic ringmaster’s attire as reinterpreted by a designer who specializes in high-end fetish gear just managed to catch the eye. It didn’t hurt that she had the subtly inhuman proportions shared by all bogeymen, making her difficult to look away from.

I said Kitty changed the place after Dave left. I never said she made it classy.

“—and now, my beloved guests, if you would put your hands together for our sweet sugarplums, our cancan belles, our Freakshow dancers, the Scarionettes!” Kitty finished our introduction with a flourish, her heels hitting the floor with gunshot precision as she walked off the main stage half a step ahead of the opening curtain. Floodlights splashed down from the rafters, revealing eleven dancers in corsets and short ruffled skirts, all frozen in perfect clockwork doll poses as we waited for the music to begin.

The tapping of an unseen conductor’s baton echoed from the speakers, catching the attention of those patrons who had learned to ignore Kitty’s posturing in favor of sucking down cocktails while they waited for the floorshow to begin. Then Emilie Autumn’s “I Know Where You Sleep” blasted out, and we started to dance.

Kitty was being generous when she called the floorshow’s first number a “cancan.” I’ve danced the cancan, although never professionally, and while it does involve a lot of girls hiking their skirts to heaven, they’re usually doing it wearing outfits that look less like they came from the remainder bin at Hot Topic. Still, it was athletic, enthusiastic, and involved cute girls in high heels and corsets bouncing up and down for five minutes without stopping for air, which was more than sufficient for our clientele.

We whirled and spun around the stage, kicking, prancing, thrusting our chests out, and somehow managing to look like we were both classier and naughtier than your average stripper. A lot of the credit for that goes to my choreography, if I do say so myself. My specialty is Latin ballroom, which is all about pouring a whole lot of sexy into a very small amount of suggestive.

Off to one side of the stage, a chorus girl was deviating from the routine to snatch dollar bills from a leering man in a baseball jersey. Okay, so maybe the transition from stripper to dancer was still a work in process for some of my coworkers. I was happy to work with them as much as I had to, since failure might mean going back to cocktail waitressing. Any amount of coaching our slower learners was worth it if it meant I could avoid that particular fate. Even if I had to do my coaching in a corset.

* * *

The nicest thing about working in a bar with aspirations of growing up to be a burlesque joint: I might have to shake my tail feathers if I wanted to bring home a paycheck, but the rotation of the acts and the solo numbers in-between meant that I was only on stage once every ninety minutes during the busy periods.

I congratulated the rest of the chorus as they stampeded off the stage, narrowly avoiding the snake dancer who was shoving her way up the backstage steps with a large wicker basket in her arms. The basket hissed companionably as it passed me. I hissed back, trying to keep my tone respectful. It never pays to piss off a wadjet.

The main room was packed with bodies by the time I stripped off my chorus girl outfit—trading it for a much more demure lacy blouse-and-petticoat combination, and yes, moments like that are the only times when I miss the tacky little uniforms Dave used to make us wear—and pushed my way out of the dressing room into the crowd. A few men leered in my direction, but none of them made a move toward me. Proof that men of any sentient species can be taught.

Also proof that having a bad-ass tanuki bouncer who sometimes fills in behind the bar can work wonders for the female employees of a place like the Freakshow. I waded my way through bodies to the bar, where luck, timing, and the willingness to cut people off won me an open stool. The man I’d ducked under to get the seat glared at me. I flashed a bright smile and blew him a kiss, then turned my attention to the bartender currently mixing drinks for my side of the room.

“Ryan, I require something so horrifically alcoholic that it makes livers tremble with fear and run for their lives when its name is uttered,” I said solemnly.

Ryan raised an eyebrow. “Or I could get you a martini glass filled with club soda and garnished with something that makes it look like you’re actually drinking liquor for a change. That way when you left the bar, you might not fall off the nearest available rooftop.”

I grinned. “That sounds good. Let’s do that.”

“Why am I not surprised?” asked Ryan—but he was laughing as he said it, and he kept laughing as he moved to get me my drink. A woman bellied up to the bar next to me, giving his ass an appreciative look. Now, I’m happy to admit that Ryan has a fantastic rear end. He not only works out, he’s a therianthrope, a shapeshifter who gets his connection to the wild side through magic and genetics, not a curse-turned-infection. Plus, how many six-five half-Japanese hotties do you find on the street, even in Manhattan? Ryan was prime man-flesh on the hoof.

There was one small complication: “His girlfriend works here,” I informed the woman, blithely.

She turned the measuring look she’d been applying to Ryan’s ass on me, expression clearly telegraphing my failure to live up to whatever rating system she was using. “Oh, really?”

“Yes, really,” I said, stung. I may be short, but five-two is a respectable height, and I don’t have any unpleasant birth defects, or share my little sister’s taste in clothes. I’m a natural blonde, even though my particular line of work means I have to keep my hair cut Mia Farrow-short, and spending three hours a day at dance practice has guaranteed me the kind of figure that stops salsa judges in their tracks. Sure, I was covered in glitter and wearing what looked like Victorian underwear, but there are a lot of men who’d find that a plus. Ryan among them: Istas believes in glitter and petticoats the way some people believe in God.

The woman sniffed. “I’ll take my chances.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Uh-huh.” There was a moment when I considered abandoning my efforts to warn her, but quite honestly, a little snottiness wasn’t enough to earn her a broken arm. Maybe a sprain or something. “I’m not the girlfriend in question. She is.” I indicated Istas, who was bussing tables on the other side of the room. She was dressed in her gothic Lolita best, a fashion statement that didn’t stand out nearly as much as it used to now that the whole club was done in steampunk-meets-Hot Topic circus style. “Just a friendly warning. She’s the jealous type.”

“She should be,” said the woman, giving Ryan’s ass one more approving glance. Then, with a final sneering look at me, she turned and blended back into the crowd.

I was still looking sulkily in her direction when Ryan waved a hand in front of my eyes, calling my attention back to him. “Earth to Verity, come in, Verity. You checked out on me for a minute there. Have the mice been letting you sleep?”

“I think letting me sleep is against their religion.”

“You aretheir religion.”

“And in their cosmology, the gods have no need for silly little things like ‘sufficient rest.’” I picked up the club soda Ryan set in front of me. Tonight’s garnish involved a lemon wedge, a chunk of mango, and yes, a little paper umbrella. “Seriously, though, I’ve been interviewing hidebehinds all week, and I’m a little worn out.”

Ryan started to answer me, but stopped himself before the first word could form. Straightening to his full height, he fixed his eyes on a point just behind me in the crowd, all but glowering. “You have company.”

There’s only one man I know in New York City who can get that kind of rise out of Ryan. I took a deliberate sip of my club soda before removing the paper umbrella from the glass, drying its toothpick handle on my napkin, and sticking it jauntily behind one ear. Then I turned, cocking my head and directing a winsome smile at the man standing there.

“Want a drink?” I asked. “I’m buying.”

“We need to talk,” replied Dominic.

That’s the Covenant for you: never using five words when four extremely ominous ones will do. I slid off my hard-won bar stool, taking one more drink from my club soda before putting it down on the bar. “I’ll get my coat,” I said, and stalked toward the dressing room door, leaving Dominic De Luca waiting alone in the crowd that clustered around the bar.

I couldn’t even get a little peace and quiet in a cryptid-owned burlesque club. What’s the world coming to these days?

Three

“Any man who doesn’t believe in carrying weapons on a first date is not a man worth knowing.”

—Frances Brown

The halls of the Freakshow, a burlesque club for the adventurous soul

THE HALL OUTSIDE the dressing room and employee break room was briefly deserted, thanks to the shift change. One shift’s-worth of dancers and floor staff were out in the main club, working, while the other employees were taking their scheduled opportunity to grab a drink, a smoke, or whatever else their biology demanded. The dragon girls were probably doing Goldschläger shots at the bar. It sounded more extravagant than it was, since they never paid for anything. What’s the point of being a preternaturally hot chick in a club full of men if you can’t get someone to buy you the occasional drink? Carol was almost certainly in Kitty’s office, drinking a cobra-venom cocktail while she waited for her hair to wake up. That’s how it goes when you work in a cryptid-owned establishment. I’ve had time to get used to it. Honestly, it’s even sort of fun. I mean, how many people have jobs where they can say “I didn’t sleep last night because the mice wouldn’t stop talking” and get sympathy rather than a referral to a psychiatrist?

I walked briskly through the empty dressing room to my locker. If I was going to have a chat with Dominic, I wanted to do it while I was wearing pants, and more heavily armed than it was possible to be in lace and petticoats. In addition to being a waitress and Ryan’s girlfriend, Istas served as Kitty’s costume designer, and she believed firmly in snaps and zippers and quick releases. Being a waheela—a type of Inuit therianthrope—meant she understood that sometimes people need to get out of their clothes in a hurry. That made them practical for work-wear, but not so much for the sort of things I was likely to get up to with Dominic De Luca.

Well. Someof the sort of things I was likely to get up to with Dominic De Luca, maybe. My work clothes would definitely be practical for the sweaty, naked things I sometimes wound up doing with Dominic, since I’d be able to strip in something approaching record time. That would be a nice change. During our last opportunity for naked fun times, I’d been wearing a Kevlar vest and a pair of cargo pants that practically had to be removed with the Jaws of Life. Getting naked before he had a chance to change his mind would be awesome.

I had just pulled my shirt on and was checking my hair in the tiny mirror inside my locker when the locker door slammed shut, nearly catching my fingers in the process. “Hey!” I yelped, turning to face whoever had interrupted my styling regime. “I was using that!”

Kitty looked at me coolly, one eyebrow arched in an almost perfect impression of my younger sister (who always said she was impersonating Mr. Spock, so that’s probably what my boss was actually trying to do). She was still wearing her ringmaster’s gear, which didn’t look quite as spectacular in the empty dressing room as it did on the carefully-lit stage. People with a naturally gray skin tone shouldn’t wear black leather unless they want to look like they’ve been standing in a smokestack for an hour or so. I’m just saying.

“Your Covenant boy is here again,” she informed me.

“I know. That’s why I’m leaving.” I reopened my locker, grabbing a brush from the top shelf and starting to rake it through my hairspray-stiffened hair. “What’s up, Kitty?”

“I thought I told you that I didn’t want him here.”

“You did. And I told him. Unfortunately, because I am not actually the boss of the Covenant of St. George, he chose to ignore me. I don’t know whyhe decided to ignore me this time, hence the putting on pants and going to talk with him.” I squinted at my reflection. I either looked pleasantly punky, if you were willing to squint and be generous with your definition of “pleasantly,” or like a bleached hedgehog. Given that I was about to go have a clandestine chat with my not-a-boyfriend no-really-honest, I decided to vote for “pleasantly punky.”

“You need to tell him again. He upsets the dancers.”

“Uh, no, he doesn’t, not really. I mean, Ryan isn’t too keen on him, but that’s just because he thinks Dominic is going to turn me in to the Covenant and kill everyone who works here. The dragons love him, Istas tolerates him, and even Carol says he’s basically okay, for a homicidal maniac.”

Kitty glowered at me. “He upsets me.”

“That’s different.” I replaced my brush on the shelf, removed my backpack from its hook, and shut the locker door. “Look, I’ll talk to him, but you know Dominic. He never makes a phone call when an ominous, Batman-like appearance will do. Unless you want to start posting men with guns on all the doors and windows, he’s going to keep showing up.”

“Like a cockroach,” she muttered darkly.

“Not the most complimentary comparison ever, but I can’t refute it.” I turned to face her, offering a sympathetic smile. “I understand that the Covenant stresses you out, Kitty. I mean, honestly, the Covenant stresses meout, what with their whole ‘line of traitors’ approach to my family. But as long as Dominic and I are on good terms, I don’t think you need to worry about this place getting purged.”

Kitty didn’t look particularly reassured. “And when you’re not on good terms anymore?”

“Then one of us is probably dead.” I shrugged. “That’s the best I can do. I’m taking my break now.”

“Will you be back tonight?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“I should fire you.”

“I know. But you won’t.”

Kitty’s glower became a full-on scowl. “Why’s that?”

“Because if you didn’t have me here, you wouldn’t know what the local Covenant was doing. Later, boss.” I flashed her a quick smile—it wasn’t returned—and scooted for the door before she could say anything about cutting my pay for the night. My mama may have raised a generation of thrill-seeking cryptid-chasers, but she didn’t raise no fools.

* * *

Now for a little bit more background, since no one should ever go into a potentially sticky situation blind, and anything involving the Covenant of St. George is a potentially sticky situation. The Covenant is your classic secret organization of scholars, warriors, and assholes, dedicated to eradicating the world’s “monster” population. Who decides whether something is a monster? Why, they do, which is why totally innocent cryptids have been finding themselves on the wrong end of Covenant swords for centuries. My family doesn’t like them very much. Which is only fair, because they don’t like usvery much either.

Then again, that may have something to do with the fact that we were members of the Covenant until about three generations ago, when my great-great-grandfather—Alexander Healy, Sr., my brother’s namesake—told them to stuff their protocols where the sun didn’t shine. He took his family and decamped to North America, where they’d be reasonably out of the way. The Covenant gave them a few decades to sulk before they started sending field agents to lure the prodigals back to the fold. The family sent the first one packing. The second, Thomas Price, submitted his letter of resignation and married one of the prodigals in question—my grandmother, Alice Healy. The Covenant has had a “kill on sight” order out for my family ever since.

Or they would, if they weren’t reasonably sure that we, like many breeds of cryptid, had gone extinct. We managed to disappear from their radar two generations ago, when my grandfather opened a portal to hell and messed everything up. It was a bad time. The Covenant’s belief that we all died when things went wrong is about the only good thing to come out of it.

Anonymity has proven to be convenient and irritating at the same time. On the one hand, it keeps us from getting shot at—much—while we’re trying to do our jobs. On the other hand, it means that we’ve had to find alternate means of training to protect the cryptids of the world—like my combat applications of ballroom dance, or my sister Antimony’s tumbling and trapeze classes. And no matter how hard we try, we can’t completely avoid encounters with the Covenant. I give you Exhibit A: Dominic De Luca, who may or may not be my boyfriend, depending on the day of the week and which one of us you decide to ask. (Hint: Normally, I’m the one disavowing all knowledge of our assignation, on account of the part where my maybe-boyfriend can be a truly massive asshole when he wants to.) We met when I stepped into a snare-trap he’d set to catch arboreal cryptids. In his defense, he didn’t really expect to snag a cocktail waitress who was taking the scenic route across Manhattan. And to counter that defense, he shouldn’t have been setting snares on my rooftops.

I’ve managed to break him of that habit. Mostly. Dominic was raised Covenant, and some habits die hard. Including, as we’d both discovered, the habit of mistrusting people you’ve been raised to regard as “the enemy.” To him, I was the latest daughter in a long line of traitors. To me, he was the latest in an even longer line of cold-blooded killers. I mean, if it weren’t for the mind-blowing sex, and the part where he saved my life six months ago—that snake cult thing again—we’d have absolutely nothing in common. Then again, my cousin Sarah says that’s probably part of the appeal. He’s forbidden fruit in hot brooding Italian man form, and just like Eve before me, I can’t resist taking a bite or two.

* * *

Dominic was waiting for me on the roof of the club, standing silhouetted against the night sky. I stopped for a moment to admire his profile—being a cold-blooded killer may not be good for your karma, but man, does it do amazing things for your physique—before letting the stairway door swing shut behind me with a clang. “S’up?”

“The English language is beautiful, versatile, and capable of poetry that steals men’s breath away from them,” said Dominic, turning to face me. “Is that really the best you can manage?”

“Yup,” I replied, with a sunny smile. “I went to public school.”

“There are times when I listen to you and feel that the reputation of your family is completely overblown,” said Dominic.

“What about the rest of the time?”

Dominic shook his head as he walked away from the edge of the roof. He stopped in front of me, turning to face me. “The rest of the time, I think my elders made a tactical error when they didn’t respond to your forefathers’ defection by destroying the continent.”

“You say the sweetest things.” I cocked my head, trying to make out his expression through the gloom. “What’s up? You know Kitty doesn’t like it when you visit me at work.”

“I don’t much care for it, either. This is not an appropriate venue for a young woman’s employment.”

“Why, because of all the cryptids, or because of the uniforms?”

“Is that what you call them now?”

“Hey, I wear less when I’m competing.”

Dominic sighed. “Yes. I know. But at least that’s to a purpose beyond coaxing cash from the unwary.”

I gave him an affronted look, not particularly concerned with whether or not he’d be able to see it. “Hey, now. It’s not like I’m stripping. I’m a respectable dancer.”

“Yes, of course,” he said dryly. “Whatever was I thinking?”

“I do not know.” I’ve wanted to be a professional dancer since I was six years old—a calling that has managed to interfere with my involvement in the family business several times over the years. It’s hard to find the time to spend a summer on a Greenpeace vessel concealing the plesiosaur migration from oceanographers when I need to be practicing for half a dozen upcoming competitions. Ballroom dance is a cutthroat world, and if you take so much as a long trip to Disney World, it can trash your standing for years.

Dancing for Kitty was a long way from the rarified heights of the World Tango Championships, but hell, it was dancing, and I was getting paid for it. That was close enough for me, especially where paying my rent was concerned.

Dominic frowned a little as he studied me, his expression barely visible through the dark. Finally, he asked, “Is there someplace we could go, for a brief while, where we wouldn’t be observed? I have matters I need to discuss with you.”

“Well, we can’t go to your place, because you’ve never let me see where you live. And we can’t go to the coffee shop, because you always get all weird when I want to ‘discuss’ things in public,” I said slowly. “You realize what that means.”

“Yes, unfortunately.” Dominic sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s a chance that they’re currently involved in some religious observance involving total silence and secluded meditation?”

I laughed. Maybe it was cruel, but I couldn’t help myself. “You really don’t know Aeslin mice very well, do you?”

“It was an idle hope,” said Dominic. “Well. If the mice are not engaged in ritual silence, can I throw myself upon your mercy and request that we take a cab to your apartment, rather than indulging in your customary suicidal approach?”

“Nope.” I leaned up onto my toes, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. Dominic looked suitably flustered in response. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be as attracted to him if he weren’t so much fun to torment. That’s probably one of those things I shouldn’t think about too hard. “ Youcan take a cab, if you want, but I’m going to be taking the overland route.”

Dominic sighed again, more deeply this time. “You’re going to plummet to your demise one day, and I’m going to have to beg your cousin to notify your family, as I’m reasonably sure they’d shoot me for having been in the city when you lost your unending battle against gravity.”

“And again, you say the sweetest things,” I said. “Bye, now. See you at the apartment.” I offered him a little wave before turning and sprinting for the edge of the roof. One step carried me onto the low retaining wall, and another step carried me over it, dropping down into the dark on the other side.

* * *

Manhattan is a city built almost entirely on the principle that you can never have too much straight up. This makes the city a free-runner’s paradise and a death trap at the same time, since one moment of carelessness can result in fifteen stories of free fall, concluding with a painful introduction to the street. I’ve managed to avoid doing anything quite that dramatic, but I’ve had more than a few close calls.

The thing to remember about free-running is that energy has to go somewhere. Your momentum can either be translated into going where you want to go, or it can be taken away from you and used to send you where gravitywants you to go . . . and you probably don’t want to go where gravity wants you to go. Continual motion reduces the chances of a fall, assuming you have the training and physical skill necessary to keep that motion under control.

I dropped like a stone for the first two stories, plummeting almost all the way back to the club before I grabbed hold of a ledge and used the energy from my fall to fling myself, hard, onto the nearby fire escape. From there, I slid down the ladder and dropped to the street below, landing with my weight balanced on my toes. The world seemed to stop for a moment, everything falling into the sweet, familiar pattern of the run. And then I was off, racing for the next building, where the dumpster would lead to the fire escape would lead to the roof would lead to the next step in my journey home . . .

Free-running in a city as vertical as Manhattan means a lot of going up just so I can go down again. It may look inefficient, but familiarity and speed make it the fastest way for me to get almost anywhere. There’s rarely traffic on the rooftops, and what there is consists almost entirely of cryptids and cryptid sympathizers, almost all of whom are happy to step aside and let me pass. I’m a Price girl, after all; I’m their defender, even if I am sleeping with the enemy. But when I’m running, that doesn’t matter. When I’m running, everything is simple, even the risk of a permanent fall.

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

* * *

Dominic was waiting outside the door to my semilegal sublet apartment when I came trotting up the stairs. He looked calm, cool, and collected, as always. I, on the other hand, was a sweaty mess, although the endorphins generated by my run had me flying high enough that I really didn’t care.

“How is it you can always get in here without me?” I asked, slowing to a walk. “I thought this building was supposed to have security.”

“I have my ways.”

“You stole somebody’s keys, didn’t you?” I used my own key to unlock the door.

Dominic looked affronted. “I did nothing of the sort,” he said. “I bribed the building manager with a tale of woe concerning our lovers’ spat.”

“Uh-huh. Was this before or after we actually hadone?”

“Oh, considerably before.”

“Why am I not in any way surprised? Come on. Time to face the inquisition.” I pocketed my keys as I pushed the door open, took a deep breath, and stepped into the apartment. Dominic followed quickly. He’d been over often enough to know what was coming, and that we needed to have the door closed before it got fully underway.

The latch had barely clicked into place when the mice filling the apartment’s short entrance hall began to cheer wildly, waving their tiny banners and ritual implements in the air. “HAIL! HAIL! HAIL THE HOMECOMING OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!”

“Yeah, guys,” I said, dropping my bag on the little table that was meant to hold the mail. “I’m home. Dominic’s here, too, so could you maybe chill out for a while?”

“HAIL!” shouted the mice, overcome with ecstasy at the idea of having twohumans they could cheer at. “HAIL THE VISITATION OF THE GOD OF QUESTIONABLE MOTIVATIONS!”

Dominic raised his eyebrows. “Is that my divinity this week?”

“Apparently so.” My family has been living with Aeslin mice for generations. They’re tiny, furry religious fanatics, and they worship us as their gods. No, I’m not quite sure how it started, but it’s pretty standard for the Aeslin; every colony anyone has ever encountered has been deeply, religiously devoted to something . . . and there’s no law requiring that the “something” make any sense whatsoever. We put up with them because they’re cute, and because they’re useful. Aeslin mice turn everything they witness into religious ritual, and their oral history is impeccable.

According to the Aeslin, all the women in my family are priestesses, connecting them directly to the divine, and all the men are gods. Maybe that’s a little sexist of them, but hey, they’re talking mice. If they want to enforce their own weird ideas of human gender roles, we’re willing to let them, if only to avoid the necessity of answering their questions about human sexuality. Believe me, there are worse things in this world than being considered a priestess. Since Dominic’s been sleeping with me, the mice have been trying various labels on him, looking for the one that fits. My personal favorite was the week they spent calling him “the God of Absolutely Never Smiling, No, Not Ever.” They did it because they felt it was accurate. I enjoyed it because it annoyed the crap out of him.