“I’m not saying that, I’m—”
“It’s Jane’s fault,” said Cassie, from across the room.
“You traitorous dyke.”
“See,” said Cassie. “She’s uncouth.”
“I am couth as fuck, Cassie. Who has cash anymore? I was going to pay the kid for the tooth the next day. Sophie has unrealistic expectations.”
“What do you want me to do?” Charlie asked. “I can’t exactly discipline her.”
“That’s the point: no one can discipline her.”
“Fear of kitty?” Charlie asked. When Sophie was just learning to talk, and Charlie had bought her dozens upon dozens of pets, from hamsters to goldfish to hissing cockroaches, only to find them dead a few days later, he discovered, quite by accident, that if Sophie pointed at a living thing and said the word “kitty,” said thing would immediately become unliving. The first time it had happened, to a kitten, in Washington Square Park, had been a shock, but the second time, only minutes later, when Sophie had pointed at an old man and uttered the dreaded k-word, only to have him drop dead on the spot, well, it had become a problem.
“Thing is, I’m not sure she does the k-word anymore,” said Jane. “I’m not sure she hasn’t lost her, you know, powers.”
“Why would you say that?”
Jane looked across the room to Cassie for support. The petite redhead nodded. “Tell him.”
“The hellhounds are gone, Charlie. When we got up yesterday morning they were just gone. The door was still locked, everything was in its place, but they were just gone.”
“So no one is protecting Sophie?”
“Not no one. Cassie and I are protecting her. I can be pretty butch, and Cassie knows that karate for the slow.”
“Tai chi,” said Cassie.
“That’s not a fighting thing,” said Charlie.
“I told her,” said Cassie.
“Well, you guys need to find the goggies! And you need to find out if Sophie still has her powers. Maybe she can protect herself. She made pretty quick work of the Morrigan.” Charlie had chased the raven-women into a vast underground grotto that had opened up under San Francisco, and was engaging them in battle when little Sophie showed up with Alvin and Mohammed and more or less vaporized them with a wave of her hand. Not in time, however, to save Charlie from the Morrigan’s venom.
“Well, I can’t have her just kitty someone,” said Jane. “That may be the one bit of your training that stuck.”
“That’s not true,” said Cassie. “She puts her napkin in her lap and always says please and thank you.”
“Well, try it,” said Charlie. “Do an experiment.”
“On Mrs. Ling? Mrs. Korjev? The mailman?”
“No, of course not, not on a person. Maybe on a lab animal.”
“May I remind you that most of your friends are lab animals.”
“Hey!” said Bob.
“Not them,” Charlie said. “I mean an animal that doesn’t have a soul.”
“How can I be sure of that? I mean, look at you—”
“I guess you can’t,” said Charlie.
“Welcome to Buddhism,” said Audrey, who had moved to the corner of the room to allow space for the Squirrel People to gather around the phone.
“That’s not helpful,” Jane called.