"That's the effect of what you're doing, I didn't mean to say it was the cause," Isabella says. "Why are you doing it, though? Weren't you recently broke?"

"I'm usually broke," he says cheerfully. "Shit like this is why. I don't really care about money unless there's something I want, and right now I've got a place to stay for a while and you're even feeding me, so I can spend all my money on strippers if I wanna."

He laughs. "Yeah, and if she does, I'll go do something else."

"Like what?"

"No idea!"

"Huh. I don't expect Metis to kick me out, but if she did, I have fallback positions. And less need than a human in wintertime for shelter, at that."

"Yeah," says Kas, "I've done the whole no-home-no-food-no-money thing way too many times to be afraid of it."

"If I were a human and that possibility were significantly on my radar I'd live farther south," snorts Isabella.

"I have a nice cuddly heater with me," says Kas, patting Petaal's coils. Somehow she manages to compose her serpentine features into an expression of immense smugness.

"True enough," laughs Isabella. "I wonder - if humans can simply not settle, why hasn't there been tremendous evolutionary pressure in its favor for exactly that sort of reason? It's useful to have a changing daemon. I suppose it could just utterly fail to be genetic."

"It's probably not genetic," says Kas. "The rest of my family settled just fine."

"Not even a bit later than usual or after more dithering?"

"Nope," he says. "Dad was a black wasp, Mom was a peacock. I think they both settled pretty early."

"I never like stinging-bug daemons," says Path. "Spiders are sometimes fine, but never wasps or scorpions or anything like that. They rub me the wrong way."

"You and me both," snorts Petaal.

"What happened to your parents, anyway?" Isabella asks.

"Died," he says succinctly.

"Yes, I know, but unless Yambe Akka got the wrong address something usually causes that."

"Tell you later," he says easily.

"I thought it sounded kinda hot, actually," Kas says cheerfully.

"Really."

"No, it happens, but not as much in recent years. It used to be that scorning a witch was a pretty reliable way to get yourself killed, it's not like that now in large part because witches can no longer get away with murder, and of course Metis can't think of any reason I'd want to let a guy I'm not related to crash in the attic apart from having decided to marry him."