Isabella readily concedes that this does not seem to be just about people taking off their clothes; it seems to be more about some combination of dancing and the employees pretending to find the customers fascinating, which she imagines might be a service some would pay for all by itself. She, of course, has no cash on her, and can produce no tips.

Kas is adamant that there is artistry involved. He gets pretty eloquent about it, in fact.

Of course dancing is an art form. Isabella admires it in general; she can't dance at all unless you count flying, she'd fall over.

And then a woman comes on with a snake daemon, some brightly coloured venomous species, whom she incorporates flawlessly into her routine. Kas grins and kisses the top of Petaal's head; Petaal taps the very end of her tail against his arm in time to the music.

Isabella takes a quick inventory of the dancers' daemon species, curious. They're more informative among humans than witches, as humans have more of a variety of possibilities.

Apart from the venomous snake, there's two cats, a hare, a moth, a brown mouse, a long-tailed hummingbird, a gecko, and a ferret.

"When you did this what did Petaal present as?"

"A rosy boa," Petaal pipes up. "I was gorgeous. We can show you sometime if you want."

"Sure," shrugs Isabella.

Petaal giggles. "'Kay."

"Is that funny?" Isabella asks.

"Yep," says Petaal.

"Why?"

"Dunno," Petaal says merrily. "Just is."

"You've got a peculiar sense of humor," Isabella says.

"You just noticed?" teases Petaal.

Isabella shrugs. "Later, do you want to see if you can learn a spell when you're being a witch?" she asks.

"Yeah," says Petaal.

"Cool. How long were you planning on hanging out here, subtly directing all of the staff to sashay by our table because you're reliably handing out money?"

...Kas gives her a quizzical look.

"They're making sure their paths go by this table when they walk around," Isabella explains. "You're giving out cash more reliably than anybody else here."

"Well, yeah, but that's not why I'm doing it," he says. "If you're bored, we can leave."

"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."

"Well, now I'm disappointed," he teases.

"Seriously? People get actually murdered that way, talk about a great big invalidation of consent," Isabella says. "I count it among my blessings that it's not how my parents got together. It is how my maternal grandparents got together."

"No," says Kas, laughing. "Not seriously. Not seriously at alllll."

"I really don't think murder or coercion-based relationships are funny," says Isabella.

"Yeah," he says, flashing a smile and standing up, "and I bet nobody's ever tried to fuck you at daggerpoint. I don't feel like being here anymore, let's go."

Isabella gets up. "I - wait, has someone done that to you?" she asks, following him out with Path shifting from foot to foot on her shoulder.

"Never met a witch before you," he non-answers.

"Point of a dagger, edge of a knife, same difference," he says, with a careless shrug that has the look of performance. Petaal slithers into his coat as he retrieves it.

"I know Metis was thinking it but I think I'm the one who first said it aloud. I'm sorry." Isabella shakes her head as though to clear it. "We don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, obviously. But I would listen."

"You're sweet," he says. "And I'm fine."

Petaal pokes her head out of Kas's hood as an Arctic fox. "What, don't believe us?"

"General sympathy hooting," disclaims Pathalan.

"Okay," Petaal says comfortably. Kas adds, "Thanks," and a smile.

Isabella sits on her cloud-pine but doesn't immediately go anywhere, once they leave the club.

Isabella drifts forward beside him. "Okay enough that you don't need me to curse this person or anything? Witches can still get away with cursing people. Mostly because the police can never find out who did it. It annoys my dad."

"...Yeah, you might have some trouble with that," he says with a quirk of a smile.

"Already dead?"

"Yep," says Petaal, showing teeth.

"Good," says Isabella. "Well done."

Kas laughs and scritches the top of Petaal's head.

"I would curse him for you, though, if he were alive and you wanted me to," says Isabella.

"You're a sweetheart," says Kas.

"That and I've never actually had anybody I was willing to curse," admits Isabella. "I'm not of Metis's opinion that in the name of practice it's okay to do it to random people once or twice, and people pay attention to that sign she has up."

"...I mean, if you need candidates, I can come up with a few," he says.

"Yeah? Who?"

Wryly, "I don't tend to get names."

"That'll make it harder," muses Isabella. "Not necessarily impossible. Does introduce a risk of mistargeting."

"Well, how do you target these things?"

"There's several ways, and really there's always a risk of mistargeting, because any one of them can go wrong, but you can get it down to acceptable levels - not more problematic than driving a car and risking hitting someone. The most essential way - I don't think I know a way to curse a person without - is to use something that has some connection with them. A place they've been, a person they've met, a thing they've owned. But adding the name, and a good long poem about the properties of who exactly you mean to hit, and then sacrificing a critter of some kind in effigy while being very clear in your mind that this critter represents the one person and not the other, all stack up to help."

"Person they've met," he snorts. "Yeah, I'll say."

"Yes, well. You could also take me to the relevant location or produce one of their shoes and that would work just as well."

"Montreal," he says succinctly. "And I don't exactly keep souvenirs."

"Bit of a flight. Metis would give me the days off if that was what it took to get me to do a practice curse, though."

"And you might have to break into somebody's apartment. Which would be a help with the souvenir thing, I guess."

"I don't really want to break into somebody's apartment," says Isabella. "My dad wouldn't approve. I don't think it's particularly likely he'd find out, but I do rather care what he'd approve of anyway."

"He'd approve of you cursing somebody, but not of you breaking into their place to do it?"

"He'd approve of me cursing somebody that I would be liable to choose to curse. Especially if they committed a crime and managed not to get convicted. Well. Approve is the wrong word. He'd look at me for a while and then he'd ask me if it had been a good idea and then when I told him yes he'd change the subject."

"He's surprisingly understanding about extralegal witchy activities, for a cop."

"Good for him."

"Yeah, things would be worse between him and my mother if - actually, come to think of it, I don't think she does anything extralegal. Casual border-crossing is not actually illegal for witches. But he'd definitely get along worse with his in-laws if he weren't."

"I'm getting the sense I might not hate your dad."

"Were you likely to before learning this? On the off-chance you ever encounter him?"

"Well, he's a cop."

"Not fond of cops?"

"They're usually not fond of me first."

"Why?"

"'Cause I do illegal stuff and I'm not sorry about it?"

"Isn't it just?" he agrees.

"Rather. I don't suppose you happen to know why it's been banned?"

"Because some people just hate fun?" he says. "I honestly think that's it."

"Then why are other forms of fun not banned?"

"Because sex is scary and hookers are easy targets."

"Easy targets? Why is that?"

"I don't know why it's true, I just know it is."

Isabella is seized by the sudden impulse to pet his hair. She sees no particular reason to quash it.

How about the adorable face he makes when she does it?

Definitely not a quashing reason. She carries on petting him. Path coos in a minimally owly manner.

"Okay," says Isabella comfortably.

Path giggles. He probably couldn't peck back without hurting her when she's so small.

Petaal likewise giggles, and zips back into the warmth of Kas's coat.

"Something fun!" chirps Petaal.

"That's still not specific enough to let me pick something," laughs Isabella. "I'll just wind up teaching you the snow-circle. Do you want to just learn the snow-circle?"

"The snow-circle's fun," Petaal says happily.

"Okay then. May as well start going over the words then. Repeat after me..." She goes through the Svaaric words of the spell, one at a time.

Petaal learns them! He is better at it than Kas is at French, perhaps because he's trying harder, perhaps because he has to learn fewer things.

"I plan to actually learn Svaaric at some point, but only after I have enough magic basics to strike off on my own and maybe only after I get an alethiometer," remarks Isabella after Petaal has the words down. "Now, that particular spell does invoke Yambe Akka, so if the goddesses-just-won't-listen-to-you hypothesis is correct, it's particularly unlikely to work. We can pick a spell that doesn't refer directly to a goddess in that case, but that could easily not work either."

"We'll see," Petaal says cheerfully.

"Yambe Akka does winter," explains Isabella. "Among other things, most notably death."

"Yeah, you mentioned that before," says Kas.

"I suppose I did, didn't I. I don't know if, theologically speaking, she is actually involved with death in general or just with witches' deaths. I only know enough religion to get good results with my magic."

"Well," says Petaal, "hopefully she won't kill us for trying to cast her nice pretty spell."

"That's not really her style. I mean, she is a death goddess, but that doesn't mean she kills people - well, it does, but - another portfolio item is mercy. Witches call for her when they can't bear whatever they have to face if they stay alive. She's the alternative to suffering. I think she'd happily retire if suffering ceased to be. My ultimate goal in life is for Yambe Akka to spend the rest of eternity sitting on a beach sipping interesting cocktails. So to speak."

"Thanks," laughs Isabella.

"Good luck with your adorable ultimate goal. What do witches die of, anyway?"

"Besides violence? Violence - including magic - is probably the most common - clan wars and the like. Otherwise some combination of age and - loneliness or boredom. I think the oldest living witch is just shy of a thousand. We tend to die off if we're the last of our clan and don't get adopted into another, or after going through about four mortal husbands, or after having become incredibly skilled at something and ceasing to take students. My great-great-aunt Tayeba Kessa died very abruptly after completing her six-year tour of the world. I think that was the last thing she wanted to do. I should be fine if I avoid personal fights, the Olympics don't get involved in a war, and I don't run out of things to do."

"...How do people run out of things to do?" he wonders.

"Don't look at me, I don't know."

He cracks up.

"I mean, seriously, languages alone, by the time you learned them all they would all be different," she exclaims. "Let alone stuff like - I don't think even boring people who do nothing but watch television could keep up with television at the rate it's produced now! Maybe it was reasonable to get bored and die a few thousand years ago. Fewer civilizations, less stuff, I could imagine not wanting to just get to know mortal after mortal and then watch the ones you liked die, maybe not everyone can hold their interest cataloguing plants or something. Not now, though. There is so much to do."

"I know," he says.

"So yeah. Making this understood is part of my usher-the-death-goddess-into-contented-retirement plan."

"Got a plan for the rest of us?" he jokes.

"Figure out how to get you guys at least as immortal as witches. First I need to learn how to do that at all - hence intensive study of magic, although the fact that I know the problem's been worked on before makes me not completely optimistic - and then I need to scale it up. Just scaling stuff up would be good, really. Minor blessings, cast on an entire population, could have some nice statistical effects. Maybe human scientists could get a leg up on solving the problem themselves."

"Cute," says Kas. "Have fun with that."

"Will do. Want to be a guinea pig when I think of something worth trying?"

"Sure!"

"Cool. I will try not to turn you irreversibly into a unicorn, or anything."

"...I would be the world's most fucked-up unicorn," he says.

"It'd be very silly," agrees Isabella.

Isabella giggles. "I'll try not to do anything not strictly beneficial that I can't undo."

"That's because you're nice," beams Kas.

"Sure," says Petaal.

"If I'm going to show you, we do need to be inside," Isabella says, opening the door and ushering them in.

As soon as they're all behind closed doors, Petaal enwitches again.

Isabella fetches the silk. "There are actually dozens of ways to do this, but I've never bothered varying it, so this is just the most common way for Olympic clan witches to wear ours," she says, untying the knot at the back of her neck with an utter lack of concern and following suit with the other knots. When she has rendered herself starclad she lays out the half-dozen pieces and starts tearing the couple yards for Petaal to match. Then she ties hers back on, at one point with Path sitting on her head to hold her hair out of the way of the knot at her neck with both feet.

"First bird I thought of that felt like us right now," Petaal says with a shrug.

"Fair enough. One of these days I need to figure out why birds. It's obvious enough why flying creatures, and we don't wind up with ostriches, but why not bats, or... whatever." She opens the back door. "Remember the spell?" she asks Petaal.

"I remember the spell!" says Petaal, taking Kas's hand and leading him outside.

"It's pure verse, so there shouldn't be anything else you have to do," Isabella says. "I was not allowed to read Shakespeare out loud in class when I went to school."

"Well, it could happen, and no one wants that," Isabella says. "Especially not during Midsummer Night's Dream, which is when this came up first. Aw, no snow circle, that's a pity. Let me think of a spell that doesn't invoke a goddess, just in case..." She considers. "Do you want to summon a rabbit? Usually it's so we can slaughter them for food or for spells, but you can just let it go again afterwards unless you want rabbit for dinner."

Isabella teaches her the equally not-English words to that spell, too.

"That's a pity," repeats Isabella. And then she looks up at the sky and smiles. "Oh, there go those irritating clouds."

Isabella shrieks and lurches away; Path divebombs Petaal and seizes a knot on her silks and tries to drag her in the other direction. "What are you doing?!" exclaims Isabella. "Let go!"

"What the fuck, Petaal?" Isabella asks, sitting down hard on the ground and barely reacting to Path's fussing with her hair and nuzzling at her face.

"Just a little - shaky - and weirded out - we are not that close, at all, I've never even tried mindreading spells because mind-affecting magic weirds me out but it felt like I imagine one of those would - I'm not harmed, are you okay?" she says. "It is not supposed to make her drunk, and even drunk daemons don't usually fling themselves on people, is she okay?"

"Maybe it's different for us," shrugs Petaal. "I don't know how I knew, it wasn't a thing I thought, it just was. Sometimes I snuggle with Augustine and that's okay too."

"She's a bear, isn't she? I don't know if bears count. Witches count. You're okay? You don't feel like I... pried you open and looked at your brain?"

"Okay. But no more unexpected leaping. Even during a full moon at midnight in an area with no light pollution on a clear night. Okay?"

"Off-limits to what—?" says Petaal, puzzled. "Oh, that. Well, of course. I want to hug you." She grins at Path. "I can hug you, too, if you want. You're really fluffy."

"Nothing odd happens if we touch each other," Path says levelly to Petaal. "I am indeed fluffy."

She bounces off of Kas and sits in the snow and holds out her arms to Path.

"Uh, do you want the no-pokey-talons spell?" Isabella asks, before Path goes anywhere. "Comes in handy."

"Don't care," Petaal says serenely.

"I can try to be careful, but sometimes the choices are between me squeezing hard enough to break skin or falling off and not necessarily having a chance to catch myself," Path tells her.

"It's fine!" she assures him earnestly.

Isabella looks quizzically at Kas. "Can one of you explain this?"

"...It's kind of the same thing as the moonlight?" he says uncertainly. "We just like feeling stuff, it doesn't make a huge difference whether it's snuggles or sharp things, as long as it's stuff we want to be feeling right then."

Path shrugs his wings, swoops over to Petaal's shoulder, and holds on as tight as he has to. He pecks at her hair a bit, arranging it behind her ear.

She beams and reaches up to gently pet his feathers.

"Awwwww," giggles Petaal. "You are fluffy. Fluffy and cute and huggable and lovable."

"Yep," Kas says happily. "That's my sweetie for ya."

Isabella laughs. "So I guess the verdict on celestial light is that yes, it is pleasant, huh?"

"Mmhmmmmmmm," hums Petaal.

"...What's it like?" Isabella asks Kas. "Having someone touch your daemon."

"Me?" says Isabella.

"Nice," he says, smiling and closing his eyes. "It was nice."

"Nice how?"

Kas giggles.

"What about... other times? What's the range here?" she asks. "If you don't mind."

Isabella shivers. So does Path; he hunkers down in Petaal's embrace.

Petaal leans her cheek against the softness of Path's feathers and hugs him gently.

Isabella decides that she, correspondingly, should hug Kas.

Well. Hair-petting got good results before and is compatible with hugs, yes?

"I'm sorry that happened to you."

"You're sweet," he says, leaning into her with a contented sigh.

"I wanna find out!" Petaal says immediately.

"Well, mine won't work for you - I can take a passenger, but only I can fly the thing. You have to cut your own," Isabella says. "It's a bit of a hike from here."

"So let's go do that!" she says. "Maybe not now, we are too snuggly."

"Sure. Closest stand of them is in Nunavut. I think the location's common knowledge. I don't think I can get the time off to fly you guys there myself, though."

"Where in Nunavut?" asks Kas.

"Auyuittuq National Park is the part it'll be easier for you to get to. I'm not sure the Nunavut Clan will think much of your visit if you try to go to the part of the tree cluster that they control."

"Mkay," Petaal says cheerfully.

"So since I can't take Petaal on as my meta-apprentice, what're you going to do with whatever amount of time you spend still in Rockland?" Isabella inquires.

"No idea!" says Kas. "We're not really big planners when we don't have to be."

"Fair enough. You likely to be bored if I go in and do my homework?"

"Nope!" he says, grinning.

Path flutters away. Not towards Isabella; she's only reading. He feels like flying.

Petaal shifts into a liger and pounces on Kas, nuzzling him ferociously. The witch-silks suffer somewhat from the transition.