"Usually he leaves Andrea with me and she'd do time syncing but she's been less clingy lately."

"Andrea?"

"Oh, uh, she's his daemon. He started keeping his soul outside of his body after there was a teleportation accident? It's weird."

"Sounds it!"

"But she can shapeshift, and if I'm holding her I'm literally holding Harley's soul, and so on, so, it's nice."

"What's holding somebody's soul like?"

"It's a bigger deal on their end than mine. I mean it's a big deal for me mostly imprinty reasons but it doesn't feel like a whole lot? It feels like something. I would notice if I picked up the wrong rabbit."

"Is she fluffy when she's a rabbit? I bet she's fluffy."

"Very fluffy."

She giggles.

"Anyway if I'm right about you being a one of Harley the bunch of you are called Jokers. There's a bunch of bunches. I'm the only me though, at least so far."

"How do you tell when there's more? I mean, not everybody can be as - as recognizable as me, right?"

"There's somebody who can tell by looking. She's an alt of the empress of my world, there's a bunch of her. She makes a point of looking at everybody."

"Gotcha. You have an Empress?"

"She's not exactly the empress of everybody. She usurped this evil vampire government that was doing evil vampire things, and now she is the good vampire government. She's my empress 'cause I'm a wolf, though."

"'The empress of my world' was a little unclear that way."

"Well, there's a bunch of her, and lots of them are empresses, but of other worlds. Also I have, like, wolf educational background, where there was not so much attention paid to 'oh by the way we technically live in Canada, Canada is technically a thing' and more to 'this is the empress, this is her kid, the princess is the alpha's imprint, we are pretty thoroughly attached to this shadow government here'."

"We live kind of in the middle of nowhere? I mean, I've been places. My family goes to Burning Man every year. But the Canada thing is just not as relevant as alphas and imperials and whatnot."

"Sure. I dunno, though, if I lived somewhere I'd want to live there."

"I live in my town. There's people in it. Wolves and imprints and puppies, and every now and then the Capital passes through, although I don't like to hang out with full vampires because they smell."

"They smell?"

"And vice-versa. I guess I could do magic to it but I don't, like, have Internet friends who are vampires."

"'Do magic to it'," she giggles. "Man, I wanna do magic to things."

Zeus giggles. "What things?"