The fledgling squawked at me and I startled. Great.

“What happened?” Lou asked, wide eyes darting around the room.

She looked rumpled. I liked rumpled.

“Are you hurt?” She licked her lips, and fuck.

This was when it occurred to me that A) I was naked. I had a blanket, yes, but right now it was only covering my knees, so I yanked it up to my waist. As a rule, werewolves were pretty okay with being naked, but I was feeling vulnerable this morning, and it was hard to be brave when you were buck naked. B) The weasels had fled, or perhaps had never been there to begin with. Maybe I’d been hallucinating, or possibly they were a side effect of Van’s hex, which seemed unlikely. And C) I was destined to make a terrible impression on Trick’s roommates.

“Were you having night terrors?” Van asked gently. “I have a cousin who gets those.”

“Weasels?” It came out as a question. I hated that. “Weasels.” There. That sounded much more authoritative.

“You mean Kodo and Podo?” Van handed the french press off to Trick before dropping down to the floor level and giving a soft whistle.

“They have names?” I wanted to take the entire carafe and drink straight from the spout. My brain felt fuzzy and useless, and as was beginning to be the way of things, I felt one step behind the conversation in this house.

“Van named them after the ferrets in Beastmaster. You don’t name your pets?” Lou asked, letting the tip of the bat drop until it touched the floor.

“Pets?” I watched Van crawl around near the base of the futon, making clucking noises with her tongue. Now that I was slightly more awake, I recategorized the smell, taking it from “weasel” to “ferret.” I wasn’t as familiar with ferrets, though that seemed like it was about to change. The two ferrets ran out from under the bed on the other side and started hopping all over the floor and each other, chittering away at Van. She whisked them up with ease, cuddling them to her Rat City Roller Girls T-shirt.

“Sorry,” Van said. “I didn’t realize they came in here.” She snuggled them close, frowning. “Now I have to figure out how they managed it.” She kissed their heads. “To be fair, they are familiars, so they’re a little smarter than the average ferret, which is already pretty smart.”

“Why?” I asked. “Ferrets. Why?”

Trick sent me a sympathetic look. “I think we broke you. And so soon, too.”

Lou shifted, resting some of her weight on the bat. “We were going to get a cat, because tradition, but Trick is allergic.”

Van held the ferrets close, her eyebrows pinched together. “Don’t say it like that. Don’t make them feel like they’re runners-up.”

Lou looked very solemnly at me. “What I meant to say was that we’d considered getting a cat, but then realized that everyone has cats and though they’re awesome, we wanted a different kind of awesome, so Van got ferrets.” She was deadpan with her delivery—it was kind of adorable.