My head was starting to hurt. It didn’t help when Jenks landed on my shoulder with the scent of wet garden. I felt a damp spot through my shirt, and I didn’t like that he had bared the sword he had taken to carrying around with him since yesterday. Ceri had moved to sit on the fainting couch, her hands resting to either side of her and her ankles crossed as if she were holding court. Clearly it was up to me. “Why not?” I said when I saw the gargoyle had flushed again, shifting from foot to foot.

“Because they’re bad luck!” Jenks shouted.

Tired of him yelling in my ear, I flicked him away. “They are not,” I said. “And I like him. He just saved me from frying my little witchy brain. At least have him fill out a rental questionnaire or something. You want the city to come down on you for not being an equal opportunity renter? You just don’t like him because he slipped your sentry lines. God, Jenks, you should be begging him to stay. You’re starting to sound like Trent.”

Jenks’s wings stopped and he almost fell. Ceri hid a smile, and I felt a moment of amusement. The pixy’s features bunched up, then smoothed out. Clearly flustered, he warily dropped to the edge of the dresser top, his wings a blur of motion. Making a show of it, he sheathed his sword. I doubted very much it would have pierced the gargoyle’s skin, but everyone in the room probably appreciated it.

“I don’t have a form,” Jenks admitted, somewhat embarrassed. “We can do it verbally.”

The gargoyle nodded, and I backed up a step, sitting beside Ceri when she shifted to make room. It was darker now without my globe, and thunder rolled in a comfortable sound.

“Name?” Jenks shot out. “And your reason for vacating previous residence?”

“Jenks, that’s rude,” I said, and the gargoyle twitched his tail in a show of acceptance.

“My name is Bis,” he said, “and I was kicked off the basilica because I was spitting on the people coming in. Suck-up little Glissando thinks she knows angel dust from dirt and tattled on me.”

“Tink’s titties, really?” Jenks said in admiration. “How far can you spit?”

My eyebrows rose. His name was Bis? What kind of a name was that?

Bis puffed up in pride. “If we’ve had a recent rain, I can hit a stop sign from a block away.”

“Holy crap!” Jenks’s wings lifted him, and he landed closer. “Think you can hit that creepy angel statue from the steeple?”

Bis’s color went silver-white to match the fur on his ears and tail, and gold flecks grew in his red eyes. “Faster than you can throw toad shit at a hummingbird poaching your nectar.”

“No fairy-ass way!”