“I’m trying to make him a better dog, like I’m trying to make you a better human. Don’t be annoying.”

“Fine. You handle this without my help.”

“Fine,” Rachel said. She reached out, then let her hand drop to her side. She looked my way. “You found my dog quickly.”

I nodded.

“Good work.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said. There wasn’t a follow-up and there wasn’t really anything for me to say or ask her, so I turned to Chris. “We didn’t make much headway, but they have a crapton of capes and the Hollow Point guys seem to have crumbled. I’m thinking phase two, but I haven’t brought it up with anyone else.”

“Phase two?” Rachel asked.

“Contain,” was Chris’s blunt response.

“Okay,” Rachel said.

I wanted to explain further, but my eye and ear were somewhat compromised. Would Mama hear and adapt?

That’d have to do for an explanation. I’d outlined a multi-stage course of action with a list of priorities, and we were already having to skip to the next big phase, without having removed the capes Rain had mentioned. Valefor was out of action, but Mama was in play, Bamet the animal herder was out there, Coronzon the monstrous changer was there, and then there were the Crowley brothers.

As far as I knew, they were the only Fallen left. The McVeays were kaput, the Behemoth-worshipers with the strong religious bent hadn’t survived the apocalypse.

The Crowley brothers weren’t really water manipulators, by and large. They and their immediate family members tended to riff on the duplication theme, often duplicating things that weren’t themselves.

I’d really wanted to knock out at least most of the leadership before moving on to the next phase. Taking out all of the major leaders would have worked too.

“I recognize you,” Rachel said, interrupting my thoughts.

“What?” Imp asked.

She was talking to Chris.

“You know him?” I asked.

“What?” Chris asked. “No she doesn’t.”

“I know of him,” Rachel said.

“No she doesn’t,” Chris said.

“What?” Imp asked, again. “Wait, the changer thing—this kid is the fucked up bird thing we saw and the crawly skull thing we heard about? And the tentacle thing from the video Tats showed us?”

“Video?” Chris asked.

“Is he?” Rachel asked. “Oh, okay.”

“What? How is that okay?” Imp was incredulous. “You can’t just raise a topic like that and say oh okay.”

“Whatever. It’s not important,” Rachel said.

“You have me on video?” Chris asked, sounding as alarmed as I’d ever heard him.

“No big deal,” Rachel said. “Not important.”

“It’s important to me! I don’t like people recording me without my permission. I get enough of that with the one teammate.”

“Fuck me,” I said, under my breath. Louder, I said, “Guys.”

“You know him?”