“Still fixated on biology, are you, Princess?” Vergis’s voice was dry as a desert.
“Well, Muffin, he can be forgiven. I almost mistake you for a human some days.” He smiled at me. “Charles isn’t Vergis’s biological father.” Kinnek cocked his head. “But even if you wanted to try for children of your own with your mate, that wouldn’t work with a hangu-na.” Kinnek looked at the others. “Surely someone has explained that to the human?”
“He said he didn’t want to procreate,” Inkiri offered.
“And that he has no uterus,” Nokim said.
“The vestigial uterus really was a joke?” Fellisse asked, his voice doubtful.
I was flushing, but I was going to blame it on the water if anyone decided to comment. The soaking really wasn’t so bad, it was all the talking that was the problem.
Charles swallowed a laugh. “Vestigial uterus?”
Fellisse tilted his head. “We had noticed your teats, Charles?—”
“Nipples,” Inkiri corrected. Clearly, while we were having this ridiculous discussion, we could at least practice our vocabulary.
Fellisse grunted in acknowledgment. “Nipples. We noticed. It makes you wonder. Stranger things have happened.”
Charles snorted. “Name one.”
“Well, I died twice, and Rory brought me back.” Nokim sounded very chill about his near-death experiences. There was a bagu who could handle a near-death crisis, clearly.
“Necromantic fuckery around here.” Vergis leaned back and stretched out his legs. “Made me see death approaching as well.”
Kinnek made a disapproving bagu noise. “We’re getting off track. But just to be clear, pregnancy is not an option for a hangu-na, Rory. However?—”
I flushed, and this time the water wouldn’t be able to hide it. “Do not tell me I should’ve put a condom on Inkiri.”
“What? No. Please remain realistic. What I was going to say was that in olden times when bagua had more magic and mate calls were strong, it would generally fuse life force and make both share longer lives than either would have by themself.”
“Oh, that.” I looked up at Inkiri. “I sort of gathered that. Well, I kind of knew? Like, I have this thing where I just know stuff, which is also new. I think it’s a side effect of the, uh, magic.”
Kinnek raised a brow. “Vergis mentioned something about that, and I’d like to look into what exactly it is. It might be how our ability to sense magic translates in you, but we’ll have to find out.”
“We’re staying, yes?” Nokim looked back and forth between all of us.
Charles nodded. “Of course you’re staying. I need Vergis to clean the garage.”
Vergis sat up straight again. “You just said you wanted me to slaughter pigeons.”
“I’ll help!” The excitement with which Nokim volunteered made me wonder whether he had ever seen a human garage. I mean, even though neither of my parents were outdoorsy or into handicrafts, our garage had still been full of random stuff.
Vergis slowly turned his head toward me. “Your. Fault.”
“Charlie, see? I told you our Muffin had it in him to make friends.”
I inched closer to Inkiri. “Muffin threatened to murder me once or twice.”
Which made Muffin glare at me.
Charles chuckled. “Next thing we know, they’ll be braiding each other’s hair. Oh, is that why you haven’t been cutting it, Vergis?”
“Oh, for the love of—you know, this is precisely why I don’t tell people about you two nutheads.”
Kinnek’s grin widened. “Because we are beautiful and mysterious?”
“Try nosy and weird.” He turned to me. “Also?—”
