“Of course I drink! Everybody drinks!”
“Everybody...?”
“Water!Gobgoyles are ninety-eight percent water! Get it?” Oscar roared, as if this were the funniest joke in the world.
“Oscar, be serious. You know what I mean. Did you drink alcohol?”
More cackling. “Duuuude” was his only response.
“Now you sound like Conrad.” A terrible thought occurred to me. “Oscar, you didn’t take something of Conrad’s, did you? Some... pills, or anything?”
Oscar sat up and looked at me intently.
“Oscar...?”
“I’ve got the munchies,” he said, and made a beeline into the kitchen.
“So what else is new?” I muttered as I followed him.
Once in the kitchen, he paused and looked at me with a blank, confused expression on his face. “Wait. Hold on.”
“What is it?”
“What were we talking about, again?”
“Oscar, what iswrongwith you?”
“Dude!”
He laughed again, waving his oversized hand in my direction as though I were saying something hysterical.He flung open the refrigerator and practically climbed in, emerging with a white carton of leftover pad Thai.
“This here’s my huckleberry!” he said, and jumped up to perch on the counter, where he started eating pad Thai noodles with his fingers.
“Oscar, I told you I don’t like it when you stand on the counter. This is a kitchen, not a pigsty.”
He slurped more noodles, and sniggered. “Pigsty, fit for a pig! ’Cept I’m not a pig, so that there’s an example of irony!Get it?”
“Off!”
“Geesh,” he said as he leapt gracefully to the floor, then somersaulted in slow motion, a surprised look on his face.
“Okay, this is ridiculous. You’d better stay here in your cubby until this passes. Whatever this is.”
“Can I have something to drink first?”
“Of course. What do you want?”
“A Singapore sling! With an umbrella, please.”
“No. There’s water or— Did you just stick your tongue out at me?”
“Of course not, mistress,” he said, puffing up his chest. “That would be beneath my dignity as a gobgoyle. Say, could you bring me some more cupcakes?”
“What do you mean, more cupcakes?”
“One thing I’ll say for that mistress of the dark: she can bake a mean cupcake.”
“Oscar...”
