Now it was his turn to look unhappy. “Must I?”

“Yes. You must. If anything happens to you, I need to be able to find out what.” I started walking again, forcing him to follow me if he wanted to remain in the discussion.

Malena grabbed my arm. I turned to look in her direction, and she scowled at me.

“Mice? What the hell are you talking about? I’m sleepy, too, but the sleep-dep hasn’t kicked in yet. Have you been staying up all week?”

“Oh, right, you don’t know. Malena, I have a colony of Aeslin mice living with me.” I ducked through the hole in the fence. “They remember everything they see. We should have moved them to the theater a week ago. They’ll help Dominic search the place, once we explain what we need.”

Malena’s mouth fell open, her eyebrows shooting toward her hairline like they’d just decided to secede from her face. “You’ve got to be kidding. Aeslin mice are a myth.”

“No, they’re an endangered species, and there’s nothing mythical about them.”

She turned to Dominic, apparently expecting him to side with her. Instead, he shook his head and said, “The mice are real. The mice comment on my hygiene, diet, and sleeping habits. The mice are not a myth, much as I might sometimes wish otherwise.”

“Okay, I need to get some sleep, but before that happens, I have got to see this.”

I almost laughed. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

Breaking into the apartments was easy, thanks to Alice’s lax approach to simple human things like “locking the goddamn window.” We slithered into the apartment below mine, me first, followed by Dominic, and finally Malena, who had the good sense to remain outside until she was sure the coast was clear. I motioned for her to close the window. Once it was shut—and locked, for a change, although that wasn’t going to last—I moved to the center of the room, cleared my throat, and announced, as loudly as I dared, “I seek audience.”

There was a long pause. Longer than normal: normally, the word “audience” would have them popping out of nowhere like a bunch of tiny rodent jack-in-the-boxes, all cheering wildly. But even talking pantheistic mice need their beauty sleep, and it was well past the hour when most of the faithful would have taken themselves off to bed.

After several minutes had ticked by, Malena flung up her hands in disgust. “This is the weirdest prank a pair of humans has ever tried to pull on me, you get that? There’s something wrong with your entire species.”

“And lo did the Violent Priestess speak unto the congregation, and she did say, ‘Ain’t Nothing Wrong with Most People which couldn’t be Fixed with a Good Smack Upside the Head,’” squeaked a small, rapturous voice from the direction of the floor. Malena jumped nearly a foot straight up. The mouse continued, unperturbed, “Then she did deliver a Good Smack Upside the Head to her husband, the God of Unexpected Situations, and All Was Well.”

Malena turned to stare at the wainscoting. The mouse, which was sitting politely with its tail tucked around its feet and its cloak slung back over its shoulders, fluffed its whiskers forward as it stared back.

“Greetings, therianthrope,” it said deferentially. Aeslin mice were remarkably canny about some things. Being polite to predators was one of them.

“Uh, mouse,” said Malena. “Mouse, talking. Talking mouse. In the apartment. There is a talking mouse.”

“Okay, it’s fun to listen to you chaining your way up to a complete sentence, but we don’t have time for this right now,” I said and knelt, holding out my hand for the mouse to scamper onto. Once it was settled on my palm I straightened, turning to present the mouse to Malena. “Malena, Aeslin mouse. Aeslin mouse, Malena. Malena is a friend, and will not eat you. Right, Malena?”

“Uh, sure,” said Malena, sounding unsettled. That was a common—and sensible—reaction to meeting an Aeslin mouse for the first time. She wasn’t screaming and running away, which put her ahead of a lot of people. “Hello, mouse.”

“Greetings, friend who will not eat me,” said the mouse. It turned to me, forcing its whiskers forward in an expression of polite curiosity. “Why do you beg audience, Arboreal Priestess? Have we displeased you in some way? For the hour is Late, and you have said, many times, that we must Let You Sleep.”

“You can hear the capital letters,” said Malena, sounding even more unsettled. “Did you notice that? It talks, and you can hear the capital letters.”

“You get used to it,” said Dominic.