“I can talk, if it helps,” he said.  “You were talking about Faerie.  Court Faerie deal with prominent families and powers.  Around here, you’re not getting a Faerie familiar unless you’re a member of the Duchamp family.  You could get a fairy, that’s F-A-I-R-Y, but then you’re talking about the witless, minor denizens of their realm.  Foot high things with butterfly wings.  Going that route would be dumb.”

“You’re helping me, now?” I asked.

“This is more self serving.  You’ve already dealt with a head-on attack.  If they called Eva and me in to deal with you, I’d probably take point.  And I don’t want to kill someone with a fairy -that’s with an R-Y at the end- for a familiar.  I’d feel like I was picking on the vulnerable.  In this case, it would be the equivalent of murdering the mentally handicapped.”

“People keep going on about that sort of thing.  I’m supposedly Blake the fool, the unsturdy rock, the guy that’s going to die within the next five years, no questions asked.  Now there’s some implications that I could fit in the same box as the mentally handicapped.”

“If you pick a fairy for a familiar,” he said.  “Just to clarify.”