“You’ll be the one who’s fried and served up with mashed potatoes and cornbread stuffing when I get back,” I promised, enjoying the vengeful mental image. “I’ll make you the early-Thanksgiving special.”

If birds could snort, Lenny would have. At one time, three months ago, Leo might’ve been able to give me something to think about. After all, he’d been a god; I wasn’t. But both of us were human, more or less, now, at least for the next four or five years, thanks to my showing off and an artifact who thought the experience might do Leo some good. For me, there were no shape-shifting powers, no powers of any kind except a natural biological defense against telepathy and empathy and the ability to tell my own païen kind when I saw them no matter what shape they wore. Leo was one up on me. He was stuck in human or bird form, and it was my fault. I’d drained my batteries by overusing my powers to take down the killer of my brother in an extremely showy and vengeful way. I wasn’t sorry. The bastard had deserved it. He’d killed my family, my only sibling. For what I did to him, things dismemberment-loving demons themselves would’ve applauded . . . no, I wasn’t sorry. I would never be sorry for that. I’d only regret I couldn’t do it a few more times.

Oddly enough, even after that show, a sentient artifact that I’d been using as a bargaining chip against Heaven and Hell had thought at the time that I was a good influence on Leo/Loki. The Light of Life, the artifact, had decided he should stick around with me for those four years it would take me to recover my shape-shifting abilities. As it was more powerful than Leo and I combined, it didn’t ask us for permission either. It neutered him—on the god part at least. The rest of him, I assumed, was in working condition. Although as I had to exercise, it would’ve been nice for Leo to have suffered a slight bit more. We’d see how many funny quips about my weight he’d make while buying Internet steroids and Viagra.