Angel moved toward her slowly, talking in a low, soft voice, like she was trying to rescue a lost kitten. Which she was.

“No, honey, you’re not. Virginia’s the big one who liked to break our toys. Do you remember her? Do you remember me?”

The catgirl moved so fast my heart stopped, but it wasn’t an attack, it was an embrace. They clung together for a long time, and then Angel took her hand and firmly pulled her over to me. I did my best not to look like the kind of guy who’d hit a girl, even one with fangs and claws.

“This is Jack, my very close friend. Like you. He was alone for a long time before I came here, because Virginia left him behind like a broken toy. He named me Angel.”

That wasn’t quite the scenario we’d been discussing recently, but there was certainly some truth to it. Not that it mattered, because her ears and tail had shot up at the word named. She looked up at me with huge, hungry eyes, like I was holding a fish just out of reach. Seriously, it was adorable, but I could feel Angel’s eyes as well, a quiet pressure begging me not to screw this up.

“You’re close like sisters, and you move like the wind. Would you like to be ‘Ariel’?”

Catgirls don’t hug, by the way, they glomp.