Ariel wrapped herself around me so tightly that the air rushed out of my lungs and the blood rushed straight to my… just-bitten shoulder, fortunately. At her size there was no safe place for my hands, and she was definitely all woman, and she was purring. The pain wouldn’t keep me down for long, and I desperately needed a distraction.

Which she provided, suddenly leaping back over to Angel with a question that turned our assumptions sideways. “Do names make you grow up?”

It hit her hard. “It… I don’t… maybe they do, for us. Maybe the reason we don’t grow up is because we don’t have names.”

“Or maybe that’s the reason you weren’t given names.”

As if we needed another reason to despise whatever Powers were in charge of there.

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.

“I’m pretty sure this one isn’t her. Or you.”

I winced as Angel bandaged the bite on my shoulder. I’d managed to avoid the claws somehow.

“What, you think we don’t bite?”

I was pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate any details about what she had done with her teeth, or with her…

“Oh, hell, the pronouns are giving me a headache. Does she have a name, or can we give her one just so I can keep it straight in my head?”

She snorted as she finished patching me up, and started listing off possibilities. “Bitch, Slut, Witch, Wackjob, …”

“Cruella, Satana, Sinistra, Sextina, …”

“No, I think she’d like those.”

“Virginia.” Our eyes met, and our grins widened into laughter. She’d hate it.

“am… i… virginia…?” A quiet, halting voice came from behind me, and I turned to find our newest redhead peeking out from behind a tree. She looked frightened, and I remembered lashing out with a fist when she’d jumped us from behind the rock and sunk her teeth into me.

She was tiny, maybe a foot shorter than Angel, who’d recently shot up to about five-foot-six. It wasn’t a child’s body, though; she was a perfect miniature woman, with gentle curves covered by short, rust-colored fur.

Yeah, we’d come home and found a stray catgirl on the porch, complete with ears, tail, and the same face as every other redhead I knew.

“I kind of liked the hero thing.”

She grinned, then hugged me again to soften the blow to my ego.

“I think she found a hero. Here, on that rock, pulled across by a real Power, but left unwatched and unguarded. She staked her claim, then used the connection to shift back along your lifeline and take the credit. That’s something we can do.”

Remembering precisely how we’d been connected when I arrived, I looked down to find Angel blushing furiously.

“When we’re older. So I’ve heard. Change the subject, please.”

“So you think she was, what, poking around in there’s dusty little corners, and stumbled across something she could use?”

“Exactly. And that rock is the way in. It’s where she found you, it’s where you found me, and it’s where we’ll find her.”

Would you believe we found another redhead waiting to pounce on us?

I think most people carry an image of themselves that’s out of date. Younger, healthier, still able to fit in those pants, things like that. Me, I was a 26-year-old pizza guy who’d been chasing 20-year-old college girls until he caught the wrong one and ended up here. Twelve years ago.

“It’s not like we own a mirror, but I see my reflection sometimes, and I look older, more like my dad.”

“Because you know you’re supposed to. You came from a place where it happened to everyone, so you expect it. I didn’t, so I don’t. And you’re not.”

I carefully pushed her away, just enough to look in her eyes. She believed it, and it scared her a little.

“What if it’s not here being there, but me being here? How I got here. How I… died.”

I hadn’t thought about her much since Angel arrived, but she’d been very focused on my death, even if she’d gotten the date wrong. And she’d said she brought me back.

“I don’t think she has that kind of power. We’re not, well, for that, and it’s always bothered me about your story. Whisking a man away at the moment of his death to hump him back to life as a hero, like some kind of slutty valkyrie? Not a chance; she probably got that story out of a comic book.”