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The car alarm sang shrilly next to them; with an air of who, us, never, not in a million years Cascati drifted out of the parking lot, ducking down another alley and stopping at the busy pavement of the city at a weeknight. She could recognise the town even more now. "It is cool," he was saying modestly, "and I am much better than all other rides, less traffic, less personal effort. Guess I'll start charging, though, ma cherie, I have to keep myself in lattes somehow."

The hamburger place really was just a little way down the street, the familiar Starbucks logo assaulting them right next to it. He sighed in deep satisfaction like a druggie who had just found his dealer, but got into line at the hamburger place anyway -- it was longer -- squinting at the menu, wallet out his pocket. They were really just any teenagers getting a meal downtown at the end of the day; well, except that she was a human with a little light-up star display and he was a gargoyle, but who cared? The city was diverse, to say the least.

"God, I'm starving," he admitted. "I've been awake all day, Prosper."

"You Ophelia Prosper or aren't you?" he said, not sounding too concerned about that either. The line continued its snail's pace as he rustled through his wallet for change. The burger place was standard fare, with exceptions. "Want to split some animal fries?"

He wagged one of his claws at her, bopping her very gently on the nose with the tip. "This is why you should feel privileged that you're hanging with me, Casca Naborn, knower of mysteries," he said. "They stole it from somewhere else -- part of the menu, if you ask. They just call it 'onion fries' here. Chips, melted cheese, grilled onions, sauce. Better than your average fry."

It was too late to refuse; there they were at the start of the line, and Casca was already ordering. He asked for "four hamburgers," like everyone else in the world usually ordered four hamburgers alone, peeled out notes from his wallet fussily and squeezed out the exact change like an old man, and waited patiently at the side for her as he gripped his ticket.

"Stick with me, darlin'," he said, "I won't see you wrong. If 'wrong' meant 'wrong fry choices.'"

Casca did not start on the animal fries. Instead, he took his first burger, opened his mouth, and did the closest possible thing to inhaling you could do while still chewing your food; the first burger went down, then the second, then the third -- and only then did he bother to reach over and eat some fries, wiping his mouth with a napkin a little surrepticiously as though mouth-napkin-wiping was a little lame.

"Told you so," was all he said. "They give you -- stupid little fussy little servings, though. Come on." (The serving was pretty medium-sized.)

The boy in front of her looked surprised at the question; he was picking at the fries now, his chin resting in his other hand, elbow resting on the table. His elbow was a sight bonier than even normal bony teenage boys' -- ridged, sharp. "Dutch?" he guessed, and then quirked his eyebrows at her again. "Darlin', pumpin, honeychile -- don't tell me you've never seen a gargoyle before. Well. Okay. I don't see Mary Poppins every day of my life -- barring creepy umbrellas -- but."

Casca started to ease his last burger out of its wrapped-paper casing. "'Stone during the day, awake at night,'" he intoned drearily, "'magical guardians, sworn warriors.' Except for me; I like Starbucks and being a consumer whore."

He took a bite of the burger. "And how," he added, after chewage.

"Is that a job," said Casca idly, "or a race? Sounds more like a career move -- unless there is some kind of, uh, racial thing which also lets you fly like a little balloon? I don't know, I've never come across a world painter before. Living in ignorance, and so on."

He wiped up a little more of the sauce with an animal fry, and then inhaled the rest of the lonely burger. Whatever else she now knew about gargoyles, it was that they had appetites.

"I'd like to travel one day," said Casca unexpectedly, who was already folding up the paper box that the burgers had come to him in and was crumpling it into neat origami. "Languages -- that's all I'm good at. It's not gargoyle: gargoyles, we're all meant to stay in one place in some mouldering castle or house protecting something until we're rubble, in a million years time. Put bluntly, pumpkin, '******** it.'"

He grinned at her, and then he said -- "You like clothes, don't you?" And added: "Derr."