I can see through you,
We are the same.
It's perfectly strange.
You run in my veins.
– Of Monsters and Men, "Wolves Without Teeth"
Jenny awoke on a bed that wasn't hers, curled between two warm bodies.
Her body felt loose and languid, heavy with the drowsiness of satisfaction and warmth, the musky scent of the two men she lay between filling her nose. At the foot of the unfamiliar bed, their dæmons were curled around each other in a multicoloured knot of fur: white, black-spotted gold, and rich mahogany brown. She could feel the buzz of Zurial's happiness in the back of her skull like the hum of static, and she decided that getting up and ready for the day could wait another few minutes. She lay her head back down on Nick Cutter's arm, the one he had tucked beneath her head. The other was resting around her waist. The professor was curled to her back like a limpet, his legs tucked behind hers, and Victor was molded to her front, arm around her waist beside Cutter's, one leg tucked between hers and Cutter's both, his nose in the crook of her neck.
If anyone had asked her, two years ago, if she thought that one day she would be in a working to catch dinosaurs in the UK and in a relationship with both a professor that had a murderous ex-wife and more baggage than an airplane's cargo hold and a genetically-identical clone of said professor created by said murderous ex-wife, she would have asked what drugs they were shooting up and recommended they stop immediately.
And yet, here she was.
Victor, as they'd come to call the clone, had attached to Jenny and Zurial like a limpet in those weeks that Cutter was still in hospital from his gunshot injury. At first, his dæmon, Girazi, had changed shape like a child's would, which was how she hid from Helen's sharp eyes in the first place. Jenny hadn't liked him very much at first, vastly unsettled by being confronted with a living photocopy of another person. With time, however, she had come to enjoy his company and found that for all he looked identical to Nick Cutter, he wasn't the professor in the least, personality-wise. They were more as identical twins than anything. When Cutter himself got out of hospital, things had certainly become...awkward for a while, as they grew used to each other again and found a balance. And then they hadn't been awkward anymore. Then they became something much more. After their first night together, Girazi settled into the form of a beautiful European otter, sleek and dark between the spotted gold of Laiguline and the snowy white of Zurial. Jenny knew that he belonged with them after that.
The pressure of small paws on her bare calf drew her out of her musing. She opened one eye to see Zurial carefully tip-pawing his way up her leg to sit on her hip, curling his black-tipped tail around his paws. "You know we need to be out of here by 10 if we expect to catch them," the other half of herself reminded softly, murmuring so as to not wake their bedmates.
"I know," Jenny muttered back. "Five more minutes, that's all I'm asking. Comfy."
Zurial flicked one ear, then rose to his paws once more, dipped his muzzle, and licked the back of Cutter's hand. All at once, her body felt as though it was buzzing with electricity, a thrill riding up her spine, all the fine hairs on her body standing up. The professor jerked awake with a soft gasp, Laiguline twisting at the foot of the bed. He looked up with drowsy blue eyes at Zurial. "Good morning to you, too," he muttered, reaching up to scratch under the fox's chin with one finger. Zurial gave a soft purring noise, and Jenny breathed out a low moan in response.
"Cheater," she muttered once Zurial had pulled back and bounded to the end of the bed to nuzzle Girazi awake.
Cutter nosed aside her hair and pressed his lips to the curve of her neck. "Ready to get up yet?"
She smiled, resting her cheek on Victor's soft hair. "I am now, thanks to Zurial," she replied dryly.
He chortled softly then rolled away from her, leaving her shivering at the sudden absence of warmth at her back. Victor stirred in her arms sluggishly, slower to wake up than the professor, and she smoothed his messy hair back out of his face. "Time to get up, love. We've got work to do," she said softly.
Victor grunted in his throat, then buried his face in her neck once more. "Comfy," he protested, then gave a yelp as Zurial nipped Girazi's tail, making the otter squeak and jump away. He sat up and held an arm out to Girazi, who scrambled up to perch on his bare shoulder, out of reach of sharp fox teeth. "Little slave driver," he said, wagging a finger at Zurial. The Arctic fox dæmon lifted his muzzle imperiously.
Jenny, Cutter, and Victor got out of the car, parked in front of a large official-looking building that reminded her of the ARC so much she felt a brief pang of homesickness. But then she pushed it aside, striding forward down the sidewalk with Zurial at her heels, putting on her cool, professional face; professor and clone followed just behind her like matching blond shadows.
Ahead, a man with a mess of dark hair stood talking to a brunette woman that looked rather exasperated with him. The man's polecat dæmon bounced from shoulder to shoulder like a hyperactive child whilst the woman's kite watched unimpressed. Standing beside the dark-haired man was another bloke with copper-toned skin and a small cat dæmon at his feet. All three people ceased talking and turned to look as Jenny strode up to them.
"Evan Cross, Angelika Finch, Mac Randall? My name is Jenny Lewis, I'm from the London Home Office. I think we should talk."