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didn’t think he liked many Focuses, if any.
    Later I sensed him gathering up his courage again.  “There’s one personal issue I would like to discuss,” he said.
    Sex.  I carefully guarded my reactions and motioned for him to continue.  I owed Gilgamesh my life, but so far I hadn’t lived up to my end of the bargain.  He loved me, and wanted me, but he held back.  In my current position, with no territory, no resources, and half a brain I would accept pretty much whatever he wanted on the subject.
    “I didn’t sleep with you because I didn’t feel it would be right,” he said.  “Nor did I sleep with Keaton.  I understand the two of you think differently about sex than I do, but I’m still burdened with my old fashioned human hang-ups.”
    “No problem.  I’m still working on understanding my needs as an Arm.  Some of my choices when I’m high on juice bother me a lot when I’m not.”  I paused.  “But you’re a Major Transform.  I won’t press you on this, but if we’re going to be long-term work partners, the juice will make us sleep together.  We both have our own mind reading tricks, although they’re different, and we won’t be able to hide our wants and desires from each other.”  I wanted to sleep with him as much as he wanted to sleep with me.  He understood, but as far as I remembered, Keaton kept me tightly leashed.
    “I have a problem,” Gilgamesh said.  “Early in your recovery Keaton lured me into her bed, with you, thinking that if I slept with you this would help bring you back to yourself.  Uh, this didn’t go well.”
    I nodded.  “The shiner and the defensive wounds.  I’m sorry.”
    “I don’t blame you.  That’s not the problem.  I panicked, bad.  That’s the problem.  For a young Crow like me, well, panic takes a long time to wear off.”
    So, we had intimacy issues.  At least my mindless attack hadn’t kept him from cuddling me.  I didn’t think I would have ever come back to myself without his cuddling.
    “Again, no problem.  I won’t press.”  Yet.  I was sure he caught the ‘yet’ with his emotion reading trick.  “I’ve never asked and I’m not sure if this is something you can talk about, but when did you first find me?”
    “St. Louis.  On September 18 th .  I transformed, as best as I’ve been able to work out, on July 14 th .  I still used my birth name and I’d met just one other Crow, Sinclair, when I found you.”
    “I need to meet Sinclair and some of your other Crow friends.  After I’ve recovered some more.  If I have to be tied up and muzzled, I still need to meet them.”
    “This will be difficult to arrange.  When something is new, it seems dangerous to a Crow.  If what’s new is dangerous, the Crow panics and runs away.  Crows must work hard to learn to do anything new.  I don’t think you’ll need to be muzzled and tied down.  What you’ll need is patience for many preliminary meetings.”
    I thought about Gilgamesh’s statement about his transformation.  “I transformed on September 9 th , so you have a couple of months on me.  Was being a baby Crow as devastating for you as being a baby Arm was for me?”
    Gilgamesh closed his eyes, listening to the hum of the road.  “I couldn’t talk to people.  I couldn’t let anyone near me without panicking and fleeing.  I nearly panicked myself to death once when I stumbled over a house cat.  I’d never even heard a hint that male Major Transforms existed.  I thought I had gone insane.”
    I took his hand and squeezed.  “I killed my own daughter when I transformed.”
    We didn’t talk for the next ten minutes, providing silent comfort to each other.  Gilgamesh was the first Transform I had told about my daughter.
    Fate had linked us from the start.  I had been partly joshing, partly reaching when I called us long-term work partners, but in fact we were far more linked than I realized.  The linkage explained some of those screwy extra