Page 57 of Damien’s Mate

Titan turned and looked at Damien with those eerie silver eyes that looked like a ghost was looking out of them at you.

Without looking away from Damien, he said to Brock, “You don’t know that for sure.”

Having watched him with Remy and the others for a while, Damien was pretty sure he was messing with him. But not completely certain.

“I taste gamey,” he said. “And there’s not enough fat on me for good marbling of the meat.”

Titan gave a faint smile, but he still didn’t say anything to Damien.

Okay then. “I don’t want to bother you,” he said. “Or get eaten. Just maybe borrow a few tools when I need them?”

There was another long silence. Brock didn’t say anything, just waited, so Damien did too.

Finally Titan said, “You can work here if you want. You like snack cakes, right?”

“Who doesn’t?” Damien put his owl on a table and started looking at the tools. “My favorite is Pop Tarts, though. I can steal some from Jaeda, if you like them.”

He figured stolen food from Remy’s mate would get him more points than buying Pop Tarts himself.

Titan nodded. “Pop Tarts are good food. Not as good as Hostess cupcakes, but good.”

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that, my friend.”

“Do you know any other good junk food? I like learning new ones.”

“I’ll give it some thought.” He found a two-foot log of nice cedar wood in a pile in the corner. “Were you going to use this for anything?”

Titan glanced at it. “No. You can have it.”

“Thanks.” He settled down at a table, pulled over a sketch pad and pencil, and started to draw, eyes on the shape of the wood. “Where are you from that you never ate junk food?”

“Alaska. Northern coast.”

Damien nodded. “Not a lot of 7-Elevens there?”

“No. Bears shit in the woods there.”

Oookay. “And also read Shakespeare? And literary fiction?” Damien asked. He’d caught a glimpse of some of the books as he came in, and was intrigued.

“Yes. It’s a puzzling incongruity.”

“Unless they use the book pages for toilet paper.”

Brock went back into the living area, poured himself a beer, and stretched out by the fire with a book. Damien sketched in silence for awhile, while Titan cut a few more chunks off his sculpture.

When he stopped for a rest, Damien said, without looking up, “I always wanted to visit Alaska. How come you ended up here?”

“Evil panthers killed my family. I followed them here to kill them back.”

Damien felt like shit for asking. He knew what it was like to lose your family, although not like that. “Sorry, man. About your family, I mean. I hope you got the bastards.”

“Most of them.” Titan put down the hammer. “I was going to kill Brandon, too, but he turned out to be a good panther so I didn’t.”

“Yeah, he’s all right.”

Titan nodded. “Want a snack cake?” He opened a cupboard on the wall near the tool pegboard. It was crammed full of snack cakes of all kinds. Excellent.

“Got any Donettes?”