The muscle-slabs who’d bagged him at Farmers Market cut off their conversation about last night’s Angels-Padres game and tried to find something to do with their bandaged hands. “No hard feelings, guys,” Daniel said. And he meant it. He didn’t regret kraken-burning them, but they’d only been following Otis’s instructions. They nodded as though they understood. Daniel found Otis at his desk, working numbers with an abacus. “How’d your meeting with Emma Walker go?” Otis said, not looking up. “Why does she know about my mother?” Otis took off his glasses, deliberately folded the temples, and set them on his desk. “What are you talking about?” “I slipped her lamassu and ate her memories. They were of me. Of when my mom went North with the thing that looked like me. Who is she, and what’s she got to do with me?” Otis clucked his tongue. “You used lamassu. That’s tricky stuff. You probably tried to drink up her memories but ended up regurgitating some of your own.
