Apocalypse to Go by Katharine Kerr

them.”
    She managed a weak smile at that.
    “Let me think about this,” I went on. “I’ll see if I can come up with an answer for you.”
    But Sophie provided the answer herself, when Mike and Ari returned with bags of deli food. Although the two men would have eaten right out of the cartons, I insisted on putting the meal out on proper plates. I brought out utensils, too. Fingers are not good enough for potato salad, no matter what some males of our species think.
    Sophie came into the kitchen to help me carry the food out to the living room. When she saw the platter of pastrami and corned beef, her big dark eyes grew wide.
    “Look at all that meat,” she said. “I guess I’m still not used to it, yet, all the stuff there is to eat here.”
    “You didn’t get much meat back on Interchange, huh?” I said.
    “Almost never, yeah. It was so expensive there, but Aunt Eileen cooks some almost every day.”
    My mind poked me. “I bet that’s why you’re developing your talent late,” I said. “And furthermore, I bet it’s why I keep seeing more and more lycanthropes around here, too. The amount of meat we all pack away must trigger the gene or activate the virus.”
    We decided to reveal Sophie’s secret right away. I figured that the family needed to know before her first change. Pat’s lycanthropy had taken us all by surprise. The uproar that followed had injured him psychologically even beyond the normal stress of discovering that he had werewolf genes. Sophie sat down next to Michael on the couch.
    “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said. “Nola figured it out. When I felt so weird, y’know? You were right to howl.”
    Michael turned to her and grinned. “Are you telling me that you’re—”
    “Yeah.” Sophie’s voice returned to her near-whisper. “Nola thinks I might be. I’m just getting it late.” She was staring at Michael in honest fear, waiting for his reaction.
    Michael grinned at her. “That’s so cool,” he said. “I mean, like, it’s just so cool!”
    “It is?” Her voice became steadier by the word. “You like it?”
    “Sure. Y’know, I wanted to be a werewolf once myself.” He held out his arms. “That’s great!”
    Sophie nestled against him and began to snuffle once again.
    “You’re a werewolf?” Ari sounded utterly confused.
    Sophie nodded and wiped her eyes on a tissue.
    “Oh,” Ari said. “For a bit there I thought you were going to say you were pregnant.”
    Everyone laughed, even Sophie. Michael looked as if he was struggling against the impulse to kiss her right in front of us.
    Ari and I retreated to the kitchen on the pretense of bringing in the rest of the food only to find that someone had gotten there ahead of us, a little blue smelly meerkat-like being. Or-Something, Michael’s tame Chaos critter, was standing on the counter by the sink and chowing down in the cardboard container of coleslaw. When I yelped, it raised its wedge-shaped head. Strands of cabbage hung from its snaggly teeth. When I snapped my fingers, it disappeared.
    “So much for the vegetable course.”
    “What?” Ari was staring at the counter. “I saw the carton moving. And cabbage hanging in the air.” He turned to me with a look of sheer exasperation. “What?”
    “A Chaos critter.” I said. “I told you about those. This one was eating the coleslaw, so I scared it off.”
    “If these things can eat real food, why can’t everyone see them?”
    “I don’t know. It’s one of the questions the Agency’s research staff is working on. I’ll tell you if they come up with a theory.”
    Ari started to speak, then merely set his lips together with a sour twist. I threw the remains of the coleslaw into the garbage.
    “I got you some artichoke hearts, too,” Ari said. “I suppose they qualify as a vegetable, anyway.”
    “Barely, but thanks.”
    Before Michael and Sophie left, Michael admitted to me that he’d started working on the map of gates.
    “Sean’s