Ibis poured the beer and ugg boots on sale passed a glass to Shadow, a glass to Jacquel. It was a fine beer, bitter and dark.
     "Good beer," said Shadow.
     "We brew it ourselves," said Ibis. "In the old days the women did the brewing. They were better brewers than we are. But now it is only the three of us here. Me, him, and her." He gestured toward the small brown cat, fast asleep in a cat-basket in the corner of the room. "There were more of us, in the beginning. But Set left us to explore, what, two hundred years ago? ugg boots on sale Must be, by now. We got a postcard from him from San Francisco in 1905, 1906. Then nothing. While poor Horus..." he trailed off, in a sigh, and shook his head.
     "I still see him, on occasion," said Jacquel. "On my way to a pickup." He sipped his beer.
     "I'll work for my keep," said Shadow. "While I'm here. You tell me what you need doing, and I'll do it."
     "We'll find work for you," agreed Jacquel.
     The small brown cat opened her eyes and stretched to her feet. She padded ugg boots cheap sale across the kitchen floor and pushed at Shadow's boot with her head. He put down his left hand and scratched her forehead and the back of her ears and the scruff of her neck. She arched, ecstatically, then sprang into his lap, pushed herself up against his chest, and touched her cold nose to his. Then she curled up in his lap and went back to sleep. He put his hand down to stroke her: her fur was soft, and she was warm and pleasant in his ugg discount lap; she acted like she was in the safest place in the world, and Shadow felt comforted.
     The beer left a pleasant buzz in Shadow's head.
     "Your room is at the top of the stairs, by the bathroom," said Jacquel. "Your work clothes will be hanging in the closet-you'll see. You'll want to wash up and shave first, I guess."
     Shadow did. He showered standing in the cast-iron tub and he shaved, very nervously, with a straight razor that Jacquel loaned him. It was obscenely sharp, and had a mother-of-pearl ugg discount handle, and Shadow suspected it was usually used to give dead men their final shave. He had never used a straight razor before, but he did not cut himself. He washed off the shaving cream, looked at himself naked in the fly-specked bathroom mirror. He was bruised: fresh bruises on his chest and arms overlaying the fading bruises that Mad Sweeney had left him. His eyes looked back mistrustfully from the mirror at him.