"Get rid of that beast first," they had said. "Nobody'll hire a bounty hunter who can't lie." But all it takes is a few high-profile kills sniped out from under their best people, and soon they're all but begging to give him a name and a contract. No Freelancer worth his salt needs to rely on dishonesty, not with so many other tools available.

And Lying Cat is a much greater asset than deceit would be. She becomes a part of The Will's reputation as much as anything else. He brings her along when negotiating terms and fees, and 'The Man Who Can't Lie' becomes 'The Man Who Can't Be Fooled'. Even without her kind's particular skill, having 150 pounds of man-eating monster on your side never hurts in a fight.

He'll be the first to admit the downsides to Lying Cat's talent (the near constant hiss of 'lying' during his ill-advised fling with The Stalk, for one, and the uncomfortable silence after its end, when he would drink himself stupid and mumble miserably about how he still loved her), but he knows he couldn't do this job and stay sane without her by his side.

The last union report stated that 63% of Freelancers have a legally registered partner like Lying Cat, and most of the rest have other, less official working relationships to fall back on. There's a reason so few Freelancers actually work alone.

"You're a pain in my ass sometimes," he had told her at the beginning, back when he was a more sentimental man, "but we stuck it out for this long, and I'm not gonna let anything split us up now."

Lying Cat purred contentedly and said nothing.