Tag: ready to read

Dopple found a rock in the scraggly backyard. “We’re not going to have a lot of time,” she said. “Do you see her?”

The tom cupped his hands around his eyes and peered in the dark window. “Something must be wrong. I told her we would come tonight.”

Dopple stood by the back door. “Get ready then,” she said and smashed the glass of the window with the rock. She knocked out the jagged shards and reached through to unlock the door.

The house stank of shit and death. It rolled out through the door like a big dog’s rank breath. Dopple caught the tom hesitating, pulling the collar of his shirt up over his nose, and jerked him into the house. Common cats scattered before them. Dopple pushed some away with her boot when they smelled her and thought about picking a fight. She stepped over others too sick or old to care who or what she was. In a corner, a cat mewled repeatedly, half-starved and mad or stupid, rocking against the wall.

They found the queen in the closet. Naked and filthy, she sat with her skinny legs pulled up to her chest. Parasites bloated her stomach so it swelled out from visible ribs. There, in the nest of her arms and legs and belly, a newborn kitten slept.

Dopple kept lookout while the tom scooped her up. The house made the shelters look homey. Hosing out the cages started to make sense to her now. Even in the dark, she could see filth staining the carpets and the smell was unbearable. The human must have burned out her nose years ago; nothing else, not even compulsive hoarding, could explain how a person could live with that smell.

A light went on under a door. “We’re out of time,” she said and hustled the tom to the door. As they ducked out, she heard someone calling out to whoever was there. The cats inside watched her with lifeless eyes. She left the door open behind them; let the common cats escape if they could.

In the car, Dopple kept one eye on the woman stretched on the backseat and one on the road as she drove to the tom’s home. “Did you know she had a kitten?”

He turned away from watching her as well. “She was going to have it any day.”

In the back, the woman stirred under the blanket he had thrown over her. “Where are we going?”

“Someplace safe,” he said. “We’ll take care of you.”

She murmured weakly. “My baby?”

The tom reached back and curled his hands over hers, where the kitten slept. “You’re holding him.”

“Lucky,” Dopple said when he turned around again. “You finding her when you did.”

“He’s not mine, if that’s what you’re thinking,” the tom said. “I normally stick closer to home, but I was desperate for a bit of–” He didn’t say a bit of tail, though Dopple knew he meant it. “For company. So I strayed a little farther than usual. I didn’t want to call the authorities until someone got her out.”

“We have a vet who helps us, but I don’t think she’s going to make it,” Dopple said as quietly as she could. She pulled into the driveway of the tom’s house. He lived as a human full-time, but roamed like any tom during his days off from cat’s bane.

The tom carried her inside. Curled up, she barely took up half the couch. Dopple pulled off a glove and pressed two short fingers to her neck. The pulse there was weak, her heart fluttering under the strain of the dozen infections and parasites the queen no doubt had in her system.

“Can you do anything for her?” asked the tom.

Dopple pulled her glove back on. “Get a glass of warm water with a little salt and sugar. She’s dehydrated.”

Dopple did not see where he went to get it; she barely noticed anything about his house. All she could see was that little black-furred head peeking out of the queen’s bony hands. When she died–Dopple was not deluded enough to think she would survive–he would be left an orphan. She could take him to the House, but what then? Who would take care of him until he was old enough to take care of himself?

—

Dopple climbed out of her mother’s jacket and tumbled down into her lap. When her mother changed, they spent a few days down in the bushes and palm trees that grew in the far corner of the park with the regular humans. Her mother insisted on keeping her close, but Dopple was old enough to take care of herself. She made a beeline for their normal home, out where the other abandoned and feral cats lived.

She jumped up on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the park and circled around it. In the dark, with just the street lamps for light, the pennies at the bottom seemed to swim and dart through the water. Down on the other side, Dopple ducked behind a bench to hide from a cat picking through a discarded takeout box. She wasn’t supposed to talk to cats she didn’t know. Sometimes they were mean.

Behind the human bathrooms, she found something interesting. Some kind of box, it was made of metal and she could smell something good inside. She sniffed again. It wasn’t tuna salad. It wasn’t sparrow. One end of the box was open. Cautiously, Dopple inched into the small opening on tiptoe.

Something slammed and Dopple darted forward as a rush of air went past her hind feet. She turned in the tiny space and found the end she came in at now closed. She pawed at it, head-butted it, kicked it, but nothing budged it. Dopple called for her mother as loud as she could, but neither she nor anyone else came to find her out there in the dark.

The next morning, humans woke Dopple from a restless sleep. She was hungry, since the food she had smelled had been no more than a mouthful, and hoarse from crying. A big hand lifted up the trap. Exhausted, Dopple mewed plaintively nonetheless and pawed at the gloved hand through the gaps in the metal bars.

“Got one of the kittens in here,” the human said. “Seems pretty friendly. The shelter might be able to find a home for this one.”

“This one’s already tagged,” another one said. Dopple saw it hold up another cage with an adult inside. “You’d think after they got fixed, they wouldn’t want to mess with the traps any more.”

“Aw, you know they don’t remember that long. Just let ’em out and we can head back.”

Dopple was unceremoniously slid from one cage into another in the back of a van. All around her, cats chattered, but no one would talk to her. The doors closed on her last sight of the park.

—

Dopple woke up slowly, recognizing her surroundings in flashes separated by what felt like days of drugged sleep. She slept on the little round bed by the television. Her fuzzy mouse toy waited just in front of her nose, but she did not have the energy to play with it. One of the humans who fed her moved around the house, though Dopple’s attention lapses made it seem like the human teleported from kitchen to bedroom to garage.

The last time she woke up and stayed awake, she remembered where she was and where she had been. The humans had taken her to the doctor and left her there, where it was noisy and smelled strange and where humans she didn’t know touched her all over. She didn’t like it there. Then she must have fallen asleep, because now she was back in her new home. Her mouth tasted like cotton and her head swam.

Dopple stood up. Her front paws felt like they had been plunged into hot coals and broken glass. The pain raced up her legs and she sprang away. She shook her paws, trying to rid them of whatever hurt them so, but it just made them throb with her pulse. Every flex made the muscles scream. She licked her paws and groaned at the shudder of pain it sent through her body. They tasted of medicine and steel and blood.

No claws scraped against her tongue when she licked across the inflamed pads. The very ends flopped uselessly when she tried to control them, her delicate paws reduced to clubs. And everything hurt.

The human bent over her, a paper bag of food in her arms, and snatched Dopple’s arm away from her mouth. “Don’t lick the medicine, Pepper,” she said, calling Dopple by that ridiculous name they insisted on using to refer to her. And it hurt, hurt, hurt when the human touched her, like she was dying, like the whole world was ending.

Dopple crunched up her body and struck out with her hind feet and at least that worked, at least those still had claws. The human jerked away when Dopple’s feet ripped two sets of long gashes up her arm. And Dopple ran.

She ran on paws stabbed with needles and knives. She ran out the front door and past the car, doors open and spilling more bags of groceries. She ran with the human chasing after her and calling a name that did not belong to Dopple. She ran under bushes and across lawns and behind houses. She ran until the blood and the hurt and the numbed-out, beyond-pain ache of it all knocked her down at last.

—

Dopple picked her way along the familiar path between dark buildings. It was just past closing time and the restaurant would have put out its garbage for the night. Dopple had to arrive early, before the smell of food left out reached the other cats in the area. Dopple kept her nose clean; she didn’t mess with anyone else’s territory. She ripped into a plastic garbage bag with her teeth and poked through the contents. The lumpy bag felt soft on her sore paws, especially compared to the chewed up concrete in the alley.

Dopple ate well on scraps of salmon and rice and cheese rinds and overcooked vegetables. She wasn’t picky and ate things the other cats wouldn’t touch unless they were truly starving. No one else had arrived, so she took the time to clean her face thoroughly. She had a funny feeling, like maybe her food hadn’t agreed with her. But it wasn’t quite her stomach that was upset. She felt creepy-crawly and restless and grouchy.

She had to lie down for a while, pressed into the corner where the building met the steps leading up to the back door. She panted. Her body felt electric and wild. She knew something strange was happening when she thought she stretched out to sleep and realized her body really did stretch, long and thin. Her legs and arms seemed to unfold endlessly. The corner became too small. The whole alley seemed too small.

The first things Dopple saw as a human were her hands, fingers cut blunt down to the first knuckle. She flexed them. They moved, albeit clumsily. She looked at her bare feet next. Whole. She stood up. Nothing hurt. She didn’t need hands to walk any more. Naked and in a strange body, she felt invulnerable.

She hissed and lunged at the first cat to join her in the alley. She laughed when it ran, tail bristling, and hugged herself. She was like her mother and, whatever else that meant, she was free from her tottering walk and her constant pain and her terror of anything bigger and stronger than she.

But beyond the alley, there were humans and cars and noise. She couldn’t stay where she was like that. Her mother had always kept a stash of clothing near their home for when she changed–and suddenly all Dopple’s memories of her mother made some kind of sense–but Dopple had no such resources. But if her mother had changed like this, there had to be more of them. If Dopple could find them, she would find a safe haven as well, she was sure.

She untied the top of one of the other garbage bags. Her hands still hurt to use, but she gripped the bottom corners between her thumbs and the sides of her first fingers. The upended garbage bag vomited kitchen scraps and waste paper. Dopple tore holes in the bottom and corners and pulled the stinking thing over her head. In the dark of night, it would hide her nakedness long enough for her to steal clothes.

Fearlessly, she prowled unfamiliar streets beyond the heart of her city, looking for just one unlocked door or open window. All she needed was a way in and she could have whatever she wanted.

—

Dopple came to a screeching halt when she realized someone else was already in the attic. And in a house full of cats-turned-human, he still had all his fur. Instinctively, she hissed at him, never thinking how unlikely it was that a common cat would hang out in their attic. He was certainly no kitten and so had to be old enough to change.

He cocked an ear at her when she hissed. “Flea bite you? What’s with the display?”

Dopple sank back and shook her head. “Thought you were common. How come you’re all–” She waved her hand to indicate his general state of being. “Thought we all had to change for the same moon.”

He unfolded his body and padded over to her. He was a big cat, and muscular, and if she had been on the street, she would have run at the sight of him. Even now, after a couple of months in the House, she wanted to escape the masses of other cats she encountered in every room. She had thought the attic would be a safe place to hide out for a few hours. The cat jumped up onto a dusty suitcase next to her. “Catnip suppresses it. I didn’t feel like being human right now.”

Dopple wrinkled her nose. “I like being human,” she said hesitantly. “Walking on two feet is way better than four.” She saw the cat focus on her hands and she reflexively curled them into protective fists.

“You should wear gloves. Might help,” he said.

Dopple set a hand on one of the cardboard boxes stacked in the attic. “I came looking for more clothes. There’s nothing good in the trunk downstairs.”

The cat shrugged. “I know where there’s a pair. I’ll trade you for them.”

“Trade?”

“If you go down to the garden and bring me back some more catnip, I’ll tell you where a pair of gloves are.”

Dopple nodded. “Catnip grows out back, right? With that other plant.”

“That’s cat’s bane. It’ll keep you human.”

Dopple hardly heard the rest of what the cat said. Cat’s bane would let her stay human a little longer. She scurried downstairs before he finished talking. She would trade him catnip for gloves, but she already owed him, even if he didn’t know it, for that tiny piece of information.

Maybe, if the gloves helped her hands, she could get money to go buy a pair of her own. She wouldn’t even have to worry about when the moon ended if she ate cat’s bane. She dashed through the house, ignoring the cats she had been so nervous around, and thought of all she could do if she could pick and choose when she turned human. Maybe that spotted cat, Carlisle, who ran everything now that the queen had died, maybe he would trade her money for something. Maybe she could work for the House.

—

Dopple grumbled under her breath and turned down a different aisle of cages when the fifth cat that day hissed as she passed by. The humans started giving her funny looks. It was never this hard when she went to the shelters. She always knew what she was looking for when it was someone’s girlfriend or son or friend who got picked up by animal control. But the cat show came with only the vague instruction from Carlisle to “check it out,” because show cats tended to be young, young enough to not yet change, which made them ticking time bombs for the secretive House of Cats.

The truth was, Dopple could hardly tell the difference between common cats and changing-cats. Cats at the House claimed you could tell by smell, by eye shape, by size or tone of voice. But Dopple just saw and smelled and heard “cat” from all of them. And they all elicited the same response: avoid when possible; respect everyone else’s territory; eat early and eat alone; know who’s in charge and keep on their good side or their blind side.

Right now, the show floor smelled of cat and kibble and shampoo. There was human and potted plant and, somewhere, peanut butter and jelly being eaten. The benched cages were done up with ribbon and flowers and glitter-crusted letters. Cats glared out at her from each one. She smirked at one wearing a ruffled, lacy collar and pulled the collar of her leather jacket up around her neck. She was nobody’s show cat.

She walked by more cages, waiting and hoping that a changing-cat, if there was one at the show, would recognize her, even if she couldn’t recognize it. She concentrated so much on picking out some subtle difference in their faces or their attitude that she almost did not notice the woman tailing her. She stopped in front of an information display put on by a local cat fanciers’ branch, expecting the woman to stop as well or break off or, well, do anything normal in stalking a person.

Instead, the woman walked right up to Dopple, cocked a hip against the table, and said, “If you wear a little perfume, it throws them off. As long as you don’t hold still for long, they’ll think you’re human.”

Dopple glanced around, making sure the unmanned booth was still empty. “That’s, uh, good to know.” Dopple tried to not be obvious about sniffing in the woman’s direction. She did smell faintly of perfume, flowery and totally different from a natural cat scent.

The woman tucked a lock of bright orange hair behind her ear and offered her hand. She had tricolor hair, so classically calico that Dopple wondered how people didn’t guess what she was all the time. “I’m Mysterium, but call me Mysti,” she said, still with her hand outstretched.

Dopple curled her hand around Mysti’s, who offered just a delicate press in return. “You’re not, I mean, you’re here on purpose, right?”

Mysti tilted her head to the side and the lock of orange hair slipped free. “On purpose?”

Dopple looked around again and lowered her voice. “I work for the House of Cats.”

Mysti’s face lit up. She slipped her arm through Dopple’s and guided her back into the flow of people. “You’re a smuggler,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m surprised you weren’t the one following me.”

“I’m not–” Dopple started to say she wasn’t able to tell the difference, but it was stupid to reveal that kind of weakness, so she settled for giving a noncommittal wag of her head. “I’m having trouble finding anyone.”

“This show has popular veteran and house pet divisions, so everyone’s mostly too old. Sammy’s the only one I’ve found today. Now, tell me about your House.”

While Mysti cut a swaying path across the hall to where she had found a young changing-cat, Dopple told her about Rune and Carlisle, about Poppy before that, and about the woman Heather who Dopple had never met but whose name she wore like a borrowed fur coat, full of money and power Dopple didn’t know how to use. With her gentle touches and her bold manners, Mysti had Dopple talking about everything.

—

Dopple heard the commotion of people chasing after the loose cat, but there was a long wait before Sammy wove into sight between the legs of oblivious humans. Without acknowledging him, Dopple walked into the ladies’ room. She felt him dart past her feet as the door opened and closed.

Behind the closed door of the stall, Dopple held open the tote bag Mysti had allowed her to borrow. Sammy hopped inside and Dopple arrange a silk scarf, wallet, keys, and cell phone over top of him before zipping it shut. The door to the room opened. Someone walked down the row of stalls, each door squeaking as they were pushed open in turn.

“Is someone in here?” A voice asked when they couldn’t open the stall Dopple occupied.

“Yes. Just a minute,” she called back. She hoisted the heavy bag onto her shoulder and flushed the toilet.

It was one of the ring assistants, ducking down to look under the sinks and behind the toilets. “There’s a loose cat. Someone said she saw him come in here.”

Dopple watched in the mirror while she washed her hands. “I didn’t see anything.” Had someone seen her let him in?

The door opened again and Mysti strode in. “Please tell me you found my phone,” she said.

Dopple stared mutely, feeling the assistant’s eyes on her, and finally nodded. What was Mysti thinking? Dopple unzipped the bag. Under the scarf, Sammy stayed frozen. Dopple took the cell phone from the pile and handed it to Mysti.

Mysti flipped it open, as though checking that it was really hers, and snapped it shut again with at satisfied air. “That’s what I get for keeping it in my back pocket,” she said. She turned to the assistant. “So, did you find that cat? He definitely ran past me when I was heading down here.” Mysti didn’t wait for an answer and Dopple followed her out.

They left the show unnoticed and Mysti took Dopple through the parking lot to a white car. “Don’t let him out until we’re out of here,” she said while she unlocked Dopple’s door first.

“Why’d you send someone in after us?” Dopple asked as they drove away. She watched out the window as they pulled onto the street. She had never been in a car before.

“The best defense is a good offense,” Mysti said. “You opened the bag with an assistant watching. No one would believe you were stealing a cat after that.”

“You could have at least warned me,” Dopple grumbled. The car sped through a tightly curved on-ramp and onto the freeway. “How’d you learn to drive?”

Mysti smiled and tapped a fingernail against the steering wheel. “You can let him out now,” she said. While Dopple twisted around to reach the bag in the back seat, she said, “I know all kinds of useful things. Like how to hide in plain sight. And how to drive. I had to have some kind of hobby in my old age.”

“Old age?” Dopple snorted.

“I had to stop showing when I was old enough to change. I couldn’t hide it from my humans. And I don’t think they would let me enter as both owner and cat in the same show.”

“Well, thanks for the help. I’ve never been to one before,” Dopple said. She didn’t look forward to going back. In the back seat, Sammy groomed himself and curled up to sleep.

“I noticed. Also, you should think about learning to drive, too. Public transportation isn’t going to serve you well in California if you plan to keep going on these rescue missions.”

“How would I learn?”

Mysti held her right hand out, palm up, like she was offering something. “I could teach you,” she said. “While I’m at your House. Provided you’re a fast learner.”

“You aren’t going to stay?” Dopple tried to shrug off her disappointment, but she liked Mysti. She was so different from other cats. So different from Dopple as well. Dopple wore her humanity like a shield, but Mysti wore it like a string of pearls. Just another chance to charm others.

“I’m looking for something,” Mysti said. The explanation of what kept them occupied the whole, long drive back to the House of Cats.

—

Dopple opened the door to her rooms and found Mysti methodically destroying a fuzzy mouse toy. Mysti shoved it under the bed and out of sight; she knew Dopple couldn’t stand them. She even knew the story of how one had been the first thing she saw after being de-clawed. “Welcome home,” she said and rubbed up against Dopple’s leg. “How did it go with the hoarder?”

“Piss poor,” Dopple said wearily. She was worn out from popping cat’s bane to get her through the end of the moon, from driving all night and then some. Her stomach knotted. “There’s something I need you to see.”

Mysti followed her down the hall and into another room. “I don’t remember Donya having two kittens,” she said when she saw the little black newborn nursing while Donya’s own kitten, now two months old and an enthusiastic explorer, played nearby.

Dopple raised a hand in greeting when Donya looked up then pulled Mysti back out of the room. “She had given birth before we got to her,” she said. “And now she’s dead.”

Mysti leaned against her in an approximation of a hug, which Dopple needed more than she was willing to admit. “I’m so sorry.” She backed away to look up at Dopple. “But I’m guessing there’s something more.”

Dopple tugged on her gloves, pressing between each finger to get them to fit as snugly as possible. She looked at them instead of Mysti. “He’s going to need someone to take care of him. I mean, not just nursing him.”

Mysti was quiet for so long that Dopple’s hands started to hurt from fussing with them while she waited. “He looks like your side of the family,” she said at last.

Dopple dropped her hands. “You have black in your coat too. And his fur’s longer than mine.”

Mysti seemed to think it over. “And I suppose you can’t do it alone. Not if you’re going to be a working mom. I’ll have to stick around, then, to take care of him when you go gallivanting around the country.”

Dopple scowled. “Who goes gallivanting? Remind me, I think I forgot.”

“Hush now.” Mysti looked into the room again. Dopple knew the feeling. The little kitten compelled her attention like nothing else. She had spent the drive home with him tucked into her jacket, a warm glow against the cold sorrow of watching another cat die. Mysti said, without looking at her, “You know, it’s a complete waste, not passing on a pedigree like mine.”

“Maybe. But you can pass on the things that really make you special. Your confidence. Your charm.” Dopple turned away and scrubbed at her blushing face. She cleared her throat and said gruffly, “So is that a yes or not?”

She saw Mysti roll her eyes. “I don’t know. Are you ever going to let me go in there and meet my son or not?” She started across the room to him. “And can we give him a proper name? Something I wouldn’t be ashamed to see on papers?”

Dopple chased after her. “What do you mean, proper? Are you saying there’s something wrong with my name?” She hoped the kitten liked the sound of bickering; he was in for a lot of it, now that he was stuck with them.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

Heather felt the tip of her pencil tear into the paper. Rune’s front paws, planted on the two sides of the open phonebook, obscured the number she had been copying down. “What do you mean, hire someone?” Rune asked. He stood there deliberately so she had no choice but to pay complete attention to him.

Heather scrubbed the eraser across the now illegible phone number for house painter number six. “The house is too big to do it myself,” she said.

“Half of it is stone,” Rune countered. He hooked a paw at her pencil, but she dodged out of the way and went back to erasing. The paper started to shred more. “And I would help you.”

“Oh, so it will take an actual month of Sundays to finish, instead of just a figurative one.” She gave up on erasing and just crossed out what was left of the entry. “Did you miss the part where I have a deadline for this?” She started copying it out again.

“Assuming Yvonne was telling the truth,” Rune said. He pounced forward. Now his paws obscured the paper and he sat on the phone book. “Would you stop fussing with that for a minute?”

Heather set the pencil down with a snap. “I’m trying to get this done so I can go into town and call them all in one shot and get prices to compare.”

“No one can make you sell your home just because the paint is peeling.”

“No, but they can make life unpleasant enough that it stops being worth it to stay.” She shoved her chair back and left Rune behind as she jogged down the stairs.

He followed her, of course, and cornered her again while she pulled on her shoes by the front door. “We’re not going to leave, no matter what they do.”

“Fantastic,” Heather said and yanked on the laces. “How about you start answering the door, so you can deal with the next person who comes here on George frickin’ Ellison’s behalf?” She stood up and opened the door onto a hot May morning. “If painting the house gets them off my back, we’re going to paint the house.”

“Where are you going?” Rune asked before she could close the door.

“To get the mail,” she said. She felt viciously glad to know that Rune would be disinclined to follow her that far down the road. He could make it about half way, just until the street came into view, before he balked and that was with Heather coaxing him along.

At the bottom of the hill, Heather jerked on the door of the mailbox to get it open. That was one more thing that needed repair or replacement and it was one more thing she would probably have to do on her own. Behind her, the rumble of a car’s engine grew as it came around the turn. Her whole plan for the day was shot because Rune wanted everything they fixed on the house to be a joyous sharing experience. She took out the handful of letters and slammed the door shut again.

Heather knew it would be a lot of work to organize the House around avoiding human painters. She shuffled through the letters as she started back up the hill. Back on the street, a car door slammed; probably someone lost again, trying to find the Shadow Hills entrance on the other side of the hill. It was not exactly a cake walk when the exterminators came out, mostly thanks to Rune himself. But Yvonne’s warning was just the latest piece of evidence that George Ellison was out to get Heather. And Heather was not going to sit still for it.

Heather was still out of sight of the house when she heard a footstep crunch on the gravel behind her. Great, someone was lost and wandering around on the property. She turned just as two arms whipped around her. There was a flash of white and a hand wrapped in cloth smashed into her face hard enough to split her lip where it hit against her teeth. She took a gasping breath and her head swam. Fumes!

—

Topaz peeked out of the backpack where Umber left it unzipped. Below him in the dark, popcorn-scented bottom of the backpack, Rafflesia yelped as he stepped on her while fighting to stand upright. Umber turned right and headed up the walkway. Behind her and where Topaz could see, the marquee of the theater came into view again as they walked out from under it. Birds pecked around the ground while it was still early and the shopping center was mostly empty. “That was amazing,” he said. “Can we go again tomorrow?” He thought of all the kittens at home who would probably love human movies.

Umber continued her leisurely walk but answered him in a low voice. “Hey, movies aren’t cheap, especially when someone insists on popcorn with extra butter.” She paused as a human passed them going the opposite way and continued when Topaz reemerged from the backpack. “Plus, I’m spending too much as it is. My truck takes a lot of gas to drive six hours down here and six back every weekend.”

Rafflesia shoved him to the side so she could look out. “You wouldn’t have to check up on us if someone would go back to the House with me.” She licked her lips. “I’ve got popcorn stuck in my teeth still,” she muttered.

“Okay, okay,” Topaz said. Next to them, the automatic doors of a grocery store slid open. “Blame it all on me. Does anyone else smell salmon?” The doors started to close, only to reopen again halfway through. A familiar woman stood by them, oblivious to their frustrations, and hunched over a cell phone. Topaz grabbed Rafflesia by the scruff of her neck and pulled her down into the backpack. “I know her.”

While Umber pretended to examine a display of potted plants with Mother’s Day-themed decorations, Topaz listened in on the woman. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

Topaz strained to hear. He could just make out the voice of the person on the other end. “…Lee…Just come…what I’m doing…”

“What’s she saying?” Rafflesia demanded.

Topaz pushed her away with a hind foot. The woman said, “Alright, I’ll be there. Just don’t.” She hesitated then walked quickly away from the store. “Don’t do anything dangerous.”

“Umber, run, get your truck,” Topaz said. “We have to follow her.”

Umber, to her credit, only paused to ask why once they were in the truck and following the woman’s car out into the suburbs. On the seat, Topaz put his paws up on the arm rest and watched out the window. Umber squeezed through the last second of a traffic light to keep up with the other car. “You’re sure she’s talking about Heather?”

Topaz spared her a quick glance. “There’s something going on between her and Heather. That other person sounded bad. I just know.”

“She’s slowing down,” Rafflesia said, watching from over Topaz’s shoulder.

“Shit, look,” Umber said as she downshifted and slowed to a crawl. “That’s a gated community. I can’t follow her without a pass code.”

The car turned into a driveway and stopped at a box mounted on a post. Topaz watched as an arm reached through the window and pressed buttons on the box. “Roll down the window.”

Umber leaned across the seat and cranked down the window, still driving down the road as the gap between them and the other car closed. “I have to pass by.”

“Go get help,” Topaz ordered. Then he dove through the open window. He landed on the side of the road at a run and bolted into the cover of the hedges that lined the driveway. He heard Umber’s truck accelerate away as he chased the car. So long as he kept up, he could guide the others there as well. So long as Rafflesia could get someone to come help him.

—

George led Susanna into his garage, flicking on the light as he went. The room smelled of oil and dust. Five degrees cooler than the rest of the house, it felt like he could use it as an extra freezer. “You’ll have to help me get her into the house. I had a devil of a time getting her into the trunk in the first place.”

Behind him, Susanna scurried across the concrete and over to the trunk. “She’s still in there? She could be dead!”

George rolled his eyes and bent to pull the latch inside the car. “I checked on her when I got home. She’s just unconscious.”

Susanna backed away as the trunk popped up an inch. “Won’t she be awake by now?”

“How should I know?” He went around to the back of the car. “I tied her hands, at any rate.” He lifted the trunk lid. “Oh, hell.”

Susanna leaned forward. “Is that a cat?” She looked over at him and blinked theatrically. Color rushed back into her pale face. “You kidnapped a cat?”

“Don’t be stupid,” George said, mind racing. A white and brown cat lay with its head sticking out of the collar of Lee’s shirt and the tip of its tail flicking at the hem. The hastily tied ropes lay in a knot toward the back of the trunk. He should have thought of this. She was one of them, whatever they were. Lee’s jeans were piled at the other end of the trunk, bent at the hip and knee just as he had left her curled up. Had she changed because he knocked her out?

“George, are you sure you’re all right? I think maybe the stress has gotten to you.” She set a hand on his shoulder, fingers taking up a pinch of shirt, and tried to lead him away from the car. “You might have had a nervous break–”

“That is Lee,” he said and batted her hand away. “I would have pictures to prove it, but I broke my phone and almost got caught and–”

“That’s a cat,” Susanna insisted. She pointed to it as she backed away. “And pictures to prove what?” She edged around the car and toward the door. “You’re scaring me.”

The cat was still asleep, so he wrapped it up in the shirt and carried it back to the house. “Where did the clothing come from then? Huh? And why is the cat wearing them?”

Susanna edged away from him through the house, always a step ahead but never quite ready to turn and leave. “It probably got cold. God, where did you even get the poor thing?”

George turned into the guest bathroom downstairs. No windows and only one door meant he could keep the creature contained easily enough. “Look, give me a day. I’m sure she’ll change back. I mean, she spends so much time as a human, she can’t stay like this for long.” He opened the door to the shower and put the bundled cat on the floor of the tub. With the door closed, it could not jump out or run out the door when they tried to come in.

Susanna looked away. He would have to keep her away from the phones in case she got a clever idea to call the police. “A day. But! But if nothing happens, I want you to see a doctor.”

George shrugged. Really, this was better than he hoped. He could get video evidence and beat down Lee in one fell swoop. “Sure thing. You’ll see. I’m not crazy. I’ve got everything under control.”

—

Rune paced in the kitchen. Even with it full of cats, the lack of Heather made it seem sinister. Umber sat on the floor and jingled her car keys restlessly. The constant rattle set Rune even more on edge. “We knew something had happened. I went looking for her when she didn’t come back. When I found the mail on the ground, I knew she was gone.”

Rafflesia squirmed as her mother nearly smothered her with attention. “Topaz said he knew the woman.”

Rune nodded. “That will be Susanna. And if she’s involved, you can bet it’s George Ellison she went to see.”

Carlisle, who had been sulking ever since he found out Rune and Rafflesia had conspired to bring Topaz home, finally spoke up. “The man who wanted to buy the house? I thought Heather settled that months ago.”

“He knows something about us,” Rune said. “He’s trying to blackmail Heather.”

The roomful of cats erupted into worried murmurs. Carlisle said, “Why wasn’t I told? We could have done–”

“Done what?” Rune interrupted. “No human will believe him if he tells them about changing-cats.”

“And if he gets the perfectly mundane Animal Control up here?” Carlisle countered.

Rafflesia pushed her mother away and stood between Rune and Carlisle. “Um, guys, aren’t you missing the point? Whoever has Heather and whatever the reason, we have to go get her back. Topaz is waiting for us.”

Rune huffed. He glanced at Carlisle, who looked as abashed as Rune felt. “So he knows where she is. How do we get us in and her out?”

“It’s a gated community,” Umber said. Rune could see everyone watch her warily. Even if she was helping them, no one seemed comfortable with the human who suddenly had an all-access pass to the House. “Getting to the front door is going to be difficult.”

Rune glanced at Dopple, who pinned her ears, but nodded. “I can get in the back door, but a cat should go find her. I won’t be able to hide as a human.”

“You’re not getting it,” Umber insisted. “How are you even going to get past the gate? And if someone notices you, how will explain being there?”

Rafflesia perked up. “You need a disguise or something.”

Carlisle cleared his throat. “I, ah, might have something.” He turned to Rune. “Do you think your old uniform will still fit?”

“My old…You kept that?”

“What is it?” Rafflesia asked. She seemed a little too excited about the whole masquerade part of the plan. Rune wondered what she imagined his uniform consisted of.

“I’ve got the uniform, the ID, I’ve even got the taser,” Carlisle said.

At Rafflesia’s baffled look, Rune explained, even as he wished they would just forget the whole idea. “I worked as a security guard.” In another lifetime, Rune thought. All the times he hid out in the attic to get away from the memories of his human life, there must have been a suitcase tucked away with all the reminders waiting for him.

“That’s perfect,” Umber said. “You can provide a diversion at the front door while Dopple breaks in and Topaz gets her out.”

“He’s not going in alone,” Rune said. “He’ll need backup in case only one of them answers the door.”

“I’ll go,” Rafflesia volunteered.

Rune heard a chorus of other voices with his when he immediately said, “No, you won’t.”

Dorian, flanked by several other of the House’s best hunters, said, “We’ll put together a team.” The others walked away with him, muttering about their respective talents.

“You’ve met this George,” Dopple said. “What if he recognizes you?”

Rune shrugged. Of all the parts of the plan, that was the least of his concerns. “I’ll improvise.”

“What’s that mean?” Rafflesia asked scornfully. She was obviously pissed off she was not part of the rescue team.

Carlisle hooked a paw over her shoulders and pulled her away. “I think he means he’ll hit him. Rather hard, probably. Come help me find that uniform.”

The group broke up to pursue their respective tasks. That left Rune alone to face his own preparation. He turned to Umber. “I need you to get something from Heather’s rooms for me.” He took a deep breath. There was no avoiding it, not if he wanted to get Heather back. Damn, but he wanted to get Heather back right now. He let the shaky breath out again. “Cat’s bane.”

—

Something wet dripped on Heather’s face. The backs of her hind legs burned. She wiped a paw across her face and opened her eyes. A shower? The faucet dripped noisily into the drain. She pushed the shirt up over her head and slipped out of it. When had she changed?

She stretched a leg up past her head and licked at the stinging skin along the back. There was blood in her fur and scrapes under that. Her lips felt bruised. She remembered the sound of gravel crunching. The driveway? The opaque glass of the shower prevented her from seeing more of the room. Where was she? She switched legs, grateful for the excuse to concentrate on the calming rhythms of grooming.

When she felt clean again, she put her paws up on the edge of the tub. She hooked at the closed door, but could not get it to slide open. The House did not have any sliding doors on the showers; they all had curtains. She was not at home.

The last thing she remembered was gravel crunching. And a car. There had been a car. And before that, she had argued with Rune about painting the house. She retreated to her shirt, which was dry and warm, especially compared to the floor of the shower. If she had her shirt here, but not the rest of her clothes, then she must have changed somewhere else and been moved.

Beyond the milky walls of the shower, another door opened. Human footsteps. The door closed again. Heather backed into the far corner of the shower to put as much space as possible between her and whoever was out there. The shower door slid open.

“Hey, kitty, are you awake?” Everything slammed into place in Heather’s mind when Susanna Dahl poked her head into the shower with a dumb smile on her face. Someone had attacked her, knocked her out, and taken her somewhere else. And if Susanna was there, Heather did not have to guess who her attacker had been.

Susanna put a plastic container full of water on the floor inside the shower. “Are you thirsty, kitty? I bet you are, huh?”

Susanna had no idea this was Heather. So she must not have seen her change. Good, great, perfect, Heather thought with grim determination. She mewed as sweetly as she could. She walked over to the water and sniffed. She lapped up some and let it wash the cottony taste out of her mouth.

Susanna stretched her hand out. “Come here, honey.”

Heather came close enough to rub her head up into Susanna’s palm. “I would like to bite you in a fatal way,” she said in cat-speak.

“Oh, what a good kitty,” Susanna said, oblivious to Heather’s threats, and scratched down her spine.

Heather could just see a door and a towel rack behind Susanna. “If I get out of here, I’m going to piss in your shoes before I leave,” Heather said and purred at the thought.

There was a knock at the door. “I’m coming in,” said a voice muffled by the door. Susanna sighed and closed the shower door again. The bathroom door opened and closed. Now the voice was clear and Heather could tell it was Ellison. “Is she awake?”

“Yes, but she’s still just a cat,” Susanna said. She spoke softly and sounded at least a little scared. Heather could see her silhouette in the glass bend deferentially toward Ellison. “George, she came right over and let me pet her.” Under the submission, though, Heather heard defiance. She doesn’t believe him. That means he doesn’t have proof of Heather changing either or he would have shown it to Susanna.

Ellison loomed huge in the door when he opened it. Heather chirruped at him and wove her body in a figure-eight. Heather thought of her mother, back before Heather was old enough to change, and how Heather would weave between her legs with just that motion and beg to be let up onto the counter while Poppy cooked.

“You don’t fool me,” Ellison said. He did not try to reach in, no doubt expecting an attack. He closed the door. Heather heard the lid of a toilet close. His silhouette sat on it just outside the shower. “I’d like to ask you again if you won’t consider selling me that house,” he said, all easy charm like he was in an office talking to a human.

Heather concentrated on keeping up the charade of being a normal cat. If she could see them, they could probably see her. And if she could just get Susanna on her side, she might bluff her way out of this.

—

Rune hoisted Dopple up over the top of the brick wall surrounding the front of the community. The street outside remained silent and dark under the light of the less than half-full moon. A new moon would have made it easier for them, but they all hated waiting even this long to have the cover of night. “I’m too damn old for this shit,” Rune groaned as he hauled himself up and over.

They met the others up the street, keeping in the shadows of houses for the moment. His feet crushed jasmine vines under his boots, sending up waves of fragrance as he crouched in the dark. Topaz loped over to him. He stopped with his front paws on Rune’s knees and panted. “I followed them to the house, but I haven’t seen Heather.”

“You did a good job,” Rune said and ran a hand down Topaz’s back. “Take us there.”

Topaz sent Rune up the street on foot. He walked in the open now. The old blue work pants were a little tight about the waist, but the belt fit. He considered pulling the taser from it as soon as someone answered the door and zapping them, but the rest of them had convinced him that surgical precision would be the goal.

Topaz appeared and disappeared as he led both Rune and the cats to the house. Rune waited in the shadows by the house. In the backyard, Dopple would be picking the lock of whatever door she could find. Only once they were in and had a chance to even find Heather would it be worthwhile for Rune to create a distraction. He just needed to keep Ellison, and the woman if he was lucky, out of the way while they got Heather out. He pulled the baseball cap lower over his eyes.

Topaz jumped onto the wall around the house and silently signaled Rune. Go. The doorbell rang in the recesses of the house. Rune self-consciously straightened the name tag over his heart. The shirt smelled foreign, like a relic from someone else’s life. He heard the deadbolt turn.

“What?” Ellison barked. A vein stood out along his neck.

Rune touched the brim of his hat. “Good evening, sir. We’ve had reports of a loud disturbance in this area and we’re just checking it out.” He slowed his speech to a drawl. Just doing my job, no need to panic. “Have you seen or heard anything suspicious tonight?”

Rune could see Ellison squinting against the porch light to see his face. He shifted to hide his face better while letting Ellison get a look at the name tag and the company insignia on his left arm. “We haven’t heard anything. Someone reported us?”

Guilty conscience, Rune thought. “No, sir. Someone called about gunfire, but we suspect it may be someone setting off illegal fireworks.”

“Well, thank you, but we’re fine.”

“All the same, sir, we’re advising residents to stay indoors tonight.” He left off the usual warning to lock all doors and windows. The last thing he wanted to do was remind Ellison to check those.

Ellison shut the door on him with a thin-lipped thanks. Damn. He was lucky if that was five minutes. Rune exhaled hard and walked stiffly back down to the street. He hoped he had bought them enough time.

—

George snarled under his breath and headed out to the kitchen. This was taking too damn long. It was time to up the stakes. He pulled a black plastic trash bag from the box under the sink. Susanna could believe whatever she wanted, but he knew that was Lee and he knew she understood him. This whole charade needed to end now. He took a roll of packing tape from the drawer of miscellaneous screw drivers and scissors. A little near death experience should get things moving.

When he heard the scream, he dropped the bag and tape and ran to the bathroom. Susanna chanted variations of “oh, my god.” He heard cats hissing. Shit. He grabbed the edge of the doorway and stumbled to a stop.

“They opened the door,” Susanna wailed. A pair of cats had her cornered in the tiny space between the toilet and the sink. Another pulled open the sliding door of the shower.

“Stop them! Don’t just stand there,” he shouted and dove for the shower door. Something hit him in the head. He caught his balance on the towel rack just as a fourth cat, one he had not noticed, raked its claws from his temple, across his ear, and down to the back of his neck.

The scratches stung, setting one side of his face on fire. The thin skin of his forehead bled profusely until he was blinking it out of his eye. He reached up and grabbed the first handful of furry body he could find. It yowled right in his ear. The whole room echoed with screams and hisses. He flung the cat as hard as he could. He heard a yelp and a clatter of broken glass.

Where was Lee? George scrubbed at his face and left a wash of blood across the back of his hand. The shower door stood open. He spun, trying to find her. A white and brown tail disappeared around the corner of the bathroom door. He lurched after her. Something caught his arm and held him back.

“They came to rescue her,” Susanna said, voice high and reedy with shock. “Oh, god, the cats knew how to find her.”

“I told you,” he growled and shook her off. Susanna’s guards had disappeared. Lee and her savior were gone. Even the cat George threw into the mirror had vanished. A bloody mess on his head, a shattered mirror, and a handful of shed fur were all he had left.

He ran through the house. How had they gotten in? And more importantly, had they gotten out yet? If he could catch them all, Lee would fold. Surely, if he could beat her whole damn family or whatever they were, she would give up.

Susanna stumbled into his back when he stopped at the laundry room door. It stood open. Beyond it, there was a vine-covered wall and darkness. There was no sound and no movement. They were all gone.

He shook Susanna by the shoulders. “What did you do?”

She slapped at his hands. “There was a knock on the door. I thought it was you.” She pushed away from him so hard that as soon as he released her, she fell backwards to the floor. She glared up at him and rubbed a hand over her shin. There were razor-thin streaks of blood on them and huge shreds in her nylons. “This was your plan.”

George turned away and slammed the open door shut again. He could feel the blood starting to dry into a cracked skin on his face. “And my mistake was bringing you along,” he said. Learn from your mistakes, he thought. Do it better next time.

—

Topaz pounced on Rafflesia. “And Dorian was all, ‘Rawr! I kill you now!’” He sprang away from her and collapsed into the waiting masses of cats. “And the man was all, “Yaa! Save me! I must scream and flail now.”

Dorian laughed weakly. He had an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel pressed to his aching back. “I’m just sorry I didn’t go straight for his eyes. I hope he dislocated his shoulder throwing me like that.”

Topaz butted heads with him. “It was awesome, man. Heather and I just ran right between his legs.” He pantomimed a bob and weave maneuver. “Out the door and down the street, thank you very much.”

Rafflesia squealed and tackled Topaz, completely delighted with the full-body retelling of their daring rescue. “Wait, wait, tell me about the woman. What about her?”

Topaz rolled over and, as he did, he saw a bobtailed rump retreating from the doorway. He grinned at Rafflesia and wriggled away. “You’ll have to ask them. ‘Cuse me a minute.” Behind him, he heard someone say, “We head-butted the door to sound like knocking…”

He bounded up the stairs just as Carlisle disappeared into his room. He hadn’t seen Carlisle once since returning to the House. He had expected some sort of drama. He nosed open the door and slipped into the dark room. But Heather had just said he was the Queen’s Official Spy, which seemed to mean he got to stay. Then there had been Rafflesia and Umber and a whole house of cats who wanted to hear how he — Topaz! — had saved the Queen’s life.

Up on the bed, Carlisle’s gray body stood out against the yellow of a familiar towel. He had it wadded up around him, just the way Topaz liked to sleep on it. Topaz sat at the side of the bed and looked up. Carlisle turned his face away from the window and over to Topaz, his eyes flashing teal. Topaz struggled to keep quiet. He had to let Carlisle speak first. He had to know he would speak.

Carlisle looked away again and Topaz feared for a long moment that it had been a dismissal. But Carlisle finally said, “I think Heather was right all along.” Topaz opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but Carlisle kept talking. “Rune willingly took cat’s bane tonight. He went down to the mailbox to find Heather when she disappeared.”

Topaz had been too worried about Heather to really think about what it meant when he first saw Rune crouched in the bushes, unexpectedly human and out in the world. Even now, Topaz wanted to tell Carlisle he hadn’t come to talk about Rune.

“What you did, that day,” Carlisle said haltingly. The words dried up in Topaz’s mouth. “You saved him. And now you’ve saved Heather as well. Because you keep doing stupid, reckless things that put you and everyone else in danger.”

“I think there was a compliment in there,” Topaz said at last when Carlisle’s monologue seemed to have stalled out.

Carlisle curled his body away, turning his back to Topaz. “I’m keeping this towel,” he said quietly.

Topaz swished his tail happily. Even if Carlisle never admitted it, Topaz knew now he had been missed as much as he had missed — well, everything and everyone. “I’ll just borrow something to replace it.” He went over to the closet and, with a jump, pulled one of Carlisle’s vests down from its hanger. Topaz dragged it in his teeth over to the door. The fabric was soft and smelled like Carlisle and mothballs and detergent. “Good night.”

On his way out the door, he heard Carlisle say, “Welcome home.”

—

Heather picked clothing out of her dresser with fingers that still shook. She couldn’t bring herself to go into the bathroom just yet. The idea of being locked in a bathroom again set her heart racing. She looked back over by her bed, where Rune stood at attention, facing the wall. He had brought her cat’s bane when she had been too shaken to get the emergency pills she kept in the cupboard.

“I told Umber she could stay the night.” She stepped into a pair of panties and steadied herself against the nightstand. When that made the lamp rattle a little, she saw Rune half turn to her. He couldn’t seem to decide if it was more important to avert his eyes or to check on her wellbeing.

“I’m fine,” Heather said and pulled a sleep shirt over her head. There had been no point in trying to send him away while she changed. Rune had been no more than six inches away from her since they met up at Umber’s waiting truck. “You can turn around now.”

Rune stood with his hands jammed in his pockets. The tails of the button-down shirt had been pulled out over the ill-fitting pants and the plain tie fluttered loose at the collar. He was the best thing she had ever seen. “Are you sure?”

It took Heather a moment to remember that he was asking if she was fine, not if he could turn around. “I’ve just got some grazes on the backs of my legs. I think he dragged me to his car once I passed out.” She could see the hot blood rush to Rune’s face. Every so often, something would remind him of what had happened and he would start stomping around like he wanted to kill something. “There’s antibiotic cream in the medicine cabinet,” Heather said to distract him.

When he came back with it, he put his hands on her waist and turned her around. “Let me,” he said and she felt him drop to his knees behind her. He slid a warm hand up the back of her calf and just waited there until she hitched the hem of the shirt up to the tops of her thighs.

The cream was cold when he dabbed it on the first patch of raw skin just below her knee. She hissed at the sting of it and Rune’s already gentle hands became the faintest of sensations. Feather touches raised goose bumps on her legs as he moved up to her thighs. Her hands tightened on the bundle of fabric knotted in them.

When he finished, he pressed a kiss into the small of her back. A rush of desire hit Heather hard enough to catch the breath in her throat. His hands were still on her thighs with his thumbs slipping just under the edge of the shirt.

She felt disappointed when he dropped his hands to brace against his knees as he pushed himself up off the floor. She heard his knees creak and could not stifle a laugh. The laugh faded away as his arms curled around her. By her ear, he said, “What’s so funny?”

She turned around in his embrace and put her hands on his shoulders. “Did I wear you out, old guy?”

Rune glared at her but his mouth quirked up. The beginning of stubble showed gray on his cheeks. “You should talk. Aren’t you a little old to be running off like this? I had to scale a wall, twice, to get you back.”

Heather took a step backward. He followed and bent to kiss her, more hesitantly than she liked, even if she did have a bruised lip. She cupped her hands around his cheeks to feel the soft rasp of stubble against her palms and the hard line of his jaw. “I guess you’re too tired then, after your adventure,” she said between kisses.

Rune did not ask what she meant. He didn’t play hard to get. He just moved her back another step so her legs touched the edge of the bed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. “I would do anything to get you.”

Heather tipped them both down onto the bed. “You already have me.”

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

George knew, when he saw her car in the driveway, that he had company, but he hoped it was not so even as he opened the unlocked front door and walked into the living room. The coffee table had sprouted a forest of Chinese take-out boxes and paper-wrapped chopsticks and plastic packets of soy and chili sauces. He let his briefcase drop to the floor by the hall closet, thudding on the hardwood floor. On the couch, Susanna jumped and twisted around to face him. She had that nervous, twitchy expression, like a panicked bird, on her face again. Obviously, the two weeks of peace he had bought himself when he gave her a key to the house had run out. They were back to clinging again.

“You’ve been having so many late nights; I thought you would like this better than going out somewhere. It’s from the one you like,” Susanna said. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear then repeated the gesture a few more times as he crossed the room.

“Is it still hot?” He undid his tie and draped it on the back of the couch. He wanted to ask her if she didn’t have a job of her own, but lately she was on some sort of personal crusade to mother him.

“I reheated it a few minutes ago. This is about the time you’ve been finishing work lately.” Her eyes flicked to the time display on the stereo. “How was your day?”

George snapped apart a set of chopsticks and stabbed them into a container of chow mein. He grunted as he slurped up a mouthful of noodles. Over the edge of the container, he saw Susanna’s hands fidgeting in her lap. He flicked the chopsticks towards the other containers. “Eat,” he said after swallowing the noodles.

Susanna picked pieces of slightly limp zucchini from a container. She chewed at the ends of her chopsticks between bites and watched him. She was in a determined mood then. He stood the chopsticks up in the noodles and leaned back. “You want to know how my day was?” She smiled and grimaced and winced all at once. “Not good, that’s how. You want the details? Of course.”

He picked up a different container and shoveled some kind of chicken into his mouth. It tasted like soggy cotton to him. Greasy, soggy cotton. “Well, three of the developments have run over budget. Two of the completed ones are having trouble filling.” The beef had too much chili in it and he felt it burn down his throat and settle in to rot around his heart. “One of my top luxury developments is experiencing some sort of goddamn exodus.” He pushed the food away and wiped his face with a paper napkin. “Oh, and the board of directors is holding a vote on Monday.” He threw the wadded up napkin across the room.

“What kind of vote?” Susanna asked. Her fingers dimpled the paper carton in her hands. Like she couldn’t guess. Who had told women it was attractive to play dumb all the time?

“A vote of no confidence.” His voice rose. He shouldn’t have to put up with this shit in his own home at the end of a hard day. He wanted a beer and a basketball game and some frigging peace and quiet. “A vote to replace me as president.” He slammed a foot into the edge of the coffee table. “Of my company. I made that company.” A tower of cartons tipped over and tumbled to the floor. The top one popped open and spilled white rice across the carpet.

George heaved himself off the couch and turned to the kitchen to get that beer. It was the only thing he seemed likely to get that night. He heard Susanna slide off the couch and start scraping spilled rice onto a napkin. For once, George did not have to worry about cleaning up some pointless mess.

—

Heather danced from paw to paw on the counter as Carlisle took out the platter of food she had put in the refrigerator the night before. She could hardly remember the years when Saturdays were a source of dread. Now they meant an excuse to spend Friday cooking something frivolous and delightful and Saturday eating and lounging and walking with Rune. Carlisle took so long easing the plastic wrap away from the plate of deviled eggs that Heather almost grabbed it with her teeth.

Rune sniffed. “Curry?”

“Curry eggs and BLT eggs and Mediterranean eggs. I love deviled eggs. I may die of cholesterol poisoning, but at least I’ll die happy.”

Valoria jumped up on the counter with them. “Something smells good. Having a picnic again, dears?”

“Sure are,” Heather said. “Try some. I made more than enough.”

Valoria nibbled politely on half an egg. “Carlisle, have you heard anything from Rafflesia?”

Carlisle folded the plastic wrap into a little square. “Not yet, but you know what teenagers are like.”

Valoria licked a bit of bright yellow filling from the tip of her nose. “I suppose it was too much to expect a letter as soon as she got settled.”

Rune looked up from his second half. “I am absolutely certain, if she had so much as a stuffy nose, Umber would have written to you herself.”

Valoria cocked her head. “I’m quite surprised to hear you say that.”

“I spoke to her extensively before Rafflesia decided to go with her. I have complete confidence in her.”

Heather twitched an ear at him. Complete confidence? But Valoria seemed substantially comforted by this. She finished her egg, praising Heather rather excessively, and left again. When Carlisle started to leave, Heather hooked a claw in his sweater sleeve to slow him. “Why not take the day off? We can’t eat all this by ourselves.”

Carlisle scratched behind her ear for a second. “Thank you, but I have work to do. Save me some leftovers.”

“Sure thing,” Heather said to his disappearing back. He had been distant and weird lately, but she was more interested at the moment in Rune’s unlimited esteem for Umber. She slid an egg off the tray with a paw and said around a bite, “You could have just told me Raff was going to find Topaz.”

Rune coughed on his food and stared at her with big, guilty eyes. “What makes you think she did?”

“Oh, please, don’t give me that. I knew you two were up to something when she left. I thought maybe you were just taking a special interest in Raff’s well-being, but you’re way too relaxed about her being with a human. You knew all about it, didn’t you?”

Rune looked around and lowered his voice. He spoke over his egg like it would muffle what he said. “It was her idea in the first place. I expected her back before now.”

“So what went wrong? You must have an idea.” Heather gulped down the last of the egg and reached for another. They really had turned out exceptionally well.

“If something had happened to Topaz, she would have come home by now. I’m sure she’s with him.”

“So why wouldn’t they come home?”

Rune snorted. “Because Topaz will find out that Rafflesia and I were the only ones in on it and he’ll come up with some damn fool idea that no one wants him to come back. No one who counts, because your own brother apparently never does.”

Heather smirked. “I’m sensing this is an ongoing problem for you two?”

The tip of Rune’s tail twitched in annoyance. He did not, however, stop eating the eggs any more than Heather did. “I hoped he was over it. I hoped Rafflesia would convince him. If we don’t all greet him with hugs and dead mice, he thinks we don’t want him around.”

“So he has self-esteem issues,” Heather said and got a flat-eared glare from Rune. “Well, that’s what it is.”

“If you say so. Point is, I don’t think he’s going to come back without a royal invitation.”

Heather glanced back toward where Carlisle had left the room. “I think it’s the second-in-command he’s more concerned about.” She groomed her whiskers fitfully. “How am I going to get Carlisle to let him back?”

“That’s your department, not mine.”

Heather unfolded the plastic with her teeth and paws and tugged it over the platter. “Is there a rule that says every house must have at least one oddly surfer-styled, cheeky ginger tabby with an endearing inability to hold his liquor?” Heather jumped down from the counter and pawed open the back door. “Because that would be really helpful right now.”

“I hear he’s a good cat burglar. Need any locks picked?” Rune asked as he followed her out into the yard for their Saturday walk.

—

When George heard the click of heels across the floor, he just kept looking out the window. The hillside dropped off beyond the backyard and created the illusion of isolation. Mountains in the distance and open patches of cloudy sky were the only things to see. “You have a lovely view here,” he said, turning as he did. “Yvonne.”

Yvonne did not offer him a hand or an air kiss. She looked like a soldier at attention in her crisp suit and brass buttons. “Mr. Ellison. Is this a social call, or are they still making you work weekends?”

“Neither. I had a little private business to discuss with you.” He helped himself to a chair by the window, setting his cowboy hat in his lap. After a long pause, Yvonne sat across from him. “Are you familiar with Heather Lee?”

Yvonne’s expression revealed nothing. Botox and Aqua Net did wonders for her poker face. “She owns property within the Shadow Hills community.”

“You’ve met her?” George pressed.

“Of course.” Yvonne picked a stray thread from her skirt without seeming to take her eyes from him.

“Of course. I don’t know if you’ve seen the old place lately, but I think it’s gone to pot, don’t you?” She stared steadily at him, just waiting. “It doesn’t reflect well on Shadow Hills when something like that happens.”

“Since you are not a member of the Shadow Hills homeowners’ association, I fail to see the cause of your concern.” She waited a single, charge beat. “Well-meaning though it may be.”

“Things like that can get people thinking, maybe it’s time to move to greener pastures. Properties go up for sale, land starts opening up. It gets very attractive to men like, well, like myself.” He gestured the brim of his hat toward his chest.

“I was under the impression you preferred to establish housing developments of your own. And cut from a rather more, hm, efficient cloth than Shadow Hills. The parcels here can’t be broken down to less than ten acres.”

“Oh, certainly. And I’m all about quality. I certainly wouldn’t want to see Shadow Hills change. But my colleagues, say, the ones who specialize in strip malls, they would love to buy up every parcel here. And once you get something like that up here, more people lose interest and move on. More land ends up in the hands of–”

“Men like yourself?”

George smiled tightly. “Exactly. Well, to make a long story short, it seems to me, it would be in your best interest if someone more capable than Lee owned that place.”

Finally, Yvonne’s face showed a flicker of uncertainty. “Someone?”

George nodded as though admitting a somewhat embarrassing secret. “Like myself.”

“I see.”

“I don’t presume to know your business, but I would be surprised if the issue hasn’t already come up.” There. That hard, strained look at the corners of her eyes told him what he needed to know. “Just a little friendly, unsolicited advice. I know how important it is to you that Shadow Hills not turn into another housing track or shopping center.”

“I’ll certainly keep that in mind,” Yvonne said and stood.

George allowed her to direct him to the front door without protest. “You do that. It’s not often that someone comes along who wants to buy a place like that. Not these days.” He settled his hat on his head and tipped it to her. “You wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to see it go to someone you can trust.”

Yvonne opened the door for him. Her glare said she trusted him as much as a rabbit trusted a fox. That was fine by him. He wanted her fear more than he would ever want her trust. He tipped his hat to her again. The door shut, but he felt her watching him from the window as he walked back to his car. Trust might get him a friend, but fear would get him everything else.

—

Carlisle took a stack of new blankets into one of the common rooms even as he felt the last of the day’s cat’s bane fading from his system. He probably knew as well as Heather did the signs of impending change and had certainly gone through it more often than she had. He too stood apart from the normal experience of being a changing cat. He smiled to the cats alternately bedding down and waking up for twilight as he swapped used blankets for fresh ones. Polite distance separated him from the rest of the House. He traded familiarity for responsibility when Poppy took him under her wing as a replacement for Heather.

Over in the corner, between the trunk of shared clothing and the window, he bent down to gather up one particular beach towel that had been left untouched for months. His fingers unconsciously curled into it, possessive and jealous. He shuffled it into the pile with the rest, but it did not end up in the laundry room when he finished. He hardly liked to even let it touch the other blankets for fear that they would contaminate it.

Back in his room, Carlisle spread the towel on his bed. Fastidious though he was, he did not pick off any of the stray hairs and he would never dream of washing it, even if it had kibble crumbs scattered on it. He shed his clothing just in time for the change, when the cat’s bane finally ran out and his body just gently turned itself inside out for a few seconds. If a full day of work did not leave him tired, changing certainly did. He did not so much jump onto the bed as climb paw over paw.

He hooked his claws in the terry cloth loops of the towel, slightly worn with age. He knew it on sight, but only when he changed could he smell the traces of Topaz that still lingered there even after so long. It was covered in his golden fur. Carlisle burrowed his face against it. He had resisted the urge to retrieve it after Topaz left. He felt betrayed and so much in the house fell on him — again — while Heather helped Rune recover. When heart-sick longing finally swallowed up the anger, there was no time to indulge it.

He used his claws to hook an edge and pull it around his body, cocooning himself in the familiar scent. But now Heather spent all her time with Rune, suddenly enthusiastic about the responsibilities of caring for the House. Even Dopple had Mysti, neither of whom had much desire to spend an afternoon discussing the newspapers Heather brought him when she went into town. And they all had other people with whom to climb trees or hunt grasshoppers.

The smell of Topaz grew stronger as Carlisle’s body heated the air in his cocoon and he started to drift to sleep. Change. Work. Change. Sleep. Change. His life took on unprecedented monotony and he had no one to blame but himself. He sent away his own grasshopper-hunting, tree-climbing, paper-reading partner and he did not know how to get him back.

—

The cats got used to bailing out of the front room whenever there was a knock at the door, so Heather did not have to tell them anything and they were gone by the time she reached the door.

On the other side, Yvonne waited and wrung her hands. “Hi, sweetie. May I please speak to you?” The polite request from someone who seemed to take it as her right to help herself to your time and space surprised Heather enough that she just stepped aside and let her in.

“We can sit in the kitchen and have something to drink, if you’d like,” she said in a clear voice intended to warn away the cats who had just relocated there. No small part of her also wished Rune would hear her and stay close by.

“The place looks nice,” Yvonne said as she hovered on the edge of the chair.

The day was just full of surprises. “I’ve been working hard on it.” She almost amended that to “we” when Rune slipped into the kitchen to hover behind her chair.

“You should paint the exterior. A fresh coat of paint would really liven the place up.” Yvonne accepted the glass of iced tea Heather offered her. “No lemonade this time?”

Heather smiled weakly. Yvonne’s new demeanor should have put her at ease, but instead she found herself bracing for the inevitable jibe that had to follow. “Was there something you needed to talk about?”

Yvonne stared into her glass and stroked lines through the beads of water on the sides. At last, she said, “You need to get this place fixed up. And I know I’ve told you that before,” she continued in a rush, “and I suppose I might have been a bit harsh about it.”

Heather gave a breathless chuckle and glanced over at Rune to see what he thought. “A little harsh?” Yvonne winced at the tone of disbelief. “You implied that I could not be expected to successfully wipe my own nose.” Rune watched in silence. Couldn’t he at least say something? It would not mean anything to Yvonne.

Yvonne nodded and kept her eyes down. “I should not have been so rude. But I’m trying to make up for it.”

“And how are you doing that?”

“By warning you.” The ‘duh’ at the end was almost audible. “You need to make this place impeccable. So people can see that you are a responsible owner for the place.”

“He’s gotten to you,” Heather said and it stared her in the face, the obvious fact that George Ellison would do more than just make idle threats.

Yvonne nodded and finally looked Heather in the eye. “I couldn’t bear it if he or one of his buddies tore this place up and turned it into a movie theater and a boutique.”

“He can’t have the house. He just can’t.” Heather thought she sounded pretty confident, which was reassuring. She did not really feel confident. Rune trotted out of the kitchen again. What, this was old news, so he had better things to do?

“He won’t stop trying. He will get something you care about and hold a knife to its throat until he gets what he wants.” Yvonne looked out the window wistfully, as though she loved the house as her own. Heather hoped she did not notice any cats out there.

The image her words brought up made Heather’s stomach turn to ice. Because she could think of all the very real, very much alive things she cared about that he could threaten. “So he sent you here to back up his threats.”

Yvonne shook her head frantically. “He sent me here to get you to sell. To tell you the association didn’t want you here or to make you think you couldn’t handle the house.”

“Jeez, you were doing that before he came along. I’m afraid of what you would be like when you try to drive me away.”

Yvonne pushed her chair back. “I told you I was sorry.” Heather did not remember her saying any such thing, but she supposed Yvonne considered her actions as good as an apology. “Please, don’t underestimate him. Whether he gets this property or another one, know that you won’t be the only one to suffer. I’ll show myself out.”

Heather hoped the cats got out of the way for Yvonne. She didn’t know what to make of the conversation. Yvonne hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. Including just how far the damage would spread if Ellison put his mind to it. She knew better than Yvonne could imagine just how many people would be unhappy. Or worse.

—

Even on the weekend, George recognized half the people who filled the bar as ones who worked in his offices. It was not a bar to take a date or a client. It was a bar to get thrashed with coworkers because you had lost the client and couldn’t get a date. It matched George’s mood better than he would have liked as he hunched over his scotch like a junkyard dog with a bone. After last night, even Susanna had left him in peace, making no mention of going out over the weekend when she left his house. He scattered a handful of peanuts onto a cocktail napkin and crushed the shell of one between thumb and forefinger.

The mirror behind the bar gave him a view of the rest of the room without turning. There was James something or other, who worked with Hill over in PR. He chatted up a woman George did not know, but who seemed to be cut from the same cloth as his own secretary and who could very well have brought him faxes and coffee on any given day. He thought a few people were from accounting, but he could not be sure. The peanut shell crumbled into fibers and salty dust under his fingers. While he watched, someone — he knew her from somewhere, didn’t he? — stared back at him in the mirror. She ducked to say something into the ear of her nearest companion, whose eyes flicked up to him and darted away again. George looked away when they laughed, heads bowed together.

He took a gulp of his drink. These peons probably didn’t know him from Adam, never mind that he was president of the goddamn board and had been in this line since they were picking their noses in grade school. The alcohol welled up behind his eyes and he crunch peanuts in the palm of his hand to drive away the wave of maudlin stupidity. The board would never vote him out, he told himself. It was just office politics rearing its ugly head. Well, he had better things to do than kowtow to that lot.

He swallowed the last of his scotch and tucked a couple of bills under the glass. The laughing girl did not look at him as he left the bar. Outside, the buildings obscured the setting sun so that all he could see above their tops was blue sky gone white at one edge and purple at the other. It would all blow over, he told himself again. They could say what they wanted about leadership and profits and new directions. It was his company. Nothing would change that.

—

Rune trotted up the spiral staircase. A huge clang shook the close quarters and he winced and pawed at his ringing ears. On the landing, Heather heaved another shattered chunk of masonry into a metal wheelbarrow. Rune skirted around it and sat on a pile of bricks. “Why is there a wheelbarrow in the house?”

“I couldn’t think of a better way to do this,” Heather said. She did not stop working and she did not look at him. The clangs turned to thuds as the wheelbarrow slowly filled. Heather wiped her arm across her forehead even as sweat continued to drip from the end of her nose.

“Why not wait until I can help you? This is a two person job.” To him, the small space radiated pleasant warmth, perfect for a cat nap.

Heather pulled more bricks from the pile blocking what remained of the doorway onto the tower’s walkway. They tumbled down in an avalanche and she jumped back to avoid getting her toes crushed. “I can do this alone. It doesn’t take any special knowledge to haul bricks away.”

“You’re going to have trouble getting it down the stairs again if you fill it much more,” Rune said after a minute.

“Why don’t you go see if someone else needs help? I’m fine here.”

Rune rubbed up against her leg. “You’re upset. Is this about what that woman said?”

Heather sidestepped him. He had to back off to avoid the next cascade of bricks she brought down without warning. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” she said impatiently.

“Maybe you should take a break for a while. You’re probably just tired.”

“I’m not tired,” Heather snapped. “And I should have done this months ago, especially after Elly got lost up here. It’s dangerous. It can’t wait just because you have the wrong body today.”

Rune sat down heavily. “Is that what this is about?” He batted at her leg when she didn’t answer. “Are you mad at me because I’m not human all the time?”

Heather passed a hunk of brick from hand to hand while staring at the half-dismantled wall. “I’m mad that you aren’t human when I need you to be.”

“I told you this could wait for a while. Elly was a fluke. No one’s going to go up here.”

“It’s not about this,” Heather said and flung the brick into the pile. It set off another little tumble. “It would have been really nice to have some backup when Yvonne showed up.”

“Like when Ellison did?” Because really, Yvonne was nothing compared to that son of a dog.

“I need more than what you can give me with two days out of every month.” Heather still stared at the wall, like she could not look at him and speak her mind at the same time. He knew that feeling. Her hands hovered in front of her with nothing to hold, covered in red dust. “I wouldn’t ask you to be human all the time.” She chuckled and wiped at her face again, but he did not think it was sweat she rubbed from her eyes. “Guess that was a once in a lifetime thing, huh?”

They were not going to have a conversation about his old life. “You’re not being fair. I’m doing the best I can.” She had him doing more than he had been able to do in years. He had walked halfway down to the road with her the other day to get the mail, for heaven’s sake.

“I’m sorry. It’s not enough.” She shrugged. “I can’t schedule my whole life around the Leo moon. Not for you, not for anyone. Things come up all the time. I have to know you can be there.” She turned quickly and picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow. Her progress down the stairs was slow and torturous, but Rune did not attempt to catch up to her.

—

George stood up from the table, hands planted on the reflective surface with a loud slap. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, I guess that settles that.” Half of the board of directors looked uncomfortable and the other half looked defiant. He plucked a stale Danish from the plate in the middle and gave the whole table a cocky grin. “It’s no skin off my nose. I think I’ll leave you to your business. Good luck picking the new guy.” No one said a word as he left the board room with a swagger and a mouthful of pastry.

He circled through the hallways with his head up. Out there, no one noticed anything different. The same meaningless faces greeted him, people he never needed to bother remembering. He positively strolled into his office. Behind her desk, the secretary visibly relaxed, smiling at him with the phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, taking his good mood as an equally good sign. He slashed a finger in front of his throat to tell her to hold all his calls and locked himself in his office.

He dropped the pastry in the trash and sank into his chair. He opened his cell phone. When Susanna answered, he said, “We’re going out tonight. Somewhere nice. Dress accordingly.”

“Does this mean the meeting went well? You’re still president?”

“Who the hell else could they get to put up with this crap? Of course I am. I’ll pick you up at six.”

He picked up the sign on the edge of his desk proclaiming George Ellison the President, Board of Directors. He threw it at the door hard enough to leave a nick in the wood after it clattered, chipped, to the floor. It would need replacing anyway, when he handed in his inevitable letter of resignation as president. Next, he opened his filing cabinet. Slowly and systematically, he flung folder after folder across the room. They flapped and landed on the floor. He wrenched the clips from contracts and released them in a downpour. He stood in a storm of paper and hurled bolts of rolled blue prints. When the cabinet was empty, he gently slid each drawer shut.

He swept papers from his chair and sat down again. Then he took out a little notebook and a pen. He flipped to a page of lists, where one entry was circled. He circled it again. He let the pen run around it, circle after circle, each one more erratic, until you could hardly tell that the name Lee had been there at all. The pen tore though the first sheet of paper and turned the name into a paper cut-out covered in black ink. It popped free. Without removing it, George snapped the notebook shut.

The secretary was off the phone when he walked out again. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Clean up the paperwork in there and file everything.” He grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door. “I’m done for the day.” I’m just getting started, he countered in his head.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

Carlisle dug his hind claws into the tree trunk and shoved himself up another foot. The pull in the tendons of his front paws felt wonderful after a busy week spent cooped up inside. His spine stretched and bunched as he propelled himself up to the first branch. He stopped there to twist and roll the kinks out of his shoulders. With Heather on her Saturday break from the cat’s bane, the office was probably off-limits anyway. Below him, a gopher inched out of its tunnel, took a look around, and disappeared again. Carlisle stretched out on the branch to watch it.

Behind him, he heard a soft voice speaking. The gopher bit off a sprig of a weed close to the tunnel entrance and ducked away. The voice moved closer and Carlisle looked back toward the house to see who had come to interrupt his holiday. Heather wove between clumps of grass with her tail high over her back. Next to her, Rune listened in silence as she chatted away.

While they were still far enough away, Carlisle bolted higher into the tree. He picked a spot where the branches were close together and the pine needles would hide him somewhat. Heather and Rune slipped into the shadows of the trees. Perhaps the office was available after all, Carlisle thought bitterly. She had ordered Carlisle out the last time he tried to talk to her while she was a cat. Her tail brushed Rune’s as they walked together.

“I think we should paint the house next,” she said. “The weather is supposed to be good for a while. And it’s not too hot yet.”

Rune kept his head turned towards her. Carlisle had no doubts that he only ventured this far from the house because Heather distracted him from his fears. Rune ducked his head in agreement. “Sure. Some of the older kittens might like to help.”

Heather stopped right below Carlisle’s tree to watch the gopher as it ate a bare patch in the grass around its home. “Good idea,” she said quietly, eyes fixed on the tunnel entrance and the quivering whiskers that cleared its mouth now and then.

Rune watched her with the same intense focus. “Should I leave you two alone?”

Heather looked up. Carlisle could see even from fifteen feet above her the way her eyes widened when Rune spoke to her, how her whole body tuned in to him when he was near. “Sorry. Got distracted. Do you want to go farther or head back?”

Rune tipped his head side to side, debating. “I can go a bit farther,” he said at last.

“I left tuna salad on the counter for us this morning,” Heather said as they set off again. “I put an ice pack with it to keep it fresh. And its covered, so hopefully no one will decide to steal it this time.”

“Did you leave a note?”

“One on each side, just to be certain.”

Carlisle let their voices fade from his mind as they walked away. Heather fixed food for him all the time when he worked longer than she thought appropriate. It was hardly something to feel jealous about, he told himself. He scrambled down from the tree. Maybe he could read letters in the garden today, if it was not too noisy with cats enjoying the sunshine. His solitary holiday just did not seem like much fun any longer.

—

Carlisle waited at the bottom of the hill by the mailbox for Dopple to return from town. He tugged at the ratty t-shirt fitfully. He wondered what it would be like to see her after twenty-five years. He tried to think of her as the Queen, her mother’s daughter. But in his mind, she was Heather, a teenager forever.

A taxi pulled into the driveway. Dopple slid out of the backseat. She looked him over once the car disappeared around the bend. “You look like hell,” she said. Her own leather jacket was slick black.

Carlisle grimaced and tried to pull the shoulders straight on the shirt. He would have given anything to wear his own clothes. “I had to wear something I could afford to leave behind when I change again.”

“He didn’t see you leave, did he?” Dopple reflexively looked up the hill toward the house.

“I saw him go upstairs around noon. I hope you’re right about him staying up there.”

“He won’t come down while everyone is changed,” Dopple said. “I have directions for you.” She held out a scrap of paper. Her handwriting wobbled across it.

“How far is it?”

“Two weeks, unless you hitchhike while you’re human.”

“I’ve no money to offer and I’d rather not take the chance of changing around a human.” Carlisle looked down the road and tried to get his heart to stop beating so hard.

He saw Dopple cock her head out of the corner of his eye. “You sure are a mess over this girl of yours. And I thought you and Topaz had something going on.”

Carlisle coughed. He was certainly too old to be of any interest to Topaz, who had every queen in the place following him around and several of the toms as well. “I just want to find her as soon as possible.”

“What’s her name?” Dopple asked. Something in her voice made Carlisle wonder if she suspected his deception.

“Crimea,” he said. The lie came easily, though he almost ruined it by laughing at the idea that he had been involved with Crimea. His younger self wished it so, but he had sense enough now to know a pointless crush when he saw one.

Dopple shrugged and turned up the road. “I’ll make excuses for you to Rune if he notices you’re gone.”

“That would be very helpful,” Carlisle murmured, but Dopple just trudged on.

He read her directions again and again while he walked. It was essential that he memorize them. In two days, he would be a cat once again and he would have no choice but to work from memory.

He chuckled a little. If Dopple spread his story around the House, he would certainly come home to an interesting reputation. Ex-girlfriend, indeed. He hoped no one mentioned it to Heather when they got back. She always hated it when people gossiped about them. At least, she used to. He wondered if that had changed in the years of their separation. He wondered what else might have as well.

—

Carlisle opened the door warily. Dopple was not due back so soon. Poppy was not expecting any visitors today. He squinted at the young man on the doorstep. He had a long scrape on his cheek and his clothes were filthy. He rather looked like he had been run over by a truck. “Rune?”

His posture relaxed a bit. “Hey, is Poppy around?” When Carlisle stepped aside to let him in, he walked with a terrible limp.

“What happened to you?” Carlisle steadied him with a hand on his arm.

“Got in a bar fight. You should see the other guys.” Rune’s grin was shaky and made pathetic by the slight swelling at the corner of his mouth.

Carlisle snorted. “Ridiculous. Were you too drunk to find your way home? Last time you wrote, you were in Nevada. What are you doing here?”

“This is my home,” Rune said. He clamped a hand on Carlisle’s wrist. “This is my home,” he repeated.

“I wasn’t going to send you packing,” Carlisle said. He patted Rune’s shoulder with his free hand. “There’s an open room down the hall. Come on.” He pulled Rune’s arm over his shoulder and helped him walk.

Carlisle looked up when he heard the thump of Poppy’s cane on the wood floor.  She looked past Rune as though she expected to see someone else with him. There was a smudge of flour in her hair, white on white, and she smelled of vanilla. When Rune looked up at her, she clicked her tongue against her teeth. “You always have to pick a fight, don’t you?”

He ducked his head. “Yes, ma’am. I waited until I got back though.”

“Very wise of you, minimizing how far you had to walk on that leg,” she said and poked it, carefully, with the tip of her cane. He winced. She sighed and handed the cane to him. “You need this more than I do. Tell me what happened.”

She stood at Rune’s side so that Carlisle had no choice but to move out of her way. “Ma’am, I can get him set up. Please don’t trouble yourself,” Carlisle said.

“That won’t be necessary,” Poppy said without looking back. “Rune and I have private matters to discuss.”

Carlisle watched them hobble down the hall to the room he had in mind for Rune. They closed the door. Well. That was fine. There was plenty of work Carlisle could get done, since they did not need him. He went upstairs to Poppy’s office in search of letters to answer or bills to pay. He did not know Rune all that well anyway. He was just being nosy. Better to mind his own business.

—

Carlisle slit his eyes against the hot light coming through the window. He could hear Vince gathering up a crowd of hunters for a trip into the woods. He wished there was a door he could slam here in the front room. Vince had asked him along, but he had better things to do than hang out with that rabble. Scarborough would never hang out with that lot. They had never even been out of this town. Boring.

Someone stroked the top of his head. Dreaming of Heather again. Wherever she was. The stroke turned into a tap between his ears. “Wakey wakey,” Poppy said. She knelt by the windowsill he occupied. “Would you be willing to help me with something?”

Carlisle stretched and stood up. “Like what?”

Poppy offered him something leafy on her open palm. “Eat this, then get dressed and come to my office.”

Carlisle shrugged and ate the cat’s bane. He fell off the windowsill when he changed, but no one was around to see, so he brushed imaginary dust off his knees and went upstairs to find some clothing. Dressed in jeans and a sweater, pleasantly warm but tragically lame looking, he entered Poppy’s office without knocking.

She gestured him into a seat on the opposite side of her desk. “Why aren’t you out with the others today?”

Carlisle looked away. “Didn’t feel like it.”

“We’ll find her eventually,” Poppy said.

“Whatever,” Carlisle said and knew it was a small and lonely word compared to the store of curses and pleas for Heather he kept inside. “What did you need me to do?”

Poppy pushed a stack of envelopes towards him. “Do you know what these are?” He shook his head. “I receive a great many letters from cats around the country.” She tapped a finger against the stack. “They tell me who has died and who has had kittens. Where they are and if they will be near our House in the future.”

Carlisle picked up an envelope and, when she did not stop him, unfolded the letter inside. It was several pages of stiff paper, written in an erratic hand. “Long,” he said.

“Yes. And I have many other things I need to take care of today. Do you think you could help me with these?” She set a pad of paper and a pen next to the letters. It had been divided into columns, labeled with things like “clan name” and “number of births (include pedigree)” and “current residence.”

“Sounds deadly dull,” Carlisle said, but his eyes kept slipping back to the letter in his hand, curious about what it might say.

“It would be very helpful to me,” Poppy said gently. “Heather was supposed to help me with these,” she added after a hesitation.

Carlisle scooted his chair up to the desk and picked up the pen. “Maybe just this once. ‘Cause I got nothing better to do.” He as much as he wanted to see Heather again, he wanted to prove he was better than she was as well. She left him behind and he didn’t think he would ever forgive her.

“You have nothing better to do,” Poppy corrected him.

He raised his eyebrows, which was his favorite expression from Scarborough. “I said that.”

“How you speak with your friends is your own business, but I expect you to speak properly when you are working,” Poppy said with a mild smile. He would not know it for a few months, but he would need to brush up on his language for when he started writing letters as well as reading them. By then, he had forgotten he was just Poppy’s second choice after Heather left.

—

Carlisle picked at the plastic bracelet they had snapped on him when he walked in with the rest of the dout. “Why do I have to wear this?”

“So they know not to serve you alcohol,” Crimea said. She wore a spiked collar. Carlisle had never met anyone as hopelessly cool, except Scarborough, their leader. “Human bars aren’t allowed unless you’re old enough.” Everyone in the dout spoke her dialect. Learning that fact made it harder to imagine Crimea had any special interest in him, almost as much as when he found out she and Scarborough went together. His crush had not abated, nonetheless.

Scarborough roughed Carlisle’s hair up so the short curls stood on end. “And you look about twelve, kid.”

Carlisle shook his hand off. “Why come to a human bar at all?”

Crimea smirked and rolled her eyes. Carlisle felt his face flush up to his ears. “If I didn’t know you were so smart, I would think you were pretty dumb. Have you met any cats running bars?”

Brig practically bounced in his chair. “Oh, oh, I have,” he said in his usual explosion of noise. “In Louisiana, there’s this–”

“Rhetorical question, Brig,” Scarborough said. “We’re here to meet another dout.”

A big man clapped a hand on Scarborough’s shoulder. “Present and accounted for.”

Scarborough stood and they exchanged friendly thumps to the back. “John. Thought we’d have to send out a search party.”

The man pulled a chair up to their table and sat by Scarborough. Two women slipped into the circle as well, their chairs pulled up so close to each other they were almost sitting in each other’s laps. They were tiny, positively dwarfed next to John, and perfect twins, down to their oddly short arms and legs.

Scarborough flung an arm around Carlisle, who peered at the newcomers from around his leader’s side. “This is our newest member, Carlisle. This is John, Naomi and Natasha. Border Crossing Dout.”

Carlisle waved awkwardly. John grinned, all teeth. “You robbing dens now? Or was he born with you?”

“Nope, picked him up at Poppy’s House. Kid knows his stuff. He’ll really be something in a couple years.”

“Were you up at Poppy’s when her kid bailed?” John asked. Carlisle wrapped both his hands around his glass of water and brought it to his lips, the ice trembling inside. Scarborough shook his head and John said, “Happened a couple months ago.” The bar seemed quiet, all the background noise dropping away.

Before he could say anything more, one of the twins, Natasha maybe, interrupted. “Word has it, she ran away.” “And no one has been able to find her,” Naomi added. “She stole all the cat’s bane at the House,” Natasha said. Naomi leaned forward to say in a scandalized voice, “Rumor has it, she’s gone full-time furless.”

Carlisle did not have to ask to know what that meant. Heather had made good on her threats. In some human city, dressed up as one of them, Heather had disappeared. Carlisle did not realize he had stood up until Crimea pulled him back down into his seat. “I have to go back,” he said.

“Now, hang on,” Crimea said. “She’s not your problem. Poppy will take care of it.”

Carlisle shook his head. “You don’t understand. Heather is– We were– I might be able to bring her home.”

“We’re at least four weeks hard travel from the House,” Scarborough said. “The trail will be cold long before you get back, even if you leave now. And we won’t be headed back there for another year, at least.”

The noise in the bar crashed back to full volume. Carlisle hovered on the edge of his seat. “I know her. I can find her.”

“You can’t go alone,” Scarborough said.

“I’ll go,” Brig said, waving his hands and pointing to himself.

Crimea smacked him on the back of the head. “You’re worse than no one at all.”

“Listen, I’m headed west myself,” John said. He turned his big palm up on the table. “We can take him most of the way, if it’s that important.”

“We didn’t know you knew her,” Natasha said. Naomi said, “We’re sorry.”

Scarborough leaned back in his chair and took a swig of his beer. “You won’t be able to connect up with us again until we come to the House again.” He raised an eyebrow. “You know we don’t follow a plan.”

“I have to go,” Carlisle said helplessly. He had to get Heather back. That was all there was to it. He saw the Blue Road dout the next time they happened his way, but he never did roam with them again. Some things, he told himself, just aren’t meant to be.

—

Carlisle licked a swath between Heather’s ears, grooming the fur against the grain, and then smoothed it again with short strokes. She purred, the vibration transferring from her back to his side where she curled. But her purring stopped as soon as he stopped washing her. “What’s wrong?”

Heather flopped over so they faced each other, all four paws touching. “I want to try something,” she said and looked away.

Carlisle liked trying new things with Heather. She never made fun of him, even when she laughed at him. Heather was his favorite cat in the whole world. The answer was always the same: he wanted to do whatever she wanted.

She stayed silent and stared past him. When her eyes met his, her pupils were dilated so large they eclipsed the blue in a black with more depth than should have been possible in her small, fine-boned face. She leaned forward until her nose touched his. “Like humans,” she said. The tip of her tongue touched his upper lip. “I want to kiss like humans.”

Carlisle copied what she did, but went no further. Heather had never proposed something like that before. She pressed her mouth next to his. Her whiskers tickled his nose. She licked again and the ticklish rasp of her tongue made him jerk away. “Sorry. Whiskers,” he said and rubbed a paw against them to relieve the tingly feeling at the sensitive base of each one.

Heather looked away again, obviously disappointed. “It looked like more fun than that,” she said.

Carlisle hooked a paw over her shoulder and rolled her back to curl beside him again. “We can try it the next time we change.” Carlisle always felt ridiculous, all oversized hands and feet and skinny legs, compared to Heather as a human, who already looked like a woman.

Heather rested her chin on his paws. “When I run away,” she said and the list of things that followed that statement was longer than Carlisle could easily remember. “You have to come with me.”

“Yes,” Carlisle said. Whatever Heather wanted. “We’ll travel the world, just like my mum does.”

“Tell me about England again,” Heather said. She always liked to hear about Carlisle’s fragmented memories of his homes before his mother left him at the House.

Outside their nook, someone said, “hey, the Blue Roads are here,” in a voice loud enough to summon every cat in the house. Carlisle slipped out from under Heather’s weight. “Let’s go see who’s here.”

Heather sighed and followed him. He knew she hated meeting new cats, but Carlisle was curious. In the solarium, a whole crowd of cats surrounded the newcomers. They all talked rapidly, exchanging bursts of information in a flurry of sound. Lost in the back of the crowd, Carlisle saw the prettiest cat — next to Heather — he had ever seen, sitting by herself.

He looked back as he crossed the room. Heather sat in the doorway, watching with a wary expression. Carlisle went over to the forgotten cat and said hello.

She grumbled under her breath and chirped a greeting back. It was a different dialect, which explained why she was not part of the larger conversation. She had a highly domed forehead, aristocratic and exotic, and the blue of her coat made even Carlisle’s rosettes look like simple gray.

“You’re a Russian Blue then, aren’t you?” He asked in her dialect.

“You speak,” she confirmed with a smile. “I’m Crimea. No one in this territory speaks.”

“I speak three dialects. And human English,” Carlisle said.

Crimea tipped her nose toward the door and Heather. “Your friend speaks too?”

Heather’s fur puffed and she disappeared from the doorway. “Ah, no,” Carlisle said. He would have gone after her, but just then Crimea swiped at another cat. When she had his attention, she introduced them and it was hours before Carlisle could get away long enough to tell Heather, coolly disinterested, all about the Blue Roads and how they wanted him to join them.

—

Heather told him not to follow her around but what she didn’t know, Carlisle thought as he nosed aside a loose board in the garden fence, couldn’t hurt him. He squeezed through the opening, getting the tip of his tail pinched for his efforts, and walked through the leafy corridor under the branches of a flowering bush. The junk heap, where kittens’ voices could be heard, was in the back corner. Carlisle was tired — Heather had walked a long way before stopping at this rundown house — and he flopped down in the prickly grass as soon as he found an opening big enough to see through.

Heather played with the other kittens. They were a little younger than she was and a little older than Carlisle. There were five of them, all different colors and coats. Heather explained to them in a tone of great authority that food always tasted better cooked. The kittens expressed vociferous disbelief. Carlisle watched the way Heather’s eyes flashed in the dim light.

“Mommy always cooks all my food,” Heather said.

“Cats can’t cook,” one of the kittens insisted.

“We can when we’re human,” Heather explained with a roll of her eyes. Carlisle sat up, a bad feeling itching under fur. Mum always told him not to talk to strange cats. There were the right kinds of cats and the wrong kinds, she told him. In the shade of an overturned bathtub and a rusted bicycle, Heather described cooking in elaborate detail.

Carlisle backed away. If he told Heather to come home, she would get mad at him for following her. She would pull his ears and refuse to talk to him for the rest of the day if she got really mad. Carlisle slunk back out of the garden. Outside, he broke to a run. Heather’s mum would help.

When he got home, he did not even have to explain to Poppy. She met him at the front door. “Where is Heather?”

Walking the path there and back made it easy to remember. Carlisle always remembered where he had been. Explaining to Poppy just which lumpy rock he had turned left at proved harder. In the end, she carried him in her arms while she ran, flat human feet pounding the ground.

Poppy broke the latch on the garden gate to get in. The noise distracted the kittens’ mother, which meant she loosened her death grip on Heather’s neck. Poppy grabbed the cat by her neck in turn and flung her across the yard. She landed in a flower pot with a yowl.

Heather refused to even look at Carlisle while Poppy carried them home. “You must never, ever go near them again,” she said. “Cats that don’t change will hurt you if you let them.”

“You’re the right kind of cat,” Carlisle said helpfully, “and they’re the wrong kind.”

Heather twisted away and buried her face in Poppy’s arm. He heard her say in a sniffle, “I’m not a cat at all.”

Poppy stopped walking. “Don’t say that. You are a perfectly good cat.”

Heather looked up at her mother. Carlisle could see bite marks, red and puffy, behind her ears. “She said I’m just like a human.”

Poppy bundled Heather closer to her chest. “They don’t know what they’re talking about,” she said. “Just forget all about it.”

It took three months for Heather to forget about Carlisle tattling on her and start talking to him again. She never did forget what the cat told her that day though.

—

Previous Episode :: Back to Index :: Next Episode

If George Ellison heard one more advertisement about how the housing market was turning around, he would kill something. If it was doing so much better, why couldn’t he afford to hire a private investigator to skulk around in bushes in the middle of the night for him? Instead, George panted and pushed his hands against his thighs to propel himself up the steep hill to the house. Why would anyone want to live this far off the beaten path?

He ducked into the trees that lined the property as he reached the summit of the hill. There were lights on in the house even at almost two in the morning. Wild party? He could use that if he talked to the homeowner’s association. But there was no music. In fact, the house seemed deathly quiet. It was waiting for something.

He crept out, knees aching with the effort to stay crouched close to the ground. The closest window was dark but he looked in all the same. His eyes had adjusted to the dark on his trek up the hill, but he still could not quite make out the shapes he saw in the room. He squinted until his eyes and temples throbbed. The things moved. George moved lower so his eyes barely cleared the ledge of the window. Something bright flashed orange and green in one of the dark shapes. Then it disappeared as the shape moved away from the window.

George moved on tiptoes, feeling out each step before he took it, wary of sticks and dry leaves that would give him away. Around the corner of the house, he found a bright patch of ground from an illuminated window. This time he stood beside the window and leaned in, inch by agonizing inch, to see through it.

Cats. Maybe six of the furry bastards. That’s what he had seen before — cat’s eyes shining in the low light. Between the two rooms, there were at least a dozen, maybe more. Who needed that many cats? A little thrill of satisfaction went through him. Maybe she was a hoarder. He could easily parlay that into losing her house.

He crouched down, ready to move on to another window, but a sound made him look once more. A cat looked like it needed to hack up a hairball. It stretched out on the floor and writhed a little. Then another cat did the same thing. One by one, they all lay down in what started to look like death throes. His mind rushed through possibilities. Rabies? Poison? Distemper?

Then things turned weird. His mind could not quite follow what happened, registering just a few isolated moments: fur falling off a cat in flurries; a leg and paw stretching to impossible lengths; a mouth full of fangs opening around a human laugh. He blinked and a room full of cats became a room full of people.

Each one naked as the day they were born, they sat up and started talking in a language he had never heard. They rubbed their eyes and scratched and stretched. Some of them walked out, some of them moved from the floor to furniture, and some of them stayed sprawled on the floor. English words started to filter into the foreign babble.

George Ellison moved away from the window. Whatever the hell he just saw, it made hoarding cats look like a harmless hobby. It would take a lot more work, but he would find a way to use this as leverage.

—

Age had robbed the old cat of her teeth and she lisped her words. “It won’t be long now.”

Heather pulled her sweater tighter to ward off the chill of more than just early morning. She too could feel the moon changing, tuning into it like flicking one ear to listen to a distant sound. “Can I do anything for you, Sarna?”

The ancient queen curled and stretched, trying to get comfortable on the heating pad under her blanket. Her legs shook with even that tiny effort. Fragile skin showed through her thin fur. But her eyes, though barely open, were still clear. “Water, please. Just a little.”

Heather tipped a spoonful of water into the cat’s mouth and set the mug aside again. “Carlisle sent word to your sons, like you asked. Are you sure…”

“That I’m dying?” Sarna asked with a wheezing chuckle. Heather knew the only answer was yes. But she was young and hopeful and it seemed impossible to just know your time was up. To announce your death before it had come. Sarna set a paw over Heather’s nearby hand. “I can’t survive the change this time.”

Heather stroked her thumb across Sarna’s paw. “Your friends will be back as soon as they finish changing.” No one wanted to disturb Sarna, so Heather, the only one who would not be changing that night, had watched her for the hour around the moon change.

“I’m not afraid,” Sarna said. “I’m in my home. I had my fair share of good kittens. I had my nine lives.” She rested, her breathing shallow. For a moment she seemed to sleep, but without opening her eyes, she said, “I danced on Broadway as a young woman. Not that you’d know it to look at me now.”

“Not in Cats, by any chance?” Heather asked with a wry smile. Laugh so you don’t have to cry, she told herself.

“No, I was before it’s time. I was in Oliver! though.”

Heather smiled. She wondered what Mother had said when she died. What had she remembered as the highlight of her life? Would she have sent word to Heather if she knew where her prodigal daughter lived?

When the change came, Heather felt it as a little twinge in her body as it started to change before realizing it already had. Under her hand, Sarna took a sharp breath and her heart beat harder and louder than should have been possible. The change took energy and strength she did not have. It did not even start.

Heather waited, hand on Sarna’s side, until she was certain there was no breath and no heartbeat to be felt. She folded the blanket around the body, covering Sarna’s face last, and switched off the heating pad. Eventually, the others came back and relieved Heather. In the time between, though, she tried to think of something to say, knowing that Sarna would not hear it anymore than Mother would, but longing for some sentiment that would give her closure. In the end, she had to settle for just staying by her side. It was still more than she had given Mother.

—

Rune relished the burn of fatigue in his arms and shoulders as he counted push-ups under his breath. The change woke him every time and left him sleepless, even though he had been adjusting to Heather’s daytime routine. His muscles ached anyway from raking leaves and fixing the porch and falling out of a tree while trimming it. He had a fantastic bruise on his right shoulder from that last one.

He let himself collapse to the carpet and roll onto his back. Heather probably slept soundly at that moment. She would want to get back to work once real morning came. Rune stumbled into the bathroom. Splashing water on his face made it easier to avoid looking at himself. His strength returned, coaxed along as a cat and as a human, but his face did not change. He buried his face in a towel as he walked out of the room and tossed it behind himself, mirror successfully avoided.

Clean and dressed, he padded barefoot down the hall to the kitchen. Foraging for breakfast yielded leftovers thoughtfully packaged and labeled by Heather. He chewed a hunk of cold chicken at the table and watched the sky lighten like a gas flame turned higher and higher, blue to orange to white. It was just a sliver of sky directly over the hills. The rest held on to night.

In moments like this, Rune longed for the comforts of human life. A television did wonders for drowning out self-doubt, even if it did nothing to encourage sleep. Instead, he folded his arms on the table and refused to think about what it meant that he scheduled his life around Heather now. Or what would happen if — when — she decided he made a better handyman than husband. Heaven knew, he made no kind of husband.

Rune walked to the sliding doors, entertaining thoughts of walking outside, in time to see the coyote make a dash for the house. Rune threw the door open before he saw the cat in its path. Time seemed to compress then, as all three animals tried to adjust to the new information. Rune moved to intercept. The cat wheeled for the open door. The coyote swerved to follow even as it dodged Rune.

The coyote had speed over the other two and snapped, yellow-toothed, at the retreating cat. Had it not attempted to avoid Rune, which it only registered as big and human, it might have captured more than a tail. As it was, the cat spun, screaming amid the hisses, and dug little claws into the coyote’s eyes. The next snap immobilized one paw and would have been the cat’s doom, but Rune, forgotten in the momentary fight, half tackled and half fell into the coyote.

Cowardice won over hunger and the coyote retreated, rubbing its bloodied eyes every few steps. Huddled over the cat, Rune saw it stop just inside the trees, watching and waiting and hoping, and he roared at it, a noise of fury beyond species. Below him, the grass bent under a dew of blood from the shredded tail and crushed paw. The cat moaned, too hurt to speak or clean the wounds.

Rune bundled the cat into the kitchen. “Easy, easy. You’re going to be okay.” Blood loss was the first problem, Rune thought as he pressed one dish towel around the tail and another around the paw. Heather could get antibiotics for infection later. Such a small cat, he thought. He tried to soothe it long enough to let him call for help. Just a kid, not old enough to change yet. “Stay put and I’ll get Heather. Heather will make it better.”

—

Heather shook a pill out of a bottle. “Swallow this. It’s for the pain.”

The young cat stopped tugging at the bandage on his foot long enough to gulp the pill down. “How long do I have to wear this?”

“Until your foot doesn’t look like it got put through a meat grinder, stupid,” Heather snapped. He made Rune look like an ideal patient. “The same goes for your tail. And you get antibiotics twice a day from me or your mother. No arguments.”

Rune helped him down from the counter to the floor. As he limped away, Rune said, “He’s awfully calm about the whole thing.”

“He’s young and indestructible, remember? And he could have taken that coyote by himself, easy.” Heather snorted. Young and foolish was more like it.

Heather packaged up the medical supplies, restocked by the vet during Rune’s detox, and Rune scrubbed down the kitchen counters, which had been press ganged into serving as an operating room. Heather looked up from washing her hands when Dorian came barging through with another cat and Valoria hot on his heels.

“She’s one of our best hunters,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Valoria was having none of it. “It’s a fool’s errand anyway. That coyote is long gone and I need her help.”

The cat in question took a knife from the butcher’s block on the counter. “This is more important. And we can track it.”

“Better to do it now,” Dorian said, “while we’re human and can put up a fight.”

“My knives?” Heather asked as the pair disappeared out the back door. “What are they doing with my knives?”

Valoria huffed. She took a large pot down from the cupboard and ran hot water in the sink. “Everyone’s up in arms over the coyote. It’s been years since one came this close to the house.”

“Are the farthest trees still booby-trapped?” Heather asked.

“Yes and if it didn’t get hit with rocks on the way in, it probably did when it left. Come with me,” she said and lifted the pot of steaming water out of the sink.

“But I-”

“I just lost a midwife, so I’ll need someone to fill in.”

“Midwife?” Heather looked back at Rune, who shrugged and followed after her.

“Donya is in labor and she’ll need help now that she’s changed. She’s panicking over the baby going through that.”

“I didn’t know it was dangerous,” Heather said as she accepted the pot while Valoria fished more towels out of the linen closet upstairs.

“It’s not ideal. She’s in a state over it though.” Valoria dropped her voice as she opened the door to one of the shared bedrooms, which had been cleared out of everyone but Donya and a young woman who looked like her daughter. “How often are the contractions?”

“Five minutes apart,” the daughter answered.

“Good, we’re getting down to it.”

Heather hovered awkwardly by the makeshift bed. Her stomach lurched nervously. “I’ve never, uh, seen someone give birth before.” By the door, Rune averted his eyes politely, but she saw him smirking. Jackass. Easy for him to laugh; he’d had a kid — and that thought really did not help her calm down.

“Thankfully,” Valoria said with a wink, “I have. I just need an extra set of hands. I’ll tell you everything you need to do.” Heather thought that sounded like a swell change of pace from being asked to take care of everything herself.

—

Rune closed the door on the new mother and kitten and joined Heather where she had slid down the wall to sprawl in the hallway. He sat not quite touching her. It felt nice to just close his eyes, her warmth on one side and the cool of the wall against his back. “Hell of a morning,” he said. It had been a mistake to follow Heather up there because it meant he played errand boy for Valoria.

Heather mumbled in reply. Then her head settled on his shoulder. In the space between their bodies, her fingers grazed his. “Wake me next week,” she said. She shifted and got comfortable against him.

Rune let his cheek rest against her head. His neck bent too far and his arm felt numb as he held still too long. But he would not move for the world in that moment. Consciousness faded only to snap back as suddenly as if someone had pricked him with a pin.

Against his shoulder, Heather stirred and groaned. “I can’t even fall asleep now. I’m thinking about paying bills. And fixing the sink in the downstairs bathroom.”

Rune curled his fingers around hers. “It’ll keep. Just rest for now.”

Heather scooted closer. “While we have a chance,” she agreed. What Rune missed in sleep then he made up for in contentment.

—

George poked buttons on his phone fitfully. Damn thing. How the hell was he supposed to get anything to work? And why did “menu” have to be represented by four little squares? What kind of sense did that make?

He shifted his weight from foot to foot in an attempt to get comfortable while perched on a steep slope. The tree he leaned against had a trunk as thick as three men and even the lowest branches were far above his head. It was an oak and its branches were few and thick. Through them, dawn light filter and grew stronger by the moment. On the cell phone’s screen, the menu flicked out of view, replaced by a wobbling view of the rocky ground at his feet.

Perfect. If he hurried back to the house, he might be able to get a glimpse of someone turning into a cat again. What the hell were they, werecats? Was it just some parlor trick? But no, what he had seen defied that explanation. George did not consider himself the sort of fool who would deny the evidence of his own senses just because he saw something fantastic. No, something weird was afoot here and he bet good money Lee would want to keep it quiet.

Stumbling over a tumble of rocks, George turned back up the hill. He had never seen a car there when Dahl brought him there, but he stayed off the road all the same. Sweat soaked his shirt under the arms and where his belt bit into his belly. Even if a few seconds of shaky video — how much could this thing record, anyway? — would not impress an outsider, he thought Lee would see things differently. Secrets, when revealed, always seem worst to the person who’s been keeping them.

Deeper in the trees, a branch snapped loudly. George ducked around the opposite side of a tree and listened. Someone cursed, too low to make out anything more than the sentiment behind it. Paying attention now, George made out more than one set of footfalls crunching through the fallen leaves and brush. George chuckled to himself. They were obviously even less suited to this damn wilderness than he was.

He started walking again, fiddling with the video capture settings on his phone as he went. Something gave under his toe, a hunk of rock worn away by lichen and rainfall trickling through the trees, and his leg slid backwards. His knee smacked the rock and his foot sent a little cascade of shards and pebbles tumbling down. He caught himself with both hands. He started to scramble up when he heard the voices, intense and focused in his direction.

He knew if he ran, he would only attract them more precisely to him and outrunning people in forests was not part of his skill set. So he froze, crouched on the ground, cell phone under one palm, body partially hidden by a tree. He tried to think of what he wore in terms of how well it might blend in with the scenery. If he held still, would he look like a fallen branch? A cluster of rocks?

The voices swelled and retreated. His knee ached and his palms stung and his back and armpits dripped sweat. An eternity later, a bird chirped. Another answered. Ambient noise returned. George eased his stiff body out of its crouch. He picked up his cell phone. A fat spider web of black broke up the display where the heel of his hand had shattered the LCD. He mouthed swear words, too scared of the phantoms moving through the trees to use his voice, and pocketed the phone.

Even if he had dared return to the house now, knowing someone hunted nearby, no phone meant no video. He turned back downhill. He would take his car, obtain breakfast, and come back when it could be called reasonable visiting hours. Even without the video, this was such a particular sort of secret, even the thinnest of allusions would get Lee wound up. And maybe that little bit of pressure was all he needed to push her to sell. Losing the fun of seeing her really squirm would be worth it if he never had to trek through these godforsaken trees again.

—

Heather pulled a pile of mail toward her across the desk. Gray-whiskers dead, kittens born, half the damn house out hunting for one coyote in the California hills. Sorting junk mail and paying bills seemed like the most relaxing thing she could do that morning. She checked that the door was closed then slid open the long drawer in the desk. She wriggled her hand under the address book she had started to build for herself from Mother’s records. She fished out the postcard hidden under it.

It was just junk mail, she knew. Probably everyone in the county had received one. It didn’t mean anything. She stroked a finger over the image on the front: a smiling woman, dark hair disappearing under a tall chef’s hat, flipped a pan over a tall fire, a wave of vegetables and grain caught at the peak of a toss. She did not have to turn the card over to know what it said. She had memorized it moments after it arrived, the lines refreshed in her mind every time she looked at it in secret.

Shelley University offered Heather a degree in culinary arts in just ten months, even while she worked full-time, along with financial aid, a fast-track to the restaurant of her choice, and more testimonials than you could shake your tail at. It listed a phone number to call for more information, but she had not worked up the courage to try. The last time, she had looked too young to even be out of high school and when she could not produce transcripts or a GED, well, no school wanted her when the system said she had been born yesterday.

She slipped the card back into its place and closed the drawer. She sorted the stack of mail in front of her into bills and junk mail and letters, each with its own spot on her desk. Maybe this time it would be different, she thought as she idly flipped through a catalogue offering the “Weirdest Goods on Earth,” which was not much of a selling point in her opinion, especially when weird meant ironic and scatological. She knew Mother had at least marginally authentic records for her stashed away somewhere. If she had access to that, it would change everything. She could go to school and learn to be a real chef.

Her hands stilled in their sorting as her eyes lost their focus. Working on the other side of those double doors for the first time. Maybe she could even start her own restaurant one day, right here by the House. She imagined fanciful names for her new restaurant, names for cafés and sushi bars and steak houses. She shook herself out of the daydream, but a little smile stayed on her lips. She opened each bill with a smile, wrote out the due date with a grin, and noted the balance due with a giggle.

She lifted a rubber band-bound stack from a basket and pulled off the band. The new bills were sorted into the older ones, all in order of the date they were due. She bound them up again and set them aside. On the opposite corner of her desk, the box for all the mail directed to Carlisle waited for his attention. Carlisle liked to keep those alphabetized, which Heather thought was taking organization just a bit too far, but he got his fur in a mat if she just tossed them in.

Her smile faded when she found an envelope between M, Marcel, and O, Olive, from AmeriCard Platinum. It had not been opened. With a wince, she ran the letter opener along the fold and tore out the contents.

“Well, shit.” She rubbed her gritty, aching eyes. Two weeks past due. She would have to go into town and phone in a payment before they imposed whatever punishment they used on late customers. Fees or broken knee caps, increased interest rates or indentured servitude. All much the same thing.

She thought of the day’s score again: dead cat, hurt kid, and late bill. That was three bad things for the day, outweighed by just a new kitten being born. Maybe that meant she had met her quota, she thought as she replaced the letters and stuffed the bill back in its envelope.

—

The funeral procession marched through the trees and down the far slope of the hill. Rune’s feet turned leaden and dragged him to a stop at the edge. The procession was somber and raucous by turns — crying and laughing and talking and singing, the cats mourned and celebrated their illustrious dead without restraint. Rune’s breath came fast and hard and he felt pinpricks of sweat spring up all over. People streamed around Rune, bumping into him. He could not take another step.

When he returned to the House after… after leaving Caroline, he had one intense catnip binge, during which he first encountered the specter of his wife which would haunt him for another eight years. The catnip offered no solace, only disguise; she could not find him if he never again walked the earth as a human. And if she could not find him, he need not face his own self-loathing. Even now, birds chirping and the promise of new things to eat and explore could not tempt him an inch farther from the house.

Something warm curled over his clenched hand. In the bright sun, he shivered. Heather hovered near his shoulder. “You don’t have to go,” she said.

“I want to show respect. I want…”

Heather curled her arm around his, linking them at the elbow. When she stepped, he followed. At the very end of the procession, behind the mothers with their armfuls of kittens and the dancing children and the cats so old they might join the ranks of the dead at any moment, Rune and Heather walked arm-in-arm like an old couple, taking their time.

The woods had grown only a little in the decade and change since he had last walked the paths there. This year had been damp, so toadstools sprouted in abundance and the smell of leaf mold rose heavy behind their footsteps. He realized they walked faster now. Even so, the last of the procession disappeared beyond the curve of the hill. Brush began to fill in the spaces between trees and their path narrowed to a gap between knee-high walls of gray-green foliage.

“I haven’t been this far either,” Heather said suddenly. “Mother’s buried out here.”

“I didn’t go then either,” Rune confessed. They walked over the peak of the hill and the valley opened up below them. Spines of pine trees and clouds of oak rolled away in dense ranks. The valley did not belong to them, but the rest of the hill did, just until you reached the bottom. The path opened up again, deliberate this time, and twisted around the ribs of the hill. It ended in a long terrace carved into the hill, back when such work was done with dynamite and shovels and life. The graveyard.

Three hundred years of cats were buried here, dating back to when California was little more than a fever dream of gold in the minds of Europeans. A house had come later, but the House was their home in this part of the world even then. They had come on the ships of earlier explorers. Sometimes they were the explorers themselves. They had come up from the high deserts of South America and from stranger places still. This was where they ended.

The party was in full swing down below them. Sarna had already been lowered into her grave and covered with respect, but little ceremony. The living needed the funeral more than the dead. Rune and Heather lingered at the edges of the crowd where those who knew her best told the story of Sarna’s life in wild theatrics.

Heather crouched by a grave marker laid flat into the ground. The letters, struck from black stone, crumbled into each other until the name they shaped was a long blob of paler stone. “I should see her. Finally.” She stood up. “Come with me?”

Rune slipped his arm through hers. “We’ll both pay our respects.” He could not longer tell who led whom, but they walked forward just the same.

—

Rune’s voice seemed to echo up to Heather through the sink drain. “Hand me the glue.”

She passed the slightly rusty container of glue to him through the cupboard door then peered into the gloom to watch him work. Curled partly on his side, he daubed the brush around the exposed end of the pipe. “Wrench,” he said then twisted the pipe into place. He tightened it with the wrench, gave it a tug to check that it held, and slid out from the emptied cupboard.

“Good to go?” Heather asked. She picked up a package of toilet paper and, when Rune nodded, pushed it back into the cupboard. Spare towels and soaps followed, all repackaged after the leak had slowly soaked them. “Is there anything you don’t know how to do?”

“Fixing a leaky pipe hardly makes me a jack-of-all-trades,” Rune said as he turned out the light behind them. “What’s the next test?”

“I could use help on the–” There was a knock at the door. “Hold that thought. I’ll go see who it is.”

“Expecting someone?”

“No and uninvited guests will pitch me straight over the edge today.”

“Maybe it’s just Dopple back again,” Rune said, but she saw him disappear down the hall nonetheless.

On the list of unexpected guests, if she had to contend with them at all, George Ellison was the absolute dead last one she wanted to see standing on their doorstep. “Yes?”

“Miss Lee, you’ll have to forgive me for stopping by unannounced like this. You are rather difficult to contact though.”

“What can I do for you?” Heather made no motion to let him in the door. If he thought for one minute he was walking into her home, he had another thing coming, she thought with a fierce swell of protective pride. He could intimidate her all her wanted in some lawyer’s office, but this was her home. Nobody messed with the Queen.

“I hoped you had an answer for me about taking this place off your hands.” He leaned on the door frame with a hand curled around it; she could not close the door without shutting his hand in it.

“If that’s the case, then you’re in luck,” Heather said. She jutted her chin out and stood up straight so that she could look him in the eye as he slouched. “I have no intention of selling the house. Thank you for your interest, but I don’t think we’ll need to have any further dealings.”

The man smiled slowly. It was not a good look. “I thought you might feel that way. But I think it would be in your best interest to make a home somewhere else. Somewhere a little better suited to your lifestyle.” He leaned in more so that, when Heather did not back away, his breath ghosted across her face, smelling of burnt coffee. “Someplace that allows pets, you know? Like cats?”

Heather was too paralyzed to pull away, so she just stood her ground. He knew. Somehow, he knew. Absolutely knew.

The first thing to get through to her was Rune’s smell, clean and dark and faintly chemical from the glue today. His arm curled around her waist so he could squeeze into the doorway as well. “Good morning, sir,” he said and extended a hand past her. “I don’t believe we’ve met. Ron Rutherford. I’m Heather’s boyfriend.”

Ellison recoiled from the door even as he shook Rune’s hand. “Pleasure. Heather and I were just discussing business.”

Heather looked over her shoulder to watch Rune’s face. It was one part gruff blue-collar guy, two parts Tom Sawyer-esque charmer. “It’s much too early in the morning for business. Why don’t you join us for coffee?”

“Thank you,” Ellison said as he backed away from the door. “I have a business to run, even at this hour.” He looked like he wanted to say something more to Heather, make another sly reference to whatever he had learned about them, but his eyes flicked involuntarily to Rune and he turned back to his car without a word.

The door shut with a tiny snick. Heather sagged against it. She held on to Rune’s hand when it slid away from her waist. “He knows,” she said with a hopeless shrug.

“I heard. We may have to do something about that.” He leaned against the door, facing her, and folded their hands across her stomach.

“I’m glad you were listening in. What did you do to drive him off?”

Rune grunted. “Men like him bully women, but they’re scared to death of other men. He’s nothing but a coward.” He laughed. “I haven’t used that name in a while.”

Heather looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Boyfriend?”

He blushed under his stubble. “Well, that too. Hell of a morning though, huh?”

“I don’t think I can take another one like it,” Heather agreed, but she thought maybe, with the warm weight of their hands against her, she might be wrong about that.

—

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