The Crucio was only in with Terry for seventeen minutes, but it was enough. Terry slammed out to put the tea kettle on; through the open door I could just hear Dante sitting at the desk making phone calls. They were assembling the Council. I hopped off Devon’s lap as he got up to help prepare things.

This should be good, I thought in anticipation, but in sad reality it was a huge letdown. After five hours of arguing, the status remained quo. The Crucio could go screw; Nova Terra was keeping its hands on the purse for now.

“It’s not like he can give orders. He said so himself,” Terry said with belligerent defensiveness.

“But it’s not like His Lordship goes about making timid suggestions either,” pointed out Dante in a weary tone. Terry had gone so far as to accuse him of supporting the engineering solution because his father was the head of the firm with the most attractive bid. He apologized for it almost as soon as it was out of his mouth, but Dante had had enough at that point and had snapped that it was that level of administrative reasoning that made him the fine archimago he was. The room had hunkered down and gone very small, and three people at the table noticed my dismay and reassured me with their outer souls–reassuring themselves at the same time; I felt a little squozled from the simultaneous pressure.

Pharaoh was there, of course, and was what I’d never seen in him before: what Meeze called “batshit furious.” He told Terry all about himself in terms of his utter inability to understand that sorcery was the lifeblood underpinning Contract, and mocked his stupidity over the basic equation of the more sorcerers playing at being steel girders, the fewer sorcerers available to, say, administer a precisely-delivered microstroke to somebody who’d seen some clumsy ass bite their neighbor in full daylight. The room was also very quiet for this, but the best/worst part was when Pharaoh did what the Art of Rhetoric calls descending to ad hominem, meaning he made it personal, and said that if Terry really cared about Nova Terra’s resources, he wouldn’t have sucked so many of them down on his trip to the pen.

Pharaoh was very angry. He was out of his chair, poised to take it right back. Problem was, Terry didn’t know even as much about Pharaoh’s personal life as I did, so he had no material. It was probably just as well: Terry carried an illegal gun (which was on Sasha’s long list of grievances), just to be a badass, and practiced with it at the range to the Lions’ discomfort–but one rainy afternoon Pharaoh had told me a little about his life before Nova Terra. He had been the District Sorcerer of Badlands, meaning the deserty cowboy places, and had laid out three would be gunslingers in those canyons.

So what Terry did instead was accuse him of being lazy, and if there was a shortage of sorcery, it was up to the District Sorcerer to make good. Pharaoh called him a — (just that, meaning he opened his mouth and raised a finger, but nothing came out, because his brain was in gear despite his temper) and gated out in a huff. Good thing I was hiding in back of the TV instead of on his knitting bag.

All in all, it was a nasty meeting, and I predicted it would take a lot of soaking in the tub for people to get over it.

Pharaoh gated back in later on that evening. Terry was down in the tub ignoring the fact that Sasha had gone back to work so as to ignore him, and I suspected at least half the Council were having a post-meeting venting session over at Dante’s. I had better ears and a sharper outer soul than the cubs, who had caught the zeitgeist and had been quarreling over what to watch on TV all night, so I padded into the study.

“Ah, good; I was wondering how to get your attention. His Nibs is in the tub, yes? Anybody else home?”

“Devon. Joel.”

“Joel?” My best pronunciation of “Joel” and the Cat for “cat pan” were lamentably close. I nodded.

“Good.” He tossed off a sorcery which pressed upon my ears until I swallowed and made them pop. It was a silencing spell. The study had one charmed into its door, but Joel had just enough sorcery that he’d notice it being used.

“I just wanted to thank you a hundred times over for having the presence of mind–and unselfishness–to bring the Tarragons up to His Lordship. Of course old Ratty had the answer, he knows all sorts of things–don’t ever call him Ratty, it’s his family nickname–and now I’m in an awkward position.” He sat on the floor across from me, his outer soul in turmoil.

“Can you think of any way to get this information across that won’t either give you away or give me credit for a discovery I didn’t make? Because I can’t.”

I had already wondered about this, but Pharaoh taking credit didn’t bother me at all. It was the way of things, since Puss in Boots and long before that.

“You do it. I approve.”

He smiled, but was still uncomfortable about it, bless his honest soul. I went up to him and rubbed my chin on his, kneading his chest with my forepaws. He snuggled my shoulders.

“It’s nobody’s business what I talk to the Crucio about. Dante at least knows that he and I go back a long way; I’ll just steal your lines and say I decided to bounce the problem off him because he was handy.”

I purred encouragement.

He rubbed my ears. “And then I don’t suppose you have any grand thoughts on how to break it to Lynn.”

I did. “Dante. Friends, man woman friends. Yes?”

“Yeahhh, trouble with that is, it gets a little daytime romance there.” What was wrong with that? I cocked my head.

“Handsome vampire getting to like a lady, has dreadful secret, makes clean breast to lady before falling on one knee. She’s going to expect the falling on one knee part.” I wanted to argue around this, but he had a point. Not Dante, then.

“You!” Then I remembered. “No. Terry. Terry Lynn kittens before.”

“Grad school is hardly kittens, love.”

Damn that unattainable spell. We really needed to work on his vocabulary. “Kittens mating time. Before. Terry tell me. Lynn tell me. New York.” Many cat owners have recorded our saying proper nouns, with detractors saying it was just within our repertoire of yowling, and “N’Yaaahhh’k” indeed was yowly, but he got the drift.

“I’ll be damned! That throws a new light on some weird subtexts I’ve wondered about. There you are then. Eureka, we’ve done it! No, you’ve done it!”

“Crucio,” I pointed out, and he hugged me.

We agreed that it needed to wait a few days until Pharaoh and Terry made it up–which wouldn’t be a big deal, both of them being the sunny temperament type–and then maybe a couple more until the very idea of the Crucio’s input wouldn’t set Terry’s back up as a matter of course. He gated home, and I went back in to the cubs.

They were watching “Buffy” reruns, and as usual arguing about whether or not Angel would have made a good Lion. I thought I’d fast for two days to see Buffy smack down with either Pharaoh or Eamon, who were fighting masters–and toss in a mouse to see it with nebbishy Taillefer Araimfres, Sasha’s assistant, who was not only a fighting master but the one who specialized in those Lions–mostly Todeschlagi–who could fight at extra high speed. So the evening ended in content. I felt very proud of myself.

The next morning was Tuesday, and we had our usual breakfast Council meeting. People were subdued and held themselves down to a barebones recitation of the necessities. They were politer than usual because there was a newbie there, one John Salvatori, who had just come over from Europe to advise on immigration–American Contract was always getting a slow, constant leak from the Old Countries. Salvatori had just been hired on by Knute Riddersley, the Councillor for Culture, who had a bad cold made worse by last night’s bickering, and Knute had sent him on alone today. He was a nondescript older man whose main interest for me was that “Salvatori” notwithstanding, he was a Todeschlagi Grail, the first I’d met other than Lynn (and the Kaiser and Kaiserin). Presumably they got rented out for other things than as blood donors and sex slaves.

Tuesdays had become extra special because Lynn had taken to coming over in the afternoon to work on her dissertation in the peace and quiet of the huge mahogany dining room. If I were there, she would make occasional comments to me, which was how I was beginning to learn a lot of otherwise useless information about the Other in Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Terry pretended to her that the Council meetings all had to do with the charitable foundation that handled the bulk of his fortune, and so she thought nothing of them all trailing out as she came in, completely ignorant of the fact that Devon had called out, “Ia tseradiae!” before letting her through the door.

Salvatori gave her a sort of fish-eyed look as he passed her, which worried me, until I recalled that the Shield of Adamant protected her from other normal Toadies as well. Unless they were master sorcerers, I reminded myself. But this guy didn’t give off the sorc vibe–and if he were a sorcerer, he would have had to check in with Pharaoh’s office as part of his own immigration, and I doubted Pharaoh would have then just let him loose on the Council. I put the fish-eye down to either sizism or racism–as did Lynn, whose eyes narrowed as she set up her computer.

But something about her seemed to niggle at Salvatori; as he left, I heard him ask Dante who she was. An old friend of the archimago’s, he was told, and he left it at that; but I still made a note to try to talk to Pharaoh about it next chance I got.

Lynn settled down with her laptop and a back-breaking stack of very old books, and I curled up to kick around my favorite catnip mouse, which was the one Pharaoh had made for me when I’d gotten spayed. There was quiet in the house for several hours.

I must have dozed off in a happy catnip haze, because I was awakened by the doorbell. It was Salvatori, who told Joel he was missing a glove. He popped his head into the dining room, but instead of doing anything sensible such as returning to his seat, or so much as asking Lynn if she’d seen it, he opened a slick-looking cell phone and said, “Ja, sie ist hier.” In a moment, I felt two massive presences gate onto the doorstep.

Uh oh. My German was pretty much limited to “Ja wohl, Herr Commandant,” but I didn’t like this at all. Joel opened the door and cried out in pain at once. There wasn’t much of a scuffle, and I snarled at the bullies who had taken out their own little brother while invading his post. Or could these Lions be held to any standards at all? They stood admiring the dining room; I recognized the sorcerer who had brought Hans into the party.

Lynn had heard Joel cry out–more so, she had pinged it, whether she had the vocabulary to say as much or not. She was standing at the table, pale with fear.

“Who are you? Why, you’re Lions–no, you can’t be Lions,” she said, sounding the disgust I felt. “Is Joel all right? What do you want?”

“We are the Lions of the Kaiser of Todeschlag, who wishes very much to make your acquaintance. It would seem to be several years overdue. Did you really think you could hide forever?” the non-sorc said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The non-sorc gave a brutal laugh.

“So you say.” (The bastard could ping her truth as well as I could.) “And if it turns out that you are just some poor a’thanila left homeless because you were invisible, it will go better for you. But not for the Archimago of Nova Terra, hiding you here in his very house. The Kaiser is furious. Come along, meine Frau.”

“But what about–” Lynn was smart enough to bite the word “Rita” off in time, although in truth the goons wouldn’t have dared to lay a finger on a Chattie–or would have packed her off with a grovel as soon as they’d run her DNA for themselves and found out that she was a daughter of the ruling house.

No such protections for Lynn; no relatives had turned up for her at all–which, Sasha said, probably meant that whoever had dumped her on a doorstep hadn’t meant to be found afterward. The irony was that they might well be nobility: it took pull to stay out of the Chattie database.

In fact, I was the only protection Lynn had, and I opted to freeze like a bunny. I knew my claws and teeth were useless against thugs who could immobilize little Joel with a couple of blows. Besides, somebody had to tell Pharaoh what had happened!

But to my horror, the sorcerer stepped forward and scooped me up. I was too far in shock to protest, holding myself limp and wide-eyed in his arms. Did he know cats were sentient and meant to remove the only witness? I began to struggle furiously, but only for a moment, as he held me away with the spell Meeze had used on Duke that long-ago afternoon: I fought against empty air. Had I survived the Roamans’ closet, only to come to this?

Lynn gasped in shock at seeing me so suspended. Tears filled her voice. “Oh my God! Please, put her down! Don’t hurt her! I’ll come quietly.”

The sorcerer grinned. “I know you will. But she will too. The Kaiser is on new medication, and he has given the Kaiserin permission for a cat. It is only fitting that one she so admired be her own now. It will make a point with the archimago; he will feel a little of the sting of having somebody steal what is his own.” He leaned over and put my mouse in his pocket.

There was the cold; the song of Bast in the utmost distance did nothing to warm that. When it was over a few seconds later, I felt myself dropped to the floor. I raced to Lynn, who gathered me in her arms, sobbing. We and the two Lions were in a well-appointed room looking out over a strange city. I recognized the tall needle in the skyline from a documentary.

We were in Berlin.

Thanksgiving came and went. My stitches fell out by themselves–well, ok, maybe with a little help from my teeth, but by then they had done their job and I was right as rain, and back to screaming the occasional curse word at Duke as he passed by in the street. The caulk in the kitchen stopped that mouse incursion, but I was poised; moreover, I was trying to figure out how to carry the war up to the attic.

People still went back and forth and up and down about the Lynn/Rita/a’thanila situation, but nothing got done–other, that is, than that they became good if awkward friends of the household. Lynn even got up the nerve to bare all in the tub in the basement, the masculine beauties of Lion Quartermain, et al. notwithstanding. True, at first she chickened out and hid in the laundry room, but then Sasha came home and stripped in front of her, pointing out that bodies were bodies, and friends didn’t mind much what other friends came packed in. This shameless play of the castration card did the trick, and now Lynn just threw small objects at Meeze, who teased her about her harem. (Seeing as the feistiest Lions got was marital chastity, it wasn’t much of a harem. Lynn privately informed me that she got as much action as I did.)

After a while, the political snarl our dai’yadi was always in got tired of the Tarragon situation and began to focus on how to pressure Chatte’d’garcon into policing a new-fangled Web entity called Bookface or Facecrooks or Spacebook or something, which had been born that spring at about the same time I was, and which the local college kids were going nuts over. Terry was on the thing, and kept insisting that it had mammoth potential to Change The World As We Knew It, but Chattie wasn’t listening, despite his increasing franticness over its apparently endless possibilities for leaking information the Th’nashi would rather keep secret. Chatte’d’garcon was happy enough to keep an eye on the world’s email, and I suspected that not getting caught at that by other people doing the same thing was maxing them out as it was. Or at least that’s what they complained about. In other words, business as usual.

Or at least it was business as usual, until one December afternoon Eamon Davenant came in with a peculiar look on his face and outer soul. He tapped at the door to Terry’s study, where Terry was chatting on Friendnook and I was sleeping on the windowseat, secure in a nest I had made from an old afghan. Terry sang, “Come in!” and Eamon did. As a rule, he was pale for a Knightsblood-Firenzi; most of them favored their Italian parents, but Eamon’s mother was whispered to be the Queen of the Assassins and a Knightsblood princess and I guess her genes had more mojo. They showed now with all claws–there wasn’t a drop of blood in his face.

Terry whistled. “Look like you saw a ghost, man. What’s wrong?” His outer soul reached out and did the equivalent of putting an arm around his shoulder; to my surprise the undemonstrative Eamon squeezed back for a second.

His Irish brogue was thicker than usual. “I did, sure as I stand here, and talked to one too. Well, not a proper ghost what’s dead and gone. But it was fey, all the same. My g’nah is sprained from feeling after it and not getting anywhere.”

He went to the wet bar and poured himself a shot of whiskey. “I was walking over here as I usually do, and the light was casting my shadow before me on the bricks. And then out of nowhere came a great big shadow, swallowing mine, the shadow of a tall man. But there was not a soul to be pinged up and down the street.” He downed the shot. “Made all my hair stand on end, I tell you. I had no idea what I’d be facing when I turned around, but I felt a fool, as the last thing I expected should have been the first in my mind. It was the Crucio.”

“The Crucio! What did he mean by it? What did he want?”

Eamon gave a shaky laugh. “You, man. He wants to talk to you. Ever so nice about it. But firm. Said he had just been over at the Pit, and was enjoying a walk in the neighborhood. Said he’d always liked university towns. Sounded downright sad that he’d never gotten to go himself. But he recognized me as being Sean’s Prince Consort, and knew that I served on Nova Terra’s Council. And would I please ask the archimago to be at home to him in about two hours. Then he got a call, apologized like a gentleman, and gated out. I tell you, I was afraid people were seeing me talk to myself and the thin air, because the only bit of me that knew he was there was my eyes. And hardly my ears–his voice, yes, but nary a heartbeat.”

I too had noticed the Crucio’s lack of normal body noises. I guessed it would be considered not the thing for his tummy to rumble in the middle of an audience of state. I was willing to bet my ears that he didn’t fart. Which must get uncomfortable, I thought.

Terry was turning even paler than Eamon. “I haven’t seen the Crucio in the three years since he anointed me as archimago, and that’s suited me fine. Did he give any hints about what he wanted?”

Eamon gave him a sharp look, his self-possession returned. “If he’d been touring the Pit, I’m betting that has something to do with it. Pharaoh has been bitching about the trouble it is, keeping all those sorcerers on one job.”

“Mm,” said Terry. “Don’t know what he expects out of me. It’s not as if I can roll up my sleeves and pitch in.”

Eamon said nothing and his face did not move, but I caught a whiff of his outer soul’s–contempt, I must say to be honest. I knew why. Even I knew that Terry had the power to make the sorcerer version of the Pit stop; he was just intimidated by the Nesh’vai, the Congress-like body of power-grabbers who sneered at him as a weak archimago without the stones to scruff them into shape. Their lack of respect only grew worse the more he knuckled under to their bullying. It was a constant low-grade gripe of Sasha’s, who had once volunteered to me that it would be nice if he respected the person he slept with.

Gay marriage had been legalized in Massachusetts that spring, and although as Lions Eamon and Sean had been claiming themselves to be happy enough that the Order recognized their relationship, they had dropped everything and pulled out all the stops to have a massive wedding the week after the law was signed. Just as heterosexual weddings made certain of their acquaintance fidgety, Eamon and Sean’s had inspired an outbreak of no eye contact, working late and a lack of talking about it in our house.

Although part of me loathed the idea of gossiping about my daddies, part of me yearned for the ability to just curl up in Pharaoh’s lap and get his full take on their relationship. I was afraid that they lacked tenderness–but somehow I couldn’t see them spending such on other men. Mainstream TV was still tiptoeing around gay relationships as anything other than a curiosity or subject for rather tedious humor, so I had no source of advice whatsoever. It made me worry.

But this had nothing to do with the impending visit of the Crucio. I hoped, oh how I hoped, he’d have a few minutes for me!

Terry twiddled about a pencil. “So what do I do, run around and make sure the house is tidy?” he asked in irritation.

Eamon shrugged. “You might try getting out your file on the Pit and running over the arguments supporting your decisions to keep the status quo. Other than that, maybe do your deep breathing exercises. Either way, he didn’t imply in the slightest that he needed my presence, so I’m out of here.” He rinsed out his glass, and left.

“Crap,” said Terry to the mid-air. He then burst into a flurry of purposeful-looking activity: opening drawers and getting out folders, opening files on his computer, and flipping through his Rolodex. After about twenty minutes of frantic mumbling, he struck himself on the forehead, which meant that he had forgotten to do something in a spasm of stupidity, and dialed up Dante. They had a long conversation, which started in him indeed running over those arguments for knuckling under to the Nesh’vai, morphed into Terry fretting in free-form anxiety while Dante presumably said calming things, and ended in their agreeing that Dante himself should be there, both as Privy Councillor, and as “somebody who can keep me from punching the officious so-and-so in the mouth.”

He then paced back and forth for a while before slamming out to wait for Dante on the lawn, then slamming back in to get his jacket to do it in, and returning to pace back and forth in the driveway.

“He seems very agitated,” the Crucio remarked in a mild tone.

I told my fur to lie back down where it belonged and turned from the window. The Crucio had done the expected thing–well, what I had expected–and used the gatepoint beside the study door. He smiled at me in genuine pleasure.

“How are you, Eureka?”

“Very well, thank you sir. Sir! We may only have a minute, and it’s been fretting me. We’re trying to keep a Grail hidden from the Kaiser. Do you have any advice you could maybe pass on to Pharaoh?”

The Crucio’s impassive face cracked into a brief fit of misery. “I can’t get involved in House politics, no matter how odious, unless things get so out of hand that Contract itself is threatened. How has this fellow escaped detection so far?”

I explained, “She’s a she, and she has an extra layer of inhibited q thinggummies, and was raised by humani. She’s middle-aged and has had a very hard life. We’re afraid she’ll go nuts if she even finds out she’s Th’nashi, let alone that she’s a Grail slave.” I was about to go into the Rita part when he raised an autocratic hand.

“By inhibited q thinggummies, do you mean the Shield of Adamant?”

“Yeah. She’s a f’something. It’s rare and special.”

“Fy’foxi–Hang on.” Outside, Dante had shown up, and the two of them were about to enter the study.

Terry opened the door and started. “My Lord!”

The Crucio bowed, his heavy silk jacket making a swirl. It looked as if it should smell nice of something exotic, but of course, it didn’t.

“Your Grace, would you do me the rare favor of according me a few moments of privacy? I have unfinished business that I fell into of a sudden.” I could tell that Terry was finishing the sentence “while waiting for you, you numbskull” by his blush. He nodded and closed the door.

The Crucio turned back to me and mewed in satisfaction, as if he put archimagi on hold for cats every day. (Maybe he did. He was the Crucio.) “Fy’foxi, I was saying. I’m surprised at Pharaoh; surprised at Lion Davenant. My brothers here in the Order are deficient in their Stricture. Because of their historical espionage potential, fy’foxi in fact belong to the Order. It’s still Grail slavery, damn it all, but seeing as it keeps those rare Toadies away from the Kaiser’s whim, nobody complains very loudly. So your lady is safe enough from her House. As for the question remaining as to how to explain to her that she’s an alien vampire to begin with, that I can’t help you with.” He flattened his hands in front of his human ears in a shrug.

I leaped off the windowsill and rubbed his boots in ecstasy before remembering myself. He laughed, and his outer soul played this nifty little counterpoint with his hands that tickled my belly while he rubbed my throat.

“If only the rest of today’s business in Nova Terra would be solved so easily, I’d go home and count it an excellent day. I’ll be sure to give Pharaoh all the details, and if I have any general ideas on how to bring her home, I’ll toss those in. She must be brought home, though. Half of that hard life of trauma has been thinking she’s mad when she’s just had g’nah; you can count on it.”

He straightened up and sighed. “Eureka, I really will try to check in with you time and again. You’ve done a good deed today. But I believe in playing fair with my archimagi, and unless you’re a member of the Council of Nova Terra, it really wouldn’t be appropriate for you to be at this interview. Especially if you decide to make me laugh or something.” His eyes twinkled, and I sighed. I hated to say goodbye to him. But when he opened the door so the Archimago of Nova Terra could re-enter his own study, I slipped out, feeling mournful and abandoned.

Most of the time I was sufficient unto myself, pursuing my own thoughts and living my own life. But sometimes, no doubt about it, I was lonely. Even these rare conversations with other species were big treats. Did we need another cat? Noooo! “Don’t wanna share,” I muttered to myself. I went into the guardroom next to the office.  Devon and Joel were having a spirited argument about why Joel couldn’t call his girlfriend and tell her he’d just seen the Crucio. Devon made a lap for me without even thinking about it, and I jumped into warmth.

But was it enough?

Matt had let a small torrent of people in. One of them, a middle aged woman with a nice smile, said something appreciative in German that sounded like some version of “Ooh, look at the pretty kitty,” and I preened myself up to my full height and came over to say hello.

“Ach du lieber, nein!” snapped a monster of a Lion. He was the biggest human I had ever seen—as tall as near-seven-foot Meeze and built like Dante wearing a Crucio for a suit. Some of it might have been fat, but I wouldn’t be the one to bring the topic up. He interposed himself between me and the rest of the party. My admirer blushed and mouthed something that I took for “I’m sorry!” at me.

“It’s all right, Rudolf,” said a soft-voiced man from somewhere down near his elbow. “I have taken my pills.”

By this time, my daddies had come down behind me and Sasha was glowering up at the cat hater, who said something very fast and nasty-sounding in German.

“Das wird genug sein, Rudolf!” The short man’s voice was no longer soft. Rudolf subsided, glaring at me.

The Kaiser (who else could it be?) extended his hand to Terry and then to Sasha. “My apologies for Lion Hofmann. I have a little allergy to the kittycats. Nothing life-threatening, I assure you, and I have taken my antihistamines. I am Wilhelm von Falkenrath and this is my wife Steffi. We are the Kaiser and Kaiserin of Todeschlag. And you are?” I noticed he didn’t introduce the other four people, but that was okay, because they were all biggish Lions who looked like they wanted to understudy for Schwarzenegger or Van Damme.  One was indeed also giving off sorcerer vibes–these were the security Meeze had complained of the prior evening. They made Terry’s “staff” of slender six-foot twenty-year-olds look like a joke. I was almost sorry we didn’t have Privy Councillor Dante on hand to bulk up our impressiveness.

“Terence Riverly, Archimago of Nova Terra, and my Grail Consort, Alexei John, N’vai’tt Van der Linden.” N’vai’tts were the Grails and humani in the Order; Sasha very rarely went by the title, unless it was required by fancy Th’nashi party rules, like this.

Sasha added, “And this is Eureka. We’re sorry; we weren’t told you were allergic. Come on, girlfriend. Basement for you.” This was the usual drill in cases like this. He gathered me up against the Kaiserin’s protests.

Not good enough for Rudolf. “But the air, the air is the same, yes?”

“We’ve just vacuumed,” said Terry, waving a hand about the place in a vague manner.

“We are accustomed to people asking about permission for their animals,” said Rudolf, adding “sir,” at a glare from the Kaiser. “I cannot see why the animal cannot be put outside for the evening.”

Before Sasha could begin an adequate reply to “permission,” let alone the rest of it, the sorcerer Lion broke in.

“If you will have your animal, then we will have ours.” He went back outside and came back with what had to be the hugest Doberman on the planet.

“This is our little Hans. He will be only too delighted to spend the party with us, and play together with your enchanting cat.” He smiled, flashing needle-like fangs which seemed nastier than any I’d seen so far–sure, Meeze had the cobra-like Todeschlagi fangs, and yeah, he used them as occasional punctuation–all the Fangs did–but this was the first hint of Boris Karloff I’d gotten. I shivered.

For reasons known only to Bast, most dogs bred to guard are big, sloppy puppykins when not in immediate kill mode, and Hans was no exception. After a fast sniff to catalog my daddies and Matt, who was still hovering, Hans stepped forward and got a big slobbery inhale of myself. I didn’t say any of the things that came first to mind, like “Get one drop of your saliva on me and your nose will need a slipcover,” because in Cat all that stuff comes out in hisses, and I didn’t want to give the Toadies the satisfaction. Instead, I gave him a feather-light tap on the nose, letting my paw linger for a moment, and said sotto voce, “Note the velvet? It’s deliberate. You play nice, I’ll play nice.” None of the humans detected anything other than the playful kitty batting at the puppy, which was my plan.

“Alles es gut!” he panted. “I only chase the cats to amuse my humans. It gives me little pleasure to frighten somebody so much smaller than myself. It is too much, how you say, like playing cat and mouse.” He sat back and his eyes twinkled. A smartass. Could be worse. Much worse.

“Touché,” I admitted. “That said, if you want to put the fear of all the gods into any of our mice, feel free. I’ve been under the weather for the last couple of days.”

He cocked his head. “I am sorry to hear it, Fraulein.” Very polite, very sincere. Put the Kaiser and his Lions on the miles-long list of people who should take lessons from their dogs. I did wonder whose foot had come down and kept him from being a bully, though, and then I caught Hans giving the Kaiserin an adoring look and figured it out.

Sasha put me down with slow, deliberate care. I went up to Hans and sniffed noses. “Let’s not give your men the show they want, hmm? Your mistress-lady seems a very good sort indeed.”

“She is the sun, the moon, and the Hunter, and I am the star at her heel,” he panted. “Would you let her caress you? She would love a cat beyond all things.” He sounded sad at not being as big a universe to her as she was to him.

I went up and gave the big love to the Kaiserin’s ankles and she laughed like a happy little child. But, “Steffi, liebschen, if you touch the cat you will have to wash your hands with the special soap,” hummed her husband; and so she just stood there with shining eyes.

“He’s a treat and a half,” I remarked to Hans. We strolled into the living room, him sniffing for all he was worth and chuckling at the faces of a few of Terry’s Councillors and other Th’nashi Beautiful People, all of whom were invited as camouflage for what was really no more than a high-level butt sniff.

“Ugh! Do not get me started. I don’t know why she married him. She gave up her cat to her roommates, but cried so at night that they got her a puppy. Me, obviously. I am four now, but I feel as if I were fifteen.”

“They mistreat you?” I gasped.

He shrugged with his big nose. “I cannot say mistreat. But there is a love of power. They expect me to play Big Mean Dog. It gets tiring. Wilhelm, he’s maybe not so bad in and of himself. The cat allergy is really pretty severe–say, before we leave, would you be so kind as to roll all over me? If they were stupid enough to try a play like this, it would only serve them right. They will have to give me a bath.”

I choked with laughter. “You’ve got yourself a deal. But you were saying?”

“It’s not so much Wilhelm as the structure of the House. You know that Todeschlag had allied itself with the Nazis, yes?”

“I’d heard something about that somewhere. And that something dreadful was done after the War to punish them, but I don’t know the details.”

He chortled without humor, a low woof that made some of the humans uneasy. “Chatte’d’garcon set up the world’s biggest spay/neuter clinic. For humans. And hanged people by mouthfuls. It set out to eradicate the House. To punish genocide, Contract committed genocide itself.”

I gasped. This didn’t sound like the bumbling Contract I knew. Or thought I knew.

He nodded. “By the time they figured out what I must say was an obvious moral issue, it was almost too late. Today there are less than 300 Todeschlagi left, and that number has grown–almost everybody in the House who survived the onslaught intact bred in a frenzy. It’s a good thing that the genes tend to be dominant. The only House more or less sure of taking the litter away from us is the Chatties themselves.”

Hence Rita, I thought. Aloud, I said, “I would think this would make Todeschlag a little less ready to offend.”

He laughed again. “Ah, but you see, you are thinking in terms of ‘lessons learned.’ The lesson learned was not that ‘You have perpetrated a horror,’ but ‘we are all monsters, it’s just that you got caught at it.’ Or something to that effect. The result is that the House is very defensive, very back-to-back, and they play up the Nazi kitsch purely because it pisses people off. Unfortunately, nice liberal American Th’nashi by and large feel much guilt over what their parents did to the poor Toadies, so the Kaiser is making hay while the sun shines, I heard someone say once. This is just one more night to try to make a little political capital.

“It helps that very few Th’nashi are Jewish,” he ended, with another humorless little bark.

I realized that I was enjoying myself hugely, having a real conversation with another thinking being. It was my first one since meeting the Crucio. I saw that I had an opportunity to myself answer the question that burned in all our heads.

“What about the Grail slavery?” I asked. “Or is that just fluffed up to sound scary?”

He looked sad. “Nein, Fraulein. It is very real. My mistress is one of only fifteen Gralen known to the House. The rest–and there are less than fifty–are all men. She has an invisible leash.”

“But he’s a Grail himself!” I cried. “What does he need her for?”

“Prestige,” he said. “Your two men, do they love each other?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, partly because I didn’t know what the answer was. I opted to return truth for truth. “Sort of. I don’t know. They’ve been together on and off since they were kittens. I know they would die for each other without thinking about it,” I said, realizing that that was truth. “So maybe they do. But I’ll tell you what, Sasha isn’t property. Not even close.”

“Then he is lucky.” His cruel-cut ears twitched. “Steffi wants me. I will do my party tricks now, with a canape on my nose.” He sighed. “What we will not do for love, eh?” He cocked his head. “Pardon me, Fraulein, but I have never had such an edifying conversation with a cat. Do your people love as well?”

Oy. “We do; we’re just . . . different. We also don’t have good places to put canapes,” I added. He laughed, this time from the belly, and trotted off to his mistress. I went to watch. It was quite the thing. He turned into a dog of stone, sitting there for over fifteen boring minutes trying not to look cross-eyed at a piece of garlic sausage that had the poor fellow drooling on the rug. Then he also fell over dead when shot and shook paws with everybody who was brave enough. As dogs go, he was really quite beautiful, and the Kaiserin got many compliments.

He managed to slip away right before they left, though, and true to my word I rolled all over him, even letting him tickle my belly with that huge snout until I giggled.

“He will be sneezing for days now,” Hans said with satisfaction. “He won’t dare to touch her. She will be able to sleep alone.” A dark chill wafted off his outer soul that made me shiver.

“Hans, do you have any humans to talk to?” I asked. I wanted to trust him. He shook his head, looking at me as if I were nuts.

“I’ve taught a nosy sorcerer about a dozen words of Cat,” I explained. Leave the Crucio out of it, I figured. “Anyway, not that I could get it across, but I was wondering: We have found one of your Grails. She’s older than your Steffi, raised among the humani. My people are afraid she’ll go mad if she is brought home. What do you think?”

“Hide her like a bone,” he said with dismal promptitude. “She is a woman. That makes her valuable. Does her father live?”

“I don’t know.”

“He would only be consulted for politeness anyhow. She would belong wholly to Wilhelm. No, she does now–home or not. Is she beautiful? Most of our people are good-looking.”

“I’m bad at that, but I like her face. She has had a hard life, but her outer soul speaks of benevolence.”

He looked sad. “Hide her like a bone.”

“But why? What would Wilhelm do to her? Beat her? She has dark skin; does that matter to your people?”

He wrinkled his muzzle no. “Well, perhaps some of the older people. Not Wilhelm; he’s a controlling bastard, but I have never pinged any racism in him. No, he will not beat her, but he will sell–no, a better word is rent–rent her to one of his Fang lords. For politics. And because he can.”

“You mean he’d just pick this woman out of her life here in America?”

“What is that clever thing you Americans say? In a New York minute. She would be lucky to see the outside of some great house again.”

Steffi von Falkenrath came up and put her hand on his collar and he sprang to attention. She looked over her shoulder and bent down next to me. She buried her hands in my fur and scritched me all over, kissing the top of my head, which for once I didn’t mind. Then she clucked at Hans, who mimicked her kiss with a playful lick, which I didn’t mind as much as I thought I would.

And they all left, first the Todeschlagi, and then the rest of the guests. At last it was the Tarragon conspiracy: Sasha, Terry, Meeze, and Pharaoh. They muttered half-words at each other and all filed down into the basement, stripping out of their tuxes willy-nilly. They all got into the tub and stared at each other through the steam. Then:

“Other than the Cat Hitler guy, they weren’t so bad, I guess,” ventured Terry. There were noises.

Pharaoh said, “And he’s a Grail himself, which might give him some insight. I can’t say that I’ve met any others to ask about. Is the Kaiserin also a Grail, or is she humani, Meeze? I didn’t feel right poking hard.”

“Grail. I’m saying conspicuous consumption there. I’m not Mr. Touchy Feely”–there was a general snort–”but I don’t think there’s any love lost between those two.”

“I concur,” said Pharaoh, when it was clear that the other three were looking at him as being the one with the social observation skills. He turned to me. “Eureka, I certainly hope the poor lady got you alone and got some kitty petting in.” I flirted my ears forward in a yes, and he beamed to himself while the other men laughed at the thought.

He continued. “Beautiful dog, though. Also the Kaiserin’s, note. Now the Big Bad was a devoted dog owner himself, but I get an overall sense of gentleness from her.  I think that if things were left up to her, we’d have no worries. But they’re not. Moreover, I also picked up on some unhappiness, and it might not be purely personal, if you follow me.”

“I wish you’d let me bring Sean into this,” complained Meeze for the jillionth time.

“Maybe later,” Terry said with finality.

To my relief, they decided to keep the Tarragon situation tabled for now. Not as “buried like a bone” as Hans might like, but better than waltzing her up to the von Falkenraths with her pedigree clenched in her teeth and a bow on her head.

We all staggered up to bed far later than I liked. Possibly inspired by the unhappy marriage they had seen, Terry and Sasha did the love-making thing that night. Pharaoh had given me the delicate addendum to Sasha’s story that the criminals had left him enough nerves to be able to enjoy such. Sometimes humans have all the luck. I waited until they were done, then crawled into the spot above Sasha’s pillow where he liked to be able to brush against my purr, and we all fell asleep. I dreamed of being chased by Hans and presented to Steffi as if I were a mouse.

“Sir? Phone.” Devon was perturbed. I burped, glad that my barbecue had come up through my front half. Pharaoh really should patent that tummy-rubbing thing. Terry scowled, but we all were grateful that Contract had given us the evening off while we entertained our a’thanila guests.

Dante was helping Lynn into her sweater, and Rita had already been sent off home with a mass of foil-wrapped leftovers. Terry took the phone Devon handed him and held up a hand, y’rai’ing Dante into a wait-a-minute.

“Oh, hey Meeze. What’s up? . . .Nope, should I care? . . .The what? The WHO?” He sat straight up, eyes like saucers. “Where is he now? What the hell is he doing here? . . . His nephew? Is that for real?” He mouthed something to Sasha that I couldn’t catch, but which made Sasha freeze.

Terry put his hand over the phone. “Dante, swing back when you get Lynn settled.” He y’rai’ed him toward the door. The big blond took the hint.

“Come, Lynn. I’ll pop my head in here later.” They were gone.

As soon as they were out of ping range, Terry went back on the phone. “They were just here. The Tarragons. They went home with Dante.” He looked around and spotted Pharaoh and I curled up on the couch. “Pharaoh’s here. Do you–”

Pharaoh interjected, “Is there something special about our guest I’m not supposed to know about?” He batted his eyes. Terry growled, a real vampire growl caused by his vibrating his hemaepoeita, the little organ under his chest that processed Sasha’s blood every other night or so.

“Never mind, Meeze. Let’s save time and deal him in. Now, he didn’t say he was headed over here, did he? . . . Good. . . . Have a cub sign out a car and drive you over. Pronto, as you say.” He hung up and buried his head in his hands, then looked toward the kitchen, where Joel was doing the dishes, Devon having drawn the short straw to scrub the grill outside. Pharaoh waved a sheet of spell at the door and my ears flattened by reflex. Joel’s little clinks and splashes and humming stopped as if a radio had been turned off. We were soundproof now.

“The Kaiser of Todeschlag just showed up to tour the Pit. He’s in town for the weekend because his nephew is giving a big talk at MIT tomorrow night.” Terry looked at Pharaoh. “This spells out ‘Grail slavery’ for Lynn.”

I could feel the sorcerer’s alarm. “Say not so. She isn’t even home yet–and I gather the idea is to keep it that way?”

Sasha shook his head. “Not only is that cutting into her rights as a Th’nashi, but it’s political suicide if–no, when the Kaiser finds out we’ve been keeping her away from him. Sooner or later the truth comes out. It always does, and I can’t even begin to figure out the ramifications of an archimago being more or less at war with the head of a House.”

Pharaoh said, “Tell Sean McPherson. If Firenzi can protect her–”

“No!” snapped Terry. “That will only complicate things. I won’t have Aria–Lynn, I mean–made into some political toy.”

“She already is, if you’re right about everything. Moreover, she’s being played for a chump. I say we should bring her home–tell her everything–and let her make her own decisions.” Pharaoh’s tone was icy. “This isn’t like our other damsel in distress.” He gestured to me. “We can’t keep two women–and yes, in a very few years Rita will be a woman–locked safe up in the house. And there isn’t any surgery which will rescue them.” He looked at Sasha. “Is it both of them? What House is Rita?”

Sasha shook his head. “I grabbed her glass tonight. We’ll have that answer tomorrow morning.”

Pharaoh said, “I know the very term ‘Grail slavery’ is enough to make one sick. But does anybody know how the Kaiser construes it? How does he treat his Grails?”

Sasha said, “I know he makes the Order and Chatte’d’garcon sign contracts if they use any, say for antivenin production–oh, yes, Toadies secrete both Toxins K and F, remember, and in large quantities. It’s a lot easier to use a Toadie Grail as a donor than a toxic Fang.” I reflected that Terry had probably been lucky that he went to jail that romantic night. If he had bitten Lynn, lacking the natural resistances of Houses Knightsblood, Firenzi, or Todeschlag itself–Terry was House Proinsias, like most Irish Th’nashi–it would have killed him in seconds. Unless he’d happened to be carrying the fragile and expensive antivenin, but somehow that seemed to be too organized an idea for the junkie he’d been at the time.

Terry asked, “Do you know any?”

Sasha shrugged. “Not sure. To paraphrase my role model, I’m a doctor, not a sorcerer. I can’t tell a Todeschlagi Grail from a humani, and neither can you, fancy-ass archimagisterial anointing package notwithstanding. Did you get any hits?” This was to Pharaoh, who had his Lion cell phone/organizer/toy thing out. It was hooked up to the Lion database via technology Chatte’d’garcon hadn’t leaked to the general public yet.

“No, although I can’t swear for my personal contacts. I don’t keep them racially organized,” Pharaoh almost snapped. “You asked, I’m assuming, whether he were coming over here, and were told he’s not, am I right?” Terry nodded. “Well, how about issuing him an official invitation at some time the Tarragons are well out of the picture? Let’s get a feel for the man. And who knows, maybe he’ll be nice enough to bring his Grails with him.”

The back door opened, and when Pharaoh felt the air pressure change, he lifted the corner of his spell. Meeze was heard exchanging pleasantries with the cubs. He had been invited to dinner, but had begged off, claiming “Lion stuff” as Terry put it. Now he poked his head in to the dining room.

“Is this too solemn for me to grab some leftovers? Dining hall had franks and beans tonight. Too gassy for me. I’m running on peanut butter and jelly.”

Terry waved. “Sure, Meeze, go ahead and see what’s left. I sent some of it off with the Tarragons. I think we’re out of ribs, but I did three whole chickens worth too. Lynn asked where the army was, which is cold hard proof she’s never been around Lions before.” The redhead heh’ed, and in a couple of minutes emerged with a plate. Leftovers weren’t encouraged, as enough people were in and out of the huge fridge to make any such confusing in a hurry, so Meeze had also grabbed the tub of potato salad so as to finish its contents. I burped again, reminding myself to just ignore the good smell.

He tucked in as the situation was explained to him. Then he shook his head. “Too risky to have him come here. The best place in Cambridge will be the talk itself. The Kaiser is trying to butter the nephew up to come work for him, so he’ll be there tomorrow night. There’ll be a reception–social schmooze time.”

Terry shook his head. “No. I have my limits, and anybody who knows anything about me will know that I don’t do lectures. It’ll look too suspicious, sailing in with half my court to hear somebody talk about the mating habits of flatfish.”

“Uh, it’s thermodynamics.”

“Even worse.” I turned a giggle into a burp. Like a lot of smart people, Terry worked very hard against anything that seemed remotely intellectual if he thought it might be boring.

The archimago rolled his pale gray eyes. “Why not throw a party here?”

“Because the Tarragons live across the street, and von Falkenrath’s security almost slid something up my royal Firenzi butt this afternoon as it was. I foresee him possibly sending out a team to canvass the surrounding area–and one of them is a very good sorcerer.” Meeze fished out an olive and looked around for me, but Pharaoh fended it off with a hand.

“She has three behind the TV as it is, and is as full as a tick.”

“Which is bad for her system. It’s still not up to full speed. Pharaoh’s been rubbing her tummy for twenty minutes now,” groused Sasha. Thank Bast the man had never had any human offspring. He would never have let them breathe their own air.

“That is the most grotesquely spoiled cat I’ve ever met,” said Meeze. Terry and Sasha both complained in those loud voices that meant they suspected he was right, but I just burped again. The man was only expressing an honest opinion.

I was getting sleepy. I struggled into a sitting position and immediately felt the barbecue shifting southwards. Oh dear. I wanted to hear the end of this conversation, but I might miss some from being in the pan. In fact . . . I slid off Pharaoh’s lap and jogged into the bathroom in the office as quickly as dignity and my creaking midsection would allow.

When I re-emerged, it was a done deal. Dante had come back while I was gone and had taken the news about his new friend’s Th’nashiness in stride. He had good news: He had already made his own dinner party for the next evening between Lynn and the child psychologist. They would be far away from any snooping Todeschlagi. “We were hoping to borrow a cub to watch Rita. She’s too far away from so’fir’aa to worry about, so she can be here in all safety.”

I flicked my ears at Pharaoh in the way I had taught him meant, “define, please.” He complied by muttering something to the knitting which had replaced me in his lap that looked like counting or something innocuous, but in reality sounded loud and clear in my ear.

“So’fir’aa is Th’nashi puberty. You either turn into a Fang–a vampire–or your body starts producing a lot of the hy’fa fragment in your blood, ready to be bitten.” I camouflaged a nod with a yawn to signify I’d gotten the message.

Meeze said, “I’m sure Joel can pitch in.”

“No,” said Terry quickly. “Let’s give poor Joel the night off. Instead, let’s just have some of the gamers on. We can plug the whole bunch into the Nintendo. Or the Playstation, or whatever we have in there.”

“I still think it’s so wrong that a media head like you doesn’t game,” murmured Meeze. I stifled a snicker. The truth was, he had tried a number of times, but was really bad at it.

And so it was. I hid in all my best spots in succession that next day, as the heavy housework crew came by. Sasha sent his tux out to the cleaners. Perhaps the most elaborate preparation was assigning Pharaoh to just happen to run into Lynn in Harvard Square and walk her home, hanging about and chitchatting while she got ready for her dinner with Dante and his friend, and then walking her over there (Dante lived about half a mile away), all so he could shield her with a spell that would “humanify” her to anybody looking. They passed right by the house and it made me blink, I can tell you.

Rita was only too happy to be tucked up with Bart and Matt for the evening. The loo in Terry’s office connected to the guard room on one side, so the visiting dignitary wouldn’t even realize she was there. If he did, he’d be truthfully told that she was being babysat, and if he happened to ask more about it, Terry had enough half-truth on tap to bore the average casual seeker. This included that Rita was House Chatte’d’garcon, of all things—Sasha was vibrating about that. Still on the Official Secrets List was that her blood father was in fact a son of the House itself. His brother was in line to inherit the Headship.

“So we’ve got House politics on top of us anyway,” Terry had sighed when Sasha gave him the news. “I wish there was some way I could get Lynn to confess about stepping out on Lafe so we could begin to take the temperature there—might be the very last straw if this Chattie bastard draws her into another custody battle, this one in Contract.”

“No, that’s the least of our worries. You keep forgetting that you’re the archimago. You can swing in with a decision on that one if it comes to pass. Although God forbid you do one of the things you’re anointed to do.” Sasha was in an evil mood. His assistant, Taillefer Araimfres, was running things at the morgue that evening, and despite poor Dr. Araimfres being excellent at it, Sasha’s greatest character flaw was that he was a lousy boss: a control freak micromanager. A couple of cases were being prepped that night that Sasha had had his own heart set on, which meant he would go in extra early on Monday morning and re-do almost everything Dr. Araimfres had done. I had met this quiet ginger Lion once and had liked him—I could tell he owned a ferret. So I told him in detail that he needed to go get a job where he was appreciated, but all he had done was to give my ears a surreptitious rumple and tell me I was a pretty kitty. Enough to madden one, sometimes.

But instead of grousing back, Terry mumbled that there was that, if it came to it. A bad sign, if he were so worried that he’d consider pulling rank. My daddies tied each others’ bow ties and—unusual thing—gave each other kisses for good luck. Then the doorbell rang and I was off downstairs at a reasonable fraction of my usual speed. We were on!

I awoke to a tantalizing smell and a corresponding grumble in my tummy. Terry had fired up the grill in the back yard and had just laid a slab of love on. I emerged to see who was where.

A familiar ping in the basement encouraged me to use the pan down there–Pharaoh was in the tub, hair done up in a tidy knot on top of his head. He waved, and I flirted my tail, but I didn’t stop to chat–ever since the surgery, when I awakened with a full bladder it was pressing against sore places.

Damn it! I had forgotten, or rather failed to realize, that the pan they’d fixed up in the bedroom had to come from somewhere. I yammered a string of dismayed stupidities at myself, doubling back and whimpering at Pharaoh as I went past. He caught my desperation.

“Want a lift to the loo, m’lady?”

I ran over to him and meowed a loud assent, wiggling a little from paw to paw as I did so. He laughed and put a hand out toward me. There was just an instant where I saw an invisible net springing from his hand. (Yes, I know, but I don’t know how else to put it.) I sniffed the gating smell, and then, oh joy, there I was in the study. But the bathroom door was closed. Lynn Tarragon was in there.

“Hurry u-u-up!” I screamed, my wiggle now a dance. I really didn’t think I could make it up the long flight to the master bedroom. To my surprise and joy she opened the door. I saw that it had been a reach-over, her still being on the pot herself. What a princess! “I would do the same for you any day,” I reassured her, sweet relief filling my souls from inner to outer.

“It’s all good, Eureka. Been there. They moved everything around and it still kinda hates you. It should go back to normal. You’re lucky you don’t have the other problem–some people wake up not being able to go at all. It’s an anesthetic thing.” She sounded so matter-of-fact that I perked up my ears in suspicion.

“Can you speak Cat?” I asked. No answer other than a smile at my questioning purrup. I realized that Lynn just automatically treated everybody with respect and didn’t even talk down to, well, me. It was as if she didn’t know how. A rare gift.

We both finished our business and exited together. I realized that Pharaoh had really screwed up by gating me into Terry’s study with a “tseradi” in the house. I didn’t know how I was going to get this through to him, but at the least he needed to be told it had been a Bad Thing, and I guessed I could get that across. Lynn sort of followed me as I headed off to the basement, there being nobody else in sight and the only person in the yard being Terry singing to himself over the grill. It was something about it being a marvelous night for a moondance–why, that no-good plagiarizing fink! That was the song Duke was singing for me! How did Terry get hold of it? It took me a few minutes to realize that the likely path of plagiarism had gone the other way, Terry not speaking Cat. Bah. Nobody can be trusted these days.

Pharaoh was out of the tub, sitting on one of the redwood benches surrounding it, putting in his contact lenses. He looked up as we both came downstairs. I headed over to him; Lynn froze on the bottom two steps. I realized that they probably didn’t know each other, as the sorcerer hadn’t been there the previous times Lynn had visited. Then I noticed that Pharaoh was naked, and caught on that Lynn at least was embarrassed.

“Oh, ah, hello. Sorry. Just wandering about. Didn’t know there was a tub down here. I’ll be . . .” She turned to go, heat radiating from her skin.

Pharaoh called after her, “Oh no, please don’t go! I don’t mind a bit. I’ll just be a jiff. Give me just one second . . . There!” He blinked to center the contact. He stood up, all grace and Lion muscle, and bowed.

“Pharaoh Hiroshi, Lion Quartermain.” His hair undid itself and tumbled at his feet; he tossed it back over his shoulders as he straightened up. It was black and glossy, catching the highlights from the muted track lights which were echoed on his still-damp skin.

“Lynn Tarragon. I’m a mother–I mean a grad student–I mean, I’m a friend of Terry’s.” Poor Lynn was still dying of embarrassment, her eyes fixed on a spot about two inches above Pharaoh’s head. He grinned, and went over to his clothes, getting dressed quickly but without the slightest fuss. She relaxed a little when his boxer shorts went on, but only a very little.

“How do you know Terry?”

“Ah, um, we had some classes together here at Harvard. I live across the street now.”

Pharaoh put on his wifebeater and looked around for his overshirt, which I had appropriated in an automatic fit of absent-mindedness. “Shoo, Eureka!” I wasn’t shooing, and bit into the soft chambray, hugging it with all paws. It was a game we often played. I wanted to make sure he noticed me.

Lynn noticed him, I think. She kept making these little sounds as he laughed and his muscles flexed while trying to dislodge me. Her outer soul was giving off an impressive amount of embarrassment and what I was breveting as sexual frustration, sketching that theory in based on what I got off the cubs while watching certain music videos.

Saved by the blowhard! I heard Dante Fabrizio come in the front door and call through the house. After a moment, he reached the kitchen and went out onto the patio. Lynn followed him, almost fleeing up the stairs.

“I’ll see you–I mean, I’ll see less of you–I mean, oh dear.” She exited, closing the door at the head of the stairs as if she had trapped a djinn down there. What the what was her problem? I mewed at Pharaoh in frustration. Somebody needed to brief him on this woman; but it looked as if somebody had needed to brief her on him. Was she really such a goody-good as to be that body shy? She had lost every bit of a poise I had thought as much a part of her as her fur–if she’d had proper fur.

“I’m very pretty,” said Pharaoh, complacent. He was braiding his hair into the workaday Lion plait, beads round his neck and both sneakers tied in bows too short to play with. “No, really. Artemisio looks like a guardian angel, and Dante ain’t half bad, but as far as naked goes, I win hands down around here. It makes the whole thing ever so much worse when the unexpected naked person is really pretty. You instinctively want to admire them, but that would be impolite. And the vibe from that poor dear is that she hasn’t been laid in months. Neither have I, of course, but she hasn’t got a vow of chastity to blame it on. What a pity; she looks like quite the armful. What do you think of her?” He picked me up and we headed upstairs, pausing in our now usual spot.

“The question is, what do you think of her? Gating me like that. I could have been the death of that woman. Or she–”

He raised a hand. “You seem upset. Oh dear, did I gate you smack into her?”

“Yes!” Over the months I’d taught him about fifteen key words in a register he could handle.

“Oh dear.  Did she scream? No. Did she realize what she was seeing?”

She hadn’t seen me gate, per se. But it had been close. I settled for biting his wrist.

“I should be more careful?”

“Yes!”

“But . . . Here’s an odd question, Eureka. An occasional cat can pick up wavelengths that we can’t, so you just might know this one. Is this lady Th’nashi?”

“YES!” I yowled. Hell with their conspiracy. Then I did a double-take. He was a master sorcerer, but he was a Knightsblood, not a Todeschlagi. How had he guessed?

Pharaoh laughed at my face. “Elementary, my dear catkin. She doesn’t ping quite right to be humani. When we’re trying not to let on that we’re turned on, we leave other  bases uncovered. Other wavelengths. To put it another way, her g’nah looks like the very beginning of a jigsaw puzzle–most of it is ‘missing,’ but there are a few key sections that are exactly where you’d expect them to be–and they were the pieces that were trying their clumsy best to interface with mine. Moreover, that lady’s a’thanila, or I’ll clean your pan. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

He smirked. “All in a minute’s work. That’s why I’m a District Sorcerer. Ha! Do the others know?”

“Yes and no.”

“Some do?”

“Yes. Terry, Sasha, Meeze.”

“And she’s not home yet. If she were, she would have Lioned me half to death back there. Caught desiring my off-limits bodaciousness and all.” I was impressed.

Terry poked his head down the stairs. “What is it with you and the cat? Careful with her, she still has stitches.” In actual fact, the sorcerer had plugged in his nice, warm, pain-numbing outer soul as soon as he took me into his arms. I was determined to stay by his side for the evening.

We came up, Pharaoh rubbing the spot behind my ears that only he and Sasha could get. It made me kind of stupid, but I didn’t care.

The cubs and Rita were bringing the food inside, it being a little too cool for the backyard. Not one but two slabs of brown and black amazingness! I licked my chops. No chicken, though. No, no, I was wrong, here it came with Sasha, who scowled at seeing somebody else loving his cat. And all manner of human accoutrements, like potato salad and pickles and (I licked my chops again) olives. They were a little too bitter to actually chew, but I could lick and play with one for hours. The humans found this hilarious for some reason, but screw ‘em. They were happy, I was happy: Ah, bliss.

Everybody sat down, Pharaoh putting his well-stuffed knitting bag under his chair for me, going so far as to hand me an olive and hiss, “Make sure the drool gets on the carpet.” I purred an assent and set to work.

Terry soon turned the conversation to school. He, Sasha, Pharaoh, and Dante had all been to fancy boys’ boarding schools; the cubs had both gone to their local public schools, but those had done a good enough job to get them into Harvard. Lynn had gone to Catholic school, and I got a great deal of amusement out of tracing the holes in her and Terry’s stories as they avoided admitting knowing each other at that age.

It was obvious that Dante had gotten a thorough briefing on the Tarragons, except for the Th’nashi part, and he said so many tactful and careful things about the uses of good school systems like Cambridge’s as to win him points with both them and me. I could see why he’d been picked to be Privy Councillor–he was a very smart man, and when he set himself to the job, could charm your collar off.

Lynn’s metaphorical collar was in tatters. By the end of the meal, she had agreed to be introduced to a couple of Dante’s friends, one of whom had fingers in the pie over at the local high school and the other of whom was an expert on childhood trauma.

“Know anybody good for me?” she quipped.

“But of course. There’s also the tried and true version of increasing your social supports. There’s a lovely hot tub right below our feet, for example–well, no, it’s a few feet thataway. Nothing like communal bathing to foster community and soak out the aches of the day.”

“Lynn has already seen the tub,” said my wicked friend with a playful leer in his voice, but Lynn had by now so recovered herself as to throw something at him. Another olive, which he proffered to me, but I was busy with the bone Joel had slipped me, slurping every available iota of delectable pig fat off with brio. Pharaoh sighed and moved his bag a little bit.

By the end of the evening, Rita was as much as signed up with a network of smart and caring adults and Lynn herself was scheduled to attend Evensong at the local monastery with Dante. I could detect just a little jealousy emanating from Terry over that one, but it wasn’t as if they were going clubbing. Or kissing or something; but I guess it was understandable. My tummy was full of forbidden human scraps, which were giving me an uncomfortable amount of gas, but my private and personal District Sorcerer was stroking my belly, sending little zaps through my gut which broke up the bubbles into something more manageable. Life was good, and our problems were solved, weren’t they?

Except for the Kaiser of Todeschlag, but he was in Germany. All the way on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. And he could stay there. My dai’yadi was expanding, and I was at peace.

To my surprise, I felt almost normal on Friday morning. At least, it seemed that way in comparison to the previous two days.  Sasha felt my belly and poked with his outer soul and pronounced himself content with my progress. I was able to navigate the stairs with greater comfort, if not quite ease, and so I followed him down for his 6 a.m. omelet and tea, while Terry was still zonked upstairs, and would be for another hour—it was a shame he got to sleep in, as he did mornings better than poor Sasha did.

Six was when the bodyguard changed off, and Bart and Matt yawned their way off to the barracks for more sleep (Bart) and Eamon’s 6:30 hand-to-hand class (Matt), while Devon and Joel showed up to hang out until Terry left and then tail him to school at a discreet distance (Devon) and do basic household chores and mind the fort for the day (Joel).

I was treated to a resumption of my morning half-can of Prairie Picnic along with my taurine-rich kibble, and I noshed while Sasha read email and the boys had an argument about some minor Stricture of the Order over their oatmeal. Morning as usual, and then I heard It.

It was the tiniest scrabble behind the sink, but I recognized it immediately. It was a mouse. At long last, a mouse! The smells I’d detected downstairs when Sasha had first brought me home had been old, and my simple presence had kept them all banished to impossible places, like the attic, for the past several months. We had some–all old houses do–but so long as they remained unseen, left nothing behind, and did no noticeable damage, they were an invisible part of the ecology, and there was nothing for me to do but smell like a cat.

But some little pioneer had once more braved the kitchen! This was more than fair game, and I was very happy. I was a decent mouser. Fred had taught me well, and I burned to impress my humans.

I wished the boys would put a lid on it so I could listen better. I decided to try the international sign language for “Look, there’s a mouse:” I pawed at the door under the sink and meowed until I had eye contact with at least Devon, then repeated the pawing, looking anxious.

Joel said, “Eureka, it’s cat food now. You still have a fresh bowl full.” To Devon: “Bart and Matt got dog food last night, d’ja hear?”

Devon snorted. “Hear? It’s on the official incident report.” He shot Sasha an apprehensive look and muttered, “Abbot nearly bust a gut laughing about it. Said he was glad we had an archimago who appreciated our abilities and expected the best.” Sasha did not make eye contact or show that he’d heard this, but a small spike of amusement went through his outer soul.

Damn it! Of course! My food lived under the sink! In fact, that must be what the rapacious little bastard was after. The nerve! I repressed the urge to roll my eyes at the boys and kept meowing like a good kitty.

Still without looking up, Sasha said, “Open the door for her. She’s got a mouse, I bet.”

Devon was closest and reached over and disengaged the latch, which I was embarrassed to recall was installed after I had failed to resist exploring some fascinating trash during my first couple of weeks. Hoist by my own petard now. I tugged open the door with a paw and sort of waddled inside, still hampered a little by the incision. And aha! Mouse sign galore–a tiny eddy of nibbled fragments of bag, several pellets of poo, and the rank smell everywhere. (Nothing reeks like mice, not even rats, which are cleaner and smarter, if an advanced topic for the average housecat, although the massive Fred had bragged about being able to take them out when he had to.)

I meowed some more and patted the bag, then realized that would only confuse them into getting back onto the cat-wantum-food trail. Maybe better to wait for Pharaoh; I was willing to bet that I’d get results. I sighed and went back to finishing my breakfast.

There it was again! I lunged into the opening under the sink without thinking, banging myself on the doorway and getting a sharp scary pang inside for my trouble. I moaned in a mixture of pain and frustration, and Sasha said in a satisfied tone, “Yup, mouse. C’mere, kitcat.” He scooped me out by my chest, “mm-hmm”-ing at my complaint in sympathy.

“Eureka, you’re not up to this yet. Let’s get the food out of there–well, looky here, gentlemen; in my line of work we call this material evidence–and up on the counter. I’ll bring home one of the big specimen canisters Farley ordered; that ought to do the trick.”

“Mice are perfectly able of getting onto the counter. Shame on you,” I mumbled. He picked up on my unhappiness.

“Best we’re doing for now. No, better yet–” He bundled the bag tight and put it on top of the refrigerator. While he was there he checked the cereal boxes and found nothing.

“Matter of time,” I groused to myself. They latched the cabinet door at Sasha’s insistence that I wasn’t 100% yet and he didn’t want temptation looking me in the eye. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the mouse or the trash; one was probably a good idea and true enough, the other was unfair, and both were infantilizing. I cleaned up the last bits of Prairie Picnic, taking time off to growl warnings toward the sink that used vocabulary that would have grown hair on the Crucio’s bald head had he been there to hear me.

Later, after everybody else had left, Joel cleaned out the cabinet under the sink, tsking at the mouse poo. I supervised, and was ashamed of myself for either sleeping on the job or at best, picking the world’s worst time to go into heat and get sidelined by the surgery. After he was done, we both took a nap in the guard room, only to be awakened by the doorbell. It was the Tarragons, Rita looking eager, Lynn looking sheepish.

“Sasha said that it was all right for Rita to play in your yard. I just wanted to check before I left for the library.”

Great, I could feel Joel thinking. Aloud, he said, “Uh, sure, I guess so. I’ll keep half an eye on her.”

“Terrific!” Lynn’s face lit up. “Rita, you behave yourself, okay?”

“Of course, Mommy.” Rita made little shooing gestures. “Hi, Eureka!” She bent down and petted my head and back with gentle strokes that betrayed that she wasn’t used to animals, or at least to getting to touch them. It was as if she was afraid I would break, which beat the alternative, I suppose, but it was a little annoying. I realized again how spoiled I’d gotten, living among Th’nashi with responsive outer souls which told them almost as feedback how hard and long to pet. Presumably, Rita’s hadn’t grown in yet.

We all watched Lynn hurry down the street at a brisk trundle which was almost a waddle. She probably would have been more comfortable with less weight, I guessed. Still, it was a pity. She looked soft. Then Rita gave Joel a disarming grin that fooled him not a bit.

“You don’t have to watch me. In fact, I’d feel weird if you did. I promise I won’t go anywhere but home to check on mom with the computer.” She sighed in resignation at her own goodness.

“Not to worry. I have my own stuff to do,” he said. “I know what you mean, and I’m not going to do the creepy old man thing. But don’t even think of heading out for the Territories, or I’ll have to come after you. Dr. Van der Linden is serious as a heart attack about that.”

She saluted. “Mind if I just go home and get my drawing stuff?” Joel waved her on. I regretted it when he shut the door, leaving all the brisk shiny beauty of the fall Outdoors on the other side. He went up to grab the laundry; meanwhile, I decided to save myself a trip up the stairs and went back in to check on my mouse.

And stopped dead in my tracks for a timeless split second: The vermin was sitting in the middle of the floor, saucy as you please. I leapt; it leapt; and then it was gone, scrabbling under the cabinets by the door this time, while I cried foul at the top of my lungs and pawed at the crack so hard I stubbed a toe.

“Oh no,” groaned Joel, as he passed with an armful of sheets.

“Oh yes,” I mewed. “And I can hear another one back under the sink. It has an accomplice.”

Joel and I spent the rest of the day alternating between tearing the kitchen apart and drawing a bead on Rita outside with our outer souls. Terry came home right before teatime and suggested siccing Pharaoh on it. Even I knew that this wasn’t in the District Sorcerer’s job description, even without seeing Joel’s look of incredulity, which he wiped off after only a nanosecond–Terry missed it, being too pleased with his own brilliant idea.

“So how long have we had a kiddo?” he asked.

“Since right about lunchtime,” Joel sighed. “Did Sasha really offer us up as a babysitting service, sir?”

Terry winced. “Um, we decided that we want to get to know them better. With the idea of maybe making them vai’ada eventually.” This was a half-truth, “vai’ada” being the opposite of “tseradi”–i.e., humani who were hip to the vampire thing and full members of Contract society, whereas in reality the Tarragons weren’t humani at all, and sooner or later Rita at least would have to reckon with that. But it was good enough for government work for the time being, and Joel nodded.

“But, sir.” He stopped, and checked through his not-very-large personal stock of diplomacy. “But.” He stopped again.

“But there are limits to how far we can take advantage of the Order?” prompted Terry with a half-smile.

Joel looked grateful. “Sir, to be perfectly honest, I don’t like kids. Even though she’s been as good as gold. Today,” he added. Joel had been on the tracking detail a couple of times. He sighed. “Thing is, maybe I’m just bringing my own stuff into it, but the whole thing reminds me of my sister. If she can get rid of my nephew, she does. And he’s turning into a little asswipe, excuse my French. Already had her call me twice to get me to sweet-talk the Lions into letting him coast on some minor stuff, and I told her I’m not doing it any more. He’s becoming an embarrassment.”

Terry sighed, looking grim. “You’re talking to a reformed asswipe. Who wasn’t appropriately supervised. Yeah, I hear ya. And what’s more, I agree. And to be fair, so does Sasha. He’s just a pragmatist who’s been Hippocratic Oathing the situation: First, do no harm. We hadn’t gotten that far, but it’s going to be up to me to sit Lynn down for a talk about the facts of life.”

“Mm,” said Joel. There was a little silence while Terry and I watched him caulk up the mousehole we had finally spotted up under the dish drainer. Then, “Your Grace, may I make a suggestion?”

“Shoot.”

“Maybe Lion Fabrizio can talk to the mom. He’s . . . got . . . a way with people. He can usually get them to do what he wants them to do.”

Terry gave a sincere and hearty laugh. “That’s for damn sure!” He grew quiet, with his I’ve-got-an-idea-smile. “You know, Joel, that’s a great idea. They don’t have a history, and I think Lynn’s even Episcopalian, so the priest thing might work some extra hoodoo. But how do we bring them together?”

“Simple. You have ‘em both over for dinner. You cook, we’ll wait table.”

“No,” Terry disagreed. “I want her to stop being intimidated by the staff issue. Whoever’s on, and I think it should be you and Dev, especially since it’s your idea, will just eat with us like we usually do.” He grinned at the cub in delighted approval. “In fact, I’m pretty sure Dante’s free tonight. Strike while the iron’s hot, I say.” He pulled out his wallet. “Go run out and pick up some ribs and the makings for my special sauce. You can’t have a stick up your ass while you’re eating barbecue; it’ll loosen her up.”

Him too, I hoped. I trotted off to my spot behind the TV for a nap. I didn’t want to miss Dante Fabrizio and barbecue sauce.

I was unhappy when I awoke, because my stitches had all stiffened up. I limped into the living room, looking for a warm lap or at least some sympathy. Meeze and Sasha and Terry were all still at the table, talking about Lynn Tarragon.

Sasha clucked to me and picked me up, managing not to jostle anything any more than could be helped. I collapsed against him in relief. His outer soul couldn’t do all the bells and whistles the way Pharaoh’s could in terms of the warm-me-up thing, but it was still his. I meatloafed as best I could, trying to keep most of my weight on my paws.

Meeze said, “So can you run her DNA from her teacup, Sash?”

“Sure I can. But it still somehow seems wrong. Invasive.”

Terry was shaking his head. “And I still can’t wrap my head around it. I tell you, I know this chick. Granted, we’ve had a long patch or two of being out of touch, but I would have noticed.”

“If she’s fy’foxi, you couldn’t have noticed,” Sasha disagreed. “She would have given you nothing to notice with. First line of interference: Todeschlagi Grail. Only other Toadies like Meeze can spot them to begin with. Second line of interference: What the old folks call the Shield of Adamant, or as it’s put in medical terms, the Q-band emitter omission. That cuts out everybody but a master sorcerer–again, like Meeze–and only if they’re really looking.”

“I always deep-ping,” said Meeze with pride.

“We know, and it’s annoying,” Terry said. The sorcerer laughed.

So Meeze was genetically House Todeschlag? That explained a few things. I had by now gotten good at telling the ethnic variations apart, and despite being House Firenzi nobility–once Head of House, apparently–he didn’t match the other couple of Firenzi I knew. There was a sort of crossbreed Th’nashi called Knightsblood-Firenzi, and he was close to that, but–

My musings were interrupted by Terry slamming a fist on the table. “I should have been there. I should have been there for her. None of my friends should have to go through bullshit like that.”

Sasha hmm’ed. “Speaking of having gone through all that trauma, I’m not in the slightest bit comfortable in breaking the news to her that she’s an alien. I’ve seen people snap over far less.”

“Unless Rita turns out to be a Grail,” Meeze pointed out, “a conversation has to be had there and pronto. All we need is for her fangs to come in before she’s properly brought home.”

“Brought home,” Terry snarled. “Shield of Adamant. This is all sounding like a bad Th’nashi romance. I’ve never even met an actual a’thanila before.” I yawned to cover my surprise at this. Terry, Bast bless him, could be dense sometimes. Actually, he had one close at hand, in social terms. Meeze’s cousin Sean McPherson, the Prince of the House of Firenzi, was an a’thanila–a Th’nashi adopted and raised by humani. Nobody knew there was anything special about Sean until he hit puberty and the descent of his fangs panicked both him and his adoptive mothers to within inches of their lives. Sean was married to Eamon Davenant, and I had heard Eamon tell the story of how his mothers-in-law had schemed to steal blood from the hospital where one of them worked when their son showed signs of needing it.

Of course, the chance was high that he wouldn’t figure out that he had blood vents under his tongue leading to a different organ entirely, and that he’d just drink the blood instead and get sick, like as not. But Sean was lucky, and, being horrible behind the wheel of anything more dangerous than a bumper car, had rear-ended a Lion on the Interstate during driving practice. Wackiness ensued, according to Eamon, with a good deal of who’s-on-first type confusion, but it all got worked out in the end. But I guessed Terry hadn’t been there for that story.

“Yes, you have, you dummy,” said Meeze. “Sean is a’thanila. And he turned out fine. Late fanger, though. I don’t recall–is this kid developing yet?” He cupped his hands over his chest.

Sasha scowled at him. “If that’s your classy way of inquiring if she’s hit puberty, yes, she has. But I’d say she’s four or five years away from fanging. Plenty of time to ease onto the topic. First things first,” he said, handing me to Terry instead of putting me down. He got up and gathered Lynn’s teacup. “Let me run this through the lab this afternoon and we’ll see what we have.”

Terry cradled me with caution. I purred to reassure him. I usually didn’t like being held with my tummy up, but right now it felt divine. “Let’s not make any hasty phone calls or anything when the tests come back, ‘k, Sash? Not until we all talk about it. And by ‘all,’ I mean that you don’t have to be dealt in to cope with the bees’ nest you’ve uncovered,” he said to Meeze. “But it would be nice if this didn’t spread through the dai’yadi.” “Dai’yadi” was a loosely-defined term for the people they hung out with/their friends/the Council including the cubs, etc.–in Cat the word came through as “Family” with both ears twitched back and whiskers forward.

“Iffen you say so,” said Meeze. He sighed in half-mock self-pity. “I had hoped to entice you out to play for a bit, but now I’ve got to go back to the Pit.” Which was where all the building-levitating sorcerers were. He tapped my nose with the end of the braid and left–through the door; Meeze hated to gate, saying it made him nauseated.

After Sasha had taken off too, Terry sat at the table with me in his arms, article long forgotten. At last he sighed and got up, careful not to jostle me. I was beginning to enjoy this.

“Eureka, what Sasha and I have is convenient and comfortable. But he’s my Grail Consort more than my lover. He just tolerates me on most days. Blood, sex, old friendship. Back when we were kids and it was new and shiny I was too preoccupied with the beginnings of coming-out angst to let myself go and just love him. But for a brief couple of months, I loved Aria with everything I had.” He sighed and tickled me under the chin. “But Daddy doesn’t need to know that, okay?” He wasn’t hearing it from me.

“Twenty-five years and a hundred pounds and a pile of Todeschlagi DNA notwithstanding, if Arianlyn Tarragon thinks she’s keeping her little girl in a car again, she’ll answer to me,” he muttered. Which did him credit. I purred and passed out again.

I awoke on the bed, in my usual spot by Sasha’s pillow. Terry was nowhere to be seen. I appreciated his thoughtfulness in placing me where he had, but I had to pee. I mewed in pain as I hit the floor with a thud that vibrated through my full bladder to the surgical site. I barely made it to the pan, and when I was done, I dry-heaved a moment or two. I crawled into the little cave Terry had made with the new electric blanket and my cat bed and felt sorry for myself.

It was late afternoon and time for cartoons, so after a while I struggled out of my den and made it downstairs, unsure as to whether or not it was better or worse than it had been that morning. I was depressed and bored. What was the point of anything? Life was just a round of eating and using the pan, with TV thrown in between to lull us into a false sense of security. And then there was pain, and sickness, and loss, and finally it all stopped. Did we really go to make an account to Bast before going back for another life? The humans said we had only nine. What if they were right, and this was it for me?

Oh, and of course. It was Bart and Matt on tonight, and they played video games instead of watching their TV as Bast meant it to be used. Even more morose, I slumped on out into the empty living room, looking for the remote. It wasn’t where it was supposed to be, which was behind the big TV in a nice warm spot where the napping was good and I could “accidentally” lie on it to turn the thing on. Nope, nowhere to be seen. Spiffy. Groovy. Better and better.

Terry was back in the dining room. This time he really was working on his article, listening to the Kinks on his laptop and spreading magazines and academic journals all over one end of the table. I had to resort to extending my claws into his jeans before he broke concentration enough to so much as bend down and pet me.

“Kibble in the kitchen, kiddo. Woo, I are the Alliteration King.” He was cheerful. Work always made Terry happy–unless it was Contract-related. Then it was his turn to go around like a rainy Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t hungry, but since when does that stop anybody in the First World from eating? I slouched along, noticing that the pain and the stiffness were less, but who cared when we were all going to die soon anyway?

Oh my Bast, were they kidding me? This was dog food! Dog food could build up ash in my system and kill me! Whatever ash was. I heard Mrs. Roaman say so. I sat in front of my bowl and yowled like Pavarotti until the baffled and angry Terry came out.

“What the frip, Eureka? I ain’t cooking right–whoa.” He looked at the bag Matt had left open on the counter and started to laugh. “Somebody got the right color bag, but the wrong manufacturer. This won’t kill you for one night, Eureka.”

“Yes, it will. I’m frail post-surgery. Go ask Sasha.” I rubbed around his ankles in irritation, hoping it wouldn’t need a Crucio to translate.

Terry groaned and threw up his hands. “On the other hand, if Daddy comes back and finds this to-do . . . Some things are so not worth it.“ He trotted off to yell at the cubs. Benefits of one’s staff having staff, as it were.

I decided to have a wash in self-congratulation on having made my human behave properly on an important point. As I was exploring my incision, Sasha came in, with Terry on his heels.

“Eureka Van der Linden, if I catch you chewing at your stitches . . .”

“I wasn’t chewing, I was licking,” I said. “And Terry is ignoring me. And Matt got me dog food, which is poisonous, I tell you. Didn’t they teach you anything in medical school?”

“This is dog food! Who got her dog food?” Oh goody. Somebody was gonna get it now. I curled my tail around my paws and looked as soulful as possible.

“Chill, Sash. It was an honest mistake. I already sent the kid back to the store. It won’t kill her. Will it?” Terry ended, with some doubt in his voice. “I’m sure cats on the street eat worse.”

“It’s lacking some important vitamins and aminos,” said Sasha. “Cats, especially young ones, need lots of taurine. Dogs can make their own.”

“Sounds like evolutionary superiority to me. Hey! Kidding! Only kidding!” Sasha had socked him one on the arm that looked painful, alien vampire resilience or no. “So what did Lynn’s test say, already? Give.”

Sasha sighed and picked up my bowl. He said, “Got ourselves a bouncing baby Th’nashi, all right. Grail from House Todeschlag. And you know what that means.”

Terry said, “Don’t pitch the dog food. I’ll have Joel run it by St. Crispin’s. They have a food pantry. And no, I don’t.”

Sasha concentrated very hard on pouring the kibble back into the bag for some poverty-stricken pooch to appreciate. I heard the sniff in my own thoughts and remembered the nice Chihuahua from the car ride. I felt guilty. No doubt about it, I was getting spoiled to death. I started to get depressed again.

“Sasha?” Terry prodded.

“The Kaiser of Todeschlag, Terry. All their Grails belong to the Kaiser. Remember?” Belong to? What did they mean?

“Yeah, but.” Terry stopped.

“But?”

“But . . . She’s a’thanila. Surely he’d cut her some slack.”

Sasha rummaged in the odds-and-ends cupboard, coming out with some packing tape. He repaired the slit Matt had made in the bag, his outer soul radiating negative absolute zero. “Fy’foxi are perhaps the rarest Grails there are. Think of Lynn as a collector’s item–a hot pink Van Gogh or something. And when you throw in the fact that the entire House comes up with a Grail in only one out of twenty births in the first place, hence reinforcing the good ol’ Grail slavery notion–”

Terry said, “Grail slavery. My Aria.” He was pale.

Sasha cocked his head, eyes alert as a sparrow’s. “Your what?”

Terry sighed. “Never mind for now. Sasha, we can’t tell her. Of course we can’t.”

Sasha made himself even busier with the now sealed bag, shaking it to settle the food and turning away from Terry to find a spot for it on the counter by the back door. “We may not have a lot of choice, Terr. You’re the archimago, and if some Toadie sorcerer happens by and spots her just like Meeze did, what with politics being politics, it can be construed as Grail theft.”

I winced as Terry’s outer soul screamed in outrage–he was struck speechless–and reconsidered my lot. Somehow belonging to the Kaiser of Todeschlag didn’t seem like the cushy gig I had, belonging to Alexei Van der Linden, occasional dog food notwithstanding. And slavery? I riffled through my memories of the few documentaries I’d seen and shuddered. I felt worried for Lynn, whom I barely knew and had accused me in rhetoric as being uncomplicated, and worse for Rita. My Bast, what about Rita?

“And what about Rita?” Terry demanded.

Sasha shrugged and shook his head. “Right now, we know that she’s not Lafe Tarragon’s child, as Toadies can’t breed with humani. All we can do tonight is say a prayer that the real daddy is another House and passed his on to the baby instead. Kid’s probably a Fang anyway, Terr. Let’s not borrow trouble. I’ll get a teacup from her soon enough.”

Matt came into the kitchen, this time with the right bag. “I’m very sorry, sir. Sorry, Eureka.” He refilled the bowl Sasha had left on the counter and put it down, brows furrowed as he tried to work out whether the ping in the room was the grownups being mad at him. I headbutted him in thanks and reassurance, and he scrunched up my ears in gratitude before exiting to his video game.

All of a sudden, Sasha gave Terry a hard half hug. “We’ll figure something out, Terry. You have money and power, and Meeze and I have brains.” He grinned.

“Hey!” But it made Terry laugh, so I laughed too. Then I went for my kibble. It tasted extra yummy, as if they had put in special fancy taurine. Sufficient unto the day.

 

We all trailed into the dining room, where Lynn Tarragon was standing by the sideboard pretending to admire the old-timey photos of Sasha’s ancestors arranged on its linen cloth. Aha! I felt Meeze’s outer soul curl itself into the available niches of Lynn’s, sniffing about. A true humani wouldn’t have felt anything, but she bristled a little, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and staring at Meeze with suspicion. Then the expression faded as if she had never realized she had put it up there, to be replaced with a shadow of bewilderment. She shook it off with a wince of soul-pain I don’t think she even knew she felt, and concentrated on Terry instead.

“Hello, Riverly. I actually stopped by to see Sasha, but I understand that he has a real job.”

“Hey, Tarragon, at least I graduated into my current academic torpor. No dissie, no shirtie. Or are you seriously going to buckle down and stop doing ‘research?’” he finger quoted at her. Both Meeze and I raised our eyebrows at this exchange. Their affect was a tad peculiar—a hint of real hostility was curling in the air, but I got the impression that this surprised them both. Issues here, definitely issues. I thought about bouncing on the remote “by accident,” but the morning talk shows were still on. No Dr. Phil, although maybe Judge Judy might be more their style.

She narrowed her eyes. “What would you know about research, film boy?”

“Ha! ‘ja ever look at my dissertation? Or better yet, the book? No, didn’t think so.” He went past her into his office, talking over his shoulder as he went. “Let me remedy that.”

“Oh no, please don’t get him talking shop,” pleaded Meeze.

“Don’t worry, he just wants to make me look bad,” Lynn said with a sigh.

“Thank God,” said Meeze with fervor. “Oops. That came out wrong.” He extended a huge hand. “Artemisio Donato, Lion de Medici. Call me Meeze. Or Rude and Stupid.”

Amused, she took his hand. “Arianlyn Lannon Tarragon. Call me Lynn. What’s the Lion thing about?” Okay. What was going on here? She really didn’t seem to know. I wondered how Meeze was going to handle this one.

But he just smiled and said, “Am I the first Lion of Mercy you’ve met?”

“How would I know?” Her eyes grew sharp, and I could smell just a whiff of her sweat glands opening up. For some reason, this seemed important to her.

“Long hair,” he brandished the braid at me to bat, “although usually not this long, and the beads.” He rattled the four-paw or so strands of small glass beads around his neck, his collar of obedience. I had learned early on to stifle the tremendous temptation to tackle the beads left on the hooks surrounding the hot tub.

Lynn frowned and pushed her thick glasses further up on her nose. “OK, I’ve seen you before, I think. What do Lions of Mercy do?”

“Get cats out of trees,” he quipped. “Or in her case, rescue them from ravening toms.” I made sure my claws stuck in the braid, hoping he’d get the point.

Terry came back in with a rather dusty cloth-bound book. I could make out the letters spelling “film” and “United States,” which only made sense, given the topic. He almost slammed it down on the table.

“I gotcha research right here. Oh, wait, no–I gotcha writing right here. Proof of the pudding. How many chapters do you have done?”

“You’re a dissertation bully!” cried Meeze. “I never would have thought it of you. Would you like me to beat him up for you?” he said to Lynn, with a half-bow. “I swung by to bury his ass in some basketball as it is. Leave the lady alone, you dirtwipe. Man, but I hated people like you when I was dissertating.”

“Yeah, and you finished, didn’t you?” Terry was whacking him with his outer soul. I wasn’t sure what a “dissertation” was; it was a new word for me, but it seemed to be something annoying but necessary.

“How many chapters, Tarragon?” He forestalled any Meezian interjections with a hand.

He was lucky Lynn didn’t have claws, or she would have cuffed him a good one, I think. “One.” She tensed up. “I’m sorry, but not all of us have the mansion and the staff of Lions. Are you a bodyguard too, Meeze? Or maybe the butler?” She paused. “I’m sorry,” she said to the redhead. “I’m not trying to be rude to you.”

“Nothing insulting about being a butler, ma’am,” Meeze said. “I grew up picking peaches in fine migrant towns all over California. Butler is a social step up. That said, I’m an engineer, which is a social step sideways.”

She laughed despite herself. “What kind of engineer?” Terry’s outer soul practically screamed at him not to mention his job, which was to make sure the Poplar-Bricklight building, which held all the Nova Terran Contract offices, didn’t fall down in a heap. I didn’t have the details, but from what I’d picked up in meetings and from Sasha in the car the other day, something was wrong with the foundation and it was being held up by sorcery. Meeze bossed the sorcerers and was trying to get the Powers that Be–Terry the archimago–to sign off on turning it into a straightforward engineering fix. Hey! Wait a minute! I realized that this precarious building was the one Sasha had taken me to yesterday. I was glad I hadn’t quite parsed this at the time as it would have increased my nervousness.

But Meeze was ignoring Terry. “I’m a project engineer currently on sabbatical from projects. The Order has me doing stuff,” he said, with a vague circular wave of his paw. “Like, for instance, making up the roster for said bodyguards. Did you even know that?” he asked Terry.

“Uh, no, I didn’t. Why you?” Despite his migrant worker youth, Meeze was Th’nashi nobility, and should have been beyond such mundanities.

“‘cause I’m good at it. Would you like some tea, Lynn?” Meeze’s cup was empty, and he turned back toward the kitchen.

“You’d think he lived here,” grumbled Terry. All the Lions, even the cubs, treated our house as if it were their own, but somehow Meeze did it with attitude.

“No, thank you for your manners,” Lynn replied, glaring at Terry. I could tell that she was trying not to cry despite Meeze’s attempts to defuse the spat.

But Terry was persisting. “Why are you making shabby excuses? OK, yeah, Sasha’s house has it going on, but I did most of my writing in that damned library, and you watched me do half of it, because you were working there at the time. It’s not like you were in the street or something.”

“How the hell would you know?” Lynn almost screamed. “Rita and I ended up sleeping in the car for two months after the divorce. You have no idea what Lafe put me through; you have no idea what Rita’s gone through–in fact, that’s why I stopped by. I wanted to explain some things to Sasha, because he’s honestly concerned. The reason she’s not in school is that she was having anxiety attacks that turned into asthma attacks that sent her to the ER on an average of twice a week. Trauma does that.” She swallowed back tears.

“But then, you’re only daddy to a kitty, aren’t you? Sorry, Eureka, nothing personal, but you’re not very complicated.” I knew this was really aimed at Terry, so I didn’t take it the wrong way.

“Well, if you were sleeping in the car, you should have called your buddy the billionaire before you put Rita through that!” Terry’s outer soul had frozen in shock at “sleeping in the car,” and he was really angry now.

“I tried! I swallowed my pride and I tried! But the . . . Lion or whoever . . . the staff person who answered said you got a dozen begging calls a week, and he gave me the number of Catholic Charities!”

Terry’s anger departed and he plopped into a chair. There was a long, awkward silence. After about a minute of it, he said, “Do you remember the name of the person you spoke to? When was this?” I could feel his tears welling up unshed as he sat there in what her outer soul was pouring off.

“No, and sometime last year. But I’m glad he told me to kiss off. I don’t know if I would have been able to live with myself, coming begging to your feet.”

“Ah, Tarragon. Lynn.” Aria, hung unsaid on the air. “Nothing like that.”

“Riverly, I know you’ve been through hell and high water, but you’ve never had to beg, have you?”

More silence. I could feel Meeze pausing in the kitchen doorway, then pushing his way through the swinging doors. He was carrying a tea tray.

“Please, Lynn. Have some tea.” He also had snagged some paper towels, which he handed her so she could mop up her cry. She let him pour her a cup of tea which was laced with a bit of tsain. Terry frowned at this as he caught the citrusy smell, but Meeze gave him the shut-up-stupid whack with his outer soul the Th’nashi called a y’rai.

I put my front paws up on Terry’s legs, asking for his lap again, because I was pretty sure my back half would divorce me if I tried the jump. This time he complied, and there we sat, stroking, sniffling, sipping, and trying to purr ourselves into a less difficult corner of the conversation.

I heard Sasha’s car pull into the driveway. This was unexpected. He came in and scowled at the men, not knowing who had said what to make Lynn cry. He knelt at Terry’s side and had him hold me up so he could check my stitches.

“How is she?” Lynn asked, in a shaky copy of her usual voice. “I had the same surgery way back when I had Rita. It wasn’t fun.”

And things became more normal. At least on the surface. After ten minutes of careful small talk, Lynn left, saying, “Feel free to pass on the basics to Sasha, Riverly. It’s what I came for. Nice to have met you, Meeze.”

I sighed like a human when the door closed behind the tatters of her odd outer soul. I decided stress was bad for my convalescence, and went off to use the pan in Terry’s office. I nearly fell asleep while using it. The windowseat was too high, but Terry had knocked his sweater off the back of his chair while looking for his book, so I just curled up on it in the corner and passed out.

The next morning I felt better, as Sasha had predicted. I had whimpered at Daddy–not being particular which daddy it was–and my pan had been brought up to the master bedroom, along with my regal if semi-conscious self carried up on my new bed like a teatray. I had thought at first that the bed was a stupid idea, but it was cushy, made of a good material for luxurious kneading, and saved me having to hop up and down from the big bed. Terry asked Pharaoh to do some sorcery to make sure it stayed warm, but was turned down.

“Can’t have charmed objects just lying about. What about an electric blanket?” Terry pouted at the pragmatism of this, but the chore of going to the drugstore in Harvard Square and then coming home and tinkering until the temperature was of Goldilocks perfection had saved him from too much inquiry about the Tarragons. I gathered from morning conversation that Terry and Lynn had known each other at grad school at Harvard, which didn’t add up to me, because he had gotten his degree some years ago. Maybe she was slow. It was, after all, Harvard.

I also gathered that there was something fishy in the air: Sasha muttered to me, “He’s lying about how he knows her, kitcat. Not that I’m jealous, but what is up with that?” I had no answer. Her outer soul’s basenote was warm and inviting, and I thought she looked as if she’d make a good lap; there was certainly enough of her for it. But I knew the humans didn’t always see that as an unmixed blessing. There was also the whole gender issue, but humans were complicated about that. I hoped my TV counseling wouldn’t have to switch from Dr. Phil to Oprah. Or Maury.

Going down the main stairs was uncomfortable, but I made myself do it, because I could feel myself start to stiffen up. I knew that if I malingered, it would have been no problem for the cubs to bring up my food–and I was starving after yesterday’s fast–but I wanted to get back to normal. I wanted to play with my new mouse!

Terry was downstairs at the big dining room table, cold tea at his elbow. He had all the stuff with him that meant he was supposedly working on an article, but he was staring into space, colorless eyes huge and thoughtful, outer soul a million miles away. Or not; he started when I passed, hoodlum twitch of a bad kid.

“Heeyyyy, look who’s back in the land of the living!” He went to pick me up, but as I flinched as his hands brushed the incision, he thought better of it and let me continue to mince into the kitchen. His long legs made two of about a dozen of my now-tiny steps, but he met me there wielding the can-opener enticingly.

“We’re out of Prairie Picnic, but they had some Lavaliver at CritterMart.”

Oh, great. Lavaliver was so last Tuesday. It was a specialty food, with mild spices (hence the “Lava”) and I’d been mad for it for six and a half days. I wasn’t in the mood for it now, especially since I’d been urping the day before. Terry wasn’t a complete stupe, though, and this last also occurred to him.

“But maybe not on a delicate tummy. Hey, how about I make you some chicken? Take about ten minutes, maybe less.” He began to rattle pans. Terry was a great cook and private catering of human food was a tremendous treat which I only got on Thursdays–today was Thursday, which was actually planned into the whole surgical adventure, I recalled, so that a Daddy would be home with me. I curled my tail around my paws and sat down to wait.

As a rule, Terry didn’t talk to me the way Sasha did, let alone the way Pharaoh did, but after a while, he said, “Say, Eureka? Ever wonder about what happened to the cat you were living with at the dead lady’s house?”

I meowed in response before I could stop myself. I did wonder! Terry smiled a little half-listening smile at the “coincidence” of my answering him, and went on. “I know they took him to the pound. I’m betting they left out a few details about him–God knows my little toes wouldn’t have felt safe. But what happened after that? Who did he meet, where did he go? And do you think he ever wonders about you too?”

Fred? Not a chance. Not that narcissist. But we weren’t talking about Fred. I was betting my new mouse we were talking about Lynn Tarragon. I hurried through an old Sentence of Contemplation I had learned at the shelter from one of the resident cats, so as to groom my outer soul down and not betray my quickened heartbeat. But would he just be vague and metaphorical?

He got out a packet of chicken breasts and his wickedest looking filet knife and set to work. “I met Lynn Tarragon in the summer of 1977. I was sixteen, she was fifteen. We were on the Staten Island Ferry, we got high, she had a great rack, and I was still in deep denial about the whole Sasha thing, which had hit that spring. But despite having every reason in the world to never want to touch a woman in any way, shape, or form, there was something about Lynn.” He dashed on a soupcon of garlic. “The Sashmeister was all the way off in Lionshead Academy in Alaska, and–there was something about Lynn. Not Lynn. Her name is Arianlyn, so I called her Aria. Couldn’t believe nobody had ever done it before.”

He put the savory mass into a pan and sighed. To my consternation, I could feel tears building up in his outer soul. Not a trace of them on his pale Irish face, though. Terry wasn’t a cryer. This Aria thing went deep. “Long story short, my hellbitch mother didn’t like the idea that there might be competition in Normalland for my carnal attentions.” He brushed a lock of non-existent hair out of his eyes while I blinked. Did I put that together the right way? Did he mean what I thought he meant? No wonder Terry’s mother was a forbidden topic in our house. No, not forbidden, just non-existent. Even the word “mother”would sometimes cause a random spike of something savage in his outer soul.

Her own kitten. She might better have eaten him alive, from what I knew of the tangle of human sexuality. I felt a surge of something complicated. I would never have kittens of my own, never make an ass of myself for a tom, never scream from the clamp on my neck and the serration tearing me bloody inside–maybe just as well, all that. But I knew what it was to love, and I loved Terry Riverly. He was towering over the range, tossing my chicken in its own sauce, with a finger of his outer soul on me the while, loving me back. I limped over and rubbed his ankles as hard as I could, mourning the fact that he’d just think it was only the food.

He cleared his throat and set the kettle on to make himself a cup of tea, getting out Sasha’s little bag of tsain, a Th’nashi herb which was calming. “Talk about mothers with real lack of supervision problems. She knew I was up to my neck in dope, she just didn’t care. She knew the flour canister on my desk didn’t have flour in it.” He grinned down at me and stroked me with the back of his non-cooking hand, the right one. “I liked the way it looked, all shiny and white and sitting there in a huge heap. I could have sneaked it out of my trust fund, all that dope money, but it was more fun to steal cars. Still is. Don’t tell Sasha.” I knew it! Oh, how I wished the Crucio could make that spell into tea or something! I had so many questions. I nuzzled him, and then got out of his way, as he went back to the stove.

“There we go. Now let’s just spread it out to cool. Don’t want real lava, kitcakes. Problem was, I had more than enough for ‘intent to distribute.’ She called the cops on me, did Mother Mary, and because I was too much of a stiff-necked ass to let them plead or bribe me out, I ended up in upstate New York for three years in a charming little town called Ossining. The pen, my love. Daddy’s a felon.” I knew this, of course. With difficulty, I propped my front paws on his legs. I knew it would hurt to be picked up, but I wanted it anyway. But he tsk’ed “Stitches!” and poured his tea, sitting down at the table with it and my plate, which he kept mechanically dicing to make sure it was cooling.

“And all during those three years, heard I not word one from little miss Arianlyn. Eureka, you would not credit how long and how many and how drippy those letters of mine were those first two months. But not a word back–and here’s the thing, kitten: When New York’s Finest scooped me up that night, I was on my way to go propose to her.” He rattled the fork alluringly and set the plate down at his feet. Oh yum!

He slid out of the chair and sat next to me, stroking my back and sipping his tea while his eyes were hard, seeing things he had not wanted to see in a long time, and which Lynn/Aria’s advent had brought back to him.

“So let’s fast-forward, oh, fifteen years. There I am in Biff’s seminar at Harvard, and I’m looking at the class roster, and there it is: Arianlyn Lannon Tarragon. And despite not a letter, not a word, not a freaking congratulations call the night I won the ViddieTV contest–and despite by the way having come the rest of the way out of the closet, although Other Daddy and I were in a bad patch then–despite all that, my heart STILL went pit a pat.

“And then in she comes, and she’s put on like, a hundred pounds. I’m not kidding, Eureka, I’m not exaggerating.” He laughed. “I know that to you that means jack shit, and that’s a good thing, because I wish the hell I didn’t have that sort of cultural baggage. And to be fair it’s not like I’m your basic humani about it. But still, to humans that’s ‘Oh my God, my ex-girlfriend turned into a moose, call Jerry Springer.’ And I was brutal about it. Pretended I didn’t even know her. Didn’t recognize her. But of course I did. And it broke my heart.

“I’ll skip over a lot of unnecessary stuff about how Daddy had a major nervous breakdown over various bullshit, but when that was over, there finally was a letter. From her. And she was in my corner. Broke my heart all over again. So we kept  pretending we were different people, but we were friends, in a kind of weird way. Heartbreak, reprise, when she went out to the Sea of Grass flyover with her husband and little Rita.” I did a lightning check of my conversation with the Crucio. Sea of Grass was another District, this one comprising the Midwest.

“I knew she wasn’t happy in the marriage. Never had much use for the hubby. And maybe, just maybe if they’d been Th’nashi, hell, if they’d been Contract citizens, I’d have tipped the Lions off to do a check on the situation. But she wasn’t, so I didn’t. God knows what and how much she put up with before leaving.” His outer soul and head snapped up together. Somebody was coming up the path in the backyard.

I narrowed my focus. It was Meeze, who was the only one of the gang to use the back door, saying that with him having been raised migrant trash, it only seemed right in that house. This pissed everybody else off–it wasn’t anybody’s fault that Auntie Rosa had such nice stuff, but in reality, I had realized it meant he could raid the refrigerator on his way in to check in with the humans.

He entered and swept a low bow to us both, twirling the tip of his braid. “Si vale, valeo!”

“Wally what?” Terry got up and put the kettle back on.

“Latin. If you are well, I am well.” Meeze dug through the cupboards.

“We’re still out of Earl Grey,” said Terry. “Unless one of the rugrats remembered to pick some up.”

“Bah. I’ll settle for Sasha’s sneezy tea. I feel something coming on. You too?” He cocked his head a little, assessing Terry’s reddened eyes.

“Allergies.” I heard him banish the whole Lynn Tarragon issue as far into the future as he could pitch it. I could have bitten the big redhead for his lousy timing. Terry had just said something that hadn’t made a word of sense. What did he mean by her not being Th’nashi? I thought they could spot each other as well as I could.

Meeze picked up on my flash of annoyance, a flicker of hurt in his green eyes. I repented–how was he to have known he was interrupting Terry spilling his guts to me? First time too, and it was a doozy. I went up to him and nuzzled him hello, to show that I was over it; not that it really had anything to do with him anyway. He scritched the place right between my jaw and my ear that I loved, sitting down at the table with his mug.

Meanwhile, Terry went about washing up the pan. As a rule he wasn’t great at cleaning up after himself, but it gave him some stage business to do while he got back into his everyday devil-may-care persona.

Still scratching me, Meeze asked, “How’s the invalid?”

“Just polished off a slice of chicken breast, and she made it down from upstairs under her own steam. In other words, better than we would be after major abdominal surgery.”

“Speak for yourself, wussyman. I have every faith that I’ll swing in during half-time from the middle of the bb court to get my stitches taken out, should it ever be so.”

Terry gave a shriek of laughter. “You? You’re a pitiful mess when you get a cold.” Meeze harrumphed, but was distracted before he could retort. Joel poked his head into the kitchen, smiling at me.

“Excuse me, sir, but the humani lady from last night is here. Asked for you. Are you in?”

Terry left the dishtowel in a damp heap on the counter in front of the microwave and heaved a huge loins-girding sigh. “Yeah, I am. Meeze, how would you like to be a buffer zone between me and somebody with whom I have a complicated history? Ia tseradi’ae, by the way, and I’m in no hurry to have that change.” There it was again! “Ia tseradi’ae” was their code phrase in Th’nashi that meant a particular humani didn’t know they were vampires. But she was one herself! Or a Grail, which was the same thing. I waited to see what Meeze would make of her.

I came out of the anesthetic pretty fast, but by then it was over. Well, in one way. In another, it was a horrible afternoon, even with better painkillers than humani vets have. I felt every sort of bodily unhappiness: muscle cramps, nausea, and of course the big pulsing hurt where my uterus and ovaries had been. The only position I felt comfortable in was sitting bolt upright.

The District Sorcerer’s office was two floors down, so Pharaoh came up to see me. He left something fragrant smelling on the clean soft towel they had spread in my traveling cage. It was a catnip mouse knitted in eyelash yarn, so that it was as furry as a small exotic guinea pig. I appreciated the gesture, but not being able to move made it a present for some other day, not this unending one.

“Do you want to be petted?” he whispered with concern. I gave my head the tiniest melancholy shake, then changed my mind and reached out and tapped him with a shaky paw. His outer soul had already been busy, doing things that dulled the pain somewhat and warmed me up.  So he sat and stroked me for a minute, stopping before I got overpetted, and turned on the TV–my cage was on the bed of a room meant for a human. We watched the cartoons I was following (thanks to the cubs) and I dozed off.

When I awoke, I was in bed, which was odd, but Sasha had gone out and gotten both a standard carrier and an actual cat bed, which I’m sure he couldn’t afford. I was wrapped up in the towel, my mouse safe nearby, and we were in the car, my bed on the floor in the back seat. The motion was the last straw, and I brought up some bitter fluid on the towel, trying to miss the actual plush green cushion of the bed itself and failing a little.

“Oh, poor kitten!” He reached his outer soul around and cradled me with it. “We’ll get you all cleaned up when we’re home, and that will be in a jiffy.” I moaned and burrowed myself deep within towel and g’nah and self-pity. Sasha continued his reassurances: “You’ll already feel worlds better tomorrow. Believe it or not, most of this is the anesthetic wearing off. My poor kitten!” I mewed, hoping to keep him talking, as it was distracting me from Me. He did so, failing to notice that when his conversation lagged I made a little noise just as a socially-skilled human would do.

We pulled up in front of the house and Sasha whistled through his teeth. “Well, will you look at that!” I couldn’t. “Seems like Little Miss Truant has a mama.” This seemed unfair. Not that she had one, but that my unwellness was going to spoil my enjoyment of the forthcoming soap opera.

“Little Miss Truant” was a pretty little girl of 12 or 13 or so, who had just moved into the neighborhood at the beginning of the school year. She lived in the Harvard graduate housing that was across the street from us, but we had never before seen a parent. We saw plenty of her, though–running about at all hours of the day and night. Sasha had once buttonholed her and asked her why she wasn’t in school?

“I’m homeschooled,” she said with a roll of her huge dark eyes, and bounced off on her adult-free way. It had been making Control Freak Van der Linden insane, to everybody’s amusement. I heard Terry telling Eamon that the neighborhood was safe enough, and the child still at the stage of being happy to play alone by herself, amusing herself by watching squirrels and the occasional raccoon, so neither her person nor her character were in particular danger. But still Sasha fretted, and knowing what the tiny victims in his morgue had suffered, nobody had much heart to catechize him on it, not even Terry.

When we pulled up in the driveway, Sasha put me on the hood while he pretended he needed to open the front door ahead of time, all the while peering at the interaction between the little girl and her mother–it had to be her mother; they looked like a shampoo ad, both golden-skinned and bedspring dark curls. It seemed to be a probably well-deserved scolding. The girl broke off and ran over to me.

“What’s the matter with Eureka?” she called to the horrified Sasha, who was about to draw his weapon or something at seeing my invalid self so approached.

“She’s just coming home from the vet. She got spayed this morning. How do you know her name?” Sasha was in full-blown cop mode.

“Oh, Eureka’s just what I call her. I’ve only seen her in the windows. She’s a Russian Blue. Dorothy had a blue kitten that she named Eureka because she found her. That’s what Eureka means, you know.” The child paused and they made eye contact, possibly picking up on Sasha’s what-the-HELL.

She sighed. “Dorothy from Oz? In the books? You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? There were other books.”

“Dorothy’s Eureka fell in a tub of bluing. And I found my Eureka, so I guessed it was appropriate.” Now it was her turn for a little what-the-HELL. They paused, appreciating each others’ literacy. I was mystified. I can read very basic things, but the only Oz I knew about was the movie. Which I suppose I also knew came from a book. But that was it.

Then: “You read Oz,” she said with satisfaction.

“Yup. And I have my clothes in an honest-to-john wardrobe. Idjits sold me one at a garage sale for $30. Solid in the back, but I check it every morning.” He did, too, giving it a ritual rap. It wasn’t the sort of private weirdness I’d expect Sasha to share, and I didn’t get the reference for years until the Narnia movie came out on DVD.

The little girl’s eyes sparkled. She held out her hand. “Rita Tarragon.”

“Special Agent Dr. Alexei John Van der Linden.” I could tell he was giving her the entire thing to thrill her, and it did.

“Oh no you are not. Are you really?” she hoped. Sasha pulled out his badge and she jumped and shrieked and grabbed it for closer examination, handing it back with her heart in her face.

“Do you have a gun?”

“Yup.” He spread his coat and turned a little to the side, so she could see it lurking in its holster in the small of his back.

“You don’t . . . What do you investigate?”

Sasha grimaced. “That, my dear Ms. Tarragon, is another tale for another day. I want to get Eureka out of the cold, and then I’d like to be introduced to your mother.”

“She’s not dating anybody since the divorce,” Rita warned.

“All good. I’m a) taken and b) gay, so she’s twice safe. All right?”

“All right! Mom! Moooommmmm!!” She barreled into the woman, who’d been slowly approaching this odd conversation, worry etching her otherwise pleasant-enough face. Sasha took the opportunity to do as advertised and carry me into the house, where I tried in desperation to make it to my pan before losing all dignity, but what my bladder wanted as a gallop came out as a limp. Devon picked me up by the scruff and carried me into the office loo–unceremonious, but at the moment it was the only way to transport me that didn’t involve bumping my stitches.

Afterwards, I sat up very straight on Terry’s office rug and strained to hear the conversation outside, but to no avail. I could feel Sasha gathering himself up in a fit of self-righteousness. Behind me, Pharaoh faded into the office gatepoint with a flurry of disturbed air. I caught his eye and pointed with a wobbly paw toward the window. He picked me up with great care and deposited me on the window seat, and when he saw the two small and irate forms facing off, cranked open a side panel of the window so he could eavesdrop in comfort too. (He could have fixed us both up in surround sound with his sorcery, of course, but that would have been cheating.)

“–I appreciate your concern, Dr. Van der Linden, but I’ve filled out the necessary permissions and the way I homeschool my child is my business.” The woman sounded like your basic Harvard grad student, albeit flavored with a New York only a little less classy than Terry’s.

“And the way you let her run loose without supervision is mine. Look, Ms. Tarragon, this is a very safe neighborhood, but that sort of “safety” applies to home invasion and ordinary street crime. I’m not trying to scare you–”

“Yes, you are. Rita could be snatched up at any moment by some opportune drive-by on her way home from traditional school. I’m not going to raise my child in a canvas bag.” Her voice was beginning to break, but her outer soul warned that she was a rage crier, and not backing down any time soon.

“Maybe you’d better get out there,” I muttered to Pharaoh, but he gave me a meaningful look and shrugged. “Damn, forgot you can’t really understand me. But you can understand that, can’t you? It’s getting out of hand.”

Sasha was trying to keep his temper. Sort of trying. “God’s wounds, woman, I have a little girl downtown who could be Rita’s sister!” Uh-oh.

“And where is downtown, Dr. Van der Linden? Who are you anyway, Child Protective Services?”

“Downtown is my morgue in the South End, and I’m FBI. Serial child murders. Screw ‘Opportune Drive-by Joe;’ anybody in this eight-block area knows that between eleven and four, Rita is out gallivanting with nary a mama so much as calling her name. She’s at the age, Ms. Tarragon, and I really think the racist media has lulled you into a false sense of security by only promoting the blonde ones. Most of the children who vanish are children of color–because the predators know the hunt won’t be as frantic.”

She had been trying to butt in for a sentence, but Sasha could talk down defense attorneys, so she slammed a fist on the hood of the car, making him snort. “Wait–what do you mean, between eleven and four? Eight-block area? Rita checks in with me online every hour, and she never goes outside this street unless I send her to the store; or are you going to call in on me for that?”

Sasha barked his short little laugh, the one that meant trouble. “Madam, if I can trouble you to come inside, I can show you proof of what I say. I’ve been meaning to track you down for two weeks now for this conversation, and you’re damned lucky I’m old-fashioned enough to have it with you instead of with CPS.”

This was something of a lie; Sasha had at first muttered, “Gonna call CPS,” and Terry had lost it, much to Sasha’s surprise–his partner had heard too many horror stories while in the pen.

“If she’s a bad mommy, then I am the last person on Earth to stop the wolves from tearing out her throat, but if she’s not, for God’s sake, Sash, bring your little crusade to her door first.”

So Sasha had set the cubs to kiddie-tracking. This reassured him that she was safe by also making sure that nobody else was out tracking her too. By now, he had a whole album’s worth of photos of Rita in the vacant lot, Rita playing in the Div School yard–right under Dante’s windows; in fact he had been the first person to notice her–and most damningly, Rita talking to a wide variety of strangers who had no idea that they themselves were being scrutinized.

But Mom didn’t have any idea either. Now her small plump jaw was set. “Doctor, you’re on. What sort of proof? Rita? Rita! You come here this instant!”

We ducked our heads back inside the house and Pharaoh opened the office door a crack after they all had passed into the living room. Rita saw the movement from the corner of her eye, and was about to come investigate, but Pharaoh became more adult than I had ever seen him and snapped, “Eureka is in here and needs to rest. You, I believe, were asked to stay with Mum and Dr. Van der Linden.” Her eyes widened with dismay and she spun a u-ey on one heel. He muttered to me, “That’s the voice I use on the Sorcerer of Philadelphia.”

Voices were a little muffled from the human perspective, and Pharaoh gave in and tossed out an unscrupulous spell to let him hear–as well as the cubs next door, seeing as it had been their hard work. Out in the living room, they had all settled on Auntie Rosa’s lovely leather furniture; I could ping the Tarragons trying not to gawk at the house and feel small. There was a pause; I presumed Sasha was opening up his photo collection.

He told her what he had done. “As it happens, my partner has bodyguards, being the rich and famous type who gets threats. When the boys were just hanging around eating their heads off, I sent ‘em out to keep an eye on Rita.”

I could hear the tiny fwips as he dealt the photos out on the large glass coffee table. Ms. Tarragon gasped.

“Rita, who are these people? And what were you doing there? What part of ‘don’t talk to strangers’ didn’t you understand? Who is this man?” Whoever he was, he was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because Sasha whistled for a cub, while doing the more usual tweak with his outer soul. I didn’t know why he bothered to whistle, because Ms. Tarragon was Th’nashi too. Putting on the dog? Didn’t seem like him. I forgot about it, because Ms. Tarragon was crying, and the cub was coming into the office to get some ice water from the wet bar and a box of tissues too.

Meanwhile, Sasha continued, albeit in a gentler tone. “That guy’s name is Moe Khan, and he looks scruffy because he’s been a merchant marine most of his life and does yard work as a hobby. He’s harmless. But this guy,” fwip, is a different story. His name is Professor Dudley Retsil Carver II, and he has a chair at the Div School. He’s allowed to teach there, but his 2002 kiddie porn conviction won’t let him go back to the private school he was at beforehand. His granddaddy has thrown Harvard a whole truckload of money, so his CORI got overlooked, I guess.”

Rita gasped. “That guy? He’s really nice! I used to see him every day. In fact, he was going to bring in his first edition Alice in Wonderland for me to look at, but I haven’t seen Duds in over a week.”

Sasha heh’ed. “I believe one of Dr. Carver’s colleagues had a discussion with him. I’d hate to venture the guess that the colleague also being the size of a linebacker may have had something to do with it. I’m sure Houghton Library right here at Harvard has all the first editions you’d like to see, if you behave in the room with the quiet and the white gloves.”

Pharaoh chuckled, tousling my ears. “Bully Fabrizio has his uses. He earned the ‘Bully’ when we were at Congreve–boarding school–because he used to bully the bullies.” I decided I hated Dante a little less, and wished I’d been there.

Out in the living room there was quiet, broken by Ms. Tarragon’s sobs. After a minute, Rita proved she wasn’t a dummy and began to cry too, in the wild way only a half-grown human kitten can when she’s had a long day and too much had happened.

It had been a long day. I couldn’t hold up my end any more. The big dramatic climax had been passed with the humans as I slid into unconsciousness. Somewhere later I felt Terry come home from class. Pharaoh slid out to give him the TV Guide blurb on it all.

But it wasn’t quite over.

“Lynn? My God, Tarragon, this is your kid we’re talking about?”

“Terry? My God, Riverly, these are your people?”

They know each other, I thought with what I had to think with. But I faded out anyway. Damn surgery. You can keep it.