Sasha turned slowly, answering him with the cool, challenging smile that Jenny had once mistaken for self-possession. When it was, in fact, a dare. The smile dared every man to fuck her, every woman to be as beautiful. Now Jenny could almost hear Sasha’s voice daring them to stop her: You’ll never touch me. I will always be beyond your reach.
The tiger cat’s growl deepened and then rose to a bloodcurdling battle cry.
Jenny watched in astonishment as the stream bank began to fill with cats. They raced across the fields. They leapt from the branches of the trees that arched the stream. They swarmed across the bridge. They came from every area of the village, until they formed a circle around Jenny, each cat arched, hissing, ready to defend her with its life. Jenny felt her own chest go tight with terror. She shouldn’t have waited; she should have left San Martino that morning. Please, she sent up a silent prayer to the Lady, don’t let any of them be hurt for me. Keep them safe.
On the other side of the stream Sasha shook her head, smiling. “Very impressive, Jenny-o,” she said.
“What do you want?” Jenny asked.
“What you’re going to give me. You’ll see. You and your precious cats will give me what was mine before and what must be mine again, what was always meant for me.”
Sasha flashed a model’s practiced smile. Then slowly, the midnight-blue velvet of her dress faded to a dusty navy, the navy to a slate blue, and the slate blue to a murky gray, until there was only a hint of color on the air, like smoke lingering after a fire.
Jenny felt her breath return to normal as the cats began to relax and disperse. Finally, only Olivero and the black and white remained on the bank with her.
“Fantasma,” Olivero said, spitting out the word like a curse. It would be the only time Jenny would hear him use human speech.
“You’ve seen her before,” Jenny said.
“Do you think it’s for our health that we always follow you?” the black and white snapped. “I told you that you were in danger.” Beside him the tiger cat was still arched, his fur nearly electric. The tuxedo cat regarded him fondly. “Olivero doesn’t trust anything he can’t kill.”
“What is she?” Jenny asked.
“A fantasma, a wraith. Or strega, a witch. Choose what term you will. She belongs to another place.”
“Minneapolis, if you really want to know,” Jenny said.
“This is not a question of geography,” the cat told her. “You must understand that although the strega can enter your world, it is not her true home. Now tell me, how many times have you seen her here?”
“Three before this time. Once in the fields, once in the church, this morning in the stream, and now with you.”
The two cats exchanged a glance, and the black and white muttered something about audace.
“And she was always dressed as she was now?”
“When I saw her in the fields, she wore a cloak. She was naked in the stream, and in the church she was dressed like a nun.”
“She was a nun,” the cat said thoughtfully. “As she was once the young noblewoman you just saw. In other times, you understand.”
Jenny took that in, her legs suddenly trembling. “What she said about me — and you — giving her what was hers … is that true?”
The tuxedo’s green gaze held her steady. “Perhaps. It is only here, where she spent so many lifetimes, that she has true power.”
“For what? What is it that she wants?”
“Whomever she can get,” the black and white answered. “But we will not let her have you.”
The next morning Jenny woke chilled. For once her bed was not blanketed with cats. There was only the black and white sitting on the pillow beside her, and at the foot of the bed, Pappa Gatto. Jenny rubbed the sleep from her eyes. It felt like her second morning in the house, so much so that she had a feeling that one cycle had ended and another begun.
Pappa Gatto soon confirmed this. “Good morning, Jenny,” he began in his usual genteel manner. “I hope you slept well, for today is very important. Today you leave for Firenze. Please get dressed then come downstairs.”
The two cats left the room, leaving Jenny as dazed as she’d been after their first conversation. She’d planned to leave San Martino today, and yet Pappa Gatto declaring it with the authority of a papal edict somehow made it real. Today she was going to leave la casa dei gatti, and she couldn’t imagine how she’d say goodbye to so many creatures whom she’d come to love.
She put on her own underwear and socks, her jeans, her lavender T-shirt, and her running shoes. After weeks in Marieangela’s oversized dresses, the tight denim jeans seemed confining. It felt strange to put on her old clothes, as if she were stepping back into a life that no longer fit her.
Pappa Gatto sat waiting at the foot of the stairs, indulging two kittens who stalked his tail. “Jenny, there is something we must show you.”
The great ginger cat led the way to a low, locked wooden door at the back of the kitchen. Jenny had tried the lock before, assuming the door led to some sort of larder. Unable to open it, she’d forgotten about it.
Pappa Gatto touched a loose brick in the hearth. “Behind that stone you will find a key to the door. Please take the key and open the door for us.”
Jenny moved the brick, found a rust-covered skeleton key, and slid it into the lock. The lock clicked open with a turn. She pushed open the wooden door and saw a stairway going down.
“This way,” Pappa Gatto said, starting down the stairs.
Jenny followed slowly, feeling her way along the stone wall with her hands. The air became damp and cool as she descended, and the stairs went slick with something that might have been moss. She stumbled once, then felt warm, soft fur beneath her hand. “Rest your hand on my back,” Pappa Gatto said. “I will lead you.”
Holding loosely to the cat, Jenny made her way to the bottom of the stairs and through an even darker hall. All the while she could sense the other cats, filing down the stairway, filling the hall behind her.
She let go of Pappa Gatto as the hall suddenly opened into a high-ceilinged chamber. Someone had been here recently, Jenny realized. Someone who’d taken the trouble to light the oil lamps on the walls.
Jenny stood perfectly still, unable to believe her eyes. The walls of the chamber were covered by a trompe l’oeil fresco, a vision both strange and familiar. The colors were the rich jewel tones of the Florentine masters — the impossibly soft reds of Botticelli; the celestial mother-of-pearl pink and silver-green of Fra Angelico; the cerulean blue of Lippi and the lapis of Bronzino; the range of earth browns that had only come through da Vinci — and all of them detailed and shimmering with gold leaf. The scene, a Renaissance villa with soaring marble columns and an airy loggia that opened out onto the garden. A spring day. Purple wisteria climbing the walls. Red poppies and white irises growing wild among the grasses.
Above the loggia, a balcony opened out from the villa’s upper story, and Jenny saw that each of the stone ledges was covered with cats. Cats whom she knew quite well. Olivero was there and so were Cipriana and Nicola, Aggripina looking ready to dispense advice, a yellow torn with a missing ear, the striped kittens, even Domenica with her funny tortoiseshell mask. In the very center of the garden was someone else Jenny recognized, the Lady of the shrine. Nearly identical to the statue, she wore lapis blue robes and had one hand upraised in blessing. But it was clear now why she was smiling and looking down. The hand that was missing from the statue rested comfortably on the head of an extraordinarily large ginger cat. And lying stretched out in front of them, guardian and mediator, was a tuxedo cat with an imperious green gaze.