35 [��������: pic_36.jpg]
When Charlie looked up from her computer, she was surprised to see that the predawn dark had brightened into morning. She glanced at her watch. Max had been gone for nearly an hour. He’d been quiet this morning, solemn and distracted as he often was when police business presented a knotty problem. Breakfast in the village with his officers was good for him, he hadn’t done that in a long while; and it lent her some extra time, which she appreciated right now.
She had wondered, slipping out of bed at four a.m., if she was raving mad to be getting up at that hour. She’d eaten yogurt and fruit at the computer, and now she was ravenous. But she was so into the world of the book that it was hard to leave-hard to leave the kit, cold and shunned by the older cats, wandering the winter hills alone. The story was so real to her that sometimes shewasthe homeless tortoiseshell, feeling sharply the terror of the thin, frightened creature creeping through the night, hiding from the clowder leader among jungles of dense, tall grass. Charlie’s rough sketches for the book marched across the cork wall behind her, sketches for which Kit had been the model. At first Charlie had meant the story for young children, but it had grown of its own accord, enriching and complicating itself until it had become a far more involving novel.
Rising from her desk she headed for the kitchen, her thoughts partly on her empty stomach but mostly still on the book. While the cat in the story looked and acted like Kit, the real challenge was that this fictional catwasan ordinary feral, and she must show the cat’s life from that aspect. No speaking, no uncatly notions. The fictional cat’s vocabulary was limited to mewls and caterwauling, to growls and hisses and body language. She had no name, there was no human to give her a name. Charlie called her, simply, the cat. But the details of a feral cat’s life were as real as she could make them-facts right from the cat’s mouth, Charlie thought, smiling. Immersed in Kit’s story, the words flowed out in a rush, all the joys and terrors of that feral cat’s perilous existence.
She was standing at the kitchen table making a peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich when she heard rustling and scrabbling outside, beneath the bay window. Crossing to the window seat to kneel on the scattered cushions, she looked down into the bushes.
Within the tangle of geraniums and camellias and ferns, she could see nothing. Looking up across the yard, she saw nothing unusual around Ryan’s truck where it stood beside Scotty’s car in front of the barn. Rock was out in the pasture playing with their own two dogs. Turning away, she spun around again when a thud hit the window behind her.
A dark shape clung to the sill. The kit stared in at her, pressing so hard against the glass that her whiskers were flat; her round yellow eyes were huge with fear.
Hurrying to open the door, Charlie was nearly bowled over as Kit flew into her arms. The little cat clung against her, shivering, her heart pounding so hard that Charlie feared for her. Holding Kit close, she returned to the window seat and sat down to cuddle her. Kit’s coat was matted and wet from the early morning dew, and full of trash and leaves. Her paws were ice-cold. She stared, terrified, into Charlie’s face, but she said no word.
“It’s all right,” Charlie said softly. “We can talk, Ryan and Scotty are both on the roof, I can see them. No one else is here.” Tucking Kit warm among the pillows, she rose long enough to snatch up the milk bottle, pour some in a bowl, and nuke it for half a minute. Setting it down, watching Kit inhale it, she opened a can of chicken, which Kit gobbled.
Sitting down beside her again, Charlie rubbed her ears. “What happened? What happened? What chased you? Where have you been? We thought�”
Kit looked up at her tiredly, still shivering.
“Worn out,” Charlie said, hoping that was all. “You’re exhausted. Oh, Kit, you mustn’t be sick!” Picking Kit up and hugging her close, Charlie carried her to the table. She was reaching for the phone, to call Lucinda or the vet, when the phone rang. Charlie snatched it up with a shaking hand.
Lucinda’s voice, agitated, cutting in and out. “Have you seen her? Have you seen Kit? Is she there with you? She hasn’t come home at all.”
“She�”
Lucinda pressed on, giving her no chance to speak. “I thought she might come there to you because you’re closer to Hellhag Hill. We’ve walked all over the hills and down into Hellhag Cave�”
“You’re in Hellhag Cave? Oh, Lucinda, come out of there. She’s�”
“We’re out now, you can’t use a phone in there. But if the ferals didn’t go down into the caves,” Lucinda blurted breathlessly, “then they’ve headed back where they came from to their clowder, and the kit�”
“Lucinda! She’s here!”
“There? Oh, my dear�”
“Kit’s here! Right here beside me. Safe in my arms. What in the world happened?”
“You didn’t know? Is she all right?”
“She’s fine! Hungry, but that’s nothing new. Didn’t know what?”
“Clyde found three ferals from Kit’s clowder, locked cruelly in a cage. Kit led him there, and he freed them-but she ran off with them. We thought� Pedric and I thought�”
Kit had her face in the phone. “I’m here, Lucinda! I’m fine. I’m right here with Charlie and I’m fine!”
Lucinda sighed, then was silent. Charlie pushed Kit away. “I didn’t know,” she said in a small voice, looking sternly at the kit.
“We thought she was just leading them away through the village and that she’d be back. When she didn’t come home, we thought� No one told you? Wilma didn’t call?”
Kit looked up at Charlie. Charlie looked at Kit. A little smile touched the kit’s darkly mottled face, the first smile Charlie had seen. Pulling the wet, dirty cat warm against her, Charlie imagined Lucinda and Pedric tramping up Hellhag Hill in the dark, imagined those two old people going down into Hellhag Cave, calling and calling the kit, and she shuddered.
“When she didn’t come home,” Lucinda said, “we were terrified she’d gone forever.”
Kit scrambled back to Charlie’s shoulder, nearly shouting into the phone. “I didn’t� I didn’t mean to worry you, Lucinda. I love you!”
“We’ll be there,” Lucinda said. “Ten minutes, as soon as we can get down the hill, we’ll be there to get you.”
When they’d hung up, Charlie gave Kit some more chicken, and finished making her own sandwich. “Those caves go on forever, Kit! They could have been lost down there!” Though it was hard to be mad at the kit. Charlie had never been able to find anything written, and had found no person who could tell her, where those black fissures ended; but the tales about Hellhag Cave were not pleasant. Carrying her sandwich and Kit back to her studio, she tucked the little cat into an easy chair, in a warm blanket, and sat down at her computer. Already Kit was nodding off.
But she couldn’t work, she sat watching Kit sleep, watching the nervous twitch of Kit’s paws, as if she was still running; and Charlie’s heart twisted at Kit’s occasional sharp mewls of fear.
As Charlie waited for Lucinda and Pedric to come for their lost kit, Joe Grey and Dulcie were preparing to search for Roman Slayter’s gun, relying on Kit’s information. They were flying blind, not at all sure what finding a gun would prove-unless it was the gun that killed Dufio. Or, if Chichi was looking for a gun, and if Chichi had been so pushy trying to learn where Slayter was staying� Though that didn’t add up to much, it was enough to put them on Slayter’s case. Cop sense or cat sense, Joe had the gut feeling this was worth a shot.