Puzzled and concerned, he followed her.
Was she simply moon-maddened, wild with the pull of the full moon? Or had something frightened her in the library’s dark rooms?
With Dulcie, who knew? His lady’s moods could explode as crazily as moths flung in a windstorm.
At least he hadn’t scented the strange torn around her door, he thought with relief as he gained the moonlit peaks.
Already she had disappeared. But her scent was there, warm and sweet, leading away into dense blackness between a tangle of vent pipes that rose from a roof as silvered and flat as a frozen pond. Slipping between the slashing shadows, he galloped past a dozen east-facing windows that reflected a dozen pale moons. Rearing up to look across the roofs for her, peering beneath overhangs and around dormers, he softly called to her. He spoke her name half a dozen times before he grew uneasy, began to worry that the torn had found her first.
Most toms wouldn’t harm a female, but there was always the nasty-tempered beast who liked to hurt a lady more than he liked to love her, the unusual, twisted male who fed on fear and pain-beasts little different from a similarly warped human. Except there were far fewer such cats than men.
Not that Dulcie couldn’t take care of herself. There wasn’t a dog in Molena Point who would tangle with his lady. But despite Dulcie’s temper and her swift claws, Joe searched with growing concern, hurrying along the peaks and watching the shadows and calling. Beneath the moon’s shifting light he could see nothing alive but the darting bats that skimmed the rooftops sucking up bugs and squeaking their shrill radar cries.
Suddenly the tom’s scent hit him strong, clinging to the wall of a little, one-room penthouse.
Sniffing at the window, Joe could smell where the cat had rubbed his cheek along the glass, arrogantly marking this territory as if it were his own.
Peering in through the dusty pane, he studied the old desk stacked with papers and catalogs and the shelves behind, crammed with books and ledgers. What had the torn seen in there of interest?
Beyond the desk a spiral staircase led down to the bookstore below. Maybe this cat, like Dulcie and like Joe himself, found a bookstore inviting; certainly bookstores had a warm coziness, and they always smelled safe.
Maybe the cat had taken up residence there; maybe the two young women who kept the shop had adopted him, picked him up on the highway or at the animal pound. How would they know that Molena Point already had enough tomcats? And why would they care? Why would a human care about the delicate balance of territory necessary to the village males?
A nudge against his flank spun him around crouched to attack.
Dulcie bounced aside laughing, her green eyes flashing. Cuffing his face, she raced to the edge of the roof and dropped off, plummeting down into the concrete canyon-he heard her claws catch on an awning.
Crouching on the rain gutter, he looked down where she clung in the swaying canvas, her eyes blazing. Lashing her tail, she leaped up past him to the roof again and sped away. He burst after her and they fled along the rooftops laughing with human voices.
“You can’t escape?”
“No scruffy torn can catch me?”
“No hoyden queen can outrunthistomcat, baby.”
“Try me.” She laughed, scorching away into the dark and twisted shadows. And who was to hear them? Below, the village slept. No one would hear them laughing and talking-no one, seeing them racing across the rooftops, would connect two cats with human voices. Wildly they fled across the peaks, leaping from shingled hip to dormer and up the winding stairs of the courthouse tower, swiftly up to its high, open lookout.
On the small circular terrace beneath the tower’s conical roof they trotted along the top of the brick rail, looking down at the world spread all below them, at a vast mosaic stained to silver and black. Nothing moved there, only the cloud shadows slipping across and the little bats jittering and darting on the fitful wind.
But then as they padded along the rail, stepping around the outside of the tower’s four pillars on a narrow row of bricks, something stirred below them.
In the sea of darkness an inky patch shifted suddenly and slunk out of the shadows.
He stood staring up at them, black and bold among the rooftops. A huge beast. Black as sin. The biggest tomcat Joe had ever seen-broad of shoulder, wide of head, solid as a panther. He moved with the grace of a panther, swaggering across the roof directly below them, belligerent and predaceous and staring up narrow-eyed, intently watching them, his slitted, amber eyes flashing fire-and his gaze was fully on Dulcie, keen with speculation.
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ON THE ROOFS below Joe and Dulcie the tomcat sauntered along a sharp peak, swaying his broad shoulders with authority and staring coldly up at them where they crouched high on the rail of the tower. Though he dismissed Joe, hardly noticing him, his gaze lingered keenly on Dulcie, making her shiver. Then he smiled and, turning away again, began to stalk between the chimneys, his gaze fixed on a skylight’s clear dome; crouched over the moonstruck bubble, he peered down intently through the curving glass.
From their high vantage, Dulcie watched him with interest.“Blue Moss Cafe,” she said softly. “What’s he looking at? What’s so fascinating? They’re closed for the night.” There would not be so much as a bread crust remaining on the small round tables, not a crumb visible in the stainless steel kitchen; she and Joe had often looked in, sniffing the good smell of beef stew, watching the happy diners. The cat seemed to study every detail of the dim, closed restaurant, remaining so for some moments before he moved on again to peer into an attic and then into a darkened penthouse. There were apartments above some of the shops, and where a room was lighted, he kept his distance, circling around to avoid any wash of light spilling upon him. Approaching an angled, tilting skylight, he hunkered over the dark, dusty panes-and froze.
Whatever he saw below him down in the dusty-dim environs of Medder’s Antiques had jerked him to full alert. Lashing his tail, he clawed at the glass, every line of his muscled body focused and intent, fixated on the little crowded antique store and its ancient, dusty furniture, perhaps studying some odd accouterment of human culture-maybe an antique rattrap or silk umbrella or silver snuffbox. A faint glow seeped up from a nightlight somewhere within, dully igniting the skylight’s grimy panes and silhouetting the black cat’s broad head and thick shoulders. Clawing at the metal frame, digging and pulling, he soon forced the skylight open.
Heaving his shoulder into the crack, he pushed the glass up, rolled underneath, and dropped out of sight as the glass thumped closed behind him; the leap would be ten or twelve feet down among dust-scented Victorian chairs and cluttered china cabinets.
“Come on!” Dulcie hissed. Leaping from the rail, she fled down the tower’s dark, winding stairs. Joe raced close, pressing against her, gripped by a nameless fear for her; he didn’t like to think what kind of cat this was, breaking and entering like a human thief.
Side by side they crouched over the skylight looking down where the cat had vanished among the jumbled furniture. Nothing moved. The reflections across a row of glass-faced china cabinets were as still as if time itself had stopped, the images of carved fretwork and tattered silk shawls lifeless and eternal, a dead montage. A heap of musical instruments, violins and trumpets and guitars, lay rumbled into the arms of a Victorian setee. An ancient bicycle wore a display of feathered hats suspended from its seat and handlebars. The cats heard no sound from the shop, only the hush of breeze around them tickling across the rooftops punctuated by the high-frequency calls of the little bats.
Clink.A metallic clunk jarred the night. Then a familiar scraping sound as the front door opened. The tinkle of its bell stifled quickly, as if someone had grabbed the clapper.