Clyde sighed, rose, and began to search for his slippers. Joe watched him for a moment then galloped along past him to the kitchen.
And as Joe drank milk out of his favorite bowl, which Clyde had placed on the breakfast table, and below him on the floor the other animals slurped up their own hastily supplied treats, Clyde sat at the table drinking cold coffee left over from the morning before.
"I hope you killed that rabbit quickly and didn't tease it. I don't like to think of you and Dulcie tormenting…" Clyde shook his head. "For two intelligent beings, you really ought to show more restraint. What good is it to be sentient, to be master of a culturally advanced language, and, supposedly, of advanced thought patterns, and still act like barbarians?"
"The rabbit died quickly. Dulcie broke its neck. Does that make you happy? It was a big buck-a huge buck, maybe the granddaddy of rabbits. It clawed her in the belly, too. For your information, a rabbit can be as vicious as a Doberman when you…"
"Wouldn't you be vicious if someone was trying to flay you for supper?"
"We're cats. We're hunters. God put rabbits on the earth for cats to hunt-it's what we do. You want we should go on food stamps?"
Finished with his milk, he dropped to the cold linoleum, Clyde turned off the light, and they trucked back to bed again. But, getting settled, clawing his side of the blanket into a satisfactory nest, Joe began to worry about Dulcie.
When he had left her in the village, not an hour before, he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving across the rooftops. Probably a raccoon or possum had climbed to the rooftops to scavenge bird's nests. And even if it had been Azrael, Dulcie would be in control; she was quite capable of bloodying Azrael if he got fresh.
Or, he hoped she was.
The moon's light cast the sidewalk and shops into a labyrinth of confusing shadows, but the street seemed empty, and Dulcie heard no sound, nor had noticed anything moving except, high above her, the little bats darting and squeaking. Her attention was centered on the shop window against which she stood, her paws pressed to the glass, the bright colors of weavings and carvings and clay figures softly illuminated into a rainbow of brilliance. Oh, the bright art drew her. Pushing her nose against the pane, she sniffed the exotic scents that seeped through, aromas no human would detect; the faint drift of sour foreign dyes, of rare woods and leathers, the heavy stink of sheep fat from the handmade wool rugs and blankets. Studying the bold Colombian and Peruvian patterns, she thought that their strange-looking horses and deer and cats were closer akin to mythological animals than to real beasts.
Closer akin to me, she thought.
The notion startled her, shocked her, made her shiver.
The idea must have been playing on her mind without realizing, from the myths she had read-the notion that she was strange and out of sync with the world.
It isn't so. I am real flesh and blood, not some weird mythical beast. I am only different.
Just a little bit different.
And stubbornly she returned her attention to the bright and foreign wares.
She had, coming down the street, paused at each shop to stand on her hind paws and stare in, admiring handprinted silk blouses and cashmere sweaters and handmade silver jewelry, her hunger for those lovely embellishments making her purr and purr with longing.
Now, dropping to all fours, she slipped into the garden that ran beside the shop and trotted along to the back, staring up at the transom above the back door.
She did not intend to steal-as she had, in the past, stolen silky garments from her neighbors. She meant only to get nearer the lovely wares, to sniff and feel and enjoy.
Swarming up a purple-blooming bougainvillea vine that climbed the shop wall, forcing up between its tangle of rough, woody limbs, she clung above the back door, clawing at the narrow transom until the hinged window dropped inward. It stopped halfway, held by a chain.
Crawling through on the slanted glass, she jumped down to a stack of packing crates, then to the floor.
She was in the shop's storeroom. It smelled of packing straw and the sour scent of the raw mahogany crates that had been shipped from South America.
Trotting into the big showroom, she was surrounded by primitive weavings and carvings and paintings, was immersed in a gallery of the exotic, every tabletop and display case filled with unusual treasures. Leaping to a counter, she nosed at straw figures and clay beasts, at painted wooden animals and medieval-looking iron wall hangings and applique pictures made from tiny bits of cloth. Lying down on a stack of wool sweaters as soft as the down of a baby bird, she rolled luxuriously, purring and humming a happy, half-cat, half-human song of delight.
It had been a long time since she'd coveted anything so fiercely as these lovely creations.
Choosing the softest sweater, a medley of rust and cream and black that complemented her own tabby coat, she forgot her good intentions. Dragging it between her front paws-like a leopard dragging an antelope-she headed across the floor to the storeroom. There she gazed up toward the high window, her head swimming with the heady pleasure of taking, all for herself, something so beautiful. She was crouched to leap when a sharp thud made her spin around, bristling.
She could smell him before she saw him. In the inky gloom, he was a whisper of black on black, his amber eyes gleaming, watching her. Sauntering out of the darkness, he smiled with smug superiority. "What have you stolen, my dear?"
She crouched, glaring.
"My, my. Would you report me and Greeley to the police, when you're nothing but a thief yourself? Tell me, Dulcie, where are you taking that lovely vicuna sweater?"
"I'm taking it to nap on it," she lied, "in the storeroom, away from the display lights. Is there a law against that?"
The tomcat sat down, cutting her a wicked smile. "You don't steal, my dear? You have never stolen from, say, your neighbors? Never slipped into their houses and carried away silk underwear, never stolen a black silk stocking or a lace teddy?"
Her heart pounded; if she had been human, her face would have flamed red.
"My dear Dulcie, I know all about your little escapades. About the box that your Wilma Getz keeps on her back porch so the neighbors can retrieve their stolen clothes, about Mr. Warren's chamois gloves that were a present from his wife, about Wilma's own expensive watch that was 'lost' under the bathtub for nearly a year."
She watched him narrowly. Where had he heard such things? All her neighbors knew, but… Mavity. It had to be Mavity-she could have heard it anywhere. She'd probably told that cute little story to Greeley, having no idea she would hurt Dulcie.
"Mavity thinks you're charming," Azrael told her, "dragging home the neighbor's underwear."
The tomcat twitched his whiskers. "And Greeley, of course, was most fascinated by your display of, shall we say, perspicacity and guile."
He looked up to the shelves above them, drawing her gaze to a row of ugly black carvings. "Those figures up there, my dear, those ugly little feathered men-you do know that those are voodoo dolls?"
"So?"
"That dark voodoo magic is of great importance." His smile was oily.
"It is that kind of darkness in you, Dulcie, that entices you to steal. Oh, yes, my dear, we are alike in that.
"You know the tales of the black cat," he said softly, "of the witch's familiar. Those are the tales of the dark within us-that is the darkness that invites the joy of thieving, my dear. That is the darkness speaking within your nature."