was being evasive. “But they’re smarter and different in other ways,
too.”
“Why? What was done to them out there?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How’d they get loose?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Why haven’t they been rounded up?”
“Beats me.”
“No offense, sir, but You’re a bad liar.”
“Always have been,” Roosevelt said with a smile. “Listen, son, I don’t
know everything, either. Only what the animals tell me. But it’s not
good for You to know even that much. The more You know, the more
You’ll want to know-and You’ve got your dog and those friends to worry
about.”
“Sounds like a threat,” I said without animosity.
When he shrugged his immense shoulders, there should have been a low
thunder of displaced air. “If You think I’ve been coopted by them at
Wyvem, then it’s a threat. If You believe I’m your friend, then it’s
advice.”
Although I wanted to trust Roosevelt, I shared Orson’s doubt. I found
it hard to believe that this man was capable of treachery. But here on
the weird side of the magical looking-glass, I had to assume that every
face was a false face.
Edgy from the caffeine but with a craving for more, I took my cup to
the coffeemaker and refilled it.
“What I can tell You,” Roosevelt said, “is there were supposed to be
dogs out at Fort Wyvern as well as cats.”
“Orson didn’t come from Wyvern.”
“Where did he come from?”
I stood with my back against the refrigerator, sipping the hot
coffee.
“One of my mom’s colleagues gave him to us. Their dog had a lot of
puppies, and they needed to find homes for them.”
“One of your mom’s colleagues at the university?”
“Yeah. A professor at Ashdon.”
Roosevelt Frost stared, unspeaking, and a terrible cloud of pity
crossed his face.
“What?” I asked, and heard a quavery note in my voice that I did not
like.
He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and kept his
silence. Suddenly he seemed to want to avoid my eyes. Now both he and
Orson were studying the damn dog biscuits.
The cat had no interest in the biscuits. Instead, he watched me.
If another cat made of pure gold with eyes of jewels, standing silent
guard for millennia in the most sacred room of a pyramid far beneath a
sea of sand, had suddenly come to life before my eyes, it would not
have seemed more mysterious than this cat with his steady, somehow
ancient gaze.
To Roosevelt, I said, “You don’t think that’s where Orson came from?
Not Wyvern? Why would my mother’s colleague lie to her?
He shook his head, as if he didn’t know, but he knew all right.
I was frustrated by the way he fluctuated between making disclosures
and guarding his secrets. I didn’t understand his game, couldn’t grasp
why he was alternately forthcoming and closemouthed.
Under the gray cat’s hieroglyphic gaze, in the draft-trembled
candlelight, with the humid air thickened by mystery as manifest as
incense, I said, “All You need to complete your act is a crystal ball,
silver hoop earrings, a Gypsy headband, and a Romanian accent.”
I couldn’t get a rise out of him.
Returning to my chair at the table, I tried to use what little I knew
to encourage him to believe that I knew even more. Maybe he would open
up further if he thought some of his secrets weren’t so secret, after
all.
“There weren’t only cats and dogs in the labs at Wyvern. There were
monkeys.”
Roosevelt didn’t reply, and he still avoided my eyes.
“You do know about the monkeys?” I asked.
“No,” he said, but he glanced from the biscuits to the security camera
monitor in the hutch.
“I suspect it’s because of the monkeys that You got a mooring outside
the marina three months ago.”
Realizing that he had betrayed his knowledge by looking at the monitor
when I mentioned the monkeys, he returned his attention to the dog
biscuits.
Only a hundred moorings were available in the bay waters beyond the
marina, and they were nearly as prized as the dock slips, though it was