what You saw and just get on with your life.”
“People I love?”
“Sasha. Bobby. Even Orson.”
“They’ll kill my friends to shut me up?”)
“Until You shut up. One by one, they’ll kill them one by one until You
shut up to save those who are left.”
I was willing to risk my own life to find out what had happened to my
mother and father-and why-but I couldn’t put the lives of my friends on
the line. “This is monstrous. Killing innocent-” “That’s who You’re
dealing with.”
My skull felt as though it would crack to relieve the pressure of my
frustration: “Who am I dealing with? I need something more specific
than just the people at Wyvern.l Roosevelt sipped his coffee and didn’t
answer.
Maybe he was my friend, and maybe the warning he’d given me would, if I
heeded it, save Sasha’s life or Bobby’s, but I wanted to punch him. I
might have done it, too, might have hammered him with a merciless
series of blows if there had been any chance whatsoever that I wouldn’t
have broken my hands.
Orson had put one paw on the table, not with the intention of sweeping
his biscuits to the floor and absconding with them but to balance
himself as he leaned sideways in his chair to look past me.
Something in the salon, beyond the galley and dining area, had drawn
his attention.
When I turned in my chair to follow Orson’s gaze, I saw a cat sitting
on the arm of the sofa, backlit by the display case full Of football
trophies. It appeared to be pale gray. In the shadows that masked its
face, its eyes glowed green and were flecked with gold.
It could have been the same cat that I had encountered in the hills
behind Kirk’s Funeral Home earlier in the night.
Like an Egyptian sculpture in a pharaoh’s sepulcher, the cat sat
motionless and seemed prepared to spend eternity on the arm of the
sofa.
Although it was only a cat, I was uncomfortable with my back to the
animal. I moved to the chair opposite Roosevelt Frost, from which I
could see, to my right, the entire salon and the sofa at the far end of
it.
“When did You get a cat?” I asked.
“It’s not mine,” Roosevelt said. “It’s just visiting.”
“I think I saw this cat earlier tonight.”
“Yes, You did.”
“That’s what it told You, huh?” I said with a touch of Bobby’s
scorn.
“Mungoierrie and I had a talk, Yes,” Roosevelt confirmed.
“Who?”
Roosevelt gestured toward the cat on the sofa. “Mungoierrie.”
He spelled it for me.
The name was exotic yet curiously familiar. Being my father’s son in
more than blood and name, I needed only a moment to recognize the
source. “It’s one of the cats in Old Possum’s Book of practical Cats,
the T. S. Eliot collection.”
“Most of these cats like those names from Eliot’s book.”
“These cats?”
“These new cats like Mungojerrie here.”
“New cats?” I asked, struggling to follow him.
Rather than explain what he meant by that term, Roosevelt said, “They
prefer those names. Couldn’t tell You why-or how they came by them. I
know one named Rum Turn Tugger. Another is Rumpelteazer. Coricopat
and Growltiger.”
“Prefer? You make it sound almost as if they choose their own
names.”
“Almost,” Roosevelt said.
I shook my head. “This is radically bizarre.”
“After all these years of animal communication,” Roosevelt said, “I
sometimes still find it bizarre myself ” “Bobby Halloway thinks You
were hit in the head once too often.
Roosevelt smiled. “He’s not alone in that opinion. But I was a
football player, You know, not a boxer. What do You think, Chris?
Has half my brain turned to gristle?”
“No, sir,” I admitted. “You’re as sharp as anyone I’ve ever known.”
“On the other hand, intelligence and flakiness aren’t mutually
exclusive, are they?”
“I’ve met too many of my parents’ fellow academics to argue that one
with You.”
From the living room, Mungojerrie continued to watch us, and from his
chair, Orson continued to monitor the cat not with typical canine
antagonism but with considerable interest.
“I ever tell You how I got into this animal-communication thing?”