“You all right?” Malkin asked, catching his mood.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” He focused his attention on her. “Tell me about this widow who used to live here.”
“Widder Hackett?” Malkin chuckled. “She was a salty one, even for a witch. She had a tongue, that one. If you so much as sat down on her stoop she’d come flying out waving a broom and chase you off. Always complaining about dirt and such, she was.” The girl looked around the house and shook her head. “What she’d think if she could see this place now! We could clean and polish until the end of time and we’d never get it back to what it was.”
“I’ll settle for getting it to where it’s habitable,” Wiz said. “Let’s do some more on the upstairs and then knock off for dinner.”
“Let’s knock off for dinner and then do some more upstairs,” Malkin countered. “It’s near evening and I haven’t eaten today.”
“Now that you mention it . . .”
Malkin looked at him. “Well?” she said finally.
“Well what?”
“Well aren’t you going to magic us up food?”
“I’m not very good at that-unless the kitchen’s got a microwave?”
Malkin snorted. “Fine wizard you are. I don’t suppose you can cook either.”
“I do all right,” Wiz said defensively.
Malkin snorted again. “I know what that means, coming from a man. Look here then, I’ll go back to the market and get a few things-charge a few things,” she amended hastily before Wiz could say anything, “and I’ll cook tonight. I don’t want food poisoning on top of everything else today. But tomorrow you do the cooking. Now help me get this miserable door open so I can get back to the miserable market before the last of the miserable stalls closes.”
With Malkin’s help he tugged the door open again and he watched her as she disappeared down the street. Then he leaned against the door and pushed it to again as the hinges protested like souls in mortal agony.
The door, Wiz thought. I’ve got to do something about that damned door.
Wiz went down the worn stone steps into the kitchen. It had to be the kitchen, he decided, because private houses don’t usually come equipped with torture chambers.
It was a high, narrow room in what he would have thought of as the basement of the house. A couple of thin barred windows high up lit the place dimly. The walls and floors were dank stone and the ceiling was rough beams and planks. There was a huge fireplace with a wicked-looking collection of iron hooks and chains hanging under the mantel, plus a contraption of iron spikes and gears and yet more chains off to one side that he vaguely recognized as some kind of spit for roasting meat. There was a stone sink in the opposite wall and in the center of the room a heavy wooden table with a rack full of hooks above it.
Gee, he thought, clean this place up, light a fire in the fireplace, put some flowers here and there, I’ll bet you could brighten it up to, oh, say, dismal.
Among the pile of supplies Malkin had purchased was a small bottle of oil. Wiz took the oil back upstairs to the door and poured some on the hinges as best he could from the inside. Then he tugged the door open to get them from the outside.
He barely had the door open six inches when a furry gray streak shot through and dashed between his legs.
“Hey!” Wiz yelled, but the streak ignored him. It was halfway up the stairs before it stopped and resolved itself into a cat.
It was a rather bedraggled and quite large cat. A tiger-striped tabby cat, Wiz thought, dredging the terms out of his subconscious. A tiger-striped tabby tomcat, he amended as the cat turned its backside toward him.
The cat sat in the middle of the stairs and looked back over its right shoulder at Wiz.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Wiz demanded of the cat. The cat continued to study Wiz with its great yellow eyes as if to say, “I live here. What’s your excuse?”