Chapter 1 #2
The Siamese came up the porch steps and through the door with the bearing of a woman entering a private salon at an exclusive establishment. She crossed the parlor and arranged herself on the corner of the desk where she could see Honey's face.
"You will get my witch's name correct on the first attempt," Lady Grey said. "I dislike repeating myself."
"I'll do my best," Honey said.
"Hildegard Voss. Voss. Two S's. The town is Vienna, in Austria. I will not specify the district."
"Vienna, Austria," Honey called toward the dining room.
A soft tap. At the edge of Honey's vision, on the map past the parlor door, a small light bloomed and held.
Honey wrote the names: Lady Grey on the familiar line, Hildegard Voss on the bonded line, Vienna in the city column.
The moment she finished the entry, the page folded itself neatly under her hand, lifted up out of the book, slid sideways across the desk on its own, and whispered down through the slit.
A second later she heard, faintly, the soft sound of a page arriving somewhere below the floor and finding its place.
"Impressive," Lady Grey said. "I must say, this is a more competent operation than I had anticipated."
"Thanks," Honey said then she called out to her mother, "Send the next one in."
For a long while, the whole house worked as one.
Rhoda on the porch, easing cats forward by name.
Roam in the doorway, steady and quiet, the gentle traffic between outside and in.
Honey at the desk with the book open and the quill moving.
Edgar at the back of it all with his marker and his lights.
Every cat the same slow ritual: name, witch, city, the page folding, the page slipping, the page gone, and the soft tap from the dining room as another small light bloomed on the map.
Edinburgh. Budapest. Tuscany, where a cat talked so fast Honey had to ask her to slow down twice.
A pair of sisters from Marseille who insisted on being registered together.
Prague. Somewhere in Wales Honey had never heard of.
The pages slipped out of her book and their visit to FACTS & FIBS was logged in their official familiar record.
The lights bloomed east and south and east again.
From the dining room, Edgar's quiet tap, tap, tap became the metronome of the whole evening.
Honey was on the fifty-third name when the tortoiseshell at the desk hissed softly.
"I am NOT giving you my witch's name," the tortoiseshell said, "until somebody tells me what in the Goddess's name is happening here."
"Fair," Honey said. "What's your name, then?"
"Pepper."
"Noted." Honey sprinkled her pink magic on the floor next to the desk, where a silver bowl of fresh water appeared.
Outside, the cats kept coming. Blinking in the grass like they'd just been set down.
Some were calm. Some trembled. One thin old gray cat with cataracts sat down in the middle of the yard and began to weep silently, and Rhoda knelt beside her and spoke to her in the voice a mother uses with a hurt child.
As Honey was sliding the sixty-first folded page through the slit, she saw a small cat limp behind the bookcase.
He must have slipped in with the others when Roam's back was turned.
She only caught him because her eye snagged on something darker than dark in the gap between the wall and the heavy old bookcase.
The shape resolved. A cat. Pressed as small as a cat could make himself.
His coat was a dull matte black, patchy in places.
He was thinner than he ought to be. His eyes were the color of old pennies, and he was watching the parlor with a wary stillness. Honey set down the quill.
"Hey," she said softly as she slipped down off the desk chair, crossed the parlor, and crouched several feet away from the bookcase. "I'm Honey. You don't have to come out. I just saw you there."
The old tom did not move.
"Whenever you're ready," Honey said. "There's no hurry. I'll come check on you in a bit, okay?"
He blinked. She did not push and went back to her desk. She made a small private mark in the book: one unregistered black tom, older, rough condition.
She registered many more cats after that until the line on the porch thinned. The names grew fewer. And then there was only the quiet of a house that had been busy too long, and her mother's voice from outside saying, I think that's all of them.
Honey set down the quill, capped the ink and stood.
She closed the registration book with a sigh.
It was quiet for the first time in an hour.
Cats were curled everywhere. On the steps.
On the railing. In the arms of the one rocking chair.
In the planter. The parlor had filled too.
Cats on the rug. Cats on every chair. A calico had claimed the wood basket beside the fireplace and was already asleep.
Roam stood at the open front door watching the last of them settle, his shoulders against the frame, one hand braced above his head.
Honey had registered nearly one hundred and five familiar cats.
They had all finally run out of the panic of arrival and begun the slower worse work of realizing they were probably going to be here a while. Some slept. Most did not.
Honey crossed to the door and stood beside Roam. He let his arm drop down from the frame and slipped it around her waist, drawing her against his side without taking his eyes off the yard.
"You okay," he said.
"I don't know," Honey said.
"Yeah."
She let her head rest against his shoulder. Then she straightened and stepped past him out onto the porch. Her mother was at the far side with her arms folded tight across herself, looking out at her lawn.
"Mom," Honey said. "How bad is this."
Rhoda was quiet a long moment.
"I don't know yet," she said. "But I know it isn't small."
"They just came," Honey rubbed her temples. "They shouldn't have been able to do that."
"No," Rhoda said. "They shouldn't."
She opened her mouth to ask another question when Lady Grey's voice drifted out through the open parlor door, in her even Viennese drawl.
"Actually, Miss Honey, before you go, my warlock has been lying about his age by one hundred years and spends every Samhain weeping in the pantry because he never spoke to his sister again after a rift that was entirely his fault."
There was a very small silence.
Then Lady Grey, in a voice both small and horrified said, "I did not mean to say that."
From the porch swing came another voice. A calico sat up straight, swished her tail and said, "My witch's prize apple pie recipe was stolen from her neighbor, and she has won the autumn bake-off twelve years running with a recipe that isn't… oh. Oh, oh, oh, oh."
Three more cats spoke at once. Then four. Then the lot of them. The parlor, the porch, the whole of FACTS & FIBS erupted.
Honey did not move. Beside her, her mother had not moved either: arms wrapped tight across her middle, face gone perfectly still, her eyes clouded with a worry her daughter had never seen on her before.
"Oh no," Rhoda said very quietly. "Oh no."