Chapter 5
Closed Doors
The old black tom blinked again. Phineas Grove crouched, very slowly, beside the heavy old bookcase. His coat opened a little as he went down. His knees touched the parlor rug without sound. He looked at the cat in the gap.
"Hello, my old friend." His voice was the soft mild voice he used on every cat. "Hello."
The old tom looked back at him. He did not blink again.
"Don't you look familiar." Phineas tilted his head. "I think we met a long, long time ago, you and I. I'm sure of it." He waited a count. "Come now. Come now, friend. We have work to do, you and I. I will fix you. For good."
Quill, in the chair behind Phineas, lifted his head. He watched his witch with perfect stillness.
The old tom in the gap did not move. Phineas reached into the gap with one careful hand and laid his palm against the dust-dark fur of the old cat's flank, and drew him out. The old cat came without resistance.
Phineas reached for the soft brown wool throw on the chair behind him and slipped it down. He gathered the old tom into the throw, stood, and tucked the bundle under one arm. He left the parlor.
In the dining room, Honey had risen to bring her mother another cup of tea. She was at the dining-room doorway when Phineas passed in the hall with a small bundle under his arm. From one end of it hung a single thin black tail.
Honey set the teacup down on the sideboard and took one step toward the hall.
"Honey, sweetheart." Her mother's voice came from the desk. "Bring me that stack of books from the table will you. I think I've found something."
Honey watched Phineas reach the far end of the hall and turn. "On it, Mama," she called back, and turned the other direction.
Phineas Grove walked the length of the back hall.
It was a narrow space and dim. He stopped at the second door from the back, shifted the bundle to his hip, laid his free hand on the porcelain knob, and turned it slowly.
He looked over his shoulder once and opened the door on a small storage room: shelves of preserves on one wall, a low chest under a small window, a folded canvas dust sheet draped over a wooden chair.
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. The latch clicked.
From the parlor end of the back hall came a soft padding.
Duchess.
She crossed to the door of the small storage room without sound. She did not knock. She did not paw. She sat down with her plumed tail curled around her front feet, lowered her ear toward the gap at the bottom of the door, and listened.
From behind the door, a soft voice began to speak.
The words were not English. They had the slope and lift of Romanian, with something older threading through them, the cadence of a chant that had been sung in mountain villages long enough to have worn the consonants smooth.
The voice was Phineas's. It was not the soft mild scholar's voice he used in parlors.
It was the voice underneath that voice, older, surer, working.
From inside the room came a thin sound. The chant did not stop.
The thin sound came again, sharper, the rasp of a small dry throat that had not been used in years, and the chant rose to meet it.
Another sound from the cat, not a meow, not quite.
Pieces of a sound broken across the chant.
The chant rose again. Inside the small storage room, the small dry throat made one long thin sound that was almost a cry.
Then Phineas's voice said one word, hard, like a struck stone.
Silence.
Duchess held the listening pose for one slow heartbeat. Then she rose, turned, and padded back up the hall the way she had come, plume tail high.
The back hall was very, very quiet. The quiet held long enough to hear the wood of the old house creak upstairs, and the wisteria shift on the front porch, and a parrot on the wisteria say something to no one, Sugar, at the volume of a man counting to himself.
Then footsteps came down the hall. The latch clicked again. The door opened.
Phineas Grove came out of the small storage room with his arms empty.
He carried no cat. The folded canvas dust sheet on the wooden chair had been moved, but the door swung shut behind him.
He paused in the back hall, looked down at his hands, flexed them once, smoothed the cuffs of his coat, and walked back down the hall toward the parlor.
The parlor had changed in his absence. Maeve and Oona had moved to the settee.
Rhoda was back in her wing chair with a heavy book open on her lap.
Edgar stood by the fireplace. Roam was pacing at the window.
Lazlo had come down from his room some little while before, composed and clean-shirted, and was staring at Roam as he paced.
Phineas stepped into the room. "Well." His voice was a little too loud for the room. "Well now. There we are."
Everyone turned.
He smiled the same small mild smile he had been smiling all day, set on his face in a way that was, somehow, a little too set. He crossed to Edgar and laid a hand on his shoulder. He did not lay it gently. He clapped it down, twice.
Edgar looked at him. "Edgar, my friend. What a, what a remarkable house you have," Phineas pressed on.
"We're partial to it." Edgar's drawl was slow. He was looking at Phineas the way Edgar looked at a horse that was off its feed.
"I should very much like another cup of that excellent coffee. If I may."
"You may," Edgar said, and motioned to the coffee table.
Phineas reached past Edgar and picked up a teacup that was not his. He did not appear to notice. He poured the coffee and drank.
Oona's bright eyes had been on Phineas since the moment he came through the doorway, and they did not leave him.
"Phineas, my love. Tell me a thing," Oona oozed.
"Yes, Oona, of course." He snapped sideways to face her.
"Where's your tabby?" She pursed her lips.
The smallest ripple went through the parlor. Phineas's eyes darted and his mild face did its smallest pause. Then his smile came back, brighter than before.
"Oh, oh, he's resting, just there. The poor old soul has had a hard day. Sometimes I must let him nap." He laughed, two short brisk laughs. "I tired him out, I'm afraid. Now, Maeve. I have been meaning to ask you. Sibiu. Do you know it?"
"I do not," Maeve said. Her hedge witch's eyes were on him now too. "Tell me of it."
"Oh, a remarkable city. Remarkable. I once watched a baker's apprentice…" He told a story about a baker's apprentice in Sibiu. Phineas Grove was telling it at the volume of a man addressing a lecture hall.
Across the parlor, Roam had stopped pacing and not, for the last forty seconds, blinked. His eyes were fixed on the too loud, nervous man.
Phineas finished the story about the baker's apprentice. He laughed another two chortles. Then he turned to Rhoda.
"Mrs. Hadwin. Madam. I wonder, see I wonder if I might have a small word with you, when you are free." He had pitched the request a notch too loudly.
Rhoda's eyebrows lifted half an inch. "Of course, Phineas. But not now, I'm on to something just here."
"Of course, madam, of course. A, a small matter. From my reading. When you can spare it. I'll be waiting." He bowed an awkward lean and nearly toppled over.
"Soon, Phineas."
"You are very kind. Thank you. Very kind."
Phineas backed away from her, set the teacup down, picked up the leather notebook from the side table beside the bookcase, and nodded once to the parlor. He turned and walked from the room with the notebook in his hand.
Lazlo watched him go.
Maeve looked at Oona. Oona looked back at Maeve. For a moment, the parlor pretended it was a normal exchange.
Edgar was looking at the door Phineas had just walked through. "Well, shock, I reckon."
Honey stood up from the chair, stretched, and crossed the parlor casually. She stopped, in passing, beside the chair Phineas had been sitting in.
Quill was not on the chair.
Honey crouched. A small grey shape shot out from behind the chair and brushed across her foot, and she startled. Quill sat down primly two feet away and watched her.
Honey glanced over her shoulder. No one had noticed. She patted Quill's head and leaned past him to peer at the gap between the side of the heavy old bookcase and the wall.
It was empty.
The dust on the floorboards had been disturbed in one place. There was a small dark patch of hair on the wood. Honey picked it up. It was matte and dust-dark, rough at the ends. She slipped it into her jeans pocket, straightened, and crossed to Roam. He hadn't moved from the window.
She leaned into him. "Roam." Her voice was the small private voice she used with him when they were alone. "The cat behind the bookcase is gone."
Roam finally blinked. "Since when."
Honey shrugged, "Last time I checked was just before Sean arrived."
"You sure," he said, and brushed her chin with his fingers.
"Yep. I just looked." She nodded.
He looked at her, his blue eyes turning amber around the edges. "I wasn't going to follow him."
"Phineas?" she asked.
"Yeah. But I think I might."
He brushed a kiss on her cheek, crossed the parlor in three steps, and went out into the front hall.