Chapter 10
The Outlaws
Three solid raps at the front door. In the kitchen, Edgar lifted his head from the window.
The raps were not Sean's. They were not Wimpleton's.
They were not the knock of anyone Edgar had been expecting.
Edgar crossed the kitchen, went down the front hall, and opened the door.
Three cats sat on the porch. He knew them by sight.
The Bad Boys of Assjacket. Zelda's three favorite gentlemen, all the way down out of West Virginia.
The one in the middle was an enormous gray tom with a white tummy, broad as a small dog, with the easy possessive sprawl of a creature who had already decided the porch was his.
The one on his left was a deadly white cat with gray splotches in the seated posture of a small assassin.
The one on his right was a randy calico with a double chin who was, at that exact moment, gazing past Edgar into the front hall as though he had just seen the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
"Yo." The big gray tom's voice was the genial bass of a country gentleman. "We heard you might need some muscle."
Edgar looked at them a moment, then lifted his eyes past the porch to the lawn.
The lawn had filled. Not with bonded familiars in their puzzled rows.
Not with cats arriving in twos and threes from someone's cold kitchen.
The creatures on the lawn now were thin.
Rough. Scarred. These were strays. None of them groomed in a long while.
They sat in a loose half-circle in the cold grass, watching the house.
They were the kind nobody comes for. They were the kind nobody had come for in a long time. These were rogue familiars.
There was no hum of spilling. There was, instead, a low listening silence. The biggest of them, a one-eyed grey tom with the build of an alley fighter and a scar from his lip to his ear, sat at the front of the half-circle.
Edgar drew in a slow breath. "These guys ain't with us."
The three on the porch did not look back at the lawn.
The gray tom heaved himself up off his haunches and rolled past Edgar's boot into the front hall on his short legs.
The white-and-gray slipped past Edgar's ankle without touching it.
The randy calico padded in last, his eyes still on the front hall, and did not blink once.
Edgar stepped down off the porch and held his hands open at his sides.
The unbonded cats did not move. From around the side of the house, Sean McLeary came up at a slow walk, his hands also open.
Behind him, came Roam, coatless, jaw set, and crossed to Edgar at the foot of the porch step.
They stood at the edge of the half-circle and let the unbonded cats look at them.
Edgar whispered, "What happened with Lazlo?"
"Clear," Sean said.
"Right." Edgar nodded.
Inside the front hall, the gray tom rolled into the parlor. "Well, good mornin', ladies."
The fluffy Persian in the best armchair lifted her head. Lady Grey turned a quarter inch on the settee. The calico in the wood basket sat up like a girl at a dance.
"How you doin'." The gray tom cocked his head at the Persian. "How you been keepin'." He cocked it the other way at Lady Grey. "Ma'am."
Lady Grey, in spite of herself, fluffed.
Boba slipped past him into the parlor with the long quiet stride of a small assassin who had decided not to be a small assassin this morning.
He crossed to the worn red ottoman where Rhoda had set a small tray of toast triangles for the spilling cats, lifted one in his paw, popped it whole into his mouth, and on his way back past the gray Russian Blue on the settee, winked.
Blewy, who had been quietly distressed for days, blinked.
Jango brought up the rear. He did not go around.
He went straight at a small white-pawed tortoiseshell named Honoria who had been rambling on for hours about her witch's gambling.
He stopped in front of her, bowed at the shoulder, scooped her clean off the rug with one fluid lift, dipped her like a man finishing the last bar of a tango, and kissed her firmly on the side of her startled mouth.
Honoria forgot, instantly and entirely, that she had ever been rambling about anything.
"Pleasure," Jango said, and set her gently down. Honoria sat where he had put her and did not breathe.
Lazlo had moved in from the wide arch between the dining room and the parlor.
His hands were clasped lightly behind his back.
He had not entered the parlor. He had not greeted the Boys.
He had not said anything at all. At his ankle, Duchess sat.
The plume of her tail was no longer plumed.
It lay flat against the rug. The blue of her left eye had softened the way water in a glass softens when something has been stirred into it.
On the rug under her right hip, in a small soft drift, was a thin line of fine silver-cream fur.
And around her, faint but unmistakable, drifted the sour-sweet wrongness of something that had been put away wet and not opened since.
Lazlo's hand, slowly, came up to his own cuff. He brushed twice at a single small thread of fur that had caught there. The thread did not move at first. He brushed again. He caught it between two fingers, and slid it into the inside pocket of his coat.
From the parlor doorway, Honey saw. She did not move. She did not say anything. She had come into the parlor from the back hall a half-step behind Lazlo's gesture, and she stood in the doorway and watched.
The bonded cats in the parlor did not say a word. Fat Bastard, mid-flirtation with Lady Grey, looked over his shoulder at Duchess. He looked at her a moment. He turned back to Lady Grey.
"How you doin'."
Rhoda came into the parlor from the back of the house with her hair half down and her sleeves rolled to the elbow and the ink of a long morning's work on the side of her hand.
"Good lord." She stopped at the threshold. "Good lord, they came. I told Zelda."
She looked at Fat Bastard. Fat Bastard tipped her a wink.
"I told her I didn't need any more help." Rhoda looked at Boba, who lifted a second piece of toast to her in salute. "I told her I had you all. I told her…"
She stopped. Her eyes had gone to Lazlo at the arch, then to Duchess at his ankle.
Rhoda's mouth opened a little. She crossed the parlor as far as the back of the wing chair. Her hand came down on the chair-back.
"Lazlo, sweetheart. Is she alright? She looks a bit piqued."
Lazlo's mild face did its smallest pause. Then his smile came on as warm as it had been since he arrived. "She's just tired. We all are tired, I think. The journey, the cats, the news. She is not herself."
"Bless her." Rhoda shook her head and turned her face to the front window. Through the glass, on the lawn, three men stood at the edge of a half-circle of stray rogue cats. Edgar's hands were open. Roam's jaw was set. Sean's coat was buttoned to the throat.
"What is going on out there." Rhoda's voice had gone quiet. "Who are those…"
No one in the parlor answered her. Fat Bastard, on the rug at her feet, lifted his big square head and met her eyes for a half-beat. He did not say anything. He turned back to Lady Grey.
Rhoda drew in one long breath, and turned. "Honey. Sweetheart. Go on out and help your father. They are going to need it."
Honey's eyes went to her mother. "Uh, Mama, I…"
"Honey." Rhoda's voice was warm. Rhoda's voice was firm. "Now. And by the Goddess what is that smell in here."
She crossed the parlor in two steps, laid her hand on the small of Honey's back, and turned her toward the front door. Behind her own back, Rhoda's other hand made a small precise gesture at Lazlo: come with me.
Honey looked at her mother one more time. Rhoda's eyes said go. Honey went.
The front door closed behind her with a small click. On the porch she stood for a count of three with the cold air on her face and the worry climbing up between her shoulder blades. Then she went down the steps to her father.
Inside, Rhoda did not look at the Boys. She did not look at the cats. She crossed to the arch where Lazlo was standing.
"Lazlo," she said.
"My dear."
"Come with me. I want to look at Nadia's file. You knew her best of anyone."
A small thing moved at the corner of Lazlo's mouth. He cocked his head sideways, "Thank you, Rhoda. I would be honored to help. But, I'm not sure…"
"Leave Duchess, please."
Lazlo looked down at Duchess. Duchess glared back up at him.
"She will stay right here. The rest will do her good."
"Thank you."
Rhoda turned and walked out of the parlor. Lazlo's hand drifted into the inside pocket of his coat as he turned to follow. The cats in the parlor did not say a word. Fat Bastard watched them go.
Rhoda crossed the front hall. She turned into the corridor.
She passed the dining room door. She passed the door to the kitchen.
She turned at the back hall, and Lazlo walked at her elbow, his hand still in his coat pocket.
She stopped at the door beside her study and laid her hand on the porcelain plate.
She laid her palm flat against a particular panel and lifted her other hand to her throat and brought out a small amulet on a thin silver chain.
The amulet was the soft worn color of old emerald, no bigger than the pad of her thumb.
She lifted it free of the chain. She waved it across the panel in a careful arc: left to right, then up and down, then in a small tight spiral that ended at the center.
The panel did not move. The runes that had not been there a moment before lifted themselves a hairsbreadth off the wood, glowed once with the deep slow green of Rhoda's magic, and sank.
The door swung inward on a hinge that had not been visible, and a flight of cold stone steps fell away into the dark.
Behind her, Lazlo drew in a small breath. "Clever."
Rhoda did not turn around. She slipped the amulet back onto its chain and dropped the chain inside her collar. Her hand, when she lifted it to the lamp on the bracket beside the panel, was steady. The light flickered on.
A small unease moved up her spine like a cold finger and was gone before she had time to name it. She shivered once. Then she lifted the lamp from its bracket, stepped over the threshold, and started down. Lazlo, his hand still in his coat pocket, stepped down behind her. The door swung shut.