Cat Fear No Evil (20 page)

Still carrying the poker, she fished the phone from her purse and dialed 911 now. She gave the dispatcher her address and described the break-in, trying to make clear the extent of the destruction. The dispatcher told her to get out of the apartment until officers could clear it.

“No. I feel safer here. I was…I was kidnapped tonight, as well. They could still be out there.” This sounded really weird, so strange that she felt embarrassed. The woman would think she was a nut.

“Can you go to a neighbor's?”

“I don't know my neighbors. I'll stay here.”

“Where in the apartment are you?”

“By the front door, in the entry. I've searched part of the apartment, all but the bedroom.”

“Officers are on the way. Please stay on the line.
When exactly were you kidnapped?” Was the woman patronizing her? Trying to assess her degree of sanity or insanity?

Well, she couldn't blame her.

Or did she simply want to keep her talking until help arrived? She repeated as briefly and clearly as she could the events since she entered the restaurant until she arrived home. She told the dispatcher about giving Consuela the jewels. She explained Consuela's change in appearance and gave her a description of her male partner, and of the car. That seemed to impress the dispatcher. She explained that Consuela had been in Molena Point and that the police there might possibly have some information on her.

Talking with the dispatcher, Kate pulled the foil-wrapped sandwich from her purse and moved into the kitchen. She was amazed that she could think of food, but she felt weak and faint, and knew she needed to eat something. Finding a saucepan among the rubble and an unbroken cup half buried in flour, she washed both thoroughly in hot soapy water, tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder. Filling the pan with water, she set it on a burner, brought up a gas flame, and searched among the debris for a tea bag.

Unwrapping the little bag of English Breakfast, she dropped it in the cup, poured boiling water over it, and carried teacup and sandwich into the little dining room, stepping over her nice place mats that were wadded on the floor. She needed to eat. She was weak; her diminished blood sugar dragged her courage even lower. She told the dispatcher where she now was in the apartment. She was pulling out her chair when a
movement in the living room brought her up short. She turned, swallowing a cry of alarm.

A black cat sat on the overturned couch disdainfully watching her.

He was huge; his amber eyes blazed so fiercely they seemed filled with licking flames.

There could not be another like him, this cat who called himself the death angel, this cat who had stolen her safe deposit key and had stolen her signature; the same thieving cat that had arrived in the village last year with Greeley Urzey to steal from the village shopkeepers. The beast that, at supper after Charlie's gallery opening, had looked down through the skylight watching them. She stood beside the table facing him, as ice cold as if all her blood had drained away. She looked down at the phone in her hand, and quietly broke the connection.

The cat smiled. “Little Kate Osborne. Pretty little Kate Osborne.”

“Why did you help Consuela? What do you get out of it? Why would a cat like you be interested in a handful of costume jewelry with paste stones? Your thieving partner could steal anything you want.”

“What partner would that be?”

“Old Greeley,” she said, sitting weakly down at the table, cupping her cold hands around the warm teacup.

“I don't run with
him
anymore. She is my partner now, sometimes. I see that you gave her the jewels.”

“How would you know what I gave her?”

“I saw her leave the parking garage. She would not have left unless she had the jewelry.”

“And is he your partner, too? The man with the big
nose?” She sipped at her tea. Where were the police? What was taking so long? What would they do, now that she had hung up?

The cat's eyes narrowed to slits and his ears laid close to his head. “If the jewels are only paste, why do
you
treasure those pieces so highly?” His crouch was so tense she thought he would leap on her, biting and clawing.

“The jewelry is part of my past. A past that has no meaning for you, or for Consuela and her friend.”

Again the cat smiled. “I could tell you about your past.” He looked at her sandwich, which lay untouched in the open foil wrap, the melted cheese turned to the consistency of rubber. “You were told at the orphanage that McCabe might be the name of your grandfather.”

“How would you know that?”

He rose and stretched, eyeing her dinner. “Is that shrimp I smell? Grilled shrimp?”

Defensively she picked up her sandwich. The cat leaped six feet to an overturned chair and leaped again onto the table. He stood on her dining table staring intently at her supper.

Removing half the sandwich from the open wrapper she shoved it across to him, leaving a greasy path on the nice oak. She'd have to have a cleaning crew in; she wasn't going to deal with this alone.

Gobbling greedily, the black tom was as messy as a stray dog. The sandwich was gone in six gulps. Licking grease from his whiskers, he eyed her half. She ate quickly though it was cold and rubbery. If in her uneasy hunger she gulped as ravenously as the tom, she didn't care.

“
I
can tell you about McCabe,” the cat said. “
I
can
tell you about your grandfather
and
your parents, if you indeed want to know.”

“How would
you
know about my heritage?” The cat's words deeply frightened her. Her search, which had started out nearly three years ago as a fledgling interest in her strange heritage, had turned into a nightmare of fear.

The black tom pricked his ears, watching her. “You'd be a pretty little cat, Kate Osborne. Oh, yes, all cream and silk. Maybe more willing than little Dulcie or that tortoiseshell. I do like a partner with my own talents.”

His audacity enraged her. And the feline part of her nature deeply upset her. The joy she had once taken in those talents had vanished—to be a cat, rolling in the garden, racing over rooftops. Those changes had occurred only those few days when her life was threatened; they had not remained a part of her life. She looked at the tomcat. “Tell me why Consuela wanted the jewels. Why she would want paste jewels?”

“Shall we say she collects oddities?”

“She'll go to jail for robbing me, her fingerprints are on my safe deposit box, her forgery is on the bank records. That's a big risk, for oddities.”

The cat's eyes grew as large as moons; he stared at her, keening a wild hunting cry, creeping toward her—she imagined his teeth in her flesh. Palms sweating, her heart racing, she rose and backed away.

He sat down suddenly on the table and began casually washing his paws, his expression one of deep amusement.

Watching him, she didn't know why she had launched herself into this search for her past, why she
had opened this Pandora's box of perplexing connections, seeking matters that any sensible person would leave alone.

The black cat looked deeply at her. His purr was ragged. “You have amazing talents, Kate Osborne.”

“Not anymore. That is past. I am no more than what you see.”

The cat smiled. “You were under great stress at that time. Your life was threatened, your marriage shattered, your fear that your husband would kill you shocked and sickened you. Perhaps that was why the changes occurred—but what a lovely white and marmalade cat you must have been. And now…Perhaps the stress of present events will—”

“No!” Kate flung her cup at him; he leaped out of its path and it shattered against the wall. He sat down again facing her, his yellow eyes filled with a mad light. The cat
was
mad. There was no reason that such a beast, with the sentient skills of a human, could not be as stark raving crazy as some poor, demented human.

But she did want to know how he had learned about her, and what else he might know.

Watching her, he smiled. “The Cat Museum, Kate Osborne. There is more information there than you have found.”

“I have been thoroughly through the archives.”

“The oral tradition, among our kind, is reliable and useful.” The cat's eyes narrowed. “Nothing written. Much that can be told.”

She thought of the other cats prowling the museum gardens, and she shivered. She had wondered about
those cats. But now…she would not, could not ever go there again, to that place she had loved so well.

“They do not like me there,” he said. “Those cats who are like us, they do not like me.” He looked deeply at her. “There is indeed a hidden world, Kate Osborne. That is the world I seek. That is your true home, the world where the jewels come from.”

“What, some commune hidden back in the mountains? Some colony of crazies with guards at the gate?”
Where were the police?
She wanted this cat out of there, she wanted this unpleasantness over with.

“A world lying deep beneath this city, Kate, a world cavernous and vast. That is the world that should have been McCabe's. The world where I, too, belong.”

She was certain that when the law arrived the cat would vanish the way he had come, that she would be rid of him—he wouldn't dare stay, he daren't sit watching while she answered the officer's questions, while she tried to skirt around the answers that she couldn't offer. Hurrying to the kitchen she removed the carving knife and opened the window again, providing for him the same four-inch escape route by which he must have entered. Sickly, desperately, she wanted this cat gone. What did he want with her? Moving quickly back into the dining room Kate found the cat still on the table, nosing at her cell phone. Snatching it up, she dropped it in her pocket. She wanted to snatch up Azrael and shove him out the window, but she was too afraid of him.

Surely when the patrol car came, if it ever did, then he would leave. The uniforms would do their work and go away again, and she would be alone. If she could ig
nore her ruined apartment, she'd take a long hot shower, pull some bedding together, lock her bedroom door against all possible intruders, and go to sleep. Tomorrow she'd muster the strength to pack what was fit to keep, send everything else to the trash, and…What? Move out? Abandon the city now, at once? Give notice at the studio and move back to Molena Point immediately, where she'd be safe?

Or she could transfer to Seattle, far away from the Bay Area, to work in the firm's new office there. She had not before seriously considered that option.

Watching her, the black cat yawned. “There
is
such a world, Kate Osborne, a world where all cats speak, a world of subterranean valleys and caverns where jewels are dug from the walls. Diamonds, rubies…Where jewelsmiths are as common as dust. Where do you think that strange work comes from that no one can identify? You know the old Celtic tales, the Irish and Welsh sagas. Do you think that ancient history is all lies because it comes to us in the form of story? Do you really
not
believe in those worlds, told of again and again throughout history?”

“They are
only
stories! Folktales! Flights of fancy, anyone knows that. There
is
no other world; such a thing is not possible.” She stared hard at the inky beast. His amber eyes blazed back at her, as hot as the flames of hell.

“The jewels can lead us there,” the cat said complacently. “If we can learn where they came from in this world, we can find the way down. A door, a passage down into that lost world.” He looked at her intently.

“You are mad,” she whispered. “There is no world but this.
This world! Here! Now.”
Snatching at the edge
of the table, she tilted it so violently the black tomcat could only leap off. He landed on the buffet. She wanted to throw the table at him. “Leave me alone!
She
has the jewels! Go to Consuela. Take the jewels. Go find your mythical door. Get out of here. Go to that other world or wherever. But get the hell out of
here
, I have nothing for you!”

He stood atop the buffet glaring at her, panther-black and as powerful and sinewy as any jungle beast. “What bargain would it take, Kate Osborne, for you to help me find that world and enter it? You have talents that I do not. And the jewels themselves from that world are surely a badge of power…”

“Get out!”
She swung around, grabbing the poker.

He stared at her unflinching. “There is a house, Kate Osborne. An old gray Victorian in Pacific Heights, an earthquake-damaged house, closed now and awaiting repairs. Cats live there, cats that do not fit into the dull gardens of the Cat Museum, beautiful, dark-souled cats who were driven out by their tame cousins. Those cats could lead us…or perhaps we will find the door there, in that wrecked dwelling, perhaps—”

“Then go there! Go to your rebel cats! Such beasts should welcome
you
. Go down to that world and leave
me
alone.” The cat was mad, he was indeed Poe's black beast, as Joe Grey had once observed. “Go to
them
,” she repeated. “I can't help you.”

“They do not want me there. Those cats fear me; they fear my power. They rise like a tide against me.”

“So what do you want from me?
I can't help you
.”

“Those beasts come and go freely from that world. Perhaps indeed a portal is there, in that ruined place…I have seen them appear out of the darkness
of that house, I have seen their eyes. I have smelled the scent of deep, dank earth on them.” His eyes burned with desire. “They drive me out, Kate Osborne. They do not want me in that world.”

She watched him, chilled by his words but not understanding.

“Even the dark souls, Kate Osborne, make war among themselves, battles of jealousy and power. If that world has turned dark as I think it has, if the hell beasts now rule there…then only a badge of power can have authority.” His yellow eyes gleamed. “I believe the jewels with their symbols of cats wield the power I want. A talisman of authority from that world…”