“It’s okay, buddy, it’s okay,” she said, leaning into the cage. She was large enough to block the rest of the world. Humans had never seemed so big before, and I had never felt so small.
Humans have no magic, not without fae blood in their veins. Humans have dull eyes, unable to pierce the dark, and soft hands, unsuited to battle. But they drove Faerie into the hidden places with their iron and their fire and their sheer numbers. Even the most fertile of fae can’t stand up to the least of humans. We were outbred and outbled, and we ran. For the first time, as I watched the human woman lean over me with her needle, I understood how it had happened. I understood how we could lose.
The needle slid into my shoulder with barely a prick. Her hands were nimble, practiced; she had done this before, so often that she had no need to hesitate or assess. In a matter of seconds she was pulling back, the syringe in her hand now bright with stolen blood. My blood.
Chelsea enjoys mortal forensics, likes to make us watch television shows that focus on them, their techniques, the way they can ferret out secrets. Would the blood in that syringe give my secrets away? To mortal eyes, did my blood differ in any substantive way from an ordinary cat’s? I didn’t know. I might have endangered all of Faerie by saving Cal from that speeding car.
The thought was immense enough to be exhausting. I blinked, intending only to grant myself a few seconds of peace. When I opened my eyes again, the cage was closed, the woman was gone, and so was the Siamese across the way. The cage where they had been was sterile and shining, devoid of any sign that it had ever been occupied. My heart sank.
When I was a child, Uncle Tybalt used to take me to the animal shelter, using my small stature and silence around humans as a mask while he claimed to be looking for the perfect pet for a young boy. We would walk along the rows of cages, sniffing out any captives with fae blood, and return for them after night fell, stepping through the shadows and into their places of imprisonment. The air there always smelled very similar to the air here, disinfectant and damp litter and misery. Despair has a scent. It cakes the nostrils and dizzies the senses, and if I never had to smell it again, I wouldn’t complain.
Night after night, we’d gone to the shelters, returning home with thin-blooded kittens, with halfbloods whose fae gifts didn’t include the ability to change their shapes—once, even, with a pureblood whose wife had died and who had retreated so far into feline form that she no longer remembered what it was to walk on two legs, to reach for things outside a housecat’s grasp. We had carried them back to the Court of Cats, and some of them lived there still, content with their second chances.
Once, just once, we had arrived to see a family in the process of finalizing the paperwork to adopt their new companion. He had been a tabby-striped tom, cradled in the arms of a little human girl who gazed at him with all the adoration and wonder in the world, and he had been half-fae at the very least. I had started to move toward them, automatically, thinking the rescue of the kitten to be a vital part of our mission, when Uncle Tybalt’s hand had tightened on my shoulder, holding me in place.
That night, rather than returning to the shelter, we had gone to an apartment, stepping out of the shadows behind the television. The kitten had been waiting for us, his tail curled around his haunches, his eyes bright and alert.
“My mother warned me of the cats who move like men,” he had said, before either of us could utter a word. “She said that one day you might come for me, as you came for my father. She said if I refused you, you wouldn’t take me. I refuse you. Go away. My pets are sleeping, and I’ll not have you waking them.”
The language of cats isn’t that grammatical and doesn’t sort itself so neatly into sentences and phrases, but I thought more like a person than a feline, most of the time, and the translation had been automatic. I had frowned, looking to Uncle Tybalt.
And Uncle Tybalt had bowed.
“Take good care of them, brave one, and remember that the Court of Cats is yours,” he’d said, and drawn me back into the shadows.
When we had emerged into the Court of Cats, when I’d tried to pull away, he’d placed his hands on my shoulders and said, voice solemn, “The world is hard for our kin. They fight all their lives for a place to belong, a warm spot to sleep, a meal to fill their bellies. All too often, they find hands raised against them and hatred in the hearts of those who should be kindest to them, who should remember that without men, there would be no cats, but without cats, there might well be no men. Do you understand?”
“No.” I had been a kitten then, sullen and full of pride at my own potential. I had been a fool.
Uncle Tybalt, though . . . if ever he had been a fool, it had been long before I came into his life. He had looked at me with understanding and said, “There were cats in the world before there were Cait Sidhe. We exist to help them when we can, and to be honored to have the opportunity; we are kings and queens among our kin. But we do not exist to command them. We do not exist to make their lives more difficult. Death follows them all the days of their lives, and it needs only catch them once. The very hands that feed and stroke them are too often raised against them. They are temporary, and we are not. We owe them our respect.”
I hadn’t fully understood, not then. Now, as I looked at the empty cage, with no way of knowing whether its occupant had been released to their loving owners or whether their body was in a box nearby, consigned to the grave, I thought I finally did.
I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep again. I needed to get stronger. I needed to heal. If I didn’t . . .
An empty cage, and silence, could be a fate that waited for anyone.
You were wrong, Uncle, I thought, the words petulant and small, like the crying of a lost child. We’re temporary, too. We always have been. We can go. We can disappear.
I slept.
FIVE
Helen’s face peered out at me from a tangle of thorny vines. They had wrapped themselves around her so tightly that they pierced her skin, thorns driving their way down toward her bones. When they struck, I knew, they would root there, growing into her body and becoming a part of her. She would unravel into a new briar, girl-shaped at first, but losing its form as it forgot what it had been, forgot that it was anything other than a predator designed by a monster.
“Run,” she whispered, voice ragged with agony and hoarse from screaming. She had stopped screaming several minutes before, when the pain had reached the point of becoming numbness. Her body was shutting down to protect her. Her mind was refusing to let go. Whether that was an intentional part of Michael’s cruelty or her own will shining through, I didn’t know, but she was still lucid, still Helen, and I couldn’t leave her. “Run, please, run. I don’t want you to see this.”
I tried to reach for her. The vines slithered, cradling her tighter, preventing me from touching her. They had their prey. Until she was digested, until she was transformed, they didn’t need or want me.
“Raj, please.”
No. This was—this was wrong. This was wrong. She was too young, her face too soft, her eyes not shadowed by the sleepless days she’d been enduring since our escape from Blind Michael. Since our escape. If we escaped, how were we back here on this endless, foggy plain?
None of this had happened. I’d seen another child taken by the vines, but not Helen. She’d been too slow. That was the terrible truth of Blind Michael’s lands. The faster you were, the better prepared for their dangers, the more likely you were to be taken, transformed, and consumed. It was the slow ones who stood half a chance of getting away, because the fast ones triggered all the traps.
I have always, always been fast. If not for Helen grabbing my hand and asking me not to leave her—if she had grabbed for someone else, if I had shaken her away, commanding her imperiously to keep her hands off of me—I would have been at the front of the mob. I would have been dead long before October could have come to bring me
home.
None of this happened.
The thought shattered the dream. I opened my eyes and found myself back in the brightly lit room, back in the cage. I felt better after my nap, however unpleasant my dreams had been. Not enough to feel like myself, but enough that when I tried to sit up, my body obeyed me. I was still weak, and my legs were still unsteady; standing was out of the question. That didn’t matter. Sitting up was a start.
The cage across from me remained empty. Another human was there, wiping it down with a cloth. He was dressed like the woman had been, in soft pastel scrubs. I decided to take a risk and meowed as loudly as I could, attracting the human’s attention. He turned to look quizzically at me. Then he smiled, apparently delighted by what he saw.
“Hey, little guy, you’re awake,” he said, approaching slowly, like he didn’t want to frighten me. That was silly. I was in a cage. He was outside the cage, and had thumbs. He was clearly in the superior position here. “You’re a lucky fellow, you know that? If that car had been going just a little faster, or if it had hit you a few inches to the right, you wouldn’t be here with us now.”
I forced my ears to stay up and my whiskers to stay forward, trying to project an air of curious friendliness. The tube still taped to my arm made it difficult. I wanted to bite it. I wanted to bite it so badly, to bite and bite until it dropped away and I was free. But the shadows were still outside my reach, and while my thoughts remained somewhat fuzzy, they were clear enough for me to understand that my painkillers were contained in the tube. If I removed it, the agonies it was keeping at bay would quickly overcome me.
No, the tube would remain until I was ready to make my escape. That was the sensible choice, the choice that led to a clean exit. I could collapse once I was somewhere safe, whether that be the Court of Cats or back in Helen’s bedroom. The thought of her hands stroking my ears was almost enough to chase the last, lingering traces of pain away.
“A handsome boy like you must have an owner,” said the man, holding his fingertips up to the cage bars for me to sniff. I did so obligingly and then, knowing what was expected of me, I rubbed my cheek against them, marking him as my own. “They’re probably worried sick about you, huh? I hope they show up soon. I need to ask them why you don’t have a microchip.”
I meowed at him.
“Don’t be a baby. Microchipping doesn’t hurt. We just pop it under all that loose skin at the back of your neck and then you don’t have to worry about getting out and getting lost. We’d already have your people on their way to see you if you had a microchip.” His expression turned sober. “Of course, maybe it’s better for you that we haven’t found them yet. Once we know who they are, they can refuse further care. You’re an expensive little guy, my friend, and your treatment isn’t finished. I see a lot of good cats die because people don’t think they’re worth what it costs to heal them.”
That couldn’t be right, could it? People who kept cats as pets took care of them, loved them, made sure they had everything they needed to be healthy and hale. I understood enough about human concepts of money to know that sometimes they would run out of it—October was forever complaining that Quentin and I needed to get jobs if we were going to continue to devour her bank account—but the idea that someone could simply refuse to pay for medical care was baffling.
“So as long as they’re not here, we can treat you, and if they can’t pay your bill, I guess we have a new foster.” He held his fingers up to the bars again. “I’ll be honest, I expect you’re going to go home with whoever owns you. You don’t seem like a long-term resident of a place like this. You seem more like the kind of cat who knows he’s in charge, and doesn’t understand why anyone would argue.”
You have no idea, I thought, and meowed at him again.
“I’m going to go tell Dr. Bailey you’re awake,” said the man. “Try to stay that way until I come back, all right?” He pulled his hand away from the bars and walked away, leaving me alone.
“He has you fooled,” said a new voice.
I looked down. There, on the floor, was a fluffy black-and-white cat with yellow eyes, looking disdainfully up at me.
“I know what you are,” she said. “Cait Sidhe. Shapeshifter. Too good for the likes of us. Slumming, shapeshifter? Or did you really go and get yourself hit by a car by accident?” She flattened her whiskers, telegraphing amusement.
I bristled, or tried to, anyway. I was too tired to do more than flick one ear in irritation. “If you must know, I am a Prince of Cats, and I was struck in the process of saving one of my subjects. They would have been killed if they’d been hit in my place. I am a hero.”
It felt good to refer to myself that way. October’s heroism is recognized by the Queen in the Mists. Mine might be smaller and more contained, but that doesn’t negate it. I saved Cal’s life. I saved Helen’s, too, back in Blind Michael’s lands, and she saved mine, more than once.
We’re all heroes. We all do what we have to, when we have to.
The cat below me curled her lips back and made a disgusted sound. “Are you enjoying your cage, hero? Do you intend to fill your stomach with crunchy biscuits and then run away into the shadows, the way your kind always does?”
“Why are you talking to me like this? The Court of Cats is always open to any of our kin who have need. If you’re angry because you want for something, you could have come to us. We would have done our best to help you. If you simply wish to taunt me because my magic is insufficient to get me out of here, please, continue. I’ll remember you later.”
The cat swished her tail. “They treat too many of us poorly. They let too many of us die.”
I thought of Uncle Tybalt in the shelter, opening cages, sweeping kittens away, and a sinking feeling grew in my stomach. He was only one man, and he had never been able to spend every night doing rescue work. The humans would have noticed. And those were only the cats who were captured or surrendered by their people. It wasn’t the cats shivering in alleys, the strays fighting for scraps to stay alive.
It wasn’t the cats whose humans could choose to discontinue care.
“I am sorry,” I said. “Once I go home, I’ll talk to my regent. Perhaps we can find a way to make things better.”
“There’s no ‘better’ when there are humans involved,” sneered the cat, and got up, and sashayed away, her tail a banner held high behind her, her posture telling me without any further words between us that she had no use for me or my Court.
I tucked my paws underneath myself and watched her go. When she was out of sight, I closed my eyes and thought about what she’d said. Yes, we tried to help the mortal cats around us, and yes, there were some of them who made the Court of Cats their home, but there was so much more we could have been doing. Had we done exactly what we accused the Divided Courts of doing, withdrawing so far into ourselves that we could no longer see how much our subjects needed us?
A new woman approached my cage, a fresh clipboard in her hands. “You’re awake,” she said, with evident delight. “Let me get a look at you, handsome boy. Oh, you’re a nice one, aren’t you?” Her voice had dropped, taking on the honeyed sweetness of a human who truly enjoyed the company of felines.
I decided to grace her with a purr.
“Aren’t you a sweetheart? I wish you could talk, handsome boy. I want to know where your owners are. I want to give them a piece of my mind. You’re too old to be running around the city unaltered, and if you’re a breeder, you should never have been able to escape. I almost hope you came from a kitten mill. Then we can be responsible with you before we help you find a new home. A handsome fellow like you, you won’t have any trouble.”
Were all humans this obsessed with the testicles of others? I couldn’t plant my butt any more firmly on the floor of my cage, so I settled for flattening my whiskers and giving her my most imperious glare. Uncle Tybalt’s subjects have been known to fall over
themselves trying to get away from me when I look at them that way, as if the force of my disdain might be sufficient to do them physical harm.
The woman laughed.
“You’re a charmer, aren’t you? Well, you’re a lucky little charmer because you didn’t break any bones, and you don’t have any internal bleeding. It’s just bad bruises and a little concussion. We’ve been giving you painkillers and space to recover, but you should be right as rain in a few days.”
It was fascinating, the way she spoke to me, like she expected me to understand. I meowed at her again. She nodded.
“Yes, you’re a good boy.” She produced a syringe from her pocket.
Damn. I’d hoped they were done adding things to the IV bag. My head was finally starting to clear, and I was going to need my wits about me if I was going to break out of here.
“Don’t you worry about a thing. This will help you stay nice and calm, and I’ll examine you again in a few hours, when I’m sure you’ve been here long enough that we would have noticed any additional complications.”
I meowed again, or tried to, anyway. The world opened up and swallowed me whole, and I fell back into the darkness.
SIX
We were running, running through Blind Michael’s lands, Helen and I hand-in-hand. We had tried running separately, but she was too afraid; she kept losing her balance, unable to focus on where she was going and look over her shoulder at the same time. This way I could guide and protect us both, could keep her heading for the safety of the trees.
I’d known her less than a day, and I already knew that if I could only keep her safe, if I could only see her to the trees, I would die knowing I’d accomplished something. I had been someone’s hero.
It wouldn’t be enough to make my father proud of me. Nothing short of a throne and a crown and the willingness to let him speak through me, like a king was merely a puppet for another’s will, would ever make him proud of me. But it would make my mother proud, I thought. It would make her curl her tail in sorrowful pleasure, because her son had been brave before he died, had been something other than a useless and weak-willed princeling without the sense to save anyone else.
The Unkindest Tide Page 40