by Sharon Shinn
“Not this week.”
“Well, next time you do, you be sure and tell her I said hi.”
“I’ll do that.”
This time he does depart, and a whoosh of street air comes wafting through the door as he and his friends exit.
“You refused a job as deputy?” I say the minute the door is closed again.
Joe shrugs. “I’d just quit the police force a couple months before that. I didn’t think I was ready for the same kind of job, just in a different place.” He glances around the pub. “Though Quinville isn’t much like Joliet.”
“Probably more about rescuing stray kittens and less about solving homicides.”
“Still gotta be ready to deal with the homicides,” he says quietly. “And I’m not sure I am.”
“Well, I can’t say I blame you for that,” I say on a long sigh.
“And we’re back to dreary topics,” Joe replies. “Come on. Let’s think of happier stuff to talk about.”
“Dessert might be a happier topic,” I suggest.
“Yes. Dessert. We need that.”
We wave the waitress over and she reels off the selections. We go from thinking we’ll split one to agreeing we each want our own to wondering if we might get three and share them all.
“You’re going to be bad for me, I can tell,” Joe says as soon as the waitress departs. “You heard Wilkerson call me a ‘big man,’ right?” He glances down at his stomach. “I keep eating three desserts every night, I’ll be a huge man.”
When I throw my head back and laugh, the pain is so sudden and so intense that for a second I think I’ve cracked my skull against the back of the bench. It’s so overwhelming that I’m disoriented for a moment—I can’t figure out what’s happening or why.
Then the nausea slams like a fist into my stomach and I think I might throw up right at the table. “Oh my God,” I say, and I can hear the stark terror in my voice.
Joe’s instantly concerned. “Karadel? What’s wrong?”
I put both palms up to my face so I can support my head, which is shrieking with agony, but then I don’t have a hand free to cover my mouth in case I start vomiting. “Joe. I’m going to be sick. Really sick. I have to leave right now.”
He’s digging into his pocket with one hand and wildly waving at our waitress with the other. “Do you think you got food poisoning? Were you allergic to something?”
I think I’m about to change shapes. Sooner than I expected and much faster than I usually do, and holy God, my head might explode before I transform. “No—it’s a migraine—I get them all the time, but they’re usually not this sudden.” My voice comes out almost as a gasp.
The waitress has jogged up to the table, and Joe throws a few twenties at her. “Cancel the dessert. My friend’s sick, and we’ve got to leave.”
“I’ll be right back with your change.”
“Keep it,” Joe says, pushing himself out of the booth. “I have to get her home.”
Solicitous as an undertaker, he bends over me and eases me out of my seat. “I’m not sure I can make it home,” I say shakily. “I might just drive to Bonnie’s.”
“You’re not driving anywhere,” he says flatly. “I’ll take you wherever you want. There’s an urgent care center just down the street—or the hospital, if you’d rather—”
God, no. The last thing I need is to be in a public facility. My head is pounding so hard I can’t think straight, and my one clear thought is that I have to get out of sight as quickly as possible. “I just want to get to Bonnie’s,” I say.
He’s ushering me out the door, where the fresh air makes me momentarily feel better. But as soon as I take a deep, hopeful breath, the nausea roils more violently in my stomach. “God,” I say.
He has one arm around my waist, the other holding on to my elbow, and he’s urging me toward his truck, parked across the street. I resist as best I can. “I really think I can drive myself,” I say, though I am not positive this is true.
“Well, you’re not going to,” he answers. I don’t have the strength to pull away from him and head to my own car, so I just give in. He practically lifts me onto the seat and actually fastens the seat belt around me. I lean my aching head against the headrest and pray I can hold on for another ten or fifteen minutes.
“Where to?” he says as he climbs in next to me.
“Take 159 to Mannheim. Right on Mannheim, left on Poplar,” I whisper. “They live just off Poplar.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” he asks as he pulls away.
“I’m begging you. No hospital.”
I close my eyes, hoping the motion of the car doesn’t upset my stomach even more, and try to gauge from distance and the turns he makes when we’ve arrived at Poplar. I guess right—he’s just swinging through the intersection when I look at my surroundings again.
“Three blocks down. Little street called Blossom. Turn left. They’re the third house on the left. Blue shutters,” I croak out, then I close my eyes again.
Only as I feel him turn into the driveway does it occur to me to wonder if anybody’s home. I have a key to their place, but Joe seems worried enough about me that I’m not sure he’d be willing to leave me alone. An attitude I would find sweet if it wasn’t, in this situation, highly inconvenient.
But I open my eyes again as he cuts the ignition, and I can see lights on in various windows in the two-story brick house. It’s almost full dark, so the rose garden and the porch swing and the small fountain are practically invisible, but even so the house manages to project an air of hospitality.
He’s out of the truck before I’ve taken a breath to thank him, so I wait for him to come around to my door and help me climb out. Impossible as I would have thought it, my head hurts even more, and I briefly entertain the idea that I have an aneurysm, something even more deadly than my usual malady. Even with Joe’s help, it’s hard to stand upright, hard to navigate the three concrete steps that lead to the wide porch. The button for the doorbell is tricky to find, as it’s usually hidden behind a curtain of ivy, and Joe doesn’t bother hunting. He just pounds furiously at the door with his left hand while supporting me with his right arm. I can’t hold my head up, so I’m resting it against his shoulder.
Alonzo opens the door, takes one look at me, and calls “Bonnie!” even as he pushes the door wider so I can come in. Joe helps me over the threshold and then stands there while I sway against him, not sure where he should escort me next. We’ve stepped just inside the living room, an elegant place of antique furniture and muted pale-winter hues. If I could speak and gesture, I’d point Joe’s attention to the Cooper Blair original on the wall. But at the moment, all I can think is how bright the room is, how pulsing with color. I stand mute, ready to crumple to the floor. I think all that’s holding me up is Joe’s arm around my waist.
Bonnie bustles into the room, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. “For heaven’s sake, Alonzo, what—oh.”
The minute I hear her voice, I know I’ll be all right.
“We were out to dinner,” Joe says. “And suddenly—she says she got a migraine—she says she doesn’t want to go to the doctor. But I don’t know, she’s acting so funny—”
“No, no, this is fairly common for Karadel,” Bonnie says briskly. “Alonzo, take her to the guest room. Right now. Bring her some water and—well, you know what to do.”
It might be my fevered imagination that Joe releases me with some reluctance into Alonzo’s hands. But Alonzo’s arm around my waist is as steady as Joe’s, and he leads me with infinite care out of the room and down the shadowed hallway. I catch echoes of the conversation between Joe and Bonnie. I think he’s explaining again that I just suddenly got sick, and she’s assuring him that I’ll be all right, that this has happened to me before, that she will take care of me. I hear something about my car and I think
Bonnie is promising him she’ll fetch it from in front of Paddy-Mac’s.
I don’t know. Their words are muffled by our distance from the front door and the escalating throb of blood in my head. Without warning, I drop to the floor, right there in the hallway, curling in on myself, clutching my head, biting my lips to hold back the moans. It feels like a saw blade is ripping down my spine—it feels like a tourniquet has been knotted around my lungs. My fingers splay and contract; my hips pop apart and recombine. I lift my head to howl—
And then everything is fine.
Pain gone. Body light. Bones aligned and muscles perfectly balanced. I blink once and look around.
I’m low to the ground and flooded with sensory input, sounds and scents particularly sharp. I extend my right front leg and am not surprised to see it covered in fluffy orange fur. Apparently, my new hybrid serum is still allowing me to turn into a cat, like Isabel—but the addition of Baxter’s blood has had some unexpected and unpleasant side effects. I might need to rethink my formulas.
But I can’t force my mind to stay on that subject. I’m distracted by a noise in the other room—the sound of the door shutting—and by the rich smells drifting down the hallway. Fish and bread and cheese, among other inviting scents. Bonnie must have been in the middle of making dinner.
Moments later, she appears in the hallway, palming a light switch to illuminate the dark space. “That was cutting it close,” she observes, bending over to pick up my clothes, my purse, and my shoes. “I take it you didn’t expect to change quite so rapidly.”
I burble a response, which is unintelligible, and she sighs. “I’ll put your things in the guest room,” she says. “And I’ll make up a bed for you in there. Though, of course, you can sleep anywhere you like.”
Alonzo squats down beside me. “Are you hungry?” he asks.
“Your coach said they just had dinner,” Bonnie tells him.
He glances up at her. “Yeah, but sometimes it takes so much energy to change that you’re starving right away.”
I mew politely, my way of conveying that, Yes, please, I’d like a little something to eat. Some of that fish would be especially nice. Bonnie sighs again.
“I think you’re right,” she says. “So perhaps you could get out a food plate and a water bowl.”
He stays on the floor a moment longer. “What about the animals?” he asks me.
Mwwrrr, I reply.
He thinks about it a moment, then holds his hand out, palm up. “If Daniel’s there and the animals will be all right, touch my hand,” he says.
I bat at his fingers with my right paw, careful to keep the claws sheathed. He pats my head before coming to his feet again. “Everything’s fine,” he says to Bonnie, and then saunters toward the kitchen.
Because in this shape I’m unable to summon the level of anxiety that I know the scary world requires, I find myself agreeing with him. Everything is fine. I follow him down the hall.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sunday passes in a hedonistically leisurely fashion. In the morning, Aurelia finds me still half asleep on the bed in the guest room and pauses to scratch under my chin.
“Look at you, your fur is almost the same color as my hair,” she says. “Did you do that on purpose?” Then she laughs because she knows that I have done no part of this transformation on purpose.
“I’m sure you’d like to go back to your own place as soon as possible, but I don’t think it will be today,” she goes on. “Bonnie’s at church this morning, I’ve got a Women in Law luncheon this afternoon, and we usually try to make sure Alonzo does homework on Sunday evenings. Is it okay if we take you back tomorrow? We did go fetch your Jeep this morning, though, so it’s in our driveway as I speak.”
I offer a chirping little meow meant to express agreement, and she grins. “Guess it doesn’t matter if you approve or not,” she observes. “Not much you can do about it anyway. See you later.”
After I’ve refreshed myself with another nap, I go exploring, eventually locating Alonzo in his room on the second floor. He’s sitting at his desk, reading a book, though his expression indicates it’s something he’s doing because he has to and not because he wants to. I tense my muscles, gauge the distance, then make a perfect leap from the floor to the desk. Moving with great delicacy, I pick my way through the books, pens, action figures, and electronic devices scattered across its surface until I come across a stack of papers that might be completed school assignments. The perfect spot. I sniff at them briefly, then settle on top of the pile, wrap my tail around my feet, and look around me.
Alonzo’s room has a lot more personality than it used to. When he first moved in, every single item in it had been picked out by Bonnie or Aurelia, from the furniture to the bed coverings to the books on the shelves. It was about a year before he added anything he chose for himself—an Avengers poster, hung so that the only way to see it was from inside the room with the door closed. Since then, he’s slowly amassed a more personal collection, but the additions are sparse. A stack of comic books. A handful of DVDs, most of them with science fiction themes. Another poster, this one featuring some sports star I don’t recognize. Lord of the Rings memorabilia.
None of it looks like something he loves so much he couldn’t leave it behind if he had to vanish in the middle of the night.
“Don’t mess up my homework,” Alonzo admonishes me, but otherwise doesn’t seem to mind my intrusion. He even reaches over to pat me on the head and allows me to nuzzle his wrist before he goes back to his reading.
Maybe an hour goes by before I hear Bonnie’s footsteps in the hallway moments before she sticks her head in the door. “Have you seen—oh, there she is. I wanted to make sure she was all right.”
“She’s fine,” Alonzo says, not a trace of doubt in his voice. He understands that on a level that Bonnie, despite her long association with shape-shifters, simply cannot. It’s the transitions that are so hard, at least for some of us; the existence itself, assuming you’re in a safe place, is almost carefree.
“How’s the book going? How many chapters have you read today?”
“Two,” Alonzo says.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s all right, I guess. It’s kind of boring.”
“Maybe it would be more exciting if you read it out loud,” Bonnie suggests. “Karadel might enjoy the story.”
“Okay,” he says without much enthusiasm. “How much should I read to her?”
“How about ten pages? Then you can come down and we can discuss it while I make dinner. Aurelia ought to be home in a couple of hours.”
He nods and waits for her to leave before picking up the book again. Any other kid might pretend to do what he’s told, figuring his foster mother wouldn’t know if he’d actually read out loud to a cat or not, but of course Alonzo does it. He wouldn’t dare upset the precarious balance of his life by rebelling; as far as he knows, this small haven of kindness where he has so miraculously come to rest could be barred to him if he makes the smallest mistake. He wouldn’t risk it.
Alonzo’s voice is soft.
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.
“You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette . . .”
The first name clues me in that today’s assignment is A Tale of Two Cities. A story of brutality and hope, sacrifice and redemption. A glimpse at the cruelties people are capable of inflicting on each other, a reminder that the world still produces heroes, flawed and ordinary as they might be. Alonzo reads with little inflection, stumbling over some of the more complicated words, but with a dogged focus that makes it clear nothing will prevent him from finishing this particular task. For the first time since I’ve known him, I experience a profound sense of conviction that Alonzo will be all right. H
e doesn’t know much about joy, he doesn’t entirely believe in goodness, but he knows how to persevere. He knows how to hang on and keep going and power through. He learned long ago how to simply endure.
* * *
The half hour before dinner is so exquisite that I wish with all my little feline heart that I were human. Aurelia’s home from her event, still dressed in a suit and heels, telling stories about her fellow lawyers in her usual dry and acerbic fashion. Bonnie’s laughing out loud at some of her descriptions, and even Alonzo is grinning. The three of them are finishing up dinner preparations with the ease of long familiarity, moving between the kitchen and the dining room to set the table, carry in serving dishes, open and decant the wine. The whole event reeks of family, of companionship and affection and belonging, and it’s something I’ve missed almost as long as I’ve been alive.
“It’s a merlot, do you want a small glass?” Aurelia asks Alonzo. “You liked it the last time we had it.”
I know he’s too young to drink alcohol, but there’s something about the ritual that seems to please him, Bonnie had told me not long ago. I don’t know if it’s because it’s something that we share with him, and that makes it special, or if it’s because he knows wine is for adults, and he likes to think that’s how we see him. We just give him a couple of ounces. I don’t think it’s hurting him. I think it can’t be hurting him if it helps convince Alonzo that he matters to them.
“Sure, I’ll take some,” he says, and Aurelia pours an inch of wine into the gold-rimmed goblet. It’s a casual family dinner on a random Sunday night, but trust Aurelia to have gotten out the good dishes. She requires elegance like other people require air.
Bonnie stands at the table, hands on her hips, looking everything over. “Have I forgotten anything? Bread! In the oven. Alonzo, could you take it out and put it in a basket? Then I think we’re ready to eat.”
Almost on the words, the doorbell rings. “Oh, Lord,” Bonnie says on a sigh, but Aurelia’s expression is almost angry. For someone who so willingly does battle on the public stage, she is ferocious about guarding her private time.