Cat Pay The Devil

25

S lipping through the dark village streets, then through heavily shadowed, overgrown gardens, Cotton had at last found the oak that held Kit’s tree house. Thankful to have left traffic and people behind him, reassured by the night’s silence in the quiet neighborhood, he’d scrambled up the oak-and found himself face-to-face with Kit herself, and Dulcie, standing in the door to the tree house. Observing the street below, they had watched him for some time.

Already the two cats knew the redheaded lady was missing. And when Cotton described her capture, panting out his urgent news, within minutes Kit was across a branch to a window of the big house and inside, shouting and nearly mewing into the telephone to Police Captain Harper.

He’d told them how he and Willow and Coyote had seen the older, gray-haired woman through that kitchen window, how he’d gone for help and seen the two men grab the redheaded one and tie her up, and drive away with her up the dirt trail through the woods, and how the big man talked about the ruins-

“But Wilma…!” Dulcie had exploded, lashing her tail, her green eyes wild. “Where exactly is that house? Why did…?”

He had told them all he knew. And now when Kit finished the call, and went right in to talk with her humans, Cotton was ready to race away. But he was too curious-and the next thing he knew, the thin old woman, Lucinda, was bringing him food, and he was very hungry. He ate with one eye on the woman and the man, and listened to Kit argue boldly with them.

“You can’t be sure where they’re taking Charlie,” Lucinda said. “It’s late and dark, and you-”

“Cotton is sure,” Kit said. “He heard them, they said ‘to the ruins.’ We-”

“The police can get there faster, Kit. Those empty hills at night are wild with coyotes and bobcats. You do remember the cougar?”

“The cougar is not there now, we haven’t smelled him on the hills for a long time. We can be there in the time it takes to argue!”

“There could be shooting. You could end up in the middle of gunfire, and what good would that do Charlie or Wilma? Max will have half the force up there, armed officers who-”

“We have sense enough to stay out of the way!” Kit hissed at Lucinda. “You know you can’t keep us in, we-”

“If you must go, if you absolutely must, then Pedric and I will take you.”

“But you can’t. There will be too many police cars, they’ll be all over that little dirt road. They’ll have it blocked and…How will you explain being there? How would you explain that you already know about Charlie and Wilma? It won’t be on the news yet. Maybe it isn’t even on the police radios, maybe they’re using their cell phones so no one else will pick it up. You can’t-”

“We’ll take you as far as we can. I’ll just get my keys.” Lucinda stared hard into the kit’s blazing yellow eyes. “Wait for us! Promise me! Think of the time you can save.”

“Cotton won’t ride in a car!” Kit shouted. “Cotton won’t get in a car! He’s feral! He won’t-”

But he had gotten in. And that had amazed Cotton himself. And now here he was riding in the backseat beside Dulcie trying to put down his panic at being shut inside the noisy, moving vehicle while Dulcie and Kit thought nothing of such a journey. The old woman drove. Her husband, Pedric, sat beside her with the kit on his lap.

Cotton was glad that Dulcie sat close to him to give him courage, purring to ease his nerves, and licking his ear. But then as they moved up among the dark hills, she reared up with her paws on the window, staring out into the night. And now he was beginning to get the feel of the moving car; it wasn’t as loud or as bumpy, or as windy and cold as when he and Willow and Coyote were hauled down from the hills in that metal cage tied on the back of a motorcycle. That had been more than a cat could bear, trapped and caged and carried down the mountain in that violent, bumpy ride and the icy wind battering them trying to tear out their fur. They’d all thought that was the end of them.

It was Dulcie and Joe Grey who had come looking for them and gotten trapped, too; and it was Kit who had rescued them all. So he guessed he could try to be as brave as she was. Well, this car was nice and warm. And the motor wasn’t so loud; its voice was almost a purr.

But then soon the ride grew bumpier once they turned off the smooth road onto the dirt one that led, winding, up the hills. Dulcie was still rearing up; in the front seat Kit stood up in Pedric’s lap, to look out, too. And she said all in one breath, “Cop cars, Lucinda, without lights. Slow down and put out your lights or we’ll give ourselves away and give the cops away. Turn them off now!”

“They’re off, Kit!” Lucinda snapped, pulling to the side of the road, onto the rocky edge. At once, Kit put her paw on the door handle.

“Kit…,” Lucinda began, holding down the master lock.

“Please, Lucinda. You’ve brought us this far; we’re as safe now as we ever can be. You can’t-”

“I know,” Lucinda said sadly. “We’ve had this argument before. I can’t run your life; I’m overprotective, and you can’t live that way.”

“Let them go,” Pedric said.

Lucinda flipped the lock. Kit leaped out the door, and Cotton beside her. Only Dulcie paused, looking at the bright tears on Lucinda’s cheeks. Then she, too, was gone.

But away among the rocks Kit reared up to look back. “We’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Go home, Lucinda. Go before the uniforms see you and come asking questions.” And, spinning around, she followed Dulcie and Cotton away fast, streaking up the hill toward the jagged, fallen walls that loomed above them against the dark night sky.

On the second floor of the ruined mansion where the front wall had crumbled away, the big, old-fashioned nursery stood open to the night like the stage in an abandoned theater. Beside a broken rocking horse, Willow and Coyote crouched, looking down the black hills, watching yet another car move up the road without lights. Already, half a dozen cars were parked along the shoulder, dark and still. Police cars. The two cats watched this car stop, saw the door open and a white cat streak out beside two darker companions.

“Cotton!” Willow hissed. “That can’t be Cotton. Riding in a car? But…that’s Kit and Dulcie.” They watched the three cats race up toward them and vanish among the tumbled stones. “Cotton went to find Kit and Dulcie?” Willow whispered, ashamed that she had doubted him. “When we saw Wilma through that window, I thought he ran away to hunt, that he didn’t want to be bothered. But he-

“He went to find them,” she said. “Even though he hates humans and fears human places. He hates that village where we were captive-but he went there, all alone.” Admiration for the white tom filled Willow. Beside her, Coyote was silent; and when Willow looked at him, he was scowling. Willow’s eyes widened. Was he jealous? She had never known Coyote to be jealous.

But there was so much else to think about, so much happening, first that car going over the side and the thin young woman scrambling out and climbing up to the road and running, and then the silver-haired woman following her more slowly, and limping. The young one called Violet seemed very afraid. Her every movement sent messages of fear, like the movements of a cornered mouse. And then the cop cars had come, and parked, never turning on lights.

“There,” she said, glimpsing Violet. Spinning around, she raced through the cluttered nursery to the back where the wall still stood intact. Leaping to the sill of a broken window, she looked deeper into the interior of the ruined estate. “Violet’s headed for that old trailer, the place she goes when that man has beaten her.”

“She thinks she’s safe there,” Coyote said, “She doesn’t know he watches her go in there.”

“Here comes Wilma,” Willow said softly, “following her. We have to tell them those men know about that place, that they will find them there.”

“We can’t talk to humans!” Coyote stared at her, shocked.

“We’ll tell Dulcie and Kit, they’ll tell them…” But even as she spoke they heard a car coming from the woods along the horse trail, heard the rattle of that rusted, open car, and there was no time to find Dulcie; Willow leaped away down the broken stairs and out the back, heading for the old trailer. Behind her, Coyote didn’t move, he stood staring after her. Glancing back, Willow gave him a scornful look, and slid away into the ivy.

Wilma moved warily and painfully downhill, approaching the derelict mansion, looking for Violet’s pale, swift shape, imagining her flashing away like a ghost among the ruins to some secret hiding place. The Pamillon estate had remained without repair for more than a generation, awaiting disposition of a title so tangled among two dozen heirs that even a vast array of attorneys seemed unable to sort out the many wills and trusts in a way that would establish legal succession. Pausing to get her bearings, shielding the flashlight and switching it on just long enough to be sure she wasn’t headed for a sinkhole, she flicked it off again, startled when she glimpsed Violet’s thin white shirt vanish among the jagged walls. Quickly she followed.

In the shadows of a collapsed garden shed and tangled ivy trellis, the girl stood unmoving, as ethereal as a ghost; Wilma approached her, expecting her to run.

She didn’t run, she stood shaking, white as paper in Wilma’s shielded light. Wilma studied her thin face and then took her icy hand. “Come on, Violet. We have to hide. Show me where.”

Violet stared into the shielded light. “There’s a place, but there are spiders and-”

“If we can hide there,” Wilma said, listening to the faint rumble of a distant, ragged engine approaching from the south, “then get on with it! They’re coming.”

Violet listened to the Jeep crunching over gravel and rocks and brushing through the trees, breaking branches. She stiffened when it did not turn up the hill toward the house but continued on through the rubble, heading directly toward them.

“Move it,” Wilma snapped. “Now!”

Violet spun, and ran.