Catopolis

FATHER MAIMS BEST by Ed Greenwood

The ghost was a pale blue, which meant that it was angry about something. Or someone. Quite possibly whoever had cut its head off, leaving the wraith floating along after its severed part, forever reaching vainly for that grisly, spectral-gore-dripping ball with both hands. It drifted past us almost blindly, heading for a blank wall that it would no doubt vanish through.

Interesting, but I hadn’t time to find out more, just now; it wasn’t our ghost. That is, one we were being paid to get rid of.

Myself, I’m not sure why living humans so fervently want dead humans-restless humans, or ghosts, in particular-to be somewhere else. After all, they gobble down dead things on their plates all the time, silently gibbering little phantoms and all, and think nothing of it. Unless the beef is tough or the turkey overdone.

But I digress. Not surprising, that; it’s what I do. “Sam & Abernathy/Paranormal Investigations and Digressions,” say the sign and all the business cards Steve is forever handing out. People always handle them gingerly, for some reason, or even with open, nostril-flaring distaste.

Almost as often as they examine me with pained expressions and start to explain some sort of “no pets” policy. Steve doesn’t bother interrupting anymore. He just lets them finish and then explains that we’re partners, a team. He’s the “Abernathy” part, and I’m “Sam.” Samiris-Sekhmet, in full, though that was a long time ago. Royal blood, of course, though that meant nothing back then. I picked up “Samratharella” several owners ago, and I prefer it.

Yes, I’m a girl, and yes, I’m a cat. The big black one with the white “skunk” stripe down my flank, courtesy of a swordcane that wasn’t quite swift enough to rob me of more than one of my nine lives. Of which I’ve used up seven, thanks for asking.

Oh, and I’m the brains of this outfit, too. Most humans have figured out by now that cats and dogs can see ghosts, but what they don’t know is that all cats can see all ghosts, most of the time; most dogs and most humans can’t see them at all or, like Steve, can see them only too late, when they’re showing themselves off to lure him into danger-or materializing enough to do him real harm. Dogs and humans can smell ghosts, but if you don’t know what you’re smelling, it doesn’t do you much good.

That’s one of the reasons that a big city like this one has so many “accidental” deaths. Humans run afoul of ghosts, and big cities have lots of both. When they meet, it’s seldom pretty.

Not all ghosts set out to murder, and those who do generally have one particular victim-or sort of victim, like rapists or cooks or men on bicycles-in mind. But in heavy traffic or in places where a fall can be fatal, being startled by a ghost can kill just as effectively as a murderous ghost’s dark deeds, and dogs and humans can easily be startled by ghosts. They tend to be able to smell a spook only when it shows itself, whereas cats know a ghost is around long before it becomes visible. So we can track ghosts and deal with them.

Cats born these days are pretty little creatures, most of them, and kin-but that’s all they are. We royalty (that is, cats old enough to have known pharaohs and who have managed to keep at least a few of their lives since then) can shapechange and speak in the minds of anyone we touch, not just long-time friendly humans, dogs, and other cats.

Yet if I ever let the wrong human see me shapechanging, I’ll probably be throwing away the last few of my lives, right there. Which is why I need Steve. He requires clothes and watches and cash to live in the world of humans: that’s why we do this work instead of just letting the passing parade of ghosts be just that, a passing parade. Oh, and he sees to my wants, too. A bit of fish, often, and chocolates every once in a long while.

Steve always sees to my wants. Which is why I’m no longer the lapcat of a certain lady known to much of the city (the seamier side) as “Cinammon Nipples,” for reasons that are probably obvious but are another digression and so best left undiscussed for now.

Back to the case at hand. The headless human was the only ghost we’d seen so far in this building, but that wasn’t surprising. Old buildings tend to host a lot of murders, violent deaths, and strong emotions-and therefore a lot of hauntings-and new buildings, unless they stand on the site of a thoroughly haunted older building, tend to have fewer.

We were here to investigate a “cat haunting.” Or rather, to get rid of a “ghost cat” that had taken to appearing and clawing anyone who so much as sat on a couch or chair, or lounged or lay down on a bed, anywhere in the place. “Here” was an incredibly valuable downtown house (on a trendy corner; “location, location, location”) that had just been remodelled into three luxury condominiums. The lady owner was living in the uppermost and was facing ruin if she couldn’t soon sell the lower two-and the ghost cat had already scared off a dwindling stream of possible buyers.

Those who looked at the place were either a far more discreet lot than usual, or these prospective buyers were all looking to install grow ops or operate escort services out of the place, because not one whiskery whisper of a ghostly cat had reached the papers.

Jethana Throneshuld had, however, sounded rich, haughty, and darned desperate on Steve’s answering machine. That desperation was real, because she hadn’t hesitated a second upon hearing his rates, and she wanted him on the job as soon as he could get from his end of the phone to hers.

Which is why we were now climbing the palatial stairs and ornate hallways of The Coachlight, heading for our client’s door. There was an elevator, but we both hated elevators, and it was only two flights of stairs. Stairs, moreover, that weren’t the usual filthy, chewing-gum and cigarette-littered, urine-reeking and otherwise spartan stairwell, but a soft-carpeted, gilt-trimmed pleasure to ascend.

I could shape human lips and throat to talk to Steve, but I made it a rule to do that only behind closed doors, on our premises. So I trotted along beside him looking like a feline domestic as he did the trenchcoat thing.

Hand in pocket as if resting on a gun, fedora pulled low. Right up to Ms. Jethana Throneshuld’s door, whose bell awakened distant grandfather clock chiming noises and then opened by itself, gliding inward with the ponderous velvet silence of something no mere mortal could ever afford.

No wonder she was facing financial ruin. The floor was deep white fur wherever it wasn’t glossy marble or set-into-the-floor bathing pools (kidney-shaped, of course, and she had three of them) and stretched away from us for what seemed the better part of a mile before being interrupted by a wall. A wall of glossy polished wood that wasn’t just panelled; it was carved, in a huge and complicated relief scene of stags chasing each other over rail fences in a deep wood. Thankfully the usual human hunters on horses-and their torrent of hounds-were absent.

Steve came to a stop, peeled off his rubber overshoes (and don’t ask what troubles he goes through to get such things, these days) and dropped them carefully into the zip-up pocket of his overcoat, to reveal spotless black dress shoes. Our client beamed at that, as she came gliding into view through an archway, festooned in some sort of designer negligée and what looked like a small waterfall of matching white diamonds.

“Ah, Mr. Abernathy!” Her face fell, as she added with considerably less enthusiasm, “Oh, and I see you’ve brought your pet.”

“My partner,” Steve said, firmly but pleasantly. “A live cat to sniff out a ghost cat. Should we set to work in here, or does your little problem appear only on the lower floors?”

“Ah, you do get to work immediately,” Ms. Throneshuld said approvingly, patting his arm in a my-but-I’ll-be-enjoying-this -soon rich Rosedale cougar sort of way as she passed him, to see to the door. Evidently it didn’t close by itself.

After the door clicked closed, she did things to a complicated alarm panel set behind a sliding miniature-an oval painting on porcelain, that is-beside it and came back to him.

I didn’t much like the look of her or want to approach her, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, but professional necessities are professional necessities, so I contrived to wander close to those shapely and overly spa-treated legs as she pranced past.

And contrived not to recoil, too. I’d been expecting her to smell of expensive perfumes, with an underlying reek of exfoliants and exotic tree oils, ylang ylang and all the other drek they put in shampoos and lotions these days. Instead, she smelt of death. Not murder or kitchen butchery, but old, dry, dusty death.

When death won’t go away, that means trouble. But then, the look in her eyes-not just the “I’ll see to you” look she gave me, but the very different sort of look she was giving Steve, was stronger trouble, and more immediate, too. It was the look a hungry cat gives to a witless canary that perches obligingly right in front of it.

“It’s probably best,” she purred, stopping against his chest and posing so that one bare leg could peek through the thigh-high slits in her designer come-hither-and-tear-this-little-frippery-off-me silks and press against him, “if we start in the bedroom. It’s been worst in there.”

I’ll just bet it has, dearie.

Yes, that was a catty thought, but then, I think everything catt-oh, never mind.

“Sam,” Steve said a little dreamily, “will you go in and ah, check things out, first?”

I turned my head and gave him an incredulous look. Had I just heard the lost-in-lust tone I thought I’d heard?

He smiled at me. Set take the man! He was falling for her! A reeking walking corpse, and-

“Well, isn’t that something!” Oh, so sweetly. “It’s as if she understands your every word! Just like a real person!”

And you’d know all about “real persons” HOW, sweetie?

She and Steve actually put their arms around each other’s hips, like a comfortable couple, to stand and watch the cute trained cat obey her master’s order.

So I obliged, of course. We’re partners, after all.

And we’re on the job, too. So…

The bedroom was every whit as horrible as I’d expected-zebra-skin throws over folding screens fashioned of beveled tall-as-a-person-in-killer-heels mirrors, only these mirrors had frames plated with gold, not brass, and the zebra skins weren’t just a textile design but were real pelts. Those screens flanked an oval pink fourposter bed topped with gilded posts holding up a pink oval overhead ring-frame, and a huge oval mirror was affixed to the ceiling above that. Four upright oval archways pierced the soft orange sherbet walls, all of them curtained off in a clashing shade of pink: bathroom, shoe closet, dressing room, clothes closet.

I batted aside the bed’s pink pleated skirting-of course it had pink pleated skirting, of a different shade than either the archway curtains or the rest of the bed-to peer under the bed and was gratified to see nothing but an unbroken field of white fur, free of the smallest speck of dust or cobweb. No ghost cat here.

Never leave unexplored territory between you and the known way out. I turned toward the closest archway to the bedroom door: the shoe closet, reeking with expensive leather and the very best dyes. Taking a deep breath while I was still far enough from those smells to keep myself from a fit of sneezing or choking, I prepared myself to come nose to nose with spooks.

Jethana Walkingcorpse probably kept her shoes in neat pairs on shelves-the ones she never used, that is. The others would be in untidy heaps on the floor, strewn all over the-

They were. I padded forward cautiously, springing over a few pairs into a little bare area of fur rug before the real heap began.

Where I stopped, nose prickling. Someone was happening behind me.

Just behind me.

I spun, silently. The Ghost Cat was fading into view and solidity right in front of me, between me and the archway out of this dead end. It-no, he-was smiling. A smile I knew all too well.

Hello, Little Meat.

I had to touch Steve, or any human, to mindspeak. We all have to, unless we use a spell.

Or we’re talking to immediate kin.

Only one of which had ever called me “Little Meat.”

The Ghost Cat opened his jaws wide, very wide-long yellow fangs, sharp and deadly as ever-and then smiled at me. Oh, yes, I knew him.

Suddenly I was struggling to breathe, fear like ice around my heart.

It’s been a long time, he observed pleasantly, looming up suddenly in the narrow closet as he gained full solidity and his true size.

Montuhotep. He Who Makes War and Is Pleased. Maralwshbekhtah, to use his later name.

He had another, more mundane title, too: my father.

I hadn’t seen him for centuries, but he hadn’t forgotten me or what he’d been trying to do to me at our last meeting, and that smile told me he was picking up right where he left off.

Trying to kill me.

Swiftly, messily, and gloatingly. That could have been his motto, had Father ever bothered with such things. He probably would have put it in other words, however. “Maim, Torment or Rape, then Slay,” perhaps.

Last daughter, he purred in my mind, come to me.

He had killed all my brothers and sisters, and probably my mother before that, by maiming them into immobility and then casting a spell on them that stole all of their nine lives and transferred them into him.

He had tried to kill me, too, but I had leaped in desperation, landed someplace I shouldn’t have, and paid the price in a nasty backlash as the spell waiting in that place had shattered Father’s life-stealing magic.

I had fled, and he had sought me, chasing me tirelessly for decades. Until there came a time when I saw him no more, padding smilingly along on my trail.

Centuries passed. I’d concluded something fatal had finally happened to him.

No such luck, evidently. He was still very much alive.

My nose told me I was facing no ghost, but a living cat. My eyes told me my father was using magic to become incorporeal and pass through things and then solidify again until turning back into a wraith seemed more useful. Until the spell wore out, or he tried to pass through cold iron and got stunned by the shattering of his spell for his pains, he could probably turn back and forth at will, as often as he wanted.

All royalty had heard of that spell, but it had been far beyond Father’s mastery when I’d fled from him. He had been busy then with his nine-lives-stealing; his own invention, that had left him bursting with pride, bereft of almost all his kin, and with more lives than any cat had any right to.

He’d probably used most of them by now, though-which was why he was here smiling at me. The stealing spell only worked on royalty who shared his bloodline, a breed of which I was now presumably the last.

Oh, I was terrified. And he knew it.

Tombs and bones, anyone who got a glimpse of me would know it! All over me, my hair was standing on end, thrusting out at the world in all directions like so many rigid little lances.

Father hadn’t been the only one learning magic. I knew a few spells, none of them very impressive and only one of them useful in my present situation.

On the other hand, I hadn’t known any useful magic-oh, I could conjure a feeble glow, or bring down darkness around myself, but all kittens could do as much, if they were royalty-while he’d been chasing me or earlier. If he still thought me helpless and gloated just a moment longer…

Surrender, he told me. Abase yourself, and receive me.

Once a tomcat, always a tomcat, first and foremost. His gloating and prancing had given me the time I needed.

“Take me. If you can,” I whispered-and vanished.

He launched himself forward, claws flung wide, raking the space where I’d been. He suspected I’d merely mastered invisibility and now, unseen but still in the closet, was seeking to dodge around him.

My spell was something a little more powerful. A translocation, “jumping” my body from the closet to a spot on that broad expanse of furs that I’d examined carefully earlier. Right beside Steve’s leg, as it happened, as he tried to ask Walkingcorpse questions as he kept moving, to keep her from rubbing herself quite all over him.

He stared at me-my sudden appearance, and my hair on end in terror-in astonishment, jaw dropping open, and her surprise was hardly less.

I didn’t wait for further reactions but raced past him like a storm wind, sprang to the sliding miniature and clawed it aside, landed thumpingly hard beneath it, and sprang right back up again to push a particular trio of the buttons I’d seen her push.

In response, the door clicked open-just as Father burst out of the closet and streaked across the room toward me.

“There! The Ghost Cat!” Throneshuld cried, almost triumphantly, pointing. “That’s it!”

Then I was out through the tiny gap between door and frame and running for my life, with Father bounding after me, eyes ablaze with anger and excitement.

“Sam?” Steve shouted, real alarm in his voice. “

Sam!”

I heard his shoes pounding across the floor after me, in the instant before the door shut itself again, muffling a shout from him that was loud and angry. And no wonder; he’d never seen me frightened before, in all our time together, and I’d just left him helpless.

I was the ghostsniffer and expert, and without me he was just a man in a hat and coat who knew how to bluster.

He was probably as frightened now as I was. Perhaps more, because humans get so frightened of the unknown. Whereas I knew exactly what I was afraid of.

Thinking of which… I risked a glance back. Father was gaining on me.

Bast take him! I’d thought in a flat-out race I-being younger, sleeker, and a lot lighter-would be faster. I always had been faster!

Wherever he’d been, he’d evidently been doing a lot of running, or getting stronger, or learning some sort of magic that lent him greater speed.

Oh, jackal dung, as some of the priests had been wont to say.

I sprang, batted the elevator button in passing, and kept right on going. I hadn’t the time to wait for its ponderous door to roll open, even if it was waiting on this floor-and it was far more likely sitting at street level, two floors down.

Nor did I really have time to use the stairs-not when Father could “fade” through flights of them, to appear below and wait for me. Or could he? Surely its frame would be iron, underneath the carpeting and the sound-deadening sandwiches of foam and wood I’d smelled beneath it. I-window!

That window had not been open when we’d come up, but it was open now. I sprang, trusting in my claws on the wooden sill to slow me enough to keep from hurtling helplessly out and down. The sharp stink of fresh cigarette ash told me why the window had been opened. The caretaker with the vacuum who’d been fussing in the lobby when Steve and I arrived had been smoking, and had dumped-or more likely flicked-the evidence out this window. I followed, quickly.

The ledge I’d seen from the street was more ornamental than useful; certainly no human could have walked along it, even one who knew the wall-clinging spell I had. Yet wires ran along it-what happens when television satellite dishes are added to older buildings as cheaply as possible-which should keep Father from “fading” through any walls to get me. He’d have to follow me, and he was a lot larger than I was.

Traffic honked, below, covering most of his snarls of anger as he thrust his head through the window and saw where I’d gone. By then I was well along the ledge, passing Steve and our creepy dead or undead client again.

“Oh, you must stay, Mister Abernathy,” she was telling him, arms around him so ardently that he’d have real trouble trying to do anything else. “You can stay in one of the unused floors below us, or better yet my guest room, to try to solve my little problem. You can find your Sam and rid me of my ghost cat.”

Steve was frowning and shaking his head-but it was a frown of bafflement, not anger at her. “I-I-Yes, I must absolutely deal with your problem. Yet lacking my partner, I’m temporarily at a loss regarding the best way to proceed. She was crucial to, ah, ‘flushing out’ your ghost, you see, and-”

“Then stay, and we can talk this over. Coffee? Or something stronger, perhaps? Surely together we can think of…”

Father was out on the ledge, flattening himself against the wall almost bonelessly, and I couldn’t tarry any longer.

I’d run out of ledge anyway, because I’d run out of building. If I followed the ledge on, around two corners, I’d probably be able to jump off it, out into the tree I’d seen rising behind The Coachlight as we’d approached it.

Well, Steve certainly seemed smitten. Perhaps Waking-corpse, too, had magic-to ensnare men, in her case. Why else would he be interested in so old and crude a flirt? She was energetic in her seduction attempts but about as subtle as a dog in heat.

I’d done it much better. Steve had been head-over-heels for me as a human and eager for each new session of sweet hot lovemaking before he’d ever known I was a cat who could shapechange. As I said, we’re partners.

Now, however, he’d just have to fend for himself. I had bigger problems. Such as staying alive long enough to warn him about the true nature of Haughty Ms. Walkingcorpse-or anything at all, ever again.

Night was falling, of course.

Providing the right lighting for a lady cat to be chased by her murderous father, far across the city.

At least, I hoped I’d last that long.

The tree was old and gnarled; its branches sagged but held. Squirrel-like I scampered down them, then headed for the ground, well aware that Father would be right behind me.

Flattening himself out ribbon-thin must mean working a magic that made him temporarily boneless, because it certainly slowed him down. When I raced away along the top rail of a fence, he was two backyards behind me.

I had to stay ahead. He needed me trapped in a confined space, or immobilized, to have time to cast his life-stealing. If he could bite the back of my neck, or get a good swipe at me with both sets of front claws, he could manage the maiming he was so infamous for, and I would be paralyzed-and doomed.

Life had suddenly become so simple-and so precious and hard to keep hold of.

So, just how well did he know this city? How well did I?

The difference between those two answers was probably all that was going to keep me alive for long.

He was gaining on me, fast.

I turned a corner, ran out of fence, sprang onto one of those crazy “spiderweb on a pole” backyard laundry racks, and from there plunged deep into the soft soil of a flowerbed, not wanting to bruise anything this early in the chase.

“Early” I hoped, that is. I scrabbled my way onto firmer ground and ran, streaking through a cat door and right up and along the back of a dog that had been waiting outside it to bully some other cat.

The dog barked and twisted furiously, its roaring din nigh deafening, but I doubted it would last more than a swift bark or two against Father. If he bothered to fight it at all.

I raced across several yards, not bothering to try to hide or misdirect by zigging here or zagging there. Right now, just moving quickly was all that was keeping me alive.

Stay near iron barriers, stay near iron…

The dog shrieked in sudden pain, and fell silent. Father.

He was keeping close. Which meant I had to get out of this neighborhood, away from the darkness and the trees that every cat instinctively welcomes and turns to, and into the bright concrete noise of the downtown. Where there would be more cars and people walking; more obstacles.

I darted across a road right in front of a surging taxi. Its front wheel came so close to clipping me that it numbed the end of my tail. There was a littered sidewalk beyond, and one of those two-rows-of-offset-vertical board fences. I went left, toward the busier street.

It was a long way to the corner, and it occurred to me that if Father had caught sight of me and dared to risk himself that much longer in the traffic, he could “cut the corner” diagonally and catch up with me.

So I found an old dented drainpipe with many straps to hook my claws into, and got aloft, fast.

I hadn’t even made it to the lowest window-ledge of the apartments above this shop when I heard a furious scrabbling below. Father’s weight was too much for his claws to hold him in his haste; he was slipping, old paint flaking away in a little cloud. Slipping, but not falling.

I wasted no time in watching or taunting but just got myself along those ledges, leaping from one to the next, and around the corner. Where a handy tree-limb let me ascend to the next row of ledges, which would put me higher than the aging shingle roof of the next building along.

Father was faster than ever. There came the crash of a window being thrown up behind me, and a man’s voice shouting, “It was a cat! And here’s another!”

Father hissed in the man’s face as he raced past-and was startled to find that one human, at least, was just as fast as he was.

The man had been reading a book, and he thrust it hard into Father’s ribs, or tried to. He got Father’s rear instead and slammed it off the ledge into space, the rest of Father following it.

To land heavily atop the store awning below. It was as rotten as most of them, and it tore, but Father wisely kept his claws sheathed, and climbed up out of the small hole, to wade along the dirty canvas.

I made the next shingle roof and paused to snatch my breath and plan my route ahead.

“Daughter!” Father hissed, reaching the end of the awning and seeing he was facing an impossible leap to reach me; he’d have to jump down instead, and find another way up.

“Last life, Father?”

“I only need one,” he snarled, with a testiness that made me think he just might be on his last one, “to take all of yours!”

I turned away without another word, and ran. This was going to be a long night. I hoped.

And so it was. Time and again Father almost caught me, and I just eluded him, until we were on streets I knew well and could stay more than a whisker ahead of him.

Not that Father seemed to be tiring. I was, but he seemed as quick as ever. Which is how he caught me.

I’d been running along a lighted marquee, one of the huge sidewalk-overhanging pulsating signs that so few movie theaters still had these days, but every second store seemed to have gained. I hadn’t seen Father fade through the wall of a building to ride a wire to the building that had the marquee-so I got a nasty shock when he faded right out of the wall ahead, to crash down on the marquee facing me, his fanged smile as big as ever.

Luckily for me, that’s exactly what he did- crash down.

Through the glass panel, into the humming heart of dozens of flourescent tubes, some of which shattered and made his hair stand on end. He clawed his way along them anyway, dislodging some from their mounts so they went dark. So they were no longer alive and threatening to cook him, but they were now on a slant. And as smooth as ever. His claws shrieked as they scrabbled, but he couldn’t climb toward me.

I turned and headed elsewhere, fast.

Trapped and knowing it, Father let himself fall through a tangle of tinkling tubes-their shards must have been razor-sharp, but pain had never bothered Father-to reach a metal frame beneath them, in the bright white heart of the marquee. He raced along it until he was under the end of the marquee where I was gathering myself for a difficult jump, and he punched his head upward, hard.

Much glass shattered, the end of the marquee fell in and my behind with it, and Father ended up pinned under my weight and the ends of about two dozen tubes. He snarled and shifted furiously, seeking to get his jaws or a claw on me, but he was covered in a shifting layer of sharp glass shards, and all that happened was that his bloodied shoulder touched my bloodied left hind leg for a moment.

And our minds met.

I had always known Father was insane, but plunging through the dark, swirling storm of his mind was still… an experience. He loved to kill, as well as loving all the other things tomcats do, and truly thought he had been touched and favored by his namesake, Montu, the god of war. He was addicted to the taste of human blood. Not a vampire; he was more like an alcoholic who had to taste strong drink as often as he could. So he clawed or bit every human who came within reach.

He’d been working with AnkhesenAkana for years.

Her, I mean. The Lady, Jethana Throneshuld, though that was just the body she was currently using.

Full working partners. She was some sort of ancient Egyptian undead spirit that he knew no name for, who went on living-I know that’s not the right word, but let it pass-by possessing one living human body after another. Her current body, the unfortunate Jethana, was starting to wear out. The condo scheme had been meant to bring new host bodies within easy reach, but it wasn’t going to work in time. So AnkhesenAkana had decided the body of someone else-my Steve!-would have to do.

I had to get away from Father, to get back to The Coachlight, and I had to do it fast!

Now there was irony, if you wanted it: the failing, hungry-for-life undead, and the cat who has taken so many lives already and has blood afire with life. Yet surely AnkhesenAkana would long ago have wrung his neck and taken the energy within him if it could use that energy. So the lives of cats evidently helped sustain undeath not at all…

It had been AnkhesenAkana who got Father his magic. She had no skill for it herself, but from her, er, first life knew where ancient texts were hidden and remembered some details seen when watching others cast spells.

He was a slow learner, it seemed; he kept undoing the incorporeal thing by indulging in his bloodlust. Contact with blood-any sort of blood-turned him corporeal even if he didn’t want to become solid.

Which gave me an idea. I had to get to a place I’d visited only once, a place any cat would hate fervently for its noise and perils and overwhelming smells. The city’s recycling sorting plant.

I used my best spell again, to get myself out of the damned marquee and away from Father. Steve couldn’t wait much longer.

I’d never much appreciated the pale gray beginnings of dawn, and they didn’t look very entrancing now. With me exhausted, Father close behind, and the rotten stink of the recycling plant-humans just throw things out; they don’t see any need to wash much-hammering my nose like… like…

No, nothing can describe this smell. It was like being blinded.

For a moment I feared Father would turn back, but no prey had ever eluded him before, and having found me after so long, he wasn’t going to let me manage to be the first.

Good. I knew exactly where I wanted to be and got there.

The place was full of rats, who sneered at me as they waited for me to fall afoul of one of the many murderous pieces of machinery that were crushing, spinning, stamping, and spewing endless streams of cardboard, plastic, and glass. When I was broken or dead, they’d feast.

I raced past my umpteenth rat-and then whirled around and bit its neck, clamping my own jaws down hard. It died.

Rat in mouth, I turned to face Father.

He’d been following me rather gingerly, and no wonder: I’d reached that rat by running along a pipe high above the cardboard shredder. Which consisted of endless belts carrying waste cardboard to the open top of a large metal chute that dropped into a metal box. Rows of robotic metal knives, each the size of a surfboard, pierced that box repeatedly, amid endless, high-pitched screaming.

So we couldn’t hear each other, couldn’t smell each other, and were poised above one of the deadliest butchering contraptions I’d ever seen. Luckily, Father’s reluctance told me he’d never been here before, which meant my desperate plan just might work.

There was a weight-sorting mechanism at the head end of this, to keep contaminants out. If it worked, I’d live. If not…

“Sorry, Steve,” I mumbled, around the rat. It didn’t taste any too good, but I didn’t plan to have it in my mouth for much longer. Putting my head down, I ran right at Father.

He reared to swipe at me with his claws, but I stopped just out of reach-and he obligingly doomed himself, lunging forward to really get his claws into me.

I slammed into him and drove us both off the pipe, scrabbling at it just long enough so that we fell separately into the waiting chute.

The secret was staying still.

I landed on a good big piece of cardboard and sat there like a stone. Which made the cardboard too heavy, tripped a sensor, and the metal “lifts” rose between the knives to thrust up my cardboard from underneath and shunt it sideways, out of the chute, for hand sorting.

At the last moment, I spat out the rat, and watched it tumble down in front of Father. Who had seen his peril and struggled furiously, churning the cardboard until he could turn incorporeal.

As I got put onto the sorting belt, he was grinning furiously at me, a translucent ghost caged in metal but unharmed by the knives slamming through him.

Until the rat struck the knives right beside him, its blood spattered in all directions, drenching him-and the knives got him.

By then I was tearing down the iron stair meant for workers to unjam the knives when necessary, trying not to cry. He was, after all, my Father.

“So passes Montuhotep,” I murmured aloud, stopping under the metal that was now dripping blue blood. I stayed still again until his gore had soaked the fur down my back, then did the one last thing I needed to do: I found a small, sharp-ended shard of old metal I could carry in my mouth. Thus laden, I got out of there and gave in to my grief.

I had hated and feared him, but he was my Father. And a cat who had in his day made many tremble. A royal tomcat, the likes of which the world would not see again.

Feeling glum, I hurried back back across the awakening city as fast as I could drag my weary body and got back to The Coachlight’s windows in time to see that I was… just in time.

Darling Steve. He had worn himself out searching the building top to bottom for me and had finally fallen asleep, all smudges and cobwebs. AnkhesenAkana needed mouth to mouth-and preferably more-body contact to take over his body and had awakened him to try to get him undressed and into bed.

It seemed even ancient Egyptian undead could seethe with frustration. She was trying to make love to a man too sleepy to stay awake and do anything, who was much larger and heavier than she was.

I decided to put her out of her misery by ringing her bell with Father’s special code.

And pouncing on her head when she snarlingly opened the door, bounding on from that lofty perch into her lair before she could even pummel me off.

She followed. I did a lot of clawing in the frantic moments that followed and managed to make Jethana Walkingcorpse brain herself against one of the gilded posts of her own bed, hard enough to awaken Steve.

Who stared in bleary astonishment as I rolled across the dazed woman’s throat, smearing her with Father’s blood-and then, rather awkwardly, pricked her with the shard, in the midst of the gore.

Whereupon Montuhotep’s “blood of many lives” started to mix with that human body’s own blood… poisoning the resident AnkhesenAkana.

Inside the now-writhing woman, it started to burn. She wailed helplessly.

“What-?” Steve contributed in astonishment. “What’d you do to her?”

By then, we were both looking at a blood-smeared but quite alive mindless living human woman. Who had seen better days and had a body no longer really suited to the negligée she was-mostly-wearing.

“Let’s go,” I snarled at my partner. “Get your clothes and everything, and let’s get out of here!”

Steve blinked at me, and I sighed, took on human form to start dressing him, and snapped, “Or can you think of some way to make the police believe all of this?”