The Catswold Portal

Chapter 33

At dusk Braden made himself a drink and stood studying the painting of the girl in the tea shop window. He had captured her look, captured the intriguing sense of otherness he had glimpsed in that brief moment. The work filled him with excitement—this was right, this was what he wanted to do. He hadn’t felt like this about a painting in a while. This was the beginning of a new series, one he had been waiting to do and not known it: a series of reflections all of this girl, her face caught in shattered light as if she had just stepped into this world from another dimension.

The reflections formed a montage: the shattered light striking across the tea shop window, shards of reflected color and light weaving around and through the girl’s figure. She was turned away; he had caught her profile against the red awning and the blue building. The work was alive—it had the old, sure resonance. He was caught up totally, wildly eager, seeing other paintings…

He’d have to find her. He wanted the series to be of her. The planes of her face belonged to reflections, were uniquely made for reflections—in mirrors, in windows. He could see her in the shattered light of a dozen settings, the long sweep of her mouth, the hint of a secret smile, the look he couldn’t define. He’d find her—he’d have to find her.

He had reached to turn off the bright studio lights, meaning to go into the village and look for her, when he realized the cat should have been winding around his feet demanding food. He remembered he hadn’t seen her all day.

He opened the door and stood calling her, embarrassed to be shouting“kitty, kitty” across the garden. When she didn’t come, he went up the hill carrying his drink, looking for her.

She didn’t appear. She should be starving—he didn’t think he’d fed her this morning, couldn’t remember letting her out, then remembered looking for her when he got up. He began to worry about her, and to wonder if she was hurt. He got a flashlight out of the station wagon and looked for her alongthe lane, thinking how fast people drove in that lane, remembering that Morian’s tiger cat had been run over there. Not finding her, he walked down the lane to the highway and up the highway, shining his light along the shoulder and into the bushes. He walked back on the other side, searching themarsh. The jagged grass caught his light, and once he saw the gleam of eyes, but it was a raccoon.

When he didn’t find the calico, fear for her shook him. That annoyed him; he had never in his life worried about an animal. Abruptly, he turned back to the studio. She was probably in the woods hunting.

He made another drink and stood looking at the painting, too excited about it to leave it alone. He began to worry that the girl might not live in the village, that she had been passing through, maybe was already gone. If she lived here, why hadn’t he seen her before? He grabbed a jacket and swung out the door to look for her, nearly stepping on the cat where she was pressed against the sill.

“Whoa. That’s no damned place to sit in the dark!” Then he saw how frightened she was, crouching and shivering. She stared up at him wild eyed and sped past him into the room, huddling beside the easel, looking back, her pink mouth open in a silent cry. He knelt, afraid she would scratch in her panic, and he took her up against his shoulder, stroking her tense little body.

He petted her for a long time. Slowly she eased against him, relaxing. What the hell had frightened her? He looked out through the windows at the dark garden, wondering if Tom Hollingsworth really had tried to kill the yellow cat. If Tom was so violent with his own cat, how might he react to the pretty little calico?

When the calico had stopped shivering and lay warm against him, he carried her into the kitchen, opened a can of tuna, and watched her tie into it. Whoever said cats ate delicately hadn’t seen this one; she acted as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks, gulping and smacking. When she finished the tuna he gave her some milk. He watched her clean the bowl, then picked her up again. She belched, then lay limp against his shoulder purring. She was soon half asleep, drifting in some inscrutable feline dream. He stood in the hall holding her and looking at the painting. He had to find this girl. If the cat hadn’t interrupted him he might already have found her somewhere in the village.

Two cats crouched in the garden watching the studio where the calico had disappeared. The black tom was filled with hate of her and wanted her gone from the garden. The white female felt no hatred as long as the calico stayed off her porch. She was a heavy, old cat, sway-backed from the weight of her pendulous, kitten-bearing belly. She sat with her belly protruding like a Buddha, bored by the black cat’s anger. She grew more interested when the yellow tom appeared from the shadows. The black cat, conditioned by other confrontations, lowered his head and crept away.

The golden tom stood on the path staring after the retreating black, then went boldly down the garden to the terrace that ran the length of the studio. He took shelter under the bushes at the end, sniffing the calico’s scent and watching the house for a glimpse of her. She interested him in a way he didn’t understand: not as a female ready to go into heat, not in any ordinary way, but in a manner that both baffled and intrigued him.

Braden fried three hamburgers for dinner, two for himself and one for the cat, his mind on the girl and how the hell he was going to find her. He ate standing in the hall studying the painting, imagining the new series, ignited in the way a good series always stirred him. As if the series already existed somewhere, as if he had not to invent it but only to discover the individual paintings. Twice he put his hamburger down, once to let the cat out, and then to phone Bob for lunch the next day. Bob might know the girl. And he thought, if they had lunch, he could run Anne’s problem by Bob and get that off his conscience.

He described the girl to Bob, but Bob didn’t know her. He waited, holding the phone while Bob asked Leslie if she knew her, but Leslie didn’t. Braden let the cat in, then made half a dozen more phone calls, but no one knew the girl. He went to bed late and tried to read, but couldn’t keep his mind on the book.

He slept restlessly. He dreamed that he lay close to someone, he could feel her rough-textured dress against his skin; once he thought he touched her hair, tangled across his cheek.

He woke to a room gray with rain. The cat was sleeping soundly. It was raining hard when he left the house to meet Bob, sloshing out to his car under a battered corduroy cap, having no idea where to find an umbrella. He had left the cat inside; she seemed to have no intention of going out in the wet. The rain was a torrent when he pulled into the parking lot at the Dock. He made a run for the door and found Bob already at a table, perfectly dry, his umbrella dripping where he had leaned it against the window. Through the glass, sky and bay were joined in one dark curtain, the rain so heavy they could see only the first two boats tied to the quay.

“Working?” Bob said, nodding across the room to the waiter.

“Matter of fact, yes—the girl I mentioned.” He explained about the sketch, and that he wanted to paint her again.

“She’s no one I remember. Leslie will keep an eye out—nearly everyone passes through the library sooner or later.” He looked at Braden intently. “This is important.”

“Yes, a series—something very different. Something I want very much to do. Something…I haven’t felt like this about the work in a long time.” He could see Bob’s look of relief in his returned enthusiasm and improved mental health, and was annoyed.

When they had ordered, he tried to describe Anne’s situation, but now Anne’s fear seemed silly. “You could drop by,” he said. “I think she’s gotten herself over the edge. She’s called me twice since the night she came down, and she’s talked to Morian, talked to Olive—she’s talked herself into believing that Tomisn’t Tom, that the boy isn’t her child.”

Bob shook his head.“If Anne doesn’t want to see me, Brade, I can’t intrude. Has Morian seen Tom? What does she think?”

“That’s strange, too. When I asked her about it, she clammed up. I don’t know what she thinks. She’s talked with Tom, she just doesn’t say anything.”

“That’s not like Morian, not to express an opinion.” Bob paused, then, “Anne may be upset about some other things right now. Maybe that, plus Tom’s illness, has gotten to her.”

Braden waited.

“Two of my clients do business with Anne’s company. A new brokerage firm is trying to elbow them out, giving them trouble, putting the screws to several small Bay area firms.”

“Anne’s not the kind to get upset over something like that.”

“They have already taken over two small real estate firms and fired the key personnel. This could mean her job. Haveyou seen Tom?”

“He’s pale, irritable, lost a lot of weight.”

The waiter came with their order. Braden on impulse asked for some fish or seafood scraps for the cat, receiving Bob’s amazed stare. When the bag was brought, he realized he’d have to pick through other people’s germs to remove shell and bone before the cat got it, and was sorry he’d asked.

Bob looked immensely amused.“When did you get a cat? I thought you hated cats.”

“I don’t hate cats. It’s Morian’s cat. I’m keeping it.”

“The black one? The tiger cat was killed, I remember.” Bob was big on cats—he and Leslie had several. “Where’s Morian, some kind of vacation? I thought…”

“She’s at home,” Braden said patiently. “I’m just keeping the cat for a while. It’s the stray, the one she—we—chased that night at Sam’s, the one the gardener had in a bag.”

Bob’s expression was one of delighted superiority. Why were cat people so superior? Braden dropped the bag beside his chair and managed to ignore it, but as they rose to leave, Bob picked it up, handing it to him. “Have you named it yet?”

“What?”

“Have you named your cat?”

“It’s Morian’s cat. It’s not my cat.”

Bob buttoned his raincoat and picked up his umbrella.“I guess I can drop around, talk to Anne, see Tom. But I can’t do anything, can’t offer help unless she asks me.” Then they were out the door, Braden running through the rain for his Chevy wagon, Bob sauntering beneath the black umbrella to his green MG. He waved as he spun out of the parking lot.

By the time Braden reached the house, the rain-damp paper bag was beginning to split. He wiped some juice off the seat, and carried the mess across the garden in both hands, cursing. He took it dripping through the studio to the kitchen and dropped it in the kitchen sink. The cat came yawning out of the bedroom sniffing the fish, winding around his ankles, her green eyes caressing him. He stood at the sink separating out bones and shells from potato skins—what the hell made the waiter think cats liked potato skins?

When he put the mess before her she set to with greed, holding a piece of lobster down with her paw and tearing at it. Finished, she gave him another loving look, followed him into the studio, and curled up by the easel so he had to step around her as he worked. When Chapman arrived around five, she jumped into Braden’s lap and went to sleep.

He sat petting the cat, prepared for Chapman’s long run-through of the mailing list, which was a lot of nonsense. But Rye always did this, as well as enumerate the kinds of liquor for the opening, champagne punch or whatever. He wanted to shout at Rye to do anything, just let him get back to work. But Christ, it made Rye happy. He had putThe Girl in the Window in the bedroom before Rye got there to avoid making the rest of the work look dull.

That night the cat slept curled against his shoulder with her head on the pillow. And even though she smelled faintly of fish, he didn’t push her away.

Melissa woke at dawn. Rain drenched the windows, cascading against the glass. She was unable to move her legs, her dress was tangled around her knees. She jerked awake, alarmed, and rolled away from Braden and swung off the bed.

This was too unnerving, to go to sleep as cat and wake as a girl lying next to him. Someday he was going to wake before she did. He was going to find her there. Her common sense told her to go away from here, to leave this garden and go away.

But she didn’t want to go away. She had been a child here. If she remained in this house, she was certain she could recapture her lost memories. And, more powerfully, she didn’t want to leave Braden.

But if she stayed here, she would have to learn how to change from girl to cat only at her own pleasure. And she would have to learn to retain her human thoughts when she was cat. It was terrifying to know that as cat she remembered nothing about Melissa, that she was totally ignorant and vulnerable.

Braden stirred, and she stiffened.

But he only turned over and slept again. She slipped out of the bedroom and into the studio.

Rain drummed on the skylight. The room was dim. The watery light made her think of shadowed caverns. And then another memory fell into place: she knew suddenly that the changing was done with a spell. There was a spell to make her change, a magic as natural to her as breathing.

She remembered Siddonie’s voice, remembered the sharp pain of that first changing, felt herself jerked to the floor, could almost make out the cadences of Siddonie’s shouted words. But then the spell faded. Absently she studied the painting before her, straining to bring back the spell. The girl in the painting was turned away, standing before a red awning.

Shock jolted her.

The painting was of her.

It was an image of her, standing before the red awning of the tea room, turned away looking up the street. Her dark hair, her green dress. She felt stricken with fear at seeing her own image. But yet she was deeply drawn to the painting. Soon fascination overcame fear. She stood looking, seeing herself in a way no mirror could show her.

The painting was beautiful, the colors warping together so rich they took her breath. She studied the line of her cheek against the red awning, her skin reflecting red. How could he have painted her from only one glimpse? She felt tremendously flattered and excited. She stood lost in his work until she heard the coffee pot start. Alarmed, she pushed quickly out onto the terrace.

Chapter 34

She fled through the rain to the tool shed, and in among the garden tools. Her dress was soaked. She stood in the little earthen room shivering, straining to remember the words for changing from cat to woman. Through the crack where the door was ajar, thin watery light seeped in. She thought about Mag’s cottage: the cozy little room, the cookstove, the rocker and cots. And Mag’s spell book lying on the shelf. Standing inside the tool cave, leaning against the ladder, she imagined taking the heavy book down, holding it in her lap, turning the pages, and imagined an empty page. She tried to let words come onto the page, tried to let her memory open. She could smell the onions hanging from Mag’s rafters. She could feel the warmth of the cookstove, could feel the weight of the heavy book, could feel the thick, rough paper beneath her fingers. Slowly, as she stared at the blank paper, the words began to emblazon themselves, rising from the whiteness as if a licking flame drew them forth.

It was there. The spell was there.

“To cat do I cleave, to Catswold cleave, called forth leaping, careening joyous from spell-fettered caverns, to cat do I return…”

She changed to cat suddenly, without pain. The simple charm seemed part of her nature.

And she remembered. She was the little calico yet she knew she was Melissa. She was so pleased she wanted to race the garden madly. But suddenly she froze, rigid. The scent of Vrech clung in the tool room. Only now as cat could she smell it.

It was not a fresh scent, but it was not very old either. She left the tool shed quickly, pushing through the door into the rain, shaking her paws in the rain.

She sat under a tree near the portal, letting memories of the Netherworld come. Only when her fur was soaked and she was shivering with cold did she leave the shelter of the tree, heading straight for the terrace. She sped across the wet bricks and clawed at the door, crying pitifully.

He came at once, wiping paint off his hands.“How the hell did you get out this morning? You were on the bed last night when I went to sleep.” He picked her up. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve done that. Christ, you’re soaked.” He stood rubbing her wet ears, frowning. She snuggled deeper into his arms, getting him wet, purring so loudly her whole body shook. He carried her into the bathroom and began to towel her dry. Then in the kitchen he opened a can of cat food, and dumped the chopped liver in a dish. She watched him, wanting to laugh. This was perfect, to be cat but to have her own wits about her, her own awareness.

She finished the canned liver quickly. It was really quite good. Braden had returned to the easel. She strolled past him, leaped to the model’s couch and gave her damp fur another cleaning, leaving dark stains on the velvet and silks. He was still working on the tea shop painting. She flipped onto her back, looking at the painting and the studio upside down. She felt so loose, so utterly comfortable both in spirit and in body. Upside down she watched Braden, then leaped to her feet and bolted the length of the studio and back, playing. She chased her tail in circles, sliding on the bare floor until, distracted, he left the easel. As he made himself a sandwich she sat down before the painting and studied the image of herself. Shewas still there when he came out of the kitchen. He stopped, watching her.

“What are you? Some kind of art critic?” He picked her up and stroked her absently. “I don’t know why it’s so important, cat, but I’m going to find this girl. I’m going to paint her again.” His look was so intense, so deep, she shivered.

He said,“It’s going to be the best work I’ve done. I’ve got two months to come up with, say, twenty new paintings.” His excitement was infectious. She rubbed her face against him. He said, “Reflections. All reflections. Why the hell did she go off like that in such a damned hurry? And why did she stare at me like that? As if—as if she knew me.” He frowned, puzzled. “Christ, cat. Think good thoughts for me. Think that I can find her.”

He put her on the couch and turned away to clean his brushes, then went to wash. She could hear him splashing, then the creak of the closet door. When he crossed the hall to the kitchen she padded in behind him and jumped on the table to watch him. He was making a list of groceries. She wished she could add chicken and lobster, and cross off the cat food.

Well, why not make a list? What was to stop her?

Maybe not this time, but soon, she would make a list and see that he bought nothing but caviar. She wanted to shout with laughter, wanted to hug him. Now she could be anything she chose, for Braden. Cat or girl. Or both.

As he left the studio she bolted through the door ahead of him, switching her tail. From the terrace she watched him head across the lane toward the village. She would give him time to search for the girl before she introduced him to his phantom model.

She lingered in the garden, hunting. Her sharp cat’s senses delighted her—her keener smell, hearing, and wider vision made every detail sharper. She could hear sounds she had never suspected as Melissa, could see the secrets within shadows that had been featureless darkness to Melissa.

She caught a bird, played with it, then killed and ate it. She caught a lizard, and turned it loose. And when she thought Braden had looked long enough for his model, she slipped into the tool room, changed to girl, and headed for the village.

She let Braden discover her outside the art store. He saw her through the glass and came out shouting, flustered as a boy. He grabbed her hand as if she would vanish. He told her he had done a painting of her and asked her name. Sarah, she said. Sarah Affandar. He asked her to pose. He offered her union wages; he wanted her to pose for several weeks. She listened gravely. She loved his eagerness and his fear that she would refuse. It was hard to keep from howling with laughter. He told her he had a show scheduled soon at Chapman’s. He said she could call Chapman’s to check on him, call the Art Institute in the city where he sometimes taught. “I’m not making a pass, you’re just—I simply want to paint you. I’d like the whole show of you—a series—your face caught in reflections, the planes of your face—you’ll see. Before you say no, will you come back to the studio and take a look? I’m not making a pass, I promise.”

“Your wife won’t mind?” she asked, delighted with the game.

“I live alone. My wife died several years ago. But she wouldn’t have minded; she brought models home, too.” He grinned, making a joke. “Her models were dogs and cats.”

She looked at him, questioning.

“She was a printmaker, etchings and drypoint, lithos. Alice Kitchen—the name she worked under, her maiden name.”

She stared at him, sick, faint. The street seemed insubstantial, as if she would fall.Alice…Alice is dead, Alice… She saw Alice suddenly. Alice’s face exploding back into consciousness so alive, her delicate features, her wry smile, her long, pale hair…She saw Alice walking up Russian Hill, her peasant skirt blowing…My wife died several years ago…Alice—Alice died…Alice…

She was so faint, so sick, shaking with the pain of Alice’s death.

She didn’t remember clearly walking back to the studio. She didn’t want to go in. She wanted to run away, curl up somewhere, and try to deal with Alice’s death. He watched her, puzzled.

She moved on in woodenly, through the door he held open, and stood uncertainly, looking around her.“You—you both painted here?”

He nodded, motioning to the left.“That part was Alice’s studio, where the paintings are stacked. Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“I—tea would be nice.” She wanted to sit down; she wanted to be alone; she wanted to cry and was too shocked to cry.

“Are you all right? You’re so pale.” He led her to the model’s couch and got her settled, then stood looking down at her, concerned.

“I’m fine. Just—just—some tea will make me feel better.”

When he had gone she touched the marks on the orange velvet where her wet cat feet had stained it. She ran her finger guiltily over the little holes she had made with her claws. One of her stiff white whiskers was caught in the velvet. She listened to Braden putting cups on a tray and tried to think about Alice, was afraid to think about her.

Her thin face, her warm, gentle eyes. Pale hair, long, pale hair. Long, full skirts. The smell of charcoal and fixative. Clear, beautiful skin.

And there had been another house. They had lived there, not here. She and Alice and Alice’s parents. A tall house with jutting windows. She and Alice could see the bay from their bedroom. Her father was a painter, that’s why the scent of paints and turpentine was so familiar.

Braden carried the tray out to the terrace and dried off the table and chairs with a towel. He had sliced some shortbread onto a blue ceramic plate.“Did you look at the painting?”

“I like it very much; it’s beautiful. Rich.” She saw that he was pleased. She said, “It’s—it makes me feel like I’m swimming in color and light, like I’m made of color and light.” But she could not, adequately, describe the way the painting made her feel.

He watched her, delighted with her. He thought maybe he had harbored a fear that she would turn out to be crude and unfeeling, because now he felt relieved. As the low sun threw amber light across her hair, he thought her brown hair wasn’t the right color for her skin and light brows. Her lashes were dark, though, and so thick he had thought she used a black liner. But when she looked down, he decided she didn’t use any makeup. He had a strange feeling of familiarity, watching her. As of someone he hadn’t seen since he was aboy: a face he had known well, but which now was so changed he could put no place or time with it. He said, “Could you start posing today?”

She had been toying with her shortbread. When she looked up, he found it hard to look away.“I—yes, I could start today.”

He left her to finish her tea while he got his sketching things together, stuffing charcoal, pastels, fixative and a sketch pad into a canvas bag.

In the village, they worked in front of the wine shop, the amber and red bottles reflected around her. He caught the quick reflection of a passing woman against her shoulder, and of a boy on a bike. Then in front of the little grocery she was mirrored against the yellows and reds and greens of the produce bins, distorted to jagged abstractions by the glass. He worked intently, feeling Melissa’s response to him in her glances, in her languorous poses. They seemed caught together in a separate place, set apart from the pedestrians and occasional gawkers. Drawing the light along her cheek was like caressing her; drawing the line of her throat made him warm with desire.

As the afternoon dimmed they worked in front of the library, her image captured among reflections of the dark forest. But this sketch disturbed him. She looked, among the heavy shadows, not caught in reflections but caught in an atmosphere that wanted to swallow her, that reached out to make her vanish.

And he wondered suddenly what Alice would think of this girl. Then guilt touched him, and pain came powerfully. He closed the drawing pad and cleaned up his pastels.

As they walked back into the village she made no move to leave him. She didn’t mention where she lived. At the corner by the Greyhound station, he asked her to have dinner with him. She said she would. They had walked for some minutes more beneath the street lights, heading back to the garden, when she asked him how his wife had died.

Chapter 35

The lights of the street lamps looked thin and insubstantial, as if they burned in another dimension. The evening air was chill. He told himself Melissa had asked the question casually, yet she seemed intense. She had turned pale when he had mentioned Alice. He watched her, frowning, not wanting to talk about Alice. He said shortly,“She was killed in a car accident. A truck went over the center line.”

“Where?” she said softly. “Where did it happen?” Her look was naked, hurt, and unguarded. The next instant her eyes were veiled.

“On the approach to Golden Gate Bridge. The truck hit her sideways, her car went over the cliff.” Her question had forced him to live it again: the phone call, then running to his car, barreling down Bayshore, running down the hill to her car, the fire truck hosing down the gas, men pulling at him to keep him from tearing at the rescue team.

He was sweating when they reached the garden. In the studio he left her looking at paintings while he made himself a drink and waited for the water to boil for her tea, stood in the kitchen trying to regain his composure. Why the hell had she asked about Alice? It wasn’t any of her business. He heard her go into the bathroom to wash, going directly there, not searching for it. Well, it was a small house.

When he took the tray in she was curled up on the model’s couch on the vermilion silk, her sandals off, looking comfortable and at home. She blushed under his intent stare, and looked down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was seeing a painting.”

She looked up again and smiled, her eyes as green as sunlit sea.“Your wife was very young when she died.”

“Twenty-nine.” He fiddled with his drink, shaking the ice. Why did she keep asking? And yet now for some reason he wanted to tell her. “If she’d come home at a different time, hadn’t been in that particular spot when the truck went over, hadn’t stopped to get wine and lobster, hadn’t stopped to take her cat drawings to the museum—a few seconds one way or the other, and the truck wouldn’t have been there. All so useless, so damned useless.” He got up and stood at the window with his back to her. “And so damned pointless to imagine what might have been if she’d just skipped one appointment.”

“What—what were the cat drawings?”

He turned to look at her.“She’d done some drawings of a door with cat faces carved on it. It’s up in the garden.” He gestured toward the terraces. “The door in the side of the hill—the gardener keeps tools there. Alice wanted to see if anyone at the Museum of History might be interested in researching the door.It looks medieval, but of course it’s probably a copy.” He crossed the room abruptly and went to freshen his drink.

She sat looking after him, ashamed that she had upset him. But the pain was hers, too. Her memory of Alice was like pressing at a new, raw wound. Alice’s deceptively delicate face, her cheek always smudged with charcoal, her funny twisted grin. The pain held Melissa in a grip like huge hands crushing out her breath.

She rose and went down the room. At the far end, above the stacked paintings, glassed-in bookcases faced the windows. Art books filled them now, but once there had been china animals. She and Alice used to play with them, making up stories. She reached beneath a glass door and slipped the hidden latch and felt the weight of the door as she drew it open. She imagined the set of white china horses they both had loved. But this was another unconnected memory; she couldn’t bring it all together. She turned suddenly, sensing that Braden watched her.

“How did you know to do that? Open the latch?”

“I suppose I’ve seen one like it,” she said quietly. “How long were you and Alice married?”

“Four years.”

“And you lived here in the studio, and worked here together. But before that, who lived in this house?”

“Alice’s aunt. We moved over from the city after she died; she left the house to Alice. We remodeled—tore out some walls to get the studio space.”

“Aunt Carrie,” she said softly, the pictures flooding back of a square, stocky Aunt Carrie, her short white hair always mussed, her thick ankles hidden in opaque stockings.

“When did she die, Braden?”

“A year before we were married,” he said quietly. “Of heart failure. She was diabetic.”

“Yes. Insulin shots.” Pale white skin, the needle.

He looked at her evenly.“You gave me the impression you were a stranger.”

“I suppose I did.” The memories were fitting together now, the memory of her childhood far sharper now than any fragmented memory of the Netherworld.

He was very still, hadn’t touched his drink. “Turn your head, Sarah.”

She held the profile until he said,“All right,” as he would if he were drawing her. He stood moments more looking at her, then turned away and knelt before an oversized chest with long, thin drawers. He pulled out the bottom drawer and began to shuffle through drawings. He removed one, studied it, and handed it to her.

She looked down into the face of a child, in profile against the door of the cats. The cats’ faces surrounded hers. Braden got his sketch pad and held, next to Alice’s drawing, his own drawing done an hour earlier as she had stood against the dark woods, her profile sharply defined in the library window.

They were the same. The child’s wide mouth was turned up at the corners. She had the same nose, the same dark lashes and light brows. Only the hair was different. The child’s hair was a patchwork of pale and dark streaks, several shades mixed together, tumbling down her shoulders.

He rose and went out to the veranda, and stood looking up the garden. She laid the drawings on the coffee table side by side, stared at them, then escaped to the bathroom.

She shut the door and stood looking into the mirror. She saw, superimposed over her present reflection, the face of the child who had, years ago, stood looking into this glass.

She and Alice used to come here to stay with Aunt Carrie for weekends. The door of the cats had been her special place. She remembered when Alice had drawn her there.“Just a few more minutes, Melissa—you can be still just a little while more…”

She remembered the last time she was alone by the door. Alice had gone into town to get something for Aunt Carrie. She had been playing and talking to the carved cats. She had been grabbed from behind and jerked into the tool room. The oak door slammed as she kicked and bit. Her screams were muffled by a hand over her mouth. A woman’s voice hissed words she didn’t know—rhythmic words.

The voice had been Siddonie’s.

The next memory that would come was of riding double behind Mag, looking down the rocky cliff, seeing a thatched stone cottage, not knowing where she was or how she had gotten there.

When she came out of the bathroom, he was standing before the coffee table looking at the drawings. He looked up at her.“Melissa.”

“Yes.”

“Alice thought you were dead.”

“My memory was dead. For years I didn’t know my true name—I thought it was Sarah. I didn’t remember anything. I came here to try to remember. I saw you in the studio working, and I remembered this house.”

“You met me on purpose today.”

“Yes.”

“And in front of the tea shop?”

“I had started to come in, then I saw you and I was afraid suddenly,” she lied. “I knew you lived here but I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t remember Alice then—only the house.”

She sat down on the edge of the couch.“Maybe I was afraid of finding out more.” It was hard to tell him half the truth. She found it hard to lie to him. “I didn’t even know what color my hair was. Someone kept it dyed. I…” She felt shaken because he was so angry—silent and pale and angry. “It—sounds silly but I—I would like to wash the dye out.” She looked at him openly. “It would—maybe I would feel more like Melissa. Maybebe more like Melissa.”

He nodded curtly.“The towels are in the bathroom cupboard, the shampoo on the shelf in the shower.”

She fled for the bathroom, chagrined and hurt. If she’d had anywhere else to run to, she would have gone. In the bathroom she dropped her dress and turned on the shower, trying with panic to remember the spell Mag had used with the dye.

And, in the shower, whispering the reverse of the spell, scrubbing her mass of hair, she watched brown dye flow away mixing with the running water.

She toweled and knelt before the little electric wall heater, drying her hair just as she and Alice used to kneel side by side, warned by Aunt Carrie over and over never to touch the heater while their hair was wet.

When her hair was dry, she rose and stood looking at herself in the mirror.

Her hair was all in streaks: shades of rust, and streaks so pale they were almost white, and streaks nearly black, all in a patchwork of colors. This, with her green eyes, gave her such a resemblance to the calico she was afraid to go back into the studio, for fear that secret would be destroyed.

But that was silly. No upperworlder would think of shape shifting. To be Catswold would be beyond an upperworlder’s ability to believe.

She dressed slowly, combed her hair with Braden’s comb, and went out.

He was opening a bottle of wine. When he looked up at her, his dark eyes widened. She swallowed.

He said nothing for a long time, then,“It’s beautiful. It suits you. It’s the way she drew you.” He paused, then, “She loved you, Melissa. She never stopped searching for you.”

She took the wine he offered. She wanted to weep for Alice, not only with her own pain but with the pain in Braden’s eyes.

She said,“When I was small, she would wake me in the mornings hugging me, her long, pale hair down around us like a tent, making me giggle.” She took his hand. “You loved her very much. I am just beginning to remember how much I loved her.”

They were quiet for a while, then she said,“There was another house, too. A tall house on a hill, with a view of the bay. I think that was where we lived.”

“The Russian Hill house.” He searched her face. “We can talk over dinner. I think we could both use something to eat. I’ll wash, just be a minute.”

Before he went to wash he put food on the veranda for the cat, and stood on the terrace calling her, looking up the garden as if he might see the white flash of her face threading along through the dark foliage. And Melissa sat alone in the studio trying to reconstruct the dark time before she knew Alice.

There had been a tangle of strangers, one after another. And Siddonie had come sometimes—a handsome, terrifying young woman with strange games she wanted Melissa to play. But then when she went to live with the Kitchens in the Russian Hill house, Siddonie had not come so often. There she was happy for the first time.

Braden returned wearing a sport coat and pale slacks. His glance slid across her long skirt, making her wish she had other clothes. She said,“I think your little cat was here. Is she orange and black and white? I tried to let her in but she ran. Cats don’t like me much. I guess I should have let her eat in peace. How beautiful she is, really lovely.” She hid her smile. “I expect she’ll come back when I’ve gone.”

Walking out to the car, she wanted to look at the door. But when they stood before it, a chill touched her. He would be thinking of the drawings and of Alice’s death. And again she was ashamed and sorry that she had stirred his pain.

Chapter 36

The cars racing by them, the speeding lights and the speed of their own car dizzied and terrified her. Again she felt the little cat’s panic as trucks roared past on the highway. She told herself that as a child she had ridden in cars. And she hid her fear from Braden. He was telling her about McCabe.

He had met McCabe only briefly, but he knew a lot about him from Alice and from McCabe’s newspaper column. Her father had written regularly for theChronicle.“An off-beat column,” Braden said, “about art, politics, whatever came to mind. McCabe had an original, sharp way of looking at things. He was a building contractor but he also moved within the art community. He was a good friend of the Kitchens’. Before he met your mother, long before you were born, he encouraged Alice’s interest in drawing animals. Later when Timorell moved in with him, Alice and she became friends. Timorell was about seventeen—she was eighteen when you were born. Alice was then about thirteen.

“McCabe knew that Timorell had a husband—she left him for McCabe, but he was in the city. He lived in a Russian Hill apartment with his small sister, a child about nine. Alice described her as totally evil; Alice was afraid of her.”

He stopped for a signal, then moved on through traffic. She watched him, liking his lean good looks, his smile. He answered her questions honestly, she thought. He said,“Timorell was soon pregnant, and terrified her husband would find out. But the husband didn’t contact her until after you were born.” He turned onto the road to Tiburon, the car’s lights slewing across the water.

“When you were three months old, Timorell’s husband came to the apartment with his small sister. Alice was there visiting, and McCabe was at work on a house up in north Marin.

“The husband was in a rage about the baby. Timorell tried to get him to leave. As they argued, the earthquake hit. It rocked the building. The wall cracked, warping in at them. Alice described it quite graphically. Timorell was holding you, trying to protect you when the front windows collapsed inward and a huge bookcase toppled; it hit Timorell hard, she twisted and fell, and Alice grabbed you.” Braden slowed for a cross street.

“Alice didn’t remember clearly what happened next. She woke in the rubble, sprawled under the dining table clutching you. You were screaming. There were rafters down all around the table. Timorell was dead. Alice screamed at her and shook her, trying to wake her. The husband was alive, trapped by fallen timbers, watching Alice woodenly. But his small sister was standing over Alice staring down at the baby; she said something in a strange language, some kind of rhyme, then Alice fainted.

“When she came to, you were gone. And the sister was gone. Alice had no doubt she had taken you, and she was terrified for you. She felt things about that little girl…” He shook his head. “Alice was terrified of her.

“She got out of the building, got down the broken stairs, and searched for you. The street was all rubble, cars every which way, groceries scattered where they had exploded from shop windows. And there was looting, confusion everywhere. She searched until dark then made her way home hysterical and exhausted.”

Melissa could see too clearly her mother lying dead. She could see young Siddonie snatching up the baby and running—stealing her, stealing the Catswold child. “And McCabe? What happened to my father?”

“He was working up here in Marin County, on a scaffolding four stories up. It fell with him. The police said that somehow he jumped free, but he was hit by falling bricks and killed.”

Braden turned into a parking lot, under a row of muted lights. There were potted plants at the door of the restaurant. It was a weathered wood building set on rough pilings, extending out between the docks, over the bay.

Inside there was a small shop and then the bar. Braden led her into the shop to wait for their table. She didn’t want to talk; she was filled with the past. But then in the shop, she saw on a top shelf a basket that intrigued her. When Braden lifted it down she knew she wanted it. She was fascinated by its smooth, octagonal sides and by its smell—it would be just right to nap in. She bought it, pullingthe roll of bills out of her pocket, making Braden stare. “It’s for your little cat.” She handed the basket to him. “For her to sleep in.”

He looked surprised, then faintly embarrassed.“She sleeps all over the silks I keep for models; she’s clawed the hell out of them.” He grinned. “Maybe, with a basket, she won’t get on them.”

When their table was called Braden watched the other women studying Melissa, her hair, her lithe beauty. It made no difference that she wore a long, rather strange dress, she would be smashing in anything. He was surprised she wasn’t used to such stares, that the glances made her uneasy. Only when they were seated did she forget the other women watching her, as she became fascinated with the fishing boats crowding the dock outside their window. Her green eyes took in every detail of rigging, her mouth curving up in the little smile he liked. He wanted to touch her throat, her cheek. He wanted to make love to her. He wanted to know her better, to know what she thought, to show her new things, to take her sailing in the bay, or maybe riding. He felt a pang of guilt at being unfaithful to Alice, then realized how stupidthat was.

When he asked her if she rode, she seemed surprised that he did. He told her he had learned to ride in England after the war.“Because of a girl whose name I’ve long since forgotten.”

“The war,” she said, watching him, seeming almost puzzled.

“I was in the Second Marines, in the Pacific. But after the armistice they sent me to England as an embassy guard. It was after I came home that I met Alice, when I was teaching.” He picked up his menu. “What would you like? The lobster’s usually good.”

“Oh, yes, the lobster.” She looked as if lobster was the most wonderful thing in the world. Everything seemed wonderful to her; she seemed to drink in every sight, every sound as if the whole world was spanking new, as if she had just been born.

But yet, watching her, he was sharply aware of another side. Despite her quiet enthusiasm, she gave him the impression she was holding something back, that there was far more to her life than she was letting him see.

“Wine?” he said. “The chablis?”

She nodded.

“Melissa, the Kitchens will be beside themselves when they learn you’re alive.” He watched her hands tighten on the menu. She had been reading the menu as eagerly as if it were deathless prose. “To the Kitchens, you were like their own child. Your disappearance caused a rift in that family that has never healed.

“They’ve gone to Europe for the summer. If I knew where, I’d call them. We could drive into the city tomorrow so you can see the house.”

“Oh, yes. I’d like that.”

When their dinner came she was starved, and the lobster smelled wonderful. She attacked it eagerly then realized he was staring. She felt her face redden. She slowed down, taking smaller bites. But it was the most wonderful food she had ever imagined—far richer than the rock lobsters which could sometimes be found in sea caves of the Netherworld.

He said,“The Kitchens have tenants in the house, but we can ask if they…”

She shook her head.“I don’t want to disturb anyone. I don’t—want to explain to strangers. It would be nice just to see it from the outside.”

He nodded.“We could go to the Cat Museum, too—it’s the best example I know of McCabe’s work. He completely changed the old buildings. Alice must have taken you there.”

She tried to remember and could not.

“We can get some nice poses in the museum gardens working against the windows—reflections of the oak trees and of the outdoor cat sculptures.” And now she remembered. Bronze cats, brick paths beneath twisted branches, white walls and long windows.

She had loved the Cat Museum; how could it have faded from her memory? When she was small its galleries and gardens had been a haven for the part of herself that even Alice didn’t see. She had always loved cats, had run to cats on the street to pet them, upsetting her foster parents and enraging some of the cats. And even though she and Alice had cats, some element had been missing, something she had come close to only in the Cat Museum.

He said,“The place has the feeling of a self-contained world. The reflections of the twisted trees and the sculpture are just what I want—you will fit perfectly. I think we can get some exciting work there.”

She smiled at him, liking his intensity, his deep involvement in the work. She did not see such passion of purpose in the Netherworld. Except of course in Siddonie’s dark passions.

“I’ll pick you up in the morning if you’ll tell me where, what part of the city.”

“I’m staying in the village with someone, quite near to you. I’ll walk over.” She watched him set a morsel of lobster aside for the calico. She must have looked amused, because he grinned shyly.

“I spoil her. I never thought I’d have a cat, let alone spoil it.”

“Doesn’t she deserve to be spoiled?” she said softly.

“She’s so beautiful, a really lovely cat.” She couldn’t resist, the deception was delicious. And she could see his pleasure when she admired his cat. Their eyes met and held, and she shivered. But she thought,I am Catswold. We are totally different. I should not let myself be so drawn to anupperworlder—I will be sorry. Already I can feel the pain this involvement would cause. I am Catswold, I am of the blood of Catswold queens, the blood of Bast. She watched idly as the dessert cart was wheeled toward them, and let herself be distracted. Such desserts in the Netherworld were servedonly to royalty. She selected the most beautiful one, but it was too sweet and disappointed her. Sipping her tea, she said,“Did Timorell or McCabe leave anything personal? Something of—sentimental value? Jewelry, perhaps?”An emerald pendant, perhaps?

He watched her, frowning.“John Kitchen salvaged some of McCabe’s paintings and prints. I think there was a safe deposit box. McCabe and Kitchen had the same attorney, one they both trusted. He might know. I’ll give him a call, if you like.”

She nodded. Things in this world were so complicated. She was yawning when they left the restaurant, was almost asleep when they turned into the lane. When he asked where she was staying, she said she would walk. He insisted he take her.

“But I really want to walk. The evening’s lovely.”

“Then I’ll walk with you. It’s late to be walking by yourself. I won’t pry or question your living arrangements.”

She looked at him, puzzled, then got out, handing him the basket.“I’ll be fine. You have canvases to stretch. It’s only a little way, and there are street lights.”

“You can’tknow you’ll be fine. The streets are empty, Melissa.”

She touched his arm.“Please. I’ll see you in the morning, early.”

He stared at her then turned and left her, striking fast across the garden to the terrace. She watched him retrieve his key and push inside, not looking back. And she turned on her heel and hurried away, sorry she had angered him.

Deep in the woods she changed to cat. As cat she wandered the garden, thinking and enjoying her sharpened perceptions, her improved eyesight, the stronger smells. But then as she passed the white house she detected a scent that made her leap to cover, her tail lashing: Wylles. From the open bedroom window came the faint scent of Prince Wylles.

She crouched in the bushes, remembering the palace room where he had lain in bed when she took in his breakfast tray, remembering the boy’s dark, cold eyes so like Siddonie’s. She left the bushes and approached the house, rigid with fright. Crouching, she watched the open window.

She judged her distance and leaped, gaining the sill. Pressed against the screen, she watched Prince Wylles asleep in Tom Hollingsworth’s bed. Seeing the prince here in this world gave her a strange, disoriented feeling, as if the two worlds were being forced unnaturally together.

And suddenly as she watched him, Wylles’ breathing changed.

He didn’t move, he still lay hunched around the pillow. But suddenly his eyes were open, staring straight at her. In the next instant he exploded to life, snatching a drinking glass from the table. He threw it as she leaped off the sill; crouched in the garden below she heard it smash against the wall. Then he was fumbling at the screen’s latch. She backed into the bushes as Wylles shouted, “Stay away from me! I don’t know what you are, but if you come near me I’ll kill you!”

She waited until he left the window, then fled, streaking down the garden.

But as she leaped for the safety of the studio terrace, she realized that Wylles had driven away the last blocks to her memory. Her picture of the Netherworld was whole now—her life there with Mag, all the little details sharply fitted together. She saw clearly her days in Affandar Palace under Siddonie’s domination. Frantically she clawed at the studio door, wanting Braden, wanting to be safe in the studio.

Yet when he came to let her in she sat down on the terrace switching her tail, suddenly feeling contrary and uncooperative. And highly amused. She might be, as girl, rather straightforward. But as cat she was a tease; and her own indomitable cat nature amused her.

He stood staring down at her, annoyed.“Come on in, for Christ sake! What the hell were you clawing the door for if you don’t want in!”

She switched her tail.

“Christ, you’re gone all day and half the night. You never come when I call you. But whenyou want in, you tear the hell out of the door. And then you just sit there.” He glowered at her, enraged. “When you’re gone the whole damned day, don’t you think I worry about you? Get the hell in here if you want in!”

She got up and swaggered in, highly entertained, and headed for the couch.

“What’s so funny? What’s so goddamn funny?”

She stared at him, shocked. She hadn’t thought he would see her amusement. She didn’t know that a laugh showed on her cat face. She turned away quickly, jumped on the couch, and curled down on the satin.

Braden watched her. The damn cat had been laughing at him. And this wasn’t the first time he’d had that feeling. And he wondered if he was getting a bit strange. Frowning, he took the piece of lobster to the kitchen and put it on a plate. “Your lobster’s served, my lady.”

She came running, and tied into the morsel as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

When she finished he got her some cat food, then realized he should have given her that first. Now she wouldn’t touch it. She sauntered back to the studio, jumped on the couch, and began to wash, seeming as content as if she’d just gorged herself on the whole lobster. It was then that he remembered the basket.

He put it down on the couch for her.

She looked up at him, pleased. She seemed to like its smell. She got in, tail waving, circled, and curled down with a sensuous wiggle. Tucking her chin under, she smiled upside down at him, her green eyes slitted, her white throat exposed, her white paws drooping languidly over her belly. Her eyes, he thought, were as green as the sea—green as Melissa’s eyes.

Chapter 37

Olive Cleaver didn’t sleep well. She thought in the night that she heard Tom shout,“Come near me—I’ll kill you!” She knew she had dreamed it, but she lay awake a long time thinking about Tom. She was puzzled by the change in the boy, distressed for him and for Anne.

She had gone over yesterday to ask Tom to help her with the research, thinking that might get him out of the house. But he had been so surly, so rude, that she had left after just a few minutes.

She had never seen Tom like that before. He said he had no use for books and why would he go anywhere with an old woman? She had left feeling very hurt. Now, lying awake, she tried to understand what she might have done to anger him and, worrying, she rose at last and went downstairs.

It was near dawn, beginning to grow light. She opened the curtains to let in the sunrise, then made herself a pot of cocoa. She sat before the window sipping it, wrapped in her heavy robe and wearing her thick slippers, looking out at the garden.

She saw Braden let out the little calico cat. She was pleased that he had kept her. The cat trotted happily up the garden past her house, heading for the woods.

She was pouring a second cup of cocoa when a young woman passed her porch at the same spot, coming down from the woods, and went directly to Braden’s. The same young woman she had seen around the garden the last few days. Maybe Braden had a new interest. Certainly she was a striking creature. Strange, Olive thought, she didn’t remember her hair being so arresting. Maybe she had just had it done—she must have spent a fortune on it. Maybeshe was an actress, made up for some part. Really, when you got used to her hair, it was stunning. Olive watched her knock, watched Braden let her in, then went to shower and dress, turning her thoughts to the research.

Chapter 38

“Get on the horse! Get on the horsenow!”

“I won’t! I’m afraid!” Tom backed away from the roan mare warily.

He wasn’t afraid. He liked horses. But he stared at the queen stubbornly, defying her, determined she would not make him do anything. He hadn’t asked to come here. He wanted to be home. The sooner she found she couldn’t make him obey, the sooner…

The sooner, what? Tom thought, reining in his anger.

Did he think she would take him back to the upperworld? Why should she? As he turned away from the horse the pain hit him: a fire shot through his body so hard he was jerked to his knees. He couldn’t move—the pain was so violent tears welled up involuntarily.

“Get on the horse.” Siddonie grabbed his arm, jerking him up. “Get on.”

“I won’t.”

The pain came, harder. He had never hated anyone, until this woman. He hated her. And was terrified of her.

“Get on now.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Her rage was so great he thought she would kill him. He felt himself go dizzy then retchingly sick. His stomach heaved, and the sharp pain struck through him as if it ground his bones—he had never been so hurting and sick. He held himself straight, staring at her, filled with angry defiance until blackness tilted over him; he reeled, and fainted.

It was hours later that Efil, having watched the performance, was able to slip into the boy’s room, breaking the locking spells on the chamber door. Siddonie had ridden off with Vrech toward the northern mines or maybe for a frolic in some deserted herder’s cabin; he didn’t care which. She didn’t know he was in the palace, she thought he had ridden to Cressteane. He had doubled back, watching her ludicrous attempt to make the boy ride, an attempt she repeated every day.

The room was dim, the draperies pulled shut. He closed the door quickly and bound it with his own spells, then cast a light across the sleeping boy’s face, not expecting him to stir. But when the light hit him, the boy woke.

Efil smiled.“You are strong, Tom Hollingsworth. Siddonie’s spells are not as effective as she thinks. She means for you to sleep until she wants you in the stable yard again.”

The boy watched him warily.

“Do you know where you are, Tom? Do you remember where you came from?”

The boy’s eyes drooped as he fought the sleepiness stirred by such questions.

“No matter. You will know in time. I am Efil, king of Affandar.”

“What is Affandar?” Tom sat up, punching a pillow behind him. “Where have you taken me? What is this all about? Who is this Queen Siddonie?” His brown eyes were very like Wylles’. Efil was fascinated by the resemblance.

“Where is this place? Why did she bring me here? What does she want with me?”

“Vrech brought you here.”

“The gardener, yes. He’s a bastard.” The boy swung off the bed; Efil caught him as he fell. With the spell Siddonie had put on him, he was surprised the boy could get up at all.

“The queen has plans for you, Tom. But perhaps we can change the outcome. If you will trust me.”

The boy was silent, looking him over. At last he said,“I don’t know whether I can trust you. But right now, I don’t have any other choice.” He leaned back against the pillows pulling for a full breath—that was the henbane. Efil made a quick healing spell, and the boy’s breathing came easier and his color quickened. His eyes widened at the change within himself; he watched Efil with new interest.

“The queen’s spells and the herbs make you ill. I have countered them, but that is not always possible. Nor will my spell last. I will lay what spells I can to help you, if you will do as I tell you.”

“Can you get me away from here? Can you get me home? Is my mother all right?”

“I’m sure no one has bothered her. I will try to get you home, but it will take time. You must first help me.”

Tom looked around the darkened room.“I don’t want to stay here.”

“You must, for the present. You must pretend obedience to the queen’s powers. You must ride, as she tells you. Once she has trained you in horsemanship and to behave like the real Wylles of Affandar, she will take you out among the villages. You must do as she tells you—it is the only way I can help you.”

“But what does she want? Why is she doing this?”

“She has brought you here to replace the sick prince. You look like him. Vrech searched a long time to find a boy who looks like him, then he—arranged for you to move to the house in the garden.”

The boy’s eyes widened. Efil put a hand on his arm. “There is no time for anger. You can only work at saving yourself. Siddonie will not harm you as long as you impersonate Wylles, as long as you are of value to her.”

“But if I could get away…”

“It would do you no good to escape, Tom. You cannot leave the Netherworld alone. No portal will open for you; they will open only for a Netherworlder.”

“But you can open this portal?”

“In time I can.”

“I don’t understand. And I don’t understand about the Netherworld. A netherworld would be an imaginary place.”

“This world lies below your world. You came here through the portal in the garden where you live—the door carved with cats.”

“The tool shed door? But there’s only a little room inside.”

“That room opens to a tunnel. The wall behind it can be opened by a spell, but only by one of us.”

The boy looked doubtful.

“Where do you think you are, then? What do you think has made you so ill and makes you sleep all the time?”

“Drugs, maybe.”

“Drugs, yes. But magic, too,” the king said. “I will try to get you home. But first you must follow the queen’s lead—let her think you are spell-cast and obedient.”

“And what doyou want in return?”

“I want to get you out of here. Your presence will destroy my own plans.” Efil smiled. “Don’t fear, I cannot kill you. It is against the Primal Law. I can only get you home again—at my own time, in my own way.”

He soon left the boy, satisfied with the conversation, certain that the boy would do as he ordered.

Already he had started rumors of the imminent birth of his child by another woman. Soon, he would let his subjects know the queen had brought a changeling into the Netherworld. Later, he would prove that was true. If that caused danger to the changeling boy, what difference?

He took the back stairs down to the stables, thinking about Melissa, hoping she was still alive. He would bring her down, surround her with divining ceremonies by the old soothsayer, let the peasants see her, create all the pomp he could to prove a child was on the way. A Catswold child, who could draw all the nations together—under his rule.

Chapter 39

The Harpy and Mag and the gathered rebels watched, in the Harpy’s little mirror, as Efil talked with Tom. When the king promised to free Tom, the Harpy clacked her beak. “Certainly he will.”

Halek laughed.“Might you show us the dispossessed Prince Wylles? Or does your mirror have the power to reach that far, Harpy?”

The Harpy jabbed her beak at Halek companionably, and brought a sharp reflection of Prince Wylles, alone in a bedroom of the Hollingsworth house.

Wylles had grown fatter, and he had some color now. His face was not pinched by sickness anymore, but only by his sour disposition. He was investigating the bedroom cupboards and closet, tossing the contents onto the floor. He seemed not to be stealing but simply destructive or inquisitive, perhaps fascinated with upperworld trinkets. As they watched he pulled out sweaters, a woman’s shoes, an electric iron, examined each then tossed it aside. He stopped sometimes and looked around him as if he wondered where he was. “Likely,” the Harpy said, “he has not fully regained his memory.

“But still,” she said, watching him more closely, “there is a wariness about him. There is, don’t you think, a look of fear in Wylles’ eyes?” She glanced up at Mag, but held the vision steady as a dark-skinned woman entered the house.

This woman was there often overseeing the boy. She and the skinny, older, pale woman were neighbors in the little communal setting of the garden. The Harpy said,“She knows there’s something strange about the boy. She half believes as his mother does that he is not Tom.” They watched Morian look about her with disgust at the dirty kitchen. The boy, in the bedroom, hadn’t bothered to answer her knock.

Morian considered the filthy kitchen table, where cracker crumbs had been smeared into chocolate syrup and peanut butter. Open jars of pickles, jam, and cocktail onions stood amid a clutter of dirty dishes. More dirty dishes were stacked in a tilting pile in the sink. She thought of cleaning up; it was only mid-morning, she had time before class. But she decided not to give the boy the satisfaction. She knew Anne hadn’t left the kitchen in this mess.

She had grown to hate this chore of checking on Tom. Up until his illness, he had always been responsible when left alone.

She called to him, then went to look for him. She found him in Anne’s bedroom.

He had everything out of the closet and the dresser drawers, dumped in a heap on the floor. Clothes were piled in corners and strewn tangled across the bed. The room looked like the Salvation Army sales room after a scatter bomb. She wanted to snatch the kid up and beat the tar out of him. She said,“I knocked. I guess you didn’t hear me.”

He glowered.“What do you want?”

She took a deep breath.“I promised Anne I’d look in. Anything you need?”

Silence. They stared at each other.

She moved nearer the boy.“I suggest you clean up this mess, and the mess in the kitchen, before Anne gets home.”

“Why should I?”

“Because if Anne finally loses patience with you—and that could be very soon—she will do something about you. Tell me, have you ever been inside a mental hospital? Have you ever seen patients tied to the bedposts, or huddled into straitjackets with their arms wrapped around them so they can’t even scratch their own noses? So they can’t eat by themselves, or go to the bathroom by themselves? Have you ever seen patients with electric caps on their heads, with wires stuck into their brains giving them electric shock treatments?”

She had to suppress a smile. Whatever her description lacked in accuracy was made up for by the expression on the boy’s face. And as she watched him, Morian was filled with the cold certainty she had had for days—that this boy wasn’t Tom.

“If Anne thinks you are mentally ill,Tom, as your behavior suggests, she will certainly put you in a mental hospital. And they not only give the patients shock treatments, they put them on drugs that make vegetables of them.

“The windows have bars on them,Tom, and the steel doors are locked at night. And sometimes the medical students from the university come to—ah, study them.”

Fear twisted deeper in the boy’s eyes, and his lips were a tight line. But then hatred blazed from his eyes, raw and cold, stirring a dark fear in her.

She had no theory about what this boy was doing here or how he got here, or where Tom was; the idea of the boys being switched was too bizarre. Half her mind could not accept such a notion. But the other half—the deep, instinctual half—knew that Tom was gone.

She went away quietly, leaving the boy tearing up Anne’s bedroom. Telling herself that her instinct was wrong, that no sensible person would believe Tom had been kidnapped and a stranger left in his place.

Going back across the garden she saw Braden and a girl getting into his station wagon. She lifted a hand to him, admiring the girl’s astonishing hair, wondering what kind of fortune she spent on that wonderful mane. Maybe she was an actress done up for a part. Braden looked pleased as hell with her. Morian smiled and put Tom out of her thoughts. She went on home feeling good.

That morning, Wylles changed his tactics. He began to cooperate. Perhaps his increased wariness was engendered by the cat he had seen watching him, or perhaps by Morian’s rage; likely even Wylles himself didn’t know what ruled him. He cleaned up Anne’s bedroom, then he cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes. Then he found an excuse to visit Olive Cleaver, turning himself into a boy just as bright and amiable as Tom had ever been.

Chapter 40

The tall Victorian house rose above the narrow street shadowed by the branches of twisted oaks laced across the slate roof. The jutting bay windows stood open, their white curtains blowing just as they had blown when Melissa was a child. The brick walk was mossy in patches just as it had been, and the garden flowers looked the same. She wondered if the clay marker still stood in the garden where, long before she was born, Alice had buried her little cat.

She realized Braden was watching her, and she took his hand. When first he had turned onto the narrow street she hadn’t looked at the house, had sat looking down the hill at the familiar rooftops, afraid to look up at the windows of their old room. And then when she did look, the house was so familiar and warm that she might just have stepped off the school bus. And suddenly without warning she was crying.

Braden drew her to him and held her. She cried against him, unable to stop, stricken with the loss of those years and the loss of Alice, her memories jolting back with terrible power.

He held her a long time and didn’t say anything. After a while she turned away and blew her nose, ashamed to have made a scene. She didn’t want to get out of the car, she didn’t want to look at the house anymore, it hurt too much. He touched her chin and turned her face back to him, wiped a tear away, and kissed her lightlyon the cheeks and eyes. When he started the car he drove slowly on up the hill, in the direction she and Alice used to walk—up the winding street toward the Cat Museum, letting her look at the familiar neighborhood. After several blocks, at the top of the hill, he parked beside a sprawling clusterof white walls and twisted oaks. Memories of the Cat Museum came back to her all at once, so powerfully she might have really returned to the days of childhood.

The museum’s grounds crowned the hill. The red tile roofs of its white stucco buildings were patterned by the trees’ lacy shadows. Some of the buildings were low, some were two-storied. McCabe had tied existing houses and out-buildings together with garden walls and roofed walkways. On beyond the museum cluster rose the Victorian roofs of the neighborhood. She got out slowly, looking.

The iron gates stood open, and she slipped through as eagerly as she had hurried through as a child. She almost thought if she turned, Alice would be behind her, as if the two times had warped together. A cool breeze touched her, and she breathed in the sun-warmed scent of lilac.

Within the gardens, the galleries opened one to another, their white walls set at angles. She wandered, looking in through wide french doors. Sun and shadow swept across the sculptures, each on its individual white stand: a rearing stone cat, a black marble cat tumbling to catch its tail, a bronze cat hunting, a tangle of jade cats playing. Beyond the sculptures, paintings hung against the white walls, well placed, and of every school. She had a sharp memory of Alice walking away through an arch carrying her drawing pad, her long, straight hair swinging bright in the museum lights.

Where a series of sculpture shelves climbed to a niche beside a skylight, a gray cat slept. Other cats wandered the galleries and gardens. She wondered if McCabe had come here as a cat, leaping the wall at night to enjoy the vistas he had created.

When they got to work, Braden posed her in a walled garden where a window reflected two fighting bronze cats. He worked quickly, with charcoal. Then she posed beside a marble cat mirrored in the dark waters of a fish pond. As he worked, cats sauntered past her, rubbing against the sun-warmed sculpture stands. A white cat raced by, wild with play, and fled over the wall. Two striped cats chased along the top of the wall. Set into the garden walls were clay plaques inscribed with quotations. She remembered sounding out the words when first learning to read. Now, during her rest she wandered, reading them. Above a recessed bench were the words from one of the pages Mag had hidden under the dresser:

I am beauty, I am all things sensuous. In Bubastis in the time of Egypt’s greatness within the temple of cats my saffron fur was brushed by slaves until it shone like Mandarin silk. Incense was burned to me and prayers raised, and temples built to please me. As I strolled beside lotus ponds the most beautiful virgins knelt before my silken paws, and served me delicacies in golden bowls, and lay silken cushions before me.

But this version was different, and not complete; the human part was left out. She thought about Bast’s Amulet and wondered if Timorell had had it when she came up through the tunnel into the streets of San Francisco. Surely, if Timorell had been wearing it the day of the earthquake, Siddonie would have taken it.

Or maybe Timorell and McCabe had secured it where Siddonie wouldn’t find it.

She wondered if the Amuletwas in McCabe’s safe deposit box. All the powers of Bast locked away, here in the upperworld.

Braden finished four sketches quickly and put his pastels away.“That’s enough—you’re pale. Do you feel all right?” He took her hand. “Let’s go get some lunch.”

She nodded, walking close to him. She was comfortable with him, as if they had always known one another.

Well, at least they had known each other longer than Braden suspected.

As they passed through the gates she was startled to see Braden’s neighbor of the flowered dresses stepping out of her car in a burst of red and orange poppies. On the other side, Wylles was getting out. Melissa drew back, but the boy had seen her.

When Braden introduced them, Wylles looked at her so blankly she couldn’t tell what he might remember. Yet even if his memory had mended, he might not remember her. He had seen her only once, that day in his chamber. And he had been drugged and ill, and her hair had been brown, not calico. But what was he doing here? Why would Wylles come to the Cat Museum?

Braden said,“Are you here doing research, Olive? Or just for an outing?”

“You poke fun at me, Braden.”

“I don’t make fun at all. I think you’ve done some fine work. What did you find out about the radiocarbon tests?”

Olive smiled, her wrinkles deepening.“Tenth century, just as I suspected. The door is genuine, Braden. It is an ancient Celtic piece and quite valuable.”

“Then you will remove it from the garden?”

“Not at all. No one has stolen it so far, and it’s in amazingly good condition.” The old woman shook her head. “No, I like it where it is. I don’t know who installed it in the garden, but for some reason I can’t explain, I feel it would not be right to move it.” She was watching Melissa, taking in her piebald hair and her long dress.

Braden said,“Melissa has been posing for me. We were working in the museum gardens.”

Melissa saw Wylles’ hand move faintly and his eyes narrow, but the next moment his face was dull, closed. She didn’t know whether he had masked his sudden perception, or whether the awareness was fleeting and he had sunk again into the lethargy of drugs and spells.

When they were in the car heading down the hill, Braden said,“You really don’t feel well. You’ve lost all color. Would you rather go straight home?”

“No, just some hot tea, and something to eat. I guess I was chilled. I’ll be fine. Just hungry.”

But she wasn’t fine. She had seen, in Wylles’ look, a quick hatred. Maybe because Braden was painting her, making images. Wylles’ rage upset her, as had Olive’s prying into the history of the portal. The old woman’s interest could stir Siddonie’s spite, or worse, could awaken some other power that would best be left alone.

She watched Braden maneuver between denser traffic, swerving around a cable car.“How would I look into McCabe’s safe deposit box? Where would I find it?”

He braked for a light, glancing over at her.“I can call McCabe’s attorney and find out.” He slowed, looking intently at her. “This is important, isn’t it? I’ll call from the restaurant.”

She ordered while he phoned. The attorney, Mathew Rhain, was out of town. He would not be back for a week. The safe deposit box was in his office. She said,“Is there no way we could see into the box before he gets back?”

“I asked. The secretary said no, Mathew is the executor. He’s sailing—a call would have to be ship-to-shore, and that won’t open the box. It would have to be a very unusual matter to bring him back before next week.”

He looked at her deeply.“I left my phone number. Rhain will call as soon as he gets back.” His dark eyes were so intent; she thought he saw her distress more clearly than she had meant and that alarmed her, though she was warmed and comforted by his caring.

He said,“Whatever it is, Melissa, I’ll help if I can.” Then their sandwiches came and he said nothing more; they ate companionably and he didn’t pry. Driving back over the bridge, he took her hand, drawing her close, but he didn’t question her. She said, “Your neighbor was doing research in theCat Museum?”

“I doubt it. Probably just an outing for Tom, to help him get his strength back. He was pretty sick recently. Though he does help her with the research sometimes. He’s very bright. But I don’t think her project has anything to do with cats; it’s about doors. She’s been fooling around withthis since before Alice died. They were both fascinated with the garden door.”

“The door of the cats.”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t find the door of the cats—unpleasant, the way you do?”

He looked at her sharply.“Did I say that?”

“No, you didn’t say it,” she said softly.

He remained silent.

She said,“What does Olive do with her research? What’s it for?”

“She’s published half a dozen pamphlets on local history and artifacts. Small presses, no money in it, but it gives her something to do—makes her feel good. She’s done some speaking to Bay area groups. Alice always encouraged her, but Olive can get carried away.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “She’s not a nut. The research she does is solid—she was a research librarian. I have a librarian friend who’s worked with her, who says Olive is very demanding of herself, very careful. She’s just—so intent about what she does. Well,” he laughed, “I shouldn’t criticize that.”

She grinned at him. No one could be more intent: his whole being, when he was working, seemed concentrated into one powerfully honed strength. As if Braden, in his own way, made strong magic.

They parted at the garden, Braden to rough in a painting, and Melissa heading for the village thinking, like all females since the time of the priestesses of Bast, about garments to adorn and entice.

Chapter 41

The beautifully dressed women on San Francisco’s streets had filled her with envy, made her want to get rid of the heavy, long dress, to make herself new and modern. But when she reached the shop, the thought of buying upperworld clothes began to intimidate her. She hoped a different woman would wait on her; she didn’t need any more shocked looks at her nakedness.

The same woman was there—thin faced, sour. Melissa moved through the racks away from her, choosing what she wanted quickly, a green-and-white leafy dress, and then orange silk pants and pink silk top as vivid as the silks on Braden’s couch. She made a concession to panties, picking out several silk concoctions that looked like they would feel nice, went into the dressing room alone, and bolted the door.

The green-and-white dress felt light on her naked body. Its colors were as rich as the leafy tangles in the garden. In the mirror, she forgot about images and tried to see herself through Braden’s eyes.

She bought the dress, the silk pants and top, and a pair of jeans and bright green sweat top. Wearing the jeans and sweatshirt, she let the saleswoman wrap her long dress with the new clothes. But when she reached across the counter to slip the roll of bills from her dress pocket, the woman gave her an amazed look.

“Do you want a purse for that, my dear? In the pocket of those jeans that roll will make a lump as big as your fist.” The thin woman smiled at her for the first time, as if she liked Melissa better when she saw her money. Melissa hid a laugh, bought the little purse the woman offered, and dropped the money in it. She had picked up her package and turned to leave when she froze, staring out through the glass.

She had seen Efil. Already he was past, heading down the street. His face had been half-hidden by the hood of an upperworld jacket, but she had seen his profile—his rounded jaw, his thin cheek and pale skin. He had walked like Efil, a quick, light movement, faintly round shouldered. Clutching her package she hurried to the glass door to look out. Why would he be here? What was he doing here?

But of course he could be in the village. He came quite casually to the upperworld just as Vrech did, just as Siddonie came.

“May I clip the tags for you?” the saleswoman said, moving close behind her.

She stood still, feeling the woman’s cold hand on her neck, wincing at the little snip of the scissors. Then she hurried out, scanning the street.

The street lights had come on, rushing the evening. The man had vanished; she had the uneasy feeling he was standing in some doorway watching for her. She thought of changing to cat and running into the woods where he wouldn’t see her, but she was afraid to become small. She kept to the main street, hurrying.

She reached the garden without seeing Efil, and stood within a leafy maze looking for him. Dusk filled the garden with indistinct shadows. Above her, the forest was already dark. Down the hill, the studio lights were on; she could see the easel and Braden’s legs below the painting, his occasional movement as he worked. She would be safe in the studio with Braden, protected and safe.

But she would not involve Braden in this.

Above on the hill, the three houses were dark. But there was a light on Olive’s porch, and her car was gone from the drive. She went up the path quickly and around to Olive’s back door where Olive kept the screen propped open for her cats. She had seen it from the woods, seen them going in and out—the white female dragging her tummy over the sill.

She hid her package on Olive’s back porch behind some boxes, and in the shadows she changed to cat. She crouched, leaped to the sill, and from that high vantage she looked up into the forest.

The shadows were no longer solid black; she could see bushes between the trees. Crouching against the dark screen, she studied the forest for a long time.

She did not see Efil. She turned away at last, pushed under the open screen, and dropped onto Olive’s kitchen counter.

The tile was cold under her paws. The tap was dripping, and she lapped water from it then jumped down to the linoleum and headed for the dining room. There she stood kneading her claws into the warm carpet, then reared up to see what was on the dining table. Yes, it was littered with books. She jumped on a chair then onto the table and prowled among the untidy stacks, but it was Olive’s open notebook that drew her.

It was harder to read as cat. Her eyes didn’t see the print so clearly, though everything else in the dim room was sharper. She dare not change to girl—if Olive came in suddenly she must find only a neighbor’s cat innocently exploring. With her claws she managed to turn the notebook pages, but she had to back away to read Olive’s writing.

The old woman had copied quotations, some from history books, some from collections of folklore and myth, all of them frightening. As the calico crouched reading the entries she felt her paws grow damp with sweat, felt her tail lashing as if it had a will of its own.

Some say that from within this hill they hear strange music. Closing the hill is a stone tall as a man, and it is carven with a cat. Myth says that if the right person knocks at this stone it will swing in, and he will enter into a world of ancient powers…

I asked them how they got under the hill, and they said that a door was hidden among the gorse. They said that door would open to an ancient world but they did not like to go there for the world was filled with cats who spoke like men.

These prehistoric burial mounds were built by an ancient Irish race, a folk whose power was broken when the ancestors of the modern Irish arrived in 3000 B.C. They fled underground and remained there among the were-beasts, and they are the Tuatha, the fairy folk.

There is a burial ground and a cave, both strong in magic, both belonging to the Cat-Kings. Both open into the antechambers of the underworld…

It was here in the British countries, where the Celtic witches dwelt, that the cats were taken down beneath the sod into the knowes and sithens and kept by the Tuatha, and they flourished.

Sudden footsteps made her start—someone was on the front porch. She leaped off the table and slid under the couch on her belly as the front door creaked open.

She heard Olive’s voice, then the velvet voice of the black lady. She could smell her scent, musky and pleasing. Olive was saying, “…much more cheerful, he ate a huge plate of spaghetti at the Iron Pot. He’s always loved spaghetti.”

Morian said,“He’s gaining weight, too. He seems—almost like the old Tom.” As the two women crossed the dining room toward the kitchen, Olive paused by the table and laid her purse down among the books. “I know Anne’s relieved. She’s had a hard time, with things at work so chaotic, and Tom sick, too. Put the kettle on, Mor, while I cut the rum cake.”

Melissa, from the dusty darkness under the couch, could see directly into the kitchen. She watched Morian move to the stove. The black woman was wearing a skimpy white sundress with plenty of honey-dark skin showing. Olive by contrast was so sallow she almost disappeared inside her red and orange flowers.

“The blue cups, or the white?” Morian said. “How’s the research going?”

“The blue cups. It’s going really well. I’m totally drawn in. Today we found reference to an Egyptian grave with a door inside that has a cat’s head carved on it.”

Melissa shivered. Braden had said the door in this garden was likely the only reference to cats Olive had come across.

Olive said,“That door led to a smaller tomb, and there were five mummified cats buried in it. I think that was the part Tom liked, the mummies. He copied the passage for me. I do think the research has helped him. He seems totally engrossed again, as he used to be.”

Melissa heard the tea kettle sing. Morian said,“He seems—Tom seems all right to you?”

“He seems better. I know this has been hard for Anne, with this Lillith business. Whatis all this about the Lillith Corporation?”

“Anne thinks Lillith is trying to buy out her company. You know her firm isn’t terribly big, but it’s an old firm and it’s always been solid. But since Lillith moved into the Bay area, through some kind of manipulation they’ve gained controlling interest of Meyer and Finley.”

Morian carried a tray into the dining room.“Anne’s boss quit last week, and that was a blow to her. And the sharpest financier they had was fired a month ago. Anne says the men who have taken their places are loud, hard to deal with, and really don’t know what they’re doing. Sloppy, she said. Or maybe worse. Files have disappeared, some records have been changed. Twice, Anne was blamed for important files being lost.”

Olive began clearing books off the table. She didn’t seem to notice that her notebook was open, though when Melissa came in it had been closed. “What a terrible thing to happen. Anne loves Meyer and Finley. That poor girl. I guess I was so interested in the research, and my sister Clara being sick—and my having to run down the Peninsula to be with her—I haven’t really talked with Anne much.”

“It’s all happened pretty quickly. Anne’s about ready to quit. She’s so upset she imagines theywant her to quit. She’s applied to three other firms, one in Portland. The whole thing started just shortly before Tom got sick.”

“But this Lillith firm—where has it come from?”

“Anne says they have holdings in several states, in diversified corporations and in land. The strange thing is, Anne says they put a large percent of their profits into charity.”

“Here, come sit down, Mor. Why would they be so heavy into charity? Are they religiously backed?”

“No, Anne looked into that. They have no connection with any church, or with any other charity. They’ve set up soup kitchens and free hotels down on Mission and in several other areas of the city and down the Peninsula: one at Half Moon Bay, one at Stockton, several up around Mendocino. They have a big ranch in Mendocino, supposedly a training center for staff. But they send indigents up there, too. Men who need work. The men get bed and board for a few hours’ work a day.”

“That’s very—altruistic.”

“It’s very strange,” Morian said flatly.

Olive rose, startling Melissa. But she only went to refill the teapot. The rum cake smelled delicious.

Morian said,“I guess Anne’s needed to talk to someone. I haven’t been much help, except to listen. Lillith holds controlling stock in some Washington state businesses—a Puget Sound salmon fishing and canning operation, and some farming land.”

Olive said,“Anne has checked them out pretty carefully.”

“It’s the charity thing that puzzles her. She’s convinced Lillith is bent on destruction of the smaller Bay area firms. But why the charities?”

Olive poured more tea and passed the lemon. Melissa stretched out flat under the couch, trying not to sneeze from the dusty cloth mesh that covered its underside. Not until Olive rose to open the front screen door did she grow tense. When the yellow cat strolled in, she backed deeper under.

But the big cat didn’t seem to see her; he headed straight for the table and stood sniffing as if drawn by the scent of rum cake. When he leaped onto a dining chair and stared across the table at Olive, the old woman laughed. “Pippin, the gourmet. He’s been here almost constantly since Tom—since Tom grew so strange toward him.” She put some rum cake on a plate and set it on the chair before the big golden cat. Melissa watched him tear into it, eating at Olive’s dining table as if he were master of the house.

And Braden thought she was spoiled!

She had decided Pippin didn’t know she was there when the golden cat, finished with the rum cake, jumped down and headed directly for her. She backed deeper under. He flopped down at the edge of the couch, staring in at her, his yellow eyes merry, his tail flipping. She looked back at him warily. And she realized for the first time that his eyes were not those of an ordinary cat. His gaze was far more aware and searching than a common cat, far more questioning.

Chapter 42

The golden tom stared under the couch at the calico, his eyes glowing with curiosity, his tail twitching in a semaphore of interest. She felt her own tail twitch in response. She was filled with a dangerous feeling of communion with this cat. She wanted to help him; she was certain he was more than an ordinary cat. And she dared not help him to shape shift. They gazed into each other’s eyes unmoving until long after Morian had left and Olive had put her supper in the oven and gone upstairs. Pippin’s expression was so filled with questions, she was certain he didn’t know what he was. He seemed filled with distrust of her yet drawn to her as if longing to know whatshe was.When she stirred herself at last and came out from under the couch, he backed away from her.

She approached him and sniffed at him, then padded on past him. As she approached the door, she glanced back at him. He hadn’t moved. He watched her with wide yellow eyes, but didn’t attempt to follow her. She pushed quickly out through the screen, leaped off the lighted porch and underneath it, into deep shadows.

Crouching under the porch she stared out at the garden searching warily for Efil. The moon had risen, casting pale light across the garden. Below, Braden’s studio lights beckoned. She could see him still at work, and she longed to be with him. She was filled with a desire so intense she was aware of his scent and could feel him stroking her.

Maybe it would be all right to go there. Efil wouldn’t dare force himself into an upperworlder’s house, nor would he dare challenge the tall, hard-muscled artist. She left the porch quickly and trotted down the path toward Braden’s lights.

Efil was standing among the trees halfway down the garden, looking up at her. The fur along her spine and tail stiffened, she backed into shadow. She had begun the changing spell when he started up toward her. She couldn’t see his face and didn’t want to; he was a stranger to her now—they might never have lain together. She didn’t know how she could have lain with him. The idea repelled her.

The change came quickly. She was girl now. He drew near and reached for her. She stepped aside.

“I came to take you home, Melissa. I came to take you back to the Netherworld, and to make you queen.”

“No, Efil.”

“But you must come back,” he said, surprised. “We must formalize the child. There are ceremonies to be performed, the announcement to be made.”

“I’m sorry, Efil.”

He didn’t seem to hear her. “Once the announcement is made I can begin the formal proceedings to dethrone Siddonie and crown you queen.”

She said nothing.

“Melissa? Do you remember the Netherworld? Do you remember that you will be queen, that you are pregnant with my child? Siddonie can’t have destroyed all your memory.”

She stirred herself.“I am not pregnant, Efil. There is no child.” She watched him narrowly. “I miscarried. The baby is dead.”

He looked puzzled, then his face twisted in anger. He grabbed her shoulders hard.“You’re lying. You’re lying to me.”

“It was very painful, there was a lot of blood. I still hurt, I still bleed some. I wept.” She shuddered, turned her face away. “The child miscarried.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders.“You’re lying—why would you lie?” His face had turned cruel. “You will have to come back to the Netherworld to prove that. The soothsayer will know.” He bruised her, twisting her around, forcing her to stumble down the terraces toward the portal.

She fought him, kicking, nearly falling as he jerked her on.“There is no baby, Efil.” She was terrified Braden would hear them from the studio, yet she longed to cry out to him. Efil jerked her arm behind her, shoving her on down the terraces. She quit fighting him and went limp so he had to drag her full weight. “I have nothing you want. I’m no useto you. Can’t you understand? The baby was born dead.”

“You’re lying.” Stubbornly he dragged her on. “I need you for the ceremonies whether or not the child is dead.”

She willed herself to hang heavy, remained a dead weight until at last he turned her loose, holding her wrist. She stood facing him, so angry she trembled.“There is no child. I can’t help you. Go find someone who can give you a child—someone who can carry a baby full term.”

“Even if you were telling the truth,” Efil said, “you are still my subject. You will do as I tell you.” He forced her down the last terrace and against the portal, reaching for the handle. “It doesn’t matter if you miscarried. The soothsayer will vouch there is a child—she will do whatever I tell her.”

She stood with her back pressed against the faces of the carved cats, blocking the door.“I will not come with you. I don’t want to be queen of Affandar. You must go back alone.”

His touch was suddenly as soft as butter, making her wince.“We can make another child, Melissa. We can still defeat Siddonie. Why would you throw away wealth and power?”

“You’re not listening, Efil. You’re not hearing anything. I don’t want to be queen of Affandar. Even if you dragged me back, forced me to bed—even if you could, I would make spells to lose the child. And,” she said, “if you tried to force me to lead the Catswold, I would turn them against you, as well as against Siddonie.”

“Listen, Melissa. I will tell you something you don’t know.” He watched her closely. She didn’t like him to look at her so intently. He said, “If you do not return to lead the Catswold, Siddonie will kill them.”

She looked back warily, trusting nothing he said.

“There is a false queen, Melissa. Siddonie is training a false queen to take your place—a Catswold woman from the alleys of the upperworld. Siddonie is teaching her all possible magic.

“If you do not come back,that young woman will lead the Catswold. And she will betray them. She will lead them into Siddonie’s trap. Without you to show them the truth, she will lead them to defeat, and then kill them.”

“I don’t believe you. No Catswold would betray Catswold.”

“This one will. She has no allegiance except to Siddonie.” He smiled coldly. “This is the role Siddonie meant for you: to betray and destroy your own people.” He looked deeply at her. “This is not just a war tactic, Melissa. This plan is Siddonie’s final revenge for the fall of Xendenton. Ever since she was a child she has prepared for this.”

He put his arm around her, drawing her close, his touch too soft. She shivered, drew away. He said,“Only you can stop her.”

She felt cold, sick. She could not believe him, yet she felt the truth in his words.

“And,” he said, “what about the old woman you lived with?”

“What about her?”

“Siddonie has imprisoned her in the palace dungeons.”

“You’re lying. That is a lie.”

His look said it was not.

“Where is Mag now?”

“I told you. In the cellars.”

But his eyes had changed. Now he was lying. She could sense his lie clearly, as if her inner vision, like her feline eyesight, had suddenly grown more intense.“Where is she, Efil?”

“They…someone freed her.”

“Who freed her?”

“I don’t know. She vanished from the cell.”

“And this story about a false queen…That, too, is a lie?”

“No, that is not a lie.”

She saw that it was not. Her increased perception was startling. She pressed her back against the protruding cats’ faces, wondering if they were responsible for her sudden insight. Efil was watching her differently, almost fearfully. She pushed him aside, and swung the door open.

“Go back, Efil. Go back to the Netherworld. I am not part of your war.”

He looked at her silently. He didn’t touch her again. She saw his sudden distaste for her, as if, because he could no longer deceive her, she was of no use to him.

When he finally moved past her into the tool room he went quickly, his face impassive, turned away. Stepping in behind him, she listened to his spell and watched the wall swing away with a small suck of air.

He went through. She heard the little huff of air as the wall swung closed again. She stared around the homely tool room then went out, drew the Catswold Portal closed, and turned away.

Chapter 43

It was dawn. The dark green of night had hardly faded when three battalions of mounted Affandar soldiers rode out through the palace gates led by Siddonie on the tall, black stallion she favored. She had dreamed all night of slaughtering the Lettlehem peasants. She had dreamed for three nights running of the image doll some Lettlehem child had made of her, which had been hung at night in her own palace courtyard, and she lusted for revenge. Three battalions of foot soldiers followed her horse soldiers—the foot soldiers wearing heavy, curved swords and leading supply ponies.

They reached the mountains above Lettlehem near midnight. They struck the five villages one after another, routing out screaming peasants, burning their cottages and crops, driving off the sheep and pigs or slaughtering them. She had gone to war under justifiable duress, and she liked killing under that shield. Her soldiers herded together the best of the village horses for their own use, and destroyed the rest. Once the fields were blackened, they destroyed all tools so the Lettlehem peasants couldn’t farm. Though Siddonie expected few of the peasants to survive their attack.

The slaughter lasted until dawn. The smell of blood and the cries of the maimed filled the burned out villages, and left Siddonie hungry for further war, lusting to attack every country in the Netherworld with full force. War was far more satisfying than winning a country by intrigue; war sharpened her senses and gave life meaning. Certainly Lettlehem had learned quickly this night, that no one made images of the queen of Affandar.

She watched the last of the peasants driven from hiding and herded across the hills and into the last village square. And there, in retribution for the incident of the image doll, she watched twenty-five Lettlehem children hanged from a gallows made of felled cedar trees.

The image doll had appeared in the courtyard of Affandar Palace three nights before, hanging from a pole driven into the earth. It was undeniably a Lettlehem doll, woven in the same style as the Lettlehem rooftops and baskets, made of the coarse flax grown only in Lettlehem. She did not know who had brought the image to Affandar, but she would find out. She did not admit to anyone the power the doll had had to weaken her magic. For a full day after the thing was torn down and burned, she had been unable even to cast a simple spell-light. She could not influence the minds of her staff; she could not manage her horse except with brute force; she could not bring down game. The atrocity had left her sick with certainty that the doll had indeed possessed a portion of her soul.

Chapter 44

Braden was drinking his third cup of coffee and going through some old sketches, waiting for Melissa, when he saw her coming across the garden. He set down his coffee cup, staring. No more long green dress hid her figure and shortened her stride. She looked smashing—long and sleek, with a lot more showing under the slim orange trousers and pink top of clinging silk. And the red silk scarf tied around her hair set off its multi-colored wildness. As she crossed the veranda and looked in at him, her green eyes nearly drowned him. When he remembered to breathe,he opened the door for her, moving the bowl of cat food out of her way. He had set it on the terrace after the cat marched out refusing to eat; he had thought that maybe later in the day she’d be hungry.

The cat had acted so strangely, glaring at him when he told her she was spoiled because she wouldn’t eat her breakfast. “A little lobster and a few cans of chicken,” he’d said, “and you’re too good to eat anything else.” And almost as if she understood, she had glowered up at him, then stuck her nose in the air and headed for the door, switching her tail impatiently until he let her out.

He watched Melissa now with more than an artist’s appreciation, watched her with increasing desire. “You look great—you have an artist’s eye for color. That orange and pink will be terrific. Have you had breakfast?”

“No, I…” She looked secretive, and blushed. “There was a problem about breakfast.”

“Oh?”

“Nothing really. I just—didn’t eat.” She had a contrite, embarrassed look, and looked faintly amused, too. She didn’t offer an explanation.

Maybe she was living with someone, maybe they’d had a fight and she had left without eating. But why the amusement? Or maybe lovemaking had gotten in the way of breakfast, he thought, annoyed. More than a little irritated, he picked up the canvas bag. “We’ll run over to Tiburon for breakfast, then work in that Victorian house I mentioned. Are you ready?” He went on out ahead of her with his sketching things.

She picked up the picnic basket he had left and followed him. She didn’t know what he was angry about. She didn’t speak again until they were in the car headed for Tiburon. She leaned back in the seat watching the gleam of the bay, searching for something to talk about. What had she done to make him mad? The silence built, making her feel trapped. What was the matter with him? Her feline reaction was to turn away from him. Her human reaction was to try to heal his anger. Was it her amusement about breakfast that had annoyed him? But he couldn’t know what had amused her, so why was he angry? She watched him shyly under lowered lashes, and when the silence grew too much she grasped at the first thing she could think of to talk about. “When you were a boy, when you went to live in Carmel, how old were you?”

He rolled down the window and slowed for a turning car.“Twelve,” he said shortly. “It was when my father died.”

“You and your mother must have had a hard time.” She tried to speak softly. When he glanced at her she said, “You were very lucky to have your Gram.”

She saw him slowly relax. She said,“I think she was a very special person.”

His expression softened reluctantly; he looked at her more directly.“We were lucky to have her, and to have the home she gave us. My mother wasn’t trained to any skill, but she liked working in the hotel. She was good at that—at managing the kitchen, and then at the bookkeeping. She learned that quickly. It was just the right thing for her, and Carmel is small. She liked being in a small place. She liked getting to know people.” He smiled for the first time. “We both liked staying put, not moving around anymore.”

He was quiet a few minutes, working through the heavy morning traffic. She stretched, letting her muscles ease. He said,“When my father was alive we moved from oil field to oil field, my mother made few lasting friends. He was a roustabout—Long Beach, Sunset Beach, Bakersfield. My strongest memory is a succession of little shacky houses with sandy front yards. Hot. There were always fleas in the sand. I would wait all afternoon after school for my father to come home and play ball with me—it was about all he liked to do.

“Our move to Carmel was the first time I was in the same school for more than six months. And Gram was my friend. She wore old faded jeans in a time when women didn’t dress like that. She had worked in a boardinghouse when she was quite young—she was a wonderful cook.

“I used to sit on the dining terrace drawing the guests and waitresses. Gram was the only one who saw any value in my drawings.”

“Your parents didn’t?”

“My dad didn’t think much of it. My mother thought I was clever and talented. She bragged and showed my pictures to the neighbors and to casual acquaintances, which enraged me. She meant well, but she didn’t understand. Gram understood.”

“Then she was special.”

“We spent a lot of time together. We used to walk along the sea early in the morning after she had made the pies. She had a cook to do the breakfasts, but she always got up at four to make the pies.

“She loved the early morning sea. She loved fog pressing against the breakers, loved the wind. On Sundays we would go down to Point Lobos and walk there, watching the waves crashing on the rocks. She thought it good that I wanted to be a painter; she never thought it was sissy.”

He slowed and turned the corner, and directly ahead of them was a theater marquee. She glanced at it and went cold. The legend on the marquee jolted her so hard she swallowed back a cry. Across the white face of the sign, in bold black letters, were three words that filled her with fear and confusion:

THE CAT PEOPLE SIMONE SIMON

How could there be a movie about cat people? She didn’t understand; she felt betrayed, exposed.

Braden was saying,“Pretty good old B movie. Ever see it?”

“I don’t—I don’t think so.”

“About a girl turning into a cat. A silly story, but it’s well cast. Simone Simon is good in it. She really looks like a cat—more like a pampered house cat, though, than a panther. The special effects are good—Jacques Tourneur directed it.”

“A—a silly story?”

“Girls turning into cats. I like science fiction, but people turning into animals…” He grinned and shrugged. “Too silly.” He turned into a parking area.

She said nothing. They got out and he held the restaurant door open for her. She felt cold. She shivered as she followed the waitress.

There were yellow flowers on the table. She touched them, sniffing their scent on her fingers. When the waitress had gone, she said,“What would you do if that story about cat people was real? If you were to see someone change into a cat?”

“Faint dead away,” he said, laughing. “Or run like hell.”

“I suppose it would be disgusting.”

“I suppose it would—the arms and legs changing, fur sprouting all over, the shape of the head…Make an interesting series of anatomical drawings.”

She toyed with her napkin, folding it into a small square, then smaller. She felt disappointed in him.

But what else would she have expected? She thought,I am a cat person. I am that disgusting creature. I am your cat—the little calico who sleeps on your pillow. She said,“Do you dismiss anything you don’t understand?”

“Of course not. Would you like the waffles? They’re really very good.”

“Waffles would be fine.”

When the waitress had gone he said,“Would you like to see the movie? It might be fun.”

She didn’t answer.

“Come on, Melissa—I’dlike to see the damned movie!”

“You said you weren’t much for that sort of thing, so why bother?”

“I only meant…I like Simone Simon. It would be fun with you, anything would.”

“But you…”

“I only meant that things like that, things that can’t really happen, people turning into cats—I just meant…Don’t stare at me like that. What the hell’s wrong? Oh, Christ. It seems silly tomake such a movie, not silly to see it. Does that make any sense to you?”

“I—yes, I suppose it does.” But it didn’t. She watched the waitress set down his coffee and her tea, and she pushed her cup away.

“Are you all right? Are you not feeling well? Do you want me to take you home?”

“I’m fine.” She looked at him steadily. “Your pictures aren’t real. And reflections aren’t real. They’re not the real world any more than cat people are.”

He started to speak, but she pressed on stubbornly.“For one thing, reflections make things go backward—your right hand is your left. They are illusions. So how can you say a movie about other illusions is silly?”

The waitress brought their waffles, letting her eyes slide down Melissa’s bright tunic and pants.

Braden passed her the butter.“That’s just the point. Light and reflectionsare real. The physics of light photons, electromagnetic radiation—all that is real.”

The waitress came back with their orange juice, and apologized for having forgotten it. Melissa tasted it with curiosity. Cressteane Palace had orange trees. Five gardeners were kept to do nothing but maintain the spells for growing the delicate fruit, which was served only to the royal family.

Braden spread butter on his waffle and passed her the bacon. He gave her a deep, needing look, as if he wanted very much for her to understand.“Physics, the action of light, is a real science. But a woman turning into a cat is—that is just impossible. Physically, medically, scientifically impossible.”

She ate in silence. There was no way to argue with him.

And why should she? What difference did it make? He was an upperworlder—they were different. Totally, irreconcilably different.

He signaled for more coffee, wondering why such a discussion should upset her. And why the hell he was so strung up.

But he knew why. He had thought she understood how he saw the world because she seemed to like his paintings. She had given him that impression, that she had a perception of color and light and meaning that was akin to his feelings. He had thought she understood what he was trying to do, what he wanted to say with his work.

Now he could see that she didn’t understand at all. So all right, his stupid ego was hurt.

Why the hell did he want her to understand? He wanted her to model, not for some goddamned philosophical discussion.

They worked all morning around an abandoned, crumbling Victorian house set alone in the center of a grassy field. They didn’t share half a dozen words. The empty rooms were filled with the sounds of the wind rattling the old doors and leaded windows. From beside a broken window she watched the wind running through the tall yellow grass that heaved like a sea. The chill, empty rooms made her feel forlorn and lost. Shewas very conscious of Braden’s detachment, of his silent, intent concentration. His work overrode his anger. She knew she had hurt him, and she didn’t like hurting him. She had said his paintings weren’t real. In effect she had said that what he felt, what he wanted to bring alive for others,was not real. She had implied that his work was of no worth.

She hadn’t meant that, and she hadn’t meant to hurt him. She said, as he stood looking at a finished drawing, “I didn’t mean that, about your work not being real.”

He frowned, picking up the drawing. It was of the leaded glass window reflecting shattered images of grass and sky and of herself.

She said,“I meant, not physically real. But—there is something else in your work.”

“You don’t need to—”

“There is,” she interrupted, “the spirit of what we see.” She looked at him deeply. “You bring alive the spirit of the physical world and make it real for others. That is your great strength, Braden West. In that way, what you do is very real.”

He looked embarrassed, and looked at her deeply for a moment then turned away. She wanted to take his hand, wanted to touch him; but she dropped her hand and moved into the pose he wanted, turning casually, relaxed, until he told her to hold. And as he worked she watched him beneath lowered lashes, feeling the tension growing between them, a tension charged now not with anger and misunderstanding but with something intimate, a need drawing them together though he didn’t touch her.

When they stopped to share the lunch he had packed, he wasn’t angry, his glances still caressed her as they had when he drew her. In the last drawing she was standing before a stained glass door, her face streaked with its red and green light. She said, teasing him, “If physics makes things real, then this is the way Iwas at this minute. I was red and green.”

He stared at her, scowling again, then started to laugh. He dropped the lid of the basket and reached for her, hugging her close, and when he kissed her it was a long, slow kiss. She leaned into him, kissing him back, forgetting what he thought about cat people.

Chapter 45

Melissa left Braden painting—already he had roughed in a canvas of the Victorian house. She went up the garden toward Olive Cleaver’s, retying the scarf around her hair, watching Olive, above her, sweeping her front porch. She had decided to take the direct approach. Olive seemed gregarious, outgoing about her research, and Braden said the old woman liked to talk about what she was doing. What harm would it do to ask Olive, directly, what she was finding?

Within minutes Olive had hurried her inside, put the kettle on, and laid out her notebooks and a heavy, leatherbound volume. She cut some angel food cake, and as they waited for the tea to brew Olive opened the thick book.“This is on loan from the Cat Museum; it’s quite valuable.” The old woman sat with her back to the window, her face in shadow, her frizzed hair looking wild against the light. Carefully her wrinkled hands turned the frail pages, then she passed the book to Melissa. The open page showed the picture of a door carved with a running cat.

This door of the galloping cat was discovered in a croft house in the south of England, in the village of Tiverton. It opens from the bottom of the cellar stair into the cellar itself, and had been boarded over, apparently for several centuries. The cottage, fallen past reclaim, had served as a feed storage shed. The myth of the galloping cat, which was believed locally, would allow no one to live in the house. Several families tried to move in but something, likely the stories told by superstitious villagers, seems to have frightened them off. In 1947 Dr. Alfred Stetsingwell obtained permission from heirs to unboard the cellar and examine the door. It far surpassed his expectations. Radiocarbon tests date the timbers at older than the six centuries, probably from the first century B.C. The carving is bold and primitive, and made with simple tools. All attempts to remove the door without damage for exhibit in the British Museum have failed. The frame wood splits, the hinges crack, and twice the door itself has cracked. And these efforts give rise to another chapter in the myth. Two of the workmen, remaining alone past quitting hours, swore that a figure came down the cellar steps and told them to board up the door again. The workers described the man as having the face and paws of a cat. They boarded up the door, but Dr. Stetsingwell later unboarded it. He was never able to remove it, short of cutting apart the wood, which he was not willing to do. The door remains in the cellar in Tiverton, where this photograph was made. The myths of the countryside center around it, and around the strange disappearance and reappearance of Tiverton’s townsfolk. Tiverton is also known in the area for its large, handsome cats, which are said to be uncannily clever at mousing. In this farming region, cats are valued for that purpose.

Olive said,“I’ve had a time searching out such examples. I’ve used every resource in the city, and of course inter-library loan.”

Melissa was shaken. She watched the old woman warily.“What the book says about the man being half-cat—that’s just made up, of course.”

Olive smiled.“Of course that part is folktale. Oh, there are wonderful tales. They’ve been all but lost.” Her faded brown eyes shone. “How lovely if they were true.”

She opened a leather case and began shuffling through papers.“I’ve found mention of several such doors carved with cats.” She looked up at Melissa. “Are you sure you’re interested in all this?”

“Oh, very interested.”

“Well, you’ve seen the door in the garden, of course.” She studied Melissa rather too intently. “There are curious stories surrounding each door—fears, superstitions. That’s the aspect that interests me most. Are you a cat person?”

Melissa sat very still, fear swamping her. She daren’t move, daren’t speak.

“Do you like cats, my dear? Are you a person who likes cats?”

She let the fear drain away; she felt weak; her heart was pounding too fast.“Oh, yes, I like cats. But cats don’t like me much. Tell me about the other doors.”

“In a tomb in Egypt, a door was found hidden behind the sarcophagus. The cat carved on it is standing upright like a person. In her left hand she holds the crescent moon, in her right she holds the sun. She is wearing a tear-shaped pendant.”

“A pendant?” Her heart thundered.

“An amulet. Surely it symbolized some power.”

Melissa waited, afraid to speak.

“There are tales of an amulet,” Olive said. “An emerald amulet with the powers of Bast.”

“Do you mean magical powers? What—what kind of powers would such a thing have?”

“I have found several mentions of the pendant in works on ancient Egypt, but they do not describe the powers.” Olive seemed to take the amulet very seriously. “The emerald is tear-shaped, and its setting is formed of two gold cats, their paws joined to protect it.”

“I suppose it is in a museum?”

“Oh, no. It has never been found. And there seem to be no other really good pictures. I suppose if it really does exist, it lies buried in some undiscovered tomb.”

Melissa studied Olive.“In the tomb where that pendant is shown in the carving—has anyone searched for it there?”

Olive smiled.“The archaeologist writes that behind that door is a solid clay wall. I have wondered, if one dug there…” She shook her head. “I’m sure others have thought of that. I’m sure the archaeologist himself must have dug into that wall, though his published work doesn’t mention it.” She poured more tea, filling their cups. “There is a door in a Celtic grave which shows an amulet around the neck of a cat, though not such a clear image. All that remains of that door is a fragment, a piece of dark oak bearing the marks of a hinge, and the forequarters of the cat.

“And there is said to be such a door in Italy, where a cat wears a jewel around its neck, but I have found no good reference. But that’s intriguing because—do you know about the cats of Italy, the Coliseum cats? Hundreds of cats living there in that magnificent ruin…”

There was no need to answer her, Melissa need only listen, Olive was completely engrossed.

“Hundreds of cats. And there’s a strange myth in Italy that intrigues me, though I don’t know how they could be connected. It is said that every now and then a stranger appears in Rome without money or identification—no passport, nothing. A stranger who is confused by the city and its traffic—innocent, like a child.

“He will be around the city for a few days then disappear. No one knows where such people go, or where they came from.” Olive picked up the book, wrapping it in brown paper. Melissa’s fists were clenched in her lap, her nails biting into her palms.

Chapter 46

Three hundred cats roamed within the fenced, wire-roofed compound in the center of the Lillith Ranch. Within the two-acre enclosure cats hunted through the high grass, played, slept, fought, and bred. Some had marked off territories and defended them. Beyond the cat compound and separated from it by low hills stood the barracks housing the human refugees from San Francisco’s streets. The buildings crested the far side of the hill, and included besides the barracks a mess hall, recreation buildings, a gym, stables, tack rooms, and weapons rooms. There was a riding ring large enough to accommodate sword training and mock battles. The human trainees were encouraged to handle the horses under supervision, but they were not encouraged to visit the cat compound.

Some of the cats were strays. Some had been stolen from the yards and gardens of San Francisco’s residential areas; some came from animal pounds. All were Catswold, carefully selected; one could tell by the eyes, by the unusually long ears, by something singularly unsettling in the expression. Vrech had not liked collecting them.

The toughest, most adaptable cats among the group did not bother to hunt, but sprawled arrogantly in the hot California sunshine, disdainful of hunting such easy game as the white mice freed daily into the enclosure for their pleasure. Instinctively they waited for normalcy to return to their lives, for times to fall again into the lean pattern of precarious survival they had learned in San Francisco’s alleys. Here, the effort to hunt was wasted; here food was brought twice daily.

Some of the cats, feeling too crowded, skulked along the fence or climbed irritably up and down the oak trees that had been pruned to stubs to allow for the wire mesh roof; they clawed at the mesh, staring through to freedom. The more dependent cats simply gorged on the white mice, which hardly knew how to escape a cat’s claws.

The area was relatively safe from idle discovery. It was protected by miles of fenced grassland owned by the Lillith Ranch, and the fences were spell-cast to discourage intruders. Small boys with twenty-two’s would turn away from it white with fear, not knowing what they were afraid of. And of course the gates were spell-locked.

Within the compound Vrech and Havermeyer had for some days watched the cats and studied them, but it was Vrech who would do the training. Havermeyer had proven totally inept, and the night before last he had returned to the city offices of Lillith Corporation. Vrech knew he had been sent up to the ranch simply to oversee him. He preferred working alone, now that he had selected the female to be trained as the false Catswold queen.

She was darkly mottled, her coat a brindled, muddy mix of black and rust unrelieved by white. She was so mean she ran off males and females alike, and had lacerated the hands of two keepers who tried to pet her.

He caught her with raw meat, wearing heavy gloves. He put her into a cage, and carried her into a locked room with barred windows. When he said the spell, when she found herself turned into a woman, she leaped at Vrech, clawing at him. He grabbed her and turned her toward the full-length mirror he had provided. She stopped clawing him, and stood looking. A curiously childlike wonder transformed her face.

She was naked, of course, and she stared at her bare skin, at her breasts and her long legs and long slim arms, clasping and unclasping her hands as if her fingers had retractable claws.

Then she looked at her hands, examined them, and began to use them. She turned the doorknob, but couldn’t open the door. She flipped the window latches and reached through to try to remove the bars. She pinched Vrech and stroked him, then tried to undo the buttons of his shirt.

She was thin, hard, angular, and well muscled. She had amber eyes, street-wise under her dark lashes, and dark, arching brows. Her black hair was red-streaked and lank, hanging to her shoulders. She watched Vrech with a shrewdness that kept him alert.

“Helsa,” Vrech said. “Your name is Helsa, after a lesser entity of the Hell Pit.”

“Helsa,” she said, touching her breasts and cupping them.

Vrech smiled.

Here in this room she was prisoner. She would remain so until she was sufficiently trained and trustworthy. He would be selective about the spells he taught her. She might be appealing and lusty, but he had no illusion that he could trust her. When he took her into the riding ring he would keep her spell-cast.

He clothed her in jeans and plain shirts. He spent three days teaching her horsemanship, then began to train her to the sword. He did not trust her sufficiently yet to take her to bed. In between riding lessons he taught her about the Catswold nation. When she understood its stubborn, defiant history and understood what Siddonie wanted of her, she saw at once the possibilities. Soon she lusted to lead the Catswold people, to hold absolute rule over them. She respected power and wanted power. She quickly understood that she would sell the Catswold nation for her own complete and absolute power. She understood that soon the queen herself would come to be with her and train her in further skills.

She could soon wield a spell to make the other cats storm the fence, make them leap and tear at the wire roof or fight one another. She could make the compound cats stop eating for days, or force them to gorge themselves. It was some weeks after Vrech began training her that Siddonie arrived at the ranch.

She was in the blue Rolls; Havermeyer had driven her up from the city. She had come up to San Francisco to sign business papers and check on him; he was good with the details but she didn’t like to give him total freedom. The corporate takeover was so complicated that Havermeyer could too easily cross her.

She had used the tunnel that opened out of Xendenton. She kept a car in the parking garage into which the tunnel opened, deducting the monthly parking fee from her taxes. It was ludicrous to her that she must pay upperworld income taxes. She had brought only a dozen staff with her—they had gone directly to the hotel where she kept a suite.

She exited from the pale blue interior of the Rolls dressed in a black riding suit with diamond cuff links closing the sleeves of her white silk shirt, diamond earrings, and diamonds at her throat. Her black hair was piled into a complicated arrangement caught with diamond pins. Sleek and impeccably groomed, she ordered Vrech to bring Helsa to her in the compound office.

The office featured an orange-and-cream Khirman rug, and cream leather chairs against a wall covered entirely by a spell-cast antique mirror that did not reflect. Siddonie stood before the patterned gold mirror watching the Catswold girl enter, watching her eyes. Seeing Helsa’s immediate envy.

Within an hour Siddonie, with skillful spells and with promises, had made Helsa her slave. The girl not only envied Siddonie’s beauty and was determined to copy it, she lusted after the power Siddonie offered her. When she rode out with Siddonie in late afternoon, Helsa was totally committed to her.

Siddonie watched Helsa send her loose horse away and bring him back, watched her change shape in the saddle from woman to cat, balancing lightly; and when after an hour’s ride they returned, she watched Helsa ride into the cat compound and lift her hand, drawing hundreds of cats running to her. She watched her make them swarm up the stunted trees, make them fight, stop fighting, watched her make them change to human then return at her command to cat. Siddonie meant, as soon as the girl was sufficiently trained, to bring all the upperworld Catswold and human troops down through the mining tunnel that led into Zzadarray, directly into the Catswold nation.

There the false queen would gather the Zzadarray Catswold, join them with her own armies, and move west until she joined Siddonie at the front lines. The Catswold would help defeat the rebels, and when the war was won Siddonie’s loyal soldiers would slaughter the Catswold soldiers, both those from the upperworld and those from Zzadarray.

And, when she had no more use for Helsa, she would kill the false Catswold queen herself.

Already in the south she had brought Shenndeth and Pearilleth into line without bloodshed, peacefully confiscating most of the horses and all the food stores. And in the first skirmishes in the outlying lands, rebel soldiers had been driven mad with spells and had turned on their brothers and killed them. In Cressteane, spells of sickness had cut down dozens of rebels with illness of the bowels and stomach. And when the rebels’ own healing spells failed, many among them had taken wine and, starving, quickly become too drunk to resist capture.

When Helsa turned and smiled at her, Siddonie smiled back with a cold, predatory satisfaction. This girl would pay, as would all the Catswold, for the fall of Xendenton.

Chapter 47

It was the evening the calico scratched Morian that Melissa saw the spirit of the cat hidden within Braden’s paintings.

Morian had come down for a drink. Melissa watched her from the couch. The dark woman was beautiful in creamy satin and gold jewelry. Coming in, she kissed Braden on the cheek and Melissa felt a growl deep in her throat and felt her claws stiffen. And when Braden had gone to the kitchen and Morian came to the couch and reached to stroke her, she growled again.

Morian looked surprised and moved away.“All right, my dear. I know when I’m not wanted.” She grinned. “Maybe a little jealous? You needn’t be, you know.”

Melissa turned her face away, but in a moment she looked back to watch Morian where she stood at the easel looking at the wet painting.

“You have a class?” Braden said from the kitchen.

“Mmm. I hate night classes—there’s always some hobby painter who shouldn’t be there and can’t keep his mind on his drawing. I like this, Brade.”

“New model. Starting a new series.”

Morian looked at the three new paintings he had hung on the wall, then at the new sketches on the work table, handling them with care. When Braden returned with the drinks, she hugged him casually.“Nice. Very nice. This is going to be an exciting series. These—are these the Craydor house?”

He nodded.“We spent a morning there.”

“Marvelous. Reflections…all reflections. Just right for you, Brade. And your model is perfect for it.”

Melissa got into her basket and curled down, pretending to sleep, listening to the dry sounds of paper as Morian looked again through the sketches.

Morian said,“It’s going to be the best series you’ve done. Even better than the Coloma series, and I didn’t think any work could be better than that. Rye will go out of his mind. Has he seen them?”

“He’s dropping by this evening on his way out to dinner.”

Morian nodded and sat down on the couch near Melissa’s basket, looking at the calico questioningly to see if she would growl again. “Nice basket—she just fits.” She looked up at him, laughing. “For someone who didn’t want a cat, you’re doing right well by her.” She reached to let the calico sniff her fingers, trying to make friends. But jealousy won, rage impelled the calico. She came up out of her basket striking fast, slashing across Morian’s hand. Morian jerked away, her eyes wide. Blood beaded across her skin. Braden shouted and reached to grab the calico, but Morian caught his arm.

“Don’t, Brade. Let her be. This is her house—she just doesn’t want me so familiar.” She moved away from the basket, pressing her fingers against the oozing blood, holding her hand away from her silk dress. “It’s only a scratch.” She stared into Melissa’s eyes, not angry but curious, searching. Melissa hissed and spat.

Braden handed Morian a clean paint rag to stop the blood.“I’ll get some iodine.”

The medicine he brought smelled so strong it made Melissa’s nose wrinkle. His look at her was cold, enraged.

Morian said,“She’s only protecting her rights. She—Brade, look at her eyes.”

“What about them?” He was furious. His voice made Melissa cringe. Why had she done that? Why had she embarrassed herself in front of him like that?

Morian said,“You’ve given the girl in the painting the cat’s eyes. How droll—the same green eyes, black fringed. Lovely.”

Braden looked puzzled.“No, they’re Melissa’s eyes. Melissa’s eyes are green, she has dark lashes.” He looked into the calico’s eyes, frowning, staring so hard Melissa shivered. He said, softly, “They are alike.” He was silent a moment, then he rose and took the empty glasses into the kitchen. Behind him Morian said softly, “It’s about time.” She reached a tentative hand to the calico to see what she would do. “You needn’t be jealous of me, my dear. It’s that gorgeous model you need to worry about.”

Melissa relaxed, and pressed her head against Morian’s fingers. Morian grinned at her. “That’s better.” She rubbed Melissa’s ears, knowing just the right places. Braden returned and stood watching them. “That was a quick turnaround. Private conversation?”

“Just girl talk,” Morian said as she glanced up through the windows. “Get a glass for Rye; here he comes. I’m on my way.”

On the terrace Rye Chapman hugged Morian, then she headed for her car. He came into the studio and stood silently looking at the paintings. He spent a long time looking. He didn’t say anything. He backed off, studying each painting, so obviously pleased that Melissa kneaded her claws with pleasure and purred extravagantly. It was much later, after Rye had gone, that she saw the shadow images.

Braden had started a new painting from the drawing with the stained glass window. Already the intricate pattern of reflections was rich and exciting, shifting across her figure, absorbing her, making her a part of the tangled colors.

As she sat in the hall behind him pretending to wash her paws, admiring the painting, she let a mewing sigh of pleasure escape her. Braden turned to look, and she froze. Then she rubbed innocently against his ankle.

He began painting again.

It was the next minute, watching the painting, that she grew disturbed. She padded farther down the hall to see it from a greater distance.

She moved again, looking.

She saw the phantom shape clearly: the faint shadow of a cat woven through her figure, a form so subtle she had to stand in just the right place to see it. Hardly more than a smoky stain, it was nearly as large as her figure: a cat lying up across her body within the folds of the orange and pink silk, its cheek forming her cheek, its muzzle barely discernible within her own face, its paws meshing into the folds of her shirt. A phantom cat, faint as a breath.

She sat behind him feeling sick. Why had he done this? Had he known about her all along? When they argued over the movie about cat people, was he making fun of her? Why else would he do this but to goad and tease her? She moved across the room to study the other paintings, and found a cat’s shadow in each, woven through her figure.

Why would Braden do this?

Or did he not know he had done it?

Did he not know those faint, elusive spirits were there? Could it be that only his inner self knew? That something deep within him knew more than his conscious mind did? Upset and afraid, she felt her stomach churn. She was so upset that within a moment she had thrown up her supper in a little pile on the hardwood floor behind Braden.

He turned and stared at her, annoyed to be interrupted. Muttering, he got a rag and wiped up the mess.

But then after he had cleaned the spot on the floor he picked her up and held her, stroking her.“What’s wrong with you? Why did you get sick? Is it the cat food?” He felt her nose; his hand smelled of paint. “How do I tell if you have a fever?Are you sick? Or did you eat a mole in the garden?” he asked hopefully. “Olive says moles make cats sick.”

She snuggled down in his arms, basking in his gentle caring. How could she be angry that he had painted the shadow images, when he was so kind and loving? She couldn’t believe he had done it deliberately. Maybe he didn’t know the images were there. Maybe they came from some hidden inner perception.

Had Braden, in making images of her, touched some power centered around her? Centered around the Catswold?

The next morning she was certain that some power of the Catswold had been touched, for she had dreamed of Timorell. She saw her mother, tall and golden haired, wandering the darkened galleries of the Cat Museum. And Timorell wore the Amulet of Bast. In the dream Melissa looked into the emerald’s green depths and saw the war in the Netherworld, and she heard someone call her name. She woke riveted with the thought that she must find the Amulet, that the outcome of the Netherworld wars could be changed if she could find the Amulet of Bast.

Chapter 48

Efil watched the compound from a nearby hill where he sat beneath a twisted oak behind an outcropping of granite, drinking a Budweiser.

He had not gone down the Catswold Portal when he left Melissa. He had waited until he felt certain she was gone, then come out again. He had gone into the city, then two days later had taken a Greyhound north. In San Andreas, he bought a used Cadillac and drove out to the compound. There he left the car on a side road and climbed under the fence, ignoring the fear that the spell-cast fence engendered. He had crossed the grassy fields staying near boulders and within the shadows of the oaks. He wanted to see what progress Vrech was making with the false queen, but he did not want to be gone too long from Affandar and the changeling boy.

He had been able to teach the boy a few tactics to protect him against Siddonie. The boy had no magic, of course, but there were ways of the mind that would help him, and Tom had a surprising ability to resist her. He had performed cleverly, letting Siddonie think she controlled him.

Efil had no intention of freeing the boy. He meant, at the right moment, to bring Wylles down to the Netherworld, to show the two together to Siddonie’s armies and to the peasants, to prove there was a changeling.

Efil drained the Budweiser can, then popped open another beer and settled back. He watched the compound most of the day, watched the upperworld horse soldiers at drill and sword practice, and watched the false Catswold queen fighting beside them in mock battle. The Affandar officers had done well with San Francisco’s drunks. They had dried them out, and taught them to ride and to use a sword with modest skill. He watched Helsa with far more interest, soon with lust. She would be randy all right. And if he offered her more power than Siddonie promised, he had no doubt she would throw in with him. Once he convinced her that Siddonie planned to destroy her along with the rest of the Catswold, she would be his.

In mid-afternoon an unsuspecting rattlesnake slid near Efil. He killed it with a spell, then unwrapped the cheese sandwich he had bought in San Andreas, and opened another beer. He watched Helsa gather a dozen of the brawniest cats in the enclosure and change them to human, watched her lead them to the riding ring and drill them on horseback and then, finished, turn them back into cats. He assumed that she had not taught them the spell for changing. When he had seen all he needed, he walked back over the hills to the dirt lane, got in the Cadillac, drove into San Andreas and from there to San Francisco. He meant to be back in Affandar by the next night.

Chapter 49

The Greyhound bus smelled of cigarettes and stale food. A large woman took up most of the seat, pressing Melissa against the window. The bus was filled with morning commuters, with men in suits and ties, and women in tweed suits flaunting bare, silky legs and high heels.

She had been half afraid to take the bus by herself, but she had awoken excited by her dream. Curled up purring close to Braden, her mind had been filled with Timorell and the Amulet.

As the bus moved through Sausalito, she watched the fishing boats rocking on the choppy water of the huge bay. Then soon, approaching the Golden Gate Bridge, she thought about Alice dying there and was blinded by sudden, sharp pain.

Once the bus had crossed the bridge she was afraid of missing her stop, worried about getting lost. But the driver let her off all right; nothing was so hard if she just asked questions. She left the morning commuters behind and swung up Telegraph in the sharp, bright wind. Above her the sky tilted in explosions of light; gulls screamed, banking over her, their wheeling flight exciting her. She turned up a familiar street that climbed Russian Hill but, passing the Kitchen house, she was filled with loss. The feeling nearly undid her; she was all opposites this morning, swinging from joy to pain.

When she reached the museum it was not yet open; the iron gates were locked. In the shadow of the wall she changed to cat and leaped up and over.

She wandered the gardens pawing into niches and behind sculpture stands. Her paws were more sensitive than hands, picking up every subtlety of the different surfaces and textures. She examined bronze and marble cats for possible openings, and explored along the tops of the garden walls, then climbed a vine to the roof and searched among vents and into an old chimney. When the museum doors opened at ten she slipped inside, into the open ladies room.

In a booth she changed to girl, and came out again to mingle with a busload of arriving tourists. Searching the galleries, looking into windowsills and shelves, she tried to think how Timorell would have marked the hiding place of the Amulet, with what sign to be recognized only by another Catswold.

She searched all morning and half the afternoon but found nothing. She left the museum late in the afternoon, tired and very hungry. Discouraged, she didn’t catch the bus back across the bridge but took the Powell Mason cable car. Asking directions from the gray-haired driver, she got off at Union Square. She had a sandwich in a little cafe, then went shopping like any upperworld woman. She was back in the garden just after dark, feeling smug withher purchases, hiding her packages under Olive Cleaver’s back porch.

Reflections of tall grasses tangled through Melissa’s hair, shattered into angles by the rebounding light. Braden worked quickly, blocking in the canvas, excited by the emerging shadows, only absently aware that the cat was winding around his bare ankles.

She hadn’t come in until after dark, then had prowled the studio restlessly. Several times he had noticed her looking up at the walls, and for a long time she sat behind him as if watching him work. She was doing that again now. She had left his ankles and sat down behind him again, looking. Soon her scrutiny began to annoy him. He laid down his brush and turned to face her. “What the hell are you looking at? Why would a cat stare at a painting?”

She looked so startled he laughed—the little cat looked truly shocked. And when he laughed, her eyes widened. She ducked her head and began to wash herself.

Grinning, he picked her up and scratched behind her ears.“You’re a strange one. Pretty strange.” But it was later when he stopped to fry a hamburger that he began to worry about her.

She came running into the kitchen at the smell of cooking meat. She hadn’t touched her cat food. He realized she hadn’t eaten since she threw up the night before.

Maybe this brand of cat food didn’t agree with her. He cut up his hamburger to cool for her, and cooked himself another one. When hers was cool and he put it down, she wolfed it, ravenous.

But then in a little while she threw it up again. This was the second throw up, and she looked so miserable that he phoned Morian.

“Just on my way out, Brade. Let me run down.” In a minute she swished in, dressed to the teeth: sleek, honey-colored cocktail dress and strings of topaz and East Indian brass.

“Bring your date in, Mor.”

“He’s impatient—let him pace. He thinks it’s stupid to be concerned about a cat.” She knelt beside the couch stroking the calico, gently feeling down her sides, opening her mouth. She smelled the cat’s breath with a familiarity that made Braden grin. She felt the calico’s stomach, pressing carefully. Outside the glass her tall, dark-skinned date paced, glancing at his watch.

“Are you late for something?”

Morian shook her head.“He thinks we are.” She stroked the little cat. “I can’t see anything wrong. They’ll throw up sometimes when they’re pregnant.”

“When they’re what?”

“Pregnant, Brade. You know, it’s when they—”

“Oh, Christ!”

“It happens, Brade

“What the hell am I going to do with a batch of kittens?”

“If she doesn’t feel better by tomorrow, you’d better take her to the vet.” She stood up and chucked him under the chin. “They’ll be sweet, Brade. Sweet kittens.”

He walked out with her and met her date, who stopped pacing long enough to shake hands. This was the boyfriend who worked for theChronicle, in financial news or something; a promotion from the sports page, Morian had said. When they had gone Braden turned off the overhead studio lights and stood in the dark feeling suddenly, unreasonably encumbered. He didn’t ask for a cat. He didn’t ask for kittens. He didn’t want to admit the concern he felt for the little calico. What the hell was he going to do with kittens?

Give a couple to Morian, he supposed, a couple to Olive. Give one to Melissa—maybe it could learn to like her.

She slept close to him that night, curled beside the pillow, her head tucked against his cheek. He kept his arm around her protectively, and she remained cat with difficulty. Lying wakeful, she wanted to change to woman, wanted to snuggle next to him as a woman.

In the morning she was still cat, sleeping beside him. She was proud of her control. He let her out and, on the veranda, arranged the table and chairs, preparing to paint Melissa there. She watched him from up the garden where she had climbed into a low acacia tree. When he seemed to be growing impatient she headed for Olive’s back porch, and beneath it she changed to girl. With some difficulty she put on one of the new outfits from City of Paris, wishing she had a proper place to bathe and make herself look nice. She went down the garden dressed in the new gathered turquoise skirt and green blouse, and she felt a sharp excitement in the way he looked at her.

He posed her sitting at the veranda table, and drew her against the leafy reflections in the studio windows. She liked his absorbed excitement as he worked. In one sense he was very much with her, seemed so close to her it was as if he touched her. But in another sense he was totally removed. Strangely, the two feelings were compatible. She sat at the table thinking about her search in the Cat Museum and wondering if the Amulet could be in McCabe’s safe deposit box. At mid-morning when he stopped to make tea for her, she asked if Alice might have had any keepsakes of Timorell’s.

He seemed puzzled by her stubborn interest in possessions, and that embarrassed her. She rose, pretending to look for the cat, and went to stand at the edge of the veranda.

He said,“When we remodeled, Alice took some cartons and boxes up to Olive’s to store in her attic. I think we got them all, but you could look.”

She did look, late that afternoon. While Braden worked she went up the garden to Olive’s.

The yellow cat watched her from the railing, then followed her into the house. She and Olive searched the attic but found nothing. Olive insisted on making tea, and when they sat down, Pippin jumped onto his chair and sat intently watching her. His golden eyes searched hers deeply, and when she let him sniff her fingers, he put his paw on her hand with innocent, almost pleading confidence.

“He likes you,” Olive said. “He’s nearly human, that cat. Much more intelligent than my own cats. He has been here constantly since Tom—since Tom turned so strange toward him. I feel sometimes as if Pippin could almost speak to me.” She passed Melissa the thinly sliced pound cake.

“Some cats seem so perceptive. As if they have a second side to them, secret and hidden from us.”

Melissa sat sipping her tea, not daring to look at Olive.

Olive said,“Sometimes I wonder if that secret side could be—liberated.” She reached to the sideboard for her leatherbound notebook.

Alarm spilled through Melissa. She rose hastily, tipping her chair and catching it before it fell.“I—Braden is waiting. I’m afraid I’ve kept him too long.”

Olive paid no attention.“I copied this from Chaptainne’s journal. He lived in the twelfth century, when people believed in magic. Or perhaps,” the old woman said, as if Melissa had not risen to leave at all, “magic really existed then.” And as Melissa backed toward the door, Olive began to read the slow, measured cadences of a spell.

Chapter 50

“Call them forth leaping,” Olive read,“bring them careening…”

Melissa dared not run away and leave Pippin here alone to be changed. Sick and shivering, she felt her body want to change, and she blocked the spell. For while Olive could not make a spell,she was present, and the words echoed in her mind to bring the changing forces pummeling down.

“…careening joyous from spell-fettered caverns…”

The powers pulled at her. She stopped them, but when she looked at Pippin his tail was lashing, his eyes blazing. The expression on his face was so intense she reached out to him, stroking him, hoping to calm him, and for one instant she saw an aura around him, saw the faint, shadowed form of a man.

The sudden ringing of the doorbell made the yellow cat leap from the chair and streak for the back of the house.

Olive stared after him and rose to open the door, her expression unreadable.“He’s heard that bell a million times. What gets into him?” she said innocently. “That will be my grandniece—I’m kitten-sitting for her.”

A little blond girl came in carrying a tiny reddish kitten, and clutching a paper bag and a small quilt under her elbow as if her mother had tucked them there. From the window, Melissa could see a woman waiting in a green car parked in Olive’s driveway. Olive took the bag and quilt, but the child didn’t want to give over the kitten. The pale-haired little girl held the yawning cat baby against her cheek.

Olive knelt, hugging the child and stroking the kitten.“I’ll take good care of her, Terry. A week isn’t so very long, you’ll see.”

The child finally managed to hand the kitten over, reaching on tiptoe to kiss its nose as the little thing snuggled deep into Olive’s hands. Melissa watched, very still. The kitten was so tiny. She wanted to hold it. She wanted to feel its soft fur, its delicate body. She wanted to lick it; she felt her tongue come out and had to bite it back. She could hardly keep from reaching out to gather the baby to her; she could smellits scent, infinitely personal and exciting. When she looked up, Olive was watching her.

As soon as the child had left, Olive brought the kitten to Melissa and settled it in her lap. Melissa cuddled it, hardly aware of Olive. It was so very small, so vulnerable. She lifted it to her cheek, felt its warmth against her, its baby-scent powerful. She stifled the urge to press her mouth into it, to lick it, to wash that lovely fur, to wash its little face and clean those tiny delicate ears.

She spent a long time stroking the kitten, playing with it, and holding it while it slept. Across the table, Olive seemed busy with her notebooks. The kitten purred so passionately that Melissa longed to feel a responding purr in her own throat. She longed to change to cat and snuggle it properly, let it chase her tail in the age-old hunting games. Meanwhile, Pippin stalked the room, watching her. She was sure his thoughts, as her own, still echoed with Olive’s half-spoken spell. And then quite suddenly Olive looked up from her books and began to read the changing spell loudly and deliberately, shocking Melissa so she hardly breathed. In panic she said a silent counter-spell and felt the change in herself subside. But Pippin had leaped up, his yelloweyes agleam.

Olive’s eyes were hard on Melissa.“You who seek the form abandoned, you who seek the house deserted…”

The change came quickly to Pippin. He yowled, was pulled straight, rearing and twisting, crying out, reaching with claws that became fingers as he was jerked tall.

The big golden cat was gone. A man stood before them, golden haired and naked.

He was a fine, muscular man, pale of skin, with short golden hair and the cat’s golden eyes. He looked at his arms, at his naked body and long straight legs. He held one leg out and then the other, hopping like a marionette wild with pleasure; he seemed to have forgotten the two women.

But he stopped suddenly, regarding them with an expression of victory.“I am a—man!” The joy in his voice made Melissa laugh out loud.

“Why do you laugh at me?”

“A laugh of happiness. Like a purr.” She could feel Olive’s excitement. She thought, giddily,Now the cat’s out of the bag, and felt herself falling into insane laughter. Olive left the room, returning with a blanket which she handed to Pippin.

“I am not—cold.”

“To cover you,” Olive said.

Obediently Pippin draped the blanket around his shoulders, covering nothing of importance.“What were those words? A—a spell. I want to know the spell.”

Olive said it slowly. Pippin repeated it. In an instant he was cat again, his tail lashing.

But the next minute he returned to man, smiling wickedly.

Olive sat down at the table, regarding Melissa with composure.“I have read about this possibility. I have thought about it for a very long time.” Pippin began to roam, looking at everything in the room, touching, sniffing. When Olive began to read the spell again, Melissa said hastily, “There is terrible danger in attempting things you don’t understand.”

“I did not attempt it, my dear. I did it. But why didn’t you change? You are the same—your hair, your eyes. The way you hunger over the kitten.” The kitten, innocent of the fuss, slept in Melissa’s circling arm.

Melissa said,“Even with your research, it seems strange that you would believe.”

“I believed because, when I was a young woman, I saw such a thing happen—or rather, I saw the results.

“I worked in the city, at the main library. I worked late two nights a week, and going home one night I saw a man step into an alley, and a cat come out.

“I thought little of that until it happened again. This time, the same cat went in and the same man came out.

“I grew curious, and began to wait near the alley on my late nights. I thought at first it was a man walking with his cat, though I never saw them together.

“I saw this happen three times more—the same man, the same cat, one emerging, the other disappearing into the alley.

“I began to investigate books on the occult, but they were so warped in their view that they told me nothing. I turned to folklore and then to archaeology. That was when I began to read about the doors with cats’ faces.”

She looked at Melissa coolly.“You are a part of whatever is happening in this garden. The gardener, Vrech, is a part of it. And Tom—I don’t know what to think about Tom. I’m not sure that boyis Tom Hollingsworth. Something has changed him greatly, something has come into this garden, something secret and pervasive and not—not of the normal world.”

Olive poured cold tea from the pot and sipped it. They heard Pippin rummaging in the refrigerator, and he soon returned eating a fried chicken leg. He had forgotten his blanket.

He said, munching,“When I was cat, I didn’t know…” He tried to bring up words from a language he had heard all his life but never used. “I didn’t know…”

He gave up at last, finished the chicken leg, and laid the bone on the table. He said, slowly,“Now I am a man.” He gave Melissa a deep golden stare. “Now I want to know where Tom is. I want to know what the gardener has done with Tom. I saw him take Tom away. He put the other boy in Tom’s bed. That boy is not Tom. Where is Tom?”

Melissa sighed. Neither lies nor evasiveness would do.“Tom is in another place.”

“Beyond the door?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised. “Beyond the portal. How…?”

“I saw the gardener come from there, smelling of deep, damp caverns. I saw him take Tom there. Tell me—all of it, please. If I am to help Tom I must know all of it.”

Olive watched them intent and eager, absorbing every word, filled with a deep, excited wonder.

“There is a land,” Melissa began, unable to do less than explain. “A land of caverns, deep down…”

“Beyond the door,” Olive whispered.

“Beyond the door,” Melissa said.

It took her a long time to explain sufficiently about the Netherworld, about the weakness of the Netherworld newborn and about the political importance of a changeling. Olive knew about changelings.

“Children stolen from our world, taken into the underworld through the cleft in a hill or through caves, another child put in their place.”

Pippin said,“Will they hurt Tom?”

“I don’t think so,” Melissa said. “He’s valuable to the queen. She will have put spells on him to make him forget his name, forget who he is, forget his life in the upperworld. She will do all she can to make him believe he is the prince of Affandar.” She touched Pippin’s hand. “Tom—a healthy child—is her assurance of her title to the throne. I don’t think she’ll hurt him.”

“What will she do if he remembers who he is? If the spells do not—hold?”

“Likely they will hold. She has great power.”

“Spells cannot be—broken? Go wrong?”

“They can,” she said quietly.

“The door is the portal,” Pippin said softly. “But is it not more than that? Is there not power within the door?” His eyes shone. “Power—that has increased since you came. I think it was the power of the portal that first made me know I was different. And then you came.” His yellow eyes glowed in his strong human face. “You made me feel strange, uneasy.” He began to pace. “You must teach me all spells. You must teach me everything about the Netherworld. You must do it at once.”

She only looked at him.

“I must go quickly to find Tom.”

“You can’t go there. Siddonie would destroy you.”

His feline gaze was searing, daunting.“I will go to find Tom.”

“There are times for patience.”

“I know that. I am cat, I know how to be patient. One is patient before a mouse hole. This,” he said imperiously, “is not so simple. I will go into the Netherworld and I will return with Tom.”

She sighed, stroking the sleeping kitten, filled with misgivings. Pippin was stubborn and hardheaded, truly Catswold. She said,“I will teach you all I can.”

Chapter 51

Pippin sat naked in Olive’s dining room reciting Netherworld spells. Already Melissa had taught him to bring a spell-light, to turn aside arrows, to open locks. He delighted her with his quick, thorough Catswold retention. She soon had taught him every spell he might need, and some just for his pleasure. He took her sandal from her foot and made it dance and hoot like an owl. He called forth a fear that made the kitten spit and left Melissa trembling, unable to pull herself free until he released her.

He said,“I am ready now. I am going now to find Tom.”

“You aren’t going naked.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t go around naked.” She swallowed a laugh at his puzzled look. “You will be cold, Pippin. And you will have no pockets to put things in. You must wait until I buy you some clothes.” She rose. “Just stay here until I come back.” He nodded, perplexed, she was out the door before he could argue.

In the village she bought jeans and a sweatshirt, sandals that seemed the right size, and a backpack, a blanket, a rope, some candy bars and something called trail food, and a good knife. She was back at Olive’s within an hour. Pippin dressed himself clumsily, complaining, and they went down through the garden. He had hugged Olive and rubbed his face against her by way of good-bye. The old woman had made him some sandwiches and put a thermos of milk in the pack. Melissa had drawn a map for him. She was nervous with worry, but there was no changing his mind.

In the tool room she brought a spell-light and spread out the map. She showed him how to travel from the tunnel to the palace, and from there to Mag’s cottage. She showed him the three rebel camps he would pass, and described and named the rebel leaders she knew. She gave him enchantments to manage a horse. She was describing the inside of the palace, and how to get to Wylles’ chambers, where Tom was likely to be, when something scraped against the oak door and it swung open.

Olive slipped in and shut the door quickly. She was dressed in heavy pants and a sweater, and carrying a faded backpack.“I took the kitten to Morian’s. I got it settled in the bedroom and left her a note by the front door. I told her I was going to my sister’s.”

Pippin said,“You don’t think—you don’t plan to go with me? You…”

“I am going with you. I told Morian I was taking Pippin with me to my sister’s in his carrier, that I thought it would do her good to have an animal around.”

Pippin said,“It is not possible for you to go. I move too fast; you will be lost.” He stood over Olive glowering down at her. “You are an upperworld person, you have no magic. What will you do when I turn to cat?”

Olive looked hard at Pippin.“I am an old woman. No one will miss me. I want more than anything to see that world. I will not hinder you. If I do, you can leave me behind. I want to see that world, and I want to help free Tom.”

“But you don’t—you aren’t—”

“You can tell me what I need to know as we travel. And perhaps I can tell you a few useful things. I have gleaned many old spells from my research. Now open the wall, Pippin. I am older than you, and more stubborn.”

He opened the wall.

Olive stared into the darkness and strode through beside Pippin. Just before the wall closed she glanced back at Melissa. Her look was filled with wonder, with the excitement of her final amazing discovery.

Melissa watched the wall seal itself and turned away drained—and she was facing Wylles. He stood in the open doorway, white with rage.

He came in slowly and shut the door behind him.“They are upperworlders. You had no right to let them go through.”

She said nothing.

“I saw you come down here, you and that Catswold—that nasty yellow cat. I saw the old woman come down. What are they up to? Why are they going down?” Wylles started for the wall, but she grabbed him and shoved him back.

“I am prince of Affandar. You dare not touch me, you are my subject.” He swung to slap her, but she caught his arm. He was only twelve years old, and he had been near to death, but he was strong enough now—it was all she could do to hold him.

“Get out of here, Wylles. Go on back to Tom’s house. What harm can two upperworlders do in the Netherworld?”

“What magic did you teach that Catswold?”

She only looked at him.

“You will pay for this. My mother knows what to do with meddlers—with a Catswold slut from my father’s bed.”

She clenched her fists to keep from hitting him.“I’m surprised at your loyalty to your mother, after she got rid of you.”

“I admire my mother’s power. She does what a queen must. My illness was a great hindrance to her.” He moved away and picked up the hoe, watching her. “Siddonie lives for the grand plan. I admire that. I admire her skill for intrigue—both at home and in the upperworld. Anne Hollingsworth is beside herself because Lillith Corporation is disrupting her neat little life. She is like a beast caught in a trap; she has no notion what is happening to her, or why.”

“And you would not help her.”

“Why should I help her? I like seeing her squirm.”

“And what would you do if you didn’t have her to feed and shelter you?”

“I would manage.” He smiled. “I won’t be here long. When my mother has defeated the rebels, when she rules every kingdom in the Netherworld, I will return to take my rightful place.”

“If you go back to the Netherworld you will sicken again.”

“If I sicken I will return here to become well.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “I will come here, just as upperworlders take winter vacations in Hawaii. I can return as I please. What is to stop me?” He balanced the hoe, testing its weight. She laid a silent spell to deflect it, and realized that his own spells touched her; she felt suddenly weak and fearful. This was the real battle, the silent battle of enchantments. She wanted to run, and she knew that desire was born of Wylles’ power warping her senses.

He said,“Siddonie will die in her time. And my father will die. Then I will rule the Netherworld that Siddonie is now winning for me.” His weight shifted slightly as he tensed to swing the hoe.

She made the hoe so heavy he couldn’t lift it. He dropped it and grabbed the shovel; their spells crashed between them, too evenly matched.“Catswold,” Wylles spat.“There will be no Catswold left when I am king.”

“Why do you hate the Catswold? Why does Siddonie?”

His eyes darkened.“The Catswold stole Xendenton from us. They killed my grandfather and my uncles.”

“It’s more than that,” she hissed, wanting to slap him.

“You fear the Catswold powers. You fear the Catswold’s stubborn independence because you can’t defeat that independence. You fear their freedom. You can’t admit the real reason you hate the Catswold—any more than you can admit why you fear images.”

“You should know about images, Catswold girl. You stir them brazenly. You encourage West to do irreparable damage.”

“Braden’s paintings harm no one.”

“West’s images draw evil forces.”

“Nonsense.”

Wylles’ face clouded. “Already evil has come to this place. I saw my father here with you, planning evil. I want to know what you are planning.”

When she laughed at him, he turned white.“You are my subject. When I ask you a question you are obliged to answer.”

“I am no one’s subject. I am Catswold; I bow to no ruler.”

He screamed a spell and swung the shovel; she drove heaviness into it so it dropped, and grabbed his hands. He struggled but soon they stood locked together by her grip, and by their powers. She burned to weaken him. He was only a boy, but he filled her with cold fear. Suddenly he jerked free and snatched up the hoe, and his spell, born of rage, overrode hers. They scuffled, she hit him. The hoe struck her in the head a blow that dizzied her, pain warped her vision. She faced him, dizzy, her back to the wall. She felt herself changing and was terrified to be small. Gasping, she shouted a forgetting spell as she felt herself change to cat.

She was cat, staring up at him. Wylles stared at her blankly, then looked at the hoe he held, puzzled, and he lowered it. She watched him, her ears back, then wiped her paw at the blood that ran down her cheek. She didn’t know whether he had changed her or whether the pain had changed her.

He looked down at her, puzzled, made no effort to harm her though she was small. Silently she brought the changing spell, and brought it again—she became a woman again with effort. When she stood tall before him, he seemed startled. “Where did you come from? I don’t…”

“We came in here together, don’t you remember? I was just behind you. You were telling me your name. I had asked you where you live.”

“I—Tom,” he said, confused. “Tom Hollingsworth. I live up—up the garden. In the white house. You’re hurt—you’ve hurt your head.”

“I hit my head. I must go and tend to it. Maybe you’d better go home, Tom.”

Wylles nodded obediently and went out. She stood outside the portal watching him meander up the garden. Then she headed for the studio, dizzy and weak.

When Braden opened the door and saw the blood he put his arm around her and helped her to the couch.“Better lie down. I’ll get some ice.” She lay down gratefully on the vermilion silk. He left her, and soon she could hear the rattle of the ice tray. He returned to hold an icy towel to her forehead and cheek, his dark eyes intense. “Are you dizzy? Can you see clearly? Are you sick to your stomach? Melissa? My God, what happened to you?”

Gratefully she let him doctor her. Even under the cold pack she could feel her cheek and forehead swelling, and then, terrified, she felt the falling sensation that came with change. Pain made the change, she was sure of it now. She blocked the metamorphosis stubbornly, willing herself to hold human shape, sick with terror that she would become the little cat as he watched.

“Are you dizzy, Melissa? Do you feel nauseated?”

“Not dizzy, not sick. It just hurts. The ice makes it better.”

Kneeling beside the couch he drew her to him, holding her close, his lips against her hurt forehead.“Will you tell me what happened?”

“I fell, up in the woods—I tripped on something, a branch. So stupid.” She was steadying now. The sense of turning to cat was fading. “I fell against a tree and hit my head.”

“But you’re trembling.”

“It frightened me. It hurt.”

He tilted her chin up, kissing her.“You’re completely white. Is that all that happened? Or was it someone—did someone hurt you?”

“No, there was no one. The pain made me dizzy, the fall frightened me. I—I’m all right now.”

“Rest a while. I’ll get a blanket.”

She watched him tuck the blanket around her, already she was drifting.

He said,“Don’t go to sleep. If it’s a concussion you mustn’t sleep. Talk to me.”

She didn’t want to sleep; she was terrified of going to sleep and changing. But she was very sleepy. Fighting to stay awake she rose at last, went into the bathroom, and washed her face. When she came out of the bathroom she stood behind him looking at the new painting, one from the Victorian house.

This painting had a dark quality. She saw herself standing beside the bevelled mirror in a bedroom of the Victorian house, wrapped in reflected shadows. She stared into her own face, startled.

She had, in this painting, a quality the other paintings did not show. Her face reflected power. Her eyes, within the shadows, reflected magic.

He was working away, oblivious to her. She stared at his back, frightened. Braden was seeing too much. First the secret cat shadows through her figure, and now this revealing glint of magic, far too explicit to be comfortable.

But he didn’t know anything consciously, she was convinced of it. Whatever Braden perceived was seen not with his conscious mind.

When she had stood behind him for some minutes held by the painting, and upset by it, he turned. He was frowning, annoyed that she was standing there. But she supposed this was natural—no one wanted someone looking over his shoulder. He said, “Do you feel any better?”

She nodded.

“I have some steaks,” he said. “Will you stay for dinner?”

“I—I’d like that,” she said softly.

He glanced toward the darkening garden and began to clean up his paints. At his direction she washed two potatoes and put them to bake, feeling smug that she was cooking in an upperworld kitchen. He went to wash, then put some records on and fixed her a whiskey. He made a salad, and while the steaks broiled he called the little cat. He looked disappointed when she didn’t appear. “I guess it’s silly to be concerned, but she’s gotten sick a couple of times.”

“It isn’t silly at all, just very caring. But I don’t think she’ll come while I’m here. Cats always avoid me.”

They ate on the terrace by candlelight, watching the garden for the cat and listening to records. The music was strange to her, exciting. There were trumpets, clarinets; he called it swing. Then one number struck her memory, making her unbearably nostalgic, and Braden said Alice had liked it.

They washed the dishes together and played another stack of records and talked about nothing and about everything—about McCabe, about Alice and the Kitchens, about the city, its galleries and museums. Isolated memories touched her, of pollarded trees in Golden Gate Park, and then of wind on the ocean. Of a room with a skylight and a fountain. Ugly memories touched her, too—pictures of a dozen different schools where she was always the new child, picked on, hazed. He had the same kind of memories, from moving so often as his father followed the oil fields. She remembered being thought a strange child because she liked cats, but she kept that memory to herself. As they discovered mutual childhood fears and pains she found her need for him rising in a way she had never felt before.

She got him to talk about his work, though she had to read between his remarks. Slowly she began to understand the search he embarked on with each new painting. She began to see how he groped, each time, for some entity almost beyond the painter’s grasp. He laughed at himself. “Late night talk.” But she liked very much the way he explained his feelings.

He was not self-conscious. His words seemed to be a way of exploring, as if he seldom put his intentions into conscious thought. She understood that his vision of the work came from deep inside; she thought that his deep response to the world was almost like an inner enchantment.

Late in the evening he called the cat again, then brought Melissa a cup of tea. She said,“The moon’s full—it makes cats crazy. She’s probably playing up in the garden, climbing trees.” She smiled at him. “She’ll be home in the morning, don’t worry.”

Leaning to set the cup down he touched her hair, then tilted her chin up, looking deeply at her. She swallowed, ducking her head to press her face into his hand. Rubbing her cheek against him, she rose and led him to the bedroom.

In the dim moonlight, touched by the cool salt wind, she let him undress her. She was already used to his nakedness, and was amused because she couldn’t tell him that. She rose to his stroking, to his lips on her, as if she had never before been loved, as if this was the first time.

Chapter 52

Wylles reached the top of the garden filled with rage at Melissa for the spell she had tried to lay on him. There was too much power in the Catswold woman. Though her spell hadn’t destroyed his memory, he had felt his face go slack, had felt himself starting to drop into the dull state of forgetfulness, had used all his power to counter her enchantment. He was pleased that he had hurt her, saw the blood as she turned away. Saw with disgust Braden West open the studio door for her and put his arm around her. And then at the top of the garden, when he spied Olive’s two kittens sunning on her porch, all his fury focused on them. He thought about cat blood spurting and thin bones broken, thought how the kittens resembled Melissa, if not in color, at least in their soft, furry weakness.

He approached the kittens casually, as if he didn’t really see them. Ignoring them, he sat down on the top step.

They looked at him with curiosity and soon the bolder kitten approached him. It was gangly despite its thick, soft fur. The thought of wounding it made him hard; he cupped his hand over his crotch. With a sudden hot, shivering bliss he pictured not the gray-and-white kitten rent in his hands, but Melissa: he saw the calico rent and torn.

The kitten approached innocently and stood looking up into his face. The second kitten skittered close behind it. He waited until they were both winding around his knees, then he grabbed them suddenly, one in each hand, meaning to bash them together, seeing Melissa crushed.

Pain hit him: hot pain shot through his neck and throat. Then someone knocked him up off the porch, hitting him from behind.

The blow was so sharp his arms jerked and his hands released the kittens. His vision faltered, blackness washed over the garden. He felt himself being shaken, hard. The porch and garden warped and swam before him. He was jerked around, hands biting into his arms.

He was facing the black woman; she held him in a grip like steel.

Morian slapped him. Her eyes blazed. His fear of her was so complete and debilitating he wet himself.

Morian tried to control her rage; she didn’t want to injure him, just terrify. Whoever this boy was, he needed to experience the terror of quick retribution. She shook him until she was afraid she would do him damage, then she held him away, staring into his white, frightened face.

She knew this could not be Tom. Tom would never harm an animal, he was too strong inwardly. The real Tom had a deep, sure core of lightness that would not allow him to do something so weak.

She tried to see physical differences between this boy and Tom, in the set of the boy’s eyes, in the shape of his brows or mouth, his round chin. As she watched him, a shiver of vertigo touched her, a swarming dizziness that puzzled and alarmed her. She held the boy tighter, digging her fingers into his shoulders.

“If I ever see you near any cat, if I see youtouch a cat again, I will break your bones, boy. I will smash your face.”

“I wasn’t going to hurt them. What makes—makes you think I would hurt them, Mor? I was petting them, picking the kittens up to pet them.”

She jerked him up off the steps, bringing him close to her face.“If any cat, in this garden or near it, is harmed in any way—even if you are not responsible—I will make pudding of that white, pasty little face.”

His stare told her that he would like to crush her, just as he had meant to crush the helpless kittens.

She shook him and twisted his ear until tears spurted from his glaring eyes.“Do you understand me!” she shouted. “I will twist your face like I am twisting that ear. I will twist your body like that, and break it.” She dropped him and held up her hands. “These black hands could kill you, boy. If you touch any cat again, these hands will break you in little pieces.”

He backed away from her. And she saw as he turned away from her something distant and cold crawling out of his eyes.

Then he was gone, into the Hollingsworth house. She stood looking after him, wondering who, or what, this boy was.

Chapter 53

The Harpy cupped her little mirror in her hands and watched with interest as Morian shook and slapped Wylles. She was perched alone on a ridge of black rock far north of Chillings, catching her breath. She opened her beak wide as, in the flashing light of her mirror, Morian dealt with Wylles. She liked the black woman’s style. The prince deserved whatever he got.

She felt that the fates were working now in a fascinating way. The events in the two worlds were linking, meshing together. Even Wylles’ role was notable. She had begun to think that, after all, the powers of good would triumph.

She surprised herself that she cared.

She was a Hell Beast. She should be rooting for Siddonie and the dark forces. She had tried, but she could not. She felt drawn to Melissa and to Mag and the rebels. Her fondness embraced, as well, the inhabitants of the upperworld garden—Braden, Olive, certainly Morian. All of them had a passion for life that warmed and excited her.

She realized that she was, for all practical purposes, no longer a true Hell Beast. She had, in becoming drawn toward the most spirited living souls, abandoned the flames of Hell. Win the war, that was the first order. After that—maybe she would move in with Mag and raise pigs.

She shook her tired wings, and let them droop and rest. Every muscle ached. She had been flying for days, moving endlessly beneath the Netherworld’s skies and sometimes running through tunnels too narrow for flight. She was the only flying beast willing to help the rebels, willing to gather together the ancient folk. How many miles she had flown she didn’t count. She had routed dwarfs from deep cave communities, and had summoned small dark men from clefts so remote they had no green sky of wizard light, only spell-lights. At her call, shy bands of white-skinned elven folk had scaled down sheer cliffs to gather in valleys their races hadn’t seen in generations. Goat-hooved urisks small as rabbits had come carrying immense spears, and a tribe of dorricks with twisted backs had joined the rebels.

Under her recruiting, the small, disciplined rebel army was swelling into a formidable band, taking on so many troops it was becoming cumbersome and unruly. She had even routed out the last few dragons, though they were puny beasts. She had brought into the rebel camps folk so long forgotten that no one knew what to call them. But all were warriors, or soon would be, though they might be armed only with picks and axes and sharpened shovels and with fighting spells not used in generations.

And now, not only were the tribes joining together, but the fates of key individuals were joining: the fate of the real Tom Hollingsworth, who had already escaped from Siddonie. The fate of Melissa. Of Wylles. The fate of Siddonie herself. And the fate of Braden West.

When, rested, the Harpy exploded suddenly into flight again, she took off with such vigor that her wings scraped the granite cliff and she bumped up against the granite sky. When she recovered from the jolt she set off in a long, powerful flight, heading north straight for Mag and the rebel camp, her shadow winging above her thin and fast. She arrived at the camp in mid-afternoon.

At once, Mag set about preparing a pot of cricket soup for her.“What of the false queen, Harpy? What does your mirror show?”

The Harpy smiled.“Just as we hoped, the street cat has embraced the advances of King Efil. Or,” she said, “she seems to have embraced his proposition. Though in my opinion, the king is a fool to trust her.” She reached, took the ladle from Mag impatiently, and began supping up crickets from it.

“The king was always a fool,” Mag said.

The Harpy nodded, her mouth full.“He thinks the false queen idolizes him. Ah,” she said, smacking a cricket,

“lovely soup.”

Mag said,“It’s hardly cooked yet. I do not like this business of the false queen.”

“Siddonie has trained her well,” the Harpy said glumly.

“And?” said Mag.

“The Catswold have long been without a queen. They may be eager, indeed, to follow this woman.”

“Then tell them she is an imposter—tell them before she comes down the tunnel and into the Catswold nation.”

“No.”

“Well, why not? If you don’t, I will send a messenger to tell them. And I myself will go to fetch Melissa home. The Catswold need their true queen.”

“No,” said the Harpy. “Not yet.”

“I do not understand you. Why are you so stubborn? You will have to tell me where she is. Do you want me to waste time searching for her? She is needed now.”

The Harpy turned away to ladle out more soup, then grew impatient and dipped her bill into the pot, spearing crickets.

“No matter how much you have helped us so far,” Mag said, “if you impede us in this you will destroy us.”

“No, I will not. Do not go after Melissa. Let the fates have their way.”

Mag stared at her.“Then you know what will happen? I thought you couldn’t see the future.”

The Harpy raised her dripping beak, a cricket caught in the side, squirming. She gulped it before she spoke. Her words were far too poetic for her nature.“I do not see the future. But I sense the whisper of fate like a rising wind against the granite sky.”

Mag snorted.

“I sense fate powerfully,” the Harpy said, her little black eyes widening. “If I did not, I would go myself to fetch Melissa.”

She resumed eating.

It was much later, after she had left Mag and was flying alone beneath the dark sky, that the Harpy saw in her little mirror a scene that made her pause in flight, dropping and shivering.

She saw a blackness stirring deep down within the flames of the Hell Pit: a dark, primal evil that, she thought, not even Siddonie’s powers could have roused. She watched it for a long time, shaken. She might sense fate, but she had not sensed this. She did not know how to deal with this cold black essence of the Hell Pit.

Chapter 54

Through the open bedroom window the bay was dark under low clouds. Wind rattled the reeds in the marsh, bringing to Melissa as she woke a memory of running among the reeds. She frowned, thinking some noise had awakened her. She heard nothing now but the wind. She woke fully and stretched, watching Braden sleeping beside her, deliriously aware that she need not sneak away now, that she belonged here, that he would wake soon and hold her and love her. She slid closer to him, fitting herself against him, her desire rising. In sleep his arms went around her and his embrace tightened but he didn’t wake. Hungrily she touched her lips to his face, breathing his scent, wanting him. The noise came again, the noise that had awakened her. She came fully alert, listening to the sliding, metallic scraping.

It came from the studio, the scraping then a click. Puzzled, she slipped out from Braden’s arms, slid off the bed, and pulled on his robe. She went out barefoot, silently padding toward the studio.

The room was unnaturally dark with the draperies closed. The only light was a faint gray pool beneath the skylight, and a dull pallor spilling in through the open front door.

Wind from the open door fingered coldly against her ankles. She looked for whoever had come in. Where she stood in the hall, in Braden’s dark robe, perhaps she had not been seen.

She could see little in the dark room. She breathed a silent spell and changed to cat. The shadows thinned, the room was lighter.

She saw a black figure barely visible in front of the closed draperies. She could hear him breathing now, and she knew his scent. Frightened, she slipped into the blackness behind the stacked canvases.

From the dense shadows between canvases she watched Wylles move toward the easel. He made no sign that he had seen her. Suddenly his face was lit, not by a spell-light but by a flashlight. Its yellow circle moved toward the paintings hanging on the wall above her.

The light paused at each painting as Wylles moved slowly down the room, looking. Then he moved to the easel; she saw too late the glint of a knife.

She heard the canvas rip as she leaped. She landed on his back raking her claws into his flesh. He threw himself against the wall to crush her.

She jumped from his shoulders and changed to girl. She hit him and grabbed his arms. The studio lights flared on.

Braden stood half awake, half asleep, wearing a pair of cutoffs, looking at the slashed painting, at her, and at the paint-smeared blade in Wylles’ hand. Looking at the painting where her face was slashed, with a hole in it where a flap of canvas hung down. It began to rain, pattering against the glass.

Braden took the paint-smeared knife from Wylles’ hand. He examined the paint on Wylles’ fingers.

Then, not speaking, he clamped a hand on Wylles’ shoulder and propelled him out the door. Melissa watched him guide Wylles up the dim garden, watched them mount the stairs to the white house, watched Braden push Wylles against the wall like a limp doll. She could see that Braden was talking to Wylles. Wylles didn’t move. At last Braden opened the door and shoved Wylles inside the house.

He came back down the garden and pushed past her, not speaking. Was he angry with her? She heard the coffeepot start. She stood looking at the ruined canvas. If she had not come in, Wylles would have destroyed all Braden’s paintings of her.

Images—he stirs violent powers with his images…

She went into the bedroom and slipped back into bed to wait for Braden to cool down.

At last he brought his coffee and her tea to bed. She touched his face.“Did you wake Tom’s mother? Did you tell her?”

“No. My business was with Tom.” His dark eyes burned with anger, but not at her.

“What did you say to him?”

“I explained how I would feel if anything else of mine was touched. I told him I had killed men in the war. I told him killing meant nothing to me.” For the first time, he grinned. “I demonstrated with his butcher knife a diversity of things I could think of to do to him.”

“Would you?”

He smiled.

She buried her face against his bare shoulder.“I loved that painting.”

“I’ll do it over.”

“He’ll come back, Braden. No matter what you told him. Is—is there somewhere we could take the paintings?”

“He won’t come back.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her, frowning.“How could you know that? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“No, but—did you see his face? I just feel that he could come back.”

“Was it Tom who hit you yesterday? The blow on your head…?”

“I fell. Why would Tom hit me?”

“Why would he slash my painting?”

“Could you take the paintings to the gallery now? The show is only three weeks away. We—we could go down to Carmel. You said last night it would be nice to paint in Carmel.”

He looked at her silently, trying to see more than she was telling him.“He’s only a child, Melissa. Why would I run away from a little boy?”

She touched his face, tracing the line of his jaw, turning her own face so the wound on her forehead and the bruise on her cheek caught the light.

He stared at her then drew her close, kissing her, holding her. At last he said,“So why not? We could get some good work in Carmel, the light is wonderful, the sea…But I don’t think I want to dump the whole show on Rye so early, fill up his storage space.”

She busied herself with her tea.

He touched under her chin, tipping her face up.“There’s more to this than you’re telling me.”

“He slashed one painting. He will destroy the rest.” She looked back at him steadily.

He sighed, took her cup from her, and kissed her.“I suppose I could take them to the gallery. But some aren’t dry. They’re a bother to handle.”

She watched him.

“All right. Rye can order frames. And he can have frames ready for the paintings we do in Carmel.” Then he laughed. “This kind of last minute thing drives him crazy.”

He touched the tip of her nose with his finger.“You don’t need to say much to get your own way, do you? With that green-eyed stare, you’re as hardheaded as the damn cat.” He gathered her close, burying his face against her, kissing her, making slow, easy love to her.

When they lay spent, his mouth resting against her throat, he said, muffled against her,“Just before I woke this morning I was dreaming of a green world. Green cliffs, green sky, green caves.” He raised up, looking at her, his eyes filled with pleasure from the dream. “I could see in the rock formations how water had cut through, and how the earth had twisted and warped. The green light seemed to seep out of every stone.”