Honey laid her hand on the old tom's flank one time. She did not press. The dust-dark fur was cold under her fingers. The tears kept coming.
"Go on now," she said. "Go on."
The rainbow leaned down. It took him up gently. The small, folded shape of him. His copper eyes finally closing. It held him in the bright center of itself a long quiet moment, and then it folded itself in on its colors, and it was gone.
Honey did not stop to wipe her eyes. She rose, grabbed the jam, opened the door, and went very fast back toward the kitchen.
Roam caught her at the second door of the back hall. He had been on his way back from the study, notebook still in his hand. He saw her face and was moving before she had taken three steps. His hand closed around her upper arm in the dim, firm and quick, and he turned her into the alcove beside the linen press.
"Honey. Sweetheart. What is it."
"He's dead Roam. The black tom cat."
"Honey."
"Phineas, now this little old cat, Roam, I…"
"Hon. I'm sorry." Roam had both hands on her face now. He was not letting her past. "We can't move just yet."
"They aredead, Roam."
"I know, darlin'. I know."
He held her face one count more. His jaw had set, and the blue of his eyes had darkened toward a color closer to amber.
"We keep our heads. Let Sean and me work."
She closed her eyes. She opened them. Then she folded against him.
His arms came around her in the dim of the back hall. He pressed his cheek to her hair. There was nothing to say about a small black tom who had not even given his name. He just held her, and she pressed her face into his coat, and the two of them stood a long moment in the alcove beside the linen press, and grieved.
From the front of the house came the brass clatter of the door knocker.
Chapter 10
The Outlaws
Three solid raps at the front door. In the kitchen, Edgar lifted his head from the window. The raps were not Sean's. They were not Wimpleton's. They were not the knock of anyone Edgar had been expecting. Edgar crossed the kitchen, went down the front hall, and opened the door. Three cats sat on the porch. He knew them by sight. The Bad Boys of Assjacket. Zelda's three favorite gentlemen, all the way down out of West Virginia.
The one in the middle was an enormous gray tom with a white tummy, broad as a small dog, with the easy possessive sprawl of a creature who had already decided the porch was his. The one on his left was a deadly white cat with gray splotches in the seated posture of a small assassin. The one on his right was a randy calico with a double chin who was, at that exact moment, gazing past Edgar into the front hall as though he had just seen the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
"Yo." The big gray tom's voice was the genial bass of a country gentleman. "We heard you might need some muscle."
Edgar looked at them a moment, then lifted his eyes past the porch to the lawn.
The lawn had filled. Not with bonded familiars in their puzzled rows. Not with cats arriving in twos and threes from someone's cold kitchen. The creatures on the lawn now were thin. Rough. Scarred. These were strays. None of them groomed in a long while. They sat in a loose half-circle in the cold grass, watching the house. They were the kind nobody comes for. They were the kind nobody had come for in a long time. These were rogue familiars.
There was no hum of spilling. There was, instead, a low listening silence. The biggest of them, a one-eyed grey tom with the build of an alley fighter and a scar from his lip to his ear, sat at the front of the half-circle.
Edgar drew in a slow breath. "These guys ain't with us."
The three on the porch did not look back at the lawn. The gray tom heaved himself up off his haunches and rolled past Edgar's boot into the front hall on his short legs. The white-and-gray slipped past Edgar's ankle without touching it. The randy calico padded in last, his eyes still on the front hall, and did not blink once.
Edgar stepped down off the porch and held his hands open at his sides. The unbonded cats did not move. From around the side of the house, Sean McLeary came up at a slow walk, his hands also open. Behind him, came Roam, coatless, jaw set, and crossed to Edgar at the foot of the porch step. They stood at the edge of the half-circle and let the unbonded cats look at them.
Edgar whispered, "What happened with Lazlo?"
"Clear," Sean said.
