Rhoda did not turn. She closed the file slowly, slid it back down into the drawer, and slid the drawer shut. The drawer made a small flat sound.
"There is no transfer logged on her familiar, Lazlo." Behind her, a breath. The soft sound of a man letting out air he had been holding.
"Forgive me." His voice came measured. "Such a tragedy. She would not have wanted that little cat to be alone. I…"
One soft step. Away from her. Toward the door.
Rhoda heard the small sound of fabric: his hand into the inside pocket of his coat. She tried to see what he was doing. She heard a smaller sound, soft, almost not a sound. The kind of sound a man makes when his lips move against something he has been carrying close to his chest. She couldn't see.
Then she heard the inner bolt of the vault door slide home.
Rhoda stepped toward him.
Lazlo was standing with his back to the closed door. His silver eyes were on her. The hand that had been in his coat was at his side now, the fingers slightly curled around something the lamplight did not reach. His face was still warm. Still mild. Still the face she had known for years.
He smiled. "My dear Rhoda."
For a long moment, the vault held them both. The cool dry air. The gold-coin wall on her left. A lifetime of work in cabinets at her right. The lamp above the door. The bolted door behind the man she had loved as a friend for the whole of their careers together.
He smiled again, warm, and his fingers at his side curled a little tighter around the thing he had taken out of his pocket.
"My dear Rhoda." He smiled.
Just above the vault, in the parlor where Lazlo had left her, Duchess stepped onto the rug slowly. Her fur shedding around her. She paled and sighed. She knew the bond between a familiar and her warlock is not a leash and is not a thread. It is a thing the cat carries in her chest the way a person carries her own breath. Duchess had been carrying a bad version. She had not let herself feel the wrongness of it because the wrongness of it was what had been keeping her warm.
Duchess tripped on the rug, as the others just watched. She tried to stand. She got her front legs under her, then one of her back legs. The other one folded. She tried again. The plume tail dragged.
"Goddess," said the calico from the wood basket, who had been sitting at the edge of her basket pretending not to look. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's trying," the Persian said from the armchair, opening one yellow eye.
"Her?" said the calico.
"The Himalayan. Who has been swanning at us with her tail in the air for three days. Look at her."
The calico stepped to the lip of the wood basket and peered down. "Oh, my. What is wrong with your fur?"
Duchess did not answer.
"You look like a coat someone left in the rain."
"Maud, please," said the Persian. "We are ladies."
"I am being a lady. I am being averypolite lady. I have not yet mentioned the smell."
From the chair beside the bookcase, Quill, Phineas's quiet grey tabby, sat up. He had not stirred from that chair since his witch had died. He looked across the parlor at Duchess now withthe steady mild gaze his witch had turned on every cat in this house.
"You stink the way a wrong thing stinks," Quill said. His voice was soft. It was not unkind. It was the voice of a scholar delivering a hard truth in a library. "And I know it. Because Phineas knew it."
Duchess's head dropped. The cloudy blue eye closed.
In the front hall, Fat Bastard rolled to his feet. He did it the way an enormous man rolls to his feet: by stages, with dignity. He looked at his boys.
"Gentlemen."
"Sir," said Boba from the kitchen doorway.
"Sir," said Jango from the rug.
