Had he taken so many hearts that he had lost count? Did he forget their previous owners as soon as he grabbed them? And why, then, was I the only one who had felt compelled to drag myself all the way to his doorstep and had felt I would surely die if I did not?
Of course, I hadn’t asked him about it yet, which was the most logical course. I had to work up enough courage for that, and perhaps being his housekeeper would give me the time to do so.
“These blasted corridors,” I said to the cat as we traipsed our way through the shining black. I knew he couldn’t understand me, but I had no one else to talk to. “Ridiculous. How long does it take him to get to the commode?”
As if it had heard me, which I suppose it had, the corridor made a noise very like a sneeze and folded itself up smaller, as you would fold a bedsheet. From standing in the middle of nowhere, I was suddenly at another door, with the door to the throne room barely five steps behind me. It left me breathless.
“Thank you,” I said to the empty air when I had composed myself. I opened the door, not without caution.
“Well, Master Cat. What have we here?”
The kitchen, it turned out, or what passed for one. The cat ambled in, looking back to make sure I was following, and sprung up onto a long table made, of course, of that same polished black. You could barely tell what was table and what was cat, but for the yellow eyes blinking.
How could the sorcerer stand to live in all this dark? It set his pretty eyes and cheekbones off nicely, to be sure, but there was more to life than pretty eyes and cheekbones, and besides, there was no one else here to see them but the cat.
There were more dirty plates in here, of course, so far gone that there would have been flies buzzing about them, if something as prosaic as a fly could have made its way into this place. As it was, the kitchen had a sweet stink and no windows to open.
As far as I could tell, there were no windows in the whole giant House. The darkly glittering chandeliers provided all the light.
“I’ll need water,” I said to the cat. “There must be water, somewhere, to clean the plates. And soap. And wood for the fireplace, so I can warm it up. I need a wash myself, bugger the plates. How does he arrange his meals usually?”
I turned a slow circle on the spot. I couldn’t see anything—no cupboards, no baskets of food. Nothing. Just the table and the plates. Did he make his own meals, then? With magic? The thought of eating magical food made my stomach churn.
The black cat squeaked.
“I wish you could talk,” I said.
“All right then,” he replied.
I looked over my shoulder, as if the voice could have come from anywhere besides the cat. Eventually I was forced to admit that he was the only possible source and turned unwillingly back to him.
“You can talk, after all?”
“Not usually,” he said. “But you wished for it.”
The words came out in strange shapes through his cat throat and cat jaws, giving him an odd, foreign-sounding accent. He had trouble with his “b” s and “w”s.
“How is that possible?” I asked.
“That’s how things work around here, for the most part,” he said.
“Oh.” Well, at least I seemed to have one ally in the place. “What do you go by?”
He looked confused.
“What should I call you?” I clarified.
“I’ve always rather fancied Cornelius.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Well, Cornelius. You wish for things, and they appear?” It sounded far too much like a fairy story. The idea that a place could be organized in such a ridiculously fanciful, mealy mouthed way made me itch with irritation.
“Not really,” explained Cornelius. “It only works if you have a real need of things. You can’t just ask for anything. And it decides what you do and don’t need, so no asking for velvet gowns or anything like that. Believe me—I’ve thought about salmon for months, and no luck.”
“I’d look a fright in a velvet gown,” I said. The cat nodded in agreement, which didn’t bother me overmuch. At least the creature was honest, or seemed so.
“You say ‘it’ decides,” I went on. “The House?”
“The House, Him. It’s all the same thing, more or less. The place grew up around Him.” I could hear the capital “H”s of House and Him, even through the little triangular cat mouth.
