Page 29 of The Innocent Sleep

Emil nodded and turned, walking briskly away. I turned back to Gabriel and Cal. “The two of you will be helping us with acquisition and distribution tonight,” I said. “Mortal sunset should come in three hours or so. Has the Court been fed well enough to wait that long for another meal, if I can promise this will be a plentiful one?”

“It has,” said Ginevra.

“Then we will take these three hours to be sure no one has any merry ideas about following us to steal the choicest bits of whatever we obtain, and we will plan our approach once the garage is secure. Go with Gabriel and Cal to join Emil. You, also, Raj.”

“What about you?” asked Raj.

“Shade seemed very concerned about the kittens of her Court,” I said. “I know you and Ginevra have been doing your very best in my absence, but I worry, and will walk the Court before I join you, to be sure all is as well as it can be. I’ll be with you inside of the hour.”

Raj looked uncertain, glancing from me to the others with small motions of his head, clearly anxious.

“Costco,” I said to him, like an incantation, and maybe it was, because his uncertainty faded, replaced by dawning amazement.

“I never thought of that,” he said.

“This time of year, they close as the sun is setting,” I said. “We’ll arrive after the human staff has departed, and we’ll do what must be done. But for now, I need to see my Court, and you need to see the space we’ll be moving things into. After we finish this task, I have an appointment to keep, in Shadowed Hills.”

Oh, I was going to be exhausted before this night’s work was done. But then, Ginevra and Raj were already exhausted, and I was still intending to take them with me and then leave them once more in charge of the Court.

If Titania survived this horror, she belonged to the Court of Cats. Of that, I had no question in the slightest.

The others walked away, and I turned to head down the tunnel, toward the part of the abandoned station that had previously been used as living quarters, when we had been more inclined to denning down here, before we’d found proper anchors to the outside. The smell of too many bodies and the dreaded litter boxes addressed my nose not long after my journey began, telling me I was heading in the right direction, however unpleasant that direction chanced to be. I kept walking, and was soon rewarded with a door that didn’t belong in a train station.

Opening it put me into one of the impossible, zigzag hallways that streak through the Court of Cats like threads through a tapestry. It’s rare for an entire hall to be lost, and so our halls are made up of segments strung together, five feet from a manor here, ten feet from a shopping center there, until they form a contiguous whole. When the magic to make the Court of Cats was first pooled together, the working must have been a wonder such as had never been seen before in all of Faerie.

The hall led me to a series of large rooms, honeycombed together by open doorways, filled with beds and piles of cloth and fur, filled in turn with cats. Most were sleeping; in a few such nests, groups of kittens rolled and tumbled, one or both parents watching tolerantly. Not all of them were cats I recognized. Many were more mortal than fae, thin-blooded feline changelings swept off the streets by Titania’s enchantment.

There were more of them than I had ever considered there might be, and while I hated the circumstances, I was glad they were finally here. This was their birthright, as much as anyone else’s: they had the right to be here, to raise their children in safety, to be cared for, even if they didn’t yearn for human keepers.

I sat on the corner of an unoccupied bed, extending my hand toward an unfamiliar mother cat for her to sniff. She did, gracefully, before knocking her head against my knuckles in acceptance and polite recognition.

“Hello, mother,” I said. “Your children look well. Healthy and strong.”

She meowed, making no attempt to hide her own hunger. I nodded.

“Yes. I understand that you would like a more substantial meal, and confidence of another coming after,” I said. “We’re working to arrange it. How old are your kits?”

A meow.

“A good age.” They’d need soft foods soon, for the weaning. The unfamiliarity of the mother cat told me she was likely one of the mortal cats with a few drops of fae blood who had been confined by Titania’s treachery. Her children would remain feline in form, and not be able to move on to human baby foods. An issue only in that food for human infants was somewhat easier to come by than food for weaning kits.

She meowed again, then settled deeper into her bed, closing her eyes. It was rare for me to be so summarily dismissed, and I was charmed despite myself. She knew I was the King here. She simply didn’t care.

“If you need anything, find a member of my Court,” I said. “We will do our best to see it done.”

I rose and continued on my prowl.

Every room I entered contained more of the same. Cats on every surface, listless, sleeping the days away.

The people who say a cat has a natural instinct to roam are projecting human attributes onto feline forms. True cats, whether purely mortal or changeling, have no need to roam. They want to eat and drink, to have warm places to sleep and clean places to eliminate themselves, to play and be engaged by their environment. They can be happy their entire lives in a single room, if the room is suited to their needs.

Fae cats are somewhat different. Not because of our instincts or “wild natures” or whatever justification humans are using for letting their pets roam wild this week, but because we’re intelligent creatures, and we need more stimulation than a simple animal. We’re also magical shapeshifters who can evade most urban threats that would destroy a domestic cat. For us, being sealed inside the Court—and having memories that implied this had been going on for years, if not decades—was a form of genuine torture.

My subjects were suffering. Hunger aside, confinement was hurting them, and it wasn’t going to stop unless I stopped it.

And I was going to stop it. I was going to get my family and my life and my world back, and let them all run free, as they should have been from the beginning. This was unendurable.

Satisfied with what I’d seen, with the horror of it all, I turned and made my way toward the buried parking garage where my companions would be waiting. All were there, save for Opal, who had presumably remained behind to keep the cats of the Court calm. Ginevra, while yawning, looked much better than she had immediately upon my arrival. Not well, to be quite clear, but better.