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Leo’s fur bristled, and Tabitha laughed like he had been responding to her alone. “I know. You have too much spirit for a simple home like mine, but you’ll find where you belong soon enough. A family that is equal to you in every way.”
Sweet Tabitha seemed so earnest Leo couldn’t bring himself to be rude to her, letting her rub his fur longer than usual. But as he did so, he couldn’t help but notice the other cats—two black-and-white sisters called Soot and Smudge and another striped tom called Tiger. They sniffed at each other and darted around after beams of light reflecting off the window chimes hanging in the doorway. Sure, they had the normal superior attitude their kind was famous for, but they were just animals.
Nothing but normal cats.
And Leo had never wanted to believe he was one of them.
Leo turned away from the second-hand shop and went farther into Castletown, following an old mouse-trail in his usual fashion. Archie had said Leo could be a faerie. Something about that idea intrigued him, perhaps even tickling at some sort of long-lost memory, but he still didn’t think it could be true. He knew about faeries—at least as much as anyone could know about the mysterious and magical beings that lived in the deepest parts of the lakes or darkest parts of the forests. They could be dangerous, but they could be weakened and bound to their rings by certain substances like iron, and they couldn’t lie.
True love could always defeat them in the end.
But Leo had never been defeated by love, and he had no trouble lying, at least not to himself. He told himself over and over that he wanted nothing more to do with the mill, that he could find just as much food hanging around the market stalls or the second-hand shop.
Tabitha even brought the food to him, never making him hunt.
He wasn’t even sure why he wanted to hunt so much, anyway; since the time Tabitha had provided him with that first plate of food, he had never gone hungry. Maybe it was just a way to work out his rage, the loneliness he felt inside his own head. Nothing soothed his spirit better than a hundred dead rats—either caught by his paws or some other trap he had laid.
But when Leo saw the miller boy leaving the matrons’ Charity House, casting glances at the princess’s royal guards in their black and silver livery, the cat couldn’t seem to help what happened next. Leo had always been curious about the castle—the one place even a stray cat couldn’t just wander in uninvited—and he felt the part of his mind that was usually dreaming up new ways to catch mice start scheming in a different direction, almost in spite of himself.
Archie never said what kind of fortune he hoped Leo might give him with his so-called faerie magic; the boy might be too distractible to come up with anything practical or specific, but it seemed it should be something simple enough.
A girl with freckles.
A means to support himself.
Leo could do that and more. After all, he wasn’t a normal cat, and just that thought triggered several others. More flashes from before. More breadcrumbs he could follow . . .
Leo had always been a hunter, but he got the impression that he had once been larger and hadn’t used his claws. He saw trees. A dark forest. Even a bow, something like a human might use. Was that even possible?
He shook his head—the kind of shake that misplaced his fur and moved his whole body. Leo’s memories just didn’t work the same way normal memories did. Humans—simple creatures as they were—had memories that lined up in neat little rows. You’re a squalling babe. Then older. And on and on. Leo didn’t have memories like that. There never seemed to be any order or reason behind the flashes he got from before, but there were just some things he knew. Things that were important—why else would a creature like him take the time to know facts if they weren’t important?
And Leo knew about Princess Ainsley—the beautiful auburn-haired and freckled young woman striding out of the Charity House with her black and silver guards. She had just reached her majority at seventeen, and her father, the king, would be accepting petitions from multiple wealthy and royal suitors. Leo also knew she liked the theater and stories filled with adventure, while the king enjoyed hunting and feasting on wild fowl. You know, the sort of things a potential suitor might want to know to give himself an advantage.
Obviously, Leo was in no position to court the princess himself. And why should he want to? He was a cat. But it seemed it would be a terrible shame for such knowledge to go to waste when someone else might benefit from it. And while the cat still couldn’t name the trouble that had first brought him to Castletown, perhaps, if he had finally found someone who thought him smart enough to communicate with, he would find he had even more to say?
By nightfall, Leo was back at the mill. Not only back at the mill but in the shadowed corner of the loft where the youngest miller boy slept.
Though it wasn’t without a few misgivings.
A floorboard creaked under the cat’s restless paws, and Archie scanned the darkness of the loft. “Puss? Are you here?”
Leo. His name was Leo. Was that really that hard? Puss. Tom. A few of the Charity House Children even called him Socks or Boots because of the white markings on his paws and hind legs, but no one ever called him by his proper name.
It needled him like a bur in his fur he couldn’t quite reach.
At least, he couldn’t reach it on his own.
Calling a cat Leo was hardly an uncommon thing, and it wasn’t like Leo expected any of the humans to use his full name and title.
Leo didn’t even know what his full name and title was. All he knew was that he had one, and he might not have thought of it at all if not for the boy’s recent revelations.
The boy sighed, rubbing at the scratch on his hand from the previous day. “I know I messed things up when I tried to talk to you before. I should have said I wanted a deal from the first, instead of telling you what my father said. He never believed you were magic; he thought you could be owned, but you know that isn’t what I believe. And I promise, if you ever come out again, I will find a way to fulfill my side of the bargain and find a way to help you too.”
Archie still believed. Faerie or not, hunter or not, Leo wasn’t a normal cat; he never wanted to be owned by a human, but perhaps there would be some advantages to making a different sort of arrangement. A deal. Something where they both benefited. The boy was so passive and vague about his dreams, Leo could become the master himself, the one in control.
And a pet human could certainly be useful. Humans could do a lot of things a cat could not, and if the miller boy could read a will left by his father, he wasn’t quite as uneducated as other peasants in this town. In fact, that might be Leo’s first experiment. If he could get this stupid human to call him by his name, perhaps they could build more meaningful conversation from there.
His mind busy planning, he went to find himself some grain.
