If only Clara could feel as single-minded, or as calm, as her person.
“What is it?”Laurel had jumped up beside her, so silently that she startled her baby sister, whose nerves were already on edge.
“She’s looking at pictures.”Clara knew her sister had difficulty making sense of pixels. Laurel’s sense of smell might be better than hers, but her eyesight left something to be desired.“Pictures of plants.”
“How silly.” Laurel whipped her dark tail around her toes.“Why look at pictures when she could simply go outside.”
“But it’s dark out and we don’t want her to go…”Clara broke off.
With a sigh, Becca had closed the herbalism site and clicked open a news alert.“The accident,” she murmured. “No wonder the bridge was closed.”
She read a moment longer, then clicked and another page appeared, one Clara had seen before. Along with the writing, which might as well be sparrow tracks to the cats, it featured pictures, reproductions of old engravings. This was the genealogy project Becca had been telling Maddy about, Clara realized. The research she longed to resume. Although she had seen her person looking through these pages—what Becca called an “online historical database”—before, something about Becca’s silence, or maybe it was her own unsettled mood, showed the word in a new light. Becca was searching for her family. For the small cat, whose only memories of her own mother were few and fading, the search seemed impossibly sad. Yes, Becca spoke to her mother weekly, using one or another of her devices, but she was alone in this city. Alone, except for her cats, Clara reminded herself.
Besides, mused Clara, looking over at her snoozing siblings, blood relations weren’t necessarily a requirement for domestic happiness.
Silently vowing to be a better helpmate to her person, Clara pushed her own sibling issues aside and focused in on Becca. As she watched, Becca scrolled down through the database’s images until she settled on one that the calico had seen before. In it, a woman sat with a cat on her lap. Something about her face—the bright eyes, perhaps—looked like Becca, only with longer hair and any trace of Becca’s curls squashed under a cap. With one outstretched finger, Becca traced the outline of the woman’s round face. Did this strange, flat representation bring back memories of Becca’s mother? Of herself? Clara couldn’t tell. Besides, to the calico it was the feline on the woman’s lap who was the real focus of the picture. That cat, who even in the scratchy black-and-white image bore a striking resemblance to Clara, occupied the center of the composition, drawing the eye even as she stared out at the viewer.
Despite the centuries between them, Clara felt the connection—and felt reassured, as if the calico in the picture was somehow reaching out. An older generation keeping watch over Clara and her person. Maybe, Clara thought, there was something to Laurel’s gift—a psychic connection that went back generations. Or maybe she was just too tired to worry anymore, and what she took as comfort was simply gratitude that Becca had remained on the couch rather than run out into the night.
It had been a full day, even without that strange confrontation. Brief as it was—only three words—Clara knew that encounter with Elizabeth was at the root of her desire to keep Becca away from those women. Knew as well that she was hiding the truth from her own siblings. She told herself this was her sisters’ fault. Harriet and Laurel complained whenever their person didanything involving other humans or the outside world, or, truly, whenever she left them alone. To give them any more reason to grumble could only lead to further unpleasantness if not outright trouble.
“Why trouble?”Clara turned to see Laurel’s blue eyes staring into hers.
“Did you just read my thoughts?” Clara reared up, nearly falling off the sofa. Her sister had startled her—and invaded her privacy.“Please don’t do that!”
“Oh, please!”The Siamese licked at one dark paw.“It’s almost the same as suggesting thoughts, only, more like inhaling…”
Clara eyed her sister with curiosity, even as she tried to keep her own mind blank.
“And I did smell something off about that plant, you know. Something that Becca isn’t aware of. My nose isvery good. I think you did too, only you never focus…”
Before Clara could respond, the woman seated in front of them jerked back and began to type.“Why didn’t I think of this before?” The two cats seated behind her exchanged a weighted glance.
“Dear Aunt Tabitha,” she murmured as she typed. “I’m not sure if you know, but I’m living in Cambridge now, and being in New England, I’ve started to research our family history…”
“Our family?”Laurel’s soft mew dripped with scorn. In her distinctive Siamese yowl, that first word dragged out into a wail.
“She means hers.” Clara translated as quickly and politely as she could. She didn’t want Becca to be disturbed, certainly not by the idea that one of her cats was in pain. But Becca had grown used to her cats’ strange sounds. With barely a glimpse at the felines behind her, she continued typing. And so, after a moment’s pause, Clara carried on, too.“She thinks that it was her ancestor who got them in trouble with the witch trials,” she said. Thanks to her particular gifts, Clara had accompanied Becca to both the library and the city’s archives, and considered herself well versed in that aspect of her work.
“Well, it was their fault.” Another sniff of that neat black velvet nose. Laurel claimed their family history as her own area of expertise.“Great Grandmama would never have been so careless.”
Clara didn’t comment. In part, because she agreed—cats had been caught up in witchcraft trials over the centuries almost always because of mistakes their people had made. In part, because she was also hoping to hear more of what Becca was trying to communicate to this aunt of hers. Although she vaguely understood the idea of writing, she couldn’t read. It was only because of her diligence staring at Becca’s keyboard that she even managed to make sense of the flat, scentless images that popped up there, seemingly at the coaxing of her person’s quick-moving fingers. Thanks to Laurel—even if she was loath to admit it—Clara knew the basics of her own family history. Knew about their ancient lineage and their bond with the special humans with whom they lived. Still, both her sisters had been frustratingly vague about the details of their royal duties. Clara was hoping for more.
So, it seemed, was Becca, from the hopeful lift in her voice.“If you have any information, would you let me know?”
A flourish and a final tap, and Becca sat back with a sigh that would have done Harriet proud. Of course, by then, Clara’s oldest sister was snoring gently once again on her special velvet pillow. In truth, Clara was starting to doze, too. But when Becca roused herself to head toward her bed soon after, her smallest cat joined her, knowing her sisters would be along soon.
Chapter 10
It seemed but a moment later that Becca’s phone began to buzz.
“Aunt Tabby?” Becca sat up, blinking, as if from a pleasant dream, unsettling the three felines who were stretched out alongside her. “No, wait,” she reached for the device, which had begun to skitter across the nightstand like a beetle on its back. “Of course not. Hey, Maddy, what’s up? How was the party?”