I was beginning to feel a little uneasy myself. I’d dealt with hoarders and shut-ins and all sorts of people and places in my time. Some of the situations just didn’t sit well with me, and this was one of them. This isn’t a nice place, I told Maggie. I don’t see any way that Boris is breaking the law, but I can’t believe he makes people live like this.
Maggie made a sound of agreement.
“Did you know he was going to run away?”
Sam shook his head.
Gently, I said, “I’m not going to tell Boris if you did.”
“I didn’t, I promise. Look, we all know our contracts. Boris might yell a lot, and he’s dirty as hell, but he’s not too bad a master. I’ve heard of worse. Mike didn’t give any sign he was planning on leaving. We just woke up one day and he was gone. Left a note for me saying that he’d muddied the trail and not to follow him.”
“His handwriting?”
“Definitely.”
“What does muddied the trail mean?”
Sam shook his head.
I asked, “And what day was this?”
“Last Tuesday.”
“Boris went looking for him?”
Sam shrugged. “I guess. Boris is gone a lot, what with his work. He said Mike would come back on his own soon. Threatened us all if we tried to leave. Then went about like business as usual. I was honestly surprised that he bothered to hire someone at all. He didn’t seem to care all that much. Then on Friday he got blood-drunk and started ranting about how if he didn’t make an example of Mike, then we’d all leave him.” It took Sam a moment to realize what he’d said, then his face went white. “But like I said,” he added quickly, “Boris is a good master. Great, you know?”
“Of course, of course,” I assured him gently. On the other side of the room, in the kennel that was out of sight, I heard something move around. It sounded bigger than the birds. I ignored it and brought Boris’s file up on my phone. “There are two other thralls, right? JD Butler and Ed Czechowski. Do they know where Michael went?”
Sam shook his head. “JD is brand new, and Michael and Ed have always avoided each other. Can’t say I’ve heard them exchange more than a few sentences.”
I wasn’t going to waste my time, then. “If you don’t mind me asking, what made you want to become a thrall?”
For a moment I thought I’d made a major misstep. Sam turned visibly pale, cleared his throat, and looked over one shoulder. He glanced around the room at anything but me before muttering, “Wanna be a vampire, you know? Immortality. Play video games for the next few hundred years.”
Humans are very odd, Maggie commented.
I pulled the conversation back to my quarry. “Do you have any idea where Michael might have gone?”
“If I did, I would have told Boris.”
“Right. Is there anything you might have … overlooked? Any little details that could be helpful in me tracking down Michael?”
Sam glanced off to one side, looking even more uncomfortable than normal. “I don’t know.”
Definitely lying, Maggie snorted.
I forced Sam to meet my gaze. “You’re sure?”
“Well … I mean, Boris probably already told you this, but Michael was getting sweet on a girl at his work.”
I wrote this down, using the opportunity to cuss Boris out in the back of my head. That asshole couldn’t have at least mentioned that Michael had a job? And a girlfriend? Aloud, I said, “Where does he work?”
“At a little garden shop down in Hinckley. Mum’s Hearth and Yard. I don’t know his girlfriend’s name. I don’t …” He trailed off, looking down at his hands.
Even without Maggie saying anything, I got the distinct impression there was more information. “Sam, my job is to bring Michael back safe and sound. There are proper Hunters out there who get their kicks from tracking down and murdering runaway thralls. If I don’t find him, one of them might.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. I’d heard a story or two. But it wasn’t necessarily the truth either. “His girlfriend’s name would be really helpful.”
I could see him wrestling with the decision. Finally, he said, “I think he wrote her name down somewhere. I’ll go look around his room. Be right back.” He hurried out before I could say anything. I heard his footsteps go up the stairs, then down a long hallway to the other end of the house. I pursed my lips, feeling a little pleased and a little crappy. Maggie, thankfully, kept her comments to herself.
I’d been alone for maybe twenty seconds when I heard a shuffle in that kennel in the corner. Curious what other pets they kept, I began to walk that direction but came up short when I heard a soft male voice say, “Hey. Hey, you. Come here.”
I paused. It was hard to pinpoint the exact location of the voice. “Excuse me?”
“Shush. I’m not talking to you.”
I glanced over my shoulder, then began to peek into boxes looking for some kind of radio or phone or something. “Who are you talking to?”
“Who do you think? Genie lady, would you tell your human to shut up for a moment so we can have a conversation?”
Uhhhh … Maggie said in my head. What the hell was that?
If my hackles hadn’t been up before, they were now. Maggie?
I have no idea. I can’t even tell where it’s coming from.
“It’s coming from the kennel in the corner, dummies. Human, bring your genie lady friend over here.”
You can hear me? Maggie demanded. It was the first time I’d ever heard her speak – inside my head – to someone else. It was weird.
“Of course I can hear you. Now you, human. Alek? Come over here.”
Slowly, hesitantly, I walked to the corner of the room. It was occupied by a kennel about six foot by six foot and maybe four feet tall. At first glance, it contained a whole bunch of old towels, a litter box, and an exceptionally large cat. The cat was maybe twenty or twenty-five pounds with a sleek blue-cream torte coat. It took a few moments of watching him before the cat gave itself a little shake and I could see that the fur on his back was actually wings that blended in perfectly with the rest of him.
Holy shit, Maggie said. That’s a sphinx!
I stared cautiously at the animal. I thought sphinxes had human faces. And were female.
“That’s rude of you to talk about me like I can’t hear you both. I’m an Egyptian sphinx, not a Greek one,” the cat – or rather, the sphinx – said. “And the human face things has a little truth to it but is kind of garbled, and … I’m not going to sit here and argue with you about what I am. I just need you to open the kennel.”
I could see that the kennel was latched, but it also had a little lock on it. Nothing fancy, just the kind people used on their luggage. “Why?” I asked.
“That’s a stupid question and you know it.” The sphinx’s brow furrowed, and he licked down one leg before staring back up at me. “Because I’m not an exotic pet. I’m an intelligent being. Because Boris is a jerk and Sam is going to be back here any moment.”
It took me two seconds of thinking about my own situation, then Maggie’s situation, then this admittedly adorable catlike creature talking to me before I bent over and fixed the lock between two fingers. I gave it a single hard wrench and felt it give way. I flipped the latch for good measure, then watched the front swing open. It was in that moment that I remembered how the sphinx from the tale of Oedipus definitely used to eat people.
I could have sworn that the sphinx smiled at me. Then, with the fwip of his tail and flutter of its wings, it slipped through the kennel door and disappeared into the labyrinth of junk within the house. I eyed the spot I saw him disappear, but I didn’t have time to think about it. I heard footsteps on the stairs and hurried over to the spot I’d been standing and pretended that I’d been on my phone the whole time. Sam appeared a moment later, a scrap of paper in his hands. He gave it to me.