"No!" Kate flung her cup at him; he leaped out of its path and it shattered against the wall. He sat down again facing her, his yellow eyes filled with a mad light. The cat was mad. There was no reason that such a beast, with the sentient skills of a human, could not be as stark raving crazy as some poor, demented human.
But she did want to know how he had learned about her, and what else he might know.
Watching her, he smiled. "The Cat Museum, Kate Osborne. There is more information there than you have found."
"I have been thoroughly through the archives."
"The oral tradition, among our kind, is reliable and useful." The cat's eyes narrowed. "Nothing written. Much that can be told."
She thought of the other cats prowling the museum gardens, and she shivered. She had wondered about those cats. But now… she would not, could not ever go there again, to that place she had loved so well.
"They do not like me there," he said. "Those cats who are like us, they do not like me." He looked deeply at her. "There is indeed a hidden world, Kate Osborne. That is the world I seek. That is your true home, the world where the jewels come from."
"What, some commune hidden back in the mountains? Some colony of crazies with guards at the gate?" Where were the police? She wanted this cat out of there, she wanted this unpleasantness over with.
"A world lying deep beneath this city, Kate, a world cavernous and vast. That is the world that should have been McCabe's. The world where I, too, belong."
She was certain that when the law arrived the cat would vanish the way he had come, that she would be rid of him-he wouldn't dare stay, he daren't sit watching while she answered the officer's questions, while she tried to skirt around the answers that she couldn't offer. Hurrying to the kitchen she removed the carving knife and opened the window again, providing for him the same four-inch escape route by which he must have entered. Sickly, desperately, she wanted this cat gone. What did he want with her? Moving quickly back into the dining room Kate found the cat still on the table, nosing at her cell phone. Snatching it up, she dropped it in her pocket. She wanted to snatch up Azrael and shove him out the window, but she was too afraid of him.
Surely when the patrol car came, if it ever did, then he would leave. The uniforms would do their work and go away again, and she would be alone. If she could ignore her ruined apartment, she'd take a long hot shower, pull some bedding together, lock her bedroom door against all possible intruders, and go to sleep. Tomorrow she'd muster the strength to pack what was fit to keep, send everything else to the trash, and… What? Move out? Abandon the city now, at once? Give notice at the studio and move back to Molena Point immediately, where she'd be safe?
Or she could transfer to Seattle, far away from the Bay Area, to work in the firm's new office there. She had not before seriously considered that option.
Watching her, the black cat yawned. "There is such a world, Kate Osborne, a world where all cats speak, a world of subterranean valleys and caverns where jewels are dug from the walls. Diamonds, rubies… Where jewelsmiths are as common as dust. Where do you think that strange work comes from that no one can identify? You know the old Celtic tales, the Irish and Welsh sagas. Do you think that ancient history is all lies because it comes to us in the form of story? Do you really not believe in those worlds, told of again and again throughout history?"
"They are only stories! Folktales! Flights of fancy, anyone knows that. There is no other world; such a thing is not possible." She stared hard at the inky beast. His amber eyes blazed back at her, as hot as the flames of hell.
"The jewels can lead us there," the cat said complacently. "If we can learn where they came from in this world, we can find the way down. A door, a passage down into that lost world." He looked at her intently.
"You are mad," she whispered. "There is no world but this. This world! Here! Now." Snatching at the edge of the table, she tilted it so violently the black tomcat could only leap off. He landed on the buffet. She wanted to throw the table at him. "Leave me alone! She has the jewels! Go to Consuela. Take the jewels. Go find your mythical door. Get out of here. Go to that other world or wherever. But get the hell out of here, I have nothing for you!"
He stood atop the buffet glaring at her, panther-black and as powerful and sinewy as any jungle beast. "What bargain would it take, Kate Osborne, for you to help me find that world and enter it? You have talents that I do not. And the jewels themselves from that world are surely a badge of power…"
"Get out! " She swung around, grabbing the poker.
He stared at her unflinching. "There is a house, Kate Osborne. An old gray Victorian in Pacific Heights, an earthquake-damaged house, closed now and awaiting repairs. Cats live there, cats that do not fit into the dull gardens of the Cat Museum, beautiful, dark-souled cats who were driven out by their tame cousins. Those cats could lead us… or perhaps we will find the door there, in that wrecked dwelling, perhaps-"
"Then go there! Go to your rebel cats! Such beasts should welcome you. Go down to that world and leave me alone." The cat was mad, he was indeed Poe's black beast, as Joe Grey once had once observed. "Go to them," she repeated. "I can't help you."
"They do not want me there. Those cats fear me; they fear my power. They rise like a tide against me."
"So what do you want from me? I can't help you."
"Those beasts come and go freely from that world. Perhaps indeed a portal is there, in that ruined place… I have seen them appear out of the darkness of that house, I have seen their eyes. I have smelled the scent of deep, dank earth on them." His eyes burned with desire. "They drive me out, Kate Osborne. They do not want me in that world."
She watched him, chilled by his words but not understanding.
"Even the dark souls, Kate Osborne, make war among themselves, battles of jealousy and power. If that world has turned dark as I think it has, if the hell beasts now rule there… then only a badge of power can have authority." His yellow eyes gleamed. "I believe the jewels with their symbols of cats wield the power I want. A talisman of authority from that world…"
She shivered, drawing back. The cat was insane, driven by an ego bigger than any lost world-and yet despite her fear of him, his words and his cloying voice strangely quickened her heart. And a little voice deep inside her kept asking, Why are there no public records for McCabe, or for my grandmother or my parents? What are McCabe's oblique references in his journals to some other world?
She shook her head, turning away. She did not want to think about this; she did not want any of this.
But then she turned back, watching the tomcat. "Is she a part of this? Is Consuela part of this insanity? Does she believe in such a world?"
His laugh was cold, teeth bared with derision. "She knows nothing about my true purpose. She has taken the jewels for her lover."
"The man who followed me?"
The cat laughed again, a snarling hiss that gave her goose bumps. "That man is not her lover. Her lover is her partner, as am I. We are three in our ventures. The man who followed you is a pawn, a simple lackey." He watched her appraisingly. "If you want to know about her partner, you must help me."
The cat jerked around as footsteps sounded outside the door in the stairwell.
"Go!" she hissed.
The cat sat unmoving, his smile evil.
Kate was so enraged, so at the end of her temper, that she snatched up the beast by the nape of his bullish neck and his thick black tail and, holding him away from her, she hiked him through to the kitchen. She was sure he'd twist around and slash her-he could shred her arm in an instant.