“That was fun,” whispered Mia outside her room, and I had to agree. I felt a little like Zorro, avenger of the weak and disinherited, and with that sense of elation, I fell asleep.
I don’t know why I didn’t dream of anything nice, only of a man with a slouch hat and a huge knife in his hand chasing me through the deserted streets of Hampstead. Something seemed to be wrong with my feet; I could hardly raise them from the ground. And the man with the knife kept coming closer. I wanted to call for help, but no sound came out. Instead my leaden feet stumbled toward the nearest house. I might be able to get help there. When I saw the mint-green front door, I knew I was only dreaming. Of course. Hopefully, Henry was waiting on the other side of it.
Relieved, I turned to face my pursuer.
“I’ll carve a Z into your forehead,” he cried. It was Charles, and he wasn’t wearing a slouch hat, but his trapper’s cap. I looked at him, baffled. What was my unconscious mind trying to tell me this time?
“When I come out, I hope you’ll be gone,” I said. Then I cautiously opened the door.
“About time too.” Henry looked around it. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” I said, trying to shoo Charles away with a gesture. “Just let me … er … tidy up a little first.”
“No need.” With a soft laugh, Henry closed the door. “Why are you so late? I thought you were never coming.”
“Mia and I had something to do first. A little cosmetic alteration to Mrs. Spencer’s front garden. She’d been saying horrible things about Lottie and Mom again today. So we chopped down her silly peacock.”
“Mr. Snuggles?”
“You mean you know him too?”
Henry laughed. “Everyone knows Mr. Snuggles. You mean you and your sister really…?”
“Chopped him up like matchwood, yup,” I said proudly. “I’d like to be there when she looks out of her window in the morning.”
Henry looked around, shivering. He rubbed his arms. As usual, he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and it was winter in my dream. “How about going somewhere else, let’s say the London Eye?” And before I could answer, we were already in a glazed capsule high up on the giant wheel above the bank of the Thames, with London by night at our feet.
“You did that!” I said. I couldn’t have imagined it in such detail myself, because while Ernest had brought us here on our sightseeing tour last September, the line of people waiting to ride on the Eye had been so long that we abandoned the idea.
“Yes, I did.” Henry put his arm around my waist and pulled me close. “Romantic, eh?”
He was right. There was no one else in the capsule, and it wasn’t moving. Glazed all around, it offered a fantastic view. Only, the green door didn’t quite fit into this futuristic scene. I put my head back and looked up at the sky through the glass. The stars were sparkling so splendidly that Henry had probably given them an extra boost, but that made no difference.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“You’re beautiful,” Henry whispered back, sounding perfectly serious, and for a moment I forgot the stars and everything else. What in the world could be more important than kissing Henry under a glass dome high above the sea of lights that was London? Warmth spread through me, and Henry gave a little groan as I nestled closer to him. He kissed me harder, burying his hand in my hair.
Something hit the glass above us hard, and I jumped. There it was again. And again. It bounced off our capsule and fell to the depths below.
“What did that?” There were more and more of them. Clonk. Clunk.
“Not me this time,” said Henry.
“Me neither,” I assured him.
Henry stared up. “Too big for hailstones. They look more like … lucky cats?”
Now I saw them too. Beckoning Japanese cats made of plastic really were raining down from the sky and bouncing off the glass roof. A red-and-white one had just landed above us, and as it slowly slid over the domed roof and downward, it seemed to be looking straight into our eyes.
Henry let go of me. “Well, if you’re not doing it on purpose, Liv, I’m afraid your unconscious mind is trying to tell us something.”
I knew he was right: this was still my dream. I’d made it rain beckoning cats. Or rather, my worried unconscious mind was warning me not to go on kissing Henry but talk to him instead.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping onto the seat in the capsule. The odd hail of cats had stopped falling.
“Didn’t you like the cat?” Henry sat down at the other end of the seat, and I was glad of the distance between us. For the first time since he’d come through the door, I looked at him properly. He was even paler than usual, and there were dark shadows under his gray eyes.
“Has Amy given you her tummy bug?”
Henry raised an eyebrow. “You want to talk about stomach infections?” Was I wrong, or did I really hear a touch of annoyance in his voice?