I am not, at first, concerned. I have made my toilette, and she must hers. She had previously found water in an adjoining chamber, and I assume she has gone there. The building is not unoccupied. Alongside the distinct murmur of the city’s voices, I hear the rumble of plumbing deep within the walls. And so I stretch and groom, my sleep having left the fur on my right side slightly matted, and then dismount from the desk. The girl has left me the remainder of the cheese, alongside a shallow bowl of water. I pause momentarily, weighing the value of these dry scraps as a lure for something fresher, and then I eat. While there are rodents in the vicinity, the human presence is keeping them in check. The day is ending. Even beyond the darkening of the shadow that falls upon this building, I can feel the growing chill. Soon enough the city will be quiet, and then the hunting may commence.
Still, I am not quite easy. Not as the gloom deepens and the girl does not reappear. The plumbing has grown quiet; the rush of water through the recesses of the walls ceased and the occasional footfall down that worn linoleum replaced by the nervous scurry of lighter, unshod steps. I should begin my hunt: there is a crevice behind the desk that smells ripe with possibility. And yet, I am concerned. My earlier dream haunts me – the shadows of men. The surprise. The attack. And my sense of the growing darkness does not help. The girl is not a cat. She is vulnerable and she is alone.
I ascend the windowsill with a leap and stick my head under the raised pane. The sightlines are bad here. Off to the right, the glow of dusk reflects red off brick; to the left, the dark of the alley. The breeze brings me what I need, however. I smell the ebbing of humanity, the quieting of the traffic. And then – yes! – the girl.
Only she is in distress. I catch sweat and the bitter scent of fear. I can hear, over the distant hubbub, her labored breathing as she runs.
I must rely on my eyes, my least favorite sense. I peer down – there is a ledge of concrete, decorative at some point, perhaps half the distance to the ground. It appears to be solid, although I see how the edge has worn and crumbles. And so I gather myself up, twitching in anticipation, and I jump. The ledge holds; my paw pads grip its grainy surface even as my claws fail to penetrate. The scent is stronger from here and I catch a glimpse of her. The scarf she had donned has fallen back and she is hurrying, like some frightened mouse. Only I cannot ascertain who pursues her – or what.
One more leap and I am on the street, hitting the pavement a bit too hard for comfort.
‘Blackie!’ Passing by the alley, she has caught the movement and races down to scoop me up. Hissing, I retreat. This is no time to compromise my movement, and she freezes in response. Ignoring the look of pain on her face, I make my own approach, brushing against her shin to reassure her as I take in the scents and sounds of the street. No, there is no pursuit, and so I lead the way back out of the alley, pausing at its mouth. I am pleased to see her hesitate as well, to see her taking in the diminished traffic before she ventures forth. She has resumed her furtive mode, leaning into the building, the better to pass unseen. At the entrance, she barely opens the door, and when we both slip in we begin to hurry again, me bounding silently up the stairs as she keeps pace, her breathing hot and hard.
‘I don’t understand it.’ Once inside our sanctuary, she closes the door and locks it, leaning against it as if to add her slight form to its force. She has taken a bottle from her jacket and drinks deeply before pouring some in my dish. Water, I am glad to see. It has a different tang than that from the nearby tap, but it is clean and so we both drink. ‘I knew him, Blackie.’
She slumps on the sofa and I look up at her. She does not need my green eyes for prompts, however. Something has happened, and without the boy here she seeks to unburden herself to me.
‘I couldn’t figure out this Rivers thing, so I went to see Jonah – Jonah Silver.’ She takes another drink and licks her lips. I am right about her fear. She has been running, but her pace is not entirely responsible for her quickened breath. ‘He was the last client the old man finished a job for. I worked with him on that case, Blackie. It was my first real case. And I thought …’
She pauses. Unlike me, she has a face that changes as thoughts pass through it, like clouds in the sky. Or reflections in a puddle, perhaps, obscuring the depth beneath. I see hurt as well as fear, and beyond it all, confusion, which makes its way into words.
‘He knows me. He congratulated me, Blackie. I was the one who noticed the lack of damage to the storeroom lock – the fact that nobody had forced it or picked their way in.’ She flexes her hands in a gesture I recognize. I, too, flex my claws, remembering a successful hunt.
‘I mean, I kind of think the old man saw that too, but, anyway …’ She shrugs. ‘I thought he’d be doing great now. Now that we solved his loss problem, figured out that it was an inside job. But he’s not, Blackie. He’s barely keeping his head above water. The place is a shambles. And personally, he’s a wreck. I mean, when he saw me, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I thought, you know, maybe he’d heard about the old man and he was worried about me. Maybe he’d heard I’d gotten hurt too. But I think he was scared for himself. He said something about Fat Peter …’