“No, you wouldn’t,” I growled.
“What’s going on?” Quoth asked again.
“This she-witch claims she’s Grimalkin,” Heathcliff glowered. “You know anything about this, bird? Shouldn’t you shifter types recognize each other?”
Quoth sniffed the air, frowning. “That’s Grimalkin, all right. I’d know that smell and those claws anywhere. But how is she a human?” He turned to Grimalkin. “If you’re a shapeshifter, then how come I’ve never sensed your thoughts or seen you shift before?”
“I’m not like you, able to switch between bodies on a whim,” Grimalkin frowned, stretching her arms out above her head. “I’ve been trapped in the feline form for centuries. My thoughts would no longer be recognizable as human. When my granddaughter spoke my son’s words, she lifted the spell, and now I am free.”
A flare of bright light streaked across my eyes, followed by a sliver of pain through my skull. My headache was worsening. I rubbed my temple as her words registered. “Excuse me, your granddaughter?”
“Why, yes. I thought it was obvious.” Grimalkin struck a pose. “Young lady, I’m your grandmother.”
Chapter Eighteen
“My grandmother is a cat,” I said the words slowly, hoping gravitas would somehow make them more believable. It didn’t.
“Skepticism doesn’t become you, my dear.” Grimalkin sat down on the floor, folding her feet beneath her. She certainly did have cat-like movements, and the way she curled her fingers around into claws and said every word in a sensuous purr… “I’m not really a cat, in the same that way your delicious friend here is not really a bird.”
I rubbed my temple. The headache circled my head. This time, it had nothing to do with my declining eyesight. “Fine. None of this makes any sense, but fine. If you’re my grandmother, then who is my father?”
“Why ask me, when you’ve already figured that out?”
I thought back to the conversation I had with Heathcliff just this week, when he’d shown me the ledger, and we’d figured out that my dad was both Herman Strepel and Mr. Simson. Grimalkin had been in the room, so she must’ve heard us talking. “But we haven’t. All I said was—”
I thought for a second there you were going to tell me my dad was a dead epic poet, and then we’d have to get your head examined.
That was it. That was what I said.
Holy shiteballs. Isis be damned.
“My father is Homer,” I said, slowly, believing and yet not believing.
Grimalkin nodded.
“Homer, the ancient Greek poet. Homer.”
She nodded again.
Heathcliff whistled.
“I…” My head pounded. “I need to sit down.”
“You’re already sitting,” my grandmother the former cat pointed out.
“Right.” My nails dug into the velvet. “Of course. Um… my father is Homer. How is that possible?”
“Don’t play the fool, Mina. It doesn’t become you. You know all this already. Your father has been traveling through time – from the ancient world to the modern day via this very bookshop, gathering inspiration for his poems. On one of his journeys, he copulated with a young woman who, nine months later, gave birth to you. I assume you don’t need the actual details of how his seed came to enter her—”
“No thanks.” I covered my ears. “I’ve got a handle on that. Other things, not so much. Why is my father jaunting through time? If he’s still writing his poems, then how is it we’re reading them now? Isn’t that some kind of paradox?”
“Pffft,paradox.” With a wave of her hand, Grimalkin dismissed two hundred years of theoretical physics. “My dear, we’re talking aboutliterature. It works because your father needs it to work. For thestory. How many men do you think they could really fit into the Trojan Horse? Don’t you think the Trojans would have been the least bit suspicious of a giant wooden construction that was clearly hollow? How did those men last all that time cramped up inside the wooden belly of the beast without one of them farting or coughing or breaking down into girlish giggles? It doesn’t matter how thingsactuallywork, as long as they make a good story.”
Now my head reallywaspounding. A jolt of violent green light danced across my vision. “But… but… why are you a cat? You said you’d been stuck as a cat for centuries, but you don’t look a day over forty.”
“Forty?” she glared at me. “Have some respect. I am merely twenty-five years of age.”
“How can you be twenty-five, and also my grandmother, andalsocenturies old?”
