Sherry had never been an avid reader of high fantasy—she preferred the sorts of stories that involved interesting things happening to ordinary people in the real world, for the slightly embarrassing reason that it made it easier for her to imagine getting to go on an adventure of her own—but she’d been around for long enough to recognize a genre convention when she was fed one by her own fat marmalade cat. “That,” she said, “sounds like a very thin plot contrivance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Prithee, sir,” Sherry said, “that sounds like you just made it up.”
The cat puffed up his tail at her. “Of course it’smade up,” he said. “As are all things that matter. If you and I stood before a priest and asked to be married now, we would be refused, but had I the shape of a man, the priest could say a few words and bind us unto eternity in the eyes of all laws on earth and heaven. What aspect of that is not made up? My form and yours, the words, earthly law? Belief, all of it. Adherence to convention. A convention much younger than I am, woman, and laws that were made whenshewas already older than most rivers. She hews to more ancient laws. And so must you, Mistress Pinkwhistle, if you hope to have the best of her.”
If someone had been there to ask how Sherry had felt as the cat spoke, she would have been forced to admit to how all the hairs on her arms were prickling. She tried to act unaffected. “Or what? What will happen if I just ignore you?”
“Then you shall carry on as you have been,” he said. “And labor as a mummer in her little murder plays. Perhaps more of your mortal companions will be the next to die for the sake of her amusement. What is the pinch-faced astrologer’s name?”
Sherry was starting to feel sick again. More murders. She might be trapped like this forever: endlessly chasing after killers at the whim of…someone. Something.Her.It rankled at her a bit to have to take the deal. The problem was that the cat held all the cards, despite his lack of thumbs. “She’s apsychologist, not an astrologer. And you can quit threatening my friends. I should have named you something else, Lord Thomas. You haven’t turned into a more pleasant person over the centuries. Thomas More probably would have made a nicer cat.”
“That’s whatyousay, Mistress Pinkwhistle,” Lord Thomas said. “But only because you’ve never had to sit through adinner with Thomas More. The only thing more unbearable than his sanctimony was his halitosis.”
“You’re just jealous that you never had a flattering Oscar-winning movie made about you,” Sherry told him. “Andyourbreath smells like cat food.”
The cat gave a deep, old-man, “Hm!” which was almost as unnerving as when he cleared his throat. Then he said, “Do we have a deal, woman?”
“Mistress Pinkwhistle,” she reminded him. His faux-Tudor syntax was weirdly contagious. “And I suppose that we do. Though I’m only agreeing under protest.”
“I’ll have the stenographer enter your protestation into the record,” said the cat. It was a particularly bad bit of dialogue for an English lawyer from the 1500s. Stenographers hadn’t even beeninvented, for goodness’ sake. Sherry was getting the sense that this Lord of Cats wasn’t taking any of this very seriously, which she supposed was exactly what you would expect from a Lord of Cats, when she thought about it. Then, even more absurdly, Lord Thomas held out one little furry paw. “We shall swear our oath on a handshake.”
Sherry shook the paw. She managed to keep herself from giggling until after she’d released it, for fear of his claws. “Deal,” she managed. Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she said, “Is it really a handshake, considering?”
She expected the cat to say something rude and sarcastic in return. Instead, he only hopped off the coffee table and trotted toward the kitchen with his tail held high in the air, pausing only to say, “Meow.”
Sherry blinked. Then she frowned. “Are youreallyjust a cat again?”
Sherry’s cat didn’t respond to her question. In ordinarycircumstances, this wouldn’t have made her feel uncomfortable. She eyed him. “I’m not letting you sleep in my bedroom either way.”
The cat ignored her and continued into the kitchen. A moment later she heard him start to scream for his dinner exactly like he usually did.
There was, she thought, not very much difference in the behavior of a cat and a high-handed, chauvinistic Tudor autodidact in the body of a cat. The only thing to truly set them apart was the vocabulary. She sighed. Then she got up and went to the kitchen to open a new can of horrible salmon-flavored wet food.
Nine
The next morning, Sherry started her day by packing her biggest quilted purse with essential supplies. First, she put in a few ugly plastic rosaries she’d been given at first communions and baptisms and had never bothered clearing out of her junk drawer. Next, she added in some crystals. Finally, she went into the kitchen to fill a few small Ziploc bags with salt and empty out the spray bottle that she used to keep Lord Thomas off the counters. She showed the spray bottle to the cat, who was basking in a sunbeam on the kitchen floor. “I’m going to fill this with holy water,” she told him. “So don’t get any ideas. I’d like my cat to stay a cat. Any funny business and you’re getting the spritz.”
Lord Thomas rolled over onto his back to show her his soft white belly. She frowned. Either he reallywasjust a cat again, in which case her little speech was embarrassing, or he wasn’t a cat and was activelytryingto embarrass her by making her feel as if she’d just been standing alone in her kitchen tough-talking a harmless little kitty like they were a couple of rival mafiosos. She felt her cheeks go warm. Then she shoved the salt and spray bottle into her bag and left.
From her house she went straight to church, where she filled up her spray bottle from the convenient metal containernear the font, the purpose of which had always previously eluded her. It hadn’t occurred to her to think that it might be there just in case someone had an urgent case of demon problems. Maybe they were required by the church in case of demonic mishaps in the same way that the government mandated sprinklers in restaurants in case of grease fires.
From the church she marched directly back to the sheriff’s department, straight past the front desk and into the sheriff’s office. Sheriff Brown, predictably, looked extremely irritated. “You can’t just barge in here whenever you want, Sherry,” he said. “What is it?”
“I’m very sorry,” Sherry said, and spritzed him straight in the face with the holy water.
Sheriff Brown made a horrible roaring sound, like something between a T. rex and a garbage disposal. Sherry spritzed him again, more to try to get him to stop making that noise than for any other reason. This time the sound he made was a very ordinary human-sounding squawk. “What the f—hell, Sherry?” he said, with a look in his eye like a man who had sublimated his desire to say a curse word into a more respectable urge to slap a senior citizen. Sherry took a step back. “You can’t just— Get out of my office,now!”
“Only if you take these,” Sherry said, and shoved two crystals, some salt, and a plastic rosary into his hand. “And promise to keep them on you.”
Sheriff Brown looked like a man who was prepared to argue. He opened his outraged mouth. Sherry cut him off before he could start. “Just take them, and I promise that I’ll leave and stop bothering you.”
The sheriff gave her a baleful look but didn’t projectile vomit or try to break his own neck again. Instead, he took thefistful of items Sherry was offering and jammed them into his pocket. “Leave.”
“Keep them on you,” she said. “Maybe you should put them in a lanyard or something. Like an amulet.”
“Get out before I arrest you,” Sheriff Brown said, and Sherry got out. She couldn’t even blame the demonic possession for getting kicked out of the sheriff’s office this time: that had been the very ordinary voice of a more-than-ordinarily annoyed Sheriff Brown. She tried not to worry too much that she’d made a mistake by coming by. She didn’t want the sheriff to be possessed, but she also didn’t want to be on a very not-possessed sheriff’s bad side.
