A bit of an impish impulse seized her for a moment. “What for?”
He gave her a long look. “For your donation to the police athletic league fundraiser. That was a really generous check. It will make a real difference to the kids.”
She smiled despite herself. “Oh,” she said. “You’re welcome.”
“Goodbye, Sherry.”
“Goodbye, Peter,” she said. She supposed she would have to write that check once she went home.
•••
Her friends kept all their promises. Janine came to pick her up as soon as she was given the green light to leave, and Charlotte came by with Sir Thomas in his cat carrier a few hours later. The doctor at the hospital who discharged her had told her that she needed full rest for the next few days, body and brain both, so that was exactly what she did. It was wonderful that doing exactly what she felt at a bone-deep level she needed to do was now medically necessary.
On the first full evening of her doctor-ordered convalescence, she was enjoying a post-dinner doze—she had eaten wonton soup while sitting up in bed, which had felt like a level of decadence worthy of an unusually louche Roman emperor—when she was jolted awake by a familiar voice very close by her ear. “Are you awake, Mistress Pinkwhistle?”
Sherry said something that, if it could be spelled, would probably be spelled something like “Unggblaughah?!” and sat up again. Lord Thomas was sitting at the foot of her bed. He was wearing a green ribbon tied in a bow around his neck. She stared at him for a moment, goggle-eyed. “I am now,” she said finally. “How did you get that ribbon on your neck?”Shehadn’t put it on him.
“I wear this ribbon in celebration of your great triumphagainst the Ancient One!” the cat said in a voice so plummy you could use it to glaze a duck.
“Oh,” Sherry said. “That’s nice. But how did youget it on?” For some reason this was, at the moment, striking her as the really pressing point.
“By various methods,” the cat said airily. “And now, thanks to our mutual efforts, I am free of her influence!”
“Oh,” she said again. “Thatisnice. I’m happy for you.” She meant it. The possibly evil spirit of possibly actual Lord Thomas Cromwell had, despite her best efforts, grown on her a little, in the same way that a shockingly pink mold had grown over a casserole that she’d put off clearing out of her fridge over the past few frantic weeks of demon hunting. All sorts of strange things could change in your life while you were fighting evil spirits. “What will you do next?”
“I will slip this mortal form and disport myself among the fairy folk, for a time,” Lord Thomas said.
“…Oh,” Sherry said cautiously. “Like…a vacation?”
“Yes!” Lord Thomas said, and started kneading his little paws on her duvet. “How prettily you put it, Mistress Pinkwhistle! I shallgo on vacation.”
“That’s great,” Sherry said sincerely. “I hope you get a nice tan. So you won’t be in my cat anymore?”
“I will vacate your cat entirely, so that you may stroke him at your pleasure,” Lord Thomas said. “Although,” he added, “if you have need of me, you need merely call my name with true intent, and I shall fly to your side. I now owe you a modest debt, Mistress Pinkwhistle.”
“Should I callLord Thomas Cromwell?” Sherry asked, feeling very clever, “or yourtruename?”
The cat’s voice changed then. The silly TV-movie-Tudorvoice disappeared. Its voice now was a hiss and a meow, a mouse’s dying squeak and the rustle of tall grasses. “You may not have my true name, mistress,” it said. “But call me with intent, and I will come. Farewell to you, Mistress Pinkwhistle, giver of tuna cans, scratcher of ears, opener of the kitchen door to release me from my bondage.”
“Goodbye,” Sherry said. Her cat gave a slow blink. Then he rolled himself up into a ball and went to sleep. She watched him for a while. Then she went to sleep, too.
The next few days passed in the same way. She lay in bed, and listened to quiet music, and petted Lord Thomas’s soft, warm sides until he stretched and purred. He didn’t have a single rude thing to say. Why would he? Cats couldn’t talk, after all. No one was murdered. An utterly horrified Janine demanded to know who’d been letting her leave her house in shoulder pads and bright-blue eye shadow. Sherry stopped ever seeing Charlotte without a cell phone either in her hand or very close to it. It came to Sherry’s attention that, in the usual course of things, running the library involved a shocking number of extremely boring budget talks and board meetings that the demon had apparently dispensed with as not essential for plot purposes. Winesap went about its business like a nice, sleepy little rural town should.
Eventually, Sherry was well enough to move back into her house and get back to ordinary things again. She worked a few shifts at the library (poor Connie was still tasked with all of the meetings, for now), beat back the new spring weeds that were starting to sprout in the garden, and made a few cautious ventures into Alan’s house to attempt to start organizing his things. She reached out to Eli to find out if he or his children wanted anything from the house. He didn’t reply, so she didher best to start sorting out the things that might have sentimental value and organize them tidily away into the basement. She’d told herself that she didn’t want Alan’s house, that she’d never move in, but that was a lie. It was a beautiful house, it was much closer to the library, and it had been left to her by someone she’d loved. She could admit that now. She’d loved Alan, in her own way, and he seemed to have loved her back. It was too late to have realized it. It was something, at least.
One morning, as she sat in her living room dawdling over a cup of tea and a novel, her old landline started to ring.
That was strange. Ever since the demon left, everyone had gone back to using their cell phones as if they’d never stopped, even though she’d had to exchange numbers with her newer friends. Father Barry sometimes texted her memes, which she always found funny even when she didn’t get the joke, because a priest sending memes reminded her of the time she’d seen a small dog in Manhattan wearing four tiny red leather shoes. Probably because of its lack of capacity to send memes as well as call people, her landline had been quiet for days. But now it was ringing. It was a number she recognized. Once she’d left the fog that the demon had created, she’d been able to search the internet to try to find where the number she’d used to call Caroline was from, and had learned that the number was from Eastern Europe: further research suggested that she might be using an internet service for calling and changing the country code to mask her location. It was a comfort, in a way, to think that whatever Sherry’s best friend’s flaws had been, the woman had never been stupid.
She answered it. On the other end of the line, Caroline said, “Sherry? Is that you?”
Sherry was lucky that her landline’s cord was long enough for her to sit down hard in her armchair without pulling it out of the wall. She did so. “Caroline?”
Caroline gave that familiar laugh of hers. Her laugh that said they were both in on the joke. Then she said, “Wow, Sherry, I’vemissedyou.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Sherry said. “That’s why I called. I’ve been thinking about you all the time. I know you probably don’t want to tell me too much, but—how are you?”
That was all it took. It wasn’t surprising, really. Caroline had always loved to talk about herself, and she’d always taken it for granted that Sherry would listen in wide-eyed fascination to every word that she said. And she wasn’t wrong about that, was the embarrassing thing. Sherry always had orbited Caroline like a wayward bit of space station. Not now, though. Not exactly. She was listening as attentively as ever, but she wasn’t letting herself get caught up in the narrative as Caroline spoke, as much as she would have enjoyed letting herself sit back and be swept away with the dark river, and the thick rubbery leaves of the trees, and the sudden shock of a macaw against the sky. Caroline talked about music, and rice and beans with a view of the beach, and meeting hippies and travelers and American retirees who’d settled in the same place that she’d chosen.
