Portia looked up in shock. “What does it mean by ‘until passing.’ ”
Harry frowned. “Death, I suppose.”
“How strange,” Portia said, and made a face as she shivered in distaste. “I don’t like this spell.”
“It can’t work,” Harry assured her. “How many of us choose the hour of our death. How would one know when to start chewing the resin—” He broke off as if struck by a new thought. “Wait a moment, a suicide would know the hour of her death.”
Portia looked down at the recipe and shook her head. “There is no way of knowing if this spell was used or not. I don’t like thinking about it.” She started to shut the book but Harry placed his hand on the page.
“How did you find this book? Has it been in your family?” he asked.
“No, I found it in the attic at Camber Hall.”
“Was it in a trunk?”
“Actually,” she said, a strange sense of foreboding rising within her, “Owl gave it to me.”
“The cat?”
Portia nodded and told him of going up the attic to put a bucket under where the roof leaked.
“So the book was on top of something it could be knocked or pushed off of?” Harry asked.
“I assume that was the case,” Portia answered. “I don’t really know. There are stacks of wooden boxes and crates and trunks up there. I was weaving my way around them when the book dropped down in front of me. I didn’t know why until I saw Owl peek around a corner. She could have jumped from the top of something and knocked the book off.”
Harry sat up. “Where is the cat now?”
“I don’t know,” Portia admitted. “The last time I saw her was the first time we met here. She was waiting for me. I haven’t seen her since.”
He pushed the covers away and stood, pressing his brow with the fingers of one hand as if trying to answer a riddle. He looked to her. “I said to you once, I thought the cat was Fenella.”
“And I thought the idea ridiculous. I still do.”
“Fenella took her own life as well,” he said,ignoring her criticism. “She knewwhenshe was going to die.”
“Oh, not again. Why do you keep suggesting that Owl, a poor little cat with deformed ears, is a two-hundred-year-old witch? That’s impossible.”
He knelt beside her. “Not if she is reincarnating herself.”
“Over and over again?” Portia let her doubts show. “Cats can’t repeat chants.”
“Portia, your cat came to me at General Montheath’s house. I was going to leave Glenfinnan. I’d exhausted every resource in the surrounding area without success. I decided I must go to Edinburgh. There is a man there who specializes in country tales and traditions. Someone suggested he might know of Fenella’s legend. I doubted it but I was on a cold trail. I didn’t know what else to do. And then your cat woke me. I was asleep, in a deep dream, and I didn’t know what it was waking me, and I threw her off the bed. She ran under the wardrobe to hide and I started thinking about how strange it was that a cat had managed to steal inside Monty’s house. The place is a dog haven. They bark at everything. Monty has no control over any of them. And yet, not one of those hounds made a sound to alert us there was a cat on the premises. So I looked under thewardrobe and the cat wasn’t there. I couldn’t find her anywhere in the room.”
“Perhaps you dreamed her,” Portia suggested gently.
“You can’t feel dreams. I heard the cat purr, felt the roughness of its tongue. Your cat was in the room and that is when I decided I needed to stay here.”
Portia looked down at the words of the spell written in the book. Owl was an independent creature and she did have a habit of appearing without fanfare. “There must be a hidey-hole or some other opening for a cat to use to find her way into Montheath’s house. Cats are very clever that way.”
Harry shook his head. “I know to my bones, Portia, your cat is a part of this. I told you that once, and I feel it more certainly than before.” He took the book from her. “But if your cat is Fenella, then why give us the book? Her hatred was so strong, she would never offer any clues to lifting the curse.”
She didn’t speak. What he was saying defied common sense.
“We need to find your cat,” Harry said.
“Owl comes home when she feels like,” Portia answered, a bit uncomfortable with the idea of him hunting her pet.
“I must find the cat.” He came to his feet and started dressing.
