Page 5 of Comfort Read

At this point, Kit falls out of earshot again, despite having walked as slowly as physically possible without actually stopping. Due to leg exhaustion, obviously, and no other, less virtuous reasons.

By the time he makes his way back to the same spot, his arms now full of hastily gathered paper bags, Sage and Frankie have moved over to Jaelyn’s shooting setup, and the rest of that tantalizing conversation is lost.

Kit sighs, shakes his head at his own ridiculousness, and finishes the bag restock. Fighting a strong and unprofessional temptation to go lurk amongst the shelves and listen in, he instead sits down at the stool behind the counter’s ancient desktop computer to do some inventory updates. Cracking his knuckles, he glances with a smile at the Suspicious Cat Behavior board, amused every time he sees it. For the first time since Sage Ballard walked in, Kit wonders what Throgmorten is up to.

As if on cue—the very instant Kit thinks it—there is a crash, a yowl, and a “Jesus Christ!” from the other side of the shop. Then Jaelyn calls, “Kit?”

“Yeah?” Kit calls back, already getting up, but he pauses briefly to make another tally mark on the board.

“Do you have a cat, or are we looking at one of the ghosts you mentioned?” A brief pause, and then, before Kit can answer: “In either case, can you help? Please?”

Kit, having reached the scene by the time she finishes speaking, spots the tension point immediately. Throgmorten has climbed, clearly with intent and malice aforethought, onto the edge of a shelf behind Sage. He’s reaching out one paw in an attempt to remove an enormous black cowboy hat.

“Oh,” Kit says, his stomach sinking. “I see. Uh. You weren’t wearing that hat before.”

“I was not,” Sage confirms, quirking an eyebrow. “It’s wardrobe from the film. I wouldn’t be caught dead in it if my contract,” he levels a sharp, significant look at Frankie, “didn’t stipulate I had to wear it for this.”

“I told you not to make me your manager,” Frankie says. She looks at Kit and gestures at Sage with her thumb as if to say, “This guy!” Then she actually does say, “This guy! You’d think I never said, ‘Sage, I’m your publicist, I went to school to be a publicist, I don’t know how to be anything but a publicist!’ But here I am, getting blamed for not copy-pasting the right wardrobe rider, just because N—” Frankie snaps her mouth shut, her eyes widening.

There is an abrupt, unpleasant pause, in which the atmosphere seems to curdle like cheese. Sage’s face freezes; Frankie’s twists; Jaelyn, behind the camera, takes on the unhappy expression of any professional who has watched their workday take a dramatic wrong turn.

And, weirdly, Kit knows at once what’s happened. Not the specifics, of course—that would be insane—but Kit recognizes The Face when he sees it, even when it’s not directed at him. Something bad happened to Sage, not that long ago, and Frankie just put her foot right in it. Kit would bet the bookshop on it.

Into the void of clawing, desperate awkwardness, Kit drops, with all the brightness he can muster, “Fun fact of the day: Throgmorten? A world-renowned hater of hats. Number one hat hater of all time. Nobody knows why!”

This is an act of kindness—a mercy—so there’s no call for them all to stare at him like he’s started speaking an unfamiliar language. Surely if nothing else they could be watching the spectacle that is Throgmorten, precariously balancing his considerable bulk in his furious attempt to get the cowboy hat off Sage’s head⁠—

“Oh, right,” Kit says, realizing. “Throgmorten is the cat. That’s, uh. What his issue is.”

This seems to satisfy both Frankie and Jaelyn, but Sage keeps staring, his eyes narrowing slightly. After a second, he says, “Is Kit short for Christopher?”

Kit blinks in surprise. “Uh—yeah.”

“So,” Sage says, taking off the hat, tossing it into a far corner, and inclining his now-inoffensive head towards Throgmorten, “was that on purpose? It must have been. It’s not like Throgmorten is a common name.”

Kit gapes for a second before he remembers to close his mouth. “Sorry, have you—I mean, yes, it was definitely on purpose, but. Have you read the Chrestomanci novels?”

It’s a silly question; Sage obviously has. The name of Kit’s cat is a fairly obscure reference, and the connection between it and Kit’s own name is one very few people have ever picked up on. That would be noteworthy from anyone, but it’s Sage Ballard. If Kit had taken a guess as to his reading habits, it would not have included detailed knowledge of Diana Wynne Jones novels for young adults—books that had been among Kit’s favorites growing up.

“What,” Sage drawls, sounding more amused than annoyed, “did you assume I didn’t know how to read? I can walk and chew gum at the same time, too, you know, hard to believe though it may seem.” Noticing that Throgmorten has, with his usual unsettling sneakiness, crept over to the hat and begun to attack it in earnest, he smiles. His tone undercutting every word, he says, “Oh no. The hat. Woe. Alas. Whatever shall we do.”

“You did that on purpose,” Frankie accuses, not sounding particularly bothered by it, as Throgmorten drags his prize behind a shelf.

Sage puts a hand on his heart and affects a wounded expression. “Me? How could you say that?”

“Let’s go ahead and seize our moment while the cat’s occupied, all right?” Jaelyn’s voice has taken on a steely edge, and Sage nods, his shoulders drooping in resignation. “Aaaand… rolling!”

Kit returns to the counter, but not for long. Ten minutes later he’s summoned again, this time because Throgmorten, having thoroughly murdered the bad hat, seems to have decided Sage is his best friend for having left it to his less-than-tender mercies. Kit is summoned so many times to extricate him from between Sage’s legs, or once from off Sage’s lap, that he gives up on working entirely and just watches the shoot carry on.

Jaelyn was right—Sage is bad at this. He’s wooden and stiff, and it’s painfully obvious he’s hated making Last Cowboy Standing, and doesn’t think it’s going to turn out well. But he cheers up whenever Throgmorten escapes and drifts over to him again, purring and headbutting him and looking over at Kit from his lap with an expression that Kit would swear is smugness.

Eventually, Frankie puts a hand on Kit’s shoulder before he can go to grab the cat for what has to be the hundredth time, stopping him. “Wait. You know what? Let the cat do what he wants. Why are we fighting this? Humanize Sage at will, my feline friend!”

Throgmorten, seeming to take offense at this, yowls. Frankie nods seriously and says, “Ah, of course. I apologize—humanize Sage at will, my feline foe.” Throgmorten purrs, and Kit, sighing, makes a mental note to add another tally to the board.

After that, it goes fairly quickly. Kit’s not sure why holding a vibrating ball of fur, claws, teeth, and the suggestion of barely contained diabolical evil is calming to Sage, but it obviously is, and it’s not like Kit can judge. He’s found Throgmorten to have a similar soothing effect. It would have been why he adopted the cat, but really Throgmorten adopted him; Kit still doesn’t know how he got into the bookshop that first day, or how he occasionally gets out to go romance the lady cat up the road.

And then it’s over: Jaelyn packing up, Sage giving Throg a final scratch behind the ears, Frankie advising Kit that his payment will be sent via wire in the next few hours.