Camp Nano

[csyphrett]

10

“We can call for help,” said Griggs. “Looks like they have screens.”

 

“Watch the door,” said Omes. “Do you see any other way on this floor, Constable?”

 

“Elevator shaft,” said Costello. He pointed at three elevator doors with his nose.

 

Omes froze the doors on their runners. He placed a portable wall in front of the doors,
then dragged two desks across the back of the cloth, wood, and cardboard stands.
Then he froze all of that.

 

It could be forced out of the way since none of it could be anchored to the floor. The
amount of time it took to force that way was the amount of time it would take for me
to do things with my mind.

 

And a simple nerve pull could do a lot of damage to a group trapped inside an
elevator shaft.

 

“Sergeant, let’s see if we can call out,” said Omes. He looked at the nearest screen,
then tapped out a password to unlock it. He smiled when he saw the call function.
“Call Constable Bob on this machine. I’ll try to loot the files on another.”

 

Costello lay with his pointed nose on his paws. He had taken refuge under a desk near
the front of the room. His ears moved to track ambient sound reaching him. He didn’t
look too happy about the situation.

 

I wasn’t too happy about it either.

 

“Dog,” I said as I plopped down beside him and curled up in a ball.

 

“Cat,” he said. He moved two inches away from me. He looked ready to bite so I
didn’t push things.

 

“They’re calling for help,” I said. “You’ll get out of this with a medal of honor, and
a nice promotion.”

 

“They’re massing beyond the door,” said Costello. “They’re waiting for explosives
to open the door so they can come in and kill us.”

 

“How do you know that?,” I asked. I rubbed an ear. They would need a ton of
explosives to help them think they could waltz in here and kill me.

 

“I can hear them,” said Costello. “I’m hoping the blast will blow the barricade back
so it protects me from the blast. Then I’ll have a chance to bite the enemy.”

 

“I would rather you didn’t,” I said. “We should move out of the way and come at
them from the sides.”

 

“Nowhere else is safer depending on how much they use to blow in the door,” said
Costello.

 

“I have a plan,” I said. “Come with me.”

 

“You have a plan?,” said Costello. “I would love to see this remarkable plan that will
let us get out of here with our fur still attached.”

 

He heaved to his feet. I uncurled. We walked to where Griggs was talking with Bob
on the screen. She seemed to be telling him everything that had happened so far.

 

“The rifle, please,” I said.

 

Costello grabbed it with his mouth. He picked it up. He garbled something that
sounded like what now.

 

I led him back to the portable wall facing the stair door. I directed him to put the rifle
so the barrel was held up by a hinge in the screen.

 

I went to the door. I could sense several traces beyond. I didn’t know what they
planned other than what Costello had picked up. I wasn’t about to let them go on the
offensive.

 

I went back to where the rifle rested. I couldn’t aim it per se. I just hoped I could hit
the target and cause more trouble for them than losing the door would hurt us.

I pulled the trigger. The rifle hopped in place as it went off. The blast hit the door.
Then the explosives went off on the outside of the doors. I slipped my paw in the
trigger guard and held the trigger down.

 

I stopped shooting when the battery was half charged. I charged forward. Wounded
and whole enemies were still present. I began directing fire to keep them too busy
to charge the suddenly opened door.

 

Costello appeared at my side. His jagged teeth ripped and tore at any of the enemy
trying to stop me from doing harm. A few of his enemies went over the rails trying
to get away from him.

 

I didn’t blame them. I would have jumped to my death instead of having something
ripping my legs off if I were in their position.

 

“Get back,” ordered Griggs. “Get back.”

 

Sonic pulses warped the air as she fired the rest of the charge in the rifle out. Bodies
flew from impacts as she cleared the landing around us. Costello backed up to get
behind her.

 

I walked to the door. I put any opposition to sleep as I passed. I had to put in a nerve
block in to make sure the nervous systems didn’t switch and put our enemies back in
the fight.

 

The constables sought cover on either side of the door. Omes stood next to Costello.
He shook his head as I walked back into the large office space and sat down next to
Griggs.

 

“You blew them up,” Omes said. “And you blew up our cover.”

 

“It was Costello’s idea,” I said. I rubbed an ear. “I couldn’t have done it without him.”

 

“That’s not true,” said Costello. “I just said they were getting ready to come in.”

 

He laid down and covered his face with his paws.

 

“So we made sure that was the expensive assault they ever had,” I said.

 

“Do you see what I have to deal with,” Omes said. “Now how do we keep them out
now that we don’t have a door?”

 

“We don’t,” I said. “But that move might have taken a large chunk out of the security
people. Were you able to get a message to Hierath?”

 

“Armed Response is on the way,” said Griggs. “I don’t think they’ll have much to
do after this.”

 

“They’ll have to clear the rest of the building,” I said. I leaned out and took a
sampling. Some of the security people had moved up two floors to get above the
smoke in the air.

 

“The files I was able to open pointed to something upstairs,” said Omes. “Do we
stay here, or go up and look around?”

 

“I would like to see this secret,” I said.

 

“So would I,” said Omes. “You two want to stay here and hold this spot?”

 

“I think we should stick together,” said Griggs.

 

“We can do more damage that way,” said Costello.

 

“All right,” said Omes. “Let’s go before they can reorganize and have another go at
us.”

 

He started out, but I scampered to get ahead of him. Charred flesh and smoke ash vied
to see who would champion the stairwell for the king of smell. I moved forward. I had
dealt with worse while I was in the Army.

 

You didn’t last long in the war if you couldn’t deal with a skunk ape without a mask.

 

I kept an eye out for traces as I led the group. Bodies were everywhere. Some of them
weren’t whole. I put it down to the fortunes of war.

 

You didn’t last long in the war if you couldn’t stand the sight of the dead. The worse
parts were when they decided to try to get up to take their revenge.

 

That made you wish you had a flamethrower you could use.

 

“Eighth floor, Witsend,” called Omes.

 

I paused at the door. This one door had a lock on it. I waited, keeping an eye on the
floors above us. Nothing moved up there.

 

Omes and the constables arrived a minute later. They looked ready to fight if
something popped up to try to kill us.

 

“All right,” said Omes. “We’re going in here. Armed Response will be here any
minute. If the rest of the guards are holing up, this is where they are doing it.”

 

“I think we should wait,” said Griggs.

 

“I don’t think we can,” said Omes. “I think they might be readying a counterattack to
stop us after what Witsend and Costello have done.”

 

“I think we should go in,” said Costello. “This is the first door with a lock.”

 

“Right,” said Griggs. “But we retreat if we can’t take on the guards in there.”

 

“We’re ready,” said Omes. He looked around. He nodded to himself before he
straightened his hat. “Let’s see what they have locked up.”

 

He pulled out his skeleton key. He inserted it into the lock and twisted it. A panel
popped open with another keypad in a recess. He typed in the numbers and stepped
back. The door open slid out of the way so we could enter.

 

I paused as I looked around. I glanced at my companions. They had the same look on
their faces that I felt.

 

Floors eight, nine, ten consisted of a large room taking up the whole space. Vats
descended from the ceiling on pipes and support structure. I visualized it like the cells
of a bee hive.

 

Inside each cell was a naked Landon. I mentally tried to calculate how many little
girls were present. I stopped when I realized that I was above ten.

 

I made a shake of my body. Cats weren’t good for counting.

 

“How many do you think are here?,” asked Griggs.

 

“A few thousand,” said Omes. “Are they all infected with Witsend’s DNA?”

 

“We would have to test them one at a time and clear them with full body scans and
tests,” I said. “I have no idea how long that will take.”

 

“We don’t dare let any of them out of the vats,” said Omes. “Not until we can move
them into some kind of quarantine.”

 

“Witsend,” said Griggs. “Find a control box. We need to keep them locked down.”

 

I agreed with her. I started prowling the catwalks, looking for the controls.

 

Omes shut the door and locked it down. He looked around for a second.

 

“Here, Witsend,” he called. He pointed to a wall. “The controls are over here.”

 

I joined him as he ran his hand over the wall. He found a keypad and let us into a
room full of screens with multiple number designators on them.

 

I looked everything over. As long as no one activated the release mechanism, we
should be all right. I made sure to disable the control for external input.

 

No one was going to send a signal to wake the girls up before we wanted.

 

All we had to do was wait on the rest of Metropole to pick up the pieces.

[csyphrett]

11

The Armed Response platoon arrived at the Briars tower and cleared the building for
us. Inspector Hierath and Captain McGonagol asked who had caused the damage they
saw. Everyone pointed at me.

 

The rats.

 

The good captain said he had never seen such destruction since leaving the Navy.
And he hoped he never saw that much again.

 

I took that as praise and smiled up at them.

 

The rest of the meeting broke down into what we were going to do with Landon’s
sisters. They had to stay in the vats until they were cleared by the Crown. The
possibility they would have to spend the rest of their lives in the gene bank was
floated around.

 

The government would have to be alerted that the city might have been wiped out
accidentally by a mad man. I doubted they would take the news well.

 

All that remained was to unfreeze Excelsior and let the government question him
about his plan. I hoped they got something coherent out of him. Sharing your body
with other people tended to cause mental problems. That was part of the reason
Composites were banned from production.

 

Most of the other reasons were no one wanted to deal with a berserker in the middle
of a city.

 

“Sergeant, take our auxiliaries to the Shipping Point,” said the Inspector. “That’s
where I had Excelsior taken when things started speeding up.”

 

“Come on, you two,” said Griggs. She handed her rifle off to one of the men in battle
armor. “Let’s get this over with so we can talk about the paperwork we’re going to
need to file.”

 

“We’re not going to arrest them?,” asked Costello.

 

“No,” said Omes. “You’re going to cover this up. You and Griggs will get a medal
for saving the city. You might even get promotions. No one will even know what
Witsend did today.”

 

“I will never tell,” I said in agreement.

 

“He’s right,” said Griggs. “The Inspector will get some of the credit, but most of it
will fall on you.”

 

“Me?,” said Costello. “Why me?”

 

“Only your nose and relentless tracking ability could have led us to this den of
iniquity,” said Griggs. She rubbed the top of his head. “That’s what’s going in the
report.”

 

“I don’t like it,” said Costello. He couldn’t resist the head rubbing. He smiled as she
petted him some more.

 

I let him enjoy the companionship. Down the line he was going to have to earn that
medal again. Expectations would be higher after what we had done.

 

I didn’t envy him that.

 

A carriage was waiting outside for us. Another faceless blue coat was driving. I
missed Constable Bob.

 

We boarded and the carriage took us to the Shipping Point. The rectangular building
was to the south of the city proper, and built on the river. A wall cut the temporary
prison off from the rest of the land. Guard towers marked the corners of the wall and
right above the gate. Towers stood on the river side to cover access to the dock.

 

Barges docked, picked up their cages, then continued on to the Oire Sea. They docked
at Donegal Island, offloaded their cargo, then left to travel back up the river to the
Shipping Point to pick up more prisoners.

 

Only one person had ever escaped the Shipping Point. He dove into the river and tried
to swim across to the other side. The river was cleaner than in the city, but it was not
something to swim in unprotected.

 

They found parts of him downstream.

 

The gate opened for us and we rolled inside. Costello jumped down as soon as the
door opened. He looked around with a small amount of happiness.

 

Griggs and Omes climbed down a lot slower. I noted fatigue poisons but there was
nothing I could do about that unless I wanted to introduce a small amount of
adrenaline to wake them up.

 

There was no point doing that unless something attacked the Shipping Point.

 

A guard in a blue coat with a striped sleeve allowed us in to the staff area. He
introduced himself as Senior Guard Warlawn. He gave us some rules to obey, but I
wasn’t listening so let them slip out of my mind.

 

Warlawn led us down to where they had stored Excelsior. Once he was moving
around again, Omes and I were done with the legal parts of the case. I would still
have to act as Landon’s doctor until someone figured out what to do with her and her
absentee parents.

 

“Chain him up to the chair,” said Griggs. “He’s a composite and we don’t know how
strong he is. Once we unfreeze him, he might try to get loose.”

 

“Understood,” said Warlawn. He motioned to two other guards to help him with the
manacles and making sure the prisoner was tied down as much as they could.

 

Costello sat so he could see under the table. I took a spot on the table top. If Excelsior
tried to pull the chains loose, I wanted a clear shot at putting him to sleep.

 

Omes motioned the guards out of the way as he pointed his gauntlet at the prisoner.
He sent an invisible beam at the frozen organ legger. Excelsior took a deep breath and
started looking around.

 

“How you doing?,” Omes said. He tossed off a wave with his gloveless hand. “We
were wondering if you would talk to us.”

 

“Why would I do that?,” Excelsior said. His vitals were all over the place. I didn’t
know if it was because of the place, or the fact that he had mixed two other nervous
systems with his own.

 

“Because we already know most of what you were doing,” said Omes. He pulled out
a chair and sat down opposite our prisoner. “We just want to clear up some facts that
we’re not sure about.”

 

“Like what?,” said Excelsior. He pulled on the chains but they held him in place.

 

“Like why did you leave your clone’s finger with someone and suggest that you were
going to ransom the rest.” Omes sat forward. “Why bother when you had your project
out front and ahead of schedule?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Excelsior.

 

“What about the parents?,” I asked. “Did they know you were going to kill their
child?”

 

“That’s a good point, Witsend,” said Omes. “Maybe one of the other pieces broke out
for a bit and sent the challenge so to speak. All he would need was a witness who
would get Metropole involved.”

 

“Which one gave you up for the girl?,” I asked. I could see all three lighting up. No
one of them wanted to admit they had done anything wrong, but I suspected it was
either the mother, or father, who had decided something had to be done. The question
was why the finger. Maybe as proof that something needed to be done.

 

And then he had regained control and decided to scrap his creation, or maybe donate
her parts to others.

 

Once the virus was in someone innocent, it could be triggered to start the spread.

 

“I assure you that I did nothing wrong,” Excelsior said. He rattled the chains around
his wrists.

 

“Don’t believe that Guv’nor,” said Excelsior in a new high pitched voice that 
sounded like a buzzsaw. “He weaponized our designs. The virus would have made
everyone compliant to requests.”

 

“Roofert,” Omes said.

 

“Rupert,” said the buzzsaw. “Landon could never pronounce it right. When he cut off
her finger, the missus and I decided to use it to get the authorities involved. We don’t
have a lot of control over the gestalt.”

 

“Does Landon know she’s a clone, and her parents are riding someone else’s body?,”
asked Griggs.

 

“No,” said Rupert. “Tell her we died. That should cover up everything. I don’t know
what we’re going to do now. She barely had a normal life to start with, what will it
be like now?”

 

“Are there any more questions?,” Excelsior said in his normal voice.

 

“No,” said Griggs. “You’re going to be held here until your arraignment, then you
will be held here until you go to court. You solicitor will be able to visit you as soon
as we know who that is.”

 

“I do have one more question,” I said. “Who did you clone the little girls from?”

 

He shook in his chair. I noted that all three of his brains seemed to be active. They
quieted down in a few seconds.

 

“No one,” said Excelsior.

 

“All right then,” I said. I knew the lie when I heard it. I just didn’t have the means to
pry it out of him. “Enjoy the Island. I have heard the sea food is really good this time
of year.”

 

Warlawn let us out, and led us back to the main gate where our carriage waited.

 

“What are his charges going to be?,” he asked.

 

“We’re still sorting it out,” said Griggs. “Running a clone factory is going to be
the main charge from what we saw. A lot of the rest of the charges will stem from
that.”

 

“So he shouldn’t be allowed out of his cell unless he is being transported?,” said
Warlawn.

 

“He’s a composite and a plague risk until he is examined by doctors,” said Griggs.
“Keep contact to a minimum.”

 

“I will put it down on his chart,” said Warlawn.

 

He left us at the carriage and went back in to oversee the transport and care of his new
prisoner.

 

“Excelsior didn’t seem to have any traces of errant DNA in him,” I said. “That might
be hidden in the extra nervous systems and brain casings.”

 

“A Metropole doctor will take him apart in the next few days after we start processing
the little girl clones,” said Griggs. “If he installed anything dodgy, they’ll find it.”

 

“What about Landon?,” asked Omes. “What happens to her?”

 

“Foster care,” Griggs said. “She’s out in the world and not a threat. Excelsior has
already set up an identity for her we can use to hide most of this from the public.
What are we going to do with her sisters seems to be a trickier question to answer in
my book. And I don’t know. Someone above my pay grade will decide something,
and orders will come down.”

 

"There’s nothing more we can do about this?,” asked Omes.

 

“Not really,” said Griggs.

 

“She’s at my office,” I said. “She deserves to know the new status quo, and the fact
she might never see her supposed parents again. One of us should break it to her.
I should since I’m her doctor and responsible for her.”

 

“We’ll take you to your office,” said Griggs. “We’ll have to make arrangements for
her.”

 

“I know,” I said.

 

We boarded the carriage and headed north into the city.

[csyphrett]

Yellow Eyes

1

“Dr. Witsend,” said Elga Spangler. She was my assistant and nurse in the office. She
made sure the patients were seen, my schedule made money while being lax, and
covered for me with my partners when I joined Murdock Omes on a case out of the
city.

 

Basically she ran everything for me with the patience of a saint, and the ruthlessness
of a dictator.

 

And that was why I had hired her in the first place.

 

I had never regretted that decision.

 

“Yes?,” I sat on my desk, looking at confirmation for a diagnosis I had given a
patient. The prognosis was bad.

 

“There is someone here to see you,” said Elga. “She is complaining of
hallucinations.”

 

“Hallucinations?,” I said. I looked up from the pictures. “What kind of
hallucinations?”

 

“I have her in the other room,” Elga said. “I told her you would take a look at her, and
see if there was anything you could do for her.”

 

“I’ll talk to her,” I said. “There’s not much we can do for Jamieson except a full body
scrape. His pictures look like the beach after we invaded.”

 

I shut down the screen and hopped down from the desk top. I walked over to Exam
Room Two. We had fitted doors in the doors for me so I didn’t have to wait for
someone to open the door for me. I stepped in and went to the desk. I used a chair to
get to the desktop and sat down.

 

The patient appeared to be in good health, dressed in clothing stolen from a charity
bin, and sat on the examination table. She glared at me as I looked at her.

 

“Nurse Spangler says you’ve been seeing things,” I said. “What kind of things?”

 

“They were eyes,” she said. “They were yellow and looked almost like cat’s eyes.”

 

“I don’t see what the problem is,” I said.

 

“They were bigger than you and no one else saw them,” she said.

 

“That could be a little bit of a problem,” I admitted. “Your brain, and chemistry look
good. Why don’t you show me where you saw these cat’s eyes.”

 

“You want to go down there?,” said the patient. Her eyes was almost as big as me
now. “Why would I do that?”

 

“As far as I can tell, you are in good shape,” I said. “The preliminary scan I have done
says your brain is working just like it’s supposed to do. That leaves me with three

explanations. Let me at least confirm the explanation that looks better on you.”

 

“Which one is that?,” she said.

 

“That you really saw what you saw,” I said. “I can look for it and prove you saw what
you saw which will make your visit nothing really that serious now that we have
things figured out.”

 

“That sounds reasonable,” said the patient.

 

“What’s your name?,” I asked.

 

“Wendy Maximus,” she said. “Do you really want to find the huge thing I saw?”

 

“If I can’t find it on our first look around,” I said. “My friend will definitely be able
to turn something up.”

 

“All right,” Wendy said. “We can go over and look for it, but if it’s not a
hallucination, I don’t want to meet it.”

 

“That’s understandable,” I said. Some of the things I saw I hadn’t wanted to meet
before I had. I was lucky they had missed me on their first go around. I tried to make
sure they didn’t get another chance if I could.

 

I hopped down to the floor. I walked out of the room and looked around for Elga. I
found her typing some of my notes up for treatments. She paused her work on the
screen to look down at me.

 

“Wendy and I are going to look for these giant cat’s eyes,” I said. “I’ll be back as
soon as I can.”

 

“Everything should be done,” said Elga. “We cleared the calender for the day with
Mr. Jamieson.”

 

“All right,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

“If you don’t come in, I will call Omes and have him chase you down,” she said.

 

“That’s good,” I said. “If things go bad tonight, I will call you as soon as I can to tell
you to start shuffling patients, or get me a headache powder.”

 

“That’s fine then,” said Elga. She gave me a small wave to get moving out the door
with Wendy.

 

Wendy opened the door for us so we could find her yellow eyes. We started walking.

I kept an eye on her vitals as we moved through the throngs on the street. The Annex
was the center for medical offices, the giant hospitals that served the city, and the
prosthetic shops everywhere. Ambulance companies vectored from the area to other
parts of the city and the outlying precincts around the city to gather up the sick and
injured.

 

If she fell down and had some kind of stroke before I could do anything, help was
only a few minutes away.

 

We stopped in front of a Rancais restaurant between a clothing store and a screen
seller. Wendy turned around until she was sure she was in the right place.

 

“I saw the eyes in the window first,” said Wendy. She held up her hands to
demonstrate the position she was in. “Then I turned around, and saw them over there
in that alley.”

 

I looked at the space. It serviced two other restaurants and a datajack accessary place
for plugging things into your brain.

 

I walked across the street. A lot of traces had gone into that space. I tried to separate
things down into anything that had yellow eyes.

 

I couldn’t find anything that could explain what she had seen.

 

There was just too much DNA in that alley.

 

Omes could track the thing down if it was material. I needed to call him and get him
up to the Annex. I had no doubt he could find out what had been there.

 

And if he couldn’t, no one could.

 

I took one last look around the alley. It was big enough for a large cat of some kind.
I just couldn’t see anything like fur laying around.

 

“Let’s go back to my office,” I said. “I need to ask my friend to come down and look
thing over.”

 

“Is there something wrong?,” Wendy asked. She seemed on the verge of running.

 

“No,” I said. “I found lots of traces left, but nothing that looked like what I would
think of as a large cat. I’m calling my friend for help tracking your monster down. I
haven’t given up.”

 

“So I’m not going crazy?,” Wendy said.

 

“Something like this could be anything,” I said. “I can tell you that your brain looks
normal. An hallucination like what you described usually requires some kind of
marking which you don’t have. You could have just been mistaken, but let’s at least
try to rule out anything physical before we start thinking about calling a medium.”

 

“Let’s do that,” said Wendy. “Shall we get started?”

 

“Let’s get some food first,” I said.

 

“How can you think about eating at a time like this?,” Wendy asked.

 

“This is the best time,” I said. “We don’t know how long we’ll be searching, I don’t
want to pay for Omes, and I’m hungry.”

 

“What about the yellow eyes?,” Wendy asked. “What should we do about that?”

 

“It’s better to chase monsters on full stomachs than emptied,” I said. “Let’s get that
food before something else happens.”

 

“All right,” Wendy said. “Let’s try the Rancaise place. We can eat and keep an eye
on the alley until we have something to use.”

 

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. I led the way back across the street and waited for a
patron to open the door. Wendy stepped inside as I looked around for a table we
could sit at without looking like we were nervous about chasing something.

 

I settled on a chair where I could keep watch on the alley in case the big cat arrived
while I was trying to eat.

 

If that happened, I was ready to abandon my drink to get a better look at what we
were chasing.

 

And if we couldn’t catch it, I would ask Omes for some help.

[csyphrett]

2

I had a small chicken pie and milk while Wendy had three, or four, appetizers to make
up one meal. I told the restaurant to call Elga and put it on my credit. I kept an eye on
the alley across the street.

 

I wondered if it was a real animal, or a spirit animal. That would make a difference
in what I could do.

 

A real animal, no matter how large, still had a brain and nervous system I could
abuse. All I needed was a second to take control and put the animal to sleep so I could
get transport to a zoo, or vet, so we could figure out what the connection to Wendy
was.

 

I might need Omes to trail the animal back to its lair if it was real and living ferally
in the city.

 

If it was a spirit animal, there was nothing I could personally do to it stop it from
following Wendy around. An exorcist, or a summoner, would have to be called to
handle things. It would move out of my paws into their hands.

 

There were other things that it could be, but those two categories basically limited my
options.

 

If I had to call Dr. Karen, I knew she would recommend a top flight exorcist to help
Wendy out.

 

I noticed two firefly sparks in the alley across from the restaurant. I sensed a nervous
system that was bigger than the humans, steam horses, and other living creatures
moving up and down the street.

 

“Your friend is back,” I said. “Don’t look at it.”

 

“That is such a relief,” Wendy said. “I thought I was going crazy.”

 

“I’m going to try to get closer so I can see what it is,” I said. “I want you to stay here.
It doesn’t seem to like the people so you should be safe.”

 

“What if it hurts you?,” she asked.

 

“Go back to my office and tell the nurse what happened,” I said. “Ask her to call
Omes and have him track it down and capture it if he can.”

 

“Will he be able to do that?,” she asked.

 

“I think so.” I hopped down from my seat. “Just eat and take it easy. It might spook
if you stare at it too long.”

 

“Right,” said Wendy. She looked down at her half-finished meal. “I don’t feel hungry
now.”

 

“You want to find out what’s going on, right?,” I asked. “I need you to pretend like
you’re eating and going to sit there for a while. Pretend you’re dining with someone
you don’t like but can’t do violence to because that would cause more problems than
what it’s worth.”

 

“That’s a lot of pretend in that sentence,” Wendy said.

 

“Don’t move,” I said. I left the restaurant and walked down the block like I didn’t
have a care in the world. Then I sprinted across the street and jogged up the next
block in the hopes of getting behind our strange observer.

 

I didn’t want it to run until I had a sample to compare it too. After that, I could track
it anywhere in the city except the Industrial Quarter. Once I knew where the lair was,
I could ask Omes to help me get it out of there without hurting it.

 

Questions roamed my mind but I concentrated on what I needed to do first. Then I
could think about answering the next question and then the next.

 

Patience was a natural skill for cats. We didn’t chase things. We waited in ambush
and then pounced. If I missed this time, I would get it the next time.

 

I moved down the street the alley connected to the original street. I saw the end of the
alley and paused to peek around the corner. Something bulky sat in the shadow at the
other end of the alley.

 

I crept up on it as silently as I could. I saw ears to match the big eyes. Wings seemed
to be folded against the body, but the body didn’t appear to be that of a bird. It looked
more like a quadruped of some kind.

 

I raked my brain for any clue to what I was looking at and coming up empty.

 

Did I want to try to stop it with my mind power? I knew that if I tried to put it to sleep
and that didn’t work I would be a creature capable of ripping me to shreds before I
got away.

 

If it did work, I could tell Wendy her vision was accurate and now there was nothing
to worry about.

 

I realized that the thing was two things. One was a spirit of some kind. I couldn’t
grasp the body with my life sense. The other was a cat. I could see the outline with
my life sense.

 

A possession was tricky to deal with from my point of view. The easiest thing was to
put the host body to sleep and get a professional to pull the spirit out. Then you could
deal with the effects.

 

The thing turned on me. Huge eyes that could have been lamps glared at me. Then it
leaped over where I stood and fled down the alley.

 

I turned to track it. I had a trace from the host body. All I had to do was follow
it home to its natural quarters.

 

Maybe I could do something once I knew where it lived.

 

Wendy bustled across the street. Her heart rate was way up. I slowed it down as I
considered my next move.

 

I didn’t want her to have a heart attack over something like this.

 

I needed to get her out of the way so I could track down the beast. Once I had done
that, I could consult with someone from the hospital about separating the two into its
component parts.

 

“You saw it?,” asked Wendy.

 

“Yes, I did,” I said. “I think you should go back to the office and wait for me there.
I need to track this animal down and figure out why it’s interested in you.”

 

“I don’t think so,” said Wendy. “There’s something familiar about those eyes. Let’s
find it. Maybe there will be an explanation at the end of this.”

 

“It could just be a stupid ghost,” I said.

 

“It could be anything,” she said. “I feel like I have seen those eyes before. I don’t
know where. Let’s see where it went. Then we can try to talk to it.”

 

“I don’t think it wants to talk,” I said. The words didn’t convince me. It wanted
something, but it didn’t seem to have the ability to talk. Maybe Wendy was right.
I hoped this wasn’t something dangerous that I should call for help to accomplish.

 

“Come on, Doctor,” said Wendy. “This could be our chance to figure everything out
without being embarrassed by whatever is causing it to watch for me.”

I doubted that.

 

I gathered up the freshest trace from the pool in the alley and followed it. I spotted
the thing across the street. It moved away as I led Wendy on the trail. Every now and
then, sunlight would catch a feather and light it up in a neon glow.

 

It led us north out of the Annex toward a section of the city called the Edge Row.
Beyond the land there, you started running into things you weren’t meant to know.
The Army had three patrol stations for rapid response but some things were better left
alone.

 

The ghost animal leaped a crumbling wall and waited for us to do the same before
heading up the long driveway to the manor in the distance.

 

We followed at a distance. I surveyed the area. I could see more of the ghost beasts
watching us. I didn’t like that at all.

 

“If we have to move fast, stick close,” I said. “There are more of the animals around.”

 

“I know,” said Wendy. “I can see their eyes.”

 

I rubbed an ear. I noted the cats were closing in. If I had to start putting them to sleep,
there was no guarantee that the ghost part would go to sleep with the animal part.

 

I put aside the worry. It boiled down to we would be eaten, or not. I decided to wait
until they tried to eat us before I did something.

 

Then I would see if my talent was enough to get us out of this.

 

“Open the door,” I said. I kept myself between the original animal and Wendy. “I
think he wants us to go inside.”

 

“I feel like I have been here before,” Wendy said. She turned in a circle. “I seem to
remember that tree for some reason.”

 

“Let’s go in and see if there’s someone we can talk to about this,” I said. The ghost
cat looked ten times bigger than me now that I could see it clearly.

 

I didn’t like that at all.

 

Wendy pulled open the door. She looked inside before stepping inside.

 

“There’s a lot of dust everywhere,” she said.

 

“Go inside and I will step in right after you,” I said. “Don’t worry about the dust.”

 

She stepped inside. I followed her. The ghost cat moved to the door. Wendy closed
the door in its huge face.

 

“Which way do we go from here?,” Wendy asked.

 

I looked around the opened space full of old furniture. A set of stairs led the way
upstairs to a set of rooms.

 

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.

 

We made our way across the dusty room. I looked at a window and noted pairs of
glowing eyes at the glass. I rubbed an ear at the watchful attention we were getting.

 

“Don’t do anything that looks like a threat,” I said. “I don’t want them crashing in
here.”

 

“I know what you mean,” said Wendy. She led the way up the stairs. She paused to
let a vapor push by before looking at the doors lining the hall. “Bedrooms?”

 

I didn’t like the presence of the vapor. It meant more ghosts might be involved in all
of this. And I couldn’t hurt a ghost with my life sense.

 

“Open the second door,” I said.

 

She did, and we stepped inside.

 

[csyphrett]

3

The room was dominated by a huge bed. I needed something like this for my rooms
at Twenty Two Bee. No more napping in the window with something that big. A small lamp stood on a table by the head of the bed. Pictures dominated the walls. 

 

The woman in the bed was close to death the way her heart and brain cycled so
slowly.

 

I jumped up on the bed. Anything happening to Wendy would lead to a stroke for
the old woman.

 

“Hello,” said Wendy. “Your cats asked us to visit you.”

 

“They’re waiting for me to die,” said the old lady. “They want someone new to live
with after I’m gone.”

 

“Why would they want me?,” asked Wendy. She glanced at the ghost cat standing
outside the window. She waved at it. It blinked at her.

 

“Because you’re family, dear,” said the old lady.

 

Vapors gathered in the room. They formed into columns. Those columns were shaped
into statues of people by unseen hands. Each face turned to look at Wendy as she
stepped back.

 

“I don’t have any family,” said Wendy. “My mother and father died when I was
moving to university. Neither one had family from what I was told.”

 

“Magnus and Wanda,” said the old lady. Two of the vapors stepped forward. They
held hands as they pretended to smile.

 

“They look like my parents, but they don’t feel like them,” said Wendy.

 

“I can’t really put much of a personality in a vapor any more,” the old lady said. One
hand gestured weakly. “It requires a memory, and I don’t have many of those any
more.”

 

“So they aren’t true spirits?,” Wendy asked. She gestured at the statues.

 

“They could be,” I said. I didn’t like being surrounded by so many symbols of dead
people. If things went bad, there was nothing I could do to protect Wendy.

 

“The cat is right,” said the old lady. “I just don’t have the strength to summon them
like I used to.”

 

And if she tried, I would stop that as neat as you please. The ghost cat glared at me.
I rubbed an ear as my tail twitched.

 

It was a good thing that Omes wasn’t there. His gauntlet might freeze the old woman
in place, but it wouldn’t do anything against her guardians.

 

And I couldn’t look after him and the woman at the same time. He knew I would
sacrifice Wendy over him every time. There was no point putting my resolve to the
test.

 

“I can’t do anything for your cats,” Wendy said. “I’m barely feeding myself. They
look like they could eat whole horses.”

 

“They don’t eat normal food,” said the old lady. “And they are more than capable of
feeding themselves. I need you to open your heart to them and take them in, let them
live with you.”

 

“I live with twenty five other girls in a dormitory,” said Wendy. “I would never be
allowed to have pets, especially not pets like those.”

 

“What about living here?,” I asked. “You have any objections to that, old lady?”

 

“It would be dangerous for a novice,” said the old lady. “She would have to learn
how to defend herself.”

 

“How many other mediums are there that can teach her?,” I asked.

 

“None, really,” said the old lady. She reached out. Vapors lifted her up so she could
see us better. “I had hoped that her mother had taught her something of the family
business.”

 

“My mother never mentioned any of this,” said Wendy. “I thought she had a normal
childhood until she went out on her own.”

 

“We didn’t get along,” said the old lady. “And I didn’t approve of your father. He
struck me as a gold digger.”

 

“I can’t blame you for that,” said Wendy. “He always seemed concerned about
gathering silver.”

 

“I could gift some of the knowledge you need to take over here,” said the old lady.

 

“Gift it?,” said Wendy.

 

“I have some books and things in the library,” said the old lady. “I can use that to
move my knowledge to you so you could live here without a problem.”

 

“I don’t know,” said Wendy. “I think there are members of your family where you
could do that. It would be a waste of your time to do that with me.”

 

“Nonsense,” said the old lady. “You’re the last of my descendants. You’re the only
one who is qualified.”

 

I didn’t say anything. Excitement was causing the old woman’s heart to speed up. I
didn’t like that at all. And her brain patterns said she wasn’t telling the whole truth.

 

How worn were the vapors filling the room? Could she still make them solid enough
to stop us? Should I put this old woman down right now before she tried whatever she
was trying to do?

 

Was I wrong about her?

 

I rubbed an ear as I considered. The options ahead were filled with immediate danger
at the start, with more to fill in when we knew what was going on. I didn’t like any
of them but the one I liked the most, I couldn’t do because I didn’t want to murder
someone in cold blood.

 

That didn’t mean I wouldn’t cause bodily harm because I wasn’t entitled to such.

 

Plenty of people have learned that mistake after I set their facial nerves on fire.

 

“I think we should move you to a hospital,” I said. “They can keep you alive until
Wendy is trained enough to do what you want.”

 

“I don’t have that long,” she said. “No hospital can keep me alive the length of time
it would take to train Wendy to handle my responsibilities.”

 

Maybe that part of things was true.

 

“It’ll make everything easier for everyone,” the old lady said. She smiled with a lot
of missing teeth.

 

I didn’t trust the glimmer in her eyes.

 

Wendy firmed up her face. I knew what she was thinking. She wanted to go through
with this because of her parents, and the thought that she could call on them from
beyond the grave. All she saw was the reward, not the excessive risk that she might
suffer foul play.

 

I had already made up my mind that whatever else happened, the old lady would die.
She was reminding me more and more of spiders. And I didn’t like the thoughts that
went with the comparison.

 

“I have a wheelchair,” the old lady said. She gestured to a corner. A few of the vapors
pushed it to the side of the bed.

 

“I’ll help you,” said Wendy. She pushed through the vapors, shuddering at their
touch. She grabbed the old woman’s torso under her arms and lifted her up. She tried
to put her gently in the chair. She wound up dropping the skinny medium.

 

“Sorry,” said Wendy. “I didn’t mean to do that. I’m so sorry.”

 

“It’s alright,” said the old lady. “Hand me the blanket your cat is sitting on.”

 

“He’s not my cat,” said Wendy. She stepped over to grab the blanket in question.
I stepped out of the way so she could pull it off the bed. “He’s my doctor.”

 

“And I am very good at it,” I said.

 

“A doctor cat,” said the old woman. “What will they think of next?”

 

The vapors crowded around the chair. Wendy waved them out of the way so she
could push the chair out of the bedroom.

 

I jumped down off the bed and followed at an angle. I didn’t want to have to strike
through Wendy to get at her forebear.

 

I had no doubt that something was going on that I had no clue about. What should
I do? Should I put the old lady asleep until I could get Omes out to look at the
situation? He knew how to dig up things hidden from plain sight.

 

Wendy didn’t seem to think anything was wrong about her getting potential magical
brain surgery.

 

I didn’t know enough about her to explain the attitude. If I was in her shoes, I would
step back and talk to a professional.

 

My opinion was simply my opinion without evidence.

 

Wendy rolled the old lady to the stairs. I had noted a railing put in at ground level on
the way up. The old lady directed Wendy to put the back wheel of her chair in that
slot so she could be pulled down the stairs.

 

A few minutes later we were on the ground floor. Wendy huffed some after the
unaccustomed exertion. She asked where to go. A vapor appeared in the shape of a
butler to show us the way.

 

I kept to the side as Wendy rolled the old lady to the door and turned the chair around
so she could open the door. The butler tried to get in my way to prevent me from
entering the room with the women. I gave the old lady a pull on her arthritis which
caused the vapor to freeze in place at the unexpected jolt. I hurried into the room. Wendy shut the door in his face so the three of us could be alone.

 

I sat just inside the door so I could watch whatever was going to happen. I had no
doubt the butler had tried to keep me out for a reason.

 

I looked out the window. Ghost cats sat out there, looking inside at what was going
to happen. What was their place in things?

 

What would they do if I pulled the plug on the old lady right then and there before she
started her gift giving?

 

Did I want to find out?

 

“Wheel me over to the ring in the floor,” said the old lady. “I’ll need the big book
with the Maximus symbol on it. I’ll need a needle. Light that candle. I’ll need an open
flame for part of this.”

 

Wendy carried out the instructions. She kept glancing at the ghost cats. One put a paw
on the window, but it couldn’t push its way in.

 

“Don’t worry about them,” said the old lady. “They can’t come into the house.”

 

“Protected?,” I asked. I circled around to the window. The ghost cats watched me. I
jumped up on the sill and inspected the lock. It was a simple hook on a hinge holding
the window down in its frame.

 

“That’s right,” said the old lady. She smiled. “As long as the window is closed, they
can’t come in no matter how much they push on it.”

 

I rubbed my ear as I looked at the old lady. She flipped through the pages of the book
on her lap as she smiled. Wendy had left the room in search of the needle that was
needed.

 

“The Maximus family live here a long time, ma’am?,” I asked.

 

“All my life,” said the old lady. “It was one of the first pieces to become normal as
the city pushed north. We still maintain one of the lookout towers to watch for
monster attacks.”

 

“Is that how you collected all these possessed animals?,” I asked.

 

“No,” said the old lady. “Those came about because of my father. He wanted a
guardian for the property. Ghost cats were what he came up with that he thought
would protect the land until the family didn’t need them anymore.”

 

More half-truths cycled her brain as I twitched my tail.

[csyphrett]

4

Wendy returned with the needle. She smiled as she crossed the room. The old lady
smiled as she took the needle.

 

There was too much smiling going on.

 

“I’m going to read out some words,” said the old lady. “When I give the sign, I am
going to need you to heat the end of the needle and jab me in the arm. As soon as you
do that, I’ll have to say some more words, and you’ll have to do the same thing to
yourself.”

 

“That seems excessive,” said Wendy.

 

“We used to have to cut off part of a finger,” said the old lady. “A pinprick is so much
easier than that.”

 

I sat in the window sill and watched. A summoning circle and the offer of blood was
not good. What was the end game? I unhooked the lock on the window. Maybe the
guardians would have to enter to do something in the next few minutes.

 

Wendy held the candle in one hand, the needle in the other. She nodded along as the
old lady started reciting words from the Maximus playbook. Neither one looked at
me. I opened the window as much as an inch. A paw got under it and pushed it the
rest of the way up.

 

The ghost cat stuck its head into the room. I moved out of the way so it could have
plenty of room to enter. Putting the animal part of it asleep would be easy to do when
I needed to do that. Whether that would stop the spirit part was anybody’s guess.

 

The ghost cat sat down under the window. I sat down next to it. We were like twins
except one of us was big as a bear and winged.

 

It moved when the old lady started pronouncing the words that went with the signal
to be jabbed by the needle. It flung a chair at Wendy as soon as she poked the lady
in the wheelchair. Wendy fell out of the summoning circle. She dropped the needle
to the floor. The ghost cat stepped in the circle. It swatted the book from the old lady
so that it landed in front of me.

 

I turned the pages until found the one with the most recent trace on it. Luckily, she
had marked each section as she went with a finger tip. That made it easier to continue
with the spell.

 

I started pronouncing the words that she had not touched. They were the same as the
ones before that I had heard her pronounce already. When I got to the relevant
section, the ghost cat stuck itself with the needle.

 

Curse marks wrote themselves on the bodies of the old lady and the ghost cat. The old
lady had more marks under those that shot to vivid life. I kicked myself for missing
them in the general decay of her form.

 

I should have seen them.

 

The ghost cat fell where it lay. The old lady looked at her hands. Wendy looked at
me. I rubbed an ear.

 

“What did you do?,” Wendy asked. “What happened?”

 

“Your friend saved your life, you floozy,” said the old lady. I twitched my tail as I
waited for an explanation about what was really going on. “You almost became one
of the spirit animals.”

 

“I don’t understand,” said Wendy. “My relative?”

 

“She’s been stealing bodies for a long time,” said the old lady. “Every time she gets
too old to do what she wants, she sends one of us to find a relative to bring back here.
She cons the descendant with a promise to magical power, then she switches bodies.
She gets their body, they get a cat body.”

 

“And the cat bodies are the real servants here on the estate,” I guessed.

 

“Most of them anyway,” the ghost cat lady said. “There are some things here that the
Army should be called to put down in my opinion.”

 

“So all this is a ruse?,” said Wendy. “It’s just to steal my body?”

 

“And keep control of the family magic,” said the ghost cat lady. “We Maximuses are
the premiere dealers in spirit workings here in the city. There must be thousands of
ghosts buried on the property. As the head of the household, she has the major part
of the gift. When she died, that would pass on to her descendants and be diluted
which would hurt the family fortune.”

 

“So all of this was just a ruse?,” asked Wendy.

 

“Madrigal’s part of it,” said the ghost cat lady. “We’ve been waiting for a chance to
go home. We’ve been stuck in these bodies for a long time. It’s time we left them and
go to where we need to go. We need you to release us.”

 

“What about the buried ghosts and the vapors in the house?,” asked Wendy.

 

“They go with us,” said the ghost cat lady.

 

The old lady ghost cat, Madrigal, roared to her feet. She raised a paw to bat her old
body to death. I told her to go to sleep with my mind. The part of her that was a
possessed animal blinked out. She collapsed back to the floor.

 

“That was close,” said the ghost cat lady. “Do you think you can run the mumbo
jumbo and get us out of here?”

 

“What happens after you’re gone?,” Wendy asked.

 

“You get to live out the rest of your life span without worrying about if you are really
someone else behind your mask of a face,” said the ghost cat lady.

 

“What about this house?,” said Wendy. She waved her hands to indicate the manor.

 

“This place?,” said the lady in the wheelchair. “It will be gone as soon as you’re done.
Only ghost power is holding it here anyway. As soon as we’re gone, so’s the rest.”

 

Wendy looked at the library. I could see the decision markers flaring in her brain. She
wanted to keep the lot.

 

“What if I don’t want to let go of this place?,” she said.

 

“I can’t make you see things my way, but do you want to be in a position where
you’re stealing your grandchildren’s lives and turning them into big honking cats?”
The ghost cat lady made a gesture with her hand as emphasis. “Do you want to be
you, or her?”

 

I didn’t see anything wrong with being a cat, but I felt it was something you had to
be born into so you knew the responsibility of being able to not care about things that
were out of your interest.

 

It wasn’t something you turned people into as a side effect of your real scheme.

 

“When do we get started?,” Wendy asked.

 

“Let’s do it now,” said the ghost cat lady. “Madrigal will try to stop us if she wakes
up before we start.”

 

“How do I know this isn’t some kind of trick?,” asked Wendy.

 

“I’ve already prevented you from losing your body,” said the ghost cat lady. “I don’t
know of a way that I can prove myself better than that.”

 

“He’s not lying,” I said. “Do you need the summoning circle?”

 

“No,” said the ghost cat lady. “Let’s go outside. We’ll have a lot more room to deal
with things.”

 

“He?,” asked Wendy.

 

“I think so,” I said. “Out the window, please.”

 

She climbed out the window. I jumped through and landed lightly on the grass
outside the room. More of the ghost cats arrived and sat around us in a crowded
circle. The ghost cat lady climbed through the window slow and easy.

 

“It’s been a while since I had a body this broken down,” he said. “We need some
leaves and some light.”

 

Wendy reached back into the library and grabbed the lighted candle. The ghost cats
spread out and returned with mouthfuls of leaves. They spit them out in a trail away
from the house.

 

“This isn’t going to be easy,” said the ghost cat lady. He handed Wendy the book.
“Read this page as clearly as you can.”

 

Wendy scanned the page. She looked up.

 

“Are you sure?,” she asked.

 

“Yes,” said the ghost cat lady. “We’ve been waiting for someone to set us free for
a long time. You’re the only one who can do that. I believe in you. Please try.”

 

Wendy started reading the words from the book. The leaves began to glow. A bridge
built itself out of glowing starlight and shining dreams.

 

The ghost cats broke away from their living parts. They became glowing columns
floating in the air. Vapors assembled from the ground and the house. They became
faces for the dead as they walked across the bridge. The ground compacted under the
weight of the bridge as the dead walked to where they were supposed to be.

Wendy kept reading. Tears drifted down her face. Her voice almost cracked under
the strain.

 

The ghost cat lady stepped out of the body he wore, pulling on a remembered jacket
and smiling. He nodded at Wendy as he joined the end of the line. Some of the people
called to him as he walked across the bridge.

 

“What have you done?,” asked a spirit from behind us.

 

I turned my head. Madrigal Maximus stood at the window in a form made of vapor
and hate. She marched out toward us, hair loose around her head.

 

“It’s over,” I said. I motioned for Wendy to keep reading.

 

“I’ll say when it’s over,” Madrigal snarled the words. She tried to kick me. I stepped
out of the way. Her foot came down on the bridge.

 

She tried to pull her foot off the thing of leaves and light. She struggled but the foot
remained where it was.

 

Wendy kept reading. She walked over. She made sure to stay off the bridge. She
pushed her grandmother further down the bridge without letting her grab hold
and pull her along. The leaves started shifting on their own, pushing the dead old lady
after her victims.

 

The columns of light closed ranks behind Madrigal and kept her moving along the
bridge until they winked out of existence.

 

“I think you can stop now,” I said.

 

Wendy stopped talking. She closed the book and dropped it to the ground. She rubbed
her face with both hands.

 

“I think we’re done here,” I said. “It looks like you just inherited an estate.
Congratulations.”

 

“What would I do with this?,” asked Wendy. She raised both hands to indicate the
grounds and the big house that had seen better days.

 

“I’m a doctor, not an interior decorator,” I said. I rubbed an ear. “You can live here,
or sell it and let the new owners do what they want with it. No one will know about
what was going on unless you tell them.”

 

Cats arrived. They were normal furred brothers of the hunt. They made noises to
indicate they wanted food and they expected Wendy to take care of the problem.

 

“And it looks like you have a pride to take care of as the new landlord,” I said.

 

Wendy sat down. She covered her face with both hands. The cats surrounded her.
They mewled for attention. She rubbed one with a hand as she tried to force her shock
down.

 

“Let’s see if Madrigal had some cat food to feed these monsters,” I said. “Then we
can go to my office and talk about things.”

 

“All right,” Wendy said. “That sounds okay.”

[csyphrett]

5

The interior of the house had collapsed with the passing of Madrigal Maximus. So
the cats either hunted on their own, or their food was now buried. We still needed
to do something about things.

 

After a brief discussion, we decided that we should just leave them on their own
with some water from the well that could be pumped up in the kitchen. We found
several bowls and put the water out for them.

 

Feral cats would consider the area around the house as their territory. So they should
hang around until we came up with a solution to the problem.

 

It was the best we could do at the moment. We couldn’t take them into the city with
us. I couldn’t take them in. Addison wouldn’t allow that. And Wendy had her
roommates to deal with before she could take in ten to fifteen stray animals.

 

We walked down from Edge Row until we found a Tube Station heading south to the
Annex. Wendy strapped us in and we took the train down to a station close to my
office. Then we walked the rest of the way.

 

Elga had long departed. I needed to call her and let her know I had survived my
adventure mostly intact.

 

I used Wendy to press the lock’s key numbers on the door. Then we went inside. I
used her hand to cut off the alarm before a blue coat arrived to ask what we were
doing.

 

The last thing I wanted to do was talk to someone about something they had no clue
about after what we had just done.

 

“Do you have anything to drink?,” Wendy asked. She put the spell book from the
estate on the front desk.

 

“We have water from the sinks,” I said. I walked around the counter and jumped up
to reach the closest screen.

 

“Stronger than that,” she said.

 

“Weyland keeps a bottle of something in the bottom drawer of his desk,” I said. “You
might need a knife to jimmy the lock.”

 

She nodded as she went to search my colleague’s office.

 

I turned the screen on and pressed the call button. I put in Elga’s number and waited.
Her face appeared a moment later. She almost smiled when she saw who was calling.

 

“What happened?,” she asked.

 

“We killed an old lady that needed killing,” I said. “We’re at the office trying to
figure out what to do now.”

 

“Let me know in the morning what you decided,” Elga said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

 

“I will,” I said. “Right now I have to figure out how to feed fifteen of my brothers.”

 

“Good luck with that,” Elga said. She cut the connection.

 

I rubbed an ear and admitted that maybe I should call for some help.

 

Maybe Omes could think of a solution where I couldn’t.

 

“This stuff is good,” said Wendy. She had Weyland’s whiskey bottle in her hand as
she came back to the waiting room. “I couldn’t afford anything like this with what I
make from my university job.”

 

“Don’t drink it all,” I said. “Weyland uses it to celebrate when he is done with his
patients.”

 

“That bad?,” Wendy said.

 

“They’re very young children,” I said. “What do you plan to do now?”

 

“I plan to get so hammered off this bottle that I won’t be able to walk home,” said
Wendy. “You’ll have to pour me into a cab and send me back to my dorm.”

 

“Let’s be a little more serious,” I said. I rubbed an ear. “You have a book of spirit
spells, you have an old decrepit house, and you have a lot of land that will collapse
back into the Wild if you let it. You also have fifteen guardians if you can train them
to watch out for you out there on the land.”

 

“On the down side, I have no way to use the spells, no way to fix up the house, and
can’t talk to the cats,” said Wendy. She sipped on the bottle. “That seems to be
sizeable disadvantages to me.”

 

“I can find you an advisor,” I said. “That should help with some of this. The rest
will depend on your will.”

 

“You know someone who does spirity things?,” Wendy asked. She placed the bottle
on the desk.

 

“I know someone who knows a bunch of someones who might be able to help you
over this hump,” I said. “Once you’re trained, you will be better able to fend for
yourself.”

 

“I don’t know if I want to make a decision like that right now,” said Wendy. “I just
sent most of my dead family to the great beyond. I can still feel the sound and I want
to go too.”

 

I had seen some of the troopers I had worked with express those same sentiments.
Their units had been attacked. They had called up fearsome powers to repel the
enemy. It left them wanting to use that power on themselves.

 

Some of them recovered and retreated from the front lines when they were no longer
needed. Some of them pretended to recover and then destroyed themselves and
whomever they had engaged in the most spectacular way possible.

 

I didn’t want Wendy to do that. I had already put some work into keeping her alive
and functioning. I didn’t want that thrown away because she felt guilty about people
she had never met before that day.

 

And they were dead. Nothing she could have done would have made them any less
dead than what they were.

 

I couldn’t think of an argument to show that she had done the right thing for her
family, and herself.

 

Being trapped inside a cat and kept in a half-state while your murderer avoids
punishment and keeps hunting her descendants was not something I could explain to
someone who hadn’t been there to see what Wendy had done.

 

“Instead of talking about the spell work and getting an advisor,” I said. “Let’s talk
about you. What would make things easier for you?”

 

“I don’t know,” said Wendy. “Things have gotten so complicated. I was never good
with responsibility. Now I have fifteen mouths to feed when I can barely feed my
own.”

 

“Take one more drink of Weyland’s whiskey and then put it away,” I said.

 

She took a gulp that seemed to be half the bottle. She capped it and carried it back
into Weyland’s office. I made a not that I would have to buy him a new bottle. I
didn’t like that because Weyland preferred the expensive stuff to cheap booze.

 

“Now what,” Wendy said after she returned.

 

“I want you to lie down on one of the guest couches,” I said. “Make yourself as
comfortable as you can.”

 

She did as I said, turning to put her back to me.

 

“Go to sleep,” I said.

 

Snores escaped her as I rubbed an ear and thought about what I could do about her
problem.

 

There wasn’t much I could do. As a general practitioner, my skills went into doing
things to the physical body. I didn’t have a lot of skill fixing people’s emotions and
mental problems.

 

Maybe I should call my own advisor and ask for some advice.

 

I put in the number for Dr. Karen’s office. I wondered idly if she was still there. She
was the chief doctor and summoner on an Army base in the Upper Q. They might be
able to pass me through to her home if she had left for the night.

 

“Hello, Witsend,” she said when her screen became active. Her smile turned her face
into the most pleasant of raisins. “How are things going in the city?”

 

“I need some advice,” I said.

 

I told her everything that had happened since Wendy Maximus had come into
my door and complained of seeing a giant cat. I concluded with the fact that I
had no way of helping her in my mind. I just didn’t have the emotional grasp required
for getting her back on her own feet.

 

Cats either did, or did not. We didn’t worry about consequences, or regrets, or
anything like that when the action was done. We moved on to the next action we had
to undertake.

 

The past was dead to us.

 

“I see your problem,” said Dr. Karen. “I think I know someone stationed near Edge
Row that can feed the cats at least. That’s only a temporary thing until Miss Maximus
wants to take up the burden of her gift. A certain amount of training would have to
be done so she didn’t kill herself by accident.”

 

“I’m more worried that she will kill herself on purpose,” I said.

 

“There’s only so much we can do to stop that,” Dr. Karen said. “I’ll tell you what.
Why don’t you have Miss Maximus meet my friend at her estate tomorrow morning?
Maybe we can get them together so they work out something so you don’t feel like
you have to mother hen another lost child.”

 

“I don’t mother anybody,” I said.

 

“Your boy?,” she said with a smile.

 

“I’m not his mother, I’m the other half of the rent we pay Addison to live in his
body,” I said. “If he goes, I’ll have to move somewhere else.”

 

“How many people have you put down for him?,” she asked.

 

“They were all bad and deserved what they got,” I said.

 

“I tell myself that too,” said Dr. Karen. “I’ll make the call. Get your patient to the
meeting at say ten. That will give you a chance to massage things.”

 

“It’ll give me a chance to clear her hangover,” I said.

 

“Have a good night, Fluffy Wuffy,” said Dr. Karen. She cut the connection with a
cheery wave.

 

I called Omes and told him I wouldn’t be home that night, and he shouldn’t worry.
He asked if I needed his help. I said no, I was dealing with a patient that was sleeping
things off at the moment. He nodded and wished me a good night before he cut the
connection.

 

The next day came and Wendy woke up as the staff started coming in to open the
office. I answered some questions from her and the staff before I could get things
moving.

 

Wendy used the bathroom to clean up and we headed out. We stopped to get sausages
on buns on the way to her new house. I quelled her stomach so she wouldn’t throw
up.

 

We took the Tube out to the edge of Edge Row. We walked down to the walled area.
It looked even worse in the daylight than it did in the early night when we had first
approached it.

 

The cats had gathered around a young man in a battered suit and boots. He smiled at
them as he set out food.

 

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Corwin. Dr. Karen said you needed help with the place here.”

 

“This is Wendy Maximus,” I said. “I’m Dr. Witsend.”

 

It didn’t take a life sense to see the sudden interest from my patient.

 

“I certainly do need help,” said Wendy. “I’m afraid there’s no place for us to sit and
talk about this.”

 

“I found two chairs, ma’am,” said Corwin. “Let me get them. Dr. Karen wasn’t really
that specific about what you needed.”

 

He left us alone.

 

“Do you want me to stick around, or can you handle this?,” I asked.

 

“I think I can handle this,” said Wendy. She smiled down at me.

 

“Call me if something comes up that I can help you,” I said.

 

“I will,” Wendy said. “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been a lot kinder to me than you
had to be.”

 

“Cats aren’t kind,” I said.

 

I turned and walked away.