“Extra-large, please.” My voice was a hoarse squeak.
“Ooh, look, kittens!” Sara squealed like a teenage girl.
I looked down at the floor. The pieces of the smashed cat were healing themselves, sprouting legs and heads and tails and turning into fluffy little black balls of cuteness.
“Okay, I’m officially freaked out now,” the Warlock whispered.
Sara didn’t seem to hear him. She reached down and scooped up the kitten that had formed from the cat’s back legs and held it out to me. “It’s dangerous to go alone. Take this.”
“But—but I’m not alone.” I wished I could keep my voice steady. “I have Pal here, and Cooper. And the Warlock.”
“You need a kitten. They’re crucial.”
“But … what do I feed it? And where are the litter boxes?” It finally occurred to me that one of the things that was disturbing me on a subconscious level was that, despite there being twenty-odd cats in the immediate vicinity, it didn’t smell the least bit litter-boxy. All I could smell was blood and gunpowder. And sweaty guy funk. But no cat poop.
Sara waved her free hand dismissively, as if I’d asked her how often the city plowed the streets during snowstorms. “Oh, we don’t worry about that here! Please, take the kitten.”
Her voice hardened a little on the word “please,” and there was a gleam in her eye that worried me, so I reached out and took the little creature from her. The kitten settled into the crook of my arm, purring. It smelled like hot electrical wiring.
“That’s better.” Sara beamed at me. “You can keep him in that saddlebag of yours; they like riding around in sacks and slings. I think they’re sort of like cockroaches that way; they like darkness and a little pressure on their bodies. Only they’re cute, of course. And cockroaches don’t like ear scratchies and belly rubbies.”
“Yeah, um, I’m pretty sure Jessie and her friends are tired.” Charlie looked a bit embarrassed and worried, as if she didn’t know what Super Nutty Nutbar thing Sara was going to say or do next. “So could we maybe get Britt to give them the key to their room?”
“Certainly,” Sara replied. “Be a dear and get that for them, would you? We’re giving them the corner quad on the eighth floor.”
I held the kitten out in front of my stone eye and blinked through a couple of gemviews, trying to figure out what I was looking at. “So … where did these cats come from?”
“My television set.” Sara picked up another kitten and handed it to the Warlock. He took it from her gingerly, squinting at the purring fluff ball as if it were a ticking bomb.
“Your television set.” Cooper stared at her.
“Oh, yes!” Sara scooped up the last kitten and cuddled it under her chin. “So soft! I heard the president say on TV that we Americans make our own reality, and I thought, you know, he was right about something for a change! That man screwed up everything … I wanted to give him a real piece of my mind, and then one night my mom and I were watching a Ronald Reagan Western, and a kitty came out of the screen! I named him Ringu. He brought more of his friends from commercials and old sitcoms and cable movies.”
Sara stopped cuddling her kitten and squinted at it. “I think this one came out of The Matrix. But it doesn’t matter where they came from, what matters is that they want to help me put things right. And they gave me the idea that we should go visit the president during one of his live speeches.”
Sara stared at me earnestly, and I felt supremely creeped out by the look on her face.
“Did you know,” she asked, “that pound for pound, cats are the deadliest predators on the planet? Yes. It’s true! And so we got ready to go see the president, and his speech was about to start … and the power went out! Miko did it. I hate her. She screwed up everything.”
What the heck is going on here? I thought to Pal.
“My educated guess,” he replied, “is that this woman is a latent, untrained Talent whose powers were triggered by an emotional trauma that also set her on the road to madness. Very dangerous. I would avoid upsetting her if possible.”
What about these cats?
“I’m not sure what they are quite yet.” Pal’s claws scratched on the floor as he shifted his weight nervously. “Electrical spirits,