people from Wyvern who want to keep a lid on this at any cost, not me. Anyway, you aren’t personally in any danger even if you try to go to outside authorities, at least not at first. They won’t touch you. Not you. You’re revered.”
This was one of the most baffling things that he had said yet, and I blinked in confusion. “Revered?”
“Yes. They’re in awe of you.”
I realized that Orson was staring at me intently, temporarily having forgotten the three promised biscuits.
Roosevelt’s statement was not merely baffling: It was downright wacky. “Why would anyone be in awe of me?” I demanded.
“Because of who you are.”
My mind looped and spun and tumbled like a capering seagull. “Who am I?”
Roosevelt frowned and pulled thoughtfully at his face with one hand before finally saying, “Damned if I know. I’m only repeating what I’ve been told.”
What the animals told you. The black Dr. Doolittle.
Some of Bobby’s scorn was creeping into me.
“The point is,” he said, “the Wyvern crowd won’t kill you unless you give them no choice, unless it’s absolutely the only way to shut you up.”
“When you talked to Sasha earlier tonight, you told her this was a matter of life and death.”
Roosevelt nodded solemnly. “And it is. For her and others. From what I hear, these bastards will try to control you by killing people you love until you agree to cease and desist, until you forget what you saw and just get on with your life.”
“People I love?”
“Sasha. Bobby. Even Orson.”
“They’ll kill my friends to shut me up?”
“Until you shut up. One by one, they’ll kill them one by one until you shut up to save those who are left.”
I was willing to risk my own life to find out what had happened to my mother and father—and why—but I couldn’t put the lives of my friends on the line. “This is monstrous. Killing innocent—”
“That’s who you’re dealing with.”
My skull felt as though it would crack to relieve the pressure of my frustration: “Who am I dealing with? I need something more specific than just the people at Wyvern.”
Roosevelt sipped his coffee and didn’t answer.
Maybe he was my friend, and maybe the warning he’d given me would, if I heeded it, save Sasha’s life or Bobby’s, but I wanted to punch him. I might have done it, too, might have hammered him with a merciless series of blows if there had been any chance whatsoever that I wouldn’t have broken my hands.
Orson had put one paw on the table, not with the intention of sweeping his biscuits to the floor and absconding with them but to balance himself as he leaned sideways in his chair to look past me. Something in the salon, beyond the galley and dining area, had drawn his attention.
When I turned in my chair to follow Orson’s gaze, I saw a cat sitting on the arm of the sofa, backlit by the display case full of football trophies. It appeared to be pale gray. In the shadows that masked its face, its eyes glowed green and were flecked with gold.
It could have been the same cat that I had encountered in the hills behind Kirk’s Funeral Home earlier in the night.
23
Like an Egyptian sculpture in a pharaoh’s sepulcher, the cat sat motionless and seemed prepared to spend eternity on the arm of the sofa.
Although it was only a cat, I was uncomfortable with my back to the animal. I moved to the chair opposite Roosevelt Frost, from which I could see, to my right, the entire salon and the sofa at the far end of it.
“When did you get a cat?” I asked.
“It’s not mine,” Roosevelt said. “It’s just visiting.”
“I think I saw this cat earlier tonight.”
“Yes, you did.”
“That’s what it told you, huh?” I said with a touch of Bobby’s scorn.
“Mungojerrie and I had a talk, yes,” Roosevelt confirmed.
“Who?”
Roosevelt gestured toward the cat on the sofa. “Mungojerrie.” He spelled it for me.
The name was exotic yet curiously familiar. Being my father’s son in more than blood and name, I needed only a moment to recognize the source. “It’s one of the cats in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the T. S. Eliot collection.”
“Most of these cats like those names from Eliot’s book.”
“These cats?”
“These new cats like Mungojerrie here.”
“New cats?” I asked, struggling to follow him.
Rather than explain what he meant by that term, Roosevelt said, “They prefer those names. Couldn’t tell you why—or how they came by them. I know one named Rum Tum