The Unkindest Tide (October Daye #13) - Seanan McGuire Page 0,172

right.” This voice belonged to the man from before. “He’s right through here.”

A door opened in the distance, and then she came around the corner, resplendent in her beauty: Helen, my Helen, her hair pulled into a bushy ponytail, her body swallowed by one of her father’s sweaters. Her father was right behind her—and behind him, back in human form, wearing overalls and a white shirt with mud stains on the sleeves, was Cal.

I jumped to my feet, or tried to. Once again, my legs refused to obey me, and I collapsed to the bottom of my cage. I didn’t let that stop me from meowing frantically, my eyes fixed on Helen.

“There you are,” she said, clasping her hands against her chest. There were tears standing in her eyes. “I was so scared.”

I meowed again, louder. I had never in my life wished so dearly that she were Cait Sidhe. She would have been able to understand me, if she had been.

Helen unclasped her hands so she could press her fingertips to the bars, then looked pleadingly at the man who’d been at least partially responsible for my care. “He wants out,” she said. “You have to let him out.”

“Is that how he wound up on the street, throwing himself in front of a car?”

“That was me,” blurted Cal, then flushed, cheeks going red as they realized what they were saying. “I mean, I’m the one who let him out. It was an accident, honest. I thought my sister was going to kill me.”

Cal and Helen look nothing alike, but two kittens from the same litter won’t always resemble one another. The man looked at Cal, somewhat dubious, before glancing to Willis, who nodded.

“Well, young lady, it was very irresponsible of you to let the cat out,” began the man. “He could have been killed, and—”

“I’m not a young lady,” said Cal.

The man blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said, I’m not a young lady. I’m not a young man, either. I’m a young me, and I don’t like it when people use the wrong pronouns.” Cal’s cheeks flared an even deeper red. “That’s all.”

The man blinked a second time before nodding and saying, with what sounded like genuine apology, “I’m sorry. That was rude of me, and I should have known better. But so should you. It’s not safe to let cats run around outside. There are cars, and coyotes, and people with dogs that haven’t been trained properly. Something very bad could have happened. Something worse than being hit by a car.”

“I understand,” said Cal, voice small.

“If you don’t mind, we’d like to pay his bill and take him home,” said Willis.

“While we settle up, I want to talk to you about having him neutered,” said the man. “You need to consider how much easier it would be to keep him inside, and how much better it would be for his mental health. If he’s not going to breed, he doesn’t need to be intact.”

“Oh,” said Willis, shooting me an amused, faintly pointed glance, “I’m very concerned with his ability to breed.”

Wisely, I was silent.

I didn’t want to give him any ideas.

SEVEN

It wasn’t safe for me to transform anywhere I might be seen, and with the painkillers still lingering in my system, I couldn’t reach for the shadows. Helen removed me from the carrier as soon as we were in the car, and I curled in her lap, tail tip over my nose, for the short drive to her place.

Cal sat with us in the backseat, bubbling over with nervous energy. “You’re not mad at me, are you?” they asked, hands fluttering like they wanted to reach for me but didn’t quite dare. “I didn’t mean for you to get hit by that car, I swear by Oberon’s eyes, I didn’t even know it was there, it was so early in the morning the sun hadn’t even come up yet, but then there it was, and I thought I was going to die, and you pushed me out of the way. You’re a hero. You’re the reason I’m still here.”

I made a small grumbling sound rather than answering them directly. It seemed rude to carry on an actual conversation when Helen wouldn’t be able to understand my side of it.

“I didn’t know humans would get out of their cars and take cats who’d been injured, I swear I didn’t,” said Cal hurriedly. “If I’d known, I would have jumped out of the bushes and bit and scratched them until they left