Page 4 of The Innocent Sleep

But my time to release the crown would come well before his, and so Ginevra had traveled down the coast to stand Regent for Raj, allowing me to step down in all but name. For the better part of two years, I had been living with October and our small, eternally evolving family, and had barely stepped inside the Court of Cats.

For me to be here was an aberration. For me to be here and none to make comment on it was an impossibility.

And for me to be here now, alone, when I had been with October only moments before . . .

That was an offense. Someone was going to suffer, just as soon as I could figure out what had happened.

I approached the nearest platform, where several cats were curled in a heap of multicolored fur and unending indolence. It is not a crime to wake a sleeping cat. It should be. The slumber of cats is a sacred thing, worthy of respect, and even in my anger, I winced as I drove my hand into the pile and scruffed the first neck I found, dragging a drowsing, one-eyed tabby to the top. I gave him a small shake. He opened his remaining eye and blinked at me quizzically, hanging heavy in my hand.

“Your King requires your attendance,” I informed him, and let go, allowing him to drop back into the pile.

Slowly, he stood and stretched, with all the casual dismissiveness he could muster. Then he leapt to the ground, pushed himself up with his front paws, and stood a second time, rising in a man’s array, the smell of dust and squash blossoms accompanying his transformation.

“Sire,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist.

From one among the Divided Courts, I would have taken the shallowness of his bow for an insult. Under the circumstances, all I could do was scowl, and demand, “Where are we? Who are you? What’s happening?”

Looking bewildered, he blinked at me, and replied, “The Court of Dreaming Cats, Sire, as I would expect you know quite well; I am Grimnir, and I wouldn’t expect you to know that at all, as I have done nothing to distinguish myself in your eyes; and as to what’s happening, gloriously nothing at the moment. In a few hours, it will be feeding time, and the halls will descend into the frenzy.”

I frowned, eyeing him. In my experience—which is quite extensive, where the Cait Sidhe are concerned—the one-eyed toms are the most aggressive about hunting their own prey, continuing to fend for themselves even when injury or illness makes it unwise in the extreme. Yet this man spoke of being fed like he was a pampered housecat, and seemed to see no strangeness in it.

Something was very wrong. “Is it not strange to see me so?” I asked.

His bewilderment deepened. “Why would it be strange to see a King within his Court? We may be the last Court of Cats in all Faerie, but still we know the ways of things.”

“I . . . see. You may return to your bed, and be glad of it, for I am done with you.” I turned away, unable to shake the feeling that the world had shifted several feet to the left, and was stubbornly refusing to return to true.

The next step, naturally, would be to attempt to leave. I walked toward a corner where the shadows gathered thickly, reaching into them with the part of my magic that always knew how to access the Roads, and they parted when I pulled against them, allowing me to step into the comforting dark.

The Shadow Roads were a gift from Oberon to the Cait Sidhe. We have always been able to access them—good luck to anyone seeking to keep a cat out of a place where it has reason to pass—but they weren’t always ours to keep and care for. Since they passed into our keeping, their anchors depend on us. The more we use them, the more stable they remain, and they connect all of the Summerlands and mortal world in one long, glorious passage.

We call them “roads” out of habit and in description of their function, but really, passage through the shadows is more like running into a vast, dark field from which any point in the world can be accessed, if only you know how to feel your way through the space you occupy. There are no routes nor passages; you run in infinite space, listening to the world around you, letting it choose the direction, letting it tell you when the time has come to drop back into the light.

Running the shadows is an art and a gift, and I have been practicing it since I was a kit.

It was difficult for me once, when I was much younger. The air is thin in the shadows, and to those who aren’t feline born, it seems entirely absent; our passengers regularly choke and gasp during the passage, unable to catch their breath. It can be thus for kittens as well. There was a time when my own breath sought to stop, but now, as I stepped into the dark, I felt only as if I were going home.

The shadows around the Court were a strange, unusually dense tangle, folded over and over on top of themselves, until I nearly lost my way several times. A weaker cat might not have been able to navigate it at all. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to transport a passenger, not even my October, who by this time had been so often in the shadows that they almost recognized her right to passage. I fought my way through, and by the time I passed into more settled territory, I was bristling and uneasy, my every nerve alert to coming danger. I had already known something was terribly wrong—how else to explain my sudden relocation?—but now it seemed that whatever had gone awry was even greater than I would have guessed. For something to disturb the shadows . . .

I tried to put the thought aside and ran faster toward the home where I dwelt with my beloved.

The route was familiar: when I arrived at what should have been my destination, the shadows shifted around me, and I stepped back into the bedroom I had left only a few minutes before.

At least, I stepped into the physical shell of the bedroom. There were no wards. While October had long since adjusted the house wards to accommodate my comings and goings, as well as those of Raj and Ginevra, I should have felt them as they considered whether to allow my passage. Wards are spells intended to function semi-autonomously. As they’re built up over time, they develop personalities, almost, attitudes and quirks entirely their own. October’s wards were wary and warm, like October herself; they knew me and welcomed me as a member of their family.

And they were gone. There were no echoes of magic in this place, nor of our life together. The room was empty save for dust and cobwebs, with no sign that anyone had lived here in years. The light through the window was glaringly bright in the absence of October’s favored blackout curtains, illuminating the dust motes dancing in every sunbeam. I moved toward it and looked out onto the street below.

That, at least, looked relatively normal, although the garden was filled with dead, neglected plants in place of May’s thriving flowers and herbs, and October’s car was absent from the drive. I took a step back, looking uneasily around, and moved to open the bedroom door before I dropped to all fours.

Better to investigate this place in feline form, in which my senses were sharper and my presence less likely to attract attention, if I somehow caught the eye of our nosy mortal neighbors. Prying into the affairs of those around you has never been a purely fae pursuit, and humans are well skilled in observation and gossip.

The hall was dusty, and there were no signs that anyone had been here in years upon years. I prowled with my ears flat and my tail bushed out to more than twice its normal size, seeking some sign—any sign—that I had ever been here before, or that my lady had existed at all.

Neither of those things presented themselves. The front and back doors were both closed. I considered, for a moment, returning to bipedal form and unlocking them, only to dismiss it as a poor idea. The neighbors would surely see and notice if I did something so blatant. Instead, I stepped into the shadows and emerged, still feline, from beneath one of the bushes in the yard.

Here, too, there was no sign of habitation, or that the garden had ever been tended. I was about to turn away and go looking for someone who could tell me what was happening when I heard one of the only sounds a King of Cats is incapable of ignoring.

A cat, meowing in distress.