Page 21 of Beneath the Poet's House

Roberto smacks her arm lightly. “There are empty cages, Lucretia. Be careful, or they’ll put you up for adoption too.” He turns to Heather. “Don’t worry, anyone that took her home would bring her back within the week.”

Heather smiles good-naturedly, then turns to address Saoirse. “I’ll let you get acquainted with the animals and be back in a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Saoirse says and watches Heather walk out before turning back to the wall of enclosures.

“Five black ones,” Lucretia says. “I told you black cats were the hardest to place. Though, Midnight is the only entirely black one. Aww, but his little card says he has diabetes!”

Saoirse stares at Midnight. Adopting a cat with diabetes would be a lot of work. But Saoirse knows how it feels to be discounted due to a diagnosis. “Hello, Midnight,” she whispers.

“Now that we’re ensconced within the privacy of Catdom,” Roberto says, “are you going to tell us why you look so exhausted?”

Saoirse turns to face him, momentarily forgetting her feline audience. “Believe it or not, I was writing.”

“Oh. My. Gosh. Yes, Saoirse!” Lucretia hugs her. “You’re over your block, then? And I’m sorry, but I have to ask, was it whatever happened during the séance that unblocked you?”

Saoirse shrugs. “Maybe? I’m still not entirely sure what happened during the séance. But after everyone left that night, I went upstairs, and a poem poured right out of me.”

Lucretia grabs her arm. “Wait, a poem? Didn’t you used to write cozy mystery novels? I didn’t know you wrote poetry too.”

“I didn’t. At least, not seriously. I mean, I had some notebooks filled with poems from over the years, but they were nothing I ever bothered to show anyone.”

Lucretia and Roberto exchange a glance.

“What?” Saoirse looks back and forth between the two of them. “What is it?”

Lucretia busies herself looking into the cubby where a cat named Bubba has rolled onto his back and is pawing at the air. When she looks over again, there is something in her face that Saoirse has never seen before. It’s something a little bit teasing and a little bit scared.

“I mean, you can’t tell me it didn’t occur to you. What a weird coincidence it is that Sarah was a poet, and now, after the longest dry spell in the history of your writing, you come back, more prolific than everandwriting poetry? That’s gnarly. Out there. Isn’t that out there, Roberto?”

Roberto gives Saoirse a pointed look. “You know how much I hate agreeing with her, but Lucretia’s right.”

Saoirse turns back to Midnight, feigning nonchalance. “If you two are going to make such a big deal about my return to writing, then I totally shouldn’t tell you who I had tea with yesterday.”

“You should,” Roberto says, grabbing Saoirse’s elbow and turning her toward him. “And you will. You’ll tell us right this instant.”

“Emmit freakin’ Powell. I guess he’s a professor with Brown’s MFA program. He ran into me on campus there, at a career fair. Literally.He bowled me over, then asked to take me to Carr Haus to make it up to me.”

Roberto’s eyes practically bug out of his head. “Um, duh, that he’s a professor with Brown’s MFA program. He’s also one of the most amazing writers to come out of the twenty-first century. Do you know he’s technically a horror writer? Now, his agent and the people at his publishing house don’t market him as such, because horror is genre fiction, and genre fiction is smut to be looked down upon by book snobs everywhere. But you cannot convince me thatVulture Eyesis anything but revolutionary, transcendent literary horror. The guy is a modern-day Edgar Allan Poe!”

Saoirse freezes at the comparison, but Roberto doesn’t notice and continues, “Vulture Eyesis astonishingly terrifying but also gorgeous and lyrical and heartbreaking. Oh my god, Saoirse, I can’t believe you got to sit down with him. Did you talk about writing? Did he say anything about where he got the idea forVulture Eyes? Some of those passages where the protagonist was trying to escape his guilt by any means possible were written as if they’d really happened! And did he reveal anything about his next novel?”

Saoirse hasn’t heard Roberto say so much in a single breath since she met him. “We did talk about writing. But mostly, we talked about death.”

“Death?” Lucretia looks worried. “Did you bring it up or did he?”

“He did, I think. Or, maybe it was me? I can’t remember. That’s what the whole conversation was like. Like I couldn’t tell where my thoughts ended and his began.”

“Oh, shit,” Roberto breathes. “So you guys hit it off?”

“We started to.” Midnight holds a paw up to the glass, and Saoirse presses a finger to the little black pad. “But then he got all weird on me. I’m talkingPlay Misty for Melevel of weirdness.”

“Seriously?” Roberto says, then stops, looking confused. “Wait, isn’tPlay Misty for Meabout awomanwho gets all obsessive and stalkerish?”

“Come on, Roberto,” Lucretia chastises. “Don’t be so rigid in your obsessive stalker gender stereotypes.”

“Right, whatever. But what exactly did he do?”

Footsteps sound in the corridor outside. “He told me he gets premonitions,” Saoirse says, “and that he had a premonition he was going to run into me, or something. That something momentous—on par with the idea for his first novel—was going to happen, and then he met me.” The door opens, and Heather walks into the room.

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