Page 13 of Ulune's Daughter

Me: At Old Chapel.

Rhodes: You bet, Safety Girl.

Smiling at his assertive ass, I send him back a thumbs-up emoji.

First week back in Bevington, I have the promise of tenure track, I have a potential TA, and I have a date.

Not a bad week all around.

I nearly ruin my streak of good luck by tripping over a black cat as I’m pushing my phone back into my bag.

It materializes out of nowhere. I catch myself with a skein of Air before I face-plant. I wrap another skein around the cat to keep it from getting yeeted into the street. Setting us both down carefully, I rush over to the meowing cat.

“I’m so sorry,” I say to the cat. “I wasn’t looking where I was going. Totally my fault.”

The sweet baby forgives me, sniffing my fingers and deciding I’m good people before butting its head against my hand for pets. I stroke its soft nose, tipped with pink, its alert ears with the most adorable tufts. It winds around me as I kneel to love on it, purring. Such a beautiful kitty. It’s a tortie, mostly black with deep copper dapples down its back and legs, and creamy chin, mittens, and tummy. Its tail is super-fluffy, like a feather duster, and it has the most beautiful light green eyes.

Knowing from my mother’s long collection of calico cats that most brindled cats are female, I croon to her and call her a pretty girl, until the cat brushes by me, flicking up its tail, and shows me a set of huge, furry balls.

“Oh, prettyboy. Goodness, you’re rare. What a love.” I give him a final stroke and rise, glad I’ve only got another two blocks to reach my house. It’s been a day.

When I set off, the cat trots after me.

I let him follow me to my house, then stop and give him a long loving at my front gate, figuring he’ll get bored and trot off after another round of petting. Instead, when I go through my gate, the cat gives the barrier a disdainful glare and leaps lightly over the four-foot-high gate to circle my ankles again.

“What a jumper! Good boy.” I praise him and love on him a bit more. He doesn’t have a collar, but he can’t be a stray. His fur is gleaming and smooth like he’s been brushed recently. He’s not chonky, but he’s certainly not going hungry. Someone’s feeding him.

Evidently, I will also be feeding him, because as I start along the path down the side of my house to the rear entrance, he follows me, meowing and diving at my ankles. When I stop at the shrine to the Mother that my friend Teddy built when she owned the house, he runs up the back steps ahead of me.

I hear him hiss, and the raven that’s claimed my porch as his territory makes a strange clucking noise. I dash up the stairs to intervene.

The cat dodges behind my legs, back arched, tail bristling.

“Oh, no, sweet baby,” I croon. “Don’t be mean to Blackey.”

The cat looks up at me, tipping its head to the side, and meows pathetically.

I can’t leave him out here with the raven. I’m not sure who will kill whom, but both animals are hissing and that doesn’t seem auspicious.

I scoop up the cat, who is lighter than I expect. Maybe he’s not being fed. Well, I have plenty of leftovers. He won’t go hungry tonight.

I carry him inside.

Chapter5

Moral Tremors

LAW

Sleeping with my mate is a seismic event.

Not in the sense that the Earth moved and the Heavens quaked with the force of our love.

It’s literally a seismic event in that she is the most restless sleeper I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something as the brother of the original Night Walker. She starts the night in the middle of the bed, under the covers. By midnight, she’s curled against the headboard with a pillow over her head. By three a.m., she’s face down on the mattress with her cheek pressed against the footboard. Sometime before dawn, she pulls every piece of bedding around her and coils in a bizarre Nautilus of flesh and cotton in the middle of the bed.

In a desperate attempt to get even an hour of sleep without getting bounced off the bed by her thrashing, I slip out of my fur and stretch into my skin beside her. I’m surprised to find she’s smaller than my skin-shape. She has such apresence. But when I draw her into my arms, her head fits neatly under my chin as her legs tangle with mine and she works her foot under my instep, hooking me to her in a gesture I find endearing.

Having seen her thrash all over her sizable—and apparently handmade—sleigh bed, I’m not concerned she’ll wake at my touch. She’s a deep sleeper. Moreover, it only takes a moment for me to slip from skin to fur and if she catches a hint of my transition, she’ll likely dismiss it as a dream, as most humans do.

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