Creatures of Charm and Hunger by Molly Tanzer

Author:Molly Tanzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780358066729
Publisher: HMH Books
Published: 2020-04-20T16:00:00+00:00

18

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SMUDGE FOLLOWED JANE OUT TO the barn when she went to clean up the mess.

It was Smudge. She was sure of it. She’d held him in her arms when he’d been a squirmy mewling kitten; she knew his ways like she knew her own. Currently, Smudge was walking as he usually did, tail swishing from side to side like a fuzzy rudder, his posture alert and focused. A confident tomcat out for a stroll.

Things weren’t any different now.

Except they were.

The storm the previous night had raged like Jane’s emotions as she’d summoned forth the Ceaseless Connoisseur from its home in the Quarry of Sensation. The demon had answered, Smudge had awoken from his induced sleep within a circle made of crushed coca leaves and rose petals, and Jane had bound them together with words and a bit of virgin white yarn she’d soaked in a solution of mercury, diabolic essence, and single-malt Scotch whisky. After she’d said the final words, the yarn had glowed an eye-watering shade of azure before disappearing into flesh and fur.

After that, the cat had stepped delicately out of the circle, head-butted her chin with the chirp that meant he would like to be petted, and then herded her to bed, as Smudge often did when she was late at her work. Today Smudge trotted his same trot, cocked his tail back and forth with the same jaunty confidence, and looked over at her with his inscrutable yellow eyes the same way he always had when she called his name. And yet she knew he was not really himself. There was something within her cat making his motions a bit swifter, a bit keener. A bit more consciously attuned to her.

Smudge had slept soundly, curled beside Jane’s feet all night. She had been the restless one, tossing and turning after everything she had done. Normally Jane wouldn’t think twice of something so normal as the cat sleeping on her feet, but there were the ducks to be considered. Three ducks with their bellies split and their entrails strewn about the barn. Whatever had done it had dragged them around and around, effectively trapping the remaining birds in a circle of feathers, guts, and blood.

Jane knew that foxes and other predators sometimes liked to play with their food; it was just the timing of this gruesome attack that gave her pause. That, and when she looked at the carcasses in the dim light of the barn—Nancy’s country pragmatism had made her save the bodies for stock at the very least—she’d noticed their necks were snapped.

Cleanly, not messily. And there were no bite marks.

It was uncanny, and she’d done something uncanny the night before. Uncanny, illegal, dangerous . . . whether her actions were ambitious or insane would be for history to decide.

But even a demon couldn’t be in two places at once—and they could not exist beyond their host. There simply hadn’t been time for Smudge to slip away and murder birds for sport, pleasure, or weirder reasons.

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