The Year of the Cat: The Complete Collection: The Year of the Cat by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Format: epub

The next few days became a blur. The $200 he was going to send to the Red Cross, and the $50 he was going to send to the Humane Society (which Ruby protested—she felt he should still send that money) went to a plane ticket that got Boyce Theriot out of northern Louisiana and to Portland, Oregon. Winston had to charge another $50 on his credit card—the one he kept for emergencies—to get one of those airport limos to pick Boyce up, because Winston couldn’t do it.

His only car was a Gremlin, bought because he liked the magical name, and he’d had it almost as long as he lived in Oregon. He found the problem that made it belch blue smoke, but he knew the undercarriage was so rusted that one day it would simply fall off.

While he waited for the limo to show up, he cleaned the guest room. He hadn’t had a guest since he moved into the cliff house decades ago, and the bed had gotten buried beneath books and blankets and trinkets he’d found. The job was larger than he expected, and he even had to use a cleaning spell—something he hadn’t done in a decade—to get the dust out of the mattress. He went to the Factory Outlet store and bought fresh sheets, a new comforter, and towels. Ruby wanted to keep the new stuff for them, and let Boyce use the older things from Winston’s bed, but that felt wrong to him.

Now that he had resigned himself to company, he wanted to do a good turn by him.

The limo arrived late Friday night. Winston watched through the front window as people piled out. In the glow of the streetlights against the dark sky, it almost looked like an art film version of those clown cars he’d seen as a child. More and more people got out until he thought the entire vehicle would collapse from their loss.

Ruby sat on the back of the couch, looking more like a cat than a familiar. She watched from a position that guaranteed she could see the people, but they couldn’t see her. And she could run for the bedroom at a moment’s notice.

Winston left her inside. He went onto his front stoop, watching as the tallest, thinnest of the group took a receipt from the limo driver. The air smelled clean and sharp; the wind was strong off the ocean, usually something he loved.

But he felt nervous now, as if he had plunged into a world he hadn’t quite expected.

The limo drove off, leaving five people in the street. Only five. It had seemed like so many more.

“Winston?” The tall, thin man came toward him and he realized it was Boyce. He hadn’t remembered Boyce being tall or thin, but now that he saw Boyce walk, he knew that this was his old friend. How could anyone forget that walk, which was half sashay, half swagger?

Winston stepped off the porch and plastered a smile on his face. He hoped he wasn’t shaking.

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