Free Cat Magic by Whitley Strieber Page B

had for the Grimm’s illustrations.” Should she add that it contained all the really good ideas she had ever had for Grimm’s, and amounted to the best of her life’s work? No point. The sketches and paintings would speak for themselves.
    Constance Collier replaced the Hobbes in a slipcase on the leather-covered library table. “He killed my husband, in case you’ve ever wondered. Hobbes killed Jack.”
    Mandy recalled that Jack Collier had died under somewhat sensational circumstances back in the early twenties. A hunting accident or something. “I didn’t know that.”
    “Shot him. Shot us both.” She stared at the book for some moments. “You come highly recommended.” She looked up, her face for the first time clear to Mandy. It had the startlingly simian appearance that is sometimes associated with great age. Here and there were vestiges of the legendary beauty of the twenties and thirties, the dramatically straight, thick eyebrows, the narrow, angled nose. Gone, though, were those full, mysterious lips and the amazing lusciousness of complexion that Stieglitz had captured in his portraits of her.
    Oddly enough, the same years which had devoured her sensuality had granted Constance Collier a deeper mystery yet: despite the fact that she was slack and dry, almost a leaf of a woman, her eyes shone with intense light. Mandy found herself very badly wanting to know her. Such eyes must hide wonderful things, or why would they shine so?
    Mandy could readily imagine herself becoming a student of Constance Collier’s. All the childhood mystery would be dispelled. More, she was fascinated by this place, the ancient kitchen, the candles, the maze, the strange adolescents. She had to be allowed to stay!
    “I think I left my portfolio on the porch.”
    As Mandy went toward the front of the house, the cawing of the crows got louder and louder, until it was a bitter, crazy cacophony, full of inscrutable passions.
    The flock rose like an angry belch of smoke when Mandy opened the door.
    She stood, shocked beyond words. Her own scream was so naked with rage that it made her clamp her lips shut—
    The crows had tom her portfolio and all of her drawings to tiny bits and scattered them about the yard.
    She stood staring, disbelieving, shattered. Her whole past, everything she had done that was fine, had been destroyed by the brainless creatures.
    She hardly noticed when Constance Collier stole near, a knowing and sympathetic look on her face, and placed a consoling hand on her hunched shoulder.

Chapter 5
    The acid, frightened stink of Long-hands made Tess scream. Her voice woke Gort, who screamed with her. She ran the cage, feeling the wind rushing in her face, perch to far bars, far bars to back wall, bang against back wall to front bars, swing back to perch.
    She had gone far, but she was no farther from Long-hands. There was stinking fear coming from him, and it infected her. Tess screamed. Again she ran the cage. Her own fear confused her, made her hands do what they shouldn’t. She hit Gort.
    At once he showed his fearsome teeth and she thought how great was this monkey and cast her eyes down an instant to say, I am yours.
    In that moment Long-hands reached his fingers around her. She screamed and screamed and bit the fingers so furiously there wouldn’t be any hard fingers anymore, but Long-hands only made a growl, “Sheuht!” and kept on taking her out of her home.
    She hated it outside of the place where she had all her smells and all Gort’s smells, and where Gort kept his body. Out here she couldn’t run the cage, perch to far bars, far bars to back wall, over and over with the wind in her fur and Gort running too the other way, and passing each other and then tumbling down on the floor in their good smells together so glad.
    Long-hands had her now, had her good. She tried to twist around and bite his face but she could not; she was being carried by Long-hands far away from Gort. She screamed. Gort screamed.