I fell asleep not long after he did, and I didn’t even dream.
In the morning, with Javier presumably still asleep, I decided to pursue knowledge a different way. A way that would likely involve cream.
I didn’t delude myself that one night spent snuggled up against my arm was going to change Grayling’s behavior. I’ve known too many cats. Nevertheless, I had an idea.
When I was young, my father had tried to teach me the merchant’s art of bargaining, and while it dealt largely with understanding people, which meant I took to it like a duck to arsenic, I did remember a few things. “Anja-bear,” he said once, “there’s a certain kind of person who needs to be smarter than you. It’s mostly men, but I’ve known a few women like that, too. What you do is say something you know is wrong so that they can correct you. That makes them feel smug and in control of the situation.” He’d winked at me. “Thenyou take them for everything they’re worth.”
It was possible that human psychology wouldn’t work on a cat, but I suspected that this might. Cats all know they’re smarter than you are, and they’re smug as hell about it. (This is not to say that there aren’t kind and loyal and humble cats out there. There probably are. I’m just saying that even the nicest cat in the world thinks it’s funny when you fall down the stairs.)
I went down to my workroom, left the door open, and began washing the glasswork, a chore I’d been putting off because the very fine tubes require some time spent with a small wad of sponge soaked in alcohol, on the end of a bit of wire. About halfway through this process, the rooster made a hostile noise, and the cat landed on the table with a soft thump.
“Hello, Grayling,” I said.
He rolled over on his back and wiggled invitingly. The fur on his underside looked as soft and fluffy as a storm cloud.
“Oh no,” I said. “Don’t even try it. I know it’s a trap.”
The cat tilted his head sideways, still upside down, and flicked his tail. “Trap?” he said, sounding affronted. “How is it a trap?”
“Because if I go to pet your belly, you disembowel my arm.”
The single yellow eye narrowed. “Did Iaskyou to pet my belly? I’m quite certain I didn’t.”
“You rolled over and wiggled!”
“That,” said the cat, rolling to his feet, “was an invitation to wrestle. You’re misinterpreting it, then blaming me because I didn’t go along with your misinterpretation. Typical.” The tip of his tail continued to shiver. “If you think that a chime-adder ringing its tail is a sign of affection, whose fault is it when you get bitten?”
I stared at the ceiling for a moment, annoyed. The cat was right. Damn it. How embarrassing. “Sorry,” I said, a bit gruffly. “You’re right.”
This seemed to mollify him. “Have you come to badger me with more questions, then?”
This was rich, given thathe’dbeen the one to come intomyworkroom, but I didn’t want to start off arguing. “No, no,” I said. “I think I’m getting the hang of things.”
“Are you, then?” he asked, in a tone that implied I was wandering naked in the desert without a map.
“I think so. Though the first time I saw someone’s reflection just standing there, to one side of the mirror, it gave me a hell of a turn. Just that horrible mirror color all over.” I went back to scrubbing the glassware, watching the cat out of the corner of my eye. “Though I suppose they bleed if you cut them, same as the rest of us.”
“They do not,” said Grayling. I noticed with some satisfaction that his tail had stopped twitching. “If you cut one, they’d be solid mirror-stuff all the way through.”
“Really!” (I had been pretty sure this was the case, of course, after my test on the plant.) “So they aren’t really alive, then?”
“Alive,” said Grayling, “is complicated.” He turned his paw over and inspected the burgundy pads. “What you ought to worry about isawake.”
“Awake?” I started to ask what he meant, then remembered my father’s advice.Let him correct you.“Those reflections didn’t look like they were asleep.”
“They were not asleep, but neither were they awake.” Grayling nibbled at a claw. “You’ll know if you meet a waking one.”
“Will I?”
“Oh yes.”
Without knowing more, I couldn’t come up with a statement for him to correct, so I went directly for a question. “Are they dangerous, then?”
“Are humans dangerous?”
I snorted.
Grayling stretched, clearly amused. “There’s your answer, then. I don’t suppose you have any cream?”
