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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Cat on the Roof

The parking garage had a roof made of concrete reinforced with a grid of metal rods. It was about two feet thick. Above that was eight feet of earth, thick and sticky, like modeling clay. The earth was reinforced by its own web of tree roots, criss-crossing over and under themselves as each tree sent feelers out into the clay in a microscopically slow explosion, searching for water and food. This network was itself laced with tunnels made by earthworms burrowing blindly beneath the park as they went about their business. And on top of all this was the grass—white roots in the clay, green shoots above it, reaching into the air, trying to breathe something clean through the exhaust fumes from the sea of traffic endlessly growling past on Park Lane. In the three inches of grass that topped the clay was a tiny world of insects going about their daily grind as thoughtlessly and relentlessly as the human inhabitants of the city around them. There were ants, there were ladybirds—and for a moment there was a beetle.

Edie saw it quite clearly, its shiny black back reflecting the orange glow from the streetlights as it moved slowly from a discarded cigarette packet toward a pile of vomit. She knew the little pyramid in the grass was vomit because she could smell it. She could smell it better than she would have liked because her nose was on the ground like the rest of her, splayed beneath a bush, hardly breathing. She knew the beetle was a beetle—but wasn’t anymore—because she saw the gargoyle land three feet in front of her, and she saw its stone claw plash into the clay beneath.

Edie edged farther back into the shadows under the bush, trying to move as imperceptibly and silently as the tree roots beneath her. In her left hand was a small glass disk, glowing blue between her fingers. It was also hot. She slipped it in her pocket without taking her eye off the stone claw four feet in front of her nose. She didn’t need a warning glass anymore. The thing was here. It was much too here for comfort.

It was a limestone gargoyle with the face of a snarling cat and the horns of a small devil. It had wings, but no arms, and long powerful legs that ended in the beetle-crushing foot claws Edie was staring at. Its eyes were blank stone like the rest of it, the set of its eyebrows was fierce and angry. A century and a half of weather had stained the stone in streaks of black and gray, and somewhere in the past, a hard frost had expanded the water in a crack in its right wing, and a section had fallen off, giving it a lopsided, battle-worn quality.

Edie knew she was good—unnaturally good—at not being seen when she wanted to remain unnoticed. But she wished she was even better at it as she watched the cat-gargoyle bend low to the ground and sniff. As it breathed out, she heard a low whistle, like someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle. It moved its head from side to side across the ground, trying to pick up a scent. Edie decided to stop edging backward and tried to make herself invisible instead.

The cat-gargoyle moved away from her toward the parapet over which George and the Gunner had disappeared. As it turned away to make its sniff-and-whistle noise scenting along the top of the wall, Edie allowed herself a deep breath. She also had a good opportunity to see the sharp ridge of vertebrae running down its back, like a line of giant thorns trying to burst through the taut stone skin. She could see the dense feline muscles bunch and relax as it moved to and fro, as if it were dancing in a slow trance, led by its nose.

And then Edie saw the woman with the stroller and the spaniel, hurrying through the orange gloom, obviously late for something and unhappy about it. The spaniel was running ahead of the woman, ears flapping happily. And then it stopped and its ears went back and it growled.

Edie’s first thought was that it had seen the cat-gargoyle six feet ahead of it. The cat-gargoyle turned and looked at the dog.

The woman snapped her fingers at the dog as she passed on the strip of pathway. “Bramble. Come here. Bramble!”

Bramble was frozen in a trembling rigor in front of the cat-gargoyle. Spaniels don’t get many ideas, so when one takes hold, they tend to stick with it. And with a horrible feeling in her stomach, Edie realized that the thought Bramble was having was not about being able to see the gargoyle. It was about sensing her under the bush.

“BRAMBLE! Come!” the woman called. She left the stroller and walked toward the dog and the gargoyle. The gargoyle took a step backward and crouched, drawing its wings open, parallel to the ground, ready to scythe into action. Edie noticed that the ends of the wings had sharp hooks on them. She’d seen a bullfighter once on the TV, and he’d made the same gesture with his cape, stepping back, spreading the cape behind him, hiding the sword, seeming innocent but ready to kill when the bull got close enough.

The woman walked right past the gargoyle. Edie thought she must have brushed it with her coat, but she clearly could not see it any more than her dog could. She grabbed the spaniel and clipped a leash to its collar.

“Come on, bad dog, there’s nothing there!” she snapped as she pulled the spaniel away. The dog started to bark back over its shoulder, the bark getting louder the farther his mistress pulled it. The bark ended in a yelp as the dog was swatted over the nose and attached to the stroller, whose occupant had now started squealing and yelling. There was a flurry of wind in the trees above, and the woman grimaced. She pulled an umbrella from the bags hung on the back of the stroller and opened it one-handed.

“Come on. It’s going to rain. We’ve got to get home. Good dog.”

The smack on the nose had dislodged the thought of Edie from the spaniel’s mind, and she trotted after the cooing mother who trundled off into the darkness, putting a rain hood over the baby as she went.

Edie was about to breathe again when she realized something chilling. The cat-gargoyle remained braced and ready to attack—but its head had slowly turned, and it looked back over its shoulder in the direction the dog had barked.

Toward Edie.

Suddenly—so fast your eyes had to twist to keep up—it switched the position of its body so it faced her bush. Keeping the claw-tipped wings spread in a nasty echo of the umbrella Edie had just watched the woman unfurl, it crouched lower to the ground and sniffed toward her.

Very slowly, one wing tip pushed the bush aside, and suddenly Edie had nowhere to run. The stone eyes looked at her. Edie had time to note that the whistling breath came from a corroded copper pipe sticking straight out of the things mouth, like a gun barrel.

Edie reached into her pocket and pulled out the disk of glass. Where it had glowed blue, it now blazed like a torch, like a blue-green torch. She held it out straight at the end of her arm, with only the merest fraction of a shake. The rest of the shake was in her voice. Go away.

She cleared her throat. Lost the shake from her voice and tried again.

“GO AWAY! You have to GO AWAY!”

One stone eyebrow rose in a question. And then the fierce snarl stretched even farther back, and the horns flattened like the dog’s ears had. And it didn’t go away at all. It stepped toward her, pulling the bush apart, opening her to the world and whatever it was about to do.

And then the rain came—a spitter, a spatter, then all at once like a block falling from the sky. Edie set her jaw and glared defiantly at the stone eyes through the falling water.

“You. Don’t. Scare. Me,” she lied. “Nothing scares me. Not anymore. You can’t hurt me. You have to GO AWAY!”

The cat-gargoyle shook itself in a shiver, looked her in the eye.

“You don’t scare me… .” she lied again.

And then the cat-gargoyle jumped.

Backward. Up into the sky. Into the rain. Away from her.

Edie stared very hard at the place where it had been, until her eyes had convinced her brain that there was nothing to see except rain and grass and the ugly orange light.

She looked at the glass disk in her hand. As she was staring at it, the light died in it, and it looked like what it was, an old piece of sea glass, the bottom of a bottle washed to and fro by the tide, worn smooth by the pebbles and sand. Something anyone might find on a day at the sea. She stuffed it back in the pocket of her sheepskin jacket. Took several deep breaths, and headed across the grass down onto the ramp of the parking garage.