The Big Meow - Diana Dueyn

“Finally,” Urruah said. “Took them long enough!”

“’Ruah, this isn’t Manhattan,” Rhiow said, “and it’s not our time, either. And consider this city’s size. Either way, she’ll be all right: we were here, lucky for her. Or maybe it was more than luck: it’s not as if there aren’t Powers that work for ehhif as well as against them.” Her eyes narrowed a little as she glanced up at the pills scattered over the counter by the sink. “Except for us, this would most likely have been a murder scene now. Or, as the ehhif would have thought, a suicide. Now all we need to know is how she was drugged so quickly, and why, and who did it.”

“But who would drug her? And why?” Hwaith said.

“I had no time to tell any of you,” Rhiow said. “Just before we went down to the room where the strings were strange, I heard this ehhif having a very interesting conversation with her friend there.” She eyed the ehhif called Ray. “Now I find myself wondering – did someone else hear some of that conversation, and not like what they heard? Did somebody maybe not want this poor queen to go to the meeting the tom-ehhif was proposing she attend?”

Rhiow looked over at Arhu. “This would normally be your department,” she said.

“Normally,” he said, sounding very annoyed. “But remember about downstairs – “

“I know. Try again,” Rhiow said. “And hurry, before too many more ehhif come in here and start making it harder for you to See.”

Arhu sat up straight, curled his tail around his feet, and went unfocused for a few moments, holding perfectly still. Then his tail started to lash. “Nothing clear,” Arhu said, his eyes going down to slits in anger. “It’s as it was downstairs. Like the whole place is fogged over. It’s impossible to get a focus. Shadows, moving in shadow – ” He sounded unnerved. “She came in here, all right: that’s hardly news, since here’s where we found her. But I can’t see anyone else here for certain until that other she-ehhif came in and found her – “

Rhiow breathed out in annoyance. “Well, when she wakes, she’ll be able to tell what happened. One of us at least will need to be with her when the police are asking her to tell her story.”

“And there’s another question,” Siffha’h said. “Who called the cops? And what were they told?”

Sif slid out from behind the toilet, glanced around to make sure that no ehhif seemed to be heading her way, and jumped up on the bathroom’s windowsill, peering downward. “Because there’s no ambulance out there,” she said. “Two police cars, though. No, here comes a third one.”

“Maybe it’s running late?” Urruah said.

But the people who came up the stairs in the next few minutes, more or less in a crowd, and talking fairly loudly, were policemen, not any kind of ambulance crew. “Okay, okay, could we have some room here please?” said a voice from outside. “Thanks, sister – Come on, how’re we supposed to move in here? Thanks – ”

Into the bathroom came a big beefy sandy-haired man wearing a dark blue police uniform and a huge gun at his hip. He looked around the room and at the people in it with what to Rhiow seemed like an expression of faint scorn. “So where’s the corpse?” he said. “Lady who called said there was a stiff up here.”

“I think the report may have been premature,” Helen said, standing up over Dolores and Ray. Her tone was cool: Rhiow could just imagine what she was thinking about this policeman’s way with a crime scene.

“Okay, what happened?” said the cop, glancing around the room, taking in the expensive people, the expensive clothes, the spilled pills, and finally Dolores, now sitting up on the floor half-supported by Ray, and looking very woozy and sheepish. “You pass out or something, lady?”

“I don’t know,” Dolores said. “I was downstairs and I didn’t feel well. I thought maybe it was the heat. I came up here to try to freshen up – and then – then I – ” Dolores stopped suddenly, as if she was having second thoughts about what she was saying, how it might sound. And indeed the pressure of all those eyes on her – and the expressions on the faces looking into the bathroom, like people trying not to look too eager to hear something that would turn into juicy, sordid gossip later – “I don’t know,” Dolores said. “I woke up here. Oh, Ray, I’m so sorry, I feel like such a fool!”

“It’s all right,” Ray said, “it’s all right…” He was rocking her a little, stroking her hair and trying to soothe her.

Watching this, the cop’s expression let go a little of its previous scorn: he started to look more kindly, though annoyed. “You want my advice, lady,” he said, “lay off the sauce. Don’t think I didn’t see the spread downstairs. Had to be enough booze to float the Queen Mary in.” He turned around and, no longer seeming inclined to use his annoyance on Dolores, pointed it at the people in the doorway and the hallway instead. “Okay, what’re the rest of you doing? Come on, nothing to see here, let the lady have some air, you’d think you wanted to see a corpse or something!”

The shocked expressions and their owners backed away from the door as the cop headed for it. “Don’t know what’s the matter with you folks,” he said as he pushed through the door and out into the hall. “What I want to know now is, who called us and reported a dead person when there wasn’t one? Hah? Ever heard of being charged for wasting police time? Hah?”

The increasingly loud sound of footsteps out in the hall suggested that people were starting to leave the area quickly, before someone in a uniform started asking the question of specific persons rather than the region at large. Shortly there was no one left in the room but Helen, Ray and Dolores, and the four unseen People.

“Come on, let’s get you up,” Helen said. She took one of Dolores’s arms: Ray took the other. Between them they pulled Dolores to her feet. She staggered a little, then leaned against the edge of the counter with the sinks, getting her breath.

“I can’t thank you enough, Miss,” Ray said, “Miss – “

“Just call me Helen.” She smiled at Ray, then turned her attention back to Dolores. “Miss, are you all right now?”

Dolores had turned herself around and was looking at herself in the mirror. A wan, sad sort of look it was, hopeless and helpless, as if the world had betrayed her one more time. “I think so,” she said, looking at Helen in the mirror. “But I feel so…so…” She shook her head.

“It’s all right,” Helen said, and turned away.

“Oh, but it’s not!” Dolores said. It wasn’t Helen she was saying it to, though, but Ray: she turned to him, clung to him. “You know what’s going to happen now! This is going to be all over the magazines next week. Or on that horrible radio show of Parsons’. How Dolores Canton can’t hold her liquor, how I passed out so cold that everybody thought I was dead, and the police were called, and…” She gulped as if something horrible had just occurred to her. “There are even going to be people who’ll claim this was some kind of publicity stunt to get my career going again. Oh, Ray, what studio’s going to hire me now? What am I going to do — ?”

“You’re going to do exactly as we agreed,” he said softly into her ear. “We’ll go to that meeting like we planned…and things like this are going to stop happening to you. Okay? Okay. Just trust me, Dolores. Come on, I’ll walk you downstairs and we’ll get your wrap.”

“You mean you’re not afraid to be seen with me after this? Oh, Ray, what if they — ”

“They won’t. Of course I’m not afraid. Now come on, darling. – Yes, all right, you’re a little wobbly. It’ll pass. Too much excitement, and okay, maybe one glass of wine too many – “

They paused, for suddenly standing there in the doorway was Elwin Dagenham, actually wringing his hands in distress as his gaze took it all in, especially the scattered pills. “Oh, Miss Canton, are you – did you – “

“I’m all right,” she said. “No, truly, Mr. Dagenham. I’m fine. I’ll be going now.”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to do that – “

“I do,” Dolores said. “I’m sorry. Ray, please – “

“Yes, all right,” Ray said. He nodded at Helen and walked Dolores slowly out of the room, murmuring to her as they went. Just for a moment, as he went out, Rhiow saw a glance pass between him and Dagenham: a strangely neutral look, as of people who mean to say something to each other later on. Out in the hall, the last few people lingering there stared at Ray and Dolores, watching them, and then hurried away in various directions, whispering. But Dagenham stood there still, his glance darting nervously around the bathroom.

Rhiow ignored him for the moment, coming out from behind the toilet. “Arhu,” she said, “if you can’t See, you can hear. Follow them. Listen to them. We have to know just when and where that meeting is. Go home with them if you have to, but find out.”

He flirted his tail “yes” and headed for the door. “Sif?”

“With you,” Siffha’h said, and went after him.

Watching Ray and Dolores go out, under his breath Urruah said, “It’s a shame that you didn’t have time to ‘tailor’ Dolores’s cure a little more.”

Rhiow looked at him. “What? How?”

Hwaith, sitting next to Urruah and peering out into the room, now glanced at Urruah and flicked an ear in agreement. “So that she’d have come out of this sick enough to have to spend a night or two in the hospital,” Hwaith said, “and couldn’t make it to this ‘meeting’ they’re talking about.”

Rhiow considered what he was saying and then lashed her tail “no”. “There wasn’t time for that kind of tweaking,” she said. “Though I understand your concern — ”

Helen meanwhile had turned to the mirror as Ray and Dolores went out and was apparently intent on adjusting her hair, not that Rhiow could see that it particularly needed any adjusting. Dagenham was looking at her, and Helen was coolly failing to notice the look without actually ignoring it: a delicate business, one worthy of a Person.

“Miss, uh, Walks — Walker – ?”

Helen looked at him at last. “I’d like to thank you,” Dagenham said. “That could have been very – uncomfortable for Miss Canton.”

“I’m sure she just had a little too much heat,” Helen said, “a little too much excitement. There are so many … attentive people downstairs.” She allowed her smile to warm a few degrees. “Some of them very attentive indeed.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s partly why I’m still here – ” When I really need to be downstairs talking to the police? Rhiow thought to herself. Yeah, I just bet. “There are some gentlemen downstairs who very much want to talk to you before you leave. One of the vice-presidents from Goldwyn, and the casting director from Paramount – “

Helen’s eyes widened just slightly. One above us, what now? she said silently in the Speech.

As if I know? Rhiow said. On a night like this, when everything’s happening at once? Ride the moment, cousin!

“Oh dear,” Helen said, “I don’t know what they’ve said to you, but I couldn’t possibly – “

“Miss Walker,” Dagenham said, coming into the room and actually reaching out and grabbing one of Helen’s hands. She started. “Please. I promised them you’d talk to them before you left. Just talk to them, that’s all. Oh, please!”

The desperate urgency in his voice was very strange. But then Rhiow thought about it, considering what kind of local political capital a climber in these particular show-business regions could make of the introduction, the “discovery”, of some new starlet. And what’s in it for him after word gets around that the ‘new starlet’ got her big break at one of his parties? He’s more sought-after than ever: every girl in town wants to get in here. Who benefits? Not him directly. He doesn’t look the type — But then Rhiow stopped herself. Whisperer dear, listen to me, I’m spending time speculating about some ehhif’s chances of sexual success! Sif’s right, it’s too perverse —!

“Well,” Helen said after a moment. “If it’s just to talk to them – ” She flicked a glance into the mirror at where Rhiow, Urruah and Hwaith were sitting. And then what? What happens when one of them offers me a contract?

Urruah flicked an ear at her. Hire an agent?

Oh, thanks a lot!

Go on, Rhiow said. There are some other things we can be looking into. And we’ll check on the Silent Man in the meantime.

“Please, Miss Walker!” Dagenham said. “They’re not used to being kept waiting – “

Helen smiled into the mirror. “Then perhaps it’s as well they are,” she said, “for a few minutes at least. If they’re thinking I’m something out of the ordinary, perhaps there’s no harm in reinforcing the impression.” She straightened, turned away from the mirror. “Shall we?”

Dagenham practically fled the bathroom, hurrying down the hall. Helen threw a glance over her shoulder at the three People, then headed out after him.

Urruah, Rhiow and Hwaith came out into the room and all stretched: being cramped up into that little space behind the toilet had left them all feeling a bit tight in the joints, psychically if not physically. “Interesting development,” Hwaith said, glancing around and wrinkling his nose at the many ehhif-scents still lingering in the hot little room.

“Not half as interesting as the one that probably brought poor Dolores here,” Rhiow said as she headed for the door and glanced down the hall in Helen’s wake. The hallway was empty; Helen and Dagenham had gone straight downstairs. “Take a moment, hear it as the Whisperer heard it with me – “

Urruah and Hwaith both went silent as they all headed down the stairs, keeping carefully to one side in case any ehhif came up. But the hallways in this side of the house were now very quiet – whatever ehhif had been here had cleared out in a hurry, most likely with the arrival of the police. Halfway down the stairs, as they turned at the landing, Hwaith looked over at Rhiow, and she wasn’t entirely surprised to see him bristling. “Are you thinking what I am?” he said. “That these ehhif are dabbling in what their kind call black magic?”

She switched her tail as she headed down the second flight of stairs, a tense “yes”. “It was so cunningly couched,” Rhiow said. “It’d be easy for a careless listener to think they were hearing somebody talk about one of the Powers that Be — ”

Urruah’s eyes were narrow as they came down onto the ground floor level. “Ugly,” he said. “The Strong Ones’, my tail — it’s the Lone One’s jackals they’re talking about!”

“Yes,” Rhiow said. “Its hangers-on, the decayed entities that suck and tear at the edges of life. They always love it when some poor deluded bunch of ehhif get suckered into thinking they’re ‘Higher Forces’ that can be called and commanded to make their lives work. No good ever comes of it!”

She was bristling too now, and it took some effort for Rhiow to calm herself. “Sorry,” she said to Hwaith. “We’ve had run-ins with such ehhif before. They’re always looking for dark places to make contact with sa’Rraah’s jackals. Too often they wind up down in the train tunnels.”