City of Lies - Lian Tanner [24]
Goldie picked up the knife and put it back in her pocket. The boy raised his eyebrows at her, as if he was asking a question, then looked toward the drain.
“You want me to get the mice?” said Goldie, who was still worried about the cat and what it might do.
The boy nodded. The cat twisted in his arms, but he held it against his chest and began to whistle to it, the way he had whistled to the mice.
Goldie crouched in front of the drain. At first she couldn’t see anything, but then her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could just make out three bundles of trembling white fur.
She reached out her hand. “Here, mousie,” she whispered. Three pairs of pink eyes blinked nervously at her. “I’m sorry about the cat,” she said. “I should’ve known it’d turn up again. It’s been following me.”
She kept her voice low and her hand very still, and before long, one of the mice began to groom itself. The others joined in, slicking their fur and cleaning their paws and whiskers. Gradually their trembling stopped.
Goldie glanced over her shoulder. The boy’s eyes were half closed and he was blinking sleepily down at the cat. To Goldie’s astonishment, the cat was blinking back at him and purring in a crackly, unpracticed voice. All of its fierce, sharp angles had softened, and now she could see the elegance that lay beneath.
“I think your boy has tamed the cat,” she whispered to the mice. “You can come out now.”
The mice gave their paws a final lick and tidied their whiskers. Then, one by one, they trooped toward her hand, inspected it carefully, and climbed on board.
Goldie had no idea what the cat might do when it saw the mice again, so she hid them against her jacket. They wriggled in her hand, full of life and warmth, and she wished she could keep them there forever.
But the boy was already lowering the cat to the ground and holding his own hand out for his pets. Reluctantly, Goldie gave them back. When they smelled their enemy on the boy’s skin they squeaked in protest.
The cat’s ears swiveled. It crouched down, its eyes fixed on the boy’s hand, its tail lashing.
It was then that the white-haired boy did something that amazed Goldie. With the palm of his hand flat, and the three mice sitting there, unprotected, he squatted next to the cat.
“I don’t think—” she began.
But the boy wasn’t listening to her. He was explaining to the cat and the mice that they must be friends. At least, that was what it sounded like to Goldie, although the noise he made was nothing more than a humming croon.
The cat’s ears flicked back and forth as if it was thinking unfamiliar thoughts. Slowly, its fierceness drained away. It took a step forward. For a moment the mice looked as if they were trying to be brave, but then their nerve broke and they ran up the boy’s arm and dived inside his jacket.
The boy crooned a bit more. The cat sat down so close to his hand that its whiskers touched his fingertips. Its spotted limbs were as still as a statue of Great Wooden. Its eyes blinked sleepily.
One by one, the mice poked their heads out from the boy’s jacket. One by one they crept back down his arm to the palm of his hand. They craned forward until they were almost touching the cat’s whiskers. Their noses crinkled. They shook their little heads and sneezed.
Then they sat down and began to clean themselves, as if they were in the safest place in the world.
Goldie let out her breath with a loud huff. “How did you do that?”
The boy stood up, grinning, and put the mice back in the pram. The cat lounged amiably against his feet, looking as if it had never in its life thought of harming another creature.
Very quickly and lightly, the boy put his hand on Goldie’s arm, then took it away again.
“What?” said Goldie.
The boy pointed at the pram.
“You want me to wheel the pram? No. You want to give me the pram? No, I didn’t think so. Oh, you want to tell my fortune.”
The boy nodded. Goldie swallowed, thinking of Toadspit and Bonnie. A fortune might tell her where to find them. Or at least give her some sort of clue. “I haven’t got any money,” she said.