I said, “I’m managing all right.” Flat, no expression, one way or the other—God, I can hear myself right now! But Sally knows me, I always forget how well. She said, “And exactly what does that mean?”

“It means I’m managing. It means I’m okay, don’t worry about me, I’m doing just fine. Okay?”

“Not okay,” Sally said, which she’d never have done back home. “Jenny, I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but I almost like it better when you’re throwing fits, bouncing off the walls. Now you’re biding your time about something, and I want you to understand that whatever it is, it’s not going to happen. However things turn out with the farm, we are not going back to New York. Get it out of your head, baby. This is it, this is our home and our family, and if you’re not happy about it, I’m very sorry. Me, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. I think you could be, too.” She grinned at me suddenly, a real sidelong flasher that I’d seen on Marta, but never on my own mother. “I’ll tell you, I think you even are at times—happy—when I’m not looking. Am I right?”

I didn’t answer, and I didn’t say a word the rest of the way back to Stourhead Farm. When we got home, I boiled out of the car and went to find Mister Cat, because I wanted to sit outside with him somewhere and do some major brooding. But he wasn’t in the dairy or asleep in my room, so I headed for the east wing and Tony’s studio. I was afraid that had to be it, and it was, and I got there just in time to scoop him up as Tony slung him out the door. I yelled, and Tony yelled back, “Well, I told you what I’d do, I told you, Jenny!” And he banged the door shut, and Mister Cat wriggled out of my arms—I thought the door slam had scared him, because he scratched me hard with a back foot, which he never does. He was down and gone before I even opened my mouth to call.

I caught up with him at the foot of the old stairway. He was just sliding between a couple of loose boards—and ahead of him, through the gap, I saw something flashing up the stairs. It looked gray in the dim light, or maybe gray-blue, and it ran on four feet, not making a sound, and it wasn’t a rat or a mouse or any animal like that, I could tell that much. Whatever it was, I didn’t want Mister Cat going after it, not for a minute. I grabbed, but you might as well grab rain as Mister Cat. He was gone, he was right behind the gray-blue thing, and it halfway turned to meet him, and then I couldn’t see them anymore. I thought I heard Mister Cat make that prrrp? sound once—after that, nothing.

For one wild moment I was tugging and yanking at those boards, to widen the space so I could get through. Then I stopped, because I wasn’t Mister Cat, and I was not going up those dark stairs by myself. With Meena or Tony, okay—even with Julian, I might have done it. Not alone.

For a while I sat there waiting for him, but that got old, so I gave up and started walking away, looking back every ten seconds or so to see if he was following me. He usually does, once he realizes I’m really going, pouncing and darting ahead of me to make it look like his own idea. Not this time. I waited in my room until Evan called me to help Tony set the table for dinner, but Mister Cat didn’t show; and he wasn’t around for the rest of the evening, either. I wasn’t going to worry about him—in New York he’d have been out all night with the Siamese Hussy—so I cleaned up in the kitchen by myself, and I helped Julian with his geography homework, and he helped me with my maths—he is a whiz, just like he told me when we met—and I talked to Meena on the phone for a little, and went to bed early.

I woke up right before Mister Cat came into my room. I’d left the door a little way open, besides the window, so maybe there was a draft moving something. I sat up fast, groping around for my bedside lamp, thinking boggarts and pookas and Hedley Kows. But when I felt Mister Cat in my room, I didn’t bother with the light, not then. I said, “You rotten, miserable cat, you scared the hell out of me! You get your butt on up here right now!”

I slapped the bed hard, and a moment later I felt him landing, heavy and light at the same time, down by my ankles. But instead of walking up to me, the way he always does, he went prrrp?, and in another moment something else landed on the bed. And I can’t describe this properly, because there wasn’t any weight to it—not a thump, not a rustle, not the smallest stir of the blankets. But there was something beside Mister Cat on my bed, and I almost knocked the lamp over turning it on. And the only reason I didn’t scream the whole damn Manor down was that I couldn’t get my breath. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get my breath again.

It was another cat. A long-haired, short-legged, blue-gray cat with deep-green eyes and a wide, pushed-in sort of face—a Persian, for God’s sake. I don’t like Persian cats much, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I could see through it.

Okay, not quite through—it wasn’t really transparent, but almost. Its outlines were a little fuzzy, but Persians look like that anyway. It looked darker beside Mister Cat, lighter when it moved and had my blanket behind it; and when it sat down for a moment to scratch, I lost it altogether in the moonlight shining on the white wall. When Mister Cat nudged it with his shoulder, it opened its mouth and this tiny, tiny, faraway meow came out. Not a real meow. More like an old yellowing memory of a meow.

I was cold. I was so cold that I could feel it in my fingernails. Mister Cat kept prodding that thing toward me, and I kept scooting away, till I was as flat up against those fancy brass spindles as I could get. But it came on, making that little distant cry that didn’t get any louder close to. It had really pretty eyes, but I couldn’t see the lamplight in them, or me, or anything but deep, deep green.

It was a female—anybody could tell that watching Mister Cat fussing and nudging and carrying on around her. I didn’t stop being scared, not with the way her shape wouldn’t stay quite in focus, and the way her… her texture kept shifting, so you couldn’t ever get a real fix on just what color she really was. But I was starting to get curious at the same time I was scared. I didn’t try to touch her, even though she was solid enough for Mister Cat to rub up against. I didn’t want to know what she felt like.

When I finally got my voice, I said to her, “So it was you, huh? You’re the one he chased all over the east wing and up the stairway. Well, you sure must have shown him a good time, that’s all I can say.” She looked straight back at me, and if the rest of her was a little undecided, those eyes weren’t. I didn’t doubt for a minute that she understood what I was saying—better than Mister Cat, even. You tend to think like that when you’ve just been waked up in the middle of the night by two cats, and one of them’s a ghost.

Because that’s what she was, that green-eyed Persian—I never doubted that, either, though I hadn’t ever seen a ghost, or believed in them, or even thought about believing in them. Or thought about cats having ghosts. But it was the only thing she could be—it’s like Sherlock Holmes saying that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever’s left has to be the answer, no matter how weird it is. I almost forgot to be scared, I was so anxious for it to be morning, so I could tell Meena.

Ghost or no ghost, Mister Cat obviously thought his new girlfriend was the greatest thing since the can-opener. He was showing her off to me, purring and crooning like an idiot, waltzing around her on the bed, practically turning somersaults. She seemed to be enjoying it, but I didn’t like seeing him that way—it reminded me too much of the changes in Sally. I said, “Okay, okay, I get the picture, settle down already. I just hope the Siamese Hussy never hears about this, that’s all.”