But the boggart just shook his head. “Ben’t that simple, can’t be. Think, gel, use yer nogger—think like boggart, think like me.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood there, reaching up now and then to play with his little beard, looking more self-satisfied than I’ve ever seen anyone look. Including Mister Cat.
Beside me Julian whispered, “Milk.” The storm was still banging away at the house, rattling the windows until I thought the old frames would come apart, and Julian had to raise his voice. “Milk. Ellie John says her mother always leaves milk out for the—the Good Folk.” He ducked his head back down so fast that I hardly heard the last words.
That got a snort out of the boggart—it sounded like somebody sneezing with a mouthful of hot soup. “Milk? Noo, that’s all trot, that is—what’s boggart want wi’ milk? Is boggart a suckling piggy, then? Is boggart calf or lamb, chetten or poppy? Noo, and not Good Folk neither. Try us again, Joolian McHugh.”
Julian couldn’t manage it, but he’d got me thinking about the handful of fairy tales I still remembered in bits and pieces. I said, “Wait, wait a minute—hold it… Shoes! That’s it—we make you a terrific pair of shoes, and you’re so happy with them that you dance all over the kitchen, and you never come back. That’s it, right? Has to be.” But the boggart was spluttering and stamping his feet before I was half through.
“Shoes, is it naow? Shoes, like them great clumsy hommicks you folk wear, and me wi’ a grand pair of kittyboots of me own?” And he held them up, first one, then the other, to show Julian and me the perfect little sort of cleats on the soles, and the way the soles nestled into the uppers, as though there weren’t any stitches at all. They were old, like him, but the best cobbler in Dorchester couldn’t have matched them. Let alone us.
“Again! Try us again!” He was having a fine time, spinning on his heels, jumping up and down. I hoped he’d stamp his way through the floor, like Rumplestiltskin. Julian was whimpering again, and right then I wanted Sally more than I had in a long time—and Evan, too—because this was all way more than I could handle. But I didn’t want Julian any more scared than he already was, so I put my arm around him and told the boggart, “Enough already, we give up, we don’t want to play anymore. Just for God’s sake tell us what would please you, so we can take care of it, and you can stop messing with us, and we’ll all be pleased. How about it, okay?”
I had a feeling that wouldn’t cut a lot of ice, and I was right. The boggart got really mad then. He stopped jumping around, and he grabbed off his dumb little feathered hat and slammed it down on the floor. “Noo, Jenny Glookstein,” he said, and that weird deep voice had gotten very quiet, and scarier for it, “noo, ye’ll play awhile wi’ boggart yet, acause I say ye will. Ye’ll goo on a-thinking what might soften boggart’s heart, what might charm boggart to leave ye be. Acause I say so.” And he took a couple of steps toward us, and Julian—I’ll always remember this—Julian wiggled out from under my arm and wiggled himself in front of me. Scared as he was. I’ll remember.
I never saw Mister Cat. You don’t, until he’s there. He hit the boggart like a bolt of black lightning out of that storm, landing on his shoulders with all four sets of claws out and busy. The boggart squealed and lurched forward—and here came Miss Flufibucket, Miss Dustbunny, that Persian ghost-cat, flashing up from underneath to rake at his face… with real claws? I couldn’t say, even now, but the boggart screamed like a trapped rabbit, falling flat, arms wrapped wildly around his head. Mister Cat pounced on his chest, holding him down, and the Persian stood off, ready for a fast slash anytime he raised his head. You’d have thought they’d been doing this sort of thing forever.
Julian was chanting, “Mister Cat! Mister Cat! Mister Cat!” like a mob cheering at a football game, but I made him stop. Mister Cat was making that creaky-door, mess-with-me-and-die sound, the way he’d done to me in Heathrow, and the boggart was absolutely cowering and crying, “Gi’m off me! Gi’m off me, missus! Boggart niver meant noo harm, boggart was on’y spoortin-like—gi’m off and ye’ll nivver see boggart more, I zwear!”
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. To somebody two feet high, Mister Cat has to look like Bagheera the Black Panther on a bad-hair day. Although the one who seemed to scare him more was the Persian—he wouldn’t even look at her, but kept making funny signs with his fingers, more or less in her direction. Whatever they were supposed to do, they didn’t. The Persian just watched him, licking her left front paw now and then. I wondered if a ghost’s tongue could taste ghost-fur.
Julian was tugging my arm, whispering, “Jenny, don’t believe him, don’t believe him! He didn’t say he wouldn’t bother us, he just said we wouldn’t see him do it.” Julian’s going to be a lawyer— I don’t think I’ve mentioned that.
“Got it,” I said; and then, to the boggart, “Okay, you, shut up and listen. Shut up, or I’ll have my attack cat eat your face.” Mister Cat might lose interest any time now, and I had to move before he strolled off somewhere with his hot date. In my toughest, meanest New York voice I said, “Now. No more bullshit. You tell us right now what we have to do so we don’t have any more aggravation from you. Right now, buddy, or that sweet kisser is lunch meat.” Jake and Marta wouldn’t have stopped laughing for a week.
It did wonders for the boggart, though. He scrunched behind his arms even more, and started babbling so fast I couldn’t understand him at first. “Zpectacles! Zpectacles, it is, so boggart can see past’s nose again. Boggart’s old, he is, boggart’s eyen ben’t what they was—zpectacles, they needs! Laive a pair on t’mat and boggart’ll trouble ye no more.” Mister Cat growled in his throat right at that moment, and the boggart yeeped—can’t find another word for it. “Nivver no more! May kitties coom get me if I lie!”
I looked at Julian. He nodded. “They have to keep their promises. Ellie John told me.”
“Okay, then,” I said, still doing the New York gangster. “One pair of eyeglasses, onna mat tonight. Just remember, duh cats know where youse live.”
I bent down and picked Mister Cat off the boggart. Mister Cat didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue about it. The Persian never moved, and I wasn’t about to touch her, not in my entire life. Again it struck me that the boggart seemed more frightened of her than he was of Mister Cat. He watched her all the time he was getting up and finding his hat, practically groveling if she so much as flicked an ear. I said, “She won’t hurt you,” but the boggart plainly wasn’t buying, and I got the feeling that he had reasons older than I was. He backed slowly away, still hunched and ready to run—then all at once he straightened up, set his hat on his head, and gave us the horse grin one more time.
“For yer ma’s sake, a single word of advice, like. A warning.” He pointed at the Persian, shaking his finger the same way he’d done at me. “Ware t’servant, ware t’mistress—and ware T’Other Oone most of all.” And you could hear the capital letters on T’Other Oone. Believe it.
“The mistress,” I said. “Who’s that? The Other One—I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who’s the Other One?”
But the boggart laughed like a bathtub drain, and did a sort of weird skip-jig on the kitchen floor. “A single word, a single word, I said, and that ye’ve had. To’morn’s to be zpectacles waiting for boggart on mat—and so farewell, Jenny Glookstein, farewell, Joolian McHugh. Farewell, farewell.”
And he was gone, the way I’d thought only Mister Cat could vanish. Julian insisted he went back under the stove, flattening himself out—“Like a piece of paper, Jenny, didn’t you see?”—and slipping in through the little space there was. Sally and Evan came sloshing in just then, and Tony came down, and we all got busy running around bringing them towels, making tea, putting their Wellingtons and their rain slickers in the bathtub. They were all over mud, even with the slickers, and Evan had a huge bruise on one cheekbone where he’d fallen over something in the dark. But they’d saved the new fruit trees. There wasn’t a thing on the planet more important, right then.