“Safe Shifters is apparently a lovely little house with bars on the windows in the countryside of Vermont that specializes in mentally ill shifters. They assure me that Gizelle will have a beautiful life with the finest of medical attention and psychiatric care. I received a letter from their director because we had a
mutual friend who cared very much for her well being. Are you saying that mutual friend isn’t you? Because some of this paperwork regarding her past has your agency’s letterhead.”
Scarlet could picture Tony’s furrowed brow in the silence that resulted.
“I’ve never heard of this place,” Tony insisted. “Look, I’ve been doing some research for you, but it’s still in processing to be declassified. I can’t send it until the beancounters decide it’s not going to negatively impact an active investigation.”
Scarlet shuffled one of the pages forward. “So you didn’t send anyone a copy of the bill of sale for exotic wildlife to Beehag twenty-six years ago? Or the newspaper clipping of her parents’ death with your agency’s stamp? Or the scientists’ notes on the experimental drugs they gave her in Beehag’s cages?”
There was a sound like a phone being dropped. A woman’s sleepy voice in the background was indecipherable.
“How did you get all that?” Tony demanded then. “You have notes from Beehag’s records? We don’t even have that. They were classified above our heads directly after my return from the field, before anyone had a chance to go through them.”
“If it wasn’t you, who could have put this together?” Scarlet was equal parts relieved and disappointed; she was glad that Tony had not been so foolish as to think she would want any part in putting Gizelle into a home, and frustrated that now she had no one to eviscerate.
If Tony had an answer, it was lost when Scarlet dropped her phone to the sound of a loud splash from the bathroom and a shrill yowl of terror.
“I’ll call you back,” she shouted towards the phone, and she opened the bathroom door onto a scene of absolute chaos.
The cream kitten was paddling around inside the toilet bowl, shrieking her protest and trying in vain to reach up to the seat, claws scrabbling on the hard porcelain. The gray kitten was standing on its back legs beside the toilet, contemplating its own expedition to the toilet seat to save her sibling.
Every towel had been pulled off of every towel rack, including the hand towels by the sink. The washcloth was in the toilet with the flailing kitten. Every bottle on the counter had been tipped over. Most of the lids had proven true, but a few of them were leaking sweet-smelling fluids over and off the counter.
And the entire bathroom was ankle-deep in shredded toilet paper.
The kittens had not only peeled off the roll by the toilet, but also had found and opened the storage cabinet. The plastic had been rent into crinkly shards, and the tubes of a dozen rolls were strewn like the bones of the enemy through the snow of toilet paper clumps that covered the floor.
Scarlet waded through it and pulled the cream kitten out of the toilet by the ruff of its wet neck. She added to its indignity by rinsing it off in the sink, then bent and gathered up a towel to wrap it in, scolding it as she went. “You are a little idiot,” she said, as the other meowed and tried to crawl up her leg to join the fun.
“I am not a cat tree,” Scarlet said, pushing her gently off.
After the third time Scarlet nearly tripped trying to dislodge the gray kitten from her leg, she scooped the persistent beast into her arms and simply toweled them both together, to purrs of delight.
They seemed to consider it a game, squirming and trying to capture the towel with their sharp little teeth and clever claws. Scarlet caught herself smiling as she tousled them in the towel, rolling them over and rubbing them down.
Not entirely dry, but at least no longer spiky-wet, Scarlet put the cream kitten down with her sister. “I’ve got work to do,” she told them regretfully.
The cream kitten meowed pitifully. The gray kitten purred. They both look up at her expectantly.
“I’m going to get back to my work now,” Scarlet said firmly.
The cream kitten yowled more demandingly, more than a hint of her Siamese ancestors in her voice.
Scarlet stared back at it. “I can’t just play with you all night,” she protested.
It meowed again, danced forward, and swiped Scarlet with its paw, all claws retracted.
“You are a little tyrant,” Scarlet scolded. It occurred to her that they might be hungry, and she went to the box with their food.
They tried to mob her, constantly underfoot as she found their dishes and peeled open the fragrant can of food. The Siamese mix tried to swarm up her side while she was spooning it out, and the gray and white kitten sweetly made little purring hiccups of joy and anticipation as it patiently sat beside the bowl.
Scarlet gave up working in favor of watching them eat, chuckling helplessly over their clumsy efforts to stuff themselves and nearly drown in their water dish.
Finally, they slowed, and left their dishes to stagger to Scarlet and beg their way up into her arms.
She could not have explained how she arrived in the position, but only a few moments later, the gray one was in her lap, limply covering more space than something so small ought to be capable of. A snoring purr occasionally vibrated through her tiny body. The cream colored one had crawled up further, and was unconscious in a warm curve around Scarlet’s neck.
The only work that Scarlet could reach without disturbing them was the mysterious envelope containing Gizelle’s unhappy history.