Page 75 of The Harbinger
“The little thing is shaking.” I pulled him from the water, rubbed him with the towel, then wrapped the little bugger and pressed him to my chest.
“What do you expect to do with it?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead.” I couldn’t exactly leave it in the tree for the dogs to get at it, but I highly doubt Sacha would allow me to take it inside. “What about a pet rescue or shelter?”
“Why? We have stray cats everywhere. They keep the rat population down.”
Rat population? I’d never even thought about rodents. “But he’s too little to be on his own.”
“His?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s a ‘he’ until I can find out otherwise. Besides, doesn’t it look like a cute little guy?” I said in a baby voice as I pulled him to my face and nuzzled my nose against his.
“I think he looks like a cat. I don’t… um, what’s the word?Antropomorfizmu.”
“Antro… what?”
“You humanize animals.”
What’s the harm in that? Maybe if we thought about animals as humans, we wouldn’t mistreat them as much as we did. But then again, there were abusive people…
I guess no one was safe.
“Okay, so where’s Sacha? I’ll ask him.”
“He’s still out on business.”
I furrowed my brows and shook my head. “No. I just saw him in his room. He was staring at me before I found this little guy.”
She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head to the side. “You’re seeing things. He’s not here.”
Invisible shivers riddled my bones as I pictured those cold eyes staring at me. If it were him, wouldn’t he have stopped me from crossing my boundaries like he did before? Wouldn’t he be out here chastising me for breaking his precious rules? But I wasn’t crazy. Yes, I’d lost my memories, but I hadn’t lost my sanity. So if it wasn’t him staring back at me from the shadows, then who?
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
The kitten’s meow drew me back to the task at hand. “Do you have a box?”
Katya shook her head and put her hands between us. “I see where this is going, and it will not end well.”
“He doesn’t have to know.”
“But he will.”
“Only if you tell him.”
“I won’t have you jeopardizing my—”
“Your job is safe. I won’t tell him.” I drew an X across my chest with my finger. “Promise.”
She sighed. “I’ll be right back.”
Katya walked out of the greenhouse, and I finished drying the kitten’s face with the corner of the towel.
“How about this one?” She placed a medium-sized box on the graveled ground beside me.
“It’s perfect.”