Thea Harrison: Oracle's Moon

And the killing.

And it was visiting with her kids.

She was off the couch and moving down the hall before she fully knew what she was doing.

Chloe said, “I want to ride the doggie!”

“I believe what you want would then be called a horse,” said the Bane.

Max shrieked, a happy sound that escalated so high it could shatter glass.

Sharp pain shot up her leg. Just as it threatened to give out from underneath her, she reached the children’s bedroom and grabbed on to the doorway as she looked inside.

Max stood in his crib. He couldn’t walk on his own yet, but he could stand when he held on to something. The single wisp of dark brown hair at the top of his head waved as he bobbed up and down. He was grinning from ear to ear and watching Chloe, who sat on the floor along with a black cat, who sat in front of her.

The cat had to be the Bane of Her Existence. The Djinn. Khalil Somebody Important. Visually, it looked like a normal, fairly large cat, perhaps twenty pounds or so, but to her mind’s eye, it felt immense with a shadowy, hazardous Power.

The cat said, “For something so small, you emit a great deal of noise.”

Chloe grabbed the cat’s tail and yanked on it. “Doggie!” Chloe shrieked. “Doggie! Doggie!”

“That is my tail,” the cat remarked. The little girl stabbed at his furred face with a plump finger. “Now you have discovered one of my eyes. Oh look, you have discovered the other one. I think you have awakened your aunt. I told you we should be quiet.”

The trio turned to look at her as she stood frozen. Two delighted children and what appeared to be a normal black cat but was instead an alien, enormously Powerful, infinitely dangerous creature.

“Look, Gracie!” said Chloe. “It’s the doggie-cat! You said we can keep him.”

The cat’s strange, wrong eyes narrowed. “Did you?” he said. His triangular face looked distinctly unfriendly, whiskers held awry. “That wasn’t what you told me earlier.”

Grace lunged forward to snatch up the cat, and he allowed it. His body hung boneless from her grip just like a real cat would. “I had no idea you meant this doggie-cat, Chloe,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That changes everything.”

“Which other doggie-cat could she possibly have meant?” said the cat. “You don’t exactly have a plethora of them hanging around.”

Grace growled to Chloe, “Stay here.”

Chloe pushed to her feet and whined, “But I want to play with him.”

Grace looked at the little girl. “I said stay here, young lady.”

Something in Grace’s expression must have made it clear she meant business, because Chloe kicked her toys on the floor. “You never let me do anything fun. I’m never going to live here again.”

“Fine,” Grace said between her teeth. “Just do as you’re told.”

She limped out of the bedroom. Max gave a wordless yell, clearly displeased at recent events. Chloe shouted, “Horrible! He’s MY doggie-cat! I found him first. You’re not fair! I hate everything and everybody!”

Grace hissed at him. “Thank you. Thank you so much for that. There are so many things wrong with what just happened. What the hell is the matter with you, anyway? Have you got no sense?”

“You are every bit as impudent and disrespectful as you were earlier this morning,” he said in a cold voice.

The cat grew as she walked down the hall, until suddenly she held on to a weight that was much too heavy for her to carry. She dropped him, and he continued to grow until he became the massive black panther from her dream. A thrill of shock iced her skin. Her gaze slid sideways to look at the impossible behemoth slinking along beside her. He was the size of a large pony, yet he still seemed small compared to what her mind insisted was the immensity of his true presence.

She would not give in to what she was feeling. She would not.

“Stop it,” she snapped.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said the monstrous feline. He turned his head to look at her with bizarre eyes that sparkled with malice.

They reached the living room. Grace rounded on him. She used her fury to propel her forward. She shoved at the giant creature. It was like trying to push a mountain. She shoved at him again. “You’re trying to intimidate me. Well, guess what, asshole? It isn’t going to work. This is my home. Those two kids are my niece and nephew. And I did not give you permission to spend time with them. You are trespassing, and it is not okay.”

The giant panther morphed into the upright figure of an angry man, and finally she came face-to-face with the Djinn she had met when he and his two companions had knocked on her door.

The form he wore this time was tall, somewhere close to six and a half feet. Long, raven black hair was pulled back from an elegant, pale face. That face had all the same things that a human face had, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. It was even lean-jawed and handsome, yet somehow it was clearly not a human face. His strange eyes were the same in every form he chose to wear, crystalline and diamondlike. He had a lean, graceful frame that matched his face, and he wore a simple black tunic and trousers, and a fierce, regal pride.

This, as much as anything, was his real physical form. At least it was his go-to form. At his essence, he was a spirit of magic and fire. No physical form could contain him in his entirety. His Power filled the house.

My gods, there’s so much of him, she thought as she stared up at his sparkling, angry eyes. What a calamity he is. Standing in front of him, she felt absurdly young, very small and stupidly, excessively fascinated.

“I offer you a gift beyond price, you foolish creature,” he said between his teeth. “And you throw it back in my face.”

“What do you think you’re offering me?” she asked. “I wake up and I find you with my kids in their bedroom. And I’ll say this again: without my permission. Do you realize how offensive that is? Maybe you don’t. Maybe that’s something Djinn would do all the time. You know what, I don’t care. And I’m not even going to get into all the wrong lessons you were teaching them. Wait a minute, yes, I am. You were a talking cat with children who are much too young to differentiate between that and reality.”

His eyes narrowed. “What nonsense are you spouting, human?”

“What do you think is going to happen the next time Chloe sees a black cat?” Grace demanded. “Do you think she’s going to say to herself, oh this is not like the freaky black cat that talks to me and lets me yank its tail and poke it in the eye? No. Do you know what she’s going to try to do? She’s going to try to talk to it and pull its tail and maybe poke it in the eye. And you know what that cat is going to do—because it’s a real goddamn cat? It’s going to scratch her. It might bite her. Cat bites are filthy things. Usually the puncture wounds go deep, and they get infected. And then suddenly, I’ll be taking a confused, crying four-year-old girl to the ER for a three-hundred-dollar doctor’s visit to get antibiotics, all because of your ignorant arrogance!”

He regarded her with a supercilious expression. “Do all your thoughts proceed in such a fashion?”

“What are you talking about?” Grace blinked, thrown off balance. “Do my thoughts proceed where?”

He gestured with a long hand. He made it look impossibly graceful. “To conclusions of disaster, of course. No doubt there will also be brain-eating parasites in the cat bite, or perhaps a troop of rabid monkeys will escape from a nearby zoo and cut a path directly for your house.”

She stared. “You think I’m making this stuff up? That cat bite happened to me when I was little. I have the scars to prove it. Do you know what I caught Chloe trying to do yesterday? She was climbing on top of the kitchen table. She thought she could jump off and fly like Clark Kent, because we had just watched an old movie rerun with Christopher Reeve, and if Superman could fly, she thought she might be able to too. Maybe she wouldn’t have broken her leg if I hadn’t caught her, but she probably would have hurt herself somehow.”