Cool, I thought pleased by my discovery. I should have Shifted earlier.

Now dressed, Abby watched me, her expression a mixture of envy and awe.

“You make that look so easy, like it doesn’t even hurt.”

I huffed air through my nose, knowing she would understand. It hurt plenty, no matter how it looked.

Flexing my muzzle, I arched my whiskers forward, then back to lie flat against my face. Then I extended my forepaws as far out as they would go, my rump in the air. After my stretch, I glanced around at my surroundings, seeing the basement for the first time on four paws.

I usual y loved the first few minutes in cat form, because every sight and smel I knew by heart as a human felt so novel, so new and different to my cat’s senses.

But this time my feline body felt awkward and out of place in the basement, where nothing stirred and nothing grew. No rodents scurried across my field of vision. No twigs or rocks poked at my paws, and no burrs caught in the soft fur over my bel y.

There was no breeze, not even the artificial cool of an air conditioner. And though I could hear sounds of civilization coming from the house above me, compared to Daddy’s woodland preserve, my underground prison was eerily quiet, and wrong, as only a man-made habitat could be.

Experienced as a cat, the basement was a concrete-lined pit, fouled by everything human. It was an assault on my senses. The floor was harsh against my paws, like walking on rough-grit sandpaper. From overhead came the sound of canned laughter; someone was up, watching TV. The bars surrounding me stank of metal, and the personal scent of everyone who had recently touched them. But the predominant smel was blood.

It was Sara’s, and it came from the empty cel to my right. No amount of scrubbing could disguise the scent of blood from a cat, and what frightened me most was knowing that the majority of what was spil ed had been disposed of along with the mattress. What I smel ed was only a fraction of what Sara had lost, along with her life.

There were other smel s, of course, like the disturbing combination of Marc and Miguel. I smel ed them both, no matter which way I turned, because their personal scents were on me, and wouldn’t completely fade until my next shower.

Abby smel ed like baby powder—scented deodorant, surely several days old now, and something young and feminine, and al her own. But pervading her scent was the distinctive, sour odor of fear.

Miguel had said he liked the smel of fear, which told me more than I ever needed to know about him.

Cats stalk and hunt for several reasons, including practice, leisure and as an excuse to socialize. But we only kil for food or in self-defense. The smel of fear does nothing to improve our appetites, nor is it an aphrodisiac.

Miguel’s fear fetish belonged to his human half, not his feline half. It was something he had in common with countless prison inmates al over the world, but not a single zoo cat. He was a human monster, whom some clumsy idiot had armed with lethal teeth and claws.

I’d love to get my hands on the cat responsible for Miguel’s first Shift, I thought. But knowing Miguel, that cat was probably rotting in peace—or in pieces—somewhere in the middle of the jungle.

In addition to blood and fear, I identified the residual smel of my own urine in the coffee container. As a cat, the smel didn’t offend me in the least. It was a natural part of my own biology, unlike the metal ic smel of the bars and the lingering odor of spil ed oil.

But the only smel I was interested in at the moment came from the white paper bag in the corner. The remains of my dinner from the night before. It wouldn’t be enough, but it was better than nothing. I clamped the bottom of the bag between my teeth and shook my head, scattering trash along with the remaining chicken breast and the scraps of the first. As a cat, I wasn’t bothered by the skin, though I wasn’t particularly fond of the extra-crisp batter. In less time than it had taken me to Shift, the breast was gone, skin and all. I might have crunched through a couple of smal bones, too.

After my meal, I sat on my haunches, cleaning my face and paws. I wasn’t full but was finished nonetheless.

“Want some more?” Abby asked, dangling her second chicken breast from her thumb and forefinger. I should have shaken my head. It wasn’t right to take her dinner just because she hadn’t been able to Shift. But because I had, I needed food.

And she didn’t seem to want it.

I blinked at her and cocked my head to the side. Are you sure?

“Yeah, go ahead.” She tossed the chicken breast through her bars, underhand.

It landed a foot and a half from my cage. I padded to the front wal of my cel and lay on my stomach, my front right paw extended between two of the bars. Almost there. Unsheathing my claws, I lunged at the breast, turning my head to the side and slamming my ear into the bars as I sank my claws into the meat. It hurt, but it worked. I pulled my meal along the floor and into the cage, then tore into it. It didn’t last any longer than the first one had.

I purred, staring straight at Abby.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

Metal springs groaned overhead, and wood creaked. Someone had just gotten out of bed. Based on the pasty color of Ryan’s skin and the dark circles under his eyes, I was willing to bet he hadn’t been to bed in a couple of days. And if he was tel ing the truth, Miguel and Sean were probably already on the road.

That only left one possibility. Eric.

In her cel , Abby lay staring at the ceiling, oblivious to the activity on the ground level. She’d known Miguel from the sound of his footsteps earlier, but this time she hadn’t heard a thing. On two legs, our hearing was much better than a human’s, but it was nothing compared to that of a cat. As a cat, I could hear frequencies wel beyond the upper range of a human, or even a dog.