It hurt to raise the Venetian blind. Lifting her arm high and pulling hard sent a sharper pain cutting along her incision. Time to start exercising, get herself back in working order. Her young, enthusiastic surgeon, Jim Hallorhan, had only this morning pronounced her ready to start some serious rehabilitation.

It hurt less to slide the window open. The chill night air felt fresh and good on her flushed face. Her room faced east, away from the village, toward the hills. High up, cutting the blackness, she could see a thin smear of red dancing against the sky, very near the high school. She made out the whirling red lights of the patrol cars and fire rig and what was probably a rescue unit. She prayed that the three cats, if they insisted on racing up there, would keep to the residential rooftops and out of the way. She thought it wasn't a big fire, maybe trash cans or an outbuilding. Very likely the units would quickly get it under control. She had been watching for some time when something else alerted her. She stood still, listening in the other direction, from the village beyond the hall and the opposite line of rooms. Had she heard a shot, faint and muffled?

Crossing the hall, she slipped into an empty room where the blinds were open to the village below, to the dim, narrow streets and little shops that lay snug beneath the leafy canopies. She watched the moving beams of police torches flashing along the faces of the buildings, and shadowy uniforms searching among the shops; farther away along the darkest streets she sensed, as much as saw, occasional swift movement. This was a strange, phantom kind of search. She stood for a long time, making little sense of it. What had gone down? Burglary? Robbery? Murder? There would be nothing on TV until it was over. She stood worrying about the cats, knowing that if they weren't already down there, they soon would be. She wished she had her binoculars. She tried to spot Joe Grey's stark white markings stalking the roofs; he was so much easier to see than her own Dulcie or the kit.

Perhaps it had been a break-in that the officer in charge had decided to handle with a quick canvassing search, while the perps had successfully fled or were hiding nearby. She could only pray the cats kept clear. After a lifetime of considerable control over the criminals she handled, she felt helpless as a civilian. Helpless, indeed, when the action involved the three cats.

Worrying but knowing there was nothing she could do, she returned at last to her room, chilled, and slipped into bed. She wished they gave you more than two thin blankets. Well, Dulcie was with Lucinda and Kit; maybe, somehow, the Greenlaws would manage to keep the two in.

Fat chance, Wilma thought.

But the Greenlaw terrace was so close to the action that maybe the two cats would be content to watch from that vantage. Maybe. She turned over, wincing at the pain, reminding herself that the surgery was over, that her gall bladder was gone and that was no big deal. A few minor changes in her diet, a small price to pay for a cessation of sudden pain. Tomorrow she'd be up at Charlie and Max's, able to start exercising again- while Charlie waited on her, she thought, amused. She ought to be home in her own house, making her own meals, but Charlie wouldn't hear it. Charlie said it was the only excuse she had to enjoy her aunt as a houseguest.

As if Charlie needed a houseguest right now, with the new addition barely finished and a hundred chores and details to tend to, trying to get settled into her new studio so she could get on with her several commissions for animal portraits, and with the children's book she was writing.

That, for Wilma, would be the biggest treat, to tuck up with Dulcie before Charlie's fire on these chill days, after Max went off to work, when Kit could speak freely, telling the fascinating tales of her kittenhood when she traveled with the wild band of ferals.

Charlie's book would include no speaking, sentient cats. Just the story of a band of feral cats trying to survive. Even so, it was turning into a magical tale, as the best realistic story should be. Magical, too, when illustrated with Charlie's drawings. Not long ago, Charlie had cursed her art education, calling it a total waste of time and money, a squandering of four years of her young life. Now, look at her, Wilma thought, grinning.

It was earlier, ten minutes before the first siren shrieked heading up the hills to the high school, the village streets still quiet and nearly deserted when Dulcie and Kit arrived on the terrace of the Greenlaws' second-floor apartment. Full of Mexican supper, they had taken their time meandering home over the rooftops, detouring to lazily chase a little bat, then to sit by a warm chimney and have a nice wash and enjoy the evening.

Their dawdling, circuitous route brought them, yawning, to the tall pine tree beside the Greenlaw terrace. As they dropped to the terrace, they could smell coffee; Lucinda stood in the shadows, her cup balanced on the terrace wall, as she, too, enjoyed the evening.

But as the two cats landed on the terrace, a siren screamed only blocks away, heading away from the fire station up toward the hills. And another siren, another. Fire trucks and then an ambulance, then patrol cars racing by nearly bursting their eardrums. Dulcie and Kit leaped to the low terrace wall, ready to follow.

"Wait," Lucinda said.

"But…" Dulcie began, looking up the far hills where a red glow was beginning to lick at the sky. The cats, not seeing Pedric, thought he'd likely gone to bed early, aching with arthritis.

"Wait, you two!" Lucinda said with urgency.

"What?" Kit said. "You never want us to go. We'll stay to the rooftops, we're safe there." Both cats crouched to run, staring up to the hills at the brightening flames, both ready to bolt and follow the fire trucks. Below them the village was still, the streets quiet. Imperatively, Lucinda put her hand on Kit's back.

Kit stared up at her. "You never want…"

The old woman spoke softly but with harsh command. "You've missed something. Look down! Something else is happening! Help me look, quick, you two can see in the dark better than I!" She pointed down across the street to the corner shop opposite their building; looking, the cats went tense.

Molena Point had no streetlights; only the soft glow from the shop windows. Between these, the sidewalk was shadowed and dim. They all three watched the dark windows of Marineau's Jewelry store; Lucinda could see little within, but the cats' eyes grew round, and they crouched, their tails lashing. "Two shadows," Dulcie said softly. "Moving inside. How…?" Then a thin, shielded light flicked on, as if from a miniature flashlight. The next instant a sharp tinkling, almost like music, and tiny jagged glints of light flickered and fell.

"Before the sirens headed up the hills," Lucinda said softly, "I heard the faintest sound. The little light flashed once, and went out. I thought I heard glass break then, too, but muffled. As if by a towel." She held up her cell phone. "I called the station. What else can you see?" Even as she spoke, the tiny light flickered again, and they heard a sharper crack as of heavier glass breaking, more bright shards fell.

"Why doesn't the city put in some decent lighting?" Lucinda snapped irritably. "Ambiance is all very well, until something ugly happens."

Max Harper had tried to get the city to install decorative, soft-glowing streetlamps. The city council said that would spoil the quaint sense of Old World mystery that the tourists liked. Max had pointed out that there was plenty of crime on the dark medieval streets, that robbery and murder were common during those times. He said modern tourists didn't need that much ambiance. Several members of the city council had laughed at him. But the shopkeepers hadn't laughed, particularly the jewelry store owners.