"Anyone else here?" Dulcie hissed.

"Just us three," Wilma said. "What's the matter?"

So, the black cat thought. Both Charlie and Kate Osborne knew that these little cats could speak. Interesting. Apparently Joe Grey and Dulcie hadn't been very careful.

"What is it?" Wilma repeated.

"Gas leak," Dulcie mewled. "A house up the street. Really strong, not like when you catch a sniff of it on the street."

Azrael could hear Joe Grey talking into the phone, giving the location, most likely talking to a police dispatcher. Telling her how strong the gas stink was and from which side of the dwelling. The next moment, some blocks away, a siren began to scream, and a fire engine went rumbling through the narrow village. He could feel the tremors in his paws as it passed, sharp as the precursor to an earthquake.

Listening to the blasting horn and the siren's final shrill scream just a few blocks away, Azrael flattened his ears. He could hear men shouting, then two more sirens, probably emergency vehicles in case there was an explosion. All these conscientious do-gooders flocking to help, so dedicated they made him gag. He imagined firemen searching for a gas cutoff, plying a wrench to stop the gas at the street. Imagined them gingerly pulling open front and back doors, ducking away and covering their faces in case the gas exploded. All that drama to save a few human lives, when the world was already overpopulated. In Azrael's view, the human herd could stand some thinning.

He froze, closing his eyes when Joe Grey streaked past. The gray tom didn't pause. Had Joe Grey caught his scent, even over the smell of fried bacon? Azrael heard Joe hit the kitchen and keep running. The plastic door flapped once, twice, and both cats were gone-and Wilma and Kate and Charlie were running out, humans and cats gripped by the urge to rescue someone, to help people. Enough smarmy goodwill to sicken a crocodile.

Now, with the house to himself, he left the shadows with leisurely insolence, and strolled into Wilma's kitchen. Leaping to the table, he polished off three pancakes and two slices of bacon. He licked the plates clean then licked the cube of butter and drank the cream from the pitcher, nearly getting his head caught. Why would anyone make a pitcher so ridiculously small? He sniffed at the cooling coffee but it smelled inferior, not the rich Colombian brand he preferred.

Dropping to the blue-and-white linoleum again, he sauntered back through the dining room and down the hall to the guest room. Likely both humans and cats would be up the street all morning preoccupied with helping their neighbors. The black tom smiled. Fate couldn't have planned it better.

Alone in the guest room he set about a methodical search, pawing among Kate's silk lingerie bags and rooting in the gathered elastic pockets that lined the sides of her suitcase, his agile black paws feeling carefully for a small metal object. For what could be his passport to a greatly elevated position in the eyes of his current partner. For what, possibly, might also be a source of information that could prove most interesting.

The yellow-and-white Victorian cottage stunk so powerfully of gas that the two cats thought it would go up any minute in an explosion of bricks and splintered wood and shingles. They'd seen such a disaster before. They didn't want that experience again. But with typical feline curiosity, they were too interested to leave. Cops were on the scene now, and that generated more questions.

Once the fire crew had cut off the gas, having circled the house peering in, they had broken the lock and gone inside. Shortly thereafter a rescue vehicle pulled up in front, then two police cars came screaming.

The house belonged to James Quinn, a Realtor with Helen Thurwell's firm. Quinn was, in fact, Helen's partner, handling sales with her as a team. The air around the handsome Victorian cottage was, even from a block away, so heavy with gas it made the cats retch.

Scorching up a pine tree, they clung in the frail branches side by side, where a breeze helped clear the air. Watching the police evacuate the houses along the block, they were both alarmed and amused by people running out of their homes loaded with valuables and carrying their pets. A frazzled-looking young woman apparently forgetting something tried to run back inside, and pitched a fit when an officer stopped her. An old woman in a pink bathrobe hobbled out accompanied by an officer, her arms loaded with a two-foot high stack of what looked like photograph albums, the little tie cords at the spines flopping in her face. As if she was saving all the family pictures. A portly lady in a red-and-black sweat suit clutched three cats, the frightened animals clawing her as she hurried down the street. When Wilma and Charlie saw her, they took two of the cats and ran with her, carrying the cats three blocks to a neighbor and handing them inside. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had seen the kit. Scanning the street looking for her, Joe moved from paw to paw, growing so nervous and restless he seemed about to explode, himself.

"The kit's all right," Dulcie said. "She won't…"

"You don't know what she'll do. And it isn't only the kit…" Joe's yellow eyes narrowed. "Coming through the dining room-I think I caught the scent of that black beast."

"Azrael? In the house? Oh, but why would he…? Where, Joe? We have to go back."

"As I passed the buffet. Just a faint whiff of scent-the whole house smelled of bacon."

Her eyes wide, she crouched to leap down. But he reached a paw to stop her. "I'll go back, Dulcie. Stay here, watch for the kit. Who knows where she's gotten to. You know how she is, she'll be in the middle somewhere…" He sounded truly worried, his frown deep and uneasy.

"I'll watch, I'll find her. But you… Be careful, Joe. Why did he go into Wilma's house? What's he up to?"

Joe's eyes were filled with conflicting concerns. "Watch for the kit but don't go near that house. Promise me!" He gave her a whisker rub and was gone, backing fast down the rough bark of the pine tree and streaking for Wilma's house. Dulcie stared after him, her ears flat with frustration, then she turned to search the gathering crowd again and the surrounding rooftops for the dark small presence of the tortoiseshell kit; the kit could vanish like a shadow among shadows. And, by her very nature, she was powerfully drawn to any kind of village disaster.

Dulcie looked and looked for a long time, but didn't see the kit. She saw no cat at all among the bushes or slipping between the feet of the thickening crowd or concealed in the branches of the surrounding trees. No cat hidden among the angles of the rooftops. Growing more and more worried, she left the safety of pine tree at last, and galloped across the roofs toward the gas-filled house.

Crouching on a shop roof just across the narrow street from the yellow Victorian house, she watched several officers in the front yard gathered around a paramedic's van. Below her hung a striped awning that bore, along its front edge, the name of the antique store it sheltered. Dropping down into the sagging canvas, crouching belly to stripes like a sunbather in a giant-size hammock, she studied the windows of James Quinn's yellow house.

All the windows were open to let out the gas, as was the front door, and still the air stunk of gas. She could see Captain Harper and Detective Garza inside. She could not see the medics, they were not around their van. Were they in there working on someone? Was Mr. Quinn in there? Dulcie's skin rippled with dismay. If he was still there, if he had not run out…

Had he been asleep when the gas leak started, had he perhaps had not awakened? Was he dead in there? Dulcie thought, sickened.