Chapter Two: Intruder Alert

  I heard the crash, and my mind, as is the wont of minds like mine, immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario.

  Then I remembered we were in the midst of the apocalypse, and I relaxed. It might be mana-crazed squirrels down there. Hell, it might even be goblins or terrifying nightmare lizards.

  But it was highly unlikely to be my alcoholic ex, home after another binge and breaking things because he was too drunk to stand straight.

  Yeah, it had been almost ten years, but the damage was done.

  The dogs, of course, went wild. Bear was already off the bed and pawing at the door; Zelda was up, hackles raised, giving a low growl; and Riley threw back his head and howled, warning all intruders that this was his territory and he would protect it.

  “Good job, guys,” I muttered, still half asleep, as I pushed the covers off and stood up. I rubbed my face with both hands, trying to wake up and process this start to a new day. I wondered if there was an apocalypse timer, something counting the minutes since the craziness had started. Gotta be an app for that, right?

  There was no more sound from downstairs. If the dogs hadn’t responded, I would have wondered if I’d imagined it. Was that good news or bad? Was a monster lying in wait?

  I picked up Zelda’s treat bag, which had been lying on the nightstand within arm’s reach, and slipped it over my head. Sure, it looked a little weird with my pajamas, but it was less weird than sleeping with a shovel in my bed, which had been my other option. With a thought, Warden’s Edge appeared in my hand.

  I made my way to the door, and nudged Bear out of the way with my leg. Resting my hand on the knob, I looked down at the dogs. If I just opened the door, they’d go tearing down the stairs in full attack mode, ready for anything.

  If this had been yesterday morning, I would have done so without thinking. If the crash had been an intruder—unlikely, but possible—the dogs were my defense. If the crash had been a bird flying into a window, a squirrel falling down the chimney, a precariously placed dish in the sink unbalancing for no real reason, the dogs would do no harm and take no risk. Well, the squirrel might be in trouble.

  But it was not yesterday morning, and whatever was down there might be dangerous.

  Except… was anything around here currently dangerous to Zelda? I didn’t have my Identify sunglasses available to know whether Bear and Riley had joined the System yesterday when they killed the mana-crazed squirrels we’d left behind, but if they had, they were probably at level 1. Zelda, on the other hand, was at least level 14, maybe higher by now, and, as Jack would say, seriously OP.

  He’d explained that the monsters would start out low level, because our mana levels were so low, but that they would grow and evolve the way we do, getting stronger and stronger. That was why he considered it so important to get an early start on leveling. At the moment, though, Zelda and I ought to be well ahead of any creature native to earth.

  So I could let Zelda out and keep Bear and Riley in the bedroom until we knew what was going on downstairs. She’d be fine, and I’d probably be fine, too.

  There was just one problem with that. Okay, two problems.

  Riley was the pack leader. It would break his heart if I sent Zelda to investigate and didn’t let him join her.

  And Bear was our guard. It was her job. If I took it away from her, she’d remember. I wasn’t worried that she’d hold it against me, although she would, but her job kept her centered, focused. I remembered what a Bear who was confused about her place in the world was like, and I didn’t want to go back there.

  Zelda wedged her way between me and Bear. Open up, her tail said, arched high over her back. Our den. She gave a little wiggle of her hips, adding, Protect the den, pack tenet.

  Pack tenet? Really? Okay, I was probably projecting, but that was an awfully complex thought for a Jack Russell.

  On the other hand, it wasn’t wrong. If I was going to pick a core belief for my pack, protecting the den would be at the top of the list. Right behind protecting the pack.

  With a sigh, I opened the door and let the dogs barrel out, exactly the way I expected them to. They scrambled their way along the short hallway to the stairs and down, Bear taking point by virtue of her longer legs, but Riley right behind her, Zelda nearly trampled in the fray.

  I followed them, shovel in hand. The stairs ended in the living room and the dogs separated there. Bear had her nose to the ground, scouting the territory. Riley was at the front door, tail half-wagging, waiting for me to come open it. Zelda, though, had gone straight for the kitchen and was poised at the door to the sunroom.

  Intruder, she told me, lifting her right paw and pointing, just as if she were some kind of hunting dog.

  My house had started life as a cabin, but over the past hundred years, people—including my dad—had added, renovated, and rebuilt, until the only thing left of its original bones was the big stone fireplace in the living room. Most of the ground floor was an open floor plan, with just a few exceptions: my dad’s office to the left (door semi-permanently closed), the pantry tucked behind the kitchen, and a bathroom under the stairs.

  The other exception was the sunroom. Once upon a time, it might have been a screened-in porch, the kind kids slept in on hot summer nights. At least forty years ago, someone had glassed in the walls, tiled the floor, and turned it into a light and airy conservatory-style room that led onto an open deck. But the door between the kitchen and sunroom still felt more like an exterior door than one meant for inside the house. It was deadbolted shut.

  You know how you can live in a place without it ever becoming yours? This house was like that for me. It was still my dad’s office, my dad’s shed, even my dad’s bedroom upstairs. Don’t judge me, but I hadn’t even cleaned out his closet. All his clothes were still hanging where he left them. The kitchen held my dad’s dishes, most of the bookshelves were filled with his books, and the junk drawer was all his junk.

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  But the sunroom was mine. I spent ninety percent of my waking time out there, working, reading, hanging out with the dogs, and so the idea that there was an intruder was… well, my response was disproportionate.

  I yanked open the door, Warden’s Edge clutched in my hand, fully prepared to slice the head off even the toughest goblin. A tiny voice in the back of my head suggested I might not want to splatter my favorite room with green blood, but I ignored it. Any goblin invading my sanctuary was dead.

  Zelda darted into the room ahead of me, Bear came hurrying up behind us, and poor oblivious Riley whuffed at the front door, as if to say, ‘But the noise came from here.’

  He was wrong. The noise had clearly come from the sunroom, but it was no goblin.

  An orange cat, mid-size, somewhat fluffy, leaped from the back of the sofa as Zelda jumped on it, and scrabbled its way up the shelves of my bookcase. From the top, it turned and hissed at us, its fur standing on end like it had stuck its finger—claw?—into an electric socket.

  I set the shovel down, resting it against the doorframe. A quick scan of the windows showed that none were broken, but an old metal bucket that usually sat next to the door was overturned, spilling its contents—junk, mostly—onto the floor.

  That was the noise, but how did a cat get into my sunroom?

  Zelda was barking non-stop from her place on the couch. Cat, cat, cat, there’s a cat in the den. What are you doing here, cat? This isn’t your den.

  Bear joined in, although her bark held more of a Kill it, kill it, we have to kill it message.

  I made my own noise, a hiss between my teeth that ended in a sharp T, and stepped between Bear and the bookshelves, my finger against my lips in a librarian’s scold. “Z, hush,” I added with a snap.

  Bear gave me a recalcitrant look, the one where the shoulders almost hunch as if to say, Don’t wanna, don’t wanna. I met her eyes with a steady, unblinking stare. She dropped her gaze, her tail, and her attitude in one fell swoop, turning her head away from both me and the cat.

  “Good girl,” I told her, giving her neck a rub in the exact spot she favored, behind the ears but not too deep.

  If it had been a day earlier Zelda might have ignored me—playing the privilege of age for all its worth—but today she settled immediately, sitting on the couch and eying the cat with interest. Pack cat? she asked. Cat pack?

  I got the words, but I wasn’t sure I got the meaning. Was she asking if the cat had a pack? Or if the cat was part of our pack? I wasn’t sure.

  The cat hissed again, less terrified, more defiant.

  I did not speak cat. I’d never owned one, although I had nothing against them. I kept rubbing Bear’s ears while I considered the cat’s presence.

  I scanned the room again, looking for the open window I’d missed. It didn’t exist. The French doors that opened onto the deck were closed, too, of course, and I stepped over to them to double-check that they were locked.

  Obviously, they were. There was no way I’d forgotten to close and lock them yesterday, no matter how much of a daze I’d been in.

  “How did you get in here, cat?” I asked rhetorically.

  Could it have been inside yesterday and I just didn’t notice it? And the dogs didn’t notice it? Okay, I’d had some stupid ideas before but that one was definitely stupider than most.

  Riley might have let a cat wander into the house—witness the fact that he was still waiting by the front door—but Bear would have put a stop to that in a swirl of teeth and blood. Probably plenty of her blood, too, given that cats had sharp claws, teeth of their own, and a vested interest in survival, but she would have found a stray inside the house in a heartbeat. It would have been messy. And loud.

  The cat did not answer me, unless its fur slowly settling was a statement. Maybe it was.

  I stared at the cat, trying to make sense of its presence.

  It stared back at me.

  I blinked.

  It didn’t.

  I sighed and turned away. Okay, maybe, just for little while, long enough to get some coffee, I’d pretend the cat didn’t exist. Maybe it would disappear as fast as it had appeared.

  My usual morning routine included letting the dogs out via the French doors while I made their breakfasts and my own coffee. If I opened the door and let them out, would the cat go with them?

  Ridiculous optimism, I know. That Serendipity stat of mine might mean that I was luckier than I used to be, but I couldn’t get that lucky.

  I opened the doors, and waved the dogs outside. Bear went eagerly, Zelda reluctantly, saying, But cat? as she did, and I had to call Riley to join them. He didn’t even notice the cat as he made his way outside. I left the French doors open, and went into the house, closing the sunroom door firmly behind me.

  I started the coffee, then went into the pantry to scoop kibble into the dogs’ bowls. When I came back into the kitchen, the cat was sitting on the counter, next to the sink.

  I didn’t drop the dog bowls.

  In fact, I didn’t do a thing. I just stood there, mouth agape. I’d closed the door. I knew I’d closed the door. Could cats open doors now?

  Clearly I was still asleep and dreaming. I glanced at the coffee pot. I could smell the coffee brewing. Had I ever smelled anything in a dream before?

  My hands were full, so I couldn’t pinch myself, but I walked over to the feeding stations, and set the bowls down, one after another, in their proper spots. Riley ate by the counter edge, Zelda ate across from him, and Bear was on the other side of the fridge. When I straightened from setting Bear’s bowl down, the cat was still by the sink.

  My next task was to clean and refill the water bowls. Maybe if I ignored the cat, it would disappear again? Yes, definitely, I would just pretend it wasn’t there and then it would stop being there.

  It was a hallucination. Except the dogs had seen it, too.

  “Did the System send you?” I asked the cat, feeling like an idiot.

  The cat just looked at me.

  Yeah, it clearly thought I was an idiot, too.

  It lifted a paw and patted the faucet handle.

  “You—need a drink?” I ventured. I picked up the closest water bowl and stepped warily over to the sink.

  I didn’t think this cat was going to attack me. It wasn’t acting the way the squirrels had. If it was mana-crazed, it hadn’t picked up the extreme violence and bloodthirstiness of the mana-crazed condition.

  On the other hand, I hadn’t thought those squirrels were going to attack, either.

  With probably a vastly unnecessary level of caution, I dumped yesterday’s water, turned on the fresh water, swished a sponge around the bowl, rinsed, dumped, and refilled the bowl. Then I set it on the counter next to the cat.

  The cat twitched its whiskers at me. As I said, I don’t speak cat. But if I did speak cat, I would have said that the whisker twitch meant thank you.

  In the corner of my vision, the red blinking dot told me I had a new notification waiting.

  The cat bent its head and lapped at the water.

  I scrubbed my face with my hands, then looked again. Yes, there was still a cat drinking water by the side of my sink. And yes, the door to the sunroom was closed.

  I opened my notifications.

  Skill gained: +1 to Animal Communication.