Nobody fishing the body out of the river saw Willie watching, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there or that he didn’t see.So there were a few advantages to being small and mostly—maybe absolutely—unknown, with a face you clocked from “around” if you clocked it at all. And those advantages only meant something when he wasn’t getting stepped on or shoved out of the way.It wasn’t a talent his partner in petty crimes Allan possessed, although he’d thought he could pass unnoticed almost anywhere. Allan the Ghost, they were calling him ’round the taverns, when cups sloshed and conversation drifted from grand games to smaller acts of larceny. Allan could pass unseen amongst the middle-city tavern crowds, picking pockets as he went—not just coins, but entire purses, and once, even a jeweled watch—“Like a living ghost!” he said, and people took up the tale. Only a few nights ago Willie’s poor pal had been buying drinks for anyone who’d listen to him tell tales of his stealth, saying he had it made, and that now, with a ditty written about him, immortality wasn’t far behind.Allan the Ghost, he’s better than most, he’ll be off with your coin but he’ll leave you the roast. It was just a quick rewrite of the song about Rupert Hawke, Gentleman Robber, but if Allan noticed, he didn’t mind, and he kept on buying drinks for everyone who’d sing it, nights lasting through dawn into bleary days. Willie was too small to drink much, but Allan was sure to pass him food instead, which was what he really needed.They’d been on the streets only a year, after the sickness took both Willie’s parents and left him suddenly evicted from their teetering two-story.Now Allan was dead and drowned. A ghost indeed. His body flopped, bigger than a fish without the shine of scales under the streaky morning sun, a bloaty color as grim as the sky before snow. Willie watched the river women drag the body all the way out of the water and thought: people would remember him now that he’d gone. Allan the Ghost, better than most, drowned in the river,raise your glass in a toast. He’d been living the high life and now he was gone.That moniker’d glitter in song for long enough to become just another drunken tune, but at least it’d be repeated. Be heard.Willie knew Allan would want to be remembered, talked about. So he was quick to share the news. “Guess who washed up this morning? No, not him; not her, either, bet you wish it was; all right, quit it, enough guessing. Remember Allan? Allan the Ghost? Yeah, we hung out some, Yeah, he was generous with the drinks! Yeah, that’s the one.”Sam Bonner’s face fell; he’d been hoping for another few nights of cheap carousing on Allan’s coin.But no mourning. No feeling. Just plenty of sentiment that ran: not me andnot my problem.At least they knew the moniker. Even if they hadn’t known Allan, they’d known the rhyme.Allan the Ghost.Willie went back to the spot that evening to find the body in the lean-to behind the Three Dogs where floaters were kept, hours after the discovery, smelling like naught in the cold air. Icy white dusted its fingertips and cracked lips and pale nose. Willie leaned closer, closer, until his shadow fell across the gray, dead face. Then he jerked back with a jolt and no name for the shock the sight gave him.It was like Allan, still very dead, had sat up with an outstretched forefinger and pointed straight to Willie’s heart, calling him the same thing as any other Riversider who bothered to call him—You.Willie shook his head. You’re not a fool, Willie, and you’re too old for witch-tales and portents. He checked the dead man’s pockets, but whatever the river hadn’t taken, other scavengers, quicker to the mark than Willie, had. Empty pockets pulled inside-out showed one soggy hole—and that was it. Eyes open and just as empty, bringing to mind the last, not-so-fresh fish on a summer’s day, flies buzzing near the gills. Colorless hair plastered to the forehead.Willie high-tailed it away.Allan had gambled and he’d lost, which was nothing that didn’t happen to somebody else every other day of the week and twice as often on holidays. He’d robbed the wrong man, or run afoul of the wrong gang, or even fallen drunk into the river, and that was the end of it. Sure, he’d known how to pick pockets and how to pick up free drinks after, how to tell a story, how to set the stakes, but he hadn’t known how not to drown. Now he was dead and Willie was sad for nobody but himself in a city where even the dead had monikers and he had none.Without Allan to partner with, to toss him scraps, it was going to be a lonely season, colder than the skies overhead and leaner than bone.Soon enough there was plenty of other gossip to occupy wagging tongues. Other bodies—Riverside offered those in spades. But without Allan, Willie, who scraped by and lined his belly with minnows pinched from purses here and there, found his fingers fumbling in the cold, freezing up before he snaked them past the pockets.It was the thing he was best suited for, being small and quick as a minnow himself, with little hands that seemed designed to slip into someone else’s pockets. But he didn’t know what kind of a rep he could build for himself on something he’d only fallen into, following Allan about, doing what Allan did.Willie the Hand? It sounded daring and bold. But that forger woman, Tess, the one with that pretty boy swordsman Ben to protect her, the one who sometimes gave Willie scraps to eat too—and once even a ripped up blanket—had already landed that name for herself. Tess the Hand, she was.And what if a hand closed around his wrist?What if he was caught before his career took off?What if they found him on the riverbank one chilly morning, squinted, and wondered, Who the hell is this? Some dead kid? What was his name again?Willie the Ghost, might as well be toast…He went hungry most days, the nights being worse since they were longer and darker. He could feel himself shrinking, imagined it happening by the hour. Pick-pocketing might not be the thing he was made for, but neither was starving to death before the White Days. And Last Night was drawing nearer, folding its cold arms around every corner, wagging its fingers and pointing to Willie.No one talked about Allan anymore, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t washed up in Riverside with pockets full of empty dreams.Discussion in Riverside had already turned, whispering down narrow alleyways and vanishing once it reached the fat, open streets; now it was all about the Last Night parties up on the Hill, where swordsmen would be called upon to perform for the nobles and their guests. Chatter swirled around who might be cut down before the fruit tarts were served, with betting action laid on the high favorites.Willie didn’t have the minnows to lay bets on the lives and swordplay of other men, but even if he did, he’d have kept his predictions to himself. He’d been born with nothing but scruples, and what he’d retained of those was simply this: that he’d make his coin with his two hands because no one else was going to make it for him.If he had a moniker, everyone would know his name—they could call on him for their odd jobs; he’d have a career, or at least eat steady meals. Willie wasn’t greedy—he didn’t need anyone to write a song about him—but there was a boon granted by recognition. Like coming in from the cold, people turning their faces toward you with knowledge of who you were. That meant something.A cane’s length of warm, yellow light spilled across the street. Willie caught a glimpse of a girl peeping into The Wheezy Rook, her hair as red as the sunrise before a storm.Ginnie was his age, or younger; she had a face people already took notice of and a passion for swordsmen that elevated them to figures of legend, not hired hands.Willie, being nothing special to look at, couldn’t hope for the same consideration. He was too scrawny to be pampered, and no one looked at him twice like they might Ginnie, if she grew up right. That unremarkable nature made him perfect for pickpocketing, but it was a poor figure who couldn’t make his fingers work when he was cold—and it was always colder in Riverside, the wind whipping between crooked, crowded brick-and-mortar buildings, keen as a knife to slice the nose off your face.If Willie could just find somewhere to thaw for the night and get his blood moving again, maybe he’d think of a solution. Brilliant ideas were like coin purses, waiting for the right hand to reach out and snatch them.He needed something. With Allan the Ghost gone, he’d lost his companion on the streets. He’d had some kind of family once; people didn’t come from nowhere.He was on his own.Willie wiggled his fingers. Were the tips bluer than they’d been that morning?He fished his hands into his own pockets for a change, keeping his head down as he ducked into the nearest alley; it’d put him at odds with the wind. He couldn’t seem to stop shivering. Not a minnow left for night boarding. Time to brave ghosts and other loiterers with prior claims to abandoned houses, hoping he’d be small enough to be overlooked in the dark.Willie forced himself to keep walking, one foot after another, down the uneven stretch of mud-streaked cobblestones.It was then that he saw the cat.She was fatter than she should’ve been this time of year, with no edge of hunger making her bare her teeth in a hiss. Instead of racing off after the scuttle of a passing rat, she cantered lazily away from Willie first, then circled back around to his boots, pushing her head into his ankle, warm and careless.Willie knelt to touch her. Her coat was glossy; he couldn’t even feel her ribs.Somebody was feeding her regular.Must be the Cat Lady.Even that woman had a name—a moniker everyone knew. You said The Cat Lady of Riverside and eyes lit up with recognition. Willie didn’t need eyes to glow on his account. But if they heard the name Slick Willie or Willie Quickfingers and recognized that… It wasn’t a family or a famous father, but in Riverside people made their own names for themselves, and it was the most he could scrape together with his crack-nailed fingers.So it was the nickname, the Cat Lady, that Willie remembered, a snippet of worthless rumor he’d caught in a gale of laughter while lurking beside a gambling table in The Maiden’s Fancy. (He spent warmer hours in the shadows watching the shuffle of cards, trying to mark the moment the dealer chose to cheat. A fine education if you didn’t blink.)Riverside had something of everything; why not an old woman who fed strays? She must’ve been crazy to waste food like that, but it took all kinds of brick to build a city, including the crumbling sort.“Hey there, sweet girl,” Willie said. He rubbed the cat’s chin and received a clawless swat in return, teaching him she liked her brow scratched best. Her full belly rumbled with a purr.Willie thought about eating her.Then he had a better idea.He was going to follow her to wherever she was being fed and eat that. When he was nice and full, he could use her for a warm ball of cozy heat as he slept.Might be nice, not sleeping alone.He straightened and pulled his hand deeper into his too-long sleeve. None of the clothing he stole ever seemed to fit him, unless he’d taken it off a dead kid—and since those didn’t crop up regularly until after Last Night, when the cold finally claimed them, the shirt he wore now had belonged once to a broader man, holes and all. Just another man who hadn’t had time to make his mark on the world—and he’d been bigger, older than Willie.It drooped, almost like an accusation, on Willie’s bones.Willie showed the cat his fingers through the ragged hem, plucking at loose threads. “Too cold out here to pet you proper,” he sighed. “Might be more loving where that came from, but not out here.”The cat flicked her tail.Willie was talking to an animal.His stomach growled, a language they already shared.When the cat started off around a corner and down a sneaky alleyway, Willie followed.A few of the cat’s pathways and scramble-holes were a tight fit, but Willie was small enough to keep up with her. The cat led him in and out of tight spots with grace and style; so what if Willie was sweating and panting by the end of the trip, with a few more holes in his shirt for his efforts?They didn’t walk up to the Cat Lady’s front door and knock.No one did. There were whispers about her in the streets—she had only one eye, or it was only one leg, or it was both legs, or one was dead and it dragged everywhere she walked, scrape, scrape, until she was on you and it was too late—She cooked orphans for meat and fed it to her cats.That was the one that stuck in Willie’s mind while his kitty friend slunk ahead, unbothered by the same worrisome reputation of its patron.There was a sagging eave and two old planks thrown over another hole-in-the-wall, and a spot where the cobblestones were missing. The cat disappeared, and Willie weighed his options—in or out, Willie?The house looked quiet, empty, alone. Willie caught no wink of movement from behind its windows, dusty and blackened with age, the broken ones boarded over to protect against looters.Maybe the Cat Lady wasn’t home.There were plenty of places to hide under an old house, especially for a mite like him. And the warmth of a cat to sleep with beckoned more than the street’s tales about the Cat Lady warded him off.Just like that Willie was inside instead of out, in a cellar that smelled only faintly of cat piss.Not that a horrible stink would’ve been a dealbreaker; the cellar was dry and almost warm, a tarp draped across the tunnel entrance, which was too tight for anyone bigger than Willie to slide through. The darkness didn’t matter either. Now and then a shadow would shiver and sigh with a tickle of whiskers, but Willie crawled into the nearest pile of sleepy kittens and drifted off with feeling finally in his fingers and toes.He woke to three needle-quick pinpricks in the side of his neck. He didn’t shout; Willie’s year on the streets had ingrained in him a number of instincts, the most important of which was stealth. A shout could bring down more trouble than he already had.Carefully, silently, he pried the kitten loose.She was a dirty bundle of brown-and-white fur, with green eyes the color of imagination, or a lady’s spring silks. Willie held her suspended by the scruff of her neck, which she allowed for a scant few seconds before letting out a squeal like a kettle left too long on the heat. She raked him across his wrist for his efforts and he let her go, watching her winnow her way back into the pile. Three pain-bright scratches welled up on his arm.He wondered whether it would catch ill and rot. One Handed Willie had a certain ring, but it was the kind of thing that only sounded impressive after the hand was lost.Since Willie was awake, he had to get moving. In the darkness of the cellar he had no way of telling time, but the sleep he’d enjoyed felt lasting, luxurious even, which meant it’d been more than a few, bare hours. His arm wasn’t bleeding any more. It’d heal soon enough.Overall, breaking into the house like a cat had been his finest success all year.Willie crept free of his hidey-hole, careful to replace the thick canvas of the tarp. Grey morning light slopped across the cellar’s crumbling stone floor, pooling cloudy in the pits like spilled tea.It was early, then. The cats had woken him before he had to confront their mysterious lady.He took a step; felt something cold and halted. Hidden in the shadows was a chipped clay bowl; he’d bumped it with his toe through the hole in his boot. When Willie crouched to inspect it, he found it filled with fresh milk, no dirt or spiders yet in the clean, creamy whiteness.She’d been here. The Cat Lady had been in the cellar with Willie and only the sheer number of cats—dozens at least, higher than Willie could count before they moved or disappeared or new ones showed up, or one fat one turned out to be three little ones—had kept him hidden from her wrath and her soup pot.Those same cats crowded around him now, mewling for the bowl in his hands.Willie thought about gratitude. Then he drank the lot.Next to the bowl was another, and next to the second bowl were scattered crumbs of yellow cheese, not even green with mold. Willie ate the cheese, reasoning the cats could scrap it out over the last bowl of milk.These were the compromises Willie could make in the faint light of a morning that wasn’t yet roused from its bed.The food was far from enough to sate his growling belly, but it was more than he’d had in days, and he was feeling optimistic as he crawled out from under the sagging eave, brushing the cellar dust and cat hair from his too-long sleeves.He was back outside, with nothing to protect him from the cold. Well, it was for the best. Any minute now, the Cat Lady might turn up to survey her feline wards, and he’d be caught out in the open. It was past time to move on. Before, he’d been too bone-exhausted to think about the danger he was in. But now that he’d slept enough for his nerves to wake, he wasn’t looking to run across the mistress of the house.In the voluminous depths of his stolen coat, something wiggled.It was his furry friend from last night. Her head poked loose, surveyed the grounds from her new vantage point, and twisted loose, leapt free to dive back into the tunnel, tail swishing twice before it disappeared under the tarpaulin.Willie had a place to sleep, now. One good night of feeling cozy—was it how lords and ladies slept, not twitching awake every half-hour to check their pockets and throats?—was all he’d needed. One good night, and he was back on his feet, shaking off the specter of Drowned Allan the Ghost—twomonikers now—and winter cold. He could creep back under the tarp each night, sleep amongst the furry warmth, and never have to pay a minnow. And there were no rats to bite him as he slept—the cats took care of that.Abandoned house on the left and another crowding in on the right. A dirty alley; no sound clattering around the corners; silence sheathed them in place. Willie kept to the shadows, studying the old house that belonged to the old lady. He could picture her blending in with the stone: antique to the point of ruin; dusty and grey around every dried edge; barely a prayer holding her together. The house, now returning to the earth, looked like it might’ve been fancy in its day. Maybe The Cat Lady had been a fine, high lady once, only to fall from grace. Down on her luck, she spent the last of her dwindling fortune living in a relic that reminded her of better days, feeding her kitties… All named for high society lords and ladies themselves, of course.Willie shook his head and craned up onto his toes to inspect a loose board.Meantime, the cats came and went, in and out under the tarp and the tangle of any number of other hidden entry-spots that Willie found by watching his new friends pace and prowl.It was irresistible. Willie discovered he could fit through two of those spots, three when he stopped breathing for long enough to squeeze inside. Before long, he was keeping a tally, ticking off the number of break-in points. The ninth he found a way to jimmy on a hunch, working the frame of a glassless window loose to give him the extra inch of space.Window Wiggler Willie, he thought to himself.Now there was a mouthful.Nobody around and the practice was free. Besides, Willie wasn’t taking a thing—just learning how to do it, and that was no crime, especially not in Riverside.Cats watched him come and go, test and gauge. They groomed, stretched, and generally slept with one eye open. When some urchins ran past, shoeless and shouting, Willie played dead and they jumped straight over him with a holler and not so much as a backward glance.It seemed he had a knack for this kind of work—breaking and entering specifically—but it was exercise a-plenty and it made him hungry.He left at noon, intending to sneak back in at night for more food and a furry bed while he practiced this new skill. The house might’ve seemed gloomy, haunted as twilight, remote and looming and pitch-dark under the wary moonlight, but cats were practical, and they didn’t mind. Neither did Willie.Noontime was one of the rare hours in Riverside when the streets could be reliably bustling with pedestrians and the good smells temporarily outweighed the bad. White curls of steam poured from the crowded shop windows, fogging up the glass where signs read BEST SOUP IN TOWN, KEEP YOUR BELLY FULL, or BEST PRICES IN TOWN, KEEP YOUR WALLETS FULL, or NO RAT MEAT ADDED.The last one was the least crowded. Riversiders didn’t much care where their meat came from or if they came by it honestly, just that they came by it at all.Willie lined his pockets from the pockets of hungry diners, appropriating a handful of brass minnows and a quarter silver. Slim pickings; he didn’t overstep or take enough to be noticed straight away. Then he burned his fingers filching a hot, stuffed Last Night bun baked in the bulging shape of what was supposed to be a deer, but reminded Willie of a hunched-over cat.Willie gobbled it crouched in a scorched alleyway, quick enough that it burnt his tongue as well as his fingers and left a scoring heat down his gullet. There were blackcurrants and nuts baked into the dough and a swirl of spice that tickled the back of his throat.When he’d quieted the rumbling in his stomach, he swung toward The Maiden’s Fancy, where Squinting Giselle was deep in conversation with that friend of hers, the big one with the ready laugh.“…haven’t seen half so much of her protector,” Giselle was saying; Willie approached by pretending to inspect someone’s abandoned flagon the next table over. “Tess is all right, but Ben’s got to make up his mind between whoring and swordsmanship, if you ask me. Otherwise, he’s going to show up to an engagement and whip out the wrong blade…if you take my meaning.”The other woman laughed at Giselle’s joke. It was a musical titter, reminding Willie of strung glass tinkling in the wind.“Marie!” A rough-looking brute with the beginnings of a beard and dried mud on his leather riding boots beckoned. He was cleaning his sword on the cape of another swordsman at the next table over, who didn’t seem to have noticed. “Enough gossip! It doesn’t entertain half so well as your other skills.”The laughing woman—Marie—gave Giselle a look part exasperated and part fond, enjoying the attention even though it butted in on her conversation.“You’ll tell me,” she said, laying a hand on Giselle’s arm, “if Tess comes in? I want to ask her about that Ben and what he’s really good for!”She laughed her beautiful laugh again, but it was only a shade of the real thing, an echo put on for the man who’d beckoned her.The swordsman had noticed the blood and mud on his cape. Marie got between him and her trick and examined the fabric. “Not to worry,” she said cheerfully. “I can get that out, easy.”“So you’re a laundress, now, too?” grumbled the brute; but he seemed glad enough when the offended swordsman handed Marie his muddy cape.Maybe it was the good night’s sleep, but Willie saw them all-too-keenly now: the patches where clothes were threadbare or a faded spot from a missing button, their boots that needed polishing, the swordsman’s second-rate weapon.The few minnows Willie’d snatched were small; they barely weighed a thing. They’d be gone quicker than Willie could wink. Stumbling into negligible, fast-spent fortunes wasn’t the same challenge as shimmying up a drainpipe and it all left Willie cold, unimpressed with himself, wanting more. Teaching himself how to enter a house that wasn’t his own—that seemed a worthier goal than slipping his hands into other men’s pockets just because it was Allan’s preferred method.And there was more money to be found in taking the things people kept under lock and key in their own houses, too.Out, back into the crisp air. Willie thought he heard a wee creature mewling, but when he turned to chase the noise, he was met with only the hollow laughter billowing from The Maiden’s Fancy before he released the latch, and the door fell shut behind him.Willie returned to the cat lady’s house by the gloaming and resumed his self-prescribed work. When he’d found his way around the tenth and eleventh obstacles to letting himself in—both of which deposited him onto the unlit, practically uninhabited parlor floor—he figured the old lady had turned in early and was no doubt older than he thought.The moon was high. Willie was satisfied, if bleeding from a scrape on his cheek thanks to some pesky ironwork.He slept in the cellar again—despite his growing assurance he need fear no interruptions from the lady of the house—after helping himself to dinner with the cats, ten bowls for more than twice that many animals, but Willie made room for himself.The cats kept him warm all night through. He woke to the fur on his clothes, fresh milk and cat company. Then he set about honing his new-found skills.The twelfth way into the great house proved trickier than the rest combined: a door out of the cellar to the ground floor of the house, with a rusty lock that flaked as soon as Willie touched it.That won’t move, said Allan the Ghost’s voice in his head. A true ghost, now.You’ve met your match, Willie.But Allan had been good at stories, and Willie remembered at least half the things he’d told him. From all the way down at the wharf, Willie scouted and retrieved a few likely-looking seabird feathers, then slicked them in the same oil the river people used to waterproof board and cloth.It was the Ghost’s voice in the back of his head, that told him a rusty lock needing oiling, before it’d shift.So Willie developed such a light and delicate touch it was artful, lover-like, tender as a kiss. He took his time with it, readying the lock to be picked as Allan had taught him.Artful Willie? Now there was a pretty thing. He wouldn’t mind it, no.Each night, when he returned to sleep with the cats, there were new dishes of cream and cheese. The sight gave him the shivers, even if it wasn’t enough to sway his appetite.On the third day he snicked some nails from the blacksmith’s and spent hours rubbing them down to finer points on the stone walls. He’d oiled the lock. Now it was time to see if it could be picked.When Willie heard the inner workings catch, it was his mouth that opened in surprise before the lock, sweet as could be. But instead of testing the door, he shut the padlock again without thinking twice.Just getting the lock open wasn’t enough. He had to learn to do it quicker than quick, so swift that he wouldn’t be seen at work.He had to refine it.Soon, Willie could pick the lock to the count of sixteen with his clumsy lockpicks while lying across the cellar door almost unmoving, pretending to be passed-out-drunk.Housebreaker Willie.Except he hadn’t been in.Lockbreaker Willie, then.Except he hadn’t broken anything.When he hit fifteen count twice in a row, he left the padlock open the merest fraction and waited until darkest night.Then he let himself in, in through the door, like a real gentleman. It was time to case the place from the inside—because he’d earned the chance.He didn’t know what he was expecting to find within the confines of the moldering main estate. More cats, probably. Crusty dishes of cream that hadn’t been cleaned out; ruined velvet furniture with the stuffing coming free of slashed fabric like drifts of snow, thanks to a cat’s attentive claws; shed, pale fur clinging to everything.There was also the presence of its owner niggling in the back of his mind—such as how she could remain so out of sight, yet at the same time keep dropping off meals for her cats.It gave him the willies, which wasn’t a good moniker for anyone, but especially not Willie.The inner house was spotless, if over-crowded with furniture. What should’ve stood as a plain open room was filled with crooked sofas wrapped in clean tarpaulins, haphazard ottomans strewn about and end tables that hadn’t been set at the end of anything. Willie almost caught his shin on a small, dark table that’d been hiding in the shadows, but he side-stepped it just in time and made no noise, no noise at all.The cat lady had more in her possession than she knew what to do with; that much was obvious. Willie wondered where she’d gotten it all and what she needed it for, whether she’d gathered it over the years like she’d gathered her cats: not knowing where and when to stop.But it was equally obvious that a scrawny scrap like Willie couldn’t move any of the heavier furniture out on his own. That was a job for a burlier sort. Willie was small and thought small, which in this case happened to meansmarter and less complicated.He closed his eyes and listened sharp for the creak of floorboards or the rasp of cloth against wood, any sign that he was about to get nabbed.All was quiet.So Willie took a chance, creeping from the foyer to a sitting room, where grey moonlight fell across the floor like ash. There was a portrait of some fine lady over the mantle, with golden curls and ornaments set like jeweled beetles burrowing amongst them. From her proud face, her cool eyes looked down over an assortment of bric-a-brac adorning the mantle above the cold fireplace. Willie noted an empty vase decorated in swirls of blue and white and a series of miniature painted men and women arranged in no kind of scene that Willie could discern. They were set all-ascramble like Riverside itself, with no rhyme or reason to where they were coming or going.Now, these small things would fit neatly in those deep pockets of his. The vase, too, if he tucked it under his shirt. And he might bargain more than a half silver for the lot if the figures were real porcelain and not cheap clay.As he drew nearer, he caught sight of the silver-handled fire poker and the tarnished ash shovel. Polished up right, he could sell them too.He was going to need bigger pockets—or maybe a sack. If he folded it right, one of the tarps would do the job fine.Willie started with the vase and then the figures, settling them in charily so they wouldn’t smash and ruin his take. Why, there was even a set of fine cloth napkins folded nearby to wrap them with; he knotted them tenderly, so the scrapes and calluses on his fingers wouldn’t snag their edges of lace. While he worked, he gave the little lords and ladies names, fancy and fine, some real and some imagined, calling this one Duchess Tremontaine and that one Lord Flamingonose, who were mingling with Horace and Hortensia and their beloved son named William…He was so caught up in his story that he forgot to watch his back. When he heard a delicate cough behind him, he nearly leapt out of his own skin.He dropped the vase—but swung to catch it on instinct, the only thought in his head no noise. Rattling tempered by the table napkins, nothing inside broke.“Stealing from a harmless old lady,” said a bell-clear ice-cut disappointed voice. “Still, that was a nimble catch!”Willie thought first and set the vase back on the mantle second. Moving slow—so when he wanted to bolt, it’d come with the element of surprise—he turned to face the lady of the house.Moonlight softened her wrinkles—if she had any. Her eyes like shadows; her mouth like sadness, as clever and as cool. There were two windows and one door to the hall and even the fireplace for potential exits, with Willie small enough to fit up most chimneys, but even as he ran through the possibilities he stayed put, as though the lady’s gaze had turned him to porcelain to set among her other baubles.Willie shivered.“Cold?” the lady asked. “Yes; it’s always cold in Riverside. But, as you’ve already found, cats are better for that than any hot toddies or water bottles. They do keep you cozy and warm, don’t they?”Willie swallowed.“Hm,” the lady continued, like a purr. “You were taking the vase and the figurines, were you? Instead of looking for the jewelry box? Don’t tell me…” She leaned forward, smelling of freshly cooked fish in a way like home and supper and bedtime might. Her dark hair revealed only a few streaks of grinning grey in the long fall of it, one curl pulled astray and a shawl wrapped snugly around her broad shoulders. “…you didn’t even think of that?”Willie shook his head.“Or maybe,” the lady concluded, “you didn’t want to rob a poor old lady blind—with nothing left for feeding her cats, not to mention herself. Maybeyou wanted just enough to line your pockets for a week or two, without asking for too much.” She shook her head; her stray curl danced in answer. “Whether or not that speaks well of your morals, kid, it’s a deathblow to your ambitions.”Willie’s mouth remembered, of its own accord, how to move, twisting into the grin that made him look younger and cuter in a harmless way, like the kid she’d called him.The lady grinned back. Willie’s smile faltered and, unlike the vase, he didn’t catch it in time.“You tried to rob me after I brought you extra cheese,” the lady said, “so that’s a mark against you. But you didn’t come after me to slit my throat and take everything I had, so that’s a mark in your favor. You caught the vase; that’s another point for you. And the cats like you. Seems like you’ve come out on top.”“Eh?” Willie’s throat croaked.“Hm,” the lady said again, “or perhaps I’ve overestimated you. If you’re going to be trespassing in homes that aren’t yours, you’ve got to be quicker than that. And you’ve got to know what to grab—the good stuff, somewhere between the knick-knacks and the family jewels.”Willie had the sense not to put her back up any further by saying what was on his mind. But his face, young and open, said it for him: Why should I take advice from the Cat Lady of Riverside?In response, she sat on the arm of one of her sofas. From beneath her voluminous skirts, Willie caught a glimpse of a pair of worn, black leather boots. They were finer than those he’d seen the stained swordsman in The Maiden’s Fancy wearing.She seemed to be waiting for something; or she was weighing Willie, not waiting, trying to determine if he was wanting.“You brought me extra cheese?” Willie asked at last.“The cats like you,” the lady reminded him, like this answered everything. “And I’ve been around long enough not to stand in the way when they take a shine to someone with ambitions.” She turned away to survey the mantle. Willie felt a hot pang of something that could’ve been hunger or could’ve been guilt. “Oh dear. No, that won’t do. I can’t let you take Hortensia; she’s my favorite.”It was Willie’s turn to weigh the situation. He could bolt and line his pockets for a few weeks like the cat lady said. She looked spry, but there was no way she’d outpace him in her mess of a foyer.But if he did that, he’d be giving up decent cheese, the warmest spot in Riverside for sleeping, and the best practice he could find for his new career.Allan the Ghost had earned himself a moniker, but nothing more than that in the end. He was beyond learning from his mistakes—the memory of him drifting waterlogged downstream until he was little more than a twinkle in a fish’s eye—but maybe Willie wasn’t.Willie retrieved the handkerchief, laying it on the coffee table and working the knot loose with an expert flick. The cat lady clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.“Now,” she said. In exchange for her figurines, she offered him a black hairpin, which loosed another wiry, wayward curl. Better than feathers and rusty nails for lockpicking, Willie thought. “You missed the thirteenth entrance, you know. First, it’s a matter of finding it, but it’s also a matter of slipping in. I wonder, will you be nimble enough?”When drinks were on Nimble Willie, he didn’t brag about his fortunes. It was enough to have them turn when he came in the door, to hear, Hey, it’s Nimble Willie! accompanied by a slap on the back. No one ever questioned how a kid who started with nothing had taught himself to be cautious as a master thief in the night, had raised himself by stolen bootstraps from pickpocket to cat-burglar. He kept his secret, that he’d learned from a cat-lady what being nimble meant.He didn’t have his own song—But that was all in good time.
END
Jaida Jones studied Japanese monsters at Columbia. Her less comprehensive monster studies were conducted elsewhere. She currently lives in Park Slope with her wife and co-conspirator, Danielle Bennett. They’ve written four books together—Havemercy; Shadow Magic; Dragon Soul; and Steel Hands—and hope someday to write a few more. They have too many cats.Danielle Bennett washed ashore on a beach in the Pacific Northwest in 1986. She writes novels with Jaida Jones in the Brooklyn brownstone they share with their seven cats. A connoisseur of fine teas, cartoons and knitting, Danielle is currently enjoying all three of these things while she undergoes chemotherapy for breast cancer.You can follow Jones and Bennett via Twitter, Tumblr, or their site!
