Excerpt

Drew watched Amber pace at the back window, looking out at the snow, her arms crossed in front of her chest. The cats were equally restless. He looked over at his big orange tabby, Mack, who was on one of the chairs in the breakfast nook looking out. The room smelled of years of garlic and onions and coffee. They'd probably have to strip the walls down to nothing before it smelled any different.

The house wasn't that old but plenty of people lived in it, plenty of activity through the years. Each of them had probably become inured to the smell of cat litter, which no doubt lingered beneath the other scents.

Everyone had their bond-mate cat, as they were called, in the house and each cat had his or her own litterbox. Of course, maybe being telepathically bound to a cat meant he didn't notice the smells from the litterboxes unless they needed cleaning? Drew was very aware that being a bond-mate to a cat had changed him.

The gas fireplace was on, though the lights were down. Chase was in the chair, looking irritated by everyone in the room. Tom and Tenny sat near the fireplace looking at their tablets. Chara, Tom's Siamese, a petite girl with a voice the size of Jupiter, laid practically up to the fireplace screen. While she was stretched out, every muscle in her body was on alert.

Like Amber.

Drew felt it. Felt Mack trying to discern what was going on with the unusual storm. Matt was out there, with his solid black cat, Wilbur, watching.

That's what they did in the house. They all watched. Matt, Anson, and Chase were the designated watchers, like point guards, sent out from the house to keep an eye on the portal which existed in the park around the corner.

Drew had lived his life in Lexington. He'd worked for numerous animal shelters and veterinarians. He was on an unofficial list of folks to call when a pet went missing and he spent more than his fair share of time searching out animals in various parks and neighborhoods throughout the city. Until a decade ago, when he'd become mind-bonded to Mack, he'd had no idea the park was anything but normal.

The portal wasn't visible to ordinary humans. Even now, Drew didn't see anything. Matt, who was out on watch that night, had once told him that he only saw something when the portal opened. Even then, it was more a sensation of a door opening to a new place. Sometimes, the shadows around him changed.

The portal only opened when a creature from another world came through. Based on Mack's description, Drew thought of the universes as bubbles floating in the air. Sometimes they floated close together and touched for a moment. At those times, something could slip through into the wrong world.

The person and their bond-mate cat watching would then push the creature back through the portal. Sometimes a host of creatures would come through, requiring more than one person to send them back. That had been Drew and Mack's job before Mack had reached his tenth birthday and officially retired.

Mack's age meant Drew was also retired. He could have taken Mack and gone to live somewhere else, but Drew liked it there. They called it the clowder house because a group of cats was a clowder. The house had been purchased by a group, which Drew only knew as Base Command, that administered the clowder houses around the world—or, if Mack were to be believed, worlds.

The cats were uniquely tuned to the portals. They had, in fact, been created to watch the portals. Before there were portals, the bubbles had come together in random spots, and creatures would come through, get lost in the wrong world, and die.

Drew wasn't clear on the details of the history of the portals. Nor did he fully understand their magic. He heard Mack sigh in his head, letting him know within their bond that Drew was disappointing him.

Still, history wasn't his thing. That was Riley's thing. Drew didn't dwell on it.

He was a worker. He liked animals, all animals, and was currently trying to figure out what he might want to do seeing he had no official duties at the house. Naturally, in addition to room and board, he got paid because he was bond-mate to Mack. Even retired, Mack was valuable to Base Command, but Drew wanted to do something. He just wasn't quite certain what it was.

Going back to working in shelters didn't quite appeal to him. He'd seen things that he'd never been able to imagine. One time, he'd encountered tiny little fairy-like things that buzzed around in a swarm like bees and had tickled him so hard he'd almost fallen over laughing as he had worked with Mack and other bond-mates, human and feline, to send them back through the portal to their home.

The watcher cats knew how to read the portals and had known four of the fairy creatures were missing. Mack and Drew had spent hours searching the park for them. Mack had found one on the ground. Drew had carried it back. It, like the other three, was dead.

It had taken long enough that the watcher cat had had to reset the portal once the others were found, also dead, and send them through. Their deaths had affected Drew, made him sad. The creatures had made him laugh in ways he'd never laughed during his life before and then they were gone. It was as if their fairy-like lights had literally brought light into his heart and mind and just as suddenly they were taken from him.

"Stop woolgathering," Mack said.

Drew would never have said woolgathering. Mack always sounded more educated than Drew was.

"At least smarter," Mack agreed.

"The temperature has dropped over thirty degrees since this afternoon," Tom said. A few inches shorter than Drew, Tom was of medium height and weight. His dark hair was trimmed neatly, and he was, as always, clean-shaven, though Drew knew Tom often went and shaved after dinner to keep his face that smooth.

"Riley hasn't yet come up with anything in the records about a creature that can change the weather like this," Mack said.

Drew sighed. They'd joked about frost witches earlier. Now, it might not be a joke. Frost witches were legends. Supposedly they came and ate the warm life spirit of the worlds, perhaps even the suns, and then left again. No world survived

"They are," Mack said. "Although all legends come from somewhere."

"I don't like it," Amber said. "It feels all wrong." Amber's tuxedo cat, Minnett, sat on the cat tree in the corner between the fireplace and the window. Her white front toes hung off the side as she worked to get her nose closer to the window so she could see better.

"It's snow," Chase said. "So it's that arctic blast or whatever the hell they're calling it this time. It happens every year."

"This wasn't forecast," Tom said.

Tenny didn't even bother to raise her head to look at him, as she continued to examine her tablet. Drew knew she was rolling her eyes at the comment. Chase had been difficult for the last week or so. Drew figured it was because he'd broken up with his girlfriend Courtney. It was hard having a partner that wasn't in the clowder house. There was so much that you couldn't say. Drew envied Julia and Cari who had each other.

Kayley's boyfriend was in the navy and he was deployed overseas. It meant she could tell him the good things about her life but didn't have to try and hide the times she was out searching around the city for creatures that didn't belong. In terms of not having to lie about her life, it worked well, but Drew knew Kayley missed the guy something awful.

Drew often ran out to the store at night to get a pint of Ben and Jerry's which the two of them would share while watching sappy old movies until Kayley felt better.

"So what? You want to go with frost witches?" Chase practically yelled. "I know that all legends are based in some fact, but that's ridiculous. Why would they even want to come here?"

"We were in the wrong place and they came through," Tom said quietly. That was how it normally worked with creatures.

"Except Matt hasn't seen anything come through."

Amber stopped her pacing, her face going white.

"I can't get Wilbur," Mack said. "He's just gone silent." All the cats could communicate with each other. It was how a cat on watch could contact others.

Tom pulled out his phone to call Matt. Drew leaned forward watching as the phone rang.

Tom shook his head when voicemail picked up.

"Something happened," Tenny said. She was already standing. Upstairs, Drew heard Julia and Cari rushing around to gather up clothing. They'd want to go after Matt. They were his backup, just as Tom and Tenny were Chase's. Fin and Kayley were Anson's. They all worked in teams. Amber was a healer. Riley was a researcher. And Drew was just an extra, kind of like he'd been all his life.