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a small
township. Stately pines flanked either side of the stone steps, ribbed pillars supported an arched portico.
    Inside—the wonderful smell of cedar and books. Books crawled up the
walls everywhere. Shape-shifting into the tiniest of mice, he scurried through
the door and across the library floor.
    Angie stood in jeans and cap-sleeved blouse, gazing upward in awe at
the wealth of thought rising around her. And Henri gazed upward in awe at her.
Her golden hair curled from the moist English air, her blouse was dew-damped
around her breasts. Henri could not take his eyes from her.
    She pulled a note from her shoulder bag, briefly studied it, then,
wadding it into a ball, tossed it toward a nearby trash can, unaware as she
turned away that the crumpled note had hit the can rim and popped to the floor.
    Henri padded swiftly across the waxed, hardwood floor, grabbed the wad
in his teeth, and whipped behind a book case. Smoothing back the edges with his
claws, he studied Andre’s scrawls. The prince of penmanship Andre was not.
Meticulousness was not one of his most notable attributes. Except
when he was cooking. He was a chef to rival the best, Henri had heard.
    The note was listing editions of several old newspapers in the
library’s basement archives.
    DuPre was hot on the
trail of the bloodline best left in the grave.
    Henri hurried out from behind the case to find Angie.
    She was standing at the top step of a dimly lit basement stairwell.
Wistfully, she glanced behind her at the staircase that spiraled upward into
the poets’ brightly lit realm.
    She turned around, walked to the center of the library, placed her palm
over the baluster finial knob, and ascended the spiral staircase.
    Apparently, DuPre and her family tree could
wait.
    Scampering up mahogany stairs so highly polished he would have been
able to see his reflection, if he had a reflection, Henri followed the mystic.
    Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales moved past them on
the right. Homer’s Iliad , Greek mythology,
and Europe’s art arced around the lustrous wood balustrade to the left. The
history of kings shone out from a shelf of their own at the landing, the dark
brooding romances of the English moors lay hidden further back.
    A column of art and music, then, the poets. Angie’s gold locks
fell away from her face revealing an open fascination with the magnanimity of
it all.
    Taking a small, blue, hardbound from a crowded shelf, she let her shop
purchases slide from her arms, and scooted into a secluded study nook.
    The window gave her an intriguing view through rain buttons of the dark
blue clouds and the park below.
    Henri shimmied along a ceiling beam to where he also had an intriguing
view—down into the book—and down into the front of her blouse.
    The philosophy of the poet masters the mystic liked best, it seemed,
struck a common chord with her own. They believed that inherent human goodness
will, sooner or later, eliminate evil from the world and usher in an eternal
reign of transcendent love. Ethereal idealism.
    Why did she cling so veraciously to such an ideal when her own life had
been one of flat tires and futility? Henri wondered, intensely curious as he
leaned his chin on his paw and drank in the cleavage of the human mystic he was
beginning to desire beyond reason.
    A gnarled and weathered branch from an ancient tree rubbed against the
window, its leafy fans smearing the pane with wet. Henri blinked toward the
mist spattered glass and down to the park.
    Everywhere the world was a canvas of watery green—green grass deepened
to dewy splendor, and lush, leafy satiated trees.
    Il commence à pleuvoir ! I love the rain! Henri thought. I love to walk
in it, talk in it, and I want to kiss Angie in the dark in it. Kiss her in
doorways drenched in watery curtains, behind rainy veils under porchway eaves, kiss her into
beads of pleasure that will melt her will into my own until she is one with me.
    I’m such a fool , he thought suddenly. Here I