Roxanne hurried to the sixth floor, where the ornate costumes for the human operas were created. Often the hum of sewing machines thrummed throughout the department, but not tonight. Roxanne kept running toward her destination. The last door down the hall stood open, the door to the wig department.
Roxanne rushed inside the wig department. Her lungs burned, making breathing difficult. Her head ached from pounding her paws across the floor. She thought about how her teacher had acted before the party. It had made Roxanne nervous to talk about him tonight, especially with Harry.
After what seemed like a lifetime, Roxanne slowed her pace. Sighing, she clambered to the top of a nearby table. Dummy heads sporting a huge variety of wigs cluttered the tabletop. A few dummy heads possessed painted eyes and mouths, along with protruding noses. Most of the other heads were smooth and plain. Whether they had eyes or not, they sent shivers down Roxanne’s spine. Crammed among the heads were wigs: long wigs, short wigs, straight and curly, and every color one could imagine. Mirrors hung on all four walls of the room, with velvet chairs placed before them for the humans to sit on while the wigs were being applied. Although Roxanne longed for the plush cushions the chairs offered, she found herself unable to leap to their promised comfort. Her weak legs could barely hold her up at the moment. The simple act of standing proved too much for her. She collapsed on a blonde wig with soft curls and closed her eyes.
“Roxanne.”
With a sigh, Roxanne opened her eyes, her vision bleary from fatigue.
“Roxanne.”
Roxanne heaved herself to her aching paws. She snaked her way to the edge of the table and swiped the necklace off her head. It clattered to the floor, its shiny baubles reminding her of a dead fish she’d once seen on the pier. How could she have been so stupid? Of course, the necklace belonged to Star. The signs were all there, but she’d ignored them. For a second, she wondered if she should bring the necklace with her but decided against it. Keeping it appealed to her as much as sleeping in a gutter. Perhaps she ought to return it to Olga? A wry smile came to Roxanne's lips. That would make the situation worse. Besides, the sooner she went to her teacher’s abode, the sooner she could sleep—she hoped.
She’d been amused when her teacher had first led her to his private room. The notion that a voice required such a place had never dawned on her before, but she supposed that even voices needed space too, even if such a space resembled a dismal prison rather than a beautiful dressing room.
Dispelling such thoughts, she bunched her legs beneath her and took a deep breath. Her vision swam. She didn’t want to do this, but she had to obey her teacher. Forcing her weary muscles to obey her, she flung herself through the air to one of the many shelves packed with wigs in a corner of the room. A wig with hair reaching the floor sat on the top shelf. Roxanne hooked her claws in the thick brown hair and pulled herself to the top shelf. Lucky for her, the dummy head this wig belonged to was a heavy one, enough to support her weight. Roxanne figured the head had to be very sturdy to hold such a massive wig.
Once she heaved herself to the top shelf, Roxanne squeezed her body between the dummy heads, the wigs brushing against her fur and tickling her nose. She sneezed. After shaking her head, she continued her search for the secret door her teacher had guided her to earlier that morning. She pawed the wall, hoping to find it soon.
A small square block in the wall gave way. It swung open, letting a cold draft of air swoosh over Roxanne. She shivered. She dreaded taking this passage down to the floor below. Roxanne’s mind drifted to when she’d first used the passage. That time, she’d seen a rat as large as a cat within its walls.
She’d been so scared she couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. She’d hunkered down, biting her paw, willing the rat to turn around and scuttle away. But her teacher’s voice had drifted down the passage, telling her not to fear; then horrid rat screeches had resounded in the passage. What sounded horrible to her must have been enticing in some strange way to the rat, for it pricked its ears and ran after the squeaks and screeches. Roxanne had taken a deep breath before continuing her trek.
Once Roxanne had reached her teacher’s abode, she’d asked him if she could attend the party...
“I think it’s best if you stay here with me, and we start your lessons this minute. A party will only delay crucial practice time,” Roxanne’s teacher had said. Roxanne hadn’t failed to notice the snarl that accompanied the word party.
“But the entire Opera Cat Company is expected to attend,” Roxanne had insisted. She could hear Norb’s insistent pleas in her mind, ordering the cats to make an appearance at the party. “Besides, Harry asked me if I’d go—”
Her teacher had snapped, “That sap?” Roxanne had pinned her ears down. Her teacher had continued, “What right does he have asking you to attend some silly party?”
Roxanne’s teacher had continued muttering, but Roxanne couldn’t decipher the words. She had waited for him to speak to her, and speak he did.
“Fine,” Roxanne’s teacher had said with a sigh. “You must go to the party so as not to raise anyone’s suspicions, especially that Harry fellow's. Your presence there, I should think, will calm his overactive nerves. If he sees you there, happy as can be, he will drop the matter of you staying with me.”
Roxanne had lifted her head. “How did you know that he knew about my lessons?”
“I have my ways of knowing,” the voice had said, a note of disdainful amusement in his words. “I am aware of everything that transpires in this opera house, whether it involves cats or humans. But that does not concern you.”
Roxanne’s heart had raced at her teacher's words. Had he been spying on her? He would never invade her privacy in such a horrid way… would he?
But if he claimed to know everything that occurred in the Shelley Opera House, did it mean he thought that Roxanne had brought him up to Harry? What all did he know? Harry had learned of Roxanne’s teacher the night he’d followed her to the theater. Roxanne had been completely unaware of that fact until their talk on the catwalks. If Roxanne’s teacher was spying on her (he couldn’t be!), then surely he knew the whole truth regarding Harry’s knowledge of him?
A sigh or a chuckle—Roxanne couldn’t determine which—had come from the voice, drawing Roxanne’s attention once more to it. Perhaps the voice had growled. “Simply remember, my dear Roxanne, that wherever you are, I am there as well. Now.” The voice seemed to move from one corner of the room to the mirror in front of Roxanne. Her legs had tensed beneath her at the change. The voice had spoken again: “Wear this necklace at the party and know that I am watching.”
A glittering object had drawn Roxanne’s gaze to the floor. Before her, in front of the mirror, she saw a beautiful necklace. She gasped. Emeralds trailed off long silver threads. She had sniffed the emeralds. Thoughts of stolen jewelry surfaced in her mind. Curious, she had asked, “Where did you get this?”
“Such small details matter not.”
Roxanne then slid the necklace on her head. It drooped over the edges of her ears and trailed down her neck. An emerald rested between her eyes. The heavy necklace had made it difficult to hold her head up, so she lowered her head, studying her reflection in the mirror. She had wondered what Harry would think of her wearing such an exquisite human necklace. It had seemed too extravagant for her.
Roxanne had opened her mouth to ask another question, but she knew her teacher had left the room. It had almost become a sixth sense to her, which bothered her. If her teacher was with her wherever she went, as he claimed, then why didn’t she feel his presence more often?
Roxanne bumped into a wall. An overpowering odor similar to dead fish filled her nostrils, chasing her current thoughts away. It reminded her of the times when deceased fish washed up on the boardwalk in front of Lady’s apartment. She wrinkled her nose. Without realizing it, she had reached her destination. Now, thinking of the necklace made her want to cough up a hairball. How could she have been so naïve? Why hadn't she pressed her teacher for answers? It would have saved her that horrid episode with Olga, at any rate.
Her paws grazed a small door in front of her. With a mighty shove, she pushed the square door open as she had the one in the wig room. The door swung open as the other one had, and she tumbled through it to the large room beneath her.
Fortunately, Roxanne fell on a thick carpet. Unfortunately, she hadn't landed on her paws. The memory of Harry telling her cats always landed on their paws surfaced in her mind, bringing a wave of sorrow over her. She blinked in the gloom, forcing herself to focus on her current surroundings. Several candles were lit, providing the only light in the drafty place. She wondered briefly how they’d been lit. Dust tickled her nose. Human scents were extremely faint here, leading her to assume that it had been a long time since a human inhabited this particular room in the opera house, a room she couldn’t determine the original use of. Life-size mannequins lined one wall, wearing ratty clothes adorned with spiderwebs. The mirror she’d admired herself in not long ago sat against the opposite wall. Black tendrils of deterioration snaked along the mirror’s edges, and long cracks crisscrossed the length of the glass. Moldy curtains, their edges torn and stringy, laced one side of the room, covering a stone wall. Close to the curtains, a large taxidermied horse stood, its hooves raised in the air as if ready to charge.
Shivering, Roxanne stood. She padded off the carpet and onto the stone floor. It sent waves of coldness through her, and she trembled harder. She glanced behind her and saw the shelves beneath the passage. The first time she’d been in the room, she’d paid them no notice. The shelves were crammed with rotted books, books with pages swollen from water damage, books whose covers were hanging on by threads, and books without covers. It looked gruesome in a strange way.
“Teacher?” Roxanne whispered. She swallowed. When she spoke again, her voice cracked. “Teacher?” Thoughts of the party raced through her head. What other lies would Olga spread? What was she saying about Roxanne this very minute? Of course, Roxanne hadn't stolen Star's necklace, but she had worn it to the party. Roxanne shook her head as if to dislodge those anxiety-inducing thoughts. A different idea entered her mind, this one no less concerning. What was Harry doing right now? He had chased her—she had heard his paw steps and his pleas for her to stop running—but she’d lost him. She wondered what thoughts ran through his head. A part of her hoped Harry would find her and convince her to leave this strange room. Not for the first time, doubts about accepting her teacher’s full-time tutelage overwhelmed her. What if she’d made a horrible mistake?
She shook her head. What was she thinking? This dank room was where her teacher resided, and she trusted him. But her stomach churned with anxiety. Why did she feel so nervous?
“Roxanne.”
Roxanne looked up.
Sitting atop one of the worn vanities, his reflection repeated three times in all three of the cracked sections of a broken mirror, a large black cat gazed at Roxanne. The cat wore a paper Halloween decoration on his head, which made Roxanne flatten her ears in fear. It appeared to be a black cat face with dark orange eyes, a red nose, and a gaping mouth, with sharp fangs poking out from under its top lip. Roxanne never understood what humans saw in the creepy cat faces; to her, they looked nothing like real cats. Her eyes fell on the actual cat wearing the ugly mask. Gobs of cobwebs stuck out from his long black fur in several spots. Across other areas of the cat’s body, bare patches of gray skin were visible, and Roxanne noticed how his long tail displayed a kink in the middle.
The horrid stench in the room became worse. Another odor mingled with the dead fish smell, but she couldn’t determine the scent. It smelled sickly sweet and made her eyes water.
But this was the cat who’d spoken her name, who possessed her teacher’s voice… along with the smell.
Perhaps, she thought, she had heard him wrong. Taking a deep breath and stifling a gag, she asked, “Where… where is my teacher?”
The cat towering above her flicked his tail, the bones cracking as he did so. When he spoke, Roxanne knew there was no doubt, no matter what the cat said, that he was her teacher. “Your teacher and I are the same,” the cat confirmed.
Roxanne sat on her paws to stop their trembling. Her head grew cold, and her stomach flip-flopped. For some reason, she had never considered her teacher to be an actual cat. His ethereal voice, coupled with the fact she never saw him, never smelled him, had spurred her to view him as a spiritual entity. At the very least, if he were a real cat, Roxanne had envisioned an extremely different image of what he looked like. The cat before her was not what she had imagined.
When Roxanne spoke, she wondered if she’d even said a word since her voice sounded far away and quiet. “I’m worried about Olga, about what she is telling the other cats. I may never be allowed to sing in this company again.” She snapped her mouth shut. She had wanted to say something else, had wanted to ask her teacher why he’d never shown himself to her before, but instead, she’d talked about Olga.
“Don’t worry about Olga,” the cat said, hissing Olga’s name. “I will ensure nothing interferes with your forthcoming success. You are here with me, and that’s all that matters.”
“But no one knows where I am!” Roxanne exclaimed. “Lady will be distraught when she realizes I’m gone. My poor human was in tears the other day when she thought I was missing.”
“Lady will be fine,” the other cat insisted.
Roxanne failed to notice the hint of annoyance creeping into her teacher’s voice. She continued babbling about her worries. “And Harry! He’ll grow even more suspicious, I’m sure of it. He worried about me leaving Lady and the Opera Cats. What if he comes searching for me? He’ll get lost! Or the rats might hurt him!”
“You must calm down,” the black cat growled.
Roxanne, too nervous to sit still at the moment, started pacing. She hadn’t heard her teacher’s words. “If I’m gone for too long, it will hurt my chances more for singing prominent roles,” she wailed. “I won’t even have the opportunity to sing in the chorus. No one else knows about our arrangement. Norb will assume I quit—he certainly won’t care about firing me whether I’m present or not—”
In one quick motion, Roxanne’s teacher had bounded off the old green vanity and landed in front of Roxanne, blocking her path. Roxanne cowered beneath the cat. He stood a head taller than she, and two piercing yellow eyes bored into her face from behind the Halloween decoration. It took all of Roxanne’s strength to not bolt from his piercing glare.
“You must relax,” the cat ordered. “I am going to teach you everything I know. When the cats of New York City hear you sing, they’ll fall to the ground from the ecstasy your voice will transport them to! And when you finish singing, they’ll beg for more! They’ll grovel for it! But you must calm yourself. You must trust me.”
“That’s just it,” Roxanne said, a sob rising in her throat. “I never considered that you were a real cat or what you looked like. I never once thought about your identity. I don’t even know your name!”
“Such things are unimportant.”
Roxanne straightened herself to her full height. The weight of her decision to stay with her teacher struck her, and she knew she had to return to the Opera Cats, to Lady. Hiding away for however long seemed unreasonable now. This understanding gave her a burst of fearlessness.
“I can’t stay. I must go!” Roxanne exclaimed. She scrabbled around her teacher, her attention solely on the shelf that led to the passageway back to the wig room.
Before Roxanne jumped for the shelf, however, her teacher leaped ahead of her, blocking her path again. Roxanne’s heart pounding faster, she darted around him, her unsheathed claws snagging the thick carpet. Her teacher stepped in front of her yet again. Hissing, Roxanne rose on her hind legs and shot one of her front paws out in an attempt to force the other cat back. Her claws became entangled in her teacher’s matted fur. With one swift movement, he batted her tiny paw away.
“Roxanne—”
“No! I want to leave!” Roxanne swatted at her teacher again. This time her claws caught on the Halloween cat face he wore on his head. She swiped her paw away in an attempt to dislodge the mask from her claws, but it came off her teacher's head instead.
Startled, Roxanne stared at the Halloween decoration. She then lifted her eyes to her teacher’s face. And screamed.
A cat’s skull gaped back at her. The ears were typical for a cat, except for their ragged edges. But the head itself—what a head! The skull was long and white. Sharp fangs curled downward from the crooked mouth. A black hole was all the cat possessed for a nose. But the eyes! Two pale, large eyeballs sat in huge eye sockets, with two yellow dots in the middle blazing like fire.
“No—it can’t be—” Roxanne murmured. Her vision swam. Her legs buckled beneath her. She passed out before she hit the cold floor.