The Big Meow

Uh, yeah. But, Rhi — Urruah climbed carefully onto the back of the front seat, balancing there next to the brim of the Silent Man’s hat and peering forward through the windshield. Then he leapt down into the front seat beside Sheba. Our guy here is really enjoying talking to someone without having to run it through paper first. Big pieces, or little ones…

Yes, Rhiow said, I gathered that. There was something else about his tone that was jogging her memory. The Silent Man’s voice reminded her of the way Iaehh sounded, some evenings, when some colleague from work called him: as if he wanted to keep them talking past the mere business at hand – the sound of someone afraid of the silence that would eventually fall, a silence that had once had another voice in it, now no longer to be heard except in memory. And even memory fades…

Here we go, said the Silent Man. We’ll park here and walk over. He pulled up to the curb, killed the engine, and stepped out of the car, opening the back door on the curb side for the rear-seat passengers.

Rhiow and Hwaith jumped down onto the sidewalk and stood there, glancing around them, as the Silent Man reached in to get Sheba out, and Urruah followed. “This is where it happened?” he said.

“This is it,” said the Silent Man, settling Sheba comfortably on his shoulder. He headed up to the corner, and stopped there.

Rhiow and the others followed him, pausing to gaze upward at the astonishing structure that took up what had to be at least the next half of this block of Hollywood Boulevard and reached well back along Highland. “This,” Rhiow said to Hwaith, “…is a hotel?”

“One of the better ones,” Hwaith said.

It occurred to Rhiow that taking it all in was going to require some time. But then I’m used to New York hotels. Relatively small buildings, in terms of the space they take up on a block…and relatively sedate. Whereas it seemed that the only thing this building’s architect had lacked was sedation. The place was a complex vista of white stucco and red tile, with a confusion of terraces and porticoes and awnings and cupolas and even what appeared to be a couple of dome-topped bell towers. The terraces and balconies on the Boulevard side were set back from the street by a couple of sidewalks’ width of plantings, and sheltered – if that was the word for a building so exhibitionistic – by a row of fine tall palm trees.

Quite something, huh? said the Silent Man.

“Unique,” Rhiow said, putting her whiskers forward.

“Spanish Revival, they call it,” Hwaith said to Urruah as they stood there gazing up at the little tiled portico that sheltered the entry to the Hollywood Hotel’s bar.

Revival? Rhiow thought. …Possibly because it fainted after they woke it up the first time, and it saw what had happened to it…? She waved her tail in a gesture of irony that she hoped would be lost on a watching ehhif, and regarded the portico. HOLLYWOOD HOTEL CORNER, a sign above it proclaimed, as if seriously thinking it could redefine the nearby intersection in its own terms. “So this is where you came out,” Rhiow said, “and saw the Lady in Black…”

This is the spot.

“Good,” Rhiow said, as she caught sight of two small mostly-white shapes coming along toward them under the palm trees. They were looking at Rhiow with interest, and slight confusion. Sightseeing, Rhi? one of them said silently. And out in the open? We done here already?

Arhu’s tone was surprisingly edgy, in marked contrast to the sound of it just a couple of hours ago. Siffha’h was walking quite close to him, a kind of body language that Rhiow had started to recognize as suggesting that she was troubled by her brother’s rattled state.

Not just yet, Rhiow said. Granted, the situation looks unusual, but bear with me for the moment. We’ve turned up something interesting with this ehhif’s help. Some kind of apparition was out here before dawn… possibly even a revenant. But the only ones who saw it were ehhif. We need a better look.

Arhu glanced curiously up at the Silent Man as he and Siffha’h came strolling up to the group and paused at the corner. For his own part, the Silent Man looked at them almost without surprise. More of your people, Blackie? he said to Rhiow.

“The younger members of our team,” Rhiow said. “This one, Arhu, is gifted in a particular way that will be helpful to us. He sees what’s going to be…”

“Which is useful,” Arhu said, “but sometimes not as useful as seeing what’s been.” He looked over at Rhiow. “How long before dawn did this apparition turn up?”

“Maybe two hours before the Eye came up?” Rhiow said to Hwaith. He waved his tail “yes.” “Four AM, as ehhif reckon it. See what you can See.”

“Got to do something about this traffic first,” Siffha’h said, and sat down at the corner, looking out at the intersection.

All the traffic lights promptly turned yellow, and then red.

Now that’s a gift, said the Silent Man, as the traffic in all four directions came to a halt.