Fiona began rattling around in the cupboards, making more noise than was necessary to remove a can of shredded chicken and empty it into a plastic bowl. Normally, these exact noises would bring Byron out of his hiding place at light speed, but the house remained quiet. She placed the plastic bowl on the floor and waited. Nothing.

“Byron? You little sod.”

At that point she thought of the wonky window she’d been meaning to fix for the last few weeks. He shouldn’t have been able to wriggle his way out of that, but what if he had? Pushing that thought from her mind, Fiona headed upstairs. May as well check everywhere before she started to panic.

The second thing was the smell. It hit her on the staircase, a wild and unnerving funk, like cages at a zoo. She frowned on the landing, thinking that perhaps Byron was ill and had thrown up somewhere, although cat sick was never nearly so powerful.

“Byron, you little sod, are you all right? That food is expensive you know, I’d appreciate you not puking it up every …”

The words dropped into nothing, eaten up by silence and the stench.

“Byron?”

She stood by her bedroom door, a sick feeling building in her stomach at the sight of the evening’s deep shadows. The smell was worse in here. It was too easy to imagine terrible things waiting for her in the darkness—Byron dead on the bed, his little kitty brain overheated and his fur covered in vomit. Or something else, something worse. A figure in the dark perhaps, watching her.

Abruptly annoyed with herself, Fiona flicked the light switch, watching with no small relief as the big ramshackle room was revealed; cupboard doors half hidden under hanging clothes, the huge bed that was far too big for her, covered in cushions; the nightstand with its pile of dog-eared romance novels. She crossed to the bed and sat down, yanking at the laces on her trainers.

“You’ve found a mouse, I expect,” she said aloud to the room. “You killed it and made a mess, and now you’re too guilty to face me. That would explain the stink.”

Free of her trainers, she leaned down to pick them up—just in time to see a hand sneak out from under the bed and curl around her ankle.

The fright and the shock were like a hammer blow to her entire body. Fiona made an odd, whuffing sound—terror seemed to snap her lungs closed in an instant—and she tried to jump clear, but the hand around her ankle had a strong grip, and it yanked back viciously, causing her to lose her balance and crash to the floor. She hit the floor chin first, padded only slightly by the thick carpet, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was aware of a great weight on the back of her legs. Whoever it was who had been hiding under the bed was climbing out, crawling up her rapidly. Fiona bucked wildly, attempting to throw them off, but they were bigger than her, stronger. She turned, catching a glimpse of a face hidden in a black woolen mask, and then there was another blow to her head, turning the edges of her vision dark and uncertain.