Theo lasted another hour and then he went to bed. Somehow, he fell asleep. He was awakened by Tess’s soft cries, too much like the cries of a lost kitten. He crawled out of his bed and knelt next to hers. Her eyes twitched under her lids, and her limbs thrashed as if she were trying to run. He caught hold of one of her hands and whispered, “It’s okay. Everything’s okay,” even though it wasn’t, and he wasn’t sure how they were going to fix it. He talked to her and squeezed her hand until her thrashing slowed, then stopped.

Without letting go, Theo shifted so that he was sitting against her bed, head resting on the mattress. He held his sister’s hand all through the night, till the sky split against the rising sun, black and gold as Nine’s fur.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nine

Miriam Biedermann had not lied to her children. The men who loaded Nine into their van and drove her to the large, dank facility in Manhattan were gentle with her. They did not yank on her harness or yell. They talked to her in low, soothing voices. The cage they put her in was clean, with a comfortable bed in one corner and a bowl full of water.

But a cage was still a cage, something Nine knew well. When she was only a kitten, and just another number, Nine had spent most of her time in one.

She hadn’t minded the cage, not back then. She had been small enough that the expanse of the enclosure seemed vast as any universe. Eyes and ears closed, barely able to walk, she nosed along the padded bottom of the cage, trying and failing to find its edges. All she could be certain of were the smells: the papery scent of the padding beneath her paws; the sharp tang of the metal bars; the musk of her brothers and sisters, each one distinct; and the smell of her mother, milky and strong.

As she and her siblings grew, so did the size of the cage. With their eyes and ears open, the kittens wrestled and chased, leaped and pounced, napped in a giant, twitching heap. Occasionally, a gloved hand would open the cage and one of the kittens would be lifted out despite Mother’s loud protests. Once outside the cage, the kittens were weighed and measured. Mouths were pried open so that teeth could be checked. Needles. Too many needles. Other indignities that Nine didn’t like to recall.

What she did recall: She was always the hardest to catch.