There's a soft, shuffling sort of sound, and I turn my head to the cat.
It stands over my phone, back arching in a long, luxurious stretch, spine curving impossibly high—and then it keeps going. Its fur ripples, somehow darker than black. The body elongates, limbs both thickening and shortening at the same time, so strangely distorted I have to blink the visual away.
It's like the cat can't decide what it wants to be. For a horrible, fluid second, it's neither cat nor anything else, just a shifting mass of shadow and suggestion.
Then a face emerges from the mass.
Bun's face.
Round cheeks. Enormous dark eyes. Her little Cupid's bow mouth.
I jerk upright, my hands almost numb with sudden cold.
But then her sweet face flickers and shifts, and Sara's sharp freckled features replace Bun's for a heartbeat. Then Jer's. Even Ron's. Faster and faster, a carousel of children's faces spinning through like someone flipping channels—
It settles on Bun.
