The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) Read Free Page B

café through the shutters, she could see the table where Moomamu was attacked. She could see the spot where Gary laid, bleeding out, missing his paw after jumping to protect his companion.  
    “Nothing, I guess,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”  
    Blaise wished her a good night and scootered past her towards the entrance to the underground.  
    As Luna stood there, looking into the café at the spot where Moomamu had fought the killer, her eyes drifted to the floor she’d just mopped. Crap, she thought as she saw a dirty footprint smack bang in the middle of the floor.

    ***

    The car grunted as Luna yanked the handbrake on. She placed the steering lock over the wheel, piled an empty crisp packet and bottle of orange juice into a plastic shopping bag and braced herself for what she was about to walk into. Her new flatmate — Gary.
    Every time she’d been home she’d found new claw marks in her curtains and sofa. Puddles of yellow around the litter tray. No, not in the litter tray. Next to it. She’d find him lying in the sun — his face as sour as an old grape. He’d been lying in the window, watching birds fly by, licking his lips.
    The only words leaving his rough tongue came in twos — “Gary’s hungry” or “Gary’s tired”. It was like he’d devolved from the sentient ginger wonder to something else. A stray moggy, depressed, lonely. It didn’t matter what Luna did for him, he wasn’t the ball of stoic calm he’d been when she met him. He was an old knife, ruined by what he’d had to cut down, blunted, flattened, in need of sharpening.
    She dragged the bags of shopping — milk, bread, cat-food and so on — to the building, holding the bags outwards so as to not catch her feet. She’d have to do the same again the next week. The Sisyphean task of the weekly food-shop.
    With the aching muscles of a mountain goat she walked past whatever was happening in the flat, dropped the bags down in the kitchen, and collapsed on the living room sofa, burying her face in the faux-fur cushion.
    It smelled like piss.
    She’d washed the cushion so many times its deep red colour was now pink, but still, Gary’s piss had permeated the cushion thoroughly and completely. His urine was now one with the stitching.
    She lifted her head just enough to move the pillow away when she saw him staring at her.  
    His pink nose, scribbled with scars. His knife-sliced pupils. The fur around his neck standing on edge in wet peaks — he’d cleaned himself. And behind him, swaying side to side, his chunky tail slapping the floor on each side of his butt.  
    “Hello Gary,” she said.
    “Gary has news,” he said.  
    She sat up, placing her legs to his side. She looked around, but there were no fresh claw marks in the sides of the furniture or in the wallpaper. She looked over by his litter tray. Mostly dry on the sides and all around, and in the tray she could see the darker patches, where the litter had broken down, clumped together. He’d been using it. She wasn’t sure she knew what a cat looked like when it smiled, but this was the closest thing to it.
    When she’d first brought him back to the flat, after the parasite had gone, the plan was to wait for the next mission. She’d let him stay until he had to move on to the next project — adventure, quest, whatever — but here he was, still chewing and scratching and pissing everywhere.
    “Gary has new mission,” he said as he purred for the first time since coming to Luna’s flat. She didn’t think he could even do it. Physically. She thought it was more of a non-intelligent cat thing to do, but here he was, his little heart shaking in his ribcage with excitement. “Luna must come with Gary.”
    “Me?” she said, realising she’d not put the milk in the fridge yet. “What do you mean? I thought you were going to get on with your life when the new mission came along? Wasn’t that the idea?”
    Gary jumped onto the sofa and placed his front