Celeste felt a shove as Illianna and Trixie suddenly appeared behind her.

“Where’ve you been?” Illianna whispered. “We’re practically starving, and you’re here dawdling. I tell you, Trix, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” She sniffed the air. “Mmm. Something smells good.” Her nose told her that with guests in the house, the spoils under the table were improving; and she was anxious to take advantage of things and sample every morsel.

She turned to Celeste. “You wait here,” she said. “I don’t want you getting all the good pieces first. Keep an eye out for the cat. Come along, Trix!”

The two shadows paused beneath the sideboard. Their noses waved back and forth as they studied the field of carpet and the forest of table and chair legs. They listened. Except for the ticking of the hallway clock, the only thing they heard was the galloping of their own heartbeats.

Trixie’s nose sniffed the air. “That’s piecrust,” she whispered.

“Yes, indeedy, it is,” replied Illianna.

“And is that spoon bread?”

“Last one there is a rotten egg!”

“Don’t make me drool!”

And the two rats scampered out from under the sideboard, carefully hugging the wall, following their noses to the broken piece of fallen piecrust.

No one saw the cat, seated on the needlepoint cushion of a dining-room chair, as it suddenly stop licking between two back toes. It peered into the shadows, pupils darkening, eyes as wide as those of an owl on a moonless night, watching the two shapes scurrying along the baseboard. It raised its rear haunches slightly, careful to use only the necessary muscles, with only barely detectable movement. No blinking of the eyes, or flicking of the ears. No twitch of the tail.

The shadows made a sharp turn, away from the wall and straight to the table.

The cat grinned. Its back feet shifted ever so slightly, tensed and ready to pounce.

Illianna, whose favorite thing was day-old piecrust, suddenly stopped. “Wait!” She sniffed again. “That’s piecrust…and something else.”

A moment too late.

There was a ripping sound of claws on carpet as the two rats split paths, Trixie racing hysterically toward the front screen door and Illianna attempting to rapidly circle back to safety under the sideboard.

But in an instant the cat predicted Illianna’s turn and cut her off. There came a terrible, frantic, high-pitched squeak for help, then a sound like wet fingers on a candle flame.

Frozen under the sideboard, Celeste squeaked in horror.

“Illianna!”

The cat ignored Celeste’s piteous cry. Trixie, in a frenzy, scrambled and wiggled through a crack under the screen door and ran out into the dark evening.

Except for the soft ticking of the hallway clock, the dining room was again quiet, though Celeste’s head echoed with the sound of Illianna’s death cry.

She was alone.