Spike, the cat, gets a whole chapter to himself.
CHAPTER 39 - SPIKE
"Spike jumps in through the cat-flap. He has been hunting hot summer mice in the twilight. But suddenly he feels a need to be home. Softly, he slips through the kitchen and up the stairs, straight into Jess’s room.
It is very empty. He sniffs the air. He does not like it. Something. What it is he does not know but his back feels all itchy. A shiver runs along it. His hairs stand on end. The tip of his tail flicks from side to side.
He pads to the window, leaps onto the windowsill, weaving between the photos and fat candles, and looks out. The night is thick and warm but not quite dark. It won’t be. It’s that time of year. Good for hunting.
Spike jumps down and then onto Jess’s bed, where he pummels the duvet before he curls himself round and round and round into the smell of her. Still unrelaxed, he begins to wash. It is comforting and rhythmical. But it is not enough.
Eventually Spike falls into a troubled sleep, and in that sleep his whiskers twitch. There is a pricking of his hackles. He dreams, and in those dreams something nasty this way comes."
