Troy woke up to the sound of his front door opening. Groggily glancing to his side, he noticed that Rusty wasn’t there.
“Maybe he went out to get the paper?” Troy hazily thought to himself. As much as he knew he should be on high alert right now, a glance at the clock showed that it was still 7 in the morning and he was dog tired.
The sudden appearance of an unfamiliar scent, immediately followed by an unfamiliar voice asking “Now where is your book?” shocked Troy to an immediate state of wakefulness.
“Shit!” he thought to himself, “this must be the owner of the Book of Transmutation and he must have already gotten Rusty!”
Slinking next to the doorway, Troy hid out of sight with feline silence and speed – he might not be a full tiger but his anthro body had every bit of the hunting prowess as though he was. Standing next to the door, he listened to the stranger riffling around in the living room – and while he couldn’t see what was going on, the sound of couch cushions being tossed around, drawers being overturned, and the room just generally being torn apart was obvious.
“Where is Rusty?” Troy thought. As much as he didn’t want to acknowledge it, he could only hear one other person alive in the house. If what RK said was true, that likely meant that Rusty was still there, but now stuck as a taxidermy.
Troy heard the stranger begin to move towards the kitchen. Figuring that now was as good a time as any, he quickly stuck his head around door to get a glance at what he was dealing with.
Standing in Troy’s living room was a fairly non-descript man holding that was clearly the Book of Transmutation in his hand. Unfortunately for Troy, the man wasn’t facing away from him, as he had expected, but rather was turned sideways looking out towards Troy’s backyard.
Troy whipped his head back around the door. While Troy had only taken the briefest of looks and it hadn’t appeared as though the stranger saw him, there was still a chance. Given his state of unreadiness, this could go very bad, very quickly.
All Troy could do was hide next to the doorway and listen.