Cat in a hot pink Pursuit

That could get on one’s nerves.
    Temple pushed herself up on an elbow and turned her bedside light onto the lowest wattage.
    Not too low to show her a bed that was way too flat on the other side.
    “Mariah?”
    She pushed out of the bed and went to the bathroom door. It was shut. Was the poor kid having her period now? No wonder she had been so down.
    Temple let her knuckles rap gently on the door.
    No answer. She pushed, gently. The door wasn’t locked but opened into utter darkness.
    A flick of the light switch produced a fluorescent flood of light that left Temple blinking.
    In the bright-white glare, something red stood out.
    After about thirty seconds, Temple could tell what it
    was.
    Red letters. Red letters written on the mirror above the sink. Studying them made her eyes water but she spied the bottle of Hot Hibiscus on the countertop.
    YOU’RE A BUNCH OF BLOODY BITCHES the nail polish block letters declared. Well, sometimes. Yes. Mother Nature was like that.
    Had Mariah done this? Not likely. Had Xoe Chloe sleepwalked and scrawled this angry comment on her competitors? Not likely.
    Someone had been in here, though, appropriated Mariah’s nail polish, and gone to work behind the closed bathroom door with neither of them the wiser.
    Or maybe not. Because Mariah was gone. The bed was flat, the bathroom was empty. The closet—Temple swooped the sliding doors open on a plethora of nauseous pink—was turned into a Stepford Wives zone and was empty of human habitation. Under the bed the cupboard was bare.
    Mariah was gone.
    Oh, bifurcated Barbie dolls! Temple’s prime assignment was missing in action.
    She shoved her feet into a pair of low-heeled mules, pink, of course, but her own bunny variety from home, and headed for the door.
    Ooops. First she doused the lights and felt her way back to her bedside, whisking her Cher hair off the lampshade and onto her head.
    Outrageous is the best disguise.
    She grabbed the key-chain pepper spray from her purse and burst out into the hall. It was as black as the bathroom had been before she’d turned on the light.
    Someone was having fun with the mansion’s light board. And not a hidden cameraman. They craved light.
    She felt her way along the wall, with no idea of where she was going, only that she’d trace the power outage to its origin.
    The producers had been diligent in soft lighting every inch of the place so that their cameras could record every twitch of a contestant. Only the bedrooms provided absolute dark.
    Mariah. Temple felt cold sweat break out all under the irritatingly hot wig. Her charge. The reason she was here. Gone.
    And someone painting bloody threats on their bathroom mirror while they slept.
    While Temple slept.
    She began to appreciate the constant needle of maternal anxiety. It was a drug, being responsible for someone else, for a young, helpless, naive someone else. Mariah. A picture in Temple’s mind’s eye, teenage whining, painting her toenails fluorescent red.
    If anything had happened to her... forget Molina! Remember Temple’s own panic.
    Something brushed her legs.
    She screeched and hugged the wall.
    It brushed again.
    Furry.
    An eighteen-inch-high tarantula? She wouldn’t doubt it in this Hell House.
    Some sound between the first low buzz of an alarm clock and a purr pushed against her bare legs.
    High furry boots, or... Puss-in-Boots, Las Vegas style.
    “Louie?” she rasped. Whispered. Ground out.
    The feathery presence drifted away but a step caught up with it.
    Okay. She was either tailgating an ostrich or following a fine-feathered friend who just happened to have a cat tail.
    In the dark, all things being equal, it was probably a cat. Her cat. Hers not to question why. Hers but to do or die. Into the Valley of Doubt marched Temple and her phantom feline.
    A slice of light beckoned in the distance.
    Was this a trap laid by a sneak-thief psycho nail-polish correspondent? Or... enlightenment?
    Temple felt another plumy brush against her bare calves and decided she need to be very Zen right now, right here.
    She pushed toward the light, into the light... and through a swinging door into the mansion’s brightly lit and darkly designed kitchen, all stainless steel and black marble and granite.
    And all... Mariah. Sitting on a black granite counter-top in her pink Teen Queen nightshirt, sucking on a raspberry Popsicle.
    “You total idiot!” Temple accused, knowing this was not the proper esteem-building tone but she had