by Molly Fitz
My cat now blubbered in earnest as if realizing for the first time ever that he wasn’t actually perfect. The poor thing. This entire experience had to be as life-altering for him as it was proving to be for me, perhaps even more.
Octo-Cat tried to keep a stiff upper lip as he continued, but broke down at several points in his story. “He slammed on the brakes and dragged me out by-by-by my scruff, then threw me in the trunk for the rest of the drive. I m-m-made a plan to leap at him and go for the eyes when we stopped, but it wasn’t hi-hi-him that opened the trunk. It was the other him.”
The dog. I still couldn’t believe Peter could change into that pit bull at will. This was the stuff of fairytales, and honestly, it didn’t belong in my picture-perfect little coastal town.
“Did you learn anything good?” I asked as I watched my cat continue to pace back and forth. I hated how worked up he was, but also found myself quite relieved that he was moving and talking like normal again.
“Not until we got here,” Octo-Cat answered with a sigh. “But I’m afraid I was so out of sorts after I c-c-crashed down the stairs that I missed most of it. And…” He sniffed hard, then tried again. “And!”
He broke down into incomprehensible sobs once again. His shoulders heaved with distress as he struggled—and failed—to get the words out.
“It’s okay,” I cooed, tapping my fingers softly on the ground to call him to me. “You can tell me anything. It’s not going to make me love you any less.”
Octo-Cat trotted up to my side, then turned his face away and mumbled. “My new Apple Pet took a lot of the impact and it-it-it... it shattered, Angela!” he finished at last.
“Oh, Octavius,” I said, using his full first name to help remind him of who he was. I hated seeing him so broken up like this. “Please don’t worry about that. In fact, if it makes you feel better, that wasn’t an Apple at all.”
He turned back toward me, his eyes wide now for a different reason—complete and unadulterated horror. “What?” he demanded.
Oh, no. I was in such a rush to help him that I hadn’t thought about how this particular revelation would impact me. I should have just kept my big mouth shut. I guessed now that the cat was out of the bag, though…
“It wasn’t Apple,” I said again, trapped by the intense scrutiny of his angry gaze. Now I was the one who had a stutter. “Apple Watches n-n-need to be tethered to a phone to work out of range, and I w-wanted you to be safe, so—”
“Angela!” he shouted, then evened his voice out and went into full-fledged lecture mode. I hated lecture mode. It meant that he was too angry to even insult me now. “If you’d gotten me an Apple like I requested, none of this would have happened in the first place.”
“That’s not fair,” I shot back. The way he’d described being discovered by Peter had absolutely nothing to do with any failings of the GPS.
He pressed his ears back flat against his head and stooped toward the ground. “I can’t believe you let me think that I could have been the one to mess things up so royally. How could you let me doubt myself like that?”
I hung my head, properly chastised. “I’m s-sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough, Angela,” he said with a small tutting noise. “If you would’ve followed my very simple, very clear instructions, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
At least as I felt worse, he appeared to feel better and better. Perhaps we’d even each other out. “Fine, it’s all my fault. Happy?”
Octo-Cat shook his head again, slowly this time. “I thought I’d trained you better.”
“You can catch up on my training later,” I promised with a giant, unhappy sigh. “Right now we need to focus on finding a way out of here.”
“Well, that’s easy,” he said with a quick shrug.
I scrambled to my feet. “Great! Then tell me.”
Octo-Cat deadpanned as he revealed, “There isn’t one.”
“Great.” I let myself sink back to the floor before realizing that maybe I shouldn’t just take his word at face value here. “What makes you so sure there’s no way out?”
“Magic,” he answered matter-of-factly.
“I thought you said you couldn’t see magic.”
“I can’t, but I think maybe now I can feel it a bit.” He flexed a paw demonstratively. “Can’t you?”
“Well, I…” I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to see if I felt any different than I had before we’d entered the lair. I gave it a good try, but ultimately came up short. “Yeah… no,” I said pathetically, wondering if my cat’s newfound ability might be all in his head anyway.
Octo-Cat growled and flicked his tail. “Even so, we just saw one human turn into a dog and another into a cat. We saw this place appear out of nowhere and then get an insta-makeover from dirty dungeon to swanky night club. I think it’s safe to say we’re in magical territory now.”
He had a definite point.
“But what do they want with us?” I mumbled, watching Peter as he laughed and joked with a small group of people I’d never seen before.
“I don’t know.” Octo-Cat was back to pacing while Peter paused and looked toward me, victory dancing across his face.
I refused to let him win, especially since I didn’t fully understand the stakes. “How did Peter even find out about me in the first place?”
“I also don’t know that.”
I swallowed hard, then asked the toughest question of all. “Are they going to kill us?”
Octo-Cat paused and looked at me over his shoulder. “Well, they already killed me once, although I don’t think that was intentional.”
“Did you really die back there?”
He nodded grimly. “It was my fifth time.”
“How did you die the other four times?” I asked, having always wondered about this. If we couldn’t break out of our magical prison, then at least we could pass the time learning more about each other’s pasts. It seemed we were always so caught up in our current adventures that we rarely had time to stroll down memory lane side-by-side.
Octo-Cat plopped down, facing me, and I could tell I was in for a good story that would hopefully take my mind off our current predicament. “Well, the first time was at the beach. I—”
One of the glass panels slid to the side with a swish, cutting off what I was sure would be a riveting tail. Perhaps Octo-Cat would be willing to tell it to me later.
The cat version of Moss slipped through the opening, and the moment he’d crossed the barrier, the glass wall slammed shut again.
“What’s going on?” I pleaded, remaining seated so that I was closer to eye level with both cats. “Are you here to help us?”
Moss sat by the glass, leaving a large distance between us. “I can’t say for sure, but maybe.”
“Maybe what? Maybe you’ll help us?” I crawled over to him on my hands and knees, and laughter rose from outside the fishbowl. I didn’t care about our audience, though. I only cared about getting help, and Moss still seemed our best chance at that happening.
“Yes,” he answered, looking down his nose at me as I scrambled closer. “But first, I have some questions.”
“He’s going to interrogate us,” Octo-Cat translated, even though I didn’t need the help. “Just like in the order part of Law & Order.”
Moss smiled, and that small gesture put me at ease. He really was a very pretty cat—not that I’d ever admit that aloud near Octo-Cat.
“Yeah, well, things work a little different when it comes to the council,” he said, still smiling although something in his expression had changed.
“Different how?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Slowly, the fear was returning. What did they have planned for us? And how could we get them to change their minds? I no longer much cared about decoding my abilities. These were the new questions I desperately needed answers to.
Moss chuckled, his green eyes boring into mine.
I paused in my tracks and waited for the big reveal.<
br />
Finally, Moss stopped laughing and informed us, “For starters, we’re not the good guys.”
I gulped hard, but nothing I did made me feel any better.
We’d been captured, and by a shape-shifting magical gang that seemed to show little regard for the rules.
If we died down here, would anyone ever even know?
I was suddenly so thankful that Octo-Cat’s tracker had broken. At least I knew now that Nan would be safe.
Even if we weren’t.
Chapter Fifteen
“Who do you work for?” Moss demanded, turning back toward me sharply.
A cheer rose up from the club. I blinked in horror as I noticed close to a dozen people and animals crowd in toward the glass, each vying for the best spot. Oh, great. Octo-Cat and I had become the unwitting stars of some kind of twisted, magical reality TV program.
“We ain’t telling you nothing!” Octo-Cat shouted, then spat dramatically on the ground. This antic earned him a few polite chuckles from the audience.
“Actually, there’s nothing to tell, seeing as we don’t work for anyone,” I explained, quietly willing Octo-Cat to ignore the lure of this momentary fame and let me handle things. “Unless Longfellow, Peters, and Associates counts,” I added with a forced calm.
“Peters,” Moss said, rubbing his chin with a paw. “Interesting.”
“Not that Peters,” I corrected with a quick glance toward the audience. Peter stood just on the other side of the glass, watching with a disturbing hunger in his eyes. “Bethany Peters. She’s nice.”
“They’re all the same, sweetheart,” Moss said with a chuckle. Did he know Bethany? Was Bethany—gasp—like him? How could that even be possible?
And why did it feel like everyone else was playing out some kind of old-timey movie? Even Octo-Cat had stars in his eyes now that he realized we had an audience.
Me? I just wanted to get home safe and put this whole ordeal behind me. If it meant never learning the truth about my abilities, then so be it. I’d rather be alive than informed.
“Are you really working with the dogs?” Octo-Cat asked, then spit on the ground again. When nobody laughed this time, his expression fell.
“Will you just stop spitting?” I demanded with an exacerbated sigh. Now I was equal parts annoyed and terrified. I’d much preferred being tied up or held at gunpoint as I had in my previous misadventures. At least then I’d known what I was up against. Here, everyone was crazy and unpredictable, super-powered and spry.
I definitely didn’t like my odds, being that I appeared to be the only semi-sane, semi-normal person around.
“You can talk to him,” Moss pointed out, narrowing his eyes at me as he tilted his head sideways toward Octo-Cat. We were getting nowhere fast, seeing as Moss wanted to revisit all the previously established facts.
“Yes, but you already knew that,” I said, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “Also, why does it even matter? Obviously, everyone here can talk to him, too.”
“Who sent you?” Moss demanded yet again.
I glowered at him as I explained, “You’ve already asked that, and I’ve already explained that nobody sent me. Well, except Peter.”
“Are you a double agent?”
A low ooh swept through the crowd. Apparently, this was a very important question. Too bad I didn’t have the slightest idea how to answer it.
“What? I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Shift,” Moss demanded, looking from me to Octo-Cat and back again.
“Um, we can’t.” I rolled my eyes to show him how ridiculous I found this whole thing.
Octo-Cat spit on the ground again and said, “No can do, fuzz.”
Oh, jeez. I had really thought he’d remain silent after his last joke was met with zero applause. I already knew the more he spoke, the longer this would take. Luckily, Moss seemed more interested in me than in my cat.
“Shift,” Moss said again, raising a threatening paw with claws fully extended.
I didn’t even flinch. “I told you I can’t,” I said through gritted teeth.
Moss apparently did not like this answer, because he hurled himself at my face and sunk his claws into my cheek.
Peter’s voice rose above the others as pain exploded on my cheek. “How do you like it now that the tables are turned?”
Blood dribbled down onto my shirt, but I was too scared to focus on the pain. “You can torture me all you want, but I don’t have a different answer to give you,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Nobody attacks my human and lives to tell the tale,” Octo-Cat shouted, surging forward to tackle Moss.
“Stop!” I screamed at them both. Octo-Cat couldn’t take a beating so soon after losing that last life. As noble as I found his choice to defend me, this was one fight I knew he’d lose.
“Just stop!” I begged Moss whose teeth were now at Octo-Cat’s throat. “I’ll tell you everything I know. It’s not much, but I’ll tell you.”
Octo-Cat backed away, hackles fully raised, his tail so poofy he looked more like a long-haired breed than his usual tabby self.
“Excellent.” Moss dragged his claws across the cold marble floor as if to remind me he could still do considerable damage, should we step out of line again. “Now, which one of you is magical?”
“Neither,” I answered, throwing my hands over my face defensively. “I never even knew magic existed until this week, and I couldn’t even talk to him until about six months ago.”
Moss came closer and stood on his hind legs. He pressed his front paws against my chest and peered into my face as he asked, “What happened six months ago?”
“I got zapped by a coffee maker,” I answered breathlessly. My cheek had begun to throb from his earlier attack. More than mad, it made me scared.
“And when she woke up, we could understand each other,” Octo-Cat finished for me.
“That’s rather anti-climactic,” Moss said. His voice now had the slightest hint of a twang. If he’d had an accent before, he’d done a wonderful job hiding it. I wondered if the fact it was coming out meant he was every bit as flustered as I felt.
Perhaps Octo-Cat and I could still win this yet.
“But you can’t shift?” he asked for what felt like the millionth time in the span of just a few minutes.
I shook my head so hard it hurt. How could I make him—and the others who were still watching hungrily—believe me once and for all? “No,” I said with as much emphasis as I could assign to the short, little word. “And I can’t do that memory thingy, either.”
“The memory… Oh.” Moss laughed a full-belly laugh, and the room joined in. “So, you’re a normie?” he asked at last, wiping tears away as he fought off the final throws of laughter. Octo-Cat had never been able to produce tears on demand. I wondered if Moss could because he was really a human.
“If that means a normal, ordinary person, then yes,” I told him with a stony gaze.
Moss nodded toward Octo-Cat. “And him?”
I nodded again. “Totally normal.”
“Excuse you,” Octo-Cat hissed, stomping over to join us. “I’m anything but—”
“Shut up!” I shouted at him. This was not the time for that overblown ego of his.
“What are you hiding?” Moss demanded, turning toward Octo-Cat but still watching me from his peripheral vision.
“Nothing. I swear.”
He studied Octo-Cat for a moment before breaking out in an unfriendly smile. “Ah, I get it,” he concluded. “He’s just your average, everyday cat with an unfailingly high opinion of himself.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in. “Yes. Exactly.”
“So, somehow you got hit with magical resonance,” he continued.
I couldn’t tell whether it was meant to be a question or not. “Sure?”
“And that’s why you don’t show up on any of our tracking systems,” he continued. “You’re a non-m
agical entity with a single magical ability.”
I nodded along. This explanation certainly made sense, seeing as I was sure about only two things here—one, I wasn’t magical, and two, I could talk to Octo-Cat.
A collective gasp sounded from the crowd. Why did they find me so interesting, especially when they could all do such extraordinary things themselves?
“Does that happen often?” I asked, suddenly desperate to understand more.
Moss shook his head. “No, it really doesn’t. This started six months ago, you say?”
I pumped my head in agreement. Finally, someone would tell me the answers. I could feel them bubbling just beneath the surface. Peter hadn’t helped me, but Moss would. I just knew it.
“That’s worrying,” he said.
“Why?”
“If you were a true magical person, you would have been born that way. If you were hit with some magical residue, it should have faded within twenty-four hours.”
“So, what am I then?” I asked as my heart hammered away inside my chest.
“That depends,” he said with a thoughtful expression.
“On?” I was so close to begging him for more. Couldn’t he see how desperately I needed to know?
“Your cooperation,” he answered with a pensive gaze.
Nobody said anything for a few moments until Peter appeared at the edge of the glass. “You’re either big trouble,” he said with a scowl.
“Or our greatest weapon,” Moss finished, his eyes now shining with an evil joy.
“No, no, no. I don’t want to be a weapon,” I argued, shuffling backward until my back was flat up against the wall.
“What about me?” Octo-Cat asked. “Am I a weapon, too?”
“You?” Moss laughed and shook his head. “You’re just an ordinary, everyday tabby cat.”
Chapter Sixteen
Octo-Cat took several steps back until he bumped into the glass. “No,” he whispered over and over again. “No, it’s not possible.”
