A Spell of Murder

by Clea Simon

  “So become a scientist, for crying out loud!” More squeaking of chairs put Clara on alert. “I never thought I’d say this, but I think you should get back into spending your days in the library. At least then you were doing real research.”

  “Maddy…” Becca began to protest.

  “It’s those people, Becca.” Her friend wouldn’t let her. “They’re crackpots—or worse.”

  “Maddy, please. They’re my friends, and, well, they rely on me. They respect me.”

  A noise like a furball in the works caused Clara’s ears to perk up. But, no, it was simply Maddy laughing.

  “Besides,” Becca sounded hurt, “one of them asked for my help on something.”

  “Please tell me you’re not going to get involved.” Maddy had lowered her voice, even as it ramped up in urgency. “Those women are conspiracy theorists of the highest order.”

  “They’re not all women.” Becca’s own voice grew quieter. “In fact, one member of the coven is a warlock, and he really believes in my abilities.”

  “Oh, Becca.” Her friend’s tone softened. “I know you’re lonely, honey. But, please. Give it time.”

  “I am, Maddy.” Becca with a confidence that made her cat proud. “And I’m exploring new interests and expanding my horizon. Just as you’ve always advised me to do. So, what’s up with you?”

  A lot, it seemed. And as Becca’s buddy went on about some conflict in an office with a co-worker who sounded like a horror, the cat at their feet nodded off. Spectral travel was tiring. Besides, Becca had a busy day planned. As her cat, Clara was going to need her energy for the mysterious meeting ahead.

  Chapter 5

  Suzanne, it turned out, lived farther away than Becca had thought. Although still technically in Cambridgeport, her apartment was down by the river, in one of those old triple-deckers the city is known for, and Becca got well and truly lost—taking a shortcut that led her into a blind alley and then another that turned into a construction site—before she retraced her steps almost to the café and started over.

  As it was, she was running late by the time she found the right street. She was tempted to blame Maddy. Her friend had kept her, going on about that nasty colleague—some woman her friend had a grudge against that she never fully explained. But Becca knew the delay was her own fault and was preparing to own up to it when she finally located the right address painted on a mailbox out front.

  The bright morning had turned into a surprisingly warm day by then, and Becca was sweating slightly—her cheeks a healthy pink—as she jogged up the front steps. Someone cared for the building. In addition to that neat mailbox, the tiny front yard was neatly raked, with low blue flowers edging a lilac that had just begun to bloom, although the smell of fresh paint nearly overwhelmed that lovely, peppery scent. Somewhere, a radio was playing salsa. But the latch on the front door was old and resisted Becca’s jiggling and pushing.

  “Here, let me help you.” A hand reached around Becca, dark with the sun, and she turned. The sandy-haired man who had come up so quietly behind her wasn’t much taller than she was, but he pulled the door open easily with one hand. The other was holding a bucket full of rags that smelled strongly of turpentine.

  “You’re going in?” he asked, his voice soft.

  She looked up. The dash of white paint on his right cheekbone made his skin look darker. Bronzed almost, with a slight glaze of sweat that added a warm and subtly spicy scent to the mix.

  “What?” She blinked. “Yes, thanks. I’m looking for Suzanne Liddle. She’s in unit three?”

  “The buzzer should be working.” He nodded into the foyer. “The electricians finished up last week.”

  “Thanks,” said Becca, a little too breathlessly, and then turned and hurried in. Clara, who had been examining the flowers, slipped in behind Becca as the door closed. Luckily, both humans were too distracted to notice the calico, even if she hadn’t cloaked her brighter orange patch in a shadow summoning that made her as grey as a Grimalkin. But though she was on her guard not to be noticed, the cat pressed close to Becca as the young woman climbed the stairs. There was something off about this building—something that even the stinging odor of that solvent couldn’t explain—and although the compact cat certainly didn’t want to trip her person, she did want her to be wary. Especially when her phone rang before she had even reached the first landing.

  “Oh!” She paused, looking at the number, and then, taking a deep breath, took the call. “Hi.”

  Like the rest of her family, Clara was a witch cat, endowed with magical abilities above and beyond the usual feline mysticism. But that didn’t mean she had unlimited powers. Sure, she could pass through solid objects like doors and walls. Those powers were sort of related to how she could summon things, like Harriet did that pillow. And she could make herself more or less invisible, as all cats—even the non-magical ones—can, which is why humans trip over them so often. But although her ears were naturally more sensitive than any human’s, she couldn’t hear everything.

  That’s why she was a tad alarmed when Becca stopped walking to listen, one hand over her ear to block out the music from outside. Something about the way her brows bunched together and her teeth came down on her lower lip made the little calico’s ears prick up, reminding her of those bad days two months ago. The days when all Becca had done—besides feed her cats, of course—was cry.

  “Uh-huh,” she said at last. Her lip still showed the marks of her teeth, but at least she’d begun walking again, slowly mounting step after step. “Yes, she told me,” she said.

  “No, I’m not home right now.” Becca had reached the third floor. The door was slightly ajar, and she turned away for privacy. “Look, I can come by your place,” she said. And then, taking another deep breath, she went on. “Okay, then what if I meet you someplace else in an hour, some place down by the river? I’m—no, really, it’s fine. I’m visiting a friend on Putnam. In fact, I’m at her door now. A new friend. Her name’s Suzanne. Suzanne Liddle.”

  At that, she straightened up, and for a moment, Clara relaxed, thinking that her person was, in fact, doing better. But then her brows came together again and she shook her head. “What do you mean, Jeff? You don’t even know her. Look.” One hand went up to push the hair from her brow. “I’ll call you when I’m leaving, okay? Jeff?”

  The hand wiped over her face and through her soft brown curls, and with a sigh big enough to deflate her, she shoved the phone back into her pocket. And with that she turned toward the slightly opened door.

  “Suzanne?” she called. “It’s Becca.”

  She rapped softly on the door, which creaked open further. Calling a little louder, to be heard over the salsa beat, she said again, “Suzanne? Are you there?”

  As a cat, Clara didn’t require permission to enter any room. And while she could pass through a locked door, an unlatched one—especially one so temptingly ajar—read like a gilt-edged invitation. Only there was something about this room, this door. Something beyond the intense smell of the paint and the metallic rattle of the ladder outside.

  “Suzanne?” Becca pushed the door further open and stepped inside. And so, despite an overwhelming sense of trepidation that had her guard hairs standing on end, Clara followed into a sunny room. As the door swung shut behind them and the latch caught with a click, she took in the warmth. The light from the big bay window. Two overstuffed chairs that Harriet would love crowded together on a deep plush rug, while a velvet-covered sofa, too big for the space, was pushed back against a bay window that stood slightly ajar. It was from here that the smell of the paint came in as well as the dust and the scrapings that had dappled the burgundy velvet with white.

  It was also that sofa—more of a love seat actually—that had set all the cat’s instinctive alarms ringing. For reclining on the dark velvet, one arm hanging low toward the floor, lay Suzanne Liddle, the inlaid hand
le of her serrated cake knife extending straight up from bare white flesh of her throat.

  Becca froze, leaving Clara to take in the sight of the woman on the sofa, the pooled blood from the awful wound collecting at her collarbone, where it was already darkening to almost match the burgundy of the upholstery. Time stopped—for a moment—and then jarred into movement with the clang of a ladder being collapsed. A boom box cut off in mid-song.

  Somewhere, outside—in a different world—work was done for the morning. And then another sound, closer, made Becca turn. A key clicked in the door. The brass knob rotated, and Clara could hear her frightened gasp, as Trent—the handsome warlock—stepped in.

  Chapter 6

  A purr can mean many different things. Cats purr to express happiness, of course. But they also purr to comfort themselves or others, and that’s what Clara was trying to do an hour later—once the police let Becca go.

  “Oh, kitties, it was horrible.” Clara would have thought, after all the questions, that her poor person would have been all talked out. But as she staggered into her apartment and collapsed onto her own lovely, clean, and beautifully unbloodied sofa, she began to rehash everything that had happened.

  “I had just seen her Wednesday, three days ago. She was here. She was…alive.” Becca lay back with a sigh, one forearm thrown over her eyes, as the three sisters converged. Clara was a little breathless from having raced home—feline invisibility aside, she didn’t think hitching a ride in a police cruiser was a good idea. “I keep thinking of her…her throat and all that blood. And that knife. I’d cut cake with that knife…” Becca repeated as she kicked her shoes off.

  Clara ducked the falling footwear and jumped up to claim her place on the sofa. Laurel and Harriet were already there, Laurel cozying up to Becca’s side and Harriet down by her stocking feet—and the pillow. They both turned to stare at their youngest sister, as if she were an interloper, and so she carefully mounted the back of the sofa and waited for an opening.

  “I…once I realized what I was seeing, I just wanted to get away…” Becca was saying. The repetition seemed to soothe her, as a purr would, but Clara remained concerned. “They had all these questions…”

  “Of course they did.” Laurel reached one velvet paw up toward Becca’s arm, as if she were petting her. Clara knew better. Laurel wanted to see Becca’s eyes as she spoke. Even her purr had an edge to it. “A body and all. Dead.”

  “Cut it out.” Clara batted down at her. Unlike her seal-point sister, Clara was trying to listen to the poor girl who lay beside them. She’d missed something in that awful room, what with her worry over Becca and the sudden appearance of the warlock, just as she’d missed the beginning of Suzanne’s explanation for why she needed Becca to come visit, and she was hoping that if she paid attention, she’d figure it out.

  “Oh, Clara.” The movement had caught Becca’s attention, and the distraught young woman reached up for the little calico. At that, Clara’s prime directive—to be Becca’s pet—overwhelmed any other concerns, and she tumbled onto her prostrate person and began to purr in earnest.

  “Oh, great.” Harriet looked up and tilted her ears back. “Now you’ve pinned her down. She came back to feed us, obviously.”

  “She’s upset.” Clara glared, but her oldest sister turned her back, fluffing out her creamsicle coat as she settled down again at Becca’s feet. Laurel, meanwhile, had stretched to her full length and started to doze. If Becca wasn’t going to share grisly details, the brown-tipped cat wasn’t interested. Clara, however, began to gently knead Becca’s belly. Making sure to keep her claws sheathed, she kept the motion even and light, the rhythm in sync with the rumble of her purr, until she felt the tension begin to leave the girl’s slim frame. Until she heard an answering purr as Becca slipped into sleep.

  Only then did Clara relax and let her own eyes begin to close. She wasn’t sleepy. The feline propensity toward napping aside, there were too many thoughts racing through her brain for her to give over to a catnap. No, she simply needed to focus on what she had seen and heard out in the bright world, in that walkup apartment. To figure out what had happened—and why—and how she could get Becca through it without any further complications.

  A soft snort startled her, and Clara looked up to see Harriet twitching, restless in her sleep. As she watched, the larger cat muttered “cream” and her pink tongue darted out to moisten her nose. Then she lay still again, having satisfied her dream appetite. Laurel, as well, napped peacefully, her dark paws stretched luxuriantly along Becca’s side. The two were deep in feline slumber, untroubled by anything outside their small world.

  Clara watched them, willing them to stay quiet. Becca needed her rest. There was no way to explain the chaos that had exploded in that upstairs apartment. How Becca had been roused from her stupor by Trent entering the room, and how, when he’d tried to hold her, she had pulled away screaming as he sputtered some kind of explanation about retrieving something the dead girl had borrowed and a key from a house-sitting stint. How her coven leader had wrapped his arms around her then, turning her from the bloody sight until he had finally gotten her calmed down enough to call for help. And how that had backfired as the cops had hustled the two of them out to the street and pulled Becca away from the dark-eyed warlock. How she had tried to answer all their questions until it all got to be too much and she had suddenly felt dizzy. How she had woken with an oxygen mask over her face and someone yelling. No, she had been the one yelling—it had just taken her a few moments to realize it.

  “The poor girl,” Clara muttered in a soft chirrup. Surely, her sisters could understand. “It was a shock.”

  “Shock shlock.” Laurel yawned and stretched. Her claws caught the afternoon light, and she began to groom. “I want to hear more. A body is meat,” she said as she bit the tip of one claw. There had definitely been an edge to her purr. “And that blood…did you taste it? Did she?”

  “No!” Clara swiveled her one black ear to check. Becca’s breathing remained even and calm. “Can’t you think of anything beyond your appetite?”

  “Huh.” Another bite and the seal point closed her eyes. Clara watched, unsure if her nearest sister was sleeping or simply ignoring her, then closed hers too. Whatever Laurel was up to, the little calico needed to think.

  It was all because of that stupid pillow. Clara didn’t know for sure why Suzanne had cornered Becca, but it had to be because of her supposed success with the summoning spell. She’d seen the way the other coven members had looked at her person. They’d all be wanting something from her now, and not just cans and cream.

  As if on cue, Becca’s phone rang, startling her from sleep.

  “Hang on.” Becca sat up, and Clara slid in a rather inelegant move down to her lap. “Maddy?”

  “Are you all right?” Even from her new perch, Clara could hear the big woman’s panicked tone.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Becca closed her eyes as she spoke and shook her head.

  Maddy must have heard the lie in her voice. “I’m coming over,” she said, loud enough to earn a harsh look from Laurel. Harriet, of course, slept on.

  “You don’t have to.” Becca’s complaint was barely a mew. Clara jumped to the floor. If company was coming over, she didn’t want to be caught unawares.

  “Is it time for dinner?” Harriet looked up as Becca reached for her shoes.

  “No,” Clara rumbled softly. “A visitor.”

  “Visitors aren’t bad.” Harriet yawned. “Visitors mean treats.”

  “This isn’t about you—” Clara broke off. Becca was heading to the kitchen, closely trailed by their middle sister. As they walked by, Harriet and Laurel exchanged a glance, and when Harriet flicked her tail, Clara cringed, wrapping her own tail around her forepaws. More magic was on the way, and that meant more trouble. With an audible thud, Harriet plopped to the floor to join Becca and Laurel in the kitchen. Wi
th a sigh, Clara followed.

  “Oh, kitties! What would I do without you?” Becca sniffled as she spoke, but at least she was sounding a bit more like herself again. Clara began to relax, and then, out of nowhere, “Would you like some treats?”

  Laurel turned toward her sisters with what Clara thought of as her Siamese smirk. Mind control was such simple magic, her tilted whiskers seemed to say, even though what Laurel did was more like implanting a suggestion than an actual direction. Harriet, of course, was too mesmerized by Becca to even bother to gloat.

  Chapter 7

  The tea Becca served her old friend was a lot kinder on the nose than what she brewed for her coven, and the almond cookies Maddy had brought were Clara’s favorites. Their delicious aroma—nutty and sweet—announced her presence even before the doorbell rang.

  That wasn’t why the agile calico jumped up on the table, though when she sauntered over to sniff at the pot, nobody shooed her off. The day was too topsy-turvy for that, the sunny afternoon already forgotten.

  Becca had begun crying again, retelling the story having brought back all the fear and the horror from earlier in the day, and Clara had wanted to check on her. Maddy, in her motherly way, was doing her bit even beyond the cookies, leaning over and patting her friend in a rather hearty manner that none of the resident felines would have appreciated.

  “There, there,” she kept repeating, though it didn’t seem to be doing any good. “Let it out.”

  “What’s up there? I can’t see!” Harriet’s plaintive meow—as close to a whimper as she got—reached Clara on the tabletop. She had thought both her siblings were napping post snack, but Harriet’s gluttony knew no bounds. “Is it cookies?”

  “Shh,” Clara hissed back, and immediately regretted it. Harriet was not only her oldest sister, she could cause trouble when she wanted to—and even when she didn’t, as the whole fiasco with the pillow had proved. Clara needed to stay on her good side, and so the calico leaned over the table’s side to call to her, in a gentler tone. “Come on up, if you want.”