The Cat of Amontillado: A Cozy Mystery (The Psychic Cat Mysteries Book 1)

by SM Reine

  As the immortals gathered in the hazy golden glow of the knitting circle, I caught the eye of several unfamiliar creatures. The Haven was not a large place. The inhabitants recognized a newcomer.

  “Is this one of yours?” asked an open-faced noncat with bright-blue eyes and very fat human lips.

  “One of Rylie’s Ard grandkids. Just visiting a couple days.” Gwyn ruffled my hair. I liked being petted.

  “You’re very cute,” said the noncat, bending over to look at me. She smelled like the musty death trapped underneath rotten autumn leaves. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is a prize to be won instead of offered to any harlot who asks for it,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Well, you’re well behaved for one of the Ard, I suppose.”

  “Hey,” Gwyn said sharply.

  The other woman straightened. “What?”

  “Nothing wrong with the Ard. Why would you say that to an Ard child anyway? Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to find my seat.” Gwyn swung around on her boot heel, took my hand, and pulled me away from the conversation.

  “What’s an Ard?” I asked, prowling beside her as she weaved through the couches. She still wasn’t letting me out of her sight lest I disappear.

  “They’re considered the lower class of the sidhe. Closer to animals, more diversity in physical appearance.”

  “Ah yes. The Ard are a faction spanning all four sidhe Courts, once treated as cattle, now unionized to protect their labor rights despite the inferiority of their magic to that of the sidhe gentry.”

  Gwyn scratched her chin. “What magical artifact did you say you ate?”

  “The Ring of Bau.”

  “Why’s that mean you know history?”

  “Because I’m very smart,” I said primly, washing my fingers. I still tasted like the egg soufflé that Gwyn had made me for dinner. “Am I Ard?”

  “Probably not,” Gwyn said. “They’re born that way. You were made.”

  “I’m confused,” I said.

  “Join the club,” she grumbled.

  She selected a couch with enough room for both of us. I didn’t mind curling up with my legs underneath me, and I held her yarn bag gladly when she dropped it into my lap. Gwyn extracted a very large pair of wooden knitting needles.

  “What is a ‘Knitting Circle,’ anyway?” I asked Gwyn, sticking my head into her bag to lick the yarn. “Does it involve ritual kitten sacrifice?”

  “You ask a lotta questions for something that picked up English this morning.” She put a finger under my chin to lift my head out of the yarn bag.

  “I’m a very smart, very perfect boy,” I informed her.

  Whatever questions I had about the knitting circle were promptly answered. It was clearly a code for time that noncats spent gossiping, drinking excessive wine, and telling tall tales about their grandchildren.

  It became quickly obvious that Miss Draconia was the belle of her own ball. I identified her easily—she was the one who deliberately pulled a large wing backed chair in front the fire pit, as though she were a queen intending to hold court. She wore an extravagant dress unbefitting such a humble community ceremony. I wanted to chew on the lace collar.

  She laughed too loudly. It made my hackles lift.

  “I see why you hate her,” I said. “Clearly she is vying for dominance. You should get the high ground and slap her in the face. It worked against my brothers when we were all locked in the bathroom.”

  “You’ve got a couple good ideas in there, but don’t you go worrying about that now. Grown-up trouble isn’t for kittens.” Gwyn gave a dry laugh. “Even a very smart, very perfect kitten who managed to get himself turned human.”

  I was so offended. “Human shifter.”

  “You shifted since becoming human?” she asked.

  She knew very well that I had not. I felt a strange heat plucking at my eyes and sneezed. Droplets slid down my cheeks. “What’s that?” I asked, jerking my head back and thrashing to try to shake it off.

  “You’re crying. Those are tears. Sorry—I was being mean, wasn’t I? You talk like a little old British man reading Jane Austen audiobooks and I forgot that kittens are, well, kids.” Gwyn’s face was a little softer when she dabbed at my cheeks with a napkin.

  Now that these “tears” had started flowing, I couldn’t seem to stop. “What do I do if I can’t turn back into myself?” I whispered to Gwyn. “How long will it be until my mummies get home?”

  She smoothed my hair down. “I promise you’re gonna be safe, no matter what.”

  I disconsolately licked the yarn again.

  “Just lay down on the couch, all right?” She pulled the string out of my mouth. “Lay down, close your eyes, catch a break. I’ll try not to talk too long. Just gotta find a sorcerer who can help you with your little problem. Sinead came tonight—I’ll see if she’s got anything up her sleeves.”

  I rested on the couch while Gwyn went to talk with Sinead.

  My eyelids were heavy. The pillow was very soft and warm. Normally I slept through the boring parts of the day, but today hadn’t been boring at all, so I was exhausted. The room was filled with people talking and laughing—especially Miss Draconia, loudest of all—but even the one-upmanship in regards to grandchildren and click of knitting needles couldn’t keep me on this side of consciousness.

  I dropped into sleep.

  I woke up to the sound of screaming.

  Within heartbeats, I was behind the couch, puffed to my full size, staring wildly around for any sign of the attacking cat. Screams had to mean a fight between cats.

  Then I realized that my hands and feet were still human, and the screams were human too.

  My head popped up over the back of the couch.

  Gwyn and Miss Draconia were fighting.

  It looked much more vicious than any fight I’d gotten into with my litter mates, even without hissing and spitting.

  Gwyn threw proper punches. I could tell. I had watched my mummies practice-fighting in their back yard while I, much more sensible, performing my post-breakfast face-cleansing on the porch. Gwyn put her whole weight behind the blows, and she hit squarely.

  On the other hand, Miss Draconia was more feline, arching high and keeping back so that she could take less damage. She flashed fang too. She was the type of noncat known as a vampire, after all, and that was likely the only reason she bore the brunt of Gwyn’s blows so skillfully.

  “That’s what you get for voting to change the standard fence staining around the entire Haven!” snarled Gwyn after one good uppercut.

  Miss Draconia’s laugh was cold. “This coming from a woman who wants to sleep among barn animals?”

  “I’d rather sleep with them than you!”

  Both of them launched into one another and the knitting circle’s shrieks seemed to egg them on.

  They tumbled. Gwyn finally managed to punch Miss Draconia hard enough to send her flying into a wall, and a wine rack fell. Bricks crumbled inward, brittle from age.

  Dust filled the room.

  “Oh, you two!”

  A larger figure waded through the crowd. Penny the Vampire Orc Blacksmith reached into the dust, extracting Gwyn and Miss Draconia. She was tall enough to hold the women apart no matter how hard they swung their fists.

  “You ruined my knitting circle!” snarled Miss Draconia.

  “You’re a dusty old hag!” snarled Gwyn.

  “All right, break it up.” Penny dropped them and shoved them apart. “This is a retirement home for immortals. It’s a resort. Both of you know fighting is forbidden, and I don’t think you want me reporting this at Town Hall!”

  Her warning seemed to be meaningful to them. They settled down.

  “How did this start?” Penny asked. She was a very patient vampire orc blacksmith.

  “I was talking to Sinead and Miss Draconia butted in where her nose weren’t wanted,” Gwyn said.

  “This is my knitting circle,” countered the vampire. “It�
��s my job as hostess to greet everyone, and Ms. McGrath is an esteemed guest.”

  “Ms. McGrath left the instant you wafted over stinking of rosewater!”

  “Because you started a fight!”

  The old women lunged, and only Penny’s arms could keep them apart.

  Her arms, and all the debris resulting from the crumbled cellar wall. There were bricks everywhere. Now that I realized they weren’t moving, I walked over and kicked one to show it I was unafraid.

  “What a mess,” Miss Draconia said, straightening her lacy collar indignantly. “All right, everyone get out of the basement. Quickly, now, before the dust settles on all our yarn bowls.”

  There were cries of dismay and the scurrying of immortal feet as people hurried to gather their belongings.

  Perhaps that was why they were all too distracted to notice what was on the other side of the wine cellar’s wall.

  I didn’t miss a detail.

  Even my dull human eyes could make out the small room that had been hidden behind the wine rack. Perhaps a closet, rather. It was still hard to tell what spaces humans considered small. My head would fit into it so the rest of me would too, and that meant it was a room.

  Currently the only thing in that room was a desiccated corpse that looked like the mouse I’d killed behind the refrigerator, where my mummies had yet to notice it.

  “What’s that?” I asked Gwyn, creeping closer to sniff at it.

  “Get out, everyone out,” Miss Draconia was still saying. She tried to sweep me up the stairs with the other knitters. I ducked under her arm and peered through the hole.

  “That’s a dead body right there,” Gwyn said from behind me. “Right behind the wine rack with the bottles from Amontillado. Ha!”

  I looked at her.

  She coughed and stopped smiling.

  “That looks like a…” Miss Draconia’s eyes went wide. As with cats, that was meant to indicate shock, or perhaps a moment of high arousal. “That’s a vampire! A vampire killed here? In Haven?”

  “Has that ever happened?” Penny asked, peering over her shoulder. “What do we even do about this? We can’t just report a dead body to Town Hall. We’re going to need more than a city counsel meeting to figure this one out!”

  “That’s the Haven Sheriff’s job,” Miss Draconia said.

  Gwyn nodded. “Yeah, it is.” She fished around in her knitting bag. She came up with a brass star inside a leather wallet, which she polished with her sleeve before hanging it on her belt. “At last, something actually interesting happening around here.”

  6

  Sheriff Gwyn

  Disappointingly, Sinead had not left the knitting circle early to concoct a cure. She’d promised Gwyn that she would research the Ring of Bau. I could only hope her search would yield results before my mummies crossed the juncture into Haven again.

  I spent the night sleeping curled at the foot of Gwyn’s bed. Every time she woke, she tried to move me back to the couch, but I returned the instant she closed her eyes again. I was used to sleeping between my mummies. I wasn’t good at being alone. The hours had passed too slowly.

  For breakfast, we had eggs.

  “I eat mostly eggs,” Gwyn said, putting a plate in front of me. “The chickens make more than I can even give away.”

  I lapped at them. They were fine. “Do zombies eat?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Do you digest?”

  “Not really,” she said. “I don’t need the fuel. I’m kept running by magic.” She tapped the tiny bird skull inside her necklace again.

  “Do you excrete the food in a manner similar to its appearance after chewing?”

  “Pretty much. It’s kinda drier by then, since my body soaks up the fluids. That’s what helps move it along. Plus a tall glass of Metamucil.” She sat across from me with eggs and something orange to drink.

  “That’s fascinating,” I said.

  “I’m fascinated by what your brain does and doesn’t know.” She swirled the orange drink, took a sip. “Wonder if we could get the Ring of Bau out the other end. Feed you a bunch of fiber.”

  I imagined trying to produce the ring in my litter box. Or worse: a human toilet, of which there were few in the Haven. A very unpleasant thought.

  Our investigation began after breakfast. We started with the winery that supplied the wine cellar.

  The winery was run by Rebecca Manzanilla, a sylph who had retired from the Summer Court. It only made sense for one of the faerie folk to produce the alcohol enjoyed in Haven. Lushes comprised the entire breed. They found sex and drink irresistible, according to Gwyn.

  "It's a good thing we've only got one sidhe in this neck of Haven, let me tell you," Gwyn muttered on our way up the driveway. "I don't know about you, but I only need so many sex parties at my retirement home."

  I blinked at her slowly, then looked away.

  “How did the vampire die?” I asked. We had agreed that I should accompany Gwyn on the murder investigation—I was curious, and Gwyn didn’t trust me home alone—but she had refused to let me examine the body. Instead, Penny had shaken her keychain at me. I had been too distracted by the jingle to listen in on the town healer’s analysis.

  “Starvation,” Gwyn said. “If there’s a body left after a vampire dies, it’s gotta be starvation. There’s a lotta different kind of vampires, but most of them crumble into ash if they die in any violent way.”

  I considered this information as we continued our approach to the winery. The distance through the grapevines would not have been long as the laser pointer flies, but the path was twistier than knotted string.

  “If this is a murder, then he must have been built into the wall and left to starve,” I concluded.

  She peered at me from underneath the shadowy brim of her hat. She was dressed for a hot morning in Haven, but the wind blowing through Flynn Bay smelled salty. “Not a bad hypothesis, kiddo. You think it might not have been a murder?”

  “One time I got stuck behind the couch,” I said.

  She gave a husky laugh that reminded me of my birth mother’s purr. “This was a murder. I’m guessing it’s personal. Starving to death takes ages for a vampire, if it happens at all, and that’s excruciating. Someone wanted this guy to hurt.”

  We finally arrived at the house and its gardens. Rebecca Manzanilla was seated in an autumnal courtyard bathed by crystalline sunlight. She was swirling her fingers through a fountain of wine, lounging on a chaise, and eating squares of cheese. She clearly considered size to be more important than quantity, in regards to her breasts, and dressed emphasize them. I was not impressed.

  I stood in the doorway, back arched, waiting for this vain noncat to attack.

  "Hello Gwyneth.” Rebecca’s lips curved into an almost feline smile as we approached. "What brings you to my neck of the woods?"

  “A murder most foul, surprisingly.” Gwyn was not as showy as Rebecca but beautiful in her sturdy plainness. Her hair was the smoky silver color of my birth mother's fur. She now wore a jacket made of tassels that looked fun to attack and leather that looked fun to chew.

  Rebecca placed her fingers over her chest. “A murderer? In Haven?”

  I walked sideways into the courtyard, chest puffed out so that I appeared bigger, and stood behind Gwyn. The leather smell was stronger at her back. I suspected she would swat me again if I tried to chew on her sleeve, so I resisted.

  “The body was in a wine cellar storing your Amontillado. Can you explain that?” Gwyn asked.

  "If there's wine in Haven, it’s my wine.” Rebecca scooped her hands through the basin to bring wine to her lips.

  I edged out from behind Gwyn and swatted at the rippling wine.

  Rebecca finally noticed me. Her noncat face seem to convey joy. "A child, in Haven?"

  "He's visiting me," Gwen said. “One of my niece’s grandkids or something. I dunno. Can’t keep track of that whole family tree.”

  “Then you’re a shifter from the l
ine of Rylie Gresham. What an honor. And you're so cute!” Rebecca reached toward me. I darted behind Gwyn again, where I felt safer. “You don't have to be afraid. It’s contrary to the nature of the sidhe to kill. There’s no pleasure in death. The pain of it weakens us.”

  "And yet your kingdoms have spent the last century fighting endless wars,” Gwyn said. “But I believe you, Rebecca. The victim’s a vampire. You’re not the type to cross vampires, and you’re not the type to risk breaking Haven’s laws.”

  “No character testimonial from you?” she asked.

  “Ha. Not a chance.”

  Rebecca’s eyebrows looked funny, twisted up together. She let the wine dribble from between her fingers and flicked the droplets to the mossy cobblestone underneath her chair. “If you don’t need anything else, you should take your nephew and leave.” She surveyed me again, and her expression relaxed. “You’re actually welcome to stay if you want, angel. I miss children. It’s the only thing I miss since I fled the Courts.”

  I hid underneath the fringe on Gwyn’s jacket.

  “I’m not done here,” Gwyn said. “I’m gonna show you a picture of the dead body. It's not pretty, but I need to know if you recognize him."

  Rebecca fanned her eyelashes at us, and I wish I could swat at those too. “Very well."

  Gwyn produced a photograph. Rebecca winced, so she must have been easily disturbed. I’d killed many an errant mouse in far messier ways. Despite having been mummified by conditions within the wall, the deader-than-usual vampire had still been recognizable as a vampire. I liked to leave mice post-digestion in my litter box.

  Rebecca took time to study the image. "I don't recognize him, but you should check Town Hall. That bracelet is worn by people assisting the Librarians. See?" She pointed at the photograph.

  "Can't believe I didn't spot that," Gwyn said. "You have good eyes."

  When Rebecca smiled, the world pulsed with pink and red, and my nose twitched at the smell of flowers. “Will you come again when you’re not being sheriff? You know how I've been missing you, Gwyn.”