What the Cat Knew

by P. D. Workman

  For a long time, she was back there, spinning contentedly, letting the swing wind down and down until it was back in its place. She opened her eyes and looked around, disoriented to find herself in the cottage.

  “You’d better not do that again,” Sarah said worriedly. “Something is happening to you when you communicate with Warren. I don’t know what it is, but you keep getting stuck.”

  Reg looked around. She was dizzy and lightheaded. The position of the sun through the windows suggested that it was late afternoon.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s too hard getting you out of those trances. I don’t think you’d better do it again.”

  Reg rubbed her temples. Whatever had just happened, she didn’t intend to go back there. “Did you find out what you needed to know?”

  “Warren isn’t dead. He’s in hospital in a coma, and he might be in danger. I think our next step should be to call the police.”

  Reg really didn’t want to have to deal with Detective Jessup or any of her contingent.

  “We don’t need to do that, do we?”

  “There’s no point in us calling the hospitals asking for Warren. They won’t give us any information. But the police could cut through the red tape and find out.”

  “What about Ling? She’s his next of kin, she could call the hospital.” Reg was feeling slightly nauseated. She picked up her cold tea and sipped it, hoping to settle her stomach.

  “You’re going to call her and tell her that her dead husband is still alive? When you don’t have proof? You really want to do that to her?”

  Reg wished that the answer was yes. She was perfectly capable of putting that burden onto someone else. What did it hurt her if Ling had to experience that disappointment again? But if she wanted to build a business, she had to be trustworthy. People wouldn’t hire her if they thought she didn’t know what she was talking about and was only playing a game with them. She couldn’t prove that Warren was in hospital. That was what she had imagined up under the influence of Sarah’s suggestions, but it wasn’t necessarily true. In fact, it probably wasn’t. It might fit the set of known facts, but neither of them actually knew that Warren was in hospital.

  That meant that not only could they not go to Ling with the information, they couldn’t go to the police either.

  “Letticia might have an idea,” Sarah offered.

  “Who is Letticia?”

  “Letticia Williams. She’s an old crone I know. Not many people have more experience than I do, but she’s been around for a long time and is very smart.”

  “I don’t think we need to bring anyone else in on this,” Reg protested. “I’ll just try calling the hospitals. If we don’t have any success with that… then I don’t know. I guess I’d rather go to your friend than to the police.”

  “I didn’t say she was a friend,” Sarah warned. “Letticia is… she doesn’t have the same philosophical outlook as I do.”

  “Philosophical outlook?” Reg needed something for her headache. Normally good at reading people, she wasn’t picking up on Sarah’s facial cues. What philosophical outlook was Sarah talking about?

  “Letticia is more… results oriented. In my opinion, it isn’t just the end result that matters. It’s how you go about it too. To me, it’s important not to trifle with powers you don’t have the proper control over or that may cause harm.”

  “Are you talking about dark magic? Letticia is a bad witch?”

  “There is no good and bad the way you are thinking, no white magic and dark magic. This isn’t television. There are many different ways to approach a problem…”

  “And Letticia might have some ideas of things that you wouldn’t do.”

  “Things that I wouldn’t think about,” Sarah amended.

  “Spells or practical steps?”

  “I don’t know, if I haven’t thought about them.”

  Reg had to admit that it had been an impossible question.

  “Okay. Can I have some time to get myself together again?”

  Sarah nodded. “Have a hot shower and a stiff drink and I’ll call her to see if she can meet.”

  “Do we need to meet face-to-face?” Reg wasn’t sure she wanted to meet a dark witch if she could avoid it. “Can’t you just tell her on the phone and see if she has any ideas?”

  “Letticia doesn’t like phones, especially cell phones. She’ll want to see you and evaluate the situation for herself.”

  “She doesn’t have a phone?”

  “She has a phone, an old wired set from decades ago. I’ll call her and she’ll come here.”

  Reg sighed. She was used to her apartment being a refuge from the world, somewhere she could go where it was just her and she could relax and let her hair down. The cottage felt more like Grand Central Station. She swept her corn rows back with both hands.

  “I’m going to have that shower, then.

  “I’ll be back with Letticia if she can come over. You won’t… contact Warren while I’m gone?”

  Reg shook her head vigorously. “Definitely not.”

  ⋆ Chapter Twelve ⋆

  After due consideration, Reg decided that Sarah’s recommendation of a good stiff drink was a sound one, and she allowed herself a tot of the Jack Daniels she had shared with Corvin.

  Why couldn’t he be the one they consulted with? Even though Sarah said that he was dangerous, Reg felt that she had been able to stand up to him just fine on their first two encounters, and nothing was going to happen if Sarah were there to intervene on her behalf as well. She could bet that he would have some suggestions. Reg didn’t like the sound of the new witch and would prefer not to have to meet her at all.

  When she had gotten out of the shower, she had pretty much decided that there was no point to a meeting with Letticia. In fact, there was little point in their doing anything. Reg was not responsible for proving whether Warren Blake was dead or whether he was a missing person. That was the job of the police and coast guard and the FAA or whoever was involved with downed planes. If they weren’t doing their job, then it was up to Ling to get them moving. She could go to the media and insist that something be done.

  Reg, on the other hand, was just a psychic. It wasn’t her job to find the missing man. If it turned out that he hadn’t been dead during the reading Reg had done for Ling, then that called Reg’s skills into question. Alternatively, saying that he was still alive and then having his dead body show up later would only compound the problem.

  After a drink, she turned her mind to the opposite problem. What if she did nothing and it turned out that Warren was still alive?

  If she and Sarah pushed for answers and they found Warren still alive, then Reg would be a hero and her reputation would be greatly improved. She could double her rates.

  But the only evidence that they had that Warren was still alive were Reg’s own imaginings and Sarah’s interpretation of the odd events around Reg’s readings. Reg’s fainting, wild ramblings, and disorientation could be explained simply enough if she were fighting a flu bug or something else she had picked up while traveling.

  Then there was the fact that Warren’s body had not turned up.

  But there were plenty of reasons for a body not to turn up. It could have been carried out to sea, consumed by sharks or other predators, caught on rocks, or cast up on some deserted shore where it was never found. Or he could have intentionally run away from his wife and his life. It would be dangerous to assume that because the body hadn’t washed up where and when expected that he was still alive and in need of saving.

  Reg sipped at the whiskey, closing her eyes and pondering the best plan of action. The best solution was probably to keep all options open until they either knew for sure that Warren was dead or that he was alive. He didn’t think he was dead, so she was not passing judgment until she knew for sure. It was possible that she was communicating with a live person telepathically rather than channeling a dead one; there was no way to know until he either accepte
d that he was dead or they had proof one way or the other.

  She put her empty tumbler into the sink, satisfied with this approach. Just like so many other con jobs, it was a delicate balance. Letting people believe what they wanted to and just adding some shading and color to provide definition. There were some complications, with Sarah and now this new witch being involved, but she could manage that, if she were careful.

  Starlight had been sleeping on one of the wicker chairs and, hearing Reg in the kitchen, he got up to see if she was making anything good.

  “Uh, sorry kitty, nothing going on here…” Reg apologized. She toed the bowl of cat food. “I do have this for you, you know. Other cats eat it.”

  He sat back on his haunches and stared at her, inscrutable.

  “Do you really think you aren’t a cat, like Corvin said? Do you think you’re a person in a smaller, furrier package?”

  He stretched tall, giving a little tail-to-head shiver, and then turned and walked toward the cottage door. Sarah knocked before he was halfway there, and opened the door. What Reg wouldn’t have given for ears like a cat’s.

  “Reg? Oh, you are ready. Great.”

  She pushed the door open the rest of the way and let the other witch in behind her.

  Like some slapstick comedy or comic book, the two witches were opposite in almost every way. Where Sarah was short and heavy, the other witch was tall and spare. Her hair was black in contrast to Sarah’s soft blond. Rather than coming across as a soft, grandmotherly person as Sarah did, Letticia was not a person to be trifled with. She walked ramrod straight and did not smile. She looked around the cottage and sniffed. Reg could have been offended, but since it had only been her home for a few days and the decorating wasn’t hers, she just let it go.

  “Reg, this is Letticia. Letticia…?”

  “You have a cat,” Letticia observed.

  “Uh, yes.”

  “Why don’t we go sit down,” Sarah suggested, gesturing toward the living room grouping. But Letticia didn’t make any indication she had even heard.

  “You didn’t tell me she had a cat,” Letticia told Sarah.

  “Are you allergic?” Reg asked. “I’m sorry, I can put him in the bedroom, or we could go up to Sarah’s house…”

  But Letticia was apparently not allergic. She walked up to Starlight and looked down at him. Starlight looked up at Letticia. He didn’t run away when she bent over to pick him up. Letticia didn’t cuddle Starlight but held him as if she were a shelf, letting him sit on her arm, gazing at her, nose to nose.

  “He has been here during the communications?” she demanded.

  Reg looked over at Sarah, looking for an explanation of what was going on. “Yes. He’s been here.”

  Letticia swiveled on the spot and walked over to the seating area. She sat herself, still ramrod straight, Starlight sitting on her lap like a king on his throne.

  Reg sat down, waiting for Starlight to leave Letticia and join her instead.

  “How has the cat behaved during these visions?”

  “I don’t know…” Reg was boggled that the woman would even ask. “He’s been behaving really strangely since I got him, so I don’t know what’s normal and what’s unusual. He’s been biting or clawing me for no reason that I can tell. He won’t eat the cat food I got for him.”

  “Did he bite you when you communicated with this man?”

  “Uh… yes, really bad, actually.” Reg showed off her ankle, bare under her capris, with a couple of bandages in place. “I was still channeling Warren when he did it. Pulled me right out of… right out of the experience.”

  “She fainted right there on the floor this morning,” Sarah told Letticia, gesturing, “and I had a really hard time getting her out of her trance when she channeled Warren today. Something is wrong. That’s just not normal.”

  Was there paranormal normality? Did one really expect things like fortune telling, spells, or speaking with the dead to follow certain rules? While Reg had tried to follow the patterns of mediums she had seen on TV so that her readings would resonate with her clients, she hadn’t really thought of there being a right way and a wrong way to be a medium. Surely everybody had their own methods and what worked for one person wouldn’t necessarily work for another.

  Letticia stared hard at Reg, making her squirm in discomfort.

  “She could just be a fake,” Letticia pointed out, as if Reg weren’t even there. “None of this makes a lot of sense.”

  “No,” Sarah protested. “I’ve seen her in action. I would know if that was just put on. She definitely made contact with someone or something.”

  “Someone or something?” Reg repeated. The air conditioner was again blowing too cold. “What does that mean?”

  “There are… other entities that you could have made contact with,” Letticia said, as if Reg should know that. “Obviously there are spirits other than Warren Blake around here, and you could have contacted one of them. Or it might have been something other than a restless spirit.”

  “Like what?”

  Letticia shrugged. She looked at Sarah. “You were quite sure that she was in contact with who she thought she was? There was no indication that it might not have been Warren?”

  “We talked about Ling. We talked about the earlier contact. Of course it was Warren.”

  “He didn’t say anything that only Warren would have known…?”

  “We weren’t trying to prove him; Reg had just invited him back. He’d been trying to get her to be his vessel again, and he was there as soon as she asked him. We have a harder time getting rid of him than getting him to come.”

  “So if we’re to assume that it is him…”

  “If it is him, then he’s in hospital somewhere. He was quite clear.”

  “And he said he was in danger,” Reg recalled. She’d felt suspended in air since her last encounter with Warren’s spirit, unable to remember everything she had said for him to Sarah.

  Sarah gave a little nod. “He indicated that he could be in danger.”

  “If someone came back looking for him,” Reg said. “What does that mean? Who would be going back for him? Does he mean the searchers? The police and rescuers who were looking for his body? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “If he nearly died,” Letticia said, “then doesn’t it make sense that someone was trying to kill him? He went down in a plane?”

  “He was the pilot of a small aircraft. Yes.”

  “And was he any good?”

  Reg lifted her hands in a shrug. “I never flew with him. His wife seemed to think so.”

  “Then how did his plane go down? It was a storm? He lost his way? Had an engine malfunction?”

  “All I heard was that the plane went down.”

  “That’s one of the two directions planes usually go. The problem is the speed they go down with. You don’t know what caused the accident?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should ask Ling that. Or ask Warren. He didn’t tell you what happened to the plane?”

  “I didn’t think to ask,” Sarah said, moving her hands nervously and looking flustered. “I should have asked, of course. It only makes sense. But I don’t think Reg should call him again.”

  “That’s a problem, since you and I don’t speak with the dead.”

  Sarah nodded, looking down, as if she were a small child who had just been called out in front of the class. “I am sorry.”

  “So we need to find out where he is and who is trying to kill him and to stop them,” Reg summarized, her voice rising with stress. “That doesn’t sound too difficult!”

  “Stay calm, child; have a drink of tea,” Letticia advised.

  Reg wanted to kick the old woman right in the knee. Who did she think she was, treating everybody else like they were two years old? She might be a free thinker, someone Sarah said could help, but that wasn’t any reason to treat everyone else like they didn’t matter and should bow down to her.

  Sarah gav
e Reg a warning look. She probably sensed that Reg was ready to blow her top. It was all getting to be a bit much. She had planned to set up shop in Black Sands, do a few casual readings a day, and be able to make a living off of her craft that way. Instead, she was surrounded by crazy people who thought that they really were witches and warlocks and that everything she said was gospel. She’d been dumped right into the middle of—what?—a murder mystery? She was tired, she had a cat that bit, and she wasn’t going to put up with any more nonsense.

  “If you’ll excuse me for a moment,” she said sweetly to Letticia, rising to her feet. “I need a break.” She remembered Erin and her little bakery in Bald Eagle Falls, and the quaint names that she and her friends had for the facilities. “I need to use the loo!”

  Open-mouthed, Sarah watched her walk away.

  ⋆ Chapter Thirteen ⋆

  Reg washed her face and held a cold cloth over her eyes. She was incredibly tired, even though it was still only late afternoon. It seemed like every contact she had with Warren left her more and more tired. For some reason, he was draining her of all of her energy.

  No. She was tired because of a virus. Or because of her travel. Or something in the air or the food. It wasn’t because Warren was draining her of energy, because she wasn’t actually channeling his spirit. If she were to believe the fiction that she had invented, then he wasn’t even dead, but in a hospital somewhere while his ghost walked around looking for trouble.

  She touched up her makeup and took her time returning to the two witches and their bizarre ideas. She sat back down with them and looked back and forth at them to see what they had decided.

  “There aren’t really that many hospitals around here,” Letticia told Reg. “We should be able to get to all of them in a few hours. All you have to do is be open to the presence of the spirits and figure out which hospital Warren is in. Then we can go inside and find him, assuming he’s not in some restricted area. Once we find him, then we can turn it over to Ling and over to the police to put together the rest of the pieces of the puzzle and figure out who he is under threat from.”