What the Cat Knew

by P. D. Workman

  Warren.

  She called out to him, but wasn’t getting any response. Reg looked at Starlight. He washed his whiskers, unconcerned.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated. Finally, Reg bumped up against Warren’s consciousness. She let out her breath in a sigh of relief, and tried to channel him. But the doors were closed. There was too much resistance.

  Reg opened her eyes. “He’s awake!”

  Corvin looked over at Uriel, who was still unconscious.

  “No—Warren. Warren is awake.”

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Six ⋆

  They left Hawthorne-Rose bound by Corvin’s spell and Uriel bound with twine they had found in one of the kitchen drawers, and headed over to McNara. Corvin’s big car was still at the Eagle Arms, so they climbed into Reg’s. Corvin couldn’t very well complain that it was too small for him, as Reg had already seen his little compact the day she and the witches had gone looking for Warren. And he couldn’t complain that she was a bad driver, not considering how Sarah drove. But he still didn’t look comfortable sitting in the passenger’s seat. Reg guessed that he liked to be the one in control.

  She understood the sentiment.

  She didn’t get there as quickly as Sarah would have, but they still made pretty good time. They ignored the reception desk and the confused receptionist calling after them to stop and check in properly. Reg wondered if all of Uriel’s spells were breaking with the severing of the binding spell. Would all of the nursing staff at McNara be wondering who the young man in room 180 was and what he was doing there?

  They burst into Warren’s room, worried and out of breath. Warren appeared to be sleeping, but he stirred and opened his eyes at their noisy entrance.

  “Oh. Hello.”

  While Reg was happy to see that he was still there, and that he was well, she had been hoping to find Ling there with him. And maybe Jessup too, busy taking their statements. But other than Warren and the machines, the room was empty.

  “Do you remember me?” Reg asked.

  He gazed at her, brows down. “I don’t know… you seem sort of familiar…”

  “My friends and I talked to you before. When you were… unconscious.” Reg didn’t want to say that he had been dead or in a coma. Unconscious seemed more tactful.

  “Oh… I’m sorry, I don’t… I don’t remember why I’m here.”

  “You were in an accident. Your airplane. But you’re okay now.”

  “Right.” He nodded along, as if that made perfect sense.

  “Do you know where Ling went?” Reg asked.

  Warren blinked a few times, thinking about it. He looked around the room as if looking for clues.

  “Ling… she was here.”

  “Today? When you woke up?”

  “No. When I woke up… I was alone.”

  “The men who you were dealing with, that transportation job, do you know where their warehouse is? Or where they live? Anything?”

  “The warehouse…” Warren sounded like he was coming out of a dream.

  “With all of the crates,” Reg suggested. “Do you remember the crates he wanted you to transport?”

  She had seen the crates in Warren’s memories. She had seen them in Uriel’s. They were important. She needed to find out where they were. If Uriel and his band of thieves had kidnapped Ling and Jessup, that seemed the most likely place to hide them.

  “Yes,” Warren sat up. He rubbed his eyes. “Yes, I picked things up from the warehouse that needed transportation. But why would Ling be there?”

  Reg looked around the room. “Do you have something to wear? We need to go check it out right now.”

  She and Corvin went through the drawers and little cupboard locker in the hospital room, but didn’t find any street clothes for Warren. Reg bit her lip and offered him a second hospital johnny. “Here, just put this one on back to front, and then you’ll be covered up. We don’t have time to find anything else.”

  Warren frowned, but seemed to be picking up on her sense of urgency, and after carefully removing the various tubes and machines, pulled the second robe on.

  “What happened? Can you tell me?”

  “You told those guys that you weren’t going to smuggle whatever it was they were trying to transport. They crashed your plane and… knocked you unconscious. You’ve been here since then. Ling came to see you, and she disappeared. I think… I think they got her too. That’s why we need to go back there to see.”

  Warren nodded, eyes wide. “I knew there was something off about those guys. There were just too many unanswered questions. And the way they would huddle together to discuss things, and then the conversations would stop dead when I walked into the room. It was obvious they had something to hide.”

  They hustled Warren past the nursing station desk and past the reception area without stopping to explain where they were going and how their coma patient was suddenly up and walking around. Before the hospital had a chance to get security to try to stop them, they were out to the parking lot and piling into the car.

  “I really should have signed their papers…” Warren said, looking back.

  “You can go back and sign them later.”

  “Yeah…”

  Reg was feeling more and more anxious. The longer it was, the better the chances were that Uriel and Hawthorne-Rose would be able to get out of their bonds or summon their troops for rescue, and then they would all be riding toward the same destination, ready for a fight. Corvin and Reg were just two people. They hadn’t been able to deal with Hawthorne-Rose or Uriel on their own, needing the cat’s help. Like most cats, Starlight didn’t like car travel and they hadn’t bothered to bring him with them. Now they had another person they needed to defend, someone without any paranormal powers.

  “Down Main,” Warren directed. “To the waterfront.”

  Reg pressed the gas pedal down farther. She weaved in and out of traffic, keeping an eye out for any police cars. Maybe it would be good if they attracted the attention of the police. They could take them to the warehouse and show them what was going on. They could get help.

  She heard a voice in her head. You should have come to the police. Civilians shouldn’t be trying to handle this kind of thing on their own. You knew there was an investigation into the plane crash. As soon as you found out Warren was alive, you should have contacted us.

  Now, she was going to do it again. Fly right into a potentially deadly situation without any police support, expecting everything to come out right in the end. Maybe they should call the police and get them to raid the warehouse instead of running blindly into it themselves.

  But she didn’t want more police officers missing or hurt. She didn’t want to have to explain how they knew what they did. She didn’t want to have to talk about psychic phenomena to nonbelievers. She still didn’t believe half of it herself, in spite of all she’d had to do to free Warren from the clutches of evil warlocks. It was too much to expect anyone to believe. She wasn’t going to believe it herself after she’d had a chance to think about it.

  “It’s the third one down…” Warren gestured. “The one with the yellow doors.”

  “Stop back here,” Corvin instructed. “We don’t want to give ourselves away.”

  Reg pulled in behind a big white van, out of sight of the warehouse.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Just go in there?”

  Corvin looked at her. He glanced over at Warren.

  “Can you tell who’s in there?” he asked Reg.

  Time for more performing in front of a nonbeliever. It had never bothered Reg when it was just an act. But that had all changed. Reg closed her eyes and concentrated on the warehouse, trying to give nothing away by her expression. She didn’t need to channel anyone or faint or do anything big. Just take a remote look to see who was in there.

  She stretched her consciousness out toward the warehouse. She saw the crates again, the ones she had seen in Uriel’s mind. She again felt the clouds of sadness sur
rounding them. She could feel other consciousnesses in the building and struggled to identify them. She had met both Ling and Jessup face to face, and was pretty sure they were there. But was there anyone else? They didn’t want to walk in on Dreadlocks or any of the others in the enterprise. Reg explored the building, wishing that they had brought Starlight with them after all. He would have helped her to focus and be more sure of herself. She was tiring after all she had already been required to do.

  Corvin reached over and took her hand. Reg jolted and opened her eyes, glaring at him for startling her.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I just thought… I might be able to help.”

  Reg stared at him, not pulling away. He was, she had learned, not to be trusted. But he had returned her gifts to her and had helped to bind Uriel and Hawthorne-Rose. Was there any possibility that he was part of their venture? Or maybe he hoped to take it over, whatever it was, now that Uriel and Hawthorne-Rose were out of the way?

  Corvin’s mind was open to her. Maybe because he had held her powers not so long ago, or maybe because he had some psychic skills of his own and was able to consciously lower his defenses. She felt for his intentions. Nearest the surface was his desire to help her and to rescue Ling and Jessup. That, at least, was genuine, and maybe that was all she needed to know in order to use him.

  There was, though, much that was buried deeper, too deep for her to explore before making her decision. Among other intentions and desires was a hunger, a deep, gnawing hunger that he had locked away as deeply as he could, but she could still sense it. He resisted when, curious, she tried to pursue it.

  “I can help,” Corvin repeated.

  Reg withdrew. She nodded. Still holding his hand, she tried to use him like she had Starlight, drawing on his power to boost her own flagging abilities. She didn’t want his thoughts, only his strength. She could immediately feel the difference. She confirmed to herself that both Ling and Jessup were in the warehouse, but she couldn’t make contact with them, so they were probably awake, not unconscious. That was good news. She couldn’t sense anyone else in the warehouse or guarding it from outside.

  “It’s just them,” she told Corvin. “Just Ling and Jessup.”

  “Let’s go in, then.”

  The three of them got out of the car. Warren was looking at Reg with a puzzled expression, but said nothing. They circled the building, checking the doors, which of course were all locked. Warren grimaced. “If I had my clothes… I did have a key…”

  “Fortunately, I have a few skills other than witchcraft,” Corvin said. He examined the locks on the back entrance. Reg waited for him to pull out a set of lock picks and open it like a burglar on TV, but instead he picked up a cinderblock from the rubbish in the alley, and smashed the doorknob off with it. He reached into the hole it left, cleared the debris, and swung the door open.

  Reg stared at it, openmouthed. Corvin chuckled.

  “Lives are at stake,” he pointed out. “I don’t think now is the time for delicacy.”

  They all entered the building.

  Even though Reg already knew there was no one in the building other than Ling and Jessup, she still tiptoed and listened for any hint of someone else guarding the building. She didn’t know if it were possible for someone to be there, hiding himself behind a spell. But she wasn’t going to walk right in as if she owned the place.

  She led the others, feeling Ling and Jessup’s location. It was like intuition, but it wasn’t. She would have said that she was just guessing where they were, but she knew it wasn’t true. It was a difficult thing to put into words.

  Reg opened the door to a small administrative office and saw both women lying bound on the floor. She let out a long sigh of relief. Warren hurried to Ling and Corvin to Jessup, pulling away their gags.

  Jessup swore. Her voice was hoarse and weak.

  “Hunter. Tell me you disarmed the snares before you busted in here.”

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Seven ⋆

  Reg looked at Corvin. She hadn’t seen him do anything special as they approached the building or the room, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t quietly removed any spells before walking through them. But by his pallor, she gathered that he hadn’t.

  He cleared his throat. “What snares?”

  “You think they would leave us here with no guard and no magical protection?” Jessup demanded.

  “Uh…”

  Reg resisted the urge to run back out the way they had come before something bad could happen. But if Jessup was right, it was already too late, and she didn’t know what she would be running into.

  She looked at Corvin. He got up and walked back to the office door they had come in. It had whooshed shut behind them on a pneumatic closer and clicked into place. Reg had thought nothing of it. Corvin wiggled the handle, but it was locked. He looked around. Reg knew he was looking for something heavy to break it off as he had with the outside door. The room was bare. Corvin shouldered the door experimentally.

  Reg shook her head. “It opens inward.”

  Corvin studied the door. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Considering the hinges, Reg looked around for a screwdriver or other tool she could use to pry the pins out of them. But just like when Corvin had looked for something to break the handle, she came up empty. Even MacGyver couldn’t have found a tool to get them out of the room. But he probably would have at least had a Swiss Army knife in his pocket. Reg patted her pockets, but she knew she wasn’t carrying anything. She had just pulled on the first pants she had found. She hadn’t even grabbed her phone or purse. If she hadn’t needed the keys to start her car, she wouldn’t even have brought them. Reg eyed the hinges, wondering whether her keys could be used to pry the pins out.

  She sighed. Not likely. Besides, they were probably magically protected against tampering.

  “Do you have your phone?” she asked Corvin.

  He patted his pockets as if he weren’t sure, and pulled out an ancient-looking Blackberry. He pressed a button and looked at the screen. “Battery has been drained,” he said. “No big surprise.”

  Warren had managed to pick out the knots binding Ling’s wrists to free her hands. Ling looked drawn and pale, but unharmed. He looked around.

  “If the door is locked, try the window,” he suggested.

  Reg crossed the room and checked the window. It was not a sealed unit, but had a bottom portion designed to slide on a track, with a screen to let in fresh air. She flipped the lever to unlock the window and slid it open.

  They all just looked at it. A three-year-old might have been able to wriggle through the opening if the screen were punched out. But none of them were going to be able to push their heads or shoulders through.

  Corvin knelt back down to untie Jessup. She was in her police uniform, but her utility belt and all of its accouterments had been removed. No gun. No tools.

  She moved stiffly, rubbing her wrists and shoulders and flexing her legs. “Hawthorne-Rose?”

  “He’s at Reg’s place,” Corvin nodded to Reg. “A little… stuck at the moment.”

  Jessup rubbed her temples. “Everything just fell apart. As soon as he saw Ling at the hospital… I knew he was dirty.”

  Corvin nodded sympathetically.

  Jessup gazed at Reg. “Heaven help us from interfering civilians! Why couldn’t you have just called the police when you found Warren? Or better yet, when you thought he was alive? You sent his wife right into the teeth of things.”

  “I’m sorry. I… didn’t think anyone would believe me. I mean, I know some police departments use psychics occasionally… but I didn’t think they were ever really taken seriously.”

  “No. And you can see why, given how flaky and unreliable they are!”

  Reg looked away, her face flaming. Ling and Warren murmured together quietly, obviously happy to be back together again, but not facing the issue of their all being locked in a tiny room together as the day started to heat up. Reg could see from Jessup’s a
nd Ling’s condition that they had already suffered from one day’s captivity. Another without water might just finish Ling off. Jessup looked stronger, but that didn’t mean she’d last much longer than Ling. They needed to find a way out.

  “Reg has been a big help,” Corvin said. “Don’t blame her for all of this. She broke the binding spell.”

  Jessup’s eyes widened. “She broke it?”

  Corvin nodded. “Not bad for a raw beginner!”

  “I just assumed…” Jessup trailed off.

  Reg leaned against the wall, trying to sort everything out. “You… know about magic?” she asked Jessup.

  “Yes. But don’t go spreading that around. It needs to stay under wraps.” Jessup leaned back, pushing sweaty hair out of her face. “Not that you’re going to have a chance to say anything to anyone. The outlook at this point is… pretty bleak.”

  “Don’t say that. We’ll figure it out.”

  “Unless you have experience breaking out of enchanted prisons, I highly doubt it.”

  Reg set her jaw stubbornly. She had never been one to take no for an answer. A lot of people had told her she couldn’t do things… but she’d usually done them anyway.

  Corvin grinned at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Well? What’s the plan, Reg?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Reg looked around the bare room. “How does it work, this trap? Is it just the locked door? Or if we get out of here, will here be something else in its place?”

  “Probably every hallway and door between here and the outside,” Jessup said. “That witch doctor knew some serious stuff. Breaking in here without first ascertaining what protections were in place… that was a big mistake.”

  “I checked for guards,” Reg said, shaking her head. “But I don’t know the first thing about magic.”

  “But this one does,” Jessup nodded to Corvin. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking… get in, get the hostages before Uriel and Hawthorne-Rose manage to wriggle free… and get out.”

  “You got Uriel too?”