by Lilly Graves
The Cat in the Lighthouse
Lilly Graves
Breezy Reads
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 1
I’m shaking over the note that Raven, my dead mother, surreptitiously passed to me from The Afterlife. She had given me her billowy gray wrap, and in the pocket was a piece of paper. I slowly re-read what it says:
“Chloe, forgive me for slipping this in here unawares. This is the true message I wanted to share with you. I tried telling you the night of the seance. My death was not an accident. Look inside of my jewelry box that’s on the top shelf of my closet. Love, Momma Raven.”
My mother’s death wasn’t an accident? She’s saying she was murdered?
My aunts, fellow witches and housemates, are sitting at the dining room table with me, eating the last of the chocolate cake. It’s nighttime, and we’re celebrating the fact that Aunt Nova was released from jail, and the true killer of her boyfriend, Mr. Billingsworth, took her place behind bars.
“Tell me the truth, sis,” Nova, the older but younger-looking aunt, teases. “At some point you thought I did it, that I killed Billingsworth for his money.” She sports a huge smile.
Willow’s eyes cast up to the hanging chandelier of lit candles. She stutters, “N-no, of course n-not. That’s crazy.”
Sebastian, Nova’s familiar, says, “She did think it was you!” He’s a white and gray Manx sitting on the table and eating from a silver platter. A fork sits unused next to the plate, as always.
“See, you did! I knew it!” Nova fixes a bit of blond bangs. She’s very glamorous, like Marilyn old-Hollywood glam. Willow, on the other hand, is the “eccentric” aunt, to put it nicely.
Willow bursts behind huge glasses, “Okay, I did! But just for like a teensy moment.” In emphasis, she pinches her fingers close together, fingers that host unpolished and uneven nails, some long, some short.
“I knew it.” Nova simply laughs.
I stand and take my plate of chocolate cake crumbs with me. “Excuse me,” I say, knowing my face feels stiff and that they might be able to see my heart is trying to break through my chest.
Sebastian asks, “Everything okay, Bubble Bum? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or are the ghost.”
My aunts look up at me.
I plaster a fake smile on my face. “Yeah, sure, everything is great.” I quickly go to the kitchen and set the plate in the sink. I turn on the water, and steam rises over my stoic expression staring back in the window. It’s taking a moment to let the information sink in, that my mother was killed. She didn’t really fall off of the lighthouse. Then someone must have pushed her.
When the window is completely fogged up, so that I can’t even make out the back patio, I turn off the water. Through the condensation, the moon appears as a misty apparition over the sea.
In case you missed recent events, let me catch you up to date. I’m Chloe, a cat. But I’m also Chloe, a witch. One moment I can sport silky black fur and a slinky tail, and the next a pixie hairdo and long legs. Confusing, right? Imagine being me.
I was meant to be born to my mother Raven, late sister of Aunts Nova and Willow. However, Raven passed over to The Afterlife much sooner than my scheduled time to come down, so she couldn’t bear me. Everyone here in Mystic Cove chalked up her death to an accident. And I can understand why. Her body was found sprawled and lifeless at the base of the shore’s lighthouse, atop rocks covered in sharp black mussels.
It was a tragic moment in Mystic Cove’s history, especially for her young age of just nineteen years old.
As for me, after losing the first of my nine lives, during the last mystery, I found out that I was sent down as a cat familiar to my Aunt Willow, as The Afterlife’s solution to losing my mother. This way I could stay in the Wildes family. And now that I know of my true nature and history, I’m gifted with the ability to shapeshift from a cat to a witch, and back.
I take in a deep breath and let out a long sigh. I’m both nervous but eager to find out what’s contained within the jewelry box. Exiting the kitchen, I hurry past the dining room and go directly for the stairs. My little family is still at the table, talking nonstop. They don’t even notice me. I make sure my footsteps are light against the mahogany staircase, following a strip of patterned blue carpeting up. Up the same stairs that past generations of Wildes have ascended, spanning more than a century.
At the end of the upstairs hall is Raven’s bedroom. I know this sounds bizarre, but I’ve never actually been inside of there before. My aunts have kept my mom’s room untouched, like a mausoleum of memories, in her honor. And as such, it’s always been kept locked. Still, nothing a simple spell can’t undo. I swirl my hand and point a shot of blue sparkling magic at the doorknob, then enter.
Instantly, it feels like the temperature has dropped ten degrees. The room is kind of what you’d expect from a teenage woman who is teetering on the edge of her twenties. A couple of rock band posters still hang on the wall. One for Aerosmith and one with Led Zeppelin’s legendary logo. A queen-sized bed decorated in maroon and black sits at the center, across from a wall where a desk sits. An older version of an iMac is blankly atop it, along with random odds and ends. I step over to the metal pencil-holder cup and peek inside at the tube of red lipstick, a few hair bands for her long black hair, and a concert ticket stub.
Next to the bed, the end table hosts a few books, which I gently pick up to peruse. One on prisoners of Alcatraz, another on accidents at the Grand Canyon, a Ripley’s Believe or Not large hardback. She liked the dark and bizarre.
After taking in the environment a moment longer, I go to the closet, where the jewelry box resides, and there it is on the top shelf just like Raven said. I pull it down and set it on the bed. It’s rectangular, made of a cherry wood. I lift the lid and inside I see items that aren’t necklaces, earrings or bracelets. No, there’s a black feather, a piece of saltwater taffy, a smooth white beach rock, a dried sprig of sage. There’s a tiny glass vial with a cork. I peer into it. Tiny, sharp white things that tinkle against the glass, when I shake it. Are those lizard teeth?
I open one of its two small drawers. Inside is a notecard:
Ingredients needed:
A single puffin feather
A white and unblemished moonstone
Bat teeth from Horacio’s Cave. ...Okay, so they’re not lizard teeth.
Blood of a shifter
I pause. Blood of a shifter? I thought shifters might as well be unicorns. Nobody believes in those, not even the witchy community. How could that be on this list? But then again, there’s me...
I open the final drawer of the jewelry box and inside is a folded piece of paper. I open it up to find it’s a layout of Wildes Road, the strip of witchy shops that my aunts work down at. A few of the shops are X’d, not including The Mystic Cove Mirror. On the other side of the paper is scraw
led what appears to be a poem.
What does all of this mean? My mother from beyond the grave sent me to her jewelry box of cryptic things. This makes no sense to me whatsoever, and somehow it’s all related to her death, her death that wasn’t an accident? I begin reading.
“A many man has sought
Moonlight and magic.”
The feather lifts into the air before me, emanating a soft white glow. I gasp and continue reading.
“But beware of curses;
They can be tragic.”
The rock levitates next, which lights up like a light bulb.
“Power pumps lifeblood through organs.
Arise, awake, O beast!”
The bottle of bat teeth raises, inside sparkling like little diamonds.
It ends there. Nothing else. Poems have a certain rhythm to their rhymes, and this one is definitely missing a line.
The rock and vial of bat teeth fall to the wood floor, the glass shattering. Crap! With a flick of a finger, I shoot some magic to conjure up a new vial. Instead, a mason jar appears.
Okaaaay, that’s not quite what I had in mind. Magic, in this body, is still hard to rope. The feather, gently floating, finally lands atop the lid. I pick up the tiny, poky teeth and put them into the jar for now.
“Chloe!” I hear Aunt Willow nearby, upstairs.
I shut the jewelry box and stuff it back up top in the closet, placing the jar beside it. Then, I step toward the door to see if I can pop out of here unseen. Just as I do, I hear something crash against the closet door and hit the wood floor.
Cringe. That was not good! The next thing I know Aunt Willow opens the door and I’m standing there like “oopsies,” my forehead wrinkling.
Chapter 2
“Chloe...” Aunt Willow enters, followed by Aunt Nova. They look at me with tilted heads and sympathetic expressions, like Awwww. Rather than chastising, they come right over with great big hugs, squeezing me between them.
“You’re not upset that I came in here?” I ask.
“Of course not, Chloe,” Nova says, an arm around me as we go sit on the bed. “This is your mother’s room. If we had known, we would have opened it up for you long ago to come and see.”
Magic buzzes within and I shrink in my place on the bed down to my cat form. Someone holding on to me, by way of a hug or handholding, or even gripping my arm in anger, is the key to my shifting. It took me a while to discover, but at least I now know. The Afterlife and my fairy godwitch Annabelle weren’t much of a help there.
“That will never get old,” Aunt Willow, whom I had come down to Mother earth as a familiar to, shakes her head in wonder. She has mousy brown hair that always looks like it could use a few more strokes of a comb, and sports big glasses.
“Something fell in the closet.” I step completely out of my clothing that is now crumpled on the comforter, revealing my slinky black figure. I reposition myself. “It’s my fault.”
Aunt Nova goes over to the closet and opens it. I can see the jewelry box is toppled over on the floor, some of its contents spilled out. “Oh dear,” she says, picking up the items and gingerly placing them back inside.
“I was looking at those things,” I explain. “In a rush, I didn’t set the box up there steadily enough, so it came tumbling down.”
Nova picks up the paper of the mystic shops, certain ones X’d out. “Oh, yes,” she says, nodding. “I remember this.” She passes it to Willow to eye.
“Yes, sister, so do I. This is from the legend of Tom Dodd’s buried treasure.”
Instead of putting the jewelry box away, Aunt Nova takes it to her lap, sitting on the bed beside me.
“Buried treasure?” I repeat. “What do the shops have to do with that?”
She answers, “As the story goes, there’s a hidden word in each of these stores, which is supposed to form a full sentence. That sentence is supposed to be spoken at the site of the buried treasure, and then the treasure will resurrect.”
“Who knows, it might just be a wild goose chase,” Willow says.
“Yeah, maybe it is,” I agree. “Why else would an ingredient be the blood of a shifter? Nobody believes in shifters. I was a special case made by the Afterlife.”
Aunt Nova shrugs. “Plenty of people believe in Bigfoot, so it doesn’t take much of a leap of imagination for some.”
“It’s hard to imagine that my mom would be a believer in shifters.” My words trail. Kind of interesting, since her daughter would become one.
Willow continues, “Tom Dodd was head builder of Wilde’s Road, one of Billingsworth’s ancestors, interestingly enough. If anyone had access to the shops when built, it was him. He claims to have worked with one of the magical settlers in setting it up. You see, the treasure isn’t physically buried. Nobody can find the treasure by simply digging up or breaking things down. It’s magically hidden, and when its location is discovered, it must be magically brought forward.”
“This is so interesting,” I say. “You two know a lot about this, so how come I haven’t heard it at all?”
Nova says, “The frenzy to seek Tom Dodd’s treasure comes in waves. There just hasn’t been another wave of interest come along since Raven’s death, but who knows? It’s bound to come back again, once someone thinks they’re smart enough or spry enough to figure things out.”
“Raven was a treasure hunter?” I ask.
Willow turns to Nova with her eyebrows going up high above her big glasses and then looks at me. “We had no idea about this. Like some prospectors, it looks like she must have kept it a secret on purpose.”
“Right,” Nova says. “She probably didn’t want people following her, threatening her. Your mother was always an adventure seeker, very much a tomboy, so although we didn’t know anything about this, I’m not surprised.”
People following her, threatening her… echoes in my mind.
“So, she didn’t even tell her sisters?” I ask.
Willow explains, “Raven didn’t talk to me about her life much at all. I was twelve at the time. She was my much older, cooler sister of eighteen years old. She had little interest in hanging out with me, or more: divulging secrets.”
“Yeah, I was just one year older than her,” Aunt Nova explains. “And although Raven was mature for her age, always hanging around older kids, like her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Sy, we had nothing much in common. In high school she was known as the goth and I was known as the cheerleader. Her boyfriend was a looker, though. It didn’t matter what social circle you were part of; anyone would admit that.” She turns to Willow. “You remember him? Sy, we called him, short for Sylvester. Sylvester Moon. They dated for a couple of years.”
“Oh, how could I forget? He was here every day, ransacking our fridge. Mother used to say he was eating us out of house and home, but she continued right on making delicious meals for him.”
“He was such a charming boy,” Nova wistfully looks up with her honey-brown eyes. “I confess, I had my own girlish crush on him.”
“Yes, most girls did.”
“Where is Sy today?” I ask.
Willow says, “It’s sad, really. He went through such a deep depression after Raven’s passing that his parents admitted him to Mystic Cove’s psychiatric lockdown facility, Shady Pines. They were non-magicals who didn’t approve of Sy’s relationship with Raven to begin with. They didn’t want their boy with a witch.”
“Yes, it must have gotten really bad.” Nova nods. “His parents left Sy locked up indefinitely and they moved to somewhere completely non-magical: Lodi, California.”
“Hmm.” Willow and I nod at that.
Although this is all so interesting, the note from my mother is metaphorically burning a hole in my pocket. I can’t really keep this a secret. They caught me red-handed in Raven’s room, in her things, and their response was that of complete understanding. I have to tell them what I know. In fact, as family they deserve to know. “Aunt Willow, Aunt Nova: Raven passed me a note in The Afterlife.
”
Their eyes snap right to mine. “You got to see her?” Nova asks.
I slowly shrug. “Yeah, I mean, when you have Tipsy Tinkerbell as your godwitch, too out of it to come see me for herself, I guess they allowed that.”
“How was it?” Willow swoons over the thought of very first mother-daughter meeting.
I smile big, feeling that same whoosh of that joy that swept over me at the time. “It was magical,” I say.
My aunts squee in response, hugging me. But right away my smile starts to fall along with my shoulders.
“What’s the matter?” Aunt Willow asks.
I pull the folded note out of my pocket. “The fact is Raven’s death was not an accident.”
Nova snatches the paper out of my hand and opens it to see, showing Willow.
“Sister was murdered?” Willow puts her hands on her face, gawking at the paper. “It wasn’t an accident?”
Aunt Nova shakes her head, her short blond hair swaying. “I-I’m speechless for once.”
“What can we do about it now?” her sister asks. “It’s been more than twenty years.”
“More than twenty-three,” I specify, because of my age. “But she believes in me. She believes I can solve her case. In honor of her memory that I do not hold because of the evil act against her, I will solve this.”
The fire in my belly is doused in disappointment when I see my aunts don’t look so sure. In fact, Willow’s face is ghostly white over it all.
“It’ll be okay,” I say. “Look, now I know about the shops and the words to the incantation. I also hold the key to the one missing ingredient: I’m a shifter! So, not only can I solve the case, but the validity of the treasure hunt.”
