by Lilly Graves
My heart hurts. I need to solve this case more than ever. The same person who murdered my mom before her time murdered Maggie.
My mind automatically goes to Sy. Did he kill my mother? It sure looks like he killed Maggie. No one else has a better reason to murder her. I’m sure of that.
Where would a man who thinks he’s a wolf be hiding out? I’m not sure. But I might know where Sy, the man, would be tonight.
Moments later, I’m bounding down the steep steps, back down to the cove. Then I run along the wet shoreline. Tall waves, pulled by the power of the full moon, are a part of my thunderous, crashing backdrop. Around the lighthouse, Sy isn’t in sight.
What was I thinking? He wasn’t here earlier either when I had checked. Suddenly tired, I stand on a mussel-covered rock at the base of the lighthouse, zoning out at the fierce ocean view. I cast a glance at a rickety metal ladder leading up to the top of the old, abandoned structure. A nap in there, to the rocking lullaby of crashing waves, could be nice.
I hop to the bottom rung and it's cold and wet against my paws. I climb up to the top, open-air window part of the lighthouse and hop inside.
That’s when I hear a low growl.
I step back against the inside wall of the circular top section of the lighthouse in fear. There’s a hairy, musclebound shadow at the other side.
He leaps forward and snarls. A stream of moonlight glints off sharp teeth. “Get out of here!” he roars. He’s a wolf. A very strong wolf, taking my breath away.
That should’ve scared me right out of my fur. But there’s something familiar in those brown eyes, and a sense of a tortured soul who wouldn’t actually harm me. Going against the Familiar’s Oath, I speak. “Sy, is that you?”
His hairy barrel chest heaves. “Demon cat, go torture someone else. Leave me be!” He scrapes scissor-like nails across the floor in a quick, threatening motion.
“No.” I stay flatfooted, even though my heart is racing. “I know you. You’re Sylvester Moon. And you don’t have Lycanthropy. You’re a shifter. You’re a shifter like me.”
That makes him recoil in thoughtful surprise. “A shifter,” he repeats with a low, rumbling voice.
“Yes.” I stay put where I’m at and add, “I’m sorry, I wish I could have told you my own secret sooner. I’m Chloe Wildes.”
“Chloe Wildes,” he repeats. The tension of his stance relaxes a touch. “It sounds like you.”
“It is me. Now we know each other’s secrets.”
A few beats go by of heavy breathing as he stares me down. “Now you know I’m this cursed creature. Are you afraid of me?”
I muster my guts to step forward and lie, “No, I’m not afraid.”
“You should be. I can kill with one swipe, with one bite. I have a mood that’s hard to control. The moon, it controls me.”
“You don’t need to hide your struggle from me. You don’t want to harm me. You have no reason to harm me.”
“You’re right. Even though you’re a cat, I don’t want to hurt you.”
I dare to say, “Maggie is dead. You had reason to kill her.”
A heaving laugh bubbles out of him.
That wasn’t the reaction I expected.
“Dead? She’s dead?”
“Yeah… You didn’t know?”
“No. I can’t say I’ll miss her.” He runs a paw through his wolf mane.
He sounds absolutely believable. “You didn’t do it.”
“I didn’t do it. I came up here before nightfall to isolate myself.”
“Then who would kill her?”
“Hah, I’m sure I’m not the only person with a motive to murder that evil hag.”
My thoughts are swimming. “I’ve already got a murder to solve. I don’t need another.”
“So why worry yourself over it? As for me, you better believe I’ll be celebrating.”
“It’s more complicated than that.” I look back up at Sy the beast, at his hairy muzzle and that wide mouth containing razor sharp teeth. “She was mauled. Her face was unrecognizable.”
“Sounds like an animal attack,” he says. “Looks like I did it, right? It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t mess up my second night free.”
“I was going to look for you, find you, and turn you in to the police, to be completely honest. I thought that wouldn’t only solve Maggie’s case, but…” Oh no, I’m talking too much.
Surprisingly, Sy doesn’t look offended at all. He nods and says, “Right. You don’t have to wonder about me when it comes to Raven. I loved her more than words can say.”
I can feel the sincerity of his words reach into my soul. Suddenly a scene plays out, as if it’s real, obscuring all reality around me. It’s my mother holding hands with Sy at night, down at the base of the lighthouse.
“You’re such a nerd,” Raven teases with a wide, adoring smile.
“Takes one to know one, but that’s why I love you.”
“You what?” She blinks.
Sy runs a hand through his short hair, showing a hint of nervousness. He looks so young and fresh, like he has never experienced the dark side of anything. “Yeah, I didn’t mean to just blurt it like that. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while. I love you, Raven Wildes. I always will.”
“I love you too, Sylvester Moon.”
The vision flashes away just as fast. Weird, it felt so real. Like when I thought Julian was arresting me. Maybe the bite of the moon pie is still in my system.
Finally, I speak. “I know you did. You loved her.”
“Still do. I can’t just get over her. She’s always been very much a part of me.”
“We’ve got to find out who killed Maggie, too, then.” I’ll leave out the tidbit about getting off the hook with Julian. “Who would kill Maggie?”
“Who wouldn’t? Sorry, can’t help myself.”
There was that balding man in suspenders who ran out of Marney’s Moon pies the other day in pure horror. According to what I overheard when hiding in the stack of pallets, Marney said he had experienced a vision of the murder. I need to find that man and ask what he witnessed. Even if just supernaturally through a witchy dessert. Tomorrow morning, first thing.
“Mind if I stay here tonight?” I ask my hairy companion who is also on the lamb.
“Be my guest,” he says.
I can’t help but think of a corny reference to Beauty and the Beast, but I keep that to myself and curl into a ball on the hard cold surface. Tomorrow I will find that man who had a vision.
Chapter 13
As soon as day breaks, the pale sunlight pours into the lighthouse, making me blink and stretch in response. I look over to the spot the beast had been sleeping last night. He’s there, awake, sitting against his side of the circular wall. He’s back to his human self, in pants but no shirt.
“Today is a new day,” I say.
“A new day,” he replies cynically. “I guess I should be happy. I’m still free.”
“I’m going to find that mystery man who saw the murder and get to the bottom of this. Then I can return my focus to my mother. I mean, the original case.”
Sy doesn’t seem to notice my slip up. He simply nods, looking melancholy.
“Sy, I really want to help you too. Not just clear your name with Maggie’s murder, but really help you get your reputation back.”
“I don’t know if that can ever happen.”
“Well, I can at least try. I think it’s possible. And nobody needs to know about your shifting secret other than me, and my lips are sealed. Well, technically, I don’t have lips at the moment.” I point with a paw to my whiskered face. “But you know what I mean.”
“I’m grateful for that. Over the last couple of decades, I haven’t known of anyone who believes in me. The last person I’d expect to be on my side is a cat.”
He doesn’t know of the vision I had of him and my mom. He doesn’t know of the inspired feelings I get, like from the afterlife, either from my mother or my fairy godwitch Annabelle,
that tell me I can trust Sy. He does, however, know that I saw the way Maggie treated him when locked up at Shady Pines.
In order to succeed at my next item of business, I need to be back in my human form. I need to go talk to Marney about that customer. Which means I need to shift.
“How do you shift back?” I ask.
“It automatically happens at daybreak. Just like how it automatically happens at nightfall during a full moon.” He shrugs his shoulders.
“Hm, just during a full moon?”
“Yep. Which gives me some relief. I don’t turn into a monster every single night.”
“Maggie told me you have lycanthropy, which would mean you’d only believe you’re a wolf. But you are a wolf.”
“Shady Pines is like a fortress. I never saw the light of day or night when locked in there. The moon’s light can’t penetrate those stone walls enough to change me. But it still had a strong enough effect to create mood swings and viscous headaches.”
“I can shift night or day,” I say. “The downside is that I need someone to help it happen every single time, and that can be really inconvenient.”
“What do I gotta do?” he asks, ready.
Wearing all blacks and grays, my head wrapped in a scarf, and my eyes covered by sunglasses, I head down Wildes Road. Out front of The Mystic Cove Mirror is parked a white van—a carpet company. Aunt Willow is already getting things going to move back in. I quicken my pace, averting my eyes to see if Julian might be anywhere around. I don’t see him.
Inside the newspaper press, almost all of the carpet is torn up and rolled out, leaving the more than hundred-year-old floorboards bare. The smell of stirred-up dust, as the last of the ancient carpet is being ushered out, is thick in the air.
“Chloe!” Aunt Willow calls across the room. “Where have you been?”
Removing my sunglasses, I head over to her for a quick hug, nothing that would cause me to shift. When I pull back, I say, “I’ve just been out.”
“Without telling me?”
A carpet man heads out the door with a section rolled up in his arms, and in a quiet tone, I reply, “As a cat, I never had to tell you where I was going, hence the pet door we got installed. I came and went at all hours of the night.”
“True, but this is different now that, you know…”
“I’m twenty-three years old, Aunt Willow. Other women my age don’t even live at home anymore.”
“Please don’t say that.” She puts her hands out a touch, like a gesture to stop.
“What?”
“You’re still my Chloe. I’ve only ever known you as my familiar, and now that you’re a twenty-three-year-old woman, my niece, I’d like the courtesy of knowing where you’re going at night. I was worried sick about you.”
“Did Julian come by?”
“Julian? No. Why?”
“Oh, I just thought he might’ve.” I look away in thought. “Hm, anyway, maybe I should get a phone, so we can call each other.”
“Phone? Who needs a phone?” I turn to see Aunt Nova approaching in her usual stilettos. From a little polka dotted Mystique Boutique gift bag, she passes a compact mirror to each of us. “We can always reach each other through these babies.”
We look at her, bewildered.
“Go ahead, open them. I’ve been working on a spell for these for a while. They’re better than any latest model cell phone out there, and much more glam. You can talk, search the Internet, video chat, record conversations. Everything!”
“Record conversations?” That’s interesting. Might be good for my investigative work.
Aunt Willow and I click ours open at the same time, releasing some magic sparkles. All I see is my face in the double mirrors. Aunt Nova opens her own and speaks, “Call Chloe Wildes.”
An image of Aunt Nova blowing a kiss appears in the top mirror. In the bottom mirror, words appear: “Your Favorite Aunt is calling…”
I chuckle. “How do I answer it?”
“Just say, ‘Answer’ and then my name.”
“Answer Nova.”
Now a live image appears. “Hello, darling, how are you this morning? And where were you last night? We were worried sick.”
“I-I’m so sorry,” I reply. “But, you know, I am an adult and can take care of myself.”
“Still, no matter how old I get...” —She takes a moment to cringe at the thought of aging— “I will always let my sister know of my whereabouts. It’s the courteous thing to do with roommates.”
“All right, you have a point.”
Aunt Willow speaks to her compact. “Call Choe.”
Suddenly, like call waiting, words pop up in the bottom mirror: Aunt Willow.
“This is so rad. Answer Willow.”
“Don’t you two just love it? If you want your mirrors to have gemstones like mine, just let me know.”
“I like mine silver,” I say. “It’s beautiful, thank you.”
“I might want to decoupage mine,” Aunt Willow inserts. “Put some cute little mushrooms on it. Maybe glue on some googly eyes.”
I smile at how different my aunts are.
Nova closes her compact and says, “Anyway, Chloe, where were you last night?”
“I… spent the night at the lighthouse.”
“Oooh…” they say in unison, knowing the anniversary of Raven’s death is in a few days, on the night of Mystic Cove’s Harvest Moon Festival.”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, there was a murder, right behind Marney’s Moon pies. It was a woman. We need to stay extra safe on the streets. Who knows what lunatic is out there?”
“Yes,” Willow agrees with her sister. “Since he wasn't caught, it can happen again.”
I don’t say anything. What can I say? I’m carrying so many secrets right now that my conscience doesn’t really like me at the moment. Instead, I bite my lip and look down. “Well, thanks for the compact.” I hold stuff it into the pocket of my skinny jeans.. “I’
Approaching the front door, I hear Nova quietly say to Willow, “She doesn’t think we know.”
I nearly stumble in my steps. I look back and see my aunts who both smile big and wave. I slowly wave back. They don’t know I have good hearing out of my cat form.
“Have a great day, sweetie,” Willow says. “I’m guessing we won’t see you for dinner. And maybe all night again?”
I pause, speechless.
All right, now seems like a good time to spill the beans. They already know, anyway. I march back over to them and say, “Okay, look, I have a confession to make.”
Nova has a knowing twinkle in her eye. “Oh, you do, do you?”
“Go on,” Willow presses her hands together.
“I’m not going to be home much lately.”
They nod with dopey smiles. Why are they reacting like this?
“As you already know, I’m trying to solve Raven’s murder. I have to. She trusts in me to do this.”
Their faces drop. Nova speaks. “Oh no, Chloe, after what I said about Raven’s request breaking the rules of the afterlife, you’re still going to do this?”
Willow continues, “After what we said about the possibility of losing more lives?”
I’m dumbfounded. My jaw drops for a couple beats. “Wait a minute, I thought you knew what I was up to. I heard you say so yourself, Aunt Nova. You forget I’m still a cat with great hearing.”
“Oh that?” she responds. “We were thinking about Julian Pierce.”
“Julian? What?”
“Well, sure,” Willow adds. “The other night, he came by the house and you two talked alone out on the porch. You were so excited to see him. The word on Wildes is that you two had a breakfast date at The Coven’s Cup. And the first thing you asked me today was if he’s been looking for you.”
“Julian and I are not dating,” I say emphatically. “In fact, I’m evading his arrest.”
Now it’s my aunts’ turn to drop their jaws in shock.
“It’s okay,�
� I implore. “It’s over nothing big. I released Sy from Shady Pines is all. The head nurse there was torturing him, so I had to. Julian is now trying to arrest me for illegally releasing him. He found out because Sy’s nurse was found dead behind Marney’s Moon pies.”
Their jaws drop even further.
“Sy is out?” Nova repeats.
“Julian wants to arrest you?”
“The woman you were interviewing in your bedroom yesterday—she’s the one who wound up dead?”
“Sy killed her? She was the murder victim?”
Wow, I can understand how this all sounds so terrible. Because it does. I look over my shoulder from the last outburst. Thankfully, the carpet guys are completely out and are now driving away. “No, he didn’t kill her. Someone else did.”
“Now you’ve got two murders you’re in the midst of?” Aunt Willow shakes her head.
“Well, blame it on the cat side of me and my curiosity,” I say in frustration. “Don’t forget my loyalty to family and desire to justify the innocent.”
They’re silent for a moment. Nova sighs and lifts her compact. “Guess this was perfect timing to get us these. You’re telling us you’re not coming back home until you have answers, right?”
“Julian wants to arrest me. What else can I do?”
The younger witch looks to the older one with wide eyes behind thick glasses. “Sister, we were soooo wrong about them.”
“You two would have made the cutest babies too.” Nova’s honey-brown eyes gaze toward a corner of the office space. “Thick black hair and piercing eyes.”
“They would have, yes. You know I saw this wand over at the toy store that would have been the most darling little gift. The wooden handle is carved so intricately into a sitting frog with his tongue wrapped around the shaft, and a little fly he catches at the very tip. Of course we’d have to wait until he’s older than three years old to be safe. Wouldn’t want to poke one of his blessed eyes out.”
I gawk at their lala-land conversation. “I’m not even interested in Julian, and yet here you both are planning out my first child with him. The perfect toy for when he’s four years old?!”
