“He must be casting spells as he walks,” I thought out loud, still in a whisper.
“Spells to help him walk?” Luna asked, but I shook my head.
“He’s not that old,” I said. “And nobody else is out where he’s headed at this time of day. They’re getting breakfast, brunch, or lunch, or just sleeping in. If I had to guess,” I started, lowering my eyes when I saw him start to glance over his shoulder, “I’d say he’s casting spells to let him know if people are following him.”
“Why would he do that? Can’t he just move quietly? That’s what I do when I want to steal treats from the cabinet,” Luna said, and I cast her a dirty look. “What? With the portions you serve, it’s a justifiable crime!”
I looked back to Elton and bit my lip. I had to follow him, but he was taking the exact measures you’d need to keep me from doing just that. “If it’s the spell I’m thinking of, it’ll tell you when there’s someone following you,” I said thoughtfully.
“I could follow him,” Luna offered brightly. “I’m pretty good at that!”
“You’re pretty good at getting distracted and following other cats,” I said. “No way.”
“Also a justifiable crime!” Luna protested, and I rolled my eyes.
“That does give me an idea, though,” I said, looking up at a nearby tree. A squirrel peered back down at us, an acorn between his paws as he twitched his nose. “A human would trigger the spell, but if I’m not a human, well, there’s a thought.”
Luna looked at me with a little surprise. “You know shapeshifting spells?”
“They’re not too hard, just a little dangerous,” I said, tilting my head back and forth. “For example, you better steer clear of me,” I added with a pointed look at Luna
“Why?”
I nodded up at the squirrel, who was still peering down at us. I felt like he was being vaguely judgmental. “I’m thinking something small, agile, and able to move without being noticed.”
“A cat!” Luna chirped excitedly. I scowled down at her.
“You’re a lot less stealthy than you think,” I said. “Besides, a cat would be noticed jumping from limb to limb.”
Luna stared at me in confusion for a moment before noticing the squirrel and widening her eyes. “Ohhh, squirrel.”
“Mmhm,” I confirmed, “which is why you need to get out of here, I don’t want you getting any funny ideas, Miss Carnivore.”
“What are you insinuating?” Luna asked with the most indignant voice she could muster, “Chase my own human around? What kind of cat do you take me for?”
“A hunting one,” I said, gently bopping her on the nose, and she shook herself off and flicked her tail at me as she headed toward the bushes nearby.
“Well, fine, I’ll go enjoy a well-deserved nap while you do your weird little woodland creature thing.”
I rolled my eyes as Luna vanished from sight. I pointed my finger and took a breath, trying to remember the spell. “Sciurusis transformoroa, viginti minuta,” I whispered while pointing at myself, hoping nobody could see me. The first part was the spell itself, the second just a timer for twenty minutes. I couldn’t exactly cast spells with squirrel paws, after all.
It was a bizarre feeling. Getting smaller gave me the feeling of vertigo, but like I was falling into myself. It made me dizzy enough that all the other feelings were just a big, furry blur. I was vaguely aware of my limbs changing, warm fur surrounding my body, and feeling a lot more balanced thanks to a bushy tail behind me. Clothes just kind of melded into the new shape, thankfully, and in the span of about a second and a half I was an ordinary western gray squirrel.
Heck yeah.
I sat up and looked around with bulging eyes. Everything looked a lot bigger and a lot more accessible all at the same time, and my heart was racing. Being a squirrel long-term must have been stressful business.
“Hey, idiot!” I heard from above. I looked up to see the squirrel from above now glaring down at me.
“What?” I barked back up.
“You’re stupid!” he called back down at me. “Go away! Leave my tree alone!”
I had a bizarre impulse to call him the son of a marmot and steal his nut, but I reined it in. “Fine!”
“Fine!”
“Fine!” I barked back with a flick of my tail as I bounded off after Elton. I leapt up onto the nearest tree that didn’t belong to that other jerk. It didn’t hit me until a little bit later that I’d done all this with such ease that it was like I had been born doing it. I’d have to be careful - animal instincts could get in the way of thinking clearly. I was suddenly very grateful I didn’t live in a neighborhood with cars on the roads.
My claws let me bound up the tree and up to the branches, and I took off after Elton with long, graceful leaps. I tried to stick to thick branches so I wouldn’t make much noise, but as I kept my eyes on him, I took a nearly blind leap and realized I was headed for a thin branch that wasn’t even thicker than my tail.
It bent alarmingly as my weight fell on it, and I kicked my legs in terror as I scrambled up and hurried on my way, catching up to Elton.
Tailing him was easy once I caught up to him. Every now and then I’d stop to inspect a funny spot on a tree or chase a bug around while his slow pace got a few feet ahead of me, and I’d eventually snap out of it and hurry after him.
I found myself getting unbelievably frustrated by how slow the guy was moving after just a few minutes. After after all, the spell was only going to last for twenty minutes. The anticipation was making me shake.
Feeling like an animal was kinda weird.
Expecting Elton to head to the boardwalk, I bounded up ahead of him, but I was surprised to see him taking a turn and heading toward the woods. A little wooded area off the beaten path, which looked like the kind of place teenagers would go to drink after dark seemed to be where he was headed.
I flicked an ear and stared down at him, fidgeting a little before I took off after him and made my way into the woods.
Almost immediately, I jumped into a tree near a big pile of sticks and leaves conspicuously taking up a nook in the branches. I was trying to puzzle out what it was when I noticed the couple of pristine, white eggs sitting in it.
Then came the fluttering of wings and angry squawking.
“Aaaahhhhh! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I barked as I bounded away from the furious mama bird fluttering around me, pecking at me with a beak that looked more like a lance with my squirrel-vision. I preferred not to lose an eye this afternoon, so I hauled my tail away without a moment to waste.
I finally found a hollowed-out knot in a tree that I hid inside, peeking out to see the bird hovering angrily at the exit for a moment before zipping off. I let out a sigh of relief. Being an animal was hard work.
Emerging from the knot, I peered around to find Elton again, but thankfully, he wasn’t far - just through a few trees up ahead. I climbed over to get a good look at him, and what I saw made me crouch low with wide eyes and a flicking tail.
Elton wasn’t alone in the little clearing he’d come to.
The other person there was another senior. And I’d recognize that streak of lightning-blue hair anywhere.
It was Gertrude Bowman.
“Oh, you and that old cane trick,” Gertrude said with a warm smile on her face, matching that of Elton’s, with an added touch of mischief.
“Can’t be too careful, you know how the old geezers around here can get when it comes to nosing around,” he said in a low voice, tossing the cane to the ground as he approached her.
“I think you just like showing off your guile,” she said with a giggle.
“What can I say,” he said in a low tone. “There’s a girl out in the woods I’m trying to impress.”
“Oh, Elton,” she said with a laugh just as he reached her, slipping his hands around her waist and pulling her into him and peppering her cheek with kisses. They were easygoing, lighthearted, and familiar, like two people who
were very comfortable around each other, and Gertrude had to struggle to keep her youthful laughter low as they flirted with each other.
Oh my goodness.
But just as my mind started racing with the implications of what I was looking at, I heard a snap behind me that made my heart skip a beat. My head whirled around, and I froze.
Luna was crouching on the branch of a tree behind me, her ears back and her eyes dilated. She was on the hunt. For me.
This was not good.
Luna pounced with a feral snarl just before I dove down from my perch to the next branch below, and the shadow over me told me Luna was hot on my tail when I kicked off and zoomed to the next branch. Fortunately for me, Luna was a lot heavier and a lot worse at this than I was, so I aimed for thin branches as I darted away from her.
“LUNA! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I barked back at her as I zipped just out of her reach. I’d always been staunchly against declawing cats all my life, but two seconds of this was giving me second thoughts.
I landed on a branch that could just barely support me, and I raced up it in time to feel Luna’s weight hit it behind me. The squall of terror told me my plan had worked. As I felt the branch sinking down under me, however, I realized it had worked too well. The whole branch broke, and both of us plummeted to the floor of the woods in the dry leaves.
I was on my feet and scrambling away in half a second, but Luna was hot on my tail. I had no idea where I was taking her, except that it was in the opposite direction of the old couple, and I desperately needed to shake her for just a few seconds to restore my form. Surely the twenty minutes were just about up. I tried twisting and turning around a few trees and even bounding up one before faking her out and diving back to the ground, but Luna had endurance on her side.
“I swear by the moon I’m not feeding you for a week if you don’t-” I started, but I had to cut myself short as I darted in the opposite direction to dodge those razor-sharp claws and a fearsome meow.
The world rushed around me as I bounded forward along the forest floor. I darted past leaves, mushrooms, and ferns with my heart racing, and then I saw my chance: a fallen, rotting log that was hollowed-out and far too small for a cat, but just the right size for me.
I made a break for it, and as soon as I was inside, I bounded over a teenager’s stash of bourbon and raced to the deepest part of it I could reach when I heard a THUMP from behind me, then silence.
I turned and saw Luna wiggling, having gotten stuck in the log, howling indignantly as she struggled to keep chasing me down the log, to no avail.
It was then that I felt my fur start to feel a little loose and my tail twitch ominously, and I realized that my twenty minutes were up, and not a second too late. Looking around in a panic, I tried to hurry for the exit at the other side of the log, but my limbs were already shooting out in every direction, my body expanding, and I heard a wet crack as I felt my shoulders break the rotten log all around me, splitting the thing open like a ripe melon and leaving me prone on the forest floor. I stood up awkwardly and staggered to get my balance, grumbling as I brushed lichen out of my hair. That was when I heard Luna.
“Geeze, you didn’t have to be rude about it,” she complained up at me, using a paw to brush the dirt and wood out of her fur.
“Excuse me, jerk!” I snapped, stomping over to the rotting remains where Luna was, grabbing her by the scruff and glaring into her face. “What in the name of the moon was that?!”
“Sorry, yeesh!” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m a cat. I can’t ignore my instincts. You looked like such easy prey, moving around as gracefully as if you had a broken leg.”
I just dropped Luna and huffed, marching off back toward the road. I heard her trotting up behind me as if nothing had happened.
“You know, if you’d killed me while I was in squirrel form, there’d be no one left to take care of you, right?”
“Eh, I’d manage,” she said nonchalantly. “Obviously there are plenty of squirrels around I could catch.”
“Not with those hunting skills, you wouldn’t,” I said with a scoff.
“Oh, come on, you saw that other squirrel, the others aren’t half as smart as you are. Besides, if you hadn’t turned back into a human I’d- Arti, are you even listening to me?”
I wasn’t. I was biting my lip, thinking about the encounter I’d witnessed between Elton and Gertrude back at the woods.
“Hold that thought,” I said absently, changing my course after a quick glance around to see where we were. “We need to go back to the Senior’s Center. I’ve got an idea!”
Chapter 15
“Where we going?” Luna asked for about the millionth time.
“Luna, if you don’t stop asking me that…”
“It’s just a question!” she retorted, pouting. “Yeesh, are you still mad about that whole chasing-a-squirrel thing?”
I rounded on her with a surge of fury. “Yes! Of course I am! You weren’t just chasing a squirrel, you were chasing me. And I didn’t turn into a squirrel for your entertainment, Lu. I did it purely so that I could do a little reconnaissance mission and spy on Elton and Gertrude. But no. You just had to ruin it, didn’t you?”
She blinked up at me with genuine sorrow in her eyes and I knew I had probably gone a little too far. Sometimes it was hard to remember that she wasn’t a human, after all, and so she didn’t quite have full control over her feline instincts. As far as she was concerned, the squirrel chase was no big deal. She was ready to forget all about it. Naturally, she wouldn’t understand why it upset me so much, why it scared me.
“I already apologized, Artemis. I don’t know what else I can say,” she said quietly, hanging her little black head. I heaved a sigh and knelt down in front of her, forcing myself to push aside my anger and annoyance. She couldn’t help it. She was still just a cat at heart, even though our connection was closer to that of two human best friends. I couldn’t hold this against her, even if I wanted to.
“I know. I understand. Just, stop asking where we’re going all the time like you’re a bratty little kid on a road trip, okay? If you just wait a little, I’ll tell you where we’re going,” I said slowly, scratching behind her left ear. She looked up at me with those round green eyes and I felt my heart swell with fondness. I could never stay mad at her, even after she quite literally threatened my life.
“Oh,” I added. “You’re also not allowed to whine and moan when I do tell you where we’re headed, alright? You wanted to tag along. You asked for this. So you don’t get to be a big baby about where this case leads us.”
She winced. “Oh, I can tell from what you just said that I know where we’re going, after all. I’ll try not to whine about it too much, but I do have to say that after this case is solved, I never, ever want to visit the Senior’s Center again.”
I smiled. “Got it. And don’t worry, I don’t have any desire to go hang out there once this is all said and done. After we put this case to bed, it’s over. We won’t have to go there anymore.”
“Oh, thank the moon for that,” she said.
“Now, hop on,” I instructed her, pointing to my shoulder. She bounded up my arm to curl around my neck, purring contentedly. I stood up and walked back through the woods quietly, trying not to let the dead orange and brown leaves crunch too loudly under my boots. There was no doubt in my mind that Elton and Gertrude were long gone by now. And judging by the secrecy of their meeting, I had a strong feeling that they had probably gone straight back to their own separate lives after their short-lived tryst in the woods. What else was there for them to do here? The woods were quiet and quaint, but these were old people we were talking about. Not love-struck hormonal teenagers hooking up under a willow tree. My instincts told me that Elton was probably headed back to the Senior’s Center to check back in. I doubted that the center’s staff would let him out for any extended length of time. He couldn’t have written on that registry sign-in sheet that he was just clocking out for a little while to
go hook up with his secret lover.
So he had to have written in some kind of excuse, an errand to run, maybe. Something brief and easy so they would have no reason to suspect his absense. And Gertrude probably did the same thing. She was a little younger than him, I thought, and in better health. So maybe she was able to justify being out of the center for longer on her own. But either way, they both would have had to fill in something bogus on the sign-in sheet. Security would have some excuse from them as to why they were out.
By now, one or both of them was probably back at the center already. When I checked my cell phone I saw that the time had really flown since I first saw Elton and Gertrude kissing in the deep, dark woods. I guess time went by pretty quickly when one was as small as a squirrel. Plus, the genuine, life-or-death, fight-or-flight mortal terror of being chased by a cat was enough to really throw your mind for a loop. It had been twenty, thirty minutes. I felt another rush of anger toward Luna for knocking me off my trail. But I had to remind myself: it was not her fault. That was just the nature of a cat: she saw a squirrel, she chased it. It didn’t matter if she logically knew it was me or not. Just the same way sa I couldn’t change the way the full moon affected my instincts and emotions, she couldn’t stop her catlike reflexes from kicking in at the sight of a small animal.
Making my way to my broom I hopped on, kicking off into the air with my mind still running in circles. It was so strange. I never would have guessed that a kind, affable woman like Gertrude could be carrying on some secret affair with the grieving beau of a dead woman. How long had this union been going on? How long had Elton been lying to Susanna, hiding the truth from her and everyone else as he pretended to be so in love with her and so heartbroken at her sudden passing? I had to hand it to him, he was one hell of an actor. The way he was shouting at and threatening Tony Byrd the other day in the rec room was totally convincing. Were those real tears he shed for Susanna, or just a remarkable ability to cry on cue? Or perhaps it was a magic spell he’d cast on himself, to make his portrayal of Grieving Old Man convincing to any audience, even me.
Witching for the Best Page 11
