1 A Hiss-tory of Magic

by Harper Lin

  If they’d been humans, I could imagine this scene playing out with Treacle striking a punching bag with more grim determination than an ordinary fitness regimen would warrant—with the punching bag being a waterbed or something that could break when punched.

  “Hey, hey—don’t do that!” Peanut Butter told Treacle with a plaintive meow. The rest of the message would have been mind to mind. “Mommy and Daddy don’t like it. They only let me do it because I have blunters on my claws, and you don’t even have those.”

  Treacle replied, “Good thing your Mommy and Daddy aren’t here to stop me, then.”

  Peanut Butter began to puff up his fur with fright. “They’re going to think your scratches are my fault, and they’ll throw me out!”

  “You just said that you have nail blunters, so it couldn’t be you. Go take a catnap.”

  “No! You stop that right now! Just stop it!”

  “You can’t make me.” It wasn’t a challenge from Treacle. It was a statement of fact.

  Well, at least … it was a statement of what Treacle thought was a fact.

  So, Peanut Butter mauled Treacle.

  Jake wasn’t much of an animal lover, let alone a cat person. He wasn’t allergic or, necessarily, cruel to animals. He’d just gathered that it was a normal and sensible surgical procedure to remove a cat’s claws. He thought that it was the same thing as neutering—of course, without knowing that our cats couldn’t care less about never getting to be fathers.

  The declawing issue had been Jake and Bea’s first really big fight, and with Peanut Butter’s personality, all arguments against declawing didn’t apply as much. Peanut Butter was neither a hunter nor a fighter and was even willing to give up his claws to stop the arguing, but Astrid and Bea worried about muscular atrophy among other side effects of something they couldn’t undo. Preventing scratches on the furniture wasn’t worth the risk of ruining the life of a living creature.

  Jake had tried to get Peanut Butter to use the scratching post, and Peanut Butter did his own best to use the scratching post, but he wasn’t always aware of when he started scratching at something, because he mostly scratched at stuff out of anxiety.

  I had discovered these nail caps for cats made out of vinyl, which stuck on with a nontoxic adhesive. Bea used them instead, and everybody was happy. Those were the nail blunters that Peanut Butter was talking about.

  For a timid kitty with nail blunters, Peanut Butter had quite the bite. He was no match for Treacle, who’d had a lifetime of street fighting the feral cats, but the attack came as a surprise to both of them.

  Treacle’s claw caught at Peanut Butter’s ear, enough to scrape the fur but not to draw blood. When Peanut Butter flattened his ears and gave a low, dangerous mrrowl, Treacle batted at Peanut Butter’s head with a sheathed paw.

  Treacle hissed. “What’s gotten into you?!”

  Peanut Butter returned to his insecure anxiety for a moment, then steeled himself. “You tell me. What’s gotten into everybody? Is Marshmallow dying?”

  Treacle quickly hid his alarm. “No. Marshmallow is just old and tired from doing magic.”

  “Why would Marshmallow do so much magic?”

  “I don’t know!” Marshmallow hadn’t told Treacle about the Maid of the Mist appearing in her dream. “Because Marshmallow can do magic? We live with special humans. Magic is a part of life, and you and I will grow into it.”

  “I believe you that it’s true…” Peanut Butter leapt onto the sofa and padded over to the window. “But there’s still something you’re not telling me.”

  Treacle leapt up to Peanut Butter and unnecessarily batted at Peanut Butter’s head again. “Of course we never tell you anything! You’re more prone to dying of fright than a rabbit!”

  “Oww! Stop it!” Peanut Butter leaped back a bit, then licked his paw to clean his face with. “Are any of us going to die in some other way?”

  Treacle thought about it. “I don’t know. It’s important that we all stay safe.”

  Peanut Butter took that much better than Treacle expected. “I want to know what’s trying to hurt us.” Then he added, “I’ll fight to protect my family if I have to.”

  “So would I,” Treacle told him. “But this is for our humans to find out. The best way that we can help them is to stay out of trouble.”

  “You never stay out of trouble,” Peanut Butter grumbled.

  Treacle looked out the window and perked his ears up. “You know what, P.B.? You’re right. The best way to help would be to stay out of trouble…” He bounded over to the cat door. “It’s not the only way to help, though!”

  “Wait for me!” Peanut Butter followed.

  Outside, Treacle regarded Peanut Butter with apprehension. We need to go to the place where the bad thing happened. We have sharper eyes and better ears than humans. Maybe we can know something that they don’t know.

  Then I’ll come with you. Two more eyes and ears should be twice as good!

  Treacle still didn’t move. I might ask the street cats. They’ll test us both harshly.

  I’m a fast runner. That was a brave statement coming from Peanut Butter.

  Stay away from the cars, Treacle advised before heading out.

  Along with how easily they step into the other dimensions, cats understand a lot more about the human world than we give them credit for. At the same time, they don’t complicate things too much.

  A Doomed History

  Meanwhile, Marshmallow and Bea returned to the old Greenstone house and spent the rest of the day there with Astrid. Marshmallow was still on her drip, in a cage, but she was feeling well enough by then to listen. That’s how I know what went on that afternoon.

  Aunt Astrid had been too exhausted to make herself a real breakfast, so Bea called for a pizza delivery and two liters of soda, and then basically just threw together everything she could find from Astrid’s pantry. Her resulting dish was a sort of rigatoni chicken stewed in white gravy, mushrooms, and parboiled root vegetables.

  Aunt Astrid finished off a whole pizza by herself, and she still had room for a couple of bowls of what I guess could be called Bea’s accidental chowder.

  Bea helped herself to a bowl while flipping through the spellbook.

  “For someone who loves books so much, you put them at risk a lot,” Astrid warned, from the soft armchair in which she rested. “That’s one of a kind, bound by hand by Imogen Greenstone more than five hundred years ago. Every word in it brims with arcane power—and, oh, the disaster that a single grease spot could cause—”

  “All right, all right! I’m putting the soup away now, Mom.” Bea set the bowl aside and gave her mother a sincere smile. “I’m glad that you have the energy to lecture me again.”

  She continued to flip through the supple vellum pages, reading unfaded ink. It didn’t feel like a magic book. Just as I could sense the magic coming off the necklace that I’d found, even referring or symbolizing real magic can make a kind of portal around any item for the other dimension to leak through. It speaks to the bodies of other people in the other dimensions, telling them to be ready to change their minds—and once people change where their minds are at, then the otherworld has you.

  Whoever had written the Greenstone spellbook took extra care to tie magic walls to the cover and pages. The spells would be powerful enough to break through the walls if they were read aloud or performed, but just reading them silently as Bea was doing wouldn’t release anything too dangerous.

  Bea read on with growing incredulity. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “These spells can’t be real. Bringing the dead back to the prime of their life, using only a pound of bone from the deceased? Growing back all of the bones and the organs and the muscles, after which the resurrected would have eternal youth?”

  “Keep reading.”

  Bea did. “Huh. This ritual required a coven of thirteen, and it sounds to me as if magic burnout took the lives of twelve of them—even though they took every precaution over the
course of the nine months required to bring the subject back to life.”

  Astrid hummed an affirmative through a mouthful of chowder, swallowed, and chased it down with a gulp of soda. “That’s two of the reasons why we couldn’t do that to Ted.”

  Bea flipped the page over again and found the other reason, written in a version of English older than standardized spelling. When Bea deciphered it, she balked. “They made a zombie! A violent undead cannibal!” She slammed the book shut, set it on the table, and jumped back from it as if it were about to explode.

  Aunt Astrid was unfazed. “Don’t be afraid of the book itself, Bea. You know what they say. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

  Bea objected, “When that doomed history is written out like a how-to manual, then it’s more like those who do learn from history could have that problem! This is dark stuff, Mom. If it’s at risk of falling into the wrong hands, we should destroy it—shouldn’t we? It’s not as if there’s anything useful in there, anyway. It’s all stuff that can cause fatal magic burnout, and not one remedy for actual magic burnout! Not one!”

  “No, no, no,” Aunt Astrid said, beckoning her daughter over. She took Bea’s hands in hers and added seriously, “There are some blank pages, still. Those dark spells were written for a dark age, but you’re an intelligent and kind young woman. You’re a healer, too. You could be the one to add that magic burnout reversal spell, one day, to that book.”

  Bea shook her head. “I could never!”

  Aunt Astrid peered at her in that amused sort of way that the wise gaze at smart alecks. “Only those who have lived forever and know the meaning of the word ‘never’ should be allowed to say it. Listen, Bea… Magic will always be around, lurking at the edges of the known world. It will always be powerful, but the question is whether it will also be wild. The book answers such a question with, ‘No, not if anybody in the Greenstone family can help it!’ That’s why we must keep it.”

  There came a knock on their door.

  “That might not be Cath,” Bea said, taking the book and handing it to Astrid. “We need to keep this hidden.”

  “In plain sight,” Astrid said. “You know my style.”

  “If it’s Jake, remember that he likes books as much as I do. Also, he doesn’t read silently.”

  Not when he read something interesting or difficult to pronounce, at least.

  “Oh. Right.” Aunt Astrid shifted to hide the book under the seat cushion.

  It had been a good thing, too, because it was Jake at the door. Bea greeted him warmly and asked about the investigation. He made his way upstairs, where he said that he’d bring them up to speed, but first he asked after Aunt Astrid’s health.

  “Low blood pressure,” Aunt Astrid lied. “It gets worse with age, but it’s nothing serious.”

  Bea offered him a lunch of accidental chowder. “Sorry, sweetheart, you missed the pizza.” She crunched at the carrots in her own bowl of chowder. “And I miss Ted already. He knew how to make a potage.”

  Even the simplest dish of his would have a dash of an herb or spice to make it something more than ordinary.

  “The whole town will miss him,” Jake said, “Anybody who’d ever been to the Brew-Ha-Ha, anyway. Darla Castellan was inconsolable.”

  “Histrionics,” Aunt Astrid said dismissively.

  “Oh, Jake wouldn’t fall for that! Would you, sweetheart?”

  Jake shrugged. “She might have been inconsolable for the wrong reasons, but I’d say that it was honest grief. You can’t string along a dead man.”

  Bea blinked, processing this. “Darla … stringing along … Ted?”

  Jake sat down with his bowl of chicken chowder. “Yeah. Apparently, they were dating. Off and on. She must have preferred that kind of melodrama.” He ate a spoonful. “This isn’t bad.”

  He caught the flabbergasted expressions on Astrid and Bea’s faces. “He never talked about his life outside of work, then? I was hoping that one of you could confirm or discredit something I learned from Miss Castellan about Ted’s troubled family history.”

  Aunt Astrid was wide eyed with disbelief. “No,” she said, “He never mentioned any of this to us.”

  “He must have known that Cath would never let him hear the end of it,” Bea remarked.

  “I guess his good taste stayed literal,” Jake said. At that moment, Bea’s cell phone rang. Jake checked the number on the screen for her. “It’s Nadia LaChance.”

  He handed the phone over to Bea, who answered it with, “Hey, girl!”

  “Please control your sister.”

  “Sis… You mean Cath? Is that what this is about?”

  “Yeah. Cousin. Whatever! I hate her so much today. Do you know that she started yelling at Ruby for no reason and my useless sister apologized to her? Ruby even invited her to lunch!”

  Bea flinched. “I hate to break it to you, Nadia, but there’s nothing to be done about Cath when she’s on a mission. And this time, it’s actually important.”

  Nadia swore and hung up.

  Aunt Astrid groaned. “Cath wouldn’t. Not in her…” she glanced at Jake and lowered her voice “…condition.”

  “Blood pressure issues run in the family,” Bea told Jake, which wasn’t a lie but wasn’t an explanation.

  Jake accepted it anyway. “I’d rather Cath not interfere with the investigation, of course. Samberg will slap the cuffs on some poor kid for jaywalking—you know how I’ve been complaining about that—but when it’s serious like this, he could be the best person on the case. If he could keep his mind on the case, that is.” Jake gave something between a smile of amusement and veiled chagrin.

  Bea read the expression instantly. “You think that Detective Samberg has a crush on Cath? They only just met yesterday!”

  “Oh, no, not a crush. Samberg went to follow the money—” Jake tried to gloss over it. “Insurance fraud attempt took an unfortunate turn for the homicidal. That was Samberg’s theory. That’s how he thinks. I know it’s ridiculous. He tells me that my personal life compromises my investigation skills, and we part ways.”

  Aunt Astrid and Bea murmured their encouragement.

  Jake held a hand up for silence, maybe partly out of humility but mostly out of excitement. “Cath? Knocked him off that trail in under a minute. Samberg can only be head over heels in love with her.”

  Aunt Astrid gave a long, drawn-out “Ohh…” the way that mothers do when the young women they’ve always taken care of find someone special.

  Bea waved her hands in refusal, almost laughing. “Enough! Enough, please, no more relationship gossip! Tell us about Ted’s family.”

  “I don’t know how much I’m allowed to tell. It’s only Miss Castellan’s statement, but…” Jake sighed. “Ted Lanier might have gotten caught up some organized crime syndicate and run up some debts, and maybe they took it out on his son.”

  “Is that why Min Park is your prime suspect?” Bea asked. “He’s Asian, so he must be a member of the yakuza? That’s so racist!”

  “My wife is psychic,” Jake remarked.

  “No!” Bea’s voice pitched high with a momentary panic. “Cath called me while I was at the vet’s, that’s all. She’d heard from Detective Samberg that Min was being held there.”

  “Interrogated,” Jake corrected. “Not jailed. We’ve found no connection between Min Park and organized crime. None at all. We only have witnesses that put him near the Brew-Ha-Ha at the time of the fire.”

  Aunt Astrid objected, “The Parks have always been upstanding members of our community. Mrs. Park was the first person to check in on us when the fire brigade came.”

  “Was she?” Jake’s voice sharpened.

  There was an awkward silence between that and Aunt Astrid’s answer. “Yes.”

  “That’s interesting.” Jake set his bowl down. He’d only had a couple of spoonfuls. Distractedly, he said, “Well, that was delicious, but I’ve got to get back to work now.”

  “
Jake, wait!” Bea said. “I have to tell you something…”

  Aunt Astrid kept silent.

  Bea went over to embrace her husband. “Please stay safe,” she begged, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “Don’t get shot. Don’t get held hostage in a warehouse somewhere by gangsters in suits. Please come back home safe to me.”

  “Of course I will. I promise.” Jake returned her embrace. After a moment, he wondered aloud, “Would this thing that you’re doing be equally convincing to Cath?”

  “Nope,” Bea answered, accurately. She pulled away, more cavalier. “Cath’s a force of nature. You’ve just got to deal with her as she comes. Good luck!”

  They exchanged “I love yous,” and then Jake left. Bea saw him out the front door.

  When she returned, Aunt Astrid breathed a sigh of relief. “You really had me going for a moment, there, Kitten.”

  “This is so wrong.” Bea hugged herself and ambled to the window to watch Jake cross the street. “We can’t throw the Parks under the bus, ruin their lives, and frame innocent people—just so that we can keep our secret! Maybe if Jake knew, he could solve the case for real and make a cover story for us.”

  “Maybe,” Aunt Astrid allowed. “Maybe not. Would you be so cruel as to burden him with the same double life as ours, and him without any magical talents?”

  “I just wish I could do something.”

  At that, Aunt Astrid suggested, “Act normal. Call the LaChance girl, make amends, and go out with your friends tonight. Tell them about my low blood pressure and Cath’s worrying penchant for vigilante justice.” When Bea looked doubtful, Aunt Astrid added, “That will help us all more than you know. I’ll be here with Marshmallow. Do you really want to be running around and yelling at people with Cath? How much of a good cop can you really be?”

  Joy Ride

  I didn’t know that any of this was going on as I headed for the police station. Out the corner of my eye, a black car slunk up beside the sidewalk with the window on the passenger side down. Blake Samberg peered at me and waved from the driver’s seat. The car slowed to a stop as I approached to stick my head into the window.