The Scariest Tail (A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 4)

by Harper Lin

  However, I was learning that sometimes I really just wanted to tell people to shut up and sip their coffee. Sorry you had to wait five minutes extra to get your tea, and I didn’t mean to forget the sprig of lavender. It’s just that we’re short-handed, and you understand. Well, if you feel you must go to our competitor The Night Owl, then by all means, do that.

  Yeah, right. Where were those black-eyed kids when I needed them?

  But Aunt Astrid’s home was a plethora of good vibes. As soon as I walked in her door after locking up the café, I could smell the sage and mugwort wafting through the place.

  On the stove, in an adorable black kettle, simmered the fragrant spices that were saturating not just the air, but all of us with their magical powers. Sage, of course, chased away evil bugaboos. Mugwort, or sailor’s tobacco as it was sometimes called, enhanced the powers of amulets and crystals, which could be seen in the bubbling, boiling water at the bottom of the kettle.

  We would each wear one of those. They were not pulled out all the time. Amulets were like glow-in-the-dark stickers. In the right conditions, they would store up power. Then when we needed them, they would glow for a good while, giving off light, energy, a foul smell at the enemy, ear-piercing frequencies only certain spirits could hear, or sometimes a ground-level vibration that drove the enemy mad. But it was temporary. More than one good witch had gotten her lumps because she hadn’t prepared her amulet correctly or did it in a hurry.

  Aunt Astrid, with Marshmallow at her side, would face out her various windows at certain times of the day, calling in all directions for the powers of nature to help us with our task. It had to be done three days in a row in order for our powers to be strong enough to do battle with those nasties on Butternut Avenue.

  It was my turn to address the western skies and spirits in the trees to awaken them from their fall rest and ask for their assistance. I liked incantations, and although they were only used in dire circumstances like ours, I enjoyed the conversation, however one-sided, with these elements of nature.

  Speaking with animals was still a blessing, but some of them didn’t care to talk back because they probably found my queries to be odd and a little intrusive. But the trees and the wind seemed eager to relate with me, and I felt their strength.

  I would keep this up as the moon crossed the sky, and I had to stand at attention for the whole thing. That was hard because I had been on my feet all day. But the spirits appreciated this kind of reverence, and it wasn’t a ritual done for comfort. It was done because somewhere, something had upset the balance of our dimension. It wasn’t just a lost or misguided entity. It was like a plague of locusts, and if we didn’t stop them in the early stages of their infiltration, we might never get a toehold again. Taking a deep breath, calming my mind and pushing out all the stress of the day, I began to recite the passages.

  Aunt Astrid was hovering over a bowl of water, with three white candles around her, one on her left, one on her right, and the other directly in front of her. She would also occasionally throw a pinch of salt into the air or sprinkle it over the open flames of the candles, causing them to glow pink or green or even a dark blue.

  Everything we were doing had a purpose, and although our rituals may have looked like random actions—shots in the dark to protect us from what we knew we were going to have to face—we knew the strength each was bringing to the fight.

  I had started to repeat the words just over a whisper when I heard Jake walk in.

  He walked up to Bea and kissed her sweetly on the cheek. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he asked.

  “No.” She smiled. “We’ve got a nice assembly line of magic going on here.”

  “And what is this for, again?” Jake asked innocently.

  “Just to chase those black-eyed children from Wonder Falls,” Aunt Astrid said. It wasn’t a lie. But Jake didn’t need to know that we had to take the fight to them. “We’re almost finished. Just one more night for the whole thing to be complete.”

  “And then what?” Jake asked.

  “Then we’ll have the muscle we need to trap them and send them back to wherever they came from,” Aunt Astrid said. “Or at least send them away from here.”

  “Good,” Jake responded. “I’m starting to get a little lonely in the house all by myself.” He slipped his arm around Bea and pulled her close to him.

  She let out a playful giggle as she elbowed him to a moderately safer distance from her. “How was work today?” she asked.

  “Oh, gosh. Well, how was work? Well, it was confusing today, to say the least.” Jake quietly pulled up a chair next to the stove where Bea watched the bubbling kettle. Every once in a while, she dropped in another couple of fresh sprigs of sage.

  “What happened?” she asked. I leaned in their direction to hear what Jake had to say.

  “Well, you remember our friend Shawn Eshelman? The guy who we thought had something to do with the Roys? Well, we had to arrest him.”

  “What?” Bea gasped. “Why?”

  “He had been seen sneaking around the Roy house with an ax.”

  “What?” Bea’s hand flew to her throat.

  I turned from the window and looked at Jake.

  “What did he have that for?” Bea whispered so as not to totally disrupt my concentration.

  “We aren’t sure. But he looked like a different person since the last time we saw him. He said he was back at the old place he used to rent and that he wasn’t going to hurt anyone. But you don’t carry an ax around like some random person might ask you to chop them some wood.”

  Jake went on to say that the Eshelman kid hadn’t bathed for a couple of days. He had obviously been sleeping in the clothes he was wearing, and with the weather getting colder, staying in that drafty, empty house had given him a nagging cough. Had he not had that cough, Mrs. Roy might not have heard him skulking around her house.

  “But the weird thing was his eyes,” Jake said. “They were half-crazed.”

  “Was he off his medication again?” Bea asked.

  “Yes. The problem now is that he won’t be sent to a psych ward. He’s got to go to jail, and I’m afraid a guy like him will get worse there before he ever gets better.”

  “That poor boy,” Bea said, shaking her head. “And as if Lisa Roy hasn’t been through enough already.”

  “Yeah.” Jake blew out a breath. “Talk about an unlucky streak.”

  I nodded in agreement but said nothing, paying homage to the setting sun and hibernating trees.

  “Yeah, it was a mess,” Jake continued. “The Roy family is all in an uproar about it. Eshelman is being held on bond for criminal trespass as well as breaking a restraining order and carrying an ax with intent to cause bodily harm. It took Blake and me hours to get the paperwork started. He told me to come home for a while. He went to check out the house where Eshelman was staying again to see if—”

  My blood ran cold. I whipped around in a panic. “What did you say?” My mouth had gone completely dry.

  “Cath, wait!” Bea snapped, her own eyes wide with worry. “You have to finish…”

  “Blake,” Jake said. “He went to that house on Butternut to—”

  “Did he go alone?” I snapped.

  “Well, probably. Unless he took a uniform, but I doubt it. He likes to do things a certain way without interrup—”

  I dropped the book I had been reading from and dashed toward the front door. I reached for the knob just as Aunt Astrid took hold of my hand.

  “We can’t stop now. We’ve got to finish what we started.” Her voice was kind and soft but firm. I saw the sadness in her eyes as she stood by this awful decision. “We can’t help him. Not if we stop.”

  “We can’t just let him go in there! It’ll kill him!” I wrenched my hand free, tore open the door, and ran outside. I jumped off the porch and reached my car in what felt like only three or four strides. A moment later, I had the engine roaring to life.

  Ask the Devil


  I swore I heard my aunt calling after me. It broke my heart what I had just done. All that work and all those hours were for nothing. I had broken the chain and for what? For a guy who probably thought I was a jerk and annoying and stupid.

  Just because I had caught him staring at me when he’d come to get his free coffee from Bea, or because he had kept our stakeout a secret from my family, didn’t mean he had any feelings toward me other than annoyance.

  But I knew what my feelings were toward him. Maybe I couldn’t say them out loud. Maybe it was just puppy love, but I couldn’t bear the thought of the nasty creatures in that house tormenting him, leaving him feeling hopeless, scratching up his mind like they’d done to Jake.

  No. I just needed to get him out of there. And maybe I would beat him to it. Maybe I would get there just as he was pulling in the driveway, and I could talk him out of going inside that God-forsaken structure. Yeah. Sure. He might not even be there yet.

  Then I could go back to Aunt Astrid’s and apologize, and we could start the whole thing all over. Three more days. Heck, Halloween wasn’t for another six days. We had plenty of time.

  Right. Okay. As long as Blake hadn’t gone into the house yet, I still had a chance to make things right.

  But then I was struck with another scare. What if I couldn’t find the house again? Prestwick was such a twisty-turny kind of place, and I could get lost like I had before. Plus, it was dark outside, and I wasn’t that familiar with the area in the daylight, let alone when all the shadows covered the landmarks and street signs.

  “You could ask the devil,” I said out loud to myself. The thought made my stomach drop to my toes. I knew Darla could tell me. If I sped up her driveway, I could ask her for the directions just to make sure. But what were the chances she would tell me? After I had basically told her to shove off where Blake Samberg was concerned, she would never help me. In fact, she had probably already been plotting revenge in a dozen different ways, four languages, and two time zones.

  “For Blake,” I said out loud. “For Blake, I’ll stare into the face of the Gorgon.”

  I hit the gas and tore through town, pulling into the Prestwick neighborhood with a squeal of tires, leaving skid marks on the pavement.

  Darla’s house was easy to find, and I pulled into her long driveway only to slam on the brakes at the top of the hill.

  “Please let her be home,” I said as I hopped out of the car, ran to the door, and began pounding away. “That’ll be the first and last time I ever say that.”

  After pushing the doorbell repeatedly and pounding on the door, I finally heard Darla yelling from inside.

  “Who the hell is making all that noise?” she yelled in a high-pitched, whiny voice.

  “Darla! Darla! It’s Cath Greenstone! Open the door!”

  “Who?”

  “You heard me, Darla! Please! Just open the door!”

  For a second, I thought I was going to have to kick it in. With the adrenaline that was pushing me along, I was pretty sure I could have done it. But I was glad I didn’t have to find out.

  Darla opened the door wearing silk pajamas and a green mud mask on her face. “What do you want?”

  “Darla, I’m sorry to bother you so late, but I need your help.”

  There it was—the grin of a cat that had a mouse wounded and cornered. “Oh, you do? Really? Isn’t that funny?”

  “Darla, please. I need to know where 3494 Butternut is. I always get lost going through—”

  “I don’t know where that is,” she snapped, making it painfully obvious she knew exactly what I was talking about. Folding her arms over her chest, she glowered at me.

  “Darla, a man’s life is at stake. Please just help me this one time and…”

  “And what? What’s in it for me?”

  “Oh my God, Darla! What do you want? I just need directions, not a kidney! What is it that you want?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You know.” If anyone deserved a punch in the face, I thought it was her.

  “Now? You want me to arrange for you to meet Detective Samberg now?” I felt my eyes sting with tears. “Jeez, all right. I’ll introduce you to him. Now tell me where that house is!”

  She took a step closer to me, put her left hand on the door frame and the other on the open door itself. “No. I just wanted to hear you give in. Now get off my property before I call the cops.” Slam!

  I stood there, trembling with anger and frustration as I stared at the front door she had just shut in my face. I quickly made my way back to my car, fully aware that Darla was watching me through the crack in the curtains, enjoying my tears as she had always done in high school.

  I peeled out of her driveway and got back onto the road, heading in the direction I thought was right.

  As I tried to calm myself enough to focus, I saw two blinking lights off to the side of the road. Reflectors. A jogger. Maybe that person knew the neighborhood.

  Quickly rolling down the window, I pulled up alongside the jogger in the stretch pants. He nearly jumped into the bushes as I stopped the car, his earbuds blocking out the world around him.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said. “Do you know how to get to 3494 Butternut?”

  “Sure.” He smiled after he realized I wasn’t any kind of threat. He told me to take a left and another left and then a right and I’d run right into it. That sounded correct.

  “Thanks!” I yelled. I repeated the directions over to myself as I drove away. As I looked in the rearview mirror, I was surprised I didn’t see the man. I looked in my side mirror, thinking perhaps he had crossed the street. Nothing. Finally, I turned around in my seat and confirmed there was no man behind me. No jogger.

  What the heck was happening? I could have sat there and turned that instance over and over in my head, but I thought I would save it for the next day instead.

  “If there is a tomorrow for me,” I said, letting out a sad little chuckle. “I’ll do like Scarlett O’Hara. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

  In my headlights, I saw the dilapidated For Sale sign and the cobblestone driveway. Looking at the clock on my dashboard, I saw it had only taken me twenty minutes to get there, including the stop at Darla’s. I still might have made it. I still might have beat Blake there.

  But as I sped up, I nearly collided with his car that was parked sideways across the width of the driveway near the gate, which had remained open since Aunt Astrid, Bea, and I had made our quick getaway. There was no squad car, which meant he had most likely come by himself.

  “Let him be in the car,” I said aloud to myself. I shone my high beams at the car, hoping to see his silhouette in the driver’s seat. But it was empty.

  Octopus

  “Of course not!” I yelled to myself. “It can’t be easy!”

  I threw the car in park and shut off the engine. Holding my breath, I listened for sounds or movement around me. Nothing moved. I got out of the car and heard crickets in the distance. But there was no noise around this house. The reality of what I was about to do sank in. This house, with its open mouth in the basement and wretched visions, was waiting for Shawn Eshelman or anyone else to walk through the door.

  “I don’t even have Aunt Astrid’s protection spell. No sacred amulet. Not even a lucky penny,” I grumbled as I looked down the long, dark passage of the driveway. Should I run or just walk?

  My mind wouldn’t hold onto a thought. It just kept jumping from thing to thing.

  “Come on, Cath! Think!”

  But nothing would come. I couldn’t wait any longer and decided that since it had let me in once before, it would either do the same again, or it would try to stop me where I was. When I stepped over the boundary of the fence and was officially on the house property, I began my walk.

  By then, it was more than dark outside. The shadows from the trees, shrubs, and sculptures on the grounds seemed to roll and tumble over each other, every section darker than the last. But still, I saw nothing more. No ghostly faces of child
ren looking out at me. Just shadows, keeping the secret of whatever it was they were concealing.

  Finally, a mysterious wind kicked up, making the branches and fallen leaves look as if they were now creatures running in the words.

  “You just need to get Blake, Cath. Just run in, grab him, and get out. You don’t need to fight or stall or anything. Just run in, grab him, and go.” I had a few small spells up my sleeve. I knew a distortion spell that could make me appear larger and abstract, like a Picasso, but I didn’t think that would help me out too much at the moment.

  I also knew how to make the winds blow harder. Perhaps that would help give us some cover once we got out of the house. But what would get me there quickly?

  I slapped my head and rolled my eyes.

  “Though the wind makes it last, in order and in stable, come to speed and make me fast for as long as I am able.”

  It was a speed spell I used in high school gym class. Since I’d been a wallflower, no one had ever noticed when I disappeared in one place and showed up a good piece along the racetrack ahead of everyone. And I’d hated gym, so the less work I had to do that made me sweat, the happier I was.

  Now I was using this simple little spell to make my way to the house.

  Just a few steps, a couple of strides, and I was nearly there.

  But as I looked around, I saw something waiting for me or at least waiting for someone to come. Up in one of the higher windows, a figure stood illuminated by a mysterious light. It was just the silhouette, but I felt those black eyes on me. I looked around as I made my way to the front stoop. The door was standing wide open. Behind me, the leaves tumbled over each other, and I was sure something was moving in the woods.

  Even though it was a bad habit, I cracked my knuckles when I stopped. Taking a deep breath, I turned my back to the woods and stepped into the house. It was quieter than I had imagined. The door automatically closed behind me. I felt as if I might have just sealed myself into my own tomb. When I tried to pull it open again, it wouldn’t budge.