Petting Them: An Anthology of Claw-ver Tails

by Tate James

  “Maybe,” Rhythm starts, tossing his cigarette into the ash tray on top of the nearest garbage can, “instead of interrogating me, you should be asking yourself why you thought confronting a bunch of drugged out homeless men by yourself was a good idea.”

  Rhythm gets up in Dutch’s face, the tension between them as dry as summer kindling. Toss a match and the whole thing might go up in flames.

  “Get out of my face, Rhythm,” Dutch says, blinking cool, gray eyes. He reaches up to adjust his bowler hat. He’s not wearing his glasses today, but that’s not surprising. I bet he dropped a good amount of cash just getting mine fixed. I doubt he wants to waste any money on fixing his when he can just wear contacts. “I’m asking nicely right now.”

  “Or what? You’ll kick my ass the way you did those homeless guys last night? Oh, that’s right: you were the one who got your ass kicked.” Rhythm holds his ground as Dutch closes his eyes, still smiling, like he’s a doll with a fixed facial expression. The throbbing vein in his neck and his clenched fists tell a different story. “Your arrogance could’ve gotten Alexiah killed.”

  Dutch opens his eyes again and reaches up his hands, patting Rhythm on the chest with his palms.

  “Why don’t you break up with your new girlfriend then? Maybe you’d have more time to stick around and help TCPS earn some money? You like to take a nice, even slice of each check, don’t you? I bet everyone would like that seeing you around more, including X.”

  “Guys, come on,” I say, worried they’re going to start fighting right then and there. Over what, exactly, I’m not sure. It feels like there are some deep-seated issues here I’m just not picking up on. Maybe I’m just dense? “Please don’t fight.”

  “Who’s fighting?” Dutch asks, lifting his hands up in a who me? pose as he backs up toward the glass doors of a boutique with a sign that says By Private Appointment Only. His smile lances straight through my heart, and even though I know I’m bleeding inside, I like it. “Come on in, X. I picked out some dresses for you.” He winks at me as the wind picks up again, and I squeak, tamping down my skirt before both boys know I wear unicorn panties.

  “Don’t worry,” Rhythm whispers, leaning down close to my ear. His warm breath makes me shiver, but I refuse to compare this moment to the one I had with Dutch last night. The two are nothing alike. “I won’t tell, about the underwear I mean.”

  “Go to hell,” I grumble, but Rhythm just smirks as he leads the way to the door and Dutch buzzes us all in on the intercom.

  Inside, there’s one, cranky looking tailor, and a whole sea of beautiful fabric, dresses, and suits.

  “Our gracious employer Miss Kasselin Claire has left each member of Ten Cats Paranormal Society with a twenty-five hundred dollar allowance,” Dutch says as he gestures at the row of mannequins closest to the door. I’m standing there gaping at the glittering array of gold, silver, and pink fabric when my boss leans in and whispers, “if we buy the most expensive things in the store, we can resell them later and make a pretty penny.”

  Ah.

  And there goes my Cinderella moment.

  There’s always a mark, someone to screw over, always a con to complete with a reward hanging in front of our faces like overripe fruit.

  “I don’t have time to make anything custom,” the man in the black vest says, “but as you’re guests of a very important customer, I’ll do my best to tailor anything we have in the store for the party on Friday. Take a look around, and then I’ll get your measurements.”

  The tailor stares at me for long enough that I start to get uncomfortable. He doesn’t look like he’s checking me out or anything, but there’s an intensity in his blue gaze that makes my skin feel itchy. A wave of ice-cold teases over my flesh like an arctic breeze, and the floaters in my vision flicker and flutter. I’m just praying they go back to their usual, unobtrusiveness after my face heals.

  If they don’t … they may very well drive me crazy.

  I hear arguing in the back that can only be Tate and Luke.

  Thank ghosts. I’m really glad they’re here. Not sure how long I could put up with this weird tension between Dutch and Rhythm. I scurry to the back of the store and find them arguing over a dress.

  “Alexiah,” Tate says, her long, dark hair hanging loose down her back. Without her psychic/medium costume on, she dresses like a model fresh off the runway, very fashion-forward and modern. She’s barely recognizable which, I guess, is the point of the costume. Tate gives me a hug, squeezing me with her impressive arm muscles until I can’t breathe. “I’m glad you’re here. Help me explain to Luke everything that’s wrong with this dress?”

  “I was just trying to help,” Luke says, rubbing his blue hair with his palm. He looks like he’d rather crawl under a rock than debate clothes with Tate. When he looks at her though, the fact that he’s into her is written across his face as plain as day. I wonder if that’s how I look when I stare at Dutch?

  I sure as hell hope not.

  “There’s more fabric on the tie you picked out,” Tate says, shaking the blue dress in Luke’s direction. “Besides that, the color is glaring, the straps are weird, and the mid-calf length is all wrong.” She sighs, like Luke’s very obvious fashion faux pas are giving her a headache as bad as mine. He is wearing a red shirt that says Plumbers Do It Better with Mario and Luigi on it.

  Hmm.

  I mean, I’d wear it as a pj shirt, but …

  “X,” Dutch whispers, drawing my attention over to a gold gown that’s vaguely reminiscent of Belle’s from Beauty and the Beast. His fingers tease the voluminous skirt, and his eyes dance with romance. Well, that or money. Probably money. I bet it’s the most expensive dress in the store. “I bet this dress pulls out all the gold in your eyes,” he says, glancing over his shoulder and looking at me … like a woman. It only lasts for a split-second, and then he’s reaching up to adjust his hat, and swapping the price tag on the gold dress for one that costs about half as much.

  Nice. Making a five-thousand dollar gown into a twenty-five hundred dollar one.

  Brilliant, Mr. Wylde.

  “That’s fucking medieval,” Rhythm says, scowling like usual. “Who wears ballgowns like that nowadays? It’s like something from Pride and Prejudice or some shit. I bet Alexiah wouldn’t even be able to walk in it.” He holds out a different dress, a tight black little thing that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. There’s no way I have the body for that.

  The two dresses … they couldn’t be anymore different. Sort of like the two men holding them up.

  I look between them, but how can I choose? The dress, I mean. Not the guys. Neither of them are options anyway. One of them doesn’t love me. The other one, I hate. What sort of choice would that be anyway?

  “I like this one,” I say, scrambling and then picking up the first dress that catches my eye.

  It’s a brilliant emerald with six black horizontal stripes on the bodice.

  Oddly enough, it reminds me of Syxx’s eyes.

  “Oh, Kasselin won’t be pleased with that,” the tailor says, and I jump because I didn’t notice him watching us.

  “You said anything in the store, and a promise is a promise,” Dutch says, no sign in his voice that his usual confidence is anything but perfectly intact. Not even after last night. Very impressive.

  “Anything that Kasselin would approve of, I should say,” the man continues, offering up a sapphire dress with white accents. “She wants the girl in blue.”

  I raise an eyebrow, but am I surprised? No. A woman who glues live insects to her party invites and pays out the nose for a paranormal investigation team to attend her fancy party can’t be all right in the head.

  The glowing orbs crowding my vision swarm around the outfit, making it glow so bright it’s like staring at the sun. Now I know I need to lay down. I’m way past due for a rest.

  “We’ll take it,” I say, ignoring that strange, awful pulling sensation in the back of my mind.

  Rhythm scoffs, Dut
ch smiles, but I think both of them would’ve screamed if they’d known that sensation was pulling us right back to Claire House … and into the arms of the demon king.

  6

  “Dick In A Box”

  The night is clear and filled with stars when we leave the Ten Cats office and head for Claire House, leaving the city behind and finding our way up the curving, gravel drive toward the brightly lit mansion.

  I don't see any cars outside, but I figure they probably have a valet or something.

  Leaning forward, I pull down the visor and check my face in the mirror. It’s still swollen, but nothing like it was on Monday. The last few days have given me a chance to heal … and the atmosphere at the Fifth Street house to get weird. Dutch and Rhythm are barely talking—to each other or to me. It’s disconcerting, especially since they’re pretty much the only friends I have. Luke’s been sick with some sort of stomach flu, and Tate spends half her days working out and the other half studying.

  I have literally no one.

  One of the cats lets out a husky yowl, and I smile as I recognize Syxx’s unique voice.

  “Does everyone know what they’re supposed to be doing?” Dutch asks, looking handsome as hell in his new gray suit with the turquoise button-up, the white tie, and the new ribbon on his bowler hat. I curl my hands in the blue fabric of my new dress, trying not to focus on the fact that it’s worth more than my entire net worth. If I let myself get sucked down that rabbit-hole, I’ll start getting paranoid about stains and snags, and I’ll never make it through the night.

  “We’ve been over it about a dozen times,” Luke says, snapping a picture of the glowing house with his camera as we pass around to the back and park near the rear entrance. Nobody bothers to come out and greet us as Dutch turns off the ignition, checks himself in the rearview mirror, and then glances over at me. Some part of me hoped that when I came down the stairs wearing this dress, that I’d see a spark in his eyes, a glow that he just couldn’t hide.

  Instead, he barely looked at me. In fact, it almost feels like he’s making a steady effort to look at everything but me. Even when I sat down and let Dutch do my makeup, it was as if he were applying lipstick, eyeliner, and shadow to a doll. He made zero effort to engage me in dialogue or form any sort of meaningful connection.

  I’m kind of over all of it.

  “Did you know that Claire House was completed in eighteen ninety-one?” I blurt, looking over at Dutch. He smiles and lifts his gaze to mine, but all I see are the usual fireworks that make up his personality, nothing special for me.

  “Did you know this place is over eighty-seven thousand square feet?” he retorts which makes me smile. Sometimes I pretend that Dutch memorizes dumb facts just for me. There’s no way for me to know. If I asked, he’d probably tell me what I wanted to hear. It’s impossible tell his truths from his lies sometimes. “And we’re going to cover every inch of that with cameras. Let’s get a control room up and running, and while we’re at it, we’ll put treats out for the cats.”

  “Where do you want Syxx?” Tate asks as she surveys the mansion out the window. This is definitely the biggest job we’ve ever worked which makes me nervous. Kasselin Claire strikes me as the type of person who won’t take pseudo-science and bullshit as a response to her problem. We need to figure out what, exactly, it is that’s bothering her and try to fix it. Or else … I imagine a woman as rich and powerful as her could destroy the reputation of Ten Cats Paranormal Society in an instant.

  “This place is so big, and there are so many people, I say we let him out now. It’s doubtful anyone will see him.” Luke grunts, Tate mutters a prayer under her breath, and we all open our doors to get out. Dutch reaches over at the last second and curls his fingers around my upper arm.

  “Hey,” he says, drawing my attention to his silver eyes. I swear, I can see my most perfect self reflected back in them, like Dutch sees not only who I am but all the possibilities of who I could be. “You’re the prettiest girl here tonight, you know that, right?”

  I snort at the same time my body flushes with heat.

  Half of me is immeasurably pleased with his praise while the other half is skeptical that he means what he says.

  “By the end of the night, you’ll have said that to every girl here,” I whisper, my voice cracking as I try to smile and make light of the moment. The orbs in my vision flutter. They’ve definitely gotten better as the week’s gone on, but their presence is still pretty concerning.

  “Maybe, but there’ll only be one I haven’t lied to.” Dutch smiles, and swings himself out of the van before I can figure out how to respond to that. He … there’s no way in unicorn that he likes me … is there? I’m so busy replaying what Dutch just said that I step out of the van and slam right into Rhythm’s chest. As usual, he had to be a rebel and ride his bike up here, even dressed in his fancy pants suit.

  We stare at each other, but I’m not really sure what to say.

  “You look okay,” I tell him, but that’s about the best I can come up with. In reality, Rhythm looks more than okay. He almost looks … good? He narrows his dark eyes on me, reaching up to run his fingers through his dark hair. His mohawk lies flat, like usual, hiding the tattoos on the side of his head. The way he looks at me … is honestly even worse than Dutch. Instead of looking around me, like I’m as interesting as a lump of plastic, Rhythm actively glares like he’s disgusting.

  I smooth my hands down the front of the tight-fitting bodice, and try not to notice how much it plumps up my, uh, bosom. Maybe my grandmother felt the need to give it such a fancy name because she passed on such a, err, big bosom to me. My mom, she was flat-chested, but not Grandma and me.

  “You look fine, too,” Rhythm says, sliding a pack of cigarettes from his pocket as he moves around the front of the van. I follow behind him, pausing to get out the carrier that Syxx shares with Binx, the other black cat in our collection. Binx has green eyes like Syxx, not as bright, but definitely similar. It’s what makes this con so easy to pull off, how similar the two kitties look.

  Dutch’s mom spent years collecting her furry family members, saving the neediest cats from death row at the worst shelters in the country. Apparently, she believed that cats on the euthanasia list were so close to crossing the veil, that they could see through it. She even claimed that the white print on Tom Thumb’s forward was, quite literally, the mark of Death himself.

  With a click of my tongue, I feed a few treats through the bars, and then open the door. Binx waits patiently inside while Syxx slinks out into the dark night, pausing for a moment to look at me with his emerald eyes. There’s a spark in there, a flame of intelligence that always surprises me. If I didn’t know better, I might say the cat was gazing at me … appreciatively?

  I reach out to give him a pat, and the little fluffwad scratches me.

  “Syxx!” I scold as I tuck my hand in close to my dress and examine the bright bloom of blood on my fingertip. The cat doesn’t seem at all concerned by his actions, moving close and rubbing against me by arching his back. He even throws himself against my injured hand, smearing blood onto his dark fur. “Get out of here,” I grumble, annoyed but not surprised by Syxx’s behavior. That’s the thing about cats: they’re predictably unpredictable.

  Rising to my feet, I pick up Binx’s carrier and grab another from the back of the van, carrying the animals inside to the room that Dutch as proclaimed as our ‘command center’. Luke is already halfway through setting up the computers, and Tate is out in the hallway, speaking to the woman we met last time we were here.

  Her eyes follow me into the room, and her smile sends little metaphysical spider legs creeping up my spine.

  I don’t like the way she’s studying me, like she knows something I don’t.

  “Oh.” Dutch glances over his shoulder at me, standing in the doorway with the cat carriers in hand. “X, can you take the cats straight to the ballroom. Kasselin’s on some sort of schedule; she doesn’t want to wait for us to
set up to get started.”

  “Okay,” I say skeptically, wondering if we’re really here to do a job or if we’re like one of those Victorian age traveling seances that people put on for fun to amuse themselves. “Just make sure we prioritize the feed to the ballroom then.” I get a thumbs-up from Dutch as I head back into the hallway, finding the creepy woman waiting for me.

  “Follow me,” she says, as Tate reappears with two more carriers, and the three of us head down the luxuriously appointed hall and take a right. We pass through a sitting room, a foyer, and then finally, I start to hear the music.

  The soft, haunting notes of a string orchestra drift out to us, and I smile, passing by torches flickering with blue flames. How they get it that color, I don’t know, but the effect is ethereal.

  “This place is beautiful, but it’s weirdly empty,” Tate whispers, and I nod. I noticed that, how few furniture pieces there are, how there are hardly any knickknacks or art pieces, proof of any kind that someone actually lives here. Maybe they don’t? Rich people like to own properties just for show sometimes, don’t they? I wouldn’t know; I’ve never had two pennies to rub together.

  “It is a little weird,” I admit, but then the music gets louder, and we step through another pair of doors into the most magnificent room I’ve ever seen in my life.

  The ceilings soar above us, painted with swirling skies and stars, while the floor is a dark marble that seems to absorb all the light in the room. Couples twirl across the dance floor in sparkling skirts and suits, some of their outfits so fantastical that I have to look twice. Is that … is that guy wearing a sapphire blue breastplate over his suit? But then I blink, and there’s nothing there.

  I set the cat carriers down where the woman tells me to, and push my glasses up my nose.

  I’m watching people laugh and chatter, but the sounds are subdued. The only thing in here that seems real is the dancing and even that … is off. I feel like I’m watching that scene from Disney’s Haunted Mansion, when all the ghostly couples flicker by.