The Very Killer Caterpillar

by Samantha Silver

  “Peaches just needs more confidence, and you can do so many more spells than I can, though,” I replied.

  “But when it comes down to it, when you try a spell you’re much better at it.”

  “Plus, I bet you can fly on a broomstick without almost dying,” I said, and Cat laughed.

  “Yeah, I can. But I’ve also had way more practice. Plus, it’s way easier to learn scary things when you’re a kid, since literally nothing is terrifying. As an adult, you know what can go wrong if you fall off a broom. When you’re a kid, you don’t care, and you don’t think of it. Still, I can try the spell if you’re more comfortable with that.”

  “Definitely,” I nodded. “I think you’ll be much better at it.”

  “If something goes wrong though, you can’t blame me,” Cat said.

  “Deal,” I nodded.

  “Ok, sit in the chair there and don’t move,” Cat said, sitting directly across from me and closing her eyes. I suddenly found myself a little bit nervous. What could go wrong with this spell? What if we switched brains? Was that possible? I didn’t want to wear weird cat clothes all the time.

  I forced those thoughts out of my head.

  “Ok, now clear your mind as much as possible,” Cat said after a minute. I did my best to not think of anything at all. Suddenly, I felt a weird sensation. It was like there was a flash of light inside my brain. I’d never experienced anything like it before, and when I opened my eyes again, Cat was grinning.

  “Did it work?” I heard her asking, but her mouth didn’t move.

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, and Cat grinned.

  “Now you try. Think of something to say to me, but use your brain, not your mouth.”

  “This is the weirdest thing ever,” I thought, focusing on Cat’s image in front of me, and her face broke into a huge grin.

  “It worked!” she said, with her voice this time. “I’m pretty sure it worked.”

  “That’s so cool,” I said. “So basically, if I just think something toward you, you’ll hear it?”

  “Exactly,” Cat nodded. “Tomorrow when I go back to the cupcake shop we can test it out, but it should work when we’re out of each other’s sight.”

  “And then if the Others come for us, we can call the other for help,” I nodded, my face breaking into a smile. “Good. We’re going to kick their butts and they’re going to have no idea we’re coming.”

  A little while later Cat and I went to bed, each to our respective bedrooms. I had to admit, the new spell was super cool, and as I lay down in bed, I decided to see if I could make it work across rooms. I pictured Cat in my head, and then thought “the thought is coming from INSIDE THE BRAIN!!”

  “That’s up there on the top five worst jokes I’ve ever heard,” Cat replied telepathically, her voice in my head, and I grinned.

  “Come on, appreciate the genius.”

  “If that’s what you consider genius, you have issues,” Cat replied, and I rolled over, happy that we were well on our way to getting a hand up over the Others at last.

  The next day dawned sunny and warm–summer was definitely well on its way. I spent the morning in the bookstore accompanied only by Muffin, who meowed at me before settling in on his beanbag. I briefly wondered where the ghosts had gone before working on an inventory list and deciding what new books I wanted to order.

  By the time lunch time rolled around, I’d had a couple of customers, and I put up the sign saying I was closed for lunch.

  Rather than grabbing anything to eat, though, I made my way toward the police station. I wanted to see how Chase was doing. After all, I still felt pretty responsible for wrecking his knee, even though he acted like it was nothing.

  As I made my way toward the building that housed both the police station and the municipal hall, however, I noticed a girl who couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty pacing outside of it. I didn’t really pay her much attention until I got closer and saw her eyes were red from crying and she had a large bruise on her cheek. My heart sunk when I saw her.

  “Hey, are you all right?” I asked the girl softly, but my voice still startled her and she jumped.

  “What? Oh, yes. Yeah, don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” the girl said, but her eyes darted from side to side and she refused to meet mine. I had a sinking feeling I knew why she was here. I’d been in her position before. I knew all the signs. I might have been wrong, of course, but I didn’t think I was.

  “You’re here to see Chief Griffin, aren’t you?” I asked her softly. “Someone did that to you, but you’re not sure if you want to report him.”

  The girl’s hand went up to her face, and she paused, as if deciding whether or not she wanted to tell me the truth. Finally, she collapsed into tears.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s why I’m here. But I don’t know. I don’t want him to get into trouble.”

  I made my way toward her, and slowly took her hand in mine. “I know you don’t. But what he did to you was wrong, and you’re right to report it. I know it’s hard, but it’s the right thing to do.”

  “He always tells me how sorry he is,” she said.

  “I know. I’ve been where you are now,” I admitted to the girl. It was funny; I’d never admitted what my ex had done to me to anyone before. It had taken a very long time before I’d even admitted it to myself. And here I was telling a complete stranger, but I knew she needed to hear it.

  “Really?” she asked, and I nodded.

  “Yes. A couple of years ago.”

  “Did you report him?”

  A wave of unease passed over me. I had gone to the police, and they had basically told me there was no case, and they couldn’t do anything about it. I ended up moving out, fleeing one day while he was at work and luckily Mike had never followed me, or tried to stalk me, or anything. Maybe he simply hadn’t been able to find me. I’d never showed up at my job again after that. I’d been working at Target in one of the major malls just outside of Miami. When I went to apply for jobs again, I looked downtown, and that was where I’d found the job as a barista.

  “I didn’t,” I told the girl, thinking a white lie was better than the truth in this situation. The last thing she needed to hear was that I went to the cops and nothing happened. “I wish I had, though.” I wished things had turned out differently. I wished Mike could have paid for what he had done to me. You’ll be happy you chose to do this,” I told her, taking her hand and leading her toward the front door. I promise.

  The girl didn’t say anything, but she did allow herself to be brought into the police station. Andi was sitting at her desk, chewing gum and playing with her phone. She glanced up over the screen as I came in.

  “Chief Griffin is in his office if you want to talk to him,” she said, nodding toward the back room. I smiled to myself; it was strange to see such a casual attitude at a police station compared to the bulletproof glass entrances in Miami.

  The girl looked around nervously as I led her past the desks and toward Chase’s office. His face perked up when he saw mine. “Hey, Alice. How are you?” he asked.

  “Good, thanks,” I told him. “This is, um, sorry, I just realized I don’t know your name,” I told the girl.

  “Leanne,” she replied. “Leanne Kingsley.”

  “This is Leanne. She needs to report a crime, and probably get a restraining order,” I told him. Chase’s face immediately went serious.

  “Of course. Please, sit down,” he told her, motioning to the chair on the other side of his desk. “Would you feel more comfortable if I brought in a female officer?” he asked, and I had such a strange mix of emotions as I heard him say that. Chase’s reaction was so different to what I’d experienced in Miami.

  At his words, the girl visibly relaxed. “No, it’s all right,” she said.

  “I’m going to go, I’ll stop by later,” I told Chase.

  “Thanks,” he told me.

  “Would you like the door left open?” I asked the girl, and she nodded.<
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  I made my way back out of the police station, my mind full of mixed emotions. Ever since I’d left Mike, I had sworn off men. I was going to be single. After all, I couldn’t trust that I wouldn’t end up in the same situation again. I couldn’t trust, period. It was why I kept pushing away from Chase. And yet, at every turn, he had accepted it. He had never tried to force me to be with him. When I turned down his invitation to learn to ski as a date, he immediately offered to do it platonically, and sure enough, on the actual date at no point did I feel like he was trying to put the moves on me.

  And now, seeing how he reacted when Leanne entered his office, I wondered if maybe, just maybe Chase was different. Could I risk giving him a chance? Or would it all blow up in my face, like it had with Mike? He had been so nice, at first, too. Until he wasn’t.

  I stopped by a café and grabbed a quick BLT for lunch, then made my way back to the bookstore for the afternoon, my mind still swirling with thoughts.

  Chapter 11

  As the afternoon went past, I found myself thinking about the Black Magic account. After the twelve-year-old boy that came in with his mom and picked out a cool-looking version of The Hunger Games that I’d ordered recently left, I dug out the phone number that the girl at Cat’s Cupcakes had given me to get access to the cheating ring.

  I dialled the number, my heart pounding in my chest. I’d never done anything like this before at all, and I felt nervous about it, even though I wasn’t even a student at the school. However, I was well aware that whoever answered the phone was possibly our main suspect in the murder.

  “Hello,” a male voice answered on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, um, I got this phone number from a student at the college here in Sapphire Village about an Instagram account,” I said. Was I supposed to mention the account had test results on it? Should I avoid that topic? What should I do? I was tempted to panic and hang up the phone. Why didn’t I just let Cat do this, she was so much better at it?

  But, I stayed on the line and a moment later the man replied. “What’s your name?”

  “Uh, Elizabeth Ross,” I lied, thinking of the name of the girl who was on the yoga mat. I heard the person on the other end of the line typing away. A moment later, he spoke again.

  “What’s your Instagram handle?”

  I gave it to him, thankful that it didn’t include my real name at all.

  “Credit card number,” he said a minute later. “It’s five hundred a month for access.”

  If I’d been drinking anything just then, I would have spat it out. Five hundred dollars a month? That was insane. Still, if it helped us find a murderer, that was a good thing, right? I grabbed my wallet and pulled out my Visa card, reading out the numbers to the guy on the other end of the line.

  “Good. Search for Black Magic Sapphires on Instagram, and request to follow the account. You’ll be accepted shortly,” the man replied, then hung up. I put the phone down and stared at it for a minute before immediately opening up my Instagram app and searching as he asked. The account was private, with just a black circle as the profile picture. I requested access, and five minutes later got a notification on my phone that my access had been approved.

  My curiosity piqued, I opened up the account page. There were no pictures currently on the account, but when I opened the main page I noticed that the account did have a My Story up. I tapped it to open it, and it turned out there were three pictures there. The first had a picture of a scantron sheet and was captioned GEO261 test June 2nd in black text on the photo. The other two pictures were similar, but for different classes and dates. Evidently you were supposed to screenshot the ones you needed.

  I wrote down the codes for the classes whose tests were online, and did a search for them on the University’s website. To my surprise, they were classes for three different professors in three different fields. One was a geology class, the other zoology and the third microbiology. As far as I could tell, none of the classes had anything in common, and yet someone had access to tests in all of those subjects.

  What kind of job gives you access to the test results of a whole bunch of different classes? I thought, thinking of Cat. A minute later, I could hear her reply in my head, even though she was at her shop a quarter mile away.

  I dunno. A janitor, maybe? Or some kind of administrative staff?

  Yeah, maybe. I’m in the cheating group now. There’s answers to tests from all kinds of classes here. Not a lot to help figure out who’s behind it though. I’ll keep looking.

  I’ll come over now.

  Five minutes later Cat walked through the front door of the bookshop. She had flour all over her clothes, and a streak of white icing ran through her pastel hair.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said to me as my eyes widened when she entered.

  “Fair enough,” I said, raising my hands. “Have a look at this.”

  I showed her the Instagram account and Cat went through it on her own for a couple of minutes before looking up at me. “You’re right, there’s nothing here that can really tell us too much about who runs it. But if it’s someone working in administration, it can’t be that hard to find out who.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I imagine there aren’t too many administrative staff in a small satellite campus like we have here, and most of them are probably women.”

  “Same as everywhere else. So how do we get a list of their staff?”

  “We don’t,” I said, an idea forming in my head. “I say we call, come up with a pretext for knowing someone there but not knowing their name, and then asking if anyone like that works in the office. But, you have to do it, it turns out I’m not very good under pressure on the phone.”

  Cat laughed. “Uh oh, what did you do?”

  “Nothing too embarrassing,” I replied. “I almost hung up on the guy out of anxiety, is all. You’re way better at that sort of stuff than I am.”

  “Fair enough. Do you think he’ll work in the main office?”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. A general secretary wouldn’t have any reason to ever come across a test results sheet. I think he probably works in the faculty administration. Maybe Professor Gordon found out about him when he went to interview for a job or something there, as well. That would make sense.”

  Cat nodded. “That makes sense. Ok, find me a phone number for the faculty administration.”

  It was pretty easy to find the number; after all, the faculty of science was the only one at the Sapphire Village campus. I gave it to Cat, who typed it into the phone.

  “Hi, I was speaking to one of your employees there the other day, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten his name. He was male, young, do you have anyone there that fits that description?”

  “Adam York… yes, that name sounds familiar.” There was a pause for a minute. “Yes, of course I’ll hold for him. Thank you for your help.” A minute later Cat removed the phone from her ear and hung up. “There’s only one man who works in the faculty office, named Adam York.” I did a quick search of his name and the college, and found out a bunch of information from his public Facebook profile.

  “It looks like he’s a student there, too,” I said. “He’s working in the faculty office part-time while he does his schooling.”

  “That makes sense,” Cat nodded. “It’s usually students who run cheating rings. I mean, I assume, anyway.”

  I laughed. “You’re not going to admit to running one when you were in college, are you?”

  Cat grinned at me. “Of course not. If I needed to cheat in college I had magic I could use.”

  “Well, at five hundred bucks a month per student, it probably would have been pretty profitable for you,” I said.

  “Wow! Is that actually what they’re charging?”

  “Yup,” I nodded. “Hopefully it’ll end up being worth the investment.”

  “That’s insane. Anyway, what do you want to do about Adam York?”

  “Find out where he hangs out a
nd try to talk to him, I guess? We can’t let on that we think he runs the Instagram account, but if we can get a hold of his phone maybe we can get proof?”

  “Sure,” Cat nodded. “Tomorrow’s Friday, so if he’s like any other college student ever he’ll go out partying, probably in the city. I’ll try and find out.”

  “Cool. Anyway, when do you want to try our plan against the Others? We have the spell and it’s definitely working, after all.”

  “I’m good with whenever, but the sooner the better, I think. I’m tired of having to worry about them, and I find even when I’m in broad daylight with a ton of people around I worry about them coming. After all, they haven’t done it yet, but there’s nothing stopping them from coming after us whenever.”

  “Agreed,” I nodded. “Why don’t we try for tonight?”

  “Sounds good. Which one of us is going to be the bait?”

  “As much as it pains me to say it, I think I should be,” I said. “After all, they’ve come after me before so we know they want me. And I know what they feel like. I should be able to contact you a split second earlier because of it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty glad you volunteered,” Cat said with a wry smile. “Let’s get these guys. It’s time to take control of our lives back.”

  Chapter 12

  As the sun set over Sapphire Village, leaving a beautiful pink alpenglow over the tip of the mountain, I began to feel more and more doubts about whether or not this plan was a good idea.

  Maybe we should just wait for Grandma Cee to do what she planned. Maybe we were going to walk into a trap. What if Cat and I combined weren’t strong enough to defeat the Others?

  Still, I knew deep down that this was what needed to be done. Cat and I were living like prisoners otherwise; whether it be here or in Brixton Road.

  So, when the antique style lamps out on the road flickered on and the sky went from Prussian blue to black, Cat and I were ready.