by Fitz Molly
“Listen. I don’t know what we’re going to see when we get up to that house. It could be a crime scene. It could be some crazy guy with a knife. I don’t know, but neither do you, and we have to start somewhere. Why not here?”
“Hey, I’m not trying to be a party pooper. I’m just trying to make sure we make it through this Halloween alive.”
“Don’t worry. Have I ever let you down before?”
Her mouth fell open, but she didn’t answer. Good. “So I’ll let you do the talking then?”
“I’m really good at it,” I said with a wink.
She rolled her eyes. “And Spook?”
“We can’t leave him alone.” It was hard enough for me to keep the glamour act going when I was standing right next to him. I definitely couldn’t maintain it from a couple blocks away, and I also couldn’t risk animal control discovering and stealing my familiar while I was working so hard to help make him right again.
I opened the back door and reached my hand in. Just like an ordinary house cat, Spook rubbed his face against my fingers.
“You are just the sweetest little guy. Aren’t you?” I told the enormous creature with a besotted grin. “When this is all over, we’re going to have a week-long cuddle fest. Yes we are.”
Zoey cleared her throat from behind me. “Um, what if we can’t get him fixed?”
“He’s not broken,” I said between clenched teeth. “In fact, maybe this is the way he’s supposed to be and the whole house cat thing was a ruse.”
“Maybe,” said Zoey, wisely choosing not to press the issue.
She was trying to be a good friend and point out all the things I could be missing, but right now I needed her as an ally—not a devil’s advocate. Also, who was she to judge when she had a familiar who was a big cat all the time? Mine would return to normal cat size soon. I was just sure of it, but first we needed to tamp down our fears and march right up to that house. It was the only way we could ever hope to solve the mystery of my overgrown kitty.
Well, it was a start, anyway.
Chapter Six
I clutched the bag containing Spook tightly to my chest. Feeling his warmth so close to me felt comforting, right. Was this how Zoey felt all the time now that she had Zia? Or how Kane was with his lizard? Not that a lizard was warm, like, at all. Still, had I known familiars could be this rewarding, I would’ve tried to connect with something a lot sooner.
And nothing beat a black cat as far as I was concerned. Well, maybe a white tiger, but Zia was decidedly less cuddly than the pint-sized version of Spook. And wasn’t a black cat the quintessential familiar? Tried and true, but not at all tired. Things became classic for a reason, and I felt the new connection to Spook right down to the bones.
Zoey and I tramped down the block until we reached the large stone house with all the cars parked out front. The flowers in the garden were dead, but the yard was otherwise well maintained. Weird.
I was just about to knock on the door when it swung open of its own accord. A woman sneered at me from the other side of the entryway. She was tall and slender with very bright red hair that had obviously been created with the help of a really cheap box dye. I held back the urge to hand her a business card for my parents’ salon and smiled at her instead.
“Hello,” I said with a polite wave. “The neighborhood heard you were having a rough day and sent us to help.”
I pushed past her and into the foyer before she could overthink my vague explanation and send us packing. The formal living room just past the door appeared to be standing room only. Two loveseats each held two people with a wingback chair that obviously belonged to the bottle redhead. Everyone sported a similar bone structure, suggesting they were related. A WASPy-looking couple sat ramrod straight with crossed legs as they regarded me stonily. My guess was they were in their late forties. A somewhat younger surly looking guy on the left-hand side of the other loveseat stared daggers my way, letting me know just how unwelcome I was here. To his side sat a taller man in wiry glasses and a suit that really should’ve been steamed before wearing.
“We really don’t need anything,” said the elderly redhead as she pushed the door even wider open.
Zoey took this as an invitation for her to slide into the foyer with us. “Nonsense. We’re here to help,” she insisted with a grin. “Anything you need. Anything at all. Dishes, vacuuming, gardening. Just name, it and we’ll do it.”
“Maybe not gardening,” I mumbled, giving Zoey a stern look. We needed an excuse to stay inside the house so we could dig around for clues.
“Bathrooms!” she shouted while pumping her head. “We’re very good at cleaning bathrooms. The grosser, the better.”
Good grief, I couldn’t take this girl anywhere. “We just want to help,” I said, trying to appear as normal as possible so they would overlook Zoey’s weirdness.
“Well, right now it would really help us if you’d get out of our house.” The woman’s voice was cold and hard like an ice cube. “But if we think of anything you can help with, I’ll be sure to contact you.”
Uh-oh. My thoughts raced in search of something I could say that would enable us to stay. As much as I hated to admit it, maybe Zoey had been right all along. Maybe we should have taken the time to come up with a plan. Worse yet, maybe we would have to turn to my parents for help. Whomp, whomp. How anticlimactic.
“Well, we’ll just…” I let my words trail away, hoping Zoey would jump in with something brilliant to rescue our investigation. It wasn’t Zoey who leaped into action, though.
It was Spook.
He wriggled in the bag I held clutched in front of me, and then his sharp claws poked through the thin nylon and got me right in the stomach. I cried out in pain, but Spook only dug deeper until, at last, I dropped the bag.
Gritting my teeth, I managed to regain control before I dropped Spook’s glamour, but by the time I opened my eyes it was full chaos. Spook had broken free from the bag and was now running straight at the door.
Zoey—bless her—slammed the door shut to keep him from escaping. But then things got even crazier.
“Galvin!” screamed the redhead as if she’d seen a ghost.
At first I thought she was yelling for one of the people in the living room, but then I realized her eyes were fixed directly on my cat. Oh, his name was so not Galvin. She reached for him, but he let out a screech and tore away in the other direction, right to where the rest of the family sat staring in shocked silence.
Spook yowled and spun in the other direction.
But instead of letting the obviously terrified kitty go, every grown adult in that room popped to their feet and gave chase. Spook was my very first cat, and yet I knew it was near impossible to catch one that didn’t want to be caught.
Spook most definitely didn’t want anyone here to touch him. He ducked and weaved through the reaching arms and legs. If I thought I could help him, I would have rushed right in there to retrieve him. As it was, it took everything I had to keep the glamour from dropping.
“Get him!” shouted the man in the glasses as if everyone wasn’t already trying to do that.
Except now Spook wasn’t running aimlessly in fright. His gaze zeroed in on me and he ran straight at me, which meant everyone else did, too.
No, no, no. This was not good.
I stood frozen, partially because everything was happening so fast. One second everyone was running at me; the next, Spook was using his very, very sharp claws to climb me like a tree trunk. He stopped once he reached my shoulder.
Once again, it took me a moment of intense concentration to rein in my glamour and keep Spook from transforming to a much heavier cat and crushing me to death in this stranger’s house. At least the sweat on my brow from the stress wouldn’t draw too much unwanted attention. After all, there was a cat pretending he was a parrot and I was his pirate.
All the people stopped and stared, as though worried any step would cause Spook to, well… spook.
“Th
at’s enough excitement for one day,” said the wife of the couple unit. She wore a pale pink cardigan, and her bleached blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun. I had to admit that her dye job was much better than the redhead’s, and judging from the lack of roots and her naturally dark brows, she was at a rather expensive salon frequently. “Hand over Galvin and see yourself out.”
One, if they thought I was moving an inch while murder mittens here was holding his blades at my neck, they were insane. Two, I hadn’t gotten a single answer about any of this yet. Knowing this was my last chance, I went straight for the kill. Spook had found me while he was covered in someone else’s blood, and based on how everyone was acting, I figured one of them knew whose it was.
“Did someone die here or not?” I choked out. “Because none of you look all that sad.”
Zoey covered her mouth with her palm. I couldn’t tell if she was amused or embarrassed. Probably a mixture of both.
“How dare you?” seethed the redhead. She went to pull the door open—presumably to tell me to get the Frankenstein out—but the door didn’t budge. “What did you two do to the door?” she muttered as she kept on trying to open it.
“What? Nothing,” said Zoey as she crossed to try the door handle herself. Now they both took turns pulling on the knob, but it refused to give. And when Zoey pounded on the pale wood, it sounded strange, more like she was banging on solid steel.
Something was definitely going on here, and I wouldn’t be leaving until we found out what. Slowly and oh-so carefully, I reached up and managed to maneuver Spook off my shoulder, moving him to cradle against my chest. His hackles were raised, and I really couldn’t blame the poor thing.
No wonder he’d run away from this place.
Unfortunately, the more stressed he became, the harder it was for me to hold the glamour. And the harder it was to hold the glamour, the more stressed I became. What a vicious cycle.
Thanks to the strange transformation of the door, they couldn’t throw us out now. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to keep up Spook’s disguise much longer. We really needed to hurry things along.
“Just answer me,” I ground out in frustration. “Did someone die here?”
“Yes!” screamed the surly man. “My dad, Harrison Dupre, died last night. Now will you please leave us be?”
“We’re psychic!” snapped Zoey. We locked eyes and she looked as surprised as I was. “I, um, the spirits led us here.”
I nodded. “Yup, that’s right. Psychics.” I could kiss her, if I weren’t stuck across the room and holding a furry time bomb in my hands.
“Yeah. The spirits told us there’s unfinished business here, and apparently they’re not letting us leave until we figure things out,” Zoey said, turning quite serious as she looked from one person to the next. “Now, which one of you killed him?”
Chapter Seven
If looks could kill, we’d already be a part of the spirit world Zoey and I were pretending to communicate with.
“You have some nerve,” hissed the blonde as her heels clacked across the foyer with her approach.
I shrugged, playing it cool. “If you want to leave, go ahead. I’m not the one stopping you.”
She huffed and fumed toward the door, which she tried and failed to open. “Well, don’t just stand there. Help me!” she shouted at her family.
Soon all five of them were scuttling about, trying every door and window in the place to no avail. Meanwhile, my head felt like it was about to explode from the effort of keeping Spook glamourized.
Zoey zipped over to my side while the others were distracted with their futile escape mission. “What did you do to the doors?” she whispered.
My eyes bulged as I held Spook tighter. “I didn’t have anything to do with that!”
“Are you sure you didn’t work some woo-woo so that you could figure out what's going on with Spook? Because you know we’re not supposed to use magic so flagrantly in front of normals.”
“Hey. If I had bippity-boppity-booed this, you’d be the first one I’d be bragging to. I have no idea how this is happening, and I only have so long until I can’t hold Spook’s glamour anymore. This must all be connected, though. Spook’s size problem. The doors being locked. If we can solve the old guy’s murder, we can fix all of this.”
Zoey rolled her eyes. “His name was Harrison, and no one said he was murdered.”
I waved a hand to gesture to the chaos surrounding us while I used the other to keep Spook in place. “This doesn’t happen when people just pass peacefully in their sleep!” I whisper-yelled.
“I know you want to figure out what’s going on with Spook, but these people are clearly going through some kind of tragedy. Maybe we should just go.” Her bright blue eyes shone with unshed tears. Like this was something I’d chosen for us! Not even close…
“Fine,” I said softly even though I was feeling rather cranky at the moment. “If we can get out of here, I’ll let all of this go and just have my parents help with Spook. But right now the only way I can think to get out of here is to try to solve this mystery. All our suspects rounded up and locked in. I say we get to interrogating!”
“If we could get out of this house, I’d never let you do this,” she said before standing back and crossing her arms over her chest.
“Yeah, well, if we could get out of here, I probably wouldn’t want to,” I muttered back. “At this point I’m firmly making the best of a bad situation. Spook found us right after his owner died, and now he’s stuck as a panther. Solving the murder has to be how to fix it.”
Zoey didn’t look convinced, but what could she say? We couldn’t get out of the house, so we didn't have many options here.
I glanced around us and tried to piece together what I could. The outside of the house had looked rather cookie cutter, but the inside was filled to the brim with exotic and expensive-looking antiques. Our victim Harrison might not be good at naming cats—Galvin, really?—but he’d had impeccable taste in everything else, provided these were his choices and not his widow’s.
A picture on the top of the mantel caught my eye, and I found myself being pulled across the living room for a closer look. Just a simple frame, but it was in the very center and seemed to be the focal point of the room.
The photo’s subject was a sweet looking man sitting and smiling for the camera while a regal black cat sat contentedly on his lap. “Hi, Harrison,” I breathed as I rubbed Spook’s ears. “I’m going to take really good care of your handsome fella. I promise.”
“This is ridiculous,” came the shrill voice of the blonde as the rest of the family trailed behind her. “You’re going to let us out of here, and you’re going to do it right now.”
“Let me say it one more time for the people in the back, I’m not the one who locked the doors. And neither is my associate here.” I glanced over my shoulder to indicate Zoey, who nodded. “I think Harrison wants us to figure out who killed him.”
A gasp tore through the room, almost like the wave at a sporting event.
“He wasn’t murdered,” said the man beside the blonde. He wore a freshly pressed pair of khakis and a polo shirt. I took him to be her husband. “He passed peacefully in his sleep.”
“How dare you barge in here and accuse us of killing anyone,” spat the redhead, thrusting a hand upon her bony hip.
Ugh. This was getting confusing. How was I supposed to solve this murder without knowing any of the key players’ names?
“Roger is right,” said the blonde with a firm shake of her head.
Roger! I had one name. That was more than I’d had before, but I still didn’t have anyone’s trust, nor did I have much energy left to keep up Spook’s diminutive facade.
As a glamour-gifted, I was crafty but not any real threat.
And the blonde lady who stood in opposition seriously looked as if she could spew venom from her eyes. “I don’t care if we have to blast a hole through the wall, but you’re going to leave and give m
e back my father’s cat while you’re at it.”
For the first time since Zoey and I had arrived, a bolt of fear shot through me. This woman meant business. She’d probably even blast a hole through us if we didn't leave soon.
My anxiety spiked, and I bent over in pain as I lost the tenuous grip I’d been keeping on my glamour. I hadn’t felt a snap like this since I was a kid and first started stretching my abilities too far. It was like a rubber band being stretched to its limits and then slamming back into me. But this rubber band in question was the size of a panther.
I watched in horror as Spook’s image flipped back and forth with each blink of my eyes—panther, kitty, panther, kitty. It was almost like seeing one of those dual hologram images until the last of my magic gave way and we were left with only the massive panther.
The reaction from the normals in the room was immediate. The surly man stepped back and let out a curse. The man in the suit actually screamed. The rich guy and the redhead both fell back and looked on in terror. The blonde, who apparently had ice in her veins, stood her ground. Her jaw clenched and she sucked in a slight breath, but she didn’t run, and she didn’t back down, either. Was it a startling show of bravery, or had she instead frozen from sudden and complete terror?
Terror, right. I had to let them know I was one of them, a normal non-magic person who had definitely not caused a giant predator to appear in their living room.
“Ahhhh!” I threw myself back against the mantel. My neck slammed into it, and a fresh wave of pain ripped through me.
Zoey rolled her eyes at my overacting, but she was smart enough to catch on.
“It’s Harrison!” she screamed. “He wants us to solve this murder or he’s going to make us pay!”
Spook was frightened by all the commotion. He crouched down and kept his ears pressed back against his head. The last thing I wanted was for one of these panicked people to hurt him. I needed to convince them he wasn’t a threat.
