Page 27

TWENTY-TWO

“Can cats time-travel?” Thorn asked Pepper and Pumpkin later that afternoon on the porch.

I’ve heard of it , Pepper said between mouthfuls of kibble with freeze-dried chicken liver.

That’s why we can’t really be tamed even over centuries. Pumpkin ate around the kibble. He’d much rather have a whole bowl of topper.

Thorn would have asked Bandit, except when she’d gotten back from Walls’s house after lunch, he wasn’t home. She wasn’t too worried, because his bowl was empty. Sometime during his spying, while she’d been helping Charlie to curl her shoes, he had returned for food. “How?”

Pumpkin and Pepper remained silent. They glanced between their bowls and the bag of chicken liver in her hand. She sprinkled more of the liver into their bowls.

We don’t have a name for it, but the servants do , Pepper said. The cosmic cat distribution system.

“How does it work?”

Some kind of ancient magic, probably. We just hear a whisper that someone somewhere sometime needs a cat, and off we go.

“Who’s whispering to you? The spirits?” That was who witches appealed to when they tried to familiarize familiars.

Don’t know. Don’t care.

“If a cat wants to travel forward or backward in time, all they have to do is hop onto this… system?”

It’s not a bus, Pumpkin said.

Pepper gently swatted at Pumpkin. That’s not true. It is like a bus, except the ticket price is very high for a cat who hasn’t been summoned to go on it.

“I didn’t know cats had a currency. How much for a ride to a point several centuries in the future? A hundred rats?”

That’d be too cheap.

Pumpkin stopped eating and sat up. Unscheduled travel costs about four extra lives.

When Thorn had last seen Turnip, he’d had seven lives. If he had traveled to the twenty-first century via the cosmic cat distribution system, he’d have had three lives left, which meant he couldn’t have traveled back to her even if he’d wanted to.

It was probably a blessing that Turnip had traveled forward in time, even if it had broken Thorn’s heart back then. He’d led a long, happy life with Walls and his family.

But she couldn’t figure out why he had traveled to the twenty-first century in the first place.

While she sometimes had her doubts about these things, she had always taken good care of Turnip, and she knew he’d loved her.

Something else, something dire, must have forced him out of the seventeenth century.

The next morning, Bandit wasn’t home, either. And his bowl of dinner from last night was untouched.

Thorn was starting to get concerned. For a second, she wondered if he, too, might disappear like Turnip.

She looked out the window. The raven wasn’t on the fig tree.

She thought of checking in on him right there and then, but Bandit despised being scried for—he called it being “spied on.” Besides, he was probably just still following the raven, or perhaps he’d found that store that sold only pet goods.

She tossed his uneaten dinner into the garbage bin and replaced it with a fresh serving.

“You’d better come home by tonight, Bandit,” she said aloud as if he could hear her, “or I’ll have no choice but to scry. ”

To push her worries for Bandit aside, she focused on the task at hand. She carefully cut the clear plastic and freed the feather of vampire parrot. She placed the feather on the table, at the end of a row of ingredients for her New-and-Improved True Love potion.

She could practically hear Madam Maude voicing her disapproval.

There was a chance Madam Maude would begrudgingly approve the use of a Charming potion, but that potion was simply an aid to keeping Thorn’s date interested till marriage.

And there was no point settling for such a potion when Thorn now had all the ingredients to make the one that would definitely secure her love.

Yet something niggled at the back of her mind. Thorn sighed. “I think I’m just not thinking straight because I’m worried about Bandit. I should scry for him now.”

Just then, the cat door flipped open.

“Bandit, where have you”—Thorn gasped as a grotesque beast barreled into the cottage.

The creature looked like it had been created with dark vapors and lethal potions, or summoned from where the wraiths roamed.

Or birthed somewhere with a heavy door that had been slammed into the creature’s face, causing it to fold upon itself over and over again.

The beast’s tail was so deformed that it curled upon itself in a tight coil.

Thorn leaped onto a chair as the beast did parkour around the cottage.

She thanked the spirits for giving it such short legs that it couldn’t propel its rotund body any significant vertical distance.

Its breaths were an ominous hybrid of pants and snorts.

Even Penny was freaked out, hopping around in her enclosure. “Ribbit! Ribbit!”

Thorn couldn’t figure out why anyone would send such a hideous but harmless beast after her. It wasn’t doing any damage, save for its claws scratching the wooden floor.

There was a series of fast knocks on the door. “I’m sorry!” a man on the other side shouted. “My pug ran into your house!”

Thorn was surprised to see not a modern witch but a modern warlock. While the beast was preoccupied polishing off every bit of food in Bandit’s bowl, she leaped off the chair and threw the door open. “Tell your beast to stand down!”

“Nugget! Come!” the man said in an excited voice, and the creature trotted toward him. He clipped a leash onto its collar.

“A ‘pug’ is a dog?” Thorn asked. “Are you not a warlock?”

The man studied her. “No, but you must be the famous witch of Covenstead.”

“No tours today.” Thorn shut the door in his face.

“I’m not here for that,” he called out through the door. “There are a couple of cats stuck up a tree.”

She immediately thought of Pepper and Pumpkin, but they were perfectly capable of getting out of a tree. They were adult cats, and the park was their domain. She opened the door again.

“I came here to ask for something to help the cats, and my dog got away from me,” the man said. “May I borrow a ladder? And some towels?”

Thorn hurried with Pug Man and his pug to the tree. Indeed, high up in an oak tree were Pepper and Pumpkin, their eyes wide and their ears pinned back. The same way Ella, Toffee, and Tux had looked in the clinic.

I’m going to die , Pepper cried.

I’m afraid , Pumpkin wailed.

“They’ve been yowling like that for at least fifteen minutes,” Pug Man said.

“Pepper! Pumpkin!” Thorn leaned the ladder against the tree and climbed up.

“I’ll get them down,” Pug Man called out, but she continued up. He steadied the ladder.

The cats didn’t offer any resistance as she scooped them into her arms. They were both trembling.

“You two were fine yesterday afternoon. What happened?”

I don’t remember.

I’m frightened.

Whatever had gotten to the cats at the clinic had gotten to Pepper and Pumpkin, too.

The same fear. The same amnesia. The only thing she could do now was to get them to the safety of the ground, where a small crowd had gathered.

She slowly made her way down the ladder, which was no mean feat while carrying two cats.

As Thorn reached the lower rungs, she spotted someone she knew. “Lily?”

Lily stepped out from the crowd. “What happened? I was out for a walk when I saw the commotion.”

“Hold them for me.” Thorn handed Pepper to Lily and Pumpkin to Pug Man. The cats didn’t resist.

Thorn palpated Pepper’s toe beans. He had only one life left. So did Pumpkin.

She dialed Walls.

“Bring them in,” he said. He was in the middle of a routine surgery. “But could you get a video of them now? I want to see if anything changes between now and when I see them.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Walls said as he palpated Pepper’s toe beans.

“They’re like little pebbles.” Thorn paced around the back room of the clinic. “Well, now just one pebble. Same as Ella, Tux, and Toffee.”

Walls gently bundled the two cats into a cage. “But you said cats aren’t too concerned about their extra lives.”

“They’re not, but usually they only lose one life at a time.

Losing multiple in a short period of time might be a different story.

The last time I counted their lives was after my date with Brad.

So in the last three weeks, Pumpkin lost seven lives.

And Pepper lost five. That’s highly unusual.

They were fine when I fed them dinner yesterday, so they might even have lost them all in the last eighteen hours. ”

“How do they seem now compared to when you first saw them forty-five minutes ago?”

“They’re not crying anymore, at least.” She handed him her cell phone. “Here’s what you asked for.”

Walls played the video on Thorn’s phone.

It started with just Thorn looking worried and confused as she tried to figure out how to record and orient the camera.

All this time, out of view, the cats were crying.

Someone called out instructions, and finally, the video swung over to the cats in the arms of Lily and Pug Man.

“That woman,” Walls said. He paused the video and zoomed into the woman holding Pepper. “Lily.”

“You know her? She’s one of the tourists at Covenstead. She was out walking in the park when she spotted us.”

“Her name was the one across all the date lists the affected cats’ owners sent me.

I called her up just this morning to ask about any perfumes or essential oils she might have used.

She happened to be in the area—I guess she was on her way to walk in the park—so she dropped into the clinic to talk to me.

” He sighed. “But she said she hadn’t worn any perfumes that were out of the ordinary, and no essential oils. I’m afraid we’re back to square one.”

Witch.

Both Thorn and Walls heard it, though all he’d have heard was a meow. He walked over and opened the back door of the clinic.

Bandit waltzed in. Round doorknobs shouldn’t have been invented.

Thorn scooped him up and squashed him to her chest and face, breathing in his scent in relief. He let her, but not without reminding her with his teeth that he was not a willing participant in this love fest.

You worry for nothing.

She palpated his toe beans and sighed with relief. “You haven’t lost any more lives.”

Why weren’t you home? You just had to make me search for you.

“Where have you been?”

Following the raven. That foul fowl led me on a wild-goose chase.

“Did you see anything happen to Pepper and Pumpkin? They’re in a bad state.” She motioned over to them, still vacant-eyed in their cages.

He glanced around at the other cats. I saw the two of them last night while following the raven. They were roaming around the park. They seemed fine.

“Whatever happened to them must have happened this morning, then.”

Too bad. The raven flew out of the park early this morning. I thought, finally, we’re onto something! But all it did was visit several garbage dumps around the town. After a few hours, it returned to the park.

“Maybe it was purposely leading you away from the park so you wouldn’t see whatever happened to Pepper and Pumpkin. Is it back on the fig tree now?”

Not when I left it ten minutes ago. It parked itself on a big oak tree. I’d have finished it off there and then, but your friend was standing under that tree. I worried she would recognize me as your cat.

“What friend?”

The one who helped you dress up for your date.

Thorn couldn’t believe it. “Lily’s the witch.”

Walls cocked his head slightly, but he didn’t say a word.

Quietly, he took out a tube packet from the treats drawer and let Bandit go to town on a mousse of chicken and beef liver.

She noted that Walls was giving her time and space to work things out, which she was very grateful for.

Her thoughts were like oil poured into water, floating around as separate bubbles but scrambling to find each other and link up.

Walls remained quiet even when she suddenly turned and marched out of the clinic.

But she stuck her head back in. “I’ll explain later.”

He nodded. And she left. Once the packet was squeezed empty, he opened the door for Bandit to follow her.

If Thorn had been fitter, her legs would be running as fast as her thoughts. Bandit caught up with her when she reached the tall oak tree. But no one was there.

Thorn and Bandit hurried on to the cottage. Once inside, he hopped on to the windowsill and kept a watch on the fig tree. She rummaged through her wardrobe by the bed. She tossed out all of its contents—the dresses, the underwear, the stockings.

Her Dire Dagger was gone.

It wasn’t a perfume or oil making the cats sick. It was magic.