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6

CALLIE

I don’t know why my cat stays near the house that burned down. I don’t know why my heart breaks as I watch the unknown woman cry, but it does. If I were a human right now, I’d be crying. Sobbing as the strange woman does. Instead, I sit trapped in my cat, my heart aching, staring up at the moon as if it can give me the answers.

It feels like something’s wrong.

Something so deep even the earth feels it. Like the wind has changed, the air has a different smell. Like… the shape of the world has been altered forever.

But why do I feel this way?

Closing my eyes, the sense of wrongness intensifies as I focus on it. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was some kind of magic. I’d think the ground and plants were mourning the woman who had died in that house.

But who was she?

Even in my cat form, I’m transfixed by the moonlit scene before me.

Sugar struts around, oddly confident after a fire and a woman being burned alive. She turns on a flashlight, the light sliding around the darkened scene, then disappears into the house without a backward glance, and I find myself hoping that these firefighters are good at hiding their feelings. Otherwise, their reaction is unsettling. They have to, though, right? Or they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs.

Someone did die, right? Shouldn’t they be upset or call the authorities to get the body?

My cat turns her head and glances at Will and James as they clean up their firefighting equipment in the light cast from the headlights of their rescue vehicle. For a while, the scene is strange. Everyone is bathed in an almost unearthly light, and clouds seem to gather around the moon, dark and heavy with the promise of rain.

The earth showing its pain.

I might not have known the person who died. I might have found the older woman’s magic and anger steered toward me frightening, but I also understood pain and loss. Foster kids experience more than their fair share of it, and I’d experienced even more than that with my shifting. None of my foster parents figured it out, thinking a cat had somehow gotten into their home, but they’d known I was odd, and I always ended up shunted from family to family. The moment I was old enough to run away and make it on my own, I did.

And that woman who blamed me lost her world today.

After a time, when James and Will are nearly finished cleaning up, the woman jerks as if waking up. She turns very slowly to look at Hank, stands on her tiptoes, and whispers something in his ear.

His entire body stiffens. So much so that my cat bristles and flattens herself more beneath the bush we’re hiding under.

What could she have said to him for him to react like that?

He moves away from her and speaks to Will and James in a low voice. Their bodies snap to attention. Then, all three of them look at the blackened house.

She told them something, but what?

The guys talk for another minute, heatedly. It’s almost an argument, but then Sugar reappears with her arms filled. All three of them fall silent as she approaches. Then, Hank’s mouth moves again, and the other two guys nod.

My cat and I watch them, looking for any sign of what they’d discussed so intently. Will and James load the older woman into her car, and Sugar climbs into the driver’s seat. James and Will get in the truck, and I watch them drive away, but Hank remains standing in front of the rescue vehicle that Sugar had driven to the scene, staring up at the house.

But why leave him behind?

He looks around cautiously, then makes his way into the house. My cat rises from her crouched position and circles the house, trying to catch glimpses of him in the windows, but it’s so dark. When he moves to a room in the back, she leaps onto the low branch of a tree with ease and watches him.

The room he stands inside has barely been touched by the fire. It’s a library of sorts, with books lining all the shelves. My heart swells looking at the room from afar. It’s clear the owner of this library loved her books and took good care of them. I could imagine myself spending hours in it…if the house and the owner hadn’t experienced such a tragedy.

He moves to the fireplace and glances around as if ensuring he’s truly alone. My cat flattens and holds her breath. Seconds tick by. At last, he reaches for a sconce over the fireplace and pulls it down. A little block of wall pulls back, revealing a hiding place. Hank glances around again, reaches into the hiding places, yanks out a book, and shoves it into his shirt. Lifting the sconce, the hiding place fades once more.

What in the world could that be?

He leaves the house in a hurry, and I feel a shudder move through my cat.

Oh hell , is all I manage to think before my shift begins.

Seconds later, I’m a grown-ass woman clutching the little branch that had held my cat easily. My arms and legs frantically try to wrap around the branch, but it snaps. With a shriek, I fall three feet into the bushes below me.

Naked and spitting out leaves, I wince at the scratches covering my body as Hank comes barreling around the corner. The look of fear on his face turns to one of shock as his gaze falls on me.

“Callie, what are you—forget it—I know.” He pulls off his jacket and glances away from me as he hands it over.

“Uh,” I say. “Could you help me up?”

He holds out a hand without looking, and I snatch the jacket and pull myself up, sure that I’ll find leaves in the most inconvenient places later on. But feeling super naked and awkward, I put his jacket on and button it to cover my exposed body.

“Done?” he asks, clearly uncomfortable as he turns his head anywhere but toward me.

I nod, and his gaze slides back to my face.

“What’s the book?” I sputter out.

His eyes widen, and he looks down, where it can be clearly seen without his jacket on. “We can’t discuss this here,” he says.

I nod and follow him to the rescue vehicle.

Hank holds my door open for me, which is unnecessary but sweet. He hops in the driver’s seat and guns it down the road.

“Okay, talk to me. What the hell is going on?” I say, twisting in my seat to stare at him.

He shoots me a quick glance out the corner of his eye. “Uh, there’s a lot to say.”

“Hank,” I use my serious voice. “I don’t know what happened back there, but I need answers.”

He sighs. “Okay.”

We don’t speak again for a long time. So long that I’m about to demand he start talking when he pulls over at a tiny parking lot facing the beach. The only sound between us is the rumble of the car. With the windows up, we can’t hear the water.

“Hank—”

“Here’s the thing.” He turns in his seat. “The old woman, the dowager queen… she wanted us to bring you to her. I think she had answers to some of your questions.”

My heart stops, and my breath leaves me. Answers? The old woman had answers for me, and now she’s—she’s dead?

Sucking in a deep breath, I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

He shakes his head. “We don’t exactly understand either, except that if anyone had answers for you, it’d be her.”

I surprise myself by slamming my hands against the dashboard. “No. No! This can’t be happening. I’ve tracked witches for years. I finally found this place. I finally found a person who might be able to end this damn cat-shifting curse, and she’s dead? Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“Callie.” He catches my hands. “I’m so sorry, but that doesn’t mean we won’t find anyone who can help.”

My heart races. “So, what? Now, all my leads are dead. A group of witches wants me dead. And I’m supposed to, what? Hide out for the rest of my life?”

“We’re going to figure something out,” he says in a voice that’s so calm it irritates me.

“How do you know?”

He takes a deep breath. “For one? Fran, the dowager queen’s partner, told me where to find a special book. She said that Phoebe had protected it for you.”

I stare at Hank’s face, my anger melting away. “Why would a witch queen set a book aside for someone she barely knew?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

Shaking my head, I turn away from him, and he releases my wrists. “I don’t know.”

“There’s no chance you knew the queen?”

I frown. “My memories, they’re fuzzy sometimes. Especially when it comes to my life before I went into the foster care system, I can vaguely remember my mom and my dad and the night I was cursed. But that’s it.”

He taps the book under his shirt. “Maybe this will give us some answers.”

I look back at him. “Let’s read it.”

He glances around as if nervous. “Not here. Let’s get back to your house and the others.”

I nod, even though the last thing I want to do is wait to ask my questions.

He takes us out of the parking lot and back onto the road.

And then a thought occurs to me. “Isn’t it weird that she died right before she could tell me anything?”

“It’s not weird, Callie. Someone used magic to kill her.”

Every muscle in my body tenses. “Why?”

He doesn’t answer for a long minute. “I think—maybe—they didn’t want her talking to you.”

“Was it really important enough to kill for?” I ask, feeling sweat trickle down my back. Could I be someone important enough to murder royalty?

He turns, and his gaze catches mine. “Phoebe, the Dowager Queen, has angered a lot of powerful people over the years. Either her actions finally caught up to her, or someone really didn’t want her talking to you.”

“Who?” I ask, feeling a tremble move through my body.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know, but it was someone powerful.”

I lean back in my chair and stare ahead, feeling lost. What could she have possibly told me that was so important that it had to be kept secret? And why would a powerful witch care about me?

But as we head to my house, I find that I have more questions and not a single answer.