Page 2 of Caged Kitten

The place looked great, everything cleaned and put away. All the prep done for tomorrow. Cash counted, logged, and deposited in the safe. The one element that might be considered out of place in a café—not for Café Crowley, mind you—was the cat hammock suction-cupped to one of the huge storefront windows. It dipped under Tully’s generous weight, my familiar a magical beast in his own right, though I told any human who asked that he was a black Maine Coon to account for his size. Grinning, I set my spreadsheets on the counter next to the cash till, then sauntered over and tickled the underside of the silky soft hammock. His puffy black tail swished, dangling over the side, and after a quick stretch, he peered back, slow-blinking a set of blazing blue eyes down at me.

Witches and warlocks had the same eyes as their familiars. It made things difficult when you needed to deny that you even had a familiar, some fuzzy creature to bolster your magic, to tap into your more intense emotions—sometimes even to calm them, to wash them all away in your darkest moments. Dad had found Tully as a kitten, tossed in a back alley garbage bin when he was only a week or two old.

“As soon as I saw those eyes, I knew he was yours, kitten,” he’d said, handing me this little bundle when I was thirteen. Some witches didn’t stumble upon their familiars until way later in life; I counted myself lucky every single day that Tully had been with me for sixteen long years, and thanks to the fact that a familiar linked into its witch’s lifeline as soon as they bonded, my fat, fluffy, lazy boy would be with me until the end.

“Did you have a wonderful day?” I cooed, up on my tiptoes to stroke him on his stately green hammock situated strategically beneath a heating vent. He stretched again, huge paws flexing, and offered another slow-blink. Of course he’d had a wonderful day. Tully was a Café Crowley staple. He had a cat’s dream life: after snoozing in the sun for hours, he’d wander from patron to patron for cuddles and pets and ear scratches. Most of the staff even snuck him treats when they thought I wasn’t looking.

Spoiled little shit.

“Well, you keep on enjoying yourself,” I told him, lowering down onto my feet again, then cocking an eyebrow. “Unless you want to count cups for me?”

Eyes closed, he offered one last long, loud purr, then rolled over and curled up, tucking every limb into the hammock, even that huge tail. Seconds later, his purrs evened out—dead to the world, totally asleep.

“Yeah, thought not,” I muttered, shaking my head with a smirk. After double-checking the locked front door, peering out into the quiet downtown side street that had begrudgingly accepted our gothic weirdness over the last few years, I figured tonight would be a long, uneventful night of counting and recounting and recounting again, until—

Thump.

The hairs on the back of my neck shot up, adrenaline spiking. Still as stone, I stood listening, waiting for another sound—met only by the usual symphony of the building settling for the night, the wooden groans and soft clicks and the odd water dribble nothing out of the ordinary. Not purposeful. That thump had intent.

Shooting a quick glance at Tully, I found my familiar had rolled back over, bright blues scanning the café same as me, his tail over the hammock’s side and swishing with interest again. Although half the lights were off, everything looked pretty standard as I did a quick sweep of the tables along the windows, the clump of armchairs, the dead fireplace, the bookshelves.

At no point was I about to call out a Hello? like I was some idiot in a horror movie. Nibbling my lower lip, I padded toward the stacks, mindful of my heels on the hardwood. My palms prickled with charged energy, magic thrumming through my veins, surging, ready for any kind of nonsense.

Three stacks over, I spotted a book on the floor. Herbs and their Uses: A Guide to Practical Hedge Magick. A bit on the nose, but there was zero harm in humans reading about non-magical plants that, when brewed properly, could dull a headache or soften period cramps. Loitering at the end of the two bookshelves, I stared at the tome for a moment, daring it to move, daring someone to move it, and then sighed when it just sat there.

“Henrietta, please don’t be back.” Shoulders slumped, I marched in and swiped the book off the ground. Adrenaline was a great tool, but when it faded, it sapped all your energy right along with it. Suddenly my eyes felt tired, the weight of the day dragging on me as I carefully slid the book back into its place on the second-highest shelf.

Strange that it had fallen.

Henrietta was our last ethereal visitor, a mischievous ghost who liked to rifle through my office and burn the few breads we made in-house. I’d hoped she would have been reaped by now—or taken out by whatever celestial being dealt with rogue spirits. Apparently, I needed to re-check my crystals; if they had lost their charge, she might have found a way back inside the premises.

Just as I smoothed a hand over a few of the spines, checking for dust, Tully yowled.

A high-pitched, terrified howl that I felt in my bones, our heightened emotions twined together as witch and familiar. I gasped, pushing away from the books and racing down the stacks.

Only to find his hammock empty on the other side of the café, one of the suction cups torn from the window.

“What the hell?” I hissed, adrenaline back with a fury. It made me shake, heightened my senses. Somewhere deeper in the back, a door slammed shut, and I nearly jumped out of my skin at the wham echoing through the building. “Tully?”

Footsteps skittered through the stacks, boots clomping down one of the back aisles. I whipped around and shoved my fear deep, deep inside. No time for panic. No time for paranoia. Tully could handle himself; hopefully, he’d beelined to a high vantage point at the first sign of trouble. Sure. Whatever you need to tell yourself to not spiral, Katja.

Hurriedly, I reached into the ether. No vibrations of another rogue spirit—just the hum of a supernatural being. If I had to guess… Warlock, based on the familiarity.

Damn it. I’d never been in a serious duel before. Never fought with other supers, never been forced to defend myself unless I was sparring with my dad or my brothers. Besides that, I preferred to do any serious casting with my wand; although I’d been cultivating my magic for the last twenty-nine years, it had a tendency to do whatever it wanted without something to channel it. My hands were unstable when casting, sad as it was for an adult witch to admit, and I’d always wondered if I’d be less of a mess if I had the backing of a coven. At least more senior witches and warlocks could have helped train me after Dad finally passed on. Instead, I stagnated, needing a wand for anything beyond the basics just to keep things neat and tidy and not accidentally set on fire.

But my wand was in my office, tucked securely in my desk. Rowan wood, griffin feather core, eight inches—described by the wandmaker as, quote, elegant.

Right now, I’d go with untested.

Two more books crashed to the ground, distinct, falling like thunder. The crack of their spines set my teeth on edge, and I hesitated, scanning the stacks for the best approach to this—to a very real person in here, screwing with me.

“This is Lloyd Guthrie’s doing.”Dad’s raspy voice rattled deep in the darker parts of my mind, a memory of him on his deathbed flashing yet again tonight. His withered body, his bulbous knuckles, his wispy grey hair littering the pillow—ravaged by disease. My mom had died giving birth to me. My brothers died, one right after the other, in freak accidents that had some in our community dubbing the Fox coven cursed. All his life, Dad had been capital-O obsessed with a warlock mobster in New York City named Lloyd Guthrie. Supposedly, that guy had it out for our family… In Dad’s mind, anyway.

Before he died, I’d thought it was just paranoia, that he was looking for someone to blame for all the tragedy in our family. But he had been so sincere when he whispered it to me, using his final breaths to warn me—to make me swear I wouldn’t take any extraordinary risks, would never draw too much attention to myself.

“If you ever see him, hear from him, sense anything out of the ordinary…” He’d struggled to say that much in a single go, fighting, clinging to my hand with both of his, with papery skin and frail fingers. “Kitten, don’t hesitate… You just run.”

In that moment, I’d experienced real terror. I had believed him, just that once, because he had sounded so passionate. So desperate. And looking into my brother’s accidents, they were suspect. No one could explain Dad’s sudden and violent illness that ripped him away from me long before I was ready to say goodbye.

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