Page 4 of Caged Kitten

2

Katja

Everything hurt when I came to. Head, especially where that spell had landed. Neck, stiff and achy like I’d pulled something on the left side. Shoulders, like I’d ping-ponged between two brick walls for hours. My ribs, as if they’d become best friends with a steel-toed boot. My wrists—on fire.

“T-Tully?” His name came out all thick and croaky, throat like sandpaper and dry beyond belief, as if I’d been sleeping with my mouth open for a week straight. I swallowed with some difficulty and winced through the sharp twinge. It didn’t matter when I finally pried my heavy eyelids open, because whatever space I suddenly found myself in was pitch-black anyway. Seated on something hard, I shuffled side to side, metal creaking beneath me—and snapped tight around my wrists. I flexed my fingers in and out, and a hard jerk got me nowhere; I was cuffed to the chair, the restraints attached at the wrists and ankles.

Had I been… kidnapped?

Finding one’s footing in the darkness sucked, senses somehow both on overdrive and painfully muted. Couldn’t see. No sound. No movement in the shadows. From the smell of it, I was far from Café Crowley, and when I reached out to him through our bond, Tully was nowhere to be found.

My eyes stung with a rush of tears. We had never spent a day apart. My familiar slept in my bed, stood guard outside the shower every morning, and ate breakfast on my lap while we watched the morning news, ruminating together about the depressing state of affairs in the human world. He came with me to work, snoozed around the café all day, and then sauntered after me on the walk home. Tully was my world—and I’d done nothing when I’d heard him yowl. I’d left him to fend for himself.

Guilt struck, hard and vicious and deep, like a knife to the gut twisting when his fat fluffy face flashed in my mind’s eye. Mercifully, I couldn’t feel any intense emotion through our connection. He wasn’t suffering, wherever he was, but he also wasn’t with me. And the fact that I couldn’t feel anything from him at all only made the guilt worse. What if he was hurt? What if those bastards had killed him?

What if—

Obnoxious light erupted above me, painting the small space in a white glow that made me flinch and squint. Sniffling, I pushed Tully deep inside, hoping that no news was good news for my familiar—that he had found a safe place to hide from whoever had kidnapped me and stuffed me inside a teeny box of a room. As I blinked back tears, I took in my surroundings: tiled walls on either side, grimy cement floor, a metal table in front of me and an iron chair beneath. Iron had a specific look to supers, a faint shimmer. While it had no effect on witches or warlocks, this would have been a death trap for a fae.

“Recludo,” I whispered, bracing for the telltale clicks of the shackles unlocking, then the satisfying thud when they fell to the ground. Nothing. I blinked, peering down behind me, my arms locked straight, my wrists raw and red. Thin cuffs snared me tight, and my spell had done nothing to change that. Frowning, I cleared my dry throat and tried again. “Resigno.” Nothing. And again. “Resero.” And again. “Apertum… Fucking fuck.”

While I felt the familiar hum of magic in my palms, the buzz that coursed through my veins before bursting from my fingertips, nothing happened. Some witches had performance anxiety, unable to cast if their emotions weren’t right, but that had never been the case with me. Even in my darkest hour, mourning the fact that I was all alone in the world, I had been able to spit everything under the sun successfully. Sloppily, sure, but that was just par for the course without a wand. Every spell, glamor, and hex in my arsenal—it came to me, whether I was broken or not.

Today—tonight?—shouldn’t have been any different.

Yikes. No windows, not even on the huge, intimidating metal door dead ahead. Not a great predictor of my chances when I couldn’t answer where or when.

Willing myself to relax with a deep breath, I unlocked my jaw and forced my shoulders down. The tightness remained, despite my best efforts, and the crick in my neck hurt when I rolled my head side to side, trying to work it out.

It was then I felt it—featherlight and barely there against my skin. Like a pair of lips whispering across my throat, so different from the shackles around my wrists and ankles, whatever it was evaded me when I peered down, high enough on my neck to hide under my chin. Cursing softly, I glanced over my shoulder…

And saw myself staring back.

In a mirror.

My heart plummeted. Was that a… two-way mirror? Were people watching me? Fighting to keep my breath even, to not spiral out, I gave my rumpled appearance a quick once-over. Although my flaming red hair was no longer neatly knotted on top of my head, frazzled instead with loose wisps spilling everywhere, I wasn’t beat up. No bruises or marks. No split lip. Everything hurt, but there was no indication that someone had taken a baseball bat to me in my sleep. Although, my shirt had been torn, one shoulder exposed, and then twin slashes cut over my waist. Same with my leggings, ripped up the middle like they were a cheap pair of split tights.

Heat flared in my cheeks. Sure, I was still covered from head to toe, my shirt long-sleeved and my leggings opaque, but someone had stolen my skirt. Ripped it clean off if the soreness around my waist was any indication.

Took that but left the four-inch heels. Sure. Why not?

A thick leather collar snaked around my neck, its girth suggesting it ought to be heavy and very present. Instead, I barely felt it.

Seriously though.

Whathad happened to me?

Fear made my chest tight, and after another quick scan, the room had an unnerving sense of familiarity to it.

An interrogation room.

Oh gods, it really did look like an interrogation room, something straight out of one of those human cop shows. The table, the chair, the cuffs, the mirror… None of it good.

Shitshitshitshitshitshit. Panicked, I struggled against my restraints, a string of spells flying from my lips as I fought for freedom. In the end, the cuffs just bit harder, sharper, my wrists brutalized, the skin on the verge of splitting open. No way was I going to bleed in here. Blood had such potency in our world, used for both light and dark magic, and I wouldn’t spill any unless I had to.

Maybe…

No, I couldn’t cast. Couldn’t reach the ground to draw a blood-magic portal even if I tried. And if I succeeded, I clearly had no juice to fuel it.

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