What the Cat Knew

by P. D. Workman

  “Stop,” Corvin begged in a strained voice. “Please don’t hurt her. I can get her to talk.”

  Hawthorne-Rose didn’t stop immediately. He rocked the knife, drilling it in deeper. Reg cried out. Her body convulsed. The room grayed at the edges.

  “What makes you think you can get further with her than I can?” Hawthorne-Rose demanded. “I’m pretty persuasive.”

  “I can do it,” Corvin insisted. “I know how to convince her.”

  Reg blinked, trying to bring the world back into focus. She tried to read his face, but felt like she was suddenly blind. What would have been so easy before he took her powers seemed an insurmountable task. She had no idea what his plan was. It had to be a trick; after all, Corvin could have just given Hawthorne-Rose the information he was looking for.

  Hawthorne-Rose considered. After a long pause, he pulled the knife back and motioned Corvin closer with the bloody blade. “You’ve got two minutes to convince this little gypsy to give it up before I start cutting her again. You’d better be good.”

  He stepped back, releasing Reg’s body. She just about fell to her knees, she was so weak and frightened. Hawthorne-Rose appeared to have released Corvin as well, and Corvin stepped quickly forward, slotting himself between Reg and Hawthorne-Rose, catching her drooping body and holding her up. Reg held on to him, desperate, but with no idea how he was going to save her from the dirty cop.

  Their faces were only inches apart.

  “Trust me,” Corvin mouthed, making no sound.

  Reg just stared at him, frozen. Corvin leaned in, exuding the scent of roses, and kissed her.

  At first she struggled, repulsed, wanting nothing to do with him again. He had stolen her powers. He had violated her. Despite his glamour, she didn’t want the intimacy with him that she had craved just hours before.

  But as her brain flooded with images, she realized what he was doing. He was willingly returning her gifts.

  Reg clutched herself to him, ignoring the pain in her hand. She drank back the psychic powers she had spent her life fighting against.

  For a few moments, there was equilibrium between them, when they both had a portion of the powers, and could communicate with each other clearly without any need for words. Corvin was clumsy with the unfamiliar gifts, his thoughts painfully loud in Reg’s head. She struggled to temper them and to understand what he knew. His own magical gifts and powers were just as unfamiliar to her as her gifts were to him, but during that brief contact, she learned all she could of them and how they could work in concert.

  ⋆ Chapter Twenty-Five ⋆

  Corvin broke the kiss, and for a few seconds, they just stared into each other’s eyes as they each adjusted to being separate again.

  “You can do it, Regina,” Corvin whispered.

  Reg took a few deep breaths, trying to calm and focus her whirling brain. If they were going to get themselves out of there, she needed to be on top of her game.

  “Alright,” Hawthorne-Rose snapped, stepping in and shoving Corvin away from Reg, “That’s enough.” He stared at Reg, his dark eyes full of malice. “Are you ready to give them to me now?”

  Reg swallowed. “I need my cat.”

  “What?”

  “My familiar.”

  Hawthorne-Rose looked around and saw Starlight sitting on his haunches, watching everything. He jerked his head for Reg to go get her pet.

  Reg stepped unsteadily away from the wall and went to Starlight. Her legs felt like jelly. She scooped Starlight up into her arms and buried her face in his fur. Newly sensitized, she could feel the warm, familiar, psychic energy he exuded.

  She sat down with him on one of the wicker chairs.

  “I need your help,” she whispered to him.

  He purred and licked her hand, his long tongue rasping over the place where Hawthorne-Rose had cut her. The pulsing pain eased. Reg patted Starlight and scratched his ears and chin, staring into his mismatched eyes while at the same time focusing on the white spot in the middle of his forehead. Together, they almost buzzed with energy. Reg pushed the memories from Warren into a quiet corner of her brain and turned her thoughts to Hawthorne-Rose.

  He stiffened, his attention riveting on Reg.

  His mind was immediately probing inside her own, eager for the information Warren had given her. As she had just done with Corvin, Reg shared the connection he had opened up and used it to delve into Hawthorne-Rose’s own consciousness. She was careful not to push too hard, hoping not to tip him off as to what she was doing. She saw again the men Warren had remembered, but their faces were clear instead of being obscured. Reg saw that the man in the long black coat was not Corvin, but another face that was vaguely familiar. She thought for an instant that it was Hawthorne-Rose himself, but it wasn’t.

  She had seen him somewhere. At the restaurant Corvin had taken her to? They hadn’t seen anyone but waiters and other staff at the Eagle Arms. The man in the coat was not a waiter or valet, and he hadn’t been dressed white tie like Corvin had been.

  She replayed it in her head. The man tossing back a drink. Taking her hand.

  Reg dug her fingers into Starlight’s fur, trying to unlock the identity of the man. She felt Starlight’s consciousness with hers inside Hawthorne-Rose’s head, and then a flash of knowledge. Uriel.

  Not from the Eagle Arms, but from The Crystal Bowl, the first day she had arrived. He had talked about setting his own rules. Not being constrained by others. Just the type of person she would expect to be working around the law and the accepted rules of the community.

  She felt the first stirrings of resistance. Hawthorne-Rose realizing that she was snooping around in his brain while he was searching hers. His body jolted and he said “no” out loud.

  Reg didn’t know how long it would take Corvin to weave his spell. She dug in, not letting Hawthorne-Rose push her out. He had withdrawn from her mind and was trying to close the connection. She had no experience in keeping open a connection the subject wanted closed, but she fought him the best she could, like two people on opposite sides of a door, one trying to pull it closed while the other pulled to keep it open. Starlight prowled around her consciousness, helping to strengthen the connection. She’d had no idea that the little cat had such a strong psychic gift.

  “No,” Hawthorne-Rose said again, fighting to shake her off. She tried to see Corvin out of her peripheral vision, wondering how he was doing, but she couldn’t see or feel him.

  “Okay, Reg,” Corvin said. “I’ve got him.”

  Reg let the connection slide away from her. Hawthorne-Rose was breathing heavily, glaring at her.

  “What just happened?” he demanded.

  Reg raised an eyebrow innocently. “What?” She straightened her housecoat, once more feeling confident in her own skin. She was whole again, the theft of her powers a fading memory.

  Starlight kneaded Reg’s leg, his claws pricking her and then withdrawing several times. He purred and blinked one eye at her.

  Reg was expecting to be tired, but maybe using Starlight to boost her signal or sleeping soundly while Corvin held her powers had renewed her strength.

  Hawthorne-Rose took a step toward Reg, looking threatening. He gripped the knife tightly in his hand, his eyes were fixed on her. Then he looked down at his foot, as if he had stepped in something. He wiggled it experimentally. He jerked toward her and then stopped. His gaze turned instead to Corvin.

  “You.”

  Corvin blinked. “Yes?”

  “Release me.”

  “Uh… no. I don’t think I will. Regina has the right to protect herself in her own home.”

  “This is not her.”

  “She asked for my aid to set the ward.”

  “I was already in the house. You cannot set a ward against someone who is already in it!”

  “Hmm…” Corvin pondered this. “No… it seems to me there were some exceptions to that rule. Something like… if you raised your hand in violence against the homeowner…”
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  Hawthorne-Rose’s face turned a deep shade of purple, but despite his best efforts, he seemed unable to move from the spot. Reg let out a sigh of relief.

  “What did you find?” Corvin asked Reg. “Anything?”

  She nodded. “There was a man at The Crystal Bowl. His name was Uriel…?”

  Corvin nodded. “Uriel Hawthorne,” he agreed.

  “Hawthorne?”

  “It’s not an uncommon name in our community. There were Hawthornes in Salem. But it’s possible that…”

  They both looked at Hawthorne-Rose. He turned his face away from Reg.

  “Is he related?” Reg asked. “It felt like… you were quite close.”

  “You didn’t have any right to—”

  “Well, I don’t know all of the rules,” Reg said sweetly. “You’ll have to explain them to me. But you did threaten me and force your connection on me, didn’t you? I just… used it for myself.”

  He closed his eyes and Reg could feel the energy rolling off of him, like heat waves from an open oven. She looked at Corvin, worried.

  “What’s he doing?” Corvin asked.

  “It’s… I think… he’s warning Uriel.” Reg looked around, panicking. “Uriel is close by!”

  Corvin swore. He darted out the door of the cottage. Reg looked at Hawthorne-Rose to make sure that he wasn’t freed by Corvin leaving, but he still seemed to be firmly rooted in place. Reg looked out the windows, but couldn’t get a clear view of Corvin or Uriel. She could hear yelling and crashing around, but she couldn’t very well go out and try to help to subdue Uriel with nothing but a bathrobe on. She hurried into her bedroom and started to pull on clothes as quickly as she could. By the time she had shirt and pants on and went back out to the living room, wrapping a bandage around her throbbing hand, Corvin was coming in the door, wrestling Uriel in with him.

  Uriel was taller, but Corvin had more weight and bulk, and managed to wrestle Uriel into a chokehold, the taller man forced down to his knees.

  “Now then,” Corvin growled, “who wants to explain what’s going on here?”

  Uriel and Hawthorne-Rose glared at each other, both defensive and self-righteous.

  “You said you could handle her,” Uriel shouted at Hawthorne-Rose. “Just a girl with a little clairvoyance. No trouble at all.”

  “He wasn’t supposed to be here. How could I have predicted that? And the cat.”

  “So, what, it was three against one? What good is it to have someone in the police department if he’s completely inept? A girl with hardly any powers. And a cat.”

  “And a warlock! In case you didn’t notice, he’s a bit of a problem!” Hawthorne-Rose shot back.

  Corvin pulled Uriel’s head back in order to smirk down at him.

  “I held him to start with, but then she…” Hawthorne-Rose looked at Reg, shaking his head. “She’s no novice, Uriel. She’s much stronger and more skilled than you led me to believe.”

  Corvin looked back and forth between the two intruders. “And which one of you is binding Warren? Or is it someone else?”

  Neither of them answered. They kept their faces masked, careful not to give it away. Reg picked Starlight up again and thought about Warren. She felt for his consciousness, and then felt for a connection back to one of the men, for the binding spell that one of them held over him even now.

  “It’s Uriel.”

  He looked at her, furious.

  “Can you break it?” Corvin asked.

  “I… I don’t know how.” Reg swallowed. Sarah had said that there was more than one way to break the binding spell, so she was pretty sure that she didn’t have to kill him to do it. She looked back toward the main house. Was Sarah even home? She had said she was going out and Reg didn’t know how much time had passed since then.

  Corvin closed his eyes. Reg didn’t know if it was in frustration, or if he was trying to think of a course of action. She waited. Uriel tried to twist away from Corvin to free himself, but Corvin tightened his grip.

  “If we can get into Uriel’s lair, I might be able to figure out how he cast the spell in order to counter it.”

  Uriel showed no concern over this suggestion. Reg guessed that no one knew where his lair was or that it was protected by enough wards he had no fear of anyone breaking into it.

  “Do you want me… to find out where it is?” Reg suggested. She loathed the idea of trying to get information from Uriel against his will, just as Hawthorne-Rose had just tried to do to her, but she couldn’t think of any other way to break the spell.

  Corvin nodded. “If you can… that would probably be the most humane way. Otherwise… we’re going to have to get our hands dirty.”

  Reg looked down at her bandaged hand. She didn’t want to be driven to torture. And Corvin had talked to her about karma, how committing violence against someone else would return to her.

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  “You can’t do that!” Hawthorne-Rose shouted at her. “There are rules about using telepathy without a person’s permission!”

  Reg stared at him in disbelief. “And what was it when you did it to me?”

  “That was a police investigation. That’s different.”

  “I don’t think so!” Reg opened her mouth to marshal her arguments, then realized that she was letting him distract her. Maybe with extra time, they could get someone else’s help or Uriel could create some kind of barrier. Or maybe Uriel could use the connection he had with Warren to kill him before they could get there to help him. Could he do that? Reg had seen things like that on TV. If someone dreamed they died, they would die in real life, wouldn’t they?

  She turned deliberately away from Hawthorne-Rose and looked at Uriel. He again tried to break away from Corvin’s grasp and get up, but Corvin wasn’t letting him go. Reg didn’t know if he was able to bind Uriel as he had bound Hawthorne-Rose, but he didn’t seem to need to. For the present, both men were under Corvin’s control.

  Reg sat down with Starlight. She entered Uriel’s consciousness, pushing through his defenses, and tried to find an image of his lair. What would it be like? A mad scientist’s laboratory? A basement dungeon? A bright and cheery kitchen? It had to be somewhere important to him, somewhere that he spent a lot of time. If he was a powerful warlock, he had to spend time on his craft.

  She saw crates of supplies, and stopped for a look. Magical ingredients and artifacts to create potions or cast certain types of spells? As soon as she started to explore the crates in his mind, she felt resistance. Uriel did not like that. He did not want her there. She smoothed the short fur over Starlight’s white spot, pushing harder mentally. She could feel Starlight’s consciousness there with her, curious about what she had found. The crates contained animals and animal parts. They seemed to be cloaked in darkness, and filled Reg with sadness when she saw them.

  But she was supposed to be looking for his lair. They needed a way to break the binding spell. When she thought of Warren and the binding spell, she felt Starlight’s attention slide in another direction. She tried to reconnect with him, to stay with him, redirecting him back to the crates and where Uriel’s lair might be.

  Starlight pulled away again, so Reg followed. The cat had been a good partner; maybe he had an instinct about Uriel that Reg didn’t.

  She again felt the connection between Warren and Uriel. The binding spell. It felt thick and strong. She explored it for a few minutes, trying to find weak points. Did magic have to be broken with magic, or could her psychic gifts break a magic spell? She tested her strength against the binding spell, and it gave more than she expected. She gathered Starlight’s consciousness and tried to direct it toward the binding spell along with her own.

  Uriel began to buck and fight against Corvin. Corvin nearly lost his grip. Reg tried to ignore their physical struggle and continued to push against the binding spell. She imagined Starlight’s teeth and claws shredding at the thick cord, fraying it and cutting their way through it. Starlight made a deep rumblin
g; Reg wasn’t sure whether it was a purr or a snarl. She held him firmly and applied her own mind against the spell, bringing out a mental arsenal of scissors, knives, and anything else she could think of that would be used to cut a strong cord.

  Uriel was howling. Corvin still fought to keep him under control. Reg worried that if Corvin put too much effort into fighting Uriel that his binding spell on Hawthorne-Rose would be broken, but it continued to hold.

  Uriel’s spell on Warren was getting thinner and more strained. Reg pictured it as a thread of dental floss; thin and very strong. But a thread like that was not strong enough over such a long distance, and she could just put it between her teeth and break it off. She braced herself and gave it a single, violent pull.

  Uriel cried out again and slumped over. Reg opened her eyes and stared at him. Corvin was trying to hold on to him and to see his face at the same time to see if he was playing a trick. Reg shook her head.

  “He’s out.”

  Corvin laid Uriel out on the floor. Hawthorne-Rose was no longer complaining. His face was as white as chalk. Reg let Starlight go, and went over to Uriel, worried.

  “Is he okay? I didn’t… I didn’t go too far, did I? I didn’t want to harm him.”

  Corvin put his fingers over Uriel’s pulse and shrugged. “Good, strong heartbeat. I’m not one of those for seeing or feeling auras…” he made sweeping motions over Uriel’s body to demonstrate. “But physically, he seems fine.”

  Reg tested her connection with Uriel. It was still there, but he was no longer fighting and resisting her. She didn’t sense any pain. She explored, feeling for the binding spell, but couldn’t find it.

  “Hold on…” she told Corvin, though what he was supposed to do or stop doing, she wasn’t sure. She felt for Warren’s consciousness, but couldn’t find it. Did that mean he was dead? Had severing the binding spell meant severing Warren’s tenuous hold on life as well? But if he were dead, she was sure she would have been able to contact his spirit. She’d made contact with him several times, and it had gotten easier every time.