A Familiar Tail

by Delia James

  “You, cat, are a big fat liar, and you have lured me here under false pretenses.”

  Alistair shrugged, a long ripple of feline shoulders and smoke-colored fur.

  I sighed. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Mrrp,” replied the cat noncommittally. Not that it mattered. I was climbing the stairs anyway.

  Dorothy Hawthorne’s attic, like her garden, was something out of a fairy tale. Fortunately, it was a cobweb-free fairy tale. There was one big central space, and the slopes of the roof’s gables created four low nooks, one in each direction. The pattern of light and shadows looked strange, but that was because while each one of those nooks had a small window, those windows were all at knee height. The central space, where the sloping roof was highest, had been set up as a study, complete with low shelves of leather-bound books and an antique desk topped by a green-shaded lamp. Alistair, perfectly at home, jumped from the desk chair to the desktop and down to the floor again. Then he paced across to what at first glance looked like just a table covered with a green cloth.

  But as my gaze followed the cat, I saw it was something else altogether.

  That green velvet cloth was decorated with elaborate Celtic knotwork. On it, a white candle in a silver holder stood next to a bundle of dried herbs. I smelled sage and rosemary and lavender and wondered if they had come from the garden. There was a silver cup, too, with some pale cloudy liquid in it, and a little silver dish of something that looked like sugar, or maybe salt.

  In the table’s exact center lay a length of carved wood and a small square of paper.

  “Mar-oow,” explained Alistair as he plumped down next to me and began washing his tail.

  I picked up the carved stick. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was maybe a foot long and as thick as my thumb. The pale wood had been carved with a twisting pattern of blossoms, branches and moons—crescent, half and full. Then, as I peered more closely, I realized there were letters carved among the flowering branches as well.

  “Quod ad . . . ,” I read as I turned it, trying to follow the spiraling words, “vos mittere in mundum triplici.”

  Latin.

  There are few advantages to studying classical art. One of them is that you can piece together most stray Latin quotations you come across. “What you send out into the world comes back in triplicate?” I said.

  Alistair swatted at me gently with a paw.

  “Hey!” I shouted, and then bit down on my next words. I was supposed to be sneaking, right? I moved to put the carved ornament back, but my hand froze. I now saw something else. The velvet cloth that covered the table didn’t have just Celtic knotwork for its pattern; there were stars printed on it too. Specifically, five-pointed stars inside golden circles.

  Pentacles.

  In art school, we’d learned that pentacles were early Christian symbols for the Virgin Mary. These days, though, they were usually symbols of something different—witchcraft.

  I backed up an involuntary step. This wasn’t a table and it wasn’t some random collection of knickknacks put together by an eccentric old cat lady.

  This was an altar. A witch’s altar.

  “Oh, no,” I croaked. “No. This is not happening.”

  Except it was. I was in a witch’s attic, and next to me was a vanishing cat. I was holding what could only be a magic wand, and my Vibe and I had been brought to this place by a whole series of very, very strange coincidences.

  Alistair meowed and head butted my shins.

  “What?” I demanded, because being freaked-out makes me short-tempered. “Has little Timmy fallen down the well? What?”

  Have you ever heard the noise an indoor cat makes looking out a window at the birds? That set of sharp, creaking, grumpy sounds that must mean something truly insulting in the ancient sparrow dialect? That was the noise Alistair made at me as he jumped onto the altar and off again.

  That piece of paper I’d noticed fluttered to the floor. I picked that up, too, and I froze. Again.

  The paper was a photograph that had been neatly clipped out of a magazine. I even knew which magazine—New England Arts Monthly. They’d published an interview with me about freelance artists and the growing independent publishing industry last summer.

  My photo had been on Dorothy Hawthorne’s altar.

  That was when I heard the footsteps.

  7

  I WHIPPED AROUND, reflexively stuffing the magazine photo into my purse. Alistair darted between my legs and skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs, his ears pressed flat against his skull.

  Down below us, someone was walking. The steps were quick and light, but not light enough to keep the old floors from singing out their warning. Then the tone of the steps changed to hollow thumps. Hollow thumps heading up the stairs.

  Alistair hissed, arching his back and puffing up from ears to tail like a Halloween nightmare. Spitting with fury, he dove down the stairs. I shouted, certain he was going to plant his face in the door. But the door opened and the cat streaked through.

  In the next heartbeat, somebody hollered in surprise and pain.

  I bolted through the open door and into the hall. At the top of the stairs, a man staggered sideways, clutching a screwdriver with one hand and his knee with the other.

  “Ow! Damn it! Ahgh!”

  Alistair ducked behind me and hugged the carpet, growling low in his throat, his eyes opened so wide I could see the whites. I gaped at the cat and the stranger, not sure which was the bigger threat. This was when I realized I was still clutching the wand.

  The man straightened up enough to meet my gaze. He was a white guy. Middle age had hit hard, leaving gray streaks in his sandy hair and lines on his sagging face. The mustache might have made him look younger once but now just looked like it was trying to hide something.

  Alistair hissed again. What color there was in the guy’s face drained away and he lifted his hand—and that screwdriver. For the life of me, I don’t know what made me do it, but I raised the wand and pointed it right at him, like I was channeling Hermione Granger and all the kids from Hogwarts.

  “Don’t even think it,” I said.

  The mustached man swallowed. He teetered backward, and then he turned and ran down the stairs.

  “Hey!”

  I stuffed the wand in my purse and ran after him. Maybe I was worried he’d been hurt by Alistair, who had inexplicably gone into attack mode. Maybe I had some weird feeling of ownership about this house. I mean, I had broken in first. Maybe I was just too startled to think straight. I didn’t know then, and I’m still not sure. I did pound down the stairs just in time to see the stranger slam out the front door.

  I darted across the threshold and onto the front porch. That was when I heard another set of footsteps and a new shout. Hard hands grabbed me and whirled me around. Now I was staring up at a second stranger.

  I think I said something like, “I . . . uh . . . er . . . ack!”

  “Who the hell are you?” he—whoever he was—demanded. “What are you doing in my house?”

  He was taller than me. His black hair waved back from his broad forehead and his eyes glittered an intense and angry blue. Under better circumstances, I might have realized how much he looked like a cross between Benedict Cumberbatch and Cary Grant. Just then, though, I was completely caught up in realizing that he wasn’t letting me go and that he’d said this was his house.

  “Frank Hawthorne.” I’d blurted the name out. Sean had said that was the name of Dorothy Hawthorne’s nephew. Who else would be in this empty house? Aside from me. And Mr. Mustache. And Alistair, of course.

  Frank, if that’s who he was, let go of one of my arms, but it was just so he could dig his hand into his sports jacket pocket, presumably looking for his phone. “I’m asking you again, who are you and what are you doing here?”

  I quickly de
cided to go with the truth—some of it, anyway. It might buy time before he called the cops. “I, um, I came in after the cat. Alistair? I heard him yowling. I thought he might be hurt or something and the place was all shut up and . . .” I let that sentence trail off. It wasn’t going anywhere interesting anyway. “Then I heard somebody else in the house, and . . .”

  “What? Crap! Not again!”

  The man whipped around and ran into the house, leaving me on the porch with only one question in my head.

  What do you mean “not again”?

  There were two things I could have done here. One of them was actually smart. I did the other, though, and followed Frank Hawthorne through the door he’d left open.

  Don’t tell me you’re surprised.

  Frank was in the dining room. He’d thrown the sheet back from an oak sideboard and pulled open the top drawer.

  “All here,” he muttered.

  “I didn’t see the guy carrying anything when he ran out,” I said. “Except a screwdriver.”

  Frank jumped. I braced myself for a fresh, and justified, round of shouting, but all I got was the sound of teeth clicking together as he clamped his jaw shut. Moving very deliberately, he closed the sideboard drawer and then locked it with the old-fashioned key hanging on the ring with his car keys.

  “What did you say your name was?” he asked as he pulled the dustcover back into place.

  “I didn’t. But it’s Annabelle Britton.”

  He nodded. Then he brought a black notebook out of one jacket pocket and a pencil out of another. He flipped the book open and started writing.

  There is a special sinking feeling you experience when you realize your bad ideas might be about to come home to roost. “Umm . . . are you a c— Police?”

  “Journalist,” he answered, which was only marginally better.

  “But you are Frank Hawthorne, right?”

  His pencil stilled. “And you get to ask that because?”

  “Because for all I know, you could be burglar number three. This house is getting a lot of foot traffic today.”

  The man ducked his head, and although it was tough to tell in the dim light, he might have been trying not to laugh. He also put down the notebook and pencil on the dining table so he could flip open his wallet and hand me his driver’s license. Sure enough, the photo that stared out of the plastic rectangle matched the man in front of me, and the name typed alongside was Darius Francis Samuel Hawthorne.

  “Old family name?” I asked.

  “Old family name,” he confirmed. “‘Frank’ was always the least bad of the possibilities.”

  “I feel your pain.” I also handed him back his license.

  “So, you believe I’m me?”

  “If you believe I’m me.”

  “Deal.” He held out his hand, and we shook. He had a nicely judged grip, not too firm or too delicate. “So, now that we’re all friends, you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here, right?”

  I didn’t exactly cross my fingers then, but I thought about it. “I really did follow Alistair. Valerie McDermott—I’m staying at McDermott’s B and B”—I waved in the general direction of the backyard—“asked me to keep an eye out for him. She said he’d been missing, so when I saw him hanging around her back fence, I decided to see if I could find out where he went.” Please don’t remember the gate was locked.

  But if Frank remembered, he wasn’t letting on. He just kept making his notes. Watching somebody write down what you’re saying is surprisingly nerve-racking. I wonder if he knew that. Probably he did.

  “Half the town’s been trying to get hold of Alistair since the funeral. Why are you the one he comes out for?”

  “Half the town has not fed him brisket tacos from the Pale Ale. And even then, he wouldn’t exactly let me hold on to him.”

  The corner of Frank’s mouth turned up into a smile that was not entirely voluntary. “Sounds like Alistair. Grab the food and run.”

  “That’s what Valerie said. Anyway, when I got to the house, the back door was open and I heard Alistair inside. I was afraid he might be in some kind of trouble.”

  “You heard him?” Frank quirked an eyebrow at me.

  “He was crying . . .”

  Right on cue, an earsplitting, breathtaking, heartrending howl with no visible source split the air.

  “Like that,” I finished limply, but Frank had already started for the kitchen at top speed. Of course I followed. I am nothing if not predictable. “Where is he?”

  “Basement.” Frank pulled open the door. “The vents in this place are sound conductors. He used to sit down there and howl just like that if I forgot to clean his litter box.” Frank thudded down the dim stairs and there didn’t seem to be any reason not to head down behind him.

  Until I got to the bottom, and the Vibe hit.

  8

  SADNESS. SADNESS AND cold and a long, slow falling away, away, away . . . hard hands on my back . . . and the stone walls twisted and the dirt floor tipped and I was sliding away, away into the cold and away from the pain . . .

  And hate. Hate and anger that burned. When would this end? Was it over, was it over, hate . . .

  “Hey, are you all right?” Frank’s voice came from a long ways off, somewhere past the cold and the falling and the twisting, tipping darkness that was trying to swallow the world whole.

  “Dead.” I’d blurted the word out. “Dead, right here, dead. Oh, my God. Help. Will help. Must help.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop. The rush of feeling was too strong to even try to fight. “Will be right. Must be right. Won’t let me down. Won’t win. Won’t win. Coming for me. Too late, too long. No. Can’t believe it. Hate. Hate you. Die this time! No. No! Will help . . .”

  “Hey, hey, come on. Sit down . . .”

  “No!” I shouted. He was holding me up. Had I fallen? Hands on my back. Hands under my hips. Fallen. Fallen hard, fallen down all those stairs away from hate and into the dark and the cold and new pain. “Out . . . gotta get out . . . please . . . help, help me, will help . . .”

  “Okay, okay. But you gotta help me. Ready? One step at a time, okay? Here we go.”

  He was moving us both forward. My foot found a stair. My hand found the railing. There was an arm under my shoulders supporting and steadying me as we climbed the long, slow way back up.

  “Merow?” Alistair. I couldn’t see straight, but I knew the cat was there. We’d reached the top of the stairs, and I felt his warm, furry side pressing against my shins.

  “Bad timing, cat,” muttered Frank.

  Except it wasn’t, because all at once, my vision cleared and my wobbly legs steadied. I found enough strength to walk the rest of the way out the kitchen’s screen door, into the sunshine and onto the flagstone patio, where, thankfully, a white wicker bench waited for me to sit down. Alistair immediately jumped up onto my lap.

  “Oof,” said one of us. I think it was me.

  Frank sat down on the wicker table in front of the bench. Was there some kind of state regulation that said houses with little old ladies and cats must also have a suite of white wicker? I needed Google. What I had was a big gray cat rubbing his head against my chin and purring like an affectionate motorboat.

  “I’m okay,” I told Frank. And Alistair. It was even true. I was breathing. I could see again and the world had stopped spinning.

  “Good,” said Frank. “Now, you want to tell me what that was about?”

  No. No, I really didn’t. I automatically dug into my well-stocked pantry of Lies I Tell About My Vibe.

  “Merow!” Alistair gave my hand a firm head butt.

  “Not now, cat, okay?” I picked Alistair up and set him on the patio. He jumped back into my lap and hunkered down. I felt the tiny pinpricks of his claws. If I tried to move him now there would be damage to skin, not to mention my favori
te yoga pants.

  I sighed in defeat. Frank, on the other hand, frowned in deep and implacable skepticism.

  “Those must have been some good tacos.”

  “Pale Ale’s finest.”

  “You were going to tell me what happened back there?” I wasn’t entirely sure if Frank was asking me or Alistair. Alistair, however, looked at me expectantly.

  “You aren’t going to like it,” I told them both.

  “I’d say that’s a decent bet.”

  “Mrrp,” agreed Alistair.

  Me, I did not believe I was having this conversation with either one of them.

  I could still lie. I always lied about the Vibe. I was good at it. But as I sat there, both strength and sense drained away, and all I had left was the truth. “Your aunt died at the bottom of those stairs.”

  “Yes, thank you, I knew that.” Frank’s words were flat and bitter, and I really couldn’t blame him for that.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You really better not be angling for the job of my psychic friend.”

  “Believe me—I would give a whole lot not to know this right now.”

  Alistair swatted at me with one paw. “Hey!”

  The cat stared belligerently back at me, blinking his baby blues. Frank, unsurprisingly, did not look at all pleased either.

  “So you’re not going to tell me my aunt had a last message for me? Like ‘Sell the house and give this person all the money’?”

  “Um, no. Look. Sometimes when I get to a place, I get a Vibe . . . a feeling. Sometimes it’s about something that already happened. Sometimes it’s about something that’s going to happen.” Now that I’d started, words just poured out of me. “I don’t need it, I don’t want it, but I’ve never been able to do anything about it and it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe it or I don’t believe it or the cat doesn’t believe it—”

  “Meow!”

  “It happens anyway, and it happened when I got into the garden, and again in the basement. And your reaction is exactly why I hate to talk about it.” I struggled under the weight of reluctant cat, but I got to my feet. “And I know you want me gone, so I am out of here. Sorry to have intruded.” Very sorry. Completely sorry. So sorry as not to be believed. I started across the lawn, heading for the gate and McDermott’s on the other side with no intention whatsoever of pausing or looking back. I clutched my purse strap and tried not to think about the magic wand and the photo inside. I’d figure out what to do about them later.