“A spy?” I groaned. Something told me I was sticking my head someplace it did not need to be. “Oh, God.” I put my hands to my lips wondering about the package. “Are you sure he’s a spy?” I looked at the television monitor on the dashboard to make sure the stats read what I thought they read.
“Yes, Maggie. He’s a spy and that man you turned into a cat was a criminal meeting with Mick Jasper and there is most likely something in that makeup you smeared all over your face.”
“There is nothing in the makeup. I bet Mick was undercover and doing a drug deal or something and the guy put makeup in there to throw him off.” It did sound possible but my girlfriend theory from earlier had just been shot to hell. “Still, Mystic Couture is something I don’t think I can give back.”
“You have to.” Vinnie pulled up to the police station and opened the door.
“Wait.” I jerked looking around the parking lot of police cars. The traitor had brought me to SKUL. “No. I’m not getting out.”
“You don’t have to.” Vinnie shut the engine off just as Mick walked up to the car.
I was going to pull Vinnie’s spark plugs if he kept this crap up. He was supposed to do what I needed him to do. I didn’t need him to drive here. I snarled.
“I see you came to your senses.” Mick put his hand on the roof, his body positioned between my driver’s seat and the open door. The muscles I’d read about from Vinnie’s work-up of Mick’s stats were popping through the short-sleeved blue knit shirt he had tucked into his jeans. Nice belt and Italian loafers made me think he was a snappy dresser. “Hand it over.”
“Hand what over?” A male voice came from behind Mick. An older silver-haired gentleman stood behind him in a grey suit, blue button down, and red tie. A curious look on his face.
“Her number.” Mick coughed. “We met last night at The Derby and we just had a late lunch.”
“When you are finished here, I need to see you.” The older man scowled. He slid his eyes over and sized me up before he surveyed the parking lot and dismissed himself.
Mewl! A cat shrieked, jumping on the hood of my car. There was a white streak of fur across his left eye. The green eyes with golden flecks zeroed in through the windshield, paralyzing me.
Honk! Ho-o-onk! Vinnie let out one short, and then one long toot of the horn, causing the cat to skitter away.
“That’s the man,” Vinnie said, out loud.
“What?” Mick jumped back, staring at the car. “Who was that?” He stuck his head into my little two-seater.
“What?” I let out a nervous giggle. “Who?” I looked at him like he had lost his mind.
“I don’t know what little game you are playing, but I heard a man’s voice.” He continued to cock his head around. “The male voice said ‘that’s the man’.”
“What man?” I furrowed my brows, playing the little banter game with him. I might not be able to put a little memory loss spell on him, but I could definitely play a head game making him think he was going nuts.
“Don’t screw with me.” His voice was raucous. “Who is the man?”
“The man?” I asked covering Vinnie’s slip up, never once taking my eyes off the cat-man who had run under the bushes, still looking as if it was about to pounce on me and Vinnie again. “I was saying there was a man who had the package.”
“He’s a man who wants the package just as much as me. Now, where is the package?” Mick stepped back up to the car and looked in.
“I left it at home.” I forced myself to look away from the black cat. Something was wrong. The spell should’ve worn off by now. It was definitely the cat, the man from last night. The eyes told me. “I had no idea who you were or what the package was about.” The cat jetted across the road, catching my attention. I tried not to focus on the angry feline. “I didn’t know you were going to come find me. Now that I know where I can find you, I will bring it by tomorrow.”
I reached over and wrapped my hand around the door handle to shut the door. Mick put his hand on the edge of the door, stopping me from closing it.
“Not so fast,” he grunted. “I will just follow you home to make sure I get the package from you.”
“That won’t be necessary. I’ll bring the package to you.” I said as Vinnie jutted forward, knocking Mick’s hand off the door, and slamming it shut. Vinnie peeled out of the parking lot. “Nice,” I said in a sarcastic tone, referring to the screech of the wheels in the SKUL parking lot.
“Maggie, we can’t be bothered with the flirtatious nature of the officer when we have a problem with him.” Vinnie whisked down the road after the cat that was darting in and out of traffic. “You know and I know the spell you placed on the man from the park should’ve worn off by now. He obviously has been keeping an eye out on you. And I have not detected him on my radar.”
“Don’t worry. Just keep up with him,” I ordered my familiar, my eyes bouncing from sidewalk to sidewalk trying to keep up with the feisty black cat. “If it’s a cat-and-mouse game he wants, he shall have it. All I know is I have to reverse the spell.”
“Why is that?” Vinnie asked turning down the street toward a warehouse on the docks near the Kentucky River.
“Someone has to be wondering where he is. He might have family. He might have kids. He might have missed work.” My voice escalated with urgency as each possible thought of who was missing him ran through my head. “What if someone filed a missing person report?” The knots in my stomach got tighter and tighter thinking how I might have altered this man’s life on a silly dare. “What if he never turns back into the human male he is?”
The thought of me screwing up a mortal life made me sick to my stomach. I was going to have to tell Auntie Meme and she was going to have to use her powers to reverse the spell. There was no way I could let this continue.
“We aren’t alone, Maggie,” Vinnie said in his robotic voice.
I turned my body around in the Cobra and looked out the small back window. Sure enough, there was a black rice burner car with red lights illuminating from underneath behind us.
“Are you sure they are following us?” I asked. The car’s blacked-out windows made it impossible for me to see the driver.
Vinnie’s engine roared. I could feel the road moving faster under us. Though I knew Vinnie wouldn’t wreck, I still turned back around into the driver’s seat and gripped the wheel. The speedometer read eighty miles per hour in a forty-five miles-per-hour zone leading down to the docks.
“I’m sure.” Vinnie’s engine revved before he took a sharp turn into a warehouse parking lot, fishtailing to a stop in front of another car that seemed ominous. “And he isn’t alone, Maggie.”
Mewl! The black cat with eerie green eyes jumped up on Vinnie.
“Shit,” I groaned.
This had to be one of the times Auntie Meme had warned me about. She told me not to get myself in a situation where I had to use magic. She told me never to get in a situation where my familiar had to do some crazy outlandish thing that would bring attention to us and our craft. She’d warned me. But I never listened. I totally wished I had listened.
“Now what?” Vinnie asked, revving the gas as we idled.
I bit my lip and continued to release and rewrap my fingers around the wheel.
“I don’t like what I’m sensing you are feeling,” Vinnie said.
“Where are we?” I asked, keeping an eye on the bright yellow car with chrome wheels, equally as low to the ground like the black car behind me. The yellow car didn’t have the blacked-out windows. Both cars had me pinned. I zeroed in on the little bit of space behind Vinnie. If I reversed and took a hard swing left, I would have enough room to get us out of there.
Vinnie’s screen popped up a map of the area.
“I know we are on the docks. I want to know what this place is and who is in the car in front of us.” My chest heaved up and down. The cat continued to stand on Vinnie’s hood with its creepy eyes focused on me. The white brow a clear indicatio
n it was the man from last night.
“If that cat makes one scratch on my hood, I’ll neuter the fur ball.” Vinnie’s monitor put a picture up of the person in the yellow car.
It was a bald man with aviator glasses on. He had a toothpick stuck in the corner of his mouth. It slowly bounced up and down as he gritted this teeth together.
“Can you get a read out on him?” I asked.
“As to our location – we are at the Mystic Couture makeup facility. Very fitting since SKUL has an interest in the package you stole and the man on top of my hood was part of it.” Vinnie’s screen showed a picture of the inside of the building.
“Indo-sting,” I whispered to reverse the spell on the cat. My brows furrowed as I looked at the cat in the eyes, eyes that haunted my soul. “Raptu, verto.” A stream of breath headed straight for the cat on the long “o” sound.
The cat’s head flung back; its mouth opened exposing the sharp teeth.
Mewwl. The sound escaped the creature that was morphing back into the man.
I shoved the gearshift into reverse, turned the wheel to the left, and punched the gas pedal not waiting for Vinnie to kick in. The wheels screeched the full one hundred and eighty degrees. I slammed on the brakes just in time to not hit the black car. The half-cat, half-man flung off the hood and landed on all fours, like a cat, on the ground.
I threw the gearshift in drive and floored the gas. A shrill sound came from Vinnie’s tires, spitting out smoke from underneath us, sending us into a forward motion making it through the small opening and out of the gate back onto the river road.
I glanced back as Vinnie took over. The man was on his hands and knees, his back heaved up and down like he was trying to catch a breath. The others were scratching their heads standing around him. The bald man peeled his sunglasses off his face, and his eyes scowled at the back of Vinnie. A white glow of sunlight blanketed him.
“Shit.” A momentary panic rushed through me. The bald man was in charge and at any cost, he was going to see to it that I was taken care of and not in a good way.
“Um. . .” Vinnie’s voice quivered. “We have company.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” I beat my hand on the wheel and turned to see what Vinnie was talking about.
“Hey!” Vinnie’s voice boomed. “Easy on the hitting.”
“Sorry, but it’s Mick.” I grimaced.
“I wasn’t talking about him.” Vinnie’s tone frightened me.
“Who?” I jerked around. The only person I noticed was Mick. My eyes darted between the cars, looking for anyone or anything who might be following us. A streak across the sky darted in front of me.
“Auntie Meme,” my voice was tight. Sweat beaded on my forehead when I saw my crazy aunt and her puffed-out black hair peddling her bike above me. Her eyes searing me and Vinnie.
She tapped her wrist, letting me know she had been out looking for me and I was going to be late.
Like a shooting star, she shot past me and disappeared.
Mick was getting closer.
“Take it nice and slow.” My eyes darted back to the rear-view mirror. I had to get this over with quick.
Vinnie decelerated taking us down to the forty-five miles-per-hour speed limit, turning left back toward home.
“Don’t go home,” I cried out. “I don’t want him knowing where we live. Plus Auntie Meme already knows we are late.”
Vinnie took all sorts of turns. I felt like I was the little silver ball, weaving in and out and around, in the child’s plastic maze game. Mick continued to follow us, at a safe distance, but he was still following.
“We need to lose him, Maggie. We have cleansing night.” Vinnie reminded me of the weekly cleansing ceremony Mom and Auntie Meme do at the beginning of every week. No wonder Auntie Meme was out. “Auntie Meme is already suspicious and knows something is really going on,” Vinnie warned how Auntie Meme wasn’t too accepting of excuses, especially since we were off work by three p.m.
“Crap.” With the chase and the damn cat, I had let the time slip by me. “I guess I’m going to have to face him,” I groaned.
Vinnie pulled into the next available spot, leaving one behind us.
“You didn’t have to make it so easy for him.” I sucked in a deep breath, tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear. I watched Mick get out of the car. He slammed the door. There was a stalking, purposeful intent in his walk.
He knocked on the window and motioned for me to roll it down. I didn’t have to. Vinnie did it for me.
“Do you want to tell me who you are?” He stood a foot away, legs planted a few inches apart, his arms crossed in front of him.
“I’m Maggie Park. I work at my family’s diner, The Brew. That’s it.” I smiled, trying to diffuse the situation.
Don’t use magic, don’t use magic. I could hear Auntie Meme’s voice in my head.
Mick scanned the area around us before his attention was brought back to me.
“Can you explain what happened back there?”
“Back where?” I asked dumbfounded.
“Now you’re going to play dumb again, like you didn’t take my package, but suddenly show up at the office saying you had the package? Which is it Maggie? If that is your real name.” His jaw tensed.
“I’m not sure what happened. All I know is that I left you and someone was following us. In fact,” I kept my hands on the wheel and looked up at him. “They corralled us in that parking lot and trapped us.”
“Us?” Mick bent down, peeking into the car.
I gulped.
“Me and Vinnie.” I rubbed my hand over the dashboard. “I named my car Vinnie. You don’t have a name for your car?”
I glanced back at his mauve-colored junker. There were some lighter spots on the old jalopy, like sunspots.
“The Caprice?” He shook his head. “No.”
“Well, I love my car and I named it. That’s not weird.” Verm, beedom, Mentally I chanted the words in my head and waved my hand in the air, casting a little memory loss spell for good measure. “Now what was it you wanted to ask me about?”
“The package.” He squeezed his eyes together and gave his head a little shake. He swallowed. His voice was raspy as he repeated, “The package. Bring it to the station or I’ll be back at your work.”
“Fine.” I rolled the window up. Vinnie peeled out of the parking spot, leaving Mick in the middle of the road with a perplexed look on his face.
Chapter Seven
“Shit.” I huffed sitting in Vinnie at the curb at the street entrance of Belgravia Court. Our house was the first one on the courtyard and I could see Mom standing at the window with the curtain slightly pulled open. My spirit could feel her disappointment.
I was late. And I was going to get the twenty-question interrogation of why I was late. The only time I had been late was due to witchery. This time was no different.
She stepped back from the window; the curtain swayed until it came to a stop. I shook my head and took a look around me. Mick and the other cars didn’t seem to be there. Vinnie had shut down. The neighbors weren’t outside. They were probably still drying out from the rainfall from overnight.
The tree-lined courtyard was beautiful this time of year. The summer colors popped of oranges, greens, yellows, and reds. We were lucky to have all the seasons in Kentucky.
I stood on the concrete front porch and noticed the summer decorations Mom had arranged in perfect order since I had left this morning. My comment about Mrs. Hubbard must’ve gotten to her. Mom had planted real flowers in the window boxes. The garden row on each side of our front walk was dotted with coral Peonies, Tiffany roses, Peach Stock, mini green Hydrangeas, Scabosia Pods putting Mrs. Hubbard’s fake bouquets to shame.
“Did you see what your mom did in a few hours?” Mrs. Hubbard stomped out onto her porch.
Ruff, ruff, ruff. King jumped in the air, yipping with each leap from behind her front porch screen door.
“I mean a couple
of hours!” She rose her fist in the air, giving it a good shake. “The garden tour is for residents who do their own gardening, not who hire out!”
“I assure you, Mom did not hire anyone.” Now, she might have waved her hand, but it was her hand. Her magic.
“Impossible!” Mrs. Hubbard was spit-fire mad.
“I’ll see ya.” I waved ’bye and looked back at the road, at Vinnie. He wasn’t used to being on the street, normally he was parked in the garage off the alley way in the back, but I was late. I would move him later or he’d move himself.
Beep, beep.
Ronald Lowell waved profusely out of the window of his old Chevy, parking right behind Vinnie.
“Hey, Maggie!” Giddiness was written all over his face.
A big sigh escaped my lips. “Auntie Meme,” I growled, planted a fake smile on my face and waved back. “Hi, Ronnie.”
He skipped his way up the sidewalk with a handful of rich and radiant fall colored flowers in a bouquet. He wore big thick-rimmed glasses, an old brown suit, and had his hair combed to the side. Ronnie was a local mechanic who never asked questions about our cars. He was good at working on circuits, replacing wheels, spark plugs and all the things that Auntie Meme felt we should use the mortals for. Blend in, she’d say.
“Those are lovely.” I felt sorry for the guy. He’d spent most of his free time trying to woo Mom into going on a date.
“Thanks, I thought Fae would love them.” He held them proudly to his chest as he spoke of my mother. He had a huge crush on her.
“Ronald.” Mom opened the door, a surprised look on her face. Her long black hair cascaded down the front of her in waves. She wore a long black dress. She stepped to the side; the hem of her dress skimmed the hardwood floors of the entryway, her hand rested on the handle of the door, the other swept past her in a smooth motion to usher me in. “Maggie,” she noted my lateness.
I moved past them, giving them private time when in all actuality, I was trying to get out of her line of vision and avoid her questions about where I had been. I could look at her and she’d know. I shoved my keys in my clutch and threw it on the kitchen table where Auntie Meme and Abram Callahan were sitting.
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