Tea & Croakies

by Sam Cheever

  My cat was weird.

  My gaze slipped over the windows, to the windshield, beyond which the roiling smog spun and drifted, covering the range of pale gray to black and something even darker, which looked like infinity in a terrifying way. “I don’t know.”

  The car creaked softly and we yelped as it shook from side to side.

  Wicked’s purr filled the ominous silence.

  “What’s up with your cat?” Lea asked, her widely terrified gaze locked on the miasma beyond the glass.

  “No clue,” I said in a low monotone. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the silence was necessary to keep from waking whatever beast nudged against us from outside.

  Purrrrrrrrrr

  I threw a glare over my shoulder. “Shh!”

  Wicked stared back at me, his gaze inscrutable.

  The car creaked again. Louder than the last time. And we threw out our arms to brace ourselves as it toppled slightly sideways and seemed to go airborne. The sense that we’d left the ground was unproven since we had no way of judging our relative position against the earth, the sky, or anything in between.

  We were blinded by the magic-induced smog, apparently airborne and, judging by the way we were suddenly thrown back against the seats, we were moving fast.

  “I don’t like this,” Lea murmured, her knuckles white against the door and dashboard.

  “This shouldn’t have been possible,” I responded. “The Fae cloaked our car. How did the witches even find us?”

  Lea shook her head and gave a startled cry as the car seemed to slow, then tipped violently sideways, jerked forward again, and made a dizzying drop that had us both caterwauling like terrified children.

  The car bounced once and shimmied violently. But I got the sense we were no longer moving. We sat in silence, even Wicked’s purring had finally stopped, and I listened to the sound of the blood roaring through my ears.

  Terror had me firmly in its clutches. I decided in that moment that I’d rather face a hundred giant owl enforcers than spend one more second being blindly compelled by infinity in a fog.

  I thought about that as the smog started to clear.

  Well…maybe not a hundred enforcers. But definitely one.

  Maybe.

  When the fog oozed away, I expected to be sitting outside the Quilleran home we’d so recently breached.

  We weren’t.

  In fact, we weren’t outside of anything. We appeared to be inside a large, concrete and metal building.

  Lea and I held perfectly still for a long moment, waiting for whatever nightmare the Quillerans had devised for us next.

  When nothing happened, we shared a look.

  Finally, I reached for the handle and opened my door. I tested the floor for firmness and then stepped out, looking around. It was clearly the inside of a warehouse building. Not an enormous building but a sturdy and relatively clean one.

  There was very little light in the space. Only the silvery trails of moonlight that filtered through a row of high windows illuminated the single, large room. The place smelled slightly musty, unused, with a tinge of rodent giving the stale scent an unkempt piquancy.

  We appeared to be alone.

  Lea and I looked at each other over the car.

  “What just happened?” I asked my friend.

  She shook her head. “Maybe that was part of the fairy cloaking magic?”

  “Maybe.” I decided, for my own sanity, to go with that. “Well,” I glanced around. “It’s not a bad place to set up for now.” Opening the door to the back seat, I urged Wicked to jump out. “Maybe you can scry on it and figure out where we are.”

  Lea nodded. “On it.” She opened the trunk and started pulling out suitcases.

  I leaned across the backseat and reached for Wally’s basket, squealing in alarm as the leather under my bracing hand warmed and rolled. I jumped back and smacked my head against the top of the car. “Ouch!”

  Lea jumped into a crouching stance, hands out and fingers splayed, silver energy spitting against her blood-red painted nails. “What!? What’s wrong?”

  I rubbed my head and giggled. “Nice battle stance.”

  She looked down to her bent and splayed legs, then quickly straightened. “You startled me.”

  I giggled some more and then glanced into the car. “Something moved under my hand.”

  A terrified squeaking in the distance told me Wicked had found the source of the rodent smell. “Don’t eat the residents!” I yelled at my cat. I could almost feel his disgust even from across the wide-open space.

  I shifted sideways and a ray of moonlight found the back seat. A familiar dark rectangle was sitting on the worn leather of the seat.

  Just about where Wicked had been sitting.

  “Drooling dog shifters…” I muttered, reaching inside.

  “What is it?” Lea asked, joining me in the doorway.

  “The book.” Upon looking more carefully at the golden letters adorning the front, I realized it wasn’t the book Rustin had given me. It was the one I hadn’t been able to touch before.

  As soon as I held it in my hands, the book opened and pages started flipping. To my vast surprise, it stopped on two blackened pages.

  I frowned. Then I realized the pages weren’t really black. They were shades of black, from pale gray to blacker than black. And the surface of the picture moved and shifted as I touched it.

  I’d seen exactly the same thing only moments before.

  Outside my car windows.

  “Meow,” Mr. Wicked said as he wound himself around my ankles.

  “This is the fog that just carried us here,” I said in a breathless whisper.

  Lea and I looked down at my cat.

  My gaze lifted slowly back to hers. “Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  We stood in silence for a beat. Then Lea frowned. “Wicked?”

  “I think so,” I said. “But why could he access the book and I couldn’t?”

  She shrugged. “Familiar magic is more easily transferred than Keeper magic. Or any other kind of magic for that matter. I’m guessing the person who owned the book before used a feline familiar to lock it and Wicked, being especially talented, probably found a way around the magical lock.”

  “Huh.”

  Lea stared a moment longer at my kitten, and then nodded. “Well, I’ll get my scrying things set up.”

  I nodded absently, looking from the book to my magically talented cat. “Good work, little man. I’d love to know how you got this thing to cooperate, though.”

  Wicked’s purring response brought a grin to my lips. Maude hadn’t been kidding when she’d said Wicked’s litter was especially magically talented.

  “Holy toad toes!” Lea exclaimed.

  I looked up from the cot I was making up in the center of the space. I’d found the cots inside Lea’s suitcase. After she’d pulled a square folding table from the same bag. And two chairs. And one of those water dispensers that bestows icy water which is magically delicious when you’re on the run from an evil witch family.

  “It’s like Mary Poppins’ bag!” I’d happily exclaimed as I pulled two blankets and two fluffy pillows from its depths.

  “Witch, please!” Lea had said, disgusted with me. “Hollyweird totally stole that idea from me.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked my friend.

  “Nothing’s wrong, exactly. It’s just…you’ll never guess where we are.”

  I walked over to where she’d set up a wide, shallow bowl filled with Mercury, a crystal ball situated at its center.

  She ran her long fingers over the ball. The silvery surface of the Mercury rippled and spun, a series of silvery funnels rising above the surface.

  Inside the glass ball was a picture of the artifact library at Croakies.

  I frowned. “That’s impossible.”

  She shook her head. “My crystal doesn’t lie.”

  “But how? Where?�
�

  She shook her head. “You should know that better than anyone. What artifacts do you have in the room that might take us in?”

  Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of anything. “This is bad. The Quillerans will find us.”

  She sat back in her chair. “I don’t think so. Aside from the fact that you probably put special warding on the place to keep non-KoA out…”

  I nodded at the unspecified question. “I did.”

  “And the fact that the artifacts never show themselves to non-keepers unless they’re engaged.”

  “True…”

  “And the fact that even we don’t know where we are.”

  She grinned and I had to laugh too. “You make a great argument.”

  “We have time to figure out what’s going on. Then, if I’m not mistaken, you can use that book Wicked was kind enough to bring with him to get us out of here.”

  She was right. On all counts. I relaxed a bit. I hadn’t wanted to worry Lea, but while she was scrying out our location, I’d opened the only door in the place and run up against a concrete block wall. No egress. In. Or out.

  Soooo….

  Across the room my suitcase jumped up into the air and slammed back down, angry sounds emerging through the canvas sides.

  “Is that…bleeping?”

  I sighed. “Yes.” I’d forgotten about my security artifact. “I needed protection.”

  Lea stood up and followed me. “So, you brought a suitcase that swears?”

  I turned to find her laughing.

  “Close.” I unzipped my bag and SB blasted out, shooting straight up into the air and flying a circle that included the entire width and breadth of the spacious room.

  As he flew, he dropped bleep bombs like bird poop on our heads the entire time.

  Clearly, he hadn’t liked being packed inside a suitcase along with my spare underwear.

  I reached into the bag and carefully extracted Blackbeard’s sword. As I touched the hilt, the blade grew to the perfect length for my arm. My fingers felt right at home around the hilt. “I figured this might help if I needed to fight the Quillerans.”

  Lea nodded. “As long as you don’t need to get too close to use it.”

  I frowned down at the blade. She had a point. A magic arrow shot a lot farther and faster than a sword could slice.

  Shrugging, I decided to trust my choice. Mr. Wicked wasn’t the only one who had some keen magical instincts.

  My right butt cheek vibrated and I reached for my phone, only to realize it wasn’t my phone.

  It was Maude’s. I must have slipped it into my pocket at some point when I was running from the enforcer.

  The ID on the phone said only, Pops. I grimaced, thinking that was way too harmless-sounding for Jacob Quilleran. The witch I’d faced off against in my rooms was no Pops.

  Needless-to-say I let the call go. A beat later, a voicemail warning showed up.

  “Who was it?” Lea asked. She was squinting into her crystal, no doubt looking for clues as to where we were.

  “Jacob Quilleran.”

  She started, her head jerking up, and I realized she thought it was my phone. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to tell her about our good fortune. I held it up. “This is Maude’s. She managed to tape some of the essence-stealing ritual.”

  Alarm faded from Lea’s expressive face. “Oh, thank the goddess. Don’t scare me like that.”

  I chuckled. “Sorry. I need to send myself the video file.” I quickly found the video and emailed it to myself. Tugging my laptop from the suitcase, I set it up on the table, sitting down across from Lea. As I opened my email, her scrying Mercury bubbled energetically. The bubbles burst in a rhythm of their own, and sent liquid metal spurting upward in random patterns, dancing to its own unheard melody.

  The video email arrived with a trumpet sound that made Lea snort out a laugh. With a bleep and a flourish, SB settled down onto the table between us. “Avast ye, maidens. Guard yer bosoms.”

  “Don’t you mean gird your loins?” Lea asked with a roll of her eyes.

  I shook my head. “No. He probably means what he said. Remember, he belonged to a pirate.”

  “Ah, yes.”

  I clicked on the video to open it. Lea stood behind me, watching over my shoulder.

  The scene on my screen was dark, confused, with a lot of action and shifting forms all wearing white.

  I realized the Quillerans’ robes were white, with blood-red scarves that hung around their necks.

  “White robes? Blasphemy,” Lea said.

  I turned to discover her curling her lip.

  “There’s nothing pure about that family.”

  I couldn’t agree more.

  We watched as the be-robed forms shifted into their places around a flickering fire. The tallest participant, features obscured by a strange black mask with perky ears like a cat’s, threw a handful of dust on the fire and the flames expanded on a rush of air. The orange and red of a normal flame was speared an unnatural purple by whatever the witch was flinging onto the fire.

  The witch turned to someone and nodded. I got a good look at the mask in the flickering light. It was a cat.

  Strange choice for a ritual. Movement at the bottom edge of the video caught my eye. Several small, graceful forms wove silently through the ritualists, their black coats sparking in the light of the fire as if they were covered in pixie dust.

  “Are those cats?”

  I nodded, pointing as the person videotaping the ritual ─ presumably Maude ─ scanned the area to pick up the four small felines circling the fire.

  The witch wearing the cat mask flung another handful of dust into the fire and it flared brightly, its glow mirrored in the sigils dangling from the cats’ collars.

  I sat closer, squinting in an attempt to see the sigils. “Those have to be Wicked’s littermates.”

  Lea frowned. “But they’re black. I thought his litter was entirely gray, which is why the Quillerans knew they’d be exceptional magical conduits.”

  I threw her a quizzical look and she shrugged. “I hear things on the witch-wave.”

  “They are all black. Maybe the witches dyed them?” I shrugged. “Or it could be different cats, I guess. Though, those sigils look like the ones LA Mapes took off the kittens.”

  On the video, the witches around the fire all joined hands and started to chant. I couldn’t understand what they were chanting, but I noticed the words had a hypnotic effect on the cats, after a few moments of chanting, the kittens stepped forward, one by one, into the fire pit.

  My stomach clenched. “Oh, no, no, no.”

  Behind the camera, Maude gasped, and the view flew off target for a beat.

  When it refocused, the cats were all standing at the edge of the fire, encircling it like the witches. The sigils hanging from their collars glowed with the eerie purple light of the fire.

  Although they appeared extremely calm, maybe even hypnotized, they didn’t seem to be in any danger from the fire. Instead of touching them, it danced around them, sending smoke into the air above the fire that appeared to mirror their shapes. The smoke felines had eyes the color of the fire, a deep orange, and glowed with power as they hovered above the flame.

  The chanting wound down and the group fell silent.

  I held my breath, unsure what would happen next, and then sucked air in a gasp as the smoke cats all plunged downward into the fire and it exploded, flame flaring out to touch everyone standing around the blaze.

  It receded slowly to show that no one had been burned.

  One by one the kittens stepped away and disappeared into the night, their sigils no longer glowing.

  And at the center of the fire, which was only softly glowing embers at that point, sat a dull silver object shaped like a star.

  The camera moved and a rock skittered past the screen. There was a soft intake of air as the masked witch’s head jerked toward the person taping the event. And then the sound of scrambling
and the wild thrashing of ground and sky, before everything went dark.

  18

  Even Fools are Occasionally Right

  I sat staring at the blank screen for a long moment, thinking. Lea shifted uncomfortably behind me, pulling me out of my thoughts.

  I hit the play button and watched the video again. And then one more time.

  Shaking her head, Lea returned to her scrying after the second viewing. “I just feel so bad for those kittens. They were like…”

  “Zombies?” I provided, a sour taste in my mouth. “They were obviously under some kind of spell.”

  Lea frowned. She sat in her chair, staring at her crystal ball, clearly disturbed by what she’d seen.

  She jumped when I slammed the top of my computer closed to stop myself from watching the video again. I looked across the table. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s frustrating. I feel like all the pieces are here and we just can’t put them together.”

  I nodded silently. “I’ve seen those sigils before. They were hanging from the kittens’ collars.”

  Lea’s eyes widened and she sat forward. “Do you still have them?”

  “No. But LA might. Her witch was going to dig into them.”

  Lea tapped the table between us with a long, pink nail. “Call her. If those sigils were used to engage the infuser we’re looking for, they’ll have magical residue from this ritual.”

  I hesitated. “I don’t want to be a party pooper, but I’m sure these objects have been used in lots of rituals by now.”

  Lea nodded. “Yes. But unless the Quillerans are using black magic on a regular basis, that won’t matter. Dark magic leaves behind a sooty aura that’s fairly easy to see.”

  I picked up my cell, quickly dialing LA. She answered on the third ring. “Naida. I’m glad you called. I was just going to call you. We need to talk.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked my friend, surging to my feet. Adrenaline coursed through my veins.

  “Deg’s been testing those sigils. We think they’ve been used in a black magic ritual fairly recently.”

  I glanced at Lea. “LA, my friend Lea’s here with me. Do you mind if I put this on speaker?”