by Sofie Ryan
Gram, Rose and Charlotte continued with the conceit that Jess and Liam were a serious couple. And it was kind of funny to watch Liam try to play the attentive boyfriend and Jess try to look adoringly at him whenever one of them was around. Mostly she looked gassy.
Nick was sitting beside me on the couch. “He sucks at this,” he said.
I grinned. “I know.”
“Don’t you feel even a little bit guilty about not telling them that Mom and the others know?”
I made a show out of thinking about his question, wrinkling my nose and twisting my mouth to one side. “Nope, not really,” I said with a shake of my head. “What about you? Do you feel guilty?”
“You just told me five minutes ago,” Nick retorted.
“Well, it wasn’t that much fun sitting here watching them by myself.”
Just then Liam draped his arm awkwardly around Jess’s shoulders. A look passed between Gram and Rose.
Nick saw it as well. He poked me with his elbow. “This is going to be good.”
It turned out Jess had seen the look, too. She twisted out from underneath Liam’s arm. “They know,” she said, taking care to enunciate both words.
I leaned my head toward Nick. “Busted,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
Jess came across the room, dropped onto the sofa beside me and slugged my arm. “How long have you known?” she asked.
I put a hand to my head. “My memory is fuzzy. I had a concussion not that long ago.”
Over by the table, Liam had draped his arms around Gram’s shoulders. “You tricked me,” I heard him say.
She smiled. “And you deceived me. I think we’re even.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek.
“For the record, I think Jess made a wonderful fake girlfriend,” Gram said, raising her voice so Jess would hear her.
“For the record, you made a wonderful fake possible grandmother-in-law,” Jess said, blowing her a kiss.
I looked around the room. Dad, Mac, John and Avery seemed to be building something with what looked like saltines and cream cheese. Gram and Rose were clearly talking up Jess’s attributes to Liam. They kept looking in her direction and smiling. Liz and Mr. P. were watching something on her tablet. Charlotte was eyeing the tablecloth as though she was about to whip it out from under the dishes. Elvis was sitting on the footstool like some kind of furry royalty. And Mom had just opened the front door to Michelle, who was carrying a huge bottle of mayonnaise and a package of tube socks. Mom seemed very happy to get both gifts.
All the people I loved most in the world were close enough to touch.
“You are a weird group of people,” Jess said.
“First of all, there is no ‘you,’” Nick said. “There’s only us, which means you’re part of the weird. And second, we don’t call it ‘weird.’” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Right, Sarah?”
I grinned. “Right. We just call it ‘family.’”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my agent, Kim Lionetti, my editor, Jessica Wade, and assistant editor Miranda Hill, whose hard work has helped make Sarah, Elvis and the Angels a success. Thanks as well go to all the readers who made suggestions for the different “cat sayings” quoted in this book. I had so much fun reading all your ideas.
This book and every book in the Second Chance Cat series has benefitted from the talents of many people behind the scenes at Berkley, especially Dache Rogers and Elisha Katz. Thank you all!
A special thank-you to the cat show people who answered all my questions and shared their love of all things feline with me.
And as always, thank you to Patrick and Lauren. Love you both!
Love Elvis the cat?
Then meet Hercules and Owen!
Read on for an excerpt of the first book in the Magical Cats series.
CURIOSITY THRILLED THE CAT
by Sofie Kelly. Available now!
The body was smack in the middle of my freshly scrubbed kitchen floor. Fred the Funky Chicken, minus his head.
“Owen!” I said, sharply.
Nothing.
“Owen, you little fur ball, I know you did this. Where are you?”
There was a muffled “meow” from the back door. I leaned around the cupboards. Owen was sprawled on his back in front of the screen door, a neon yellow feather sticking out of his mouth. He rolled over onto his side and looked at me with the same goofy expression I used to get from stoned students coming into the BU library.
I crouched down next to the gray-and-white tabby. “Owen, you killed Fred,” I said. “That’s the third chicken this week.”
The cat sat up slowly and stretched. He padded over to me and put one paw on my knee. Tipping his head to one side he looked up at me with his golden eyes. I sat back against the end of the cupboard. Owen climbed onto my lap and put his two front paws on my chest. The feather was still sticking out of his mouth.
I held out my right hand. “Give me Fred’s head,” I said. The cat looked at me unblinkingly. “C’mon, Owen. Spit it out.”
He turned his head sideways and dropped what was left of Fred the Funky Chicken’s head into my hand. It was a soggy lump of cotton with that lone yellow feather stuck on the end.
“You have a problem, Owen,” I told the cat. “You have a monkey on your back.” I dropped what was left of the toy’s head onto the floor and wiped my hand on my gray yoga pants. “Or maybe I should say you have a chicken on your back.”
The cat nuzzled my chin, then laid his head against my T-shirt, closed his eyes and started to purr.
I stroked the top of his head. “That’s what they all say,” I told him. “You’re addicted, you little fur ball, and Rebecca is your dealer.”
Owen just kept on purring and ignored me. Hercules came around the corner then. “Your brother is a catnip junkie,” I said to the little tuxedo cat.
Hercules climbed over my legs and sniffed the remains of Fred the Funky Chicken’s head. Then he looked at Owen, rumbling like a diesel engine as I scratched the side of his head. I swear there was disdain on Hercules’ furry face. Stick catnip in, on or near anything and Owen squirmed with joy. Hercules, on the other hand, was indifferent.
The stocky black-and-white cat climbed onto my lap, too. He put one white paw on my shoulder and swatted at my hair.
“Behind the ear?” I asked.
“Meow,” the cat said.
I took that as a yes, and tucked the strands back behind my ear. I was used to long hair, but I’d cut mine several months ago. I was still adjusting to the change in style. At least I hadn’t given in to the impulse to dye my dark brown hair blonde.
“Maybe I’ll ask Rebecca if she has any ideas for my hair,” I said. “She’s supposed to be back tonight.” At the sound of Rebecca’s name Owen lifted his head. He’d taken to Rebecca from the first moment he’d seen her, about two weeks after I’d brought the cats home.
Both Owen and Hercules had been feral kittens. I’d found them, or more truthfully they’d found me, about a month after I’d arrived in town. I had no idea how old they were. They were affectionate with me, but wouldn’t allow anyone else to come near them, let alone touch them. That hadn’t stopped Rebecca, my backyard neighbor, from trying. She’d been buying both cats little catnip toys for weeks now, but all she’d done was turn Owen into a chicken-decapitating catnip junkie. She was on vacation right now, but Owen had clearly managed to unearth a chicken from a secret stash somewhere.
I stroked the top of his head again. “Go back to sleep,” I said. “You’re going cold turkey . . . or maybe I should say cold chicken. I’m telling Rebecca no more catnip toys for you. You’re getting lazy.”
Owen put his head down again, while Hercules used his to butt my free hand. “You want some attention, too?” I asked. I scratched the spot, almost at the top of his head, where the
white fur around his mouth and up the bridge of his nose gave way to black. His green eyes narrowed to slits and he began to purr, as well. The rumbling was kind of like being in the service bay of a Volkswagen dealership.
I glanced up at the clock. “Okay, you two. Let me up. It’s almost time for me to go and I have to take care of the dearly departed before I do.”
I’d sold my car when I’d moved to Minnesota from Boston, and because I could walk everywhere in Mayville Heights, I still hadn’t bought a new one. Since I had no car, I’d spent my first few weeks in town wandering around exploring, which is how I’d stumbled on Wisteria Hill, the abandoned Henderson estate. Everett Henderson had hired me at the library.
Owen and Hercules had peered out at me from a tumble of raspberry canes and then followed me around while I explored the overgrown English country garden behind the house. I’d seen several other full-grown cats, but they’d all disappeared as soon as I got anywhere close to them. When I left, Owen and Hercules followed me down the rutted gravel driveway. Twice I’d picked them up and carried them back to the empty house, but that didn’t deter them. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find their mother. They were so small and so determined to come with me that in the end I’d brought them home.
There were whispers around town about Wisteria Hill and the feral cats. But that didn’t mean there was anything unusual about my cats. Oh no, nothing unusual at all. It didn’t matter that I’d heard rumors about strange lights and ghosts. No one had lived at the estate for quite a while, but Everett refused to sell it or do anything with the property. I’d heard that he’d grown up at Wisteria Hill. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to change anything.
Speaking of not wanting change, Hercules was not eager to relinquish his prime spot on my lap. But after some gentle prodding, he shook himself and got off. Owen yawned a couple of times, stretched and took twice as long to move.
I got the broom and dustpan from the porch and swept up the remains of Fred the Funky Chicken. Owen and Hercules sat in front of the refrigerator and watched. Owen made a move toward the dustpan, like he was toying with the idea of grabbing the body and making a run for it.
I glared at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
He sat back down, making low, grumbling meows in his throat.
I flipped open the lid of the garbage can and held the pan over the top. “Fred was a good chicken,” I said solemnly. “He was a funky chicken and we’ll miss him.”
“Meow,” Owen yowled.
I flipped what was left of the catnip toy into the garbage. “Rest in peace, Fred,” I said as the lid closed.
I put the broom away, brushed the cat hair off my shirt and washed my hands. I looked in the bathroom mirror. Hercules was right. My hair did look better tucked behind my ear.
My messenger bag with a towel and canvas shoes for tai chi class was in the front closet. I set it by the door and went back through the house to make sure the cats had fresh water.
“I’m leaving,” I said. But both cats had disappeared and I didn’t get any answer.
I stopped to grab my keys and pick up my bag. Locking the door behind me, I headed out, down Mountain Road.
The sun was yellow-orange, low on the sky over Lake Pepin. It was a warm Minnesota evening, without the sticky humidity of Boston in late July. I shifted my bag from one shoulder to the other. I wasn’t going to think about Boston. Minnesota was home now—at least for the next eighteen months or so.
The street curved in toward the center of town as I headed down the hill, and the roof of the library building came into view below. It sat on the midpoint of a curve of shoreline, protected from the water by a rock wall. The brick building had a stained-glass window that dominated one end and a copper-roofed cupola, complete with its original wrought-iron weather vane.
The Mayville Heights Free Public Library was a Carnegie library, built in 1912 with money donated by the industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Now it was being restored and updated to celebrate its centenary. That was why I had been in town for the last several months. And why I’d be here for the next year and a half. I was supervising the restoration—which was almost finished—as well as updating the collections, computerizing the card catalogue and setting up free Internet access for the library patrons. I was slowly learning the reading history of everyone in town. It made me feel like I knew the people a little, as well.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sofie Ryan is a writer and mixed-media artist who loves to repurpose things in her life and in her art. She is the author of Claw Enforcement, No Escape Claws and The Fast and the Furriest in the New York Times bestselling Second Chance Cat Mysteries. She also writes the New York Times bestselling Magical Cats Mysteries under the name Sofie Kelly.
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