by Steve Vernon
Especially one who’d saved her life.
Sure, the cell phone flashlight had hurt the werewolf, but the cat had hurt the werewolf, too. It took both of them to get rid of it. And the way the cat had shown up at just the right time? It was almost like she’d known that Chessa would need her.
“Guess we make quite a team,” Chessa said to the cat.
The cat raised its head and looked at her with sea-glass green eyes.
Maybe Chessa really was going nuts because she could swear the cat understood exactly what she was saying, and more than that—agreed with her.
The cat swished its tail, and now Chessa thought she saw a glint of self-satisfaction in those eyes.
And something else. A hint of mischief.
Come to think of it, that might make a good name for a cat. If it was going to live with her, Chessa couldn’t just keep calling it cat.
“Mischief,” she said, trying the name out loud.
The cat closed its eyes and started to purr.
Mischief it was, then.
“Welcome to my life,” Chessa said.
She almost added I hope you like it here but changed her mind.
It wasn’t like that at all. She hadn’t gone looking for a cat. In fact, she got the distinct feeling that the cat had come looking for her.
How weird was that?
Well, on a scale of things she thought she knew yesterday to things she knew tonight, it barely registered a blip.
Chessa let out a contented little sigh. Someone had finally picked her.
And she couldn’t be happier about that.
If you liked “The Night Mischief Became a Real Cat,” you might also like Annie’s short novel UNBROKEN FAMILIAR.
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Enjoy the following free sample of UNBROKEN FAMILIAR.
Unbroken Familiar sample
A cold rain plastered Twig’s hair to her scalp and the back of her neck, dripped in large drops from the long, delicate points of her ears, and raised goosebumps on her skin.
Rain was nothing new in Moretown Bay. The Pacific Northwest city that hugged the bay of the same name saw more rain than sun, and more cold days year round than warm ones. The cold didn’t usually bother Twig, but tonight was different.
She leaned against the wet brick wall outside the strip club her friend Jocko owned. He’d named the place Snow’s Palace, a dig at some movie Twig had never seen. Apparently Jocko, the tallest dwarf Twig had ever known, had a serious dislike of the way dwarves had been depicted in the film.
Jocko’s twisted sense of humor had been the first thing (other than his sheer size; Jocko stood well over six feet tall) that Twig had noticed about the big, hairy guy when they’d met years ago. Her own twisted sense of humor, as well as her diminutive size, had caught his attention, and they’d been friends—after a fashion—ever since.
She wrapped her bare arms around herself, trying not to shiver. Heat and cold, sunshine and rain, all the permutations of the elements weren’t supposed to affect elves, but tonight Twig didn’t feel much like an elf at all.
Her family had disowned her.
She’d torn up the parchment a coal black crow had delivered less than an hour ago. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t get the formal, stilted language of the proclamation out of her brain.
Activities unbecoming your station.
And…
Dishonored your family.
And her most damning sin:
You have associated with a dwarf who has himself dishonored his own kin.
Twig supposed she should have known this was coming.
In the Shadows, the locals’ name for the hard-luck neighborhood down by the commercial piers in Moretown Bay, sin was a way of life. Jocko’s strip club wouldn’t even be classified as “sin light” by the Shadows’ standards.
Drug deals, kidnapping, murder. It all happened after dark in the Shadows. Even the cops didn’t patrol the area all that much. Back when Jocko had worked vice, he’d been one of the cops who did venture past the boundaries between the places most law-abiding citizens called home and the places where crime didn’t bother to hide its face.
Jocko had been one of the good guys. He still was, but that didn’t matter to Twig’s family. Just like it didn’t matter to her family that she wasn’t a stripper, or that she didn’t have anything to do with drugs. Or that she didn’t do any number of things that the mortal world considered “criminal.”
To the elves of Marlette Island, and especially the elves, like her family, who had royal blood flowing in their veins, merely associating with sinners was sufficient reason for banishment.
The garish neon sign advertising Snow’s Palace reflected off the slick pavement of the street outside the club. Loud surfer music—the only kind of music Jocko allowed in his club—blasted into the night air as the door opened and a group of drunken humans poured themselves into a taxi waiting at the curb.
The club’s bouncer watched the men get into the taxi and then turned toward where Twig stood in the rain beyond the awning that covered the club’s entrance.
“Don’t you have enough sense to come in out of the rain?” he asked.
He was a muscle-bound weight lifter hired to intimidate anyone who wanted to get fresh with the dancers. Twig had grabbed him by the nuts and squeezed—hard—when he’d tried to intimidate her back when they’d first met six months ago.
The bouncer hadn’t been around back when Twig first went to work for Jocko. She’d been gone from Moretown Bay and Jocko’s life for nearly a decade helping a friend, but circumstances had brought her back to the Shadows. She’d tried to get inside the club to see Jocko, and she hadn’t had any time to spare. That’s what happened when someone was out to kill you.
The bouncer had thought she was a kid, and he’d tried to stop her from going inside the club. The Marlette elves, especially those with royal blood like Twig, looked perpetually young. Other than her long, delicately pointed ears, her youthful appearance was the only thing that gave away her heritage.
The bouncer hadn’t taken her seriously when she’d told him she was probably old enough to be his mother, so she’d taught him looks were unreliable when it came to elves.
Consequently, the bouncer didn’t like her, and she didn’t like him. But at least he’d contented himself to only jab at her with words.
She certainly wasn’t about to explain to him why she’d come outside in the rain.
She didn’t want to be surrounded by her adopted family—Jocko and the changeling dancers and her fellow bartenders—when her own kin had disowned her. It all hurt too much.
If she was the type who drowned her sorrows in alcohol, she’d be inside drinking away a week’s worth of wages, but that had never been her style. She was brash and bold—ten years spent with a motorcycle gang while she was trying to help her friend tended to do that to a person—and she never, ever let anyone see her hurting.
“Fuck off,” she told the bouncer. “I like the rain.”
“Nutty elf,” he muttered under his breath before he went back to his post just inside the door.
Stupid man. He could have whispered, and she still would have heard him over the music.
Twig heard more things than humans could ever imagine with her long, delicately pointed ears. More than music and speech and the whisper of a breeze rustling the garbage in an alleyway at noon.
She heard magic.
She ignored most of it, the way she imagined humans ignored the sound of their beating hearts. They only paid attention when something went wrong.
Twig ignored the everyday sounds of magic in the city. She’d learned to tune them out early, or they would have been like thousands of discordant notes playing simultaneously in her head. She only heard the unusual. The strained. The injured or captive.
Like when she’d heard the imprisoned magic of the spirit that had been trapped inside her motorcycle.
That was probably another reason her kin had disowned her. Elves of her station didn’t join motorcycle gangs. It Just Wasn’t Done.
She’d first heard the injured magic of the gentle water spirit trapped inside the chrome and steel of the motorcycle not long after Jocko had opened his strip club. When she’d been young, back when she’d still lived on Marlette Island with her kin, she’d heard the unfettered songs of magic sung by the water spirits who lived in the bay. The mournful tones of this gentle spirit’s magic hurt her heart.
Twig had made it her business to free the spirit, even if it meant she had to leave her friends behind.
Jocko had taken it personally.
Apparently so had her kin.
Freeing the spirit had taken ten years of her life and taken her far from Moretown Bay and farther still from Marlette Island. But years to an elf were not as dear to her as they would be to humans, or even to dwarves, and Twig had considered it a small cost.
The fact that she’d returned to Jocko for help in defeating the demon who’d been using the water spirit’s magic to augment its own had gone a long way toward repairing their friendship.
A friendship that had now cost Twig her family.
It didn’t matter. She’d get over it. Most of the women—human and otherwise—who worked in the club had been disowned by their kin in one way or another. Jocko had a soft spot for women who needed help, and he never said no to any woman who asked for it.
Not that she needed his help now. She didn’t need anyone’s help. She certainly didn’t need her—
The sound of magic in distress interrupted her thoughts.
Twig stood up straight and cocked her head to one side.
The sound was deep purple and ancient, and it resonated at a level that was almost beyond Twig’s ability to hear. It came to her on a whisper of blue-black wings and sorrow.
The rain pelted down harder, as if the Shadows itself was weeping.
Twig swiped at her ears with an angry hand, trying to dry them. Something about this magic sounded familiar, but the sound was so faint, the memory wouldn’t come.
Words did. Very faint on the air and garbled.
Help them.
The words came with a vision—an old woman floating on the dark water of the bay. Perched on her chest: a dark bird one instant, an ancient girl-child the next.
Twig recognized the woman.
She was the Merlin Twig had hired to set the water spirit free.
The Merlin who’d set something else free that night as well—a beast whose master Twig had killed.
A beast who’d been banished by the Merlin.
It looked like the beast had returned to even the score.
(end of sample)
UNBROKEN FAMILIAR is available from your favorite ebook distributors.
About the Author
Award-winning editor and author Kristine Kathryn Rusch describes Annie Reed as “one of the best writers I’ve come across in years.”
Annie’s won recognition for her stellar writing across multiple genres. Her story “The Color of Guilt” was selected as one of The Best Crime and Mystery Stories 2016 and her story “One Sun, No Waiting” was one of the first science fiction stories honored with a literary fellowship award by the Nevada Arts Foundation.
A frequent contributor to the Fiction River anthologies, Annie’s thrilled to be a part of the relaunch of Pulphouse magazine. Annie’s recent work includes the superhero origin short novel Faster, which can be found in Hiding Behind the Cowl, and the urban fantasy novella “Unbroken Familiar.” Annie’s also one of the founding members of the innovative Uncollected Anthology, a quarterly series of themed urban fantasy stories written by some of the best writers working today.
Annie’s novels include Pretty Little Horses, Paper Bullets, A Death in Cumberland, and the upcoming Missing in Cumberland, as well as numerous other projects she can’t wait to get to. For more information about Annie, including news about upcoming bundles and publications, go to www.annie-reed.com.
Copyright Information
The Night Mischief Became a Real Cat
Copyright © 2017 by Annie Reed
Published by Thunder Valley Press
Cover and Layout copyright © 2017 Thunder Valley Press
Cover art copyright © matc/Depositphotos.com
Title page art copyright © BorbelySissy/Depositphotos.com
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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
He’s got nine lives, three miracles, and one family to save!
Gingersnap Cat is an orange tabby feeling blue. Heaven’s paradise, but it’s just not home without his human family by his side. Not even Christmas with his feline friends can cheer him up.
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But when Heaven needs an extra paw, Gingersnap answers the call. Sent back to Earth, Gingersnap must help a little kitten fulfill a big destiny!
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A Gingersnap Cat Christmas will have you laughing, cheering, and looking for the unexpected friendships in your life. Add this faith-affirming holiday fantasy to your Christmas traditions today!
A Gingersnap Cat Christmas
by Danielle Williams
Published 2018
© Copyright 2018 Danielle Williams
All rights reserved.
Published by Pixelvania Publishing.
ISBN: 978-1-7326308-0-2
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously to convey a sense of realism. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Cassidy and Dominique
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and the members of the Monte Cristo Ward, our angels when we needed them.
I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.
—Jules Verne
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Where there is great love there are always miracles.
—Willa Cather
1
My name is Gingersnap. I used to live on Earth with my family, but like all animals do, I got old and died. I live in Heaven now, in Cat Housing (domesticated division). I’ll move over to the Human development when my forever family makes it up here. Right now only my master’s mom and dad are up here, but they’re dog people. They live with Sammy, their Chihuahua. I still visit twice a year, but it’s not the same without my forever family.
Some of my cat friends live over in the Human development right now, even if it’s just part time, but I was with the Romanos a long time, and I’d feel strange hanging around other humans. I mean, I spent some time on the streets, but when I finally found my forever family, I fit, snug as a mouse in its hole, or like one of those pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, like my Gina used to do.
(Sometimes at night I’d get bored and play with the loose pieces. Luckily, Damien, Gina’s dad, was a smart guy and made a scraper out of a long stick so she could sweep ’em out from under the sofa where I usually wound up batting them. Hey, instinct’s instinct.)
Anyway, Cat Housing’s really great. It’s sunny, there are trees everywhere—bare and leafed—no cars or vacuums, and som
e of the smarter rats (and mice, and voles, etc.) agreed to start a community hunting league, where they try to outsmart us while we chase them. But no one ever dies up here. Of course. Everyone touches noses after and goes home. It’s a good team sport. I hear they’re even trying to get a Birding league started.
Heaven is terrific.
But this year…Idunno. I can’t say I’m bored—I’m a cat, sleeping’s still one of my favorite hobbies—but something’s just…missing.
2
“Psst. Gingersnap. Gingersnap. Hey, Gingie!”
Rodney, my Siamese friend, butted his head into my shoulder.
“What?” I rolled awake. “And don’t call me Gingie!”
“Sorry,” he said, but his brown tail still waved in the air, so I knew he wasn’t. “But you know how you’ve been moping around, saying you want something to do?”
“Yes, I am aware of the things I have said.”
He rolled his blue eyes. “Well, Feather’s calling for some extra paws to help with the Christmas decorations this year. You should come!”
“Right now?”
“Yeah!”
I licked my paw—first to wash my face and wake me up a little more, second to buy me some time.
Christmas in Heaven is a Big Deal; everyone here goes all out. My buddy George had been on the decorating team every year and loved it, but collecting and transporting doodads was in his bones. He told me once about a time he’d brought his person back a slipper big as he was, back on Earth when he was just a kitten.