by R K Dreaming
Jeeves looked alarmed. He had looked hopefully towards Juliet with every course he had served, but she had merely picked at her meal and had not complimented a single thing. Her limp mood had infected Gwendolyn too, who had also failed to notice Jeeves’s efforts.
Percy did not thank him either. He could have at least made her one thing she liked. She shot him a grieved look, and was glad to see that he looked like he was beginning to regret his choices as he sourly took away the empty plates and topped up Gwendolyn and Juliet’s dessert wines.
Percy finished off her mum’s unfinished dessert and Juliet’s untouched one.
Afterwards, she took Gwendolyn aside and whispered, “I’m telling you, I haven’t seen a cat since that jar smashed, and I’ve been looking for one all over.”
She explained to her mother about the little kitten named Lucky that she had temporarily adopted, and who had stayed at the house all of the previous week.
“She used to get really scared at nights, and scratch me and wail, and I thought it was because some other stranger cat had got into the house and was frightening her. But it must have been this Skrull.”
Gwendolyn looked unconvinced. “Don’t be silly. Skrull wouldn’t bother frightening a kitten. A silly little kitten would be beneath his notice!”
“Of course it was him. What else…?” Percy’s voice trailed off. She’d had a sudden thought. “I’ll prove it. Let me go and ask Mr Bramble.”
She hurried down to the bottom of the garden, pulling her sleeves and hood low over her hands and face to ensure that the thorny blackberry bushes and roses did not scratch her up as she worked her way through the tangle of wildlife there.
Finally, breaking out of the brambles, she walked up the little path to a large rock. It had a small door set into it.
She knocked on it, and a few minutes later Mr Bramble opened the door. He beamed to see Percy.
“Tired of your guest already?” he said cheerily. “Do you want to come in for some tea?”
Percy grinned at him. Mr Bramble had often offered her a shelter from her mum’s many loud parties when she had been young, for which she would always be grateful.
She shook her head. “Actually, Mr Bramble, do you remember that Lucky kitten used to get anxious when she was here? You said it was because there was another cat in the house frightening her?”
Mr Bramble nodded his head and a dark look came over his face. “That beastly beast,” he said. “Creeping about all the time. It’s unnatural is what it is!”
Percy was relieved. “Do you know where the cat is?” she asked urgently. “Mum says he belongs to the family, and she needs to find him.”
Mr Bramble shook his head. “I don’t know. I hoped he was gone now. Found some peace finally.”
Percy went back to the house feeling dejected. When she suggested to her mother that they might as well give up, Gwendolyn Prince got a stubborn look on her face.
“Never!” she announced. “You don’t understand how precious that cat is. My mother warned me to never let him go, mischievous thing that he is. And sadly, he never bonded with me, so I had to keep him in the jar.”
“What’s the big deal!” said Percy. “You could go to Magicwild Market and get some other cat tomorrow to do whatever you want with it.”
Gwendolyn grabbed her arm and hustled her away from the door of the dining room that Juliet was still in. She lowered her voice.
“Just any cat won’t do. Skrull is irreplaceable. He is powerfully magical. I have to have him to help me with the spell I need to cast for Juliet. I promised Juliet to keep her safe. I promised. And I never break my promises! Whatever will I tell Juliet now if we don’t find him?”
Percy groaned. “But mum, I have the week off school. It’s half term. Can’t it wait? I promised my friends we’d do some stuff together.”
She thought it was in her best interests not to mention that the stuff they wanted to do together was to find a way to sneak Felix and Shara into Magicwild Market. Only witches and wizards and Meeks were allowed free passage inside Magicwild Market, and Felix and Shara were too young to get the special permits that eldritch folk needed to be allowed in.
Gwendolyn brightened. “A whole week off school? How wonderful. That means you’ll be able to dedicate all of your time to finding Skrull, since you were the one that lost him!”
Percy groaned.
She moaned, she whinged, she argued, but it was all to no avail. Gwendolyn had made up her mind.
And so Percy searched the while house again the following day, traipsing through everywhere she had already covered, and then through the orangery, the ballroom, the library, the upstairs gallery. It was endless.
The problem was that even if the darn cat was still here, it could be running to somewhere new the moment it heard her coming. Heck, if it was as magical as her mother said, it could be etherhopping for all Percy knew. What Percy needed was an army of ghosts to hunt it, but Jeeeves had refused to help at all.
Meanwhile, Gwendolyn was having no better time of it. Juliet was clinging to her like a limpet, following her everywhere. Clearly Juliet’s grief had made her rather more a miserable person than Gwendolyn had dreamed she could be when she’d invited her here.
“Cheer up, darling,” Gwendolyn said to Juliet at dinner, pressing her to take a large slice of chocolate cake. “And look, Jeeves has made you raspberry coulis to go with it. Your favorite!”
Gwendolyn drizzled a generous amount of the sticky red sauce on top of the slice. Percy got the feeling that perhaps it contained a hint of Perk-Me-Up potion.
Juliet blanched at the sight of the cake and pushed it away immediately.
“I couldn’t eat that, Gwen dear,” she said in a faint voice. “Poor Brad will never eat cake again. And he so loved chocolate cake.”
She choked on her tears, and grabbed a napkin to bury her face in.
Gwendolyn patted her shoulder with a miserable expression on.
“I know just the thing to cheer you up, darling,” she said, still in her forced cheerful voice. “I’ve been planning the most incredible party for Halloween!”
Percy threw Gwendolyn an alarmed look, but her mother ignored her. Halloween was in three days. No way would the Sheedy cousins be caught before then.
“I throw the best one every year,” Gwendolyn continued. “You’ll meet the most fabulous people, and I know they’ll cheer you up. I know you love a good party every bit as much as I do!”
“But I won’t be able to attend,” Juliet sobbed into her tissue. “We can’t let them know that I’m here. I’ll have to hide in my b-bedroom!”
“You won’t,” Gwendolyn hurried to reassure her. “I’ve got the perfect disguise for you. All you have to do is drink up the little potion that I’m currently brewing, and you’ll blend right in.”
Juliet looked at Gwendolyn with a mix of suspicion and hope on her face. “You mean…” She hiccupped. “Do you mean what I think you mean? But that potion won’t be ready for Halloween. It takes weeks to brew!”
“Not if you’re me it doesn’t.”
“So you can put me into a disguise and make me someone else right away?” Juliet asked meekly.
“Soon. I’m just waiting for a special ingredient.”
“But… but who will I be? I refuse to be just anyone.”
“Don’t worry, dear. I have just the perfect person for you to be!”
“But I’m so tired, Gwendolyn. I can’t bear to act like someone else. And what if I’m here for weeks? What if one of your friends gets suspicious? I simply can’t bear the deceit.”
Gwendolyn’s face fell. “But I thought you’d find it such fun! You always did before.”
“I can’t bear the pressure,” said Juliet. “I’m not myself. I can’t do it.”
“It’s someone very special,” said Gwendolyn persuasively. “Someone no one on earth has seen before! There won’t be any pressure. You’ll be free to be however you want to be!”
“How can that be possible?” said Juliet with a pout. “That potion can only make you the same as another living person.”
“My version will be extra special,” Gwendolyn reassured her. “And won’t it be wonderful to slip into somebody else’s face for a while? To live somebody else’s life and forget your grief for a teensy little bit? You’ve been through such a horrible time. No one would blame you for it.”
Juliet’s eyes lit up a little bit. She clutched Gwendolyn’s hand with her thin pale one.
“I do… I do miss people,” she said. “And music, and dancing, and merry-making. Oh, is it so terrible of me to miss it, Gwennie?”
“Of course it’s not,” Gwendolyn declared. “And once the potion is ready, you won’t even have to be shackled to this house. You will even be able to get out and about and take a little walk in the fresh air, and then you’ll be right as rain!”
“Is that a good idea?” said Percy in warning tones. She was staring at Gwendolyn in horror.
Gwendolyn glared at her. “You have two days until Thursday. Until Halloween,” she said. “Two days Persephone to find that special ingredient you’ve lost, or I’ll have to cancel my party, and you know I hate cancelling my parties!”
Juliet looked stricken at the thought that the wonderful party that had been dangled in front of her was now going to be taken away. She turned her pleading big hazel eyes onto Percy.
Percy groaned. If she found the darned cat, she’d risk unleashing Juliet-in-disguise on the world to get into all sorts of trouble. If she didn’t find the cat, she’d be trapped at home with gloomy, moany Juliet all week long. It was a lose-lose situation.
4. The Exquisite Opal
By the next morning Percy had decided that the disguise-potion might be the lesser of two evils. After all, Gwendolyn’s magic was powerful. And as much as Percy hated to admit it, her mum’s wild schemes often turned out to be ingenious. Percy would just have to do her best to make sure Juliet-in-disguise never left the house, which shouldn’t be too hard given that her fear of the Sheedys had reduced her to a terrified little mouse.
And so Percy took up her search for Skrull with renewed vigor. She decided to look outdoors, where Mr Bramble had last seen the cat.
Percy scoured every bush and flower border and bramble patch in her immensely large garden. Like her house, this too had been magically enhanced and in reality existed in a much smaller space. For the first time Percy wished that her garden really had been the tiny size that it ought to be.
“Damned cat,” she muttered under her breath as she took a look in the shed. “When I find you, we’ll both be lucky if I don’t kill you.”
The stupid thing! If only it wasn’t so devilishly clever. It was most definitely giving her the runaround. She was surprised she couldn’t hear it chuckling. In her mind she pictured it seeing her coming and immediately skulking away to wherever she had just been searching ten minutes previously.
What she needed was a bit of luck. She needed for the darned cat to be caught in the middle of a nap, if a bag of bones ever needed a nap that was.
At this sour thought, it was like a light bulb went off in Percy’s head. She gasped, stricken by an idea, and annoyed with herself for not having thought of it before.
“Lucky kitten!” she cried in relief.
“Lucky what?” said Gwendolyn, who had just come out into the garden to see what Percy was doing.
“Lucky kitten can help me find the cat,” said Percy excitedly. “My friend Shara has her.”
“Most certainly not. I said no friends. Skrull is our family secret and needs to stay that way!”
“But we don’t need to tell anyone he’s magic.”
“It’s best not to even—”
“Do you want to find him or not?” demanded Percy. “If the stupid thing is even in this house. It could be running around London for all we know. And anyway, you can trust my friends to know about Juliet but you can’t trust them to know about Skrull? That’s ridiculous! I’m calling them whether you like it or not.”
In the end her mother acquiesced. She was clearly horrified at the idea of having to cancel her Halloween party.
Percy called Shara immediately and was disappointed when Shara did not answer. Percy left her a voicemail asking to borrow Lucky kitten.
It turned out that Shara’s little brother was scheduled to have his operation on Wednesday night. Shara, who now firmly believed that Lucky kitten was very lucky indeed, simply could not allow the kitten out of her very ill little brother’s vicinity until after the operation was successful.
Which meant that by Halloween morning, Skrull had not been found and Percy’s mum was frantic. She had resorted to using her wand at dawn. Half the furniture in the house was upside down. But Gwendolyn had been right — the spells did not work on the cat. There was no sign of him.
Just after breakfast, there came a knock on the door. Percy opened it and gave a great cry of relief to find Shara and Nan and Felix all standing outside. Lucky kitten was clutched in Shara’s arms.
Lucky kitten was small and grey with short fluffy hair and big green eyes. She had even grown a little in the time that Percy had not seen her. She immediately leapt into Percy’s arms with a great meow of delight.
Percy chuckled as the kitten squirmed and wriggled out of her clutches. She climbed up onto Percy’s shoulder, where she had always enjoyed perching, and flicked Percy’s earlobe with her rough little tongue. It tickled.
“Stop that.” Percy laughed, and let her friends into the house.
“Did everything go okay with your brother’s operation?” she asked Shara anxiously.
“Perfectly,” said Shara, almost bouncing with excitement. “Wonderfully! I’m telling you that from the day Lucky kitten came into our lives, not a single thing has gone wrong with Liro. I’m so glad you let us have her, Percy.”
Lucky kitten seemed to have grown brave in the time that she’d been away, or perhaps it was that she was now in the house with her gang of four friends. She had dropped onto the floor and was sniffing around.
“How are you getting on with Patch?” Percy asked Nan. “Any news on his superpower yet?”
Nan shook her head. “We’re still getting to know each other. And anyway, you didn’t know that Lucky kitten was lucky until she decided to show you. Patch is a bit, erm…”
“Set in his ways?” teased Percy. “Determined to hide his secrets?”
Nan laughed. “Gosh I hope not. I’m sure he’s special. I’ll find out his superpower eventually. I bet it’s amazing.” She sounded more hopeful than certain though.
“Crazy amazing,” Percy agreed. “Has to be. He’s kind of full of himself.”
“He is not!” Nan protested. “He’s just self-assured. I like it.”
Percy got down on her knees beside Lucky kitten and told her what she wanted. Lucky kitten seemed to understand. They didn’t even have to bring Percy’s mum over to use magic to help Lucky kitten obey. The kitten wandered off immediately, frequently checking over her shoulder to make sure they were all following close behind.
They spent the next two hours being led on a merry chase all around Percy’s immense house.
“This place is unbelievable,” Shara kept saying. “Do lots of witches have this sort of thing?”
Nan shook her head. “I wish. It takes strong magic and complex spell-casting to extend something on this scale and make it this stable and long-lasting. Percy’s family are the legendary Princes. This has been their family home for generations.
“Were the legendary Princes,” said Percy, having to swallow a pang of sadness. “It all stops with me.”
Despite her efforts to laugh it off, the trio all gave her sympathetic looks. Percy scowled. She hated sympathy.
They entered the ballroom. Felix looked up at the ceiling and whistled in admiration. Hundreds of glimmering candles were already floating up there.
The entire insides of the house, not just the ground floor, had b
een festooned with Halloween decorations overnight by Jeeves. The place was dripping with spiderwebs and lit up by flickering candles. Enormous carved pumpkins with horrendous faces on them lay scattered around the passageways and rooms, some of them spewing out their own innards, some of them devouring their own babies. Tiny little pumpkin lanterns glowed upon every windowsill.
Blood dripped suddenly on some of the walls, and sometimes from doorways as they opened them. Occasional icy blasts hit them out of nowhere. In several rooms, low echoing groans or ghoulish howls rose unexpectedly before dying away.
Percy knew from past experience that more terrible sounds were in store, like the earsplitting screams that would emerge from some of Jeeves’s hors d’oeuvres as they were being eaten. This was a trick he enjoyed playing very much on the guests.
Worst of all was the pack of poltergeists that he had roped into joining them for the evening, who would be helping him serve the food and would play in the live band, or afterlive band as it was. Jeeves had persuaded some of them to swoop through the walls at the most inopportune moments to alarm their victims. Percy was sure that more than a few drinks glasses would be smashed by the end of the night.
It could have been worse. Jeeves had pouted when Gwendolyn had banned the ghosts from frightening anyone who was just about to take a seat on a toilet.
“All of this effort,” said Shara, “and your mum might still cancel the party. I can’t believe it.”
“Yep,” said Percy. “It might be for the best you know.”
“Oh, I really hope not,” said Shara longingly.
In the ballroom, a few of the musician poltergeists were practicing their brass instruments on the stage. One overheard their conversation.
“A ghost cat, did you say?” he said with glee. “What fun!”
Percy did not bother to correct them. Her mother had been unable to say what manner of cat Skrull might be now that he had been left to his own devices.
The ghosts decided to join in on the search, but this mainly involved them swooping around the four teenagers’ heads.