Cat-astrophic Spells (15 page)

“
G
et away
, Treacle!”
I screamed in my head.
“Run home! Just get home where it’s safe!”
I then saw him rub against Jennifer’s leg. My eyes swelled with tears. She had him, and she was going to kill him, slowly and cruelly. My mud-crusted hand clutched her, and I sank my nails in as far as I could.
“Fight her, Treacle! Remember me? I wouldn’t hurt you! Fight her!”

“Oh, I see. I got your cat,” Jennifer said. “He’s been lurking around here for a little while now while you’ve been doing anything but fighting back. He’s seen you give up. Now he’s mine.”

I coughed and cried, still clawing at her hand around my neck. I was starting to feel light-headed. With one last try, I screamed in my head,
“One good swipe, Treacle!”

I think the balance between the light and the darkness had been tipped because just as I thought I was going to pass out, I heard a fierce
meower-er-eow.

My cat was clawing and scraping at his own face. He hissed and arched his back with all his fur on edge. In one sudden movement, he jumped up at Jennifer’s face.

She screamed out a stream of obscenities as Treacle scratched all the way down her cheek. She dropped me to the ground, and I landed on the hard, bumpy rocks that were along the banks of the river. Just as I looked up, she waved her left hand, and my poor cat went flying into a tree, dropping to the ground with a thud.

As much as my gut pulled me toward Treacle, I reached out to the water instead. I just needed one lousy drop. Then I heard Jennifer again. She just wouldn’t shut up.

“I’ll kill you both! I’ll tear you apart! You’ll explode from the inside out just like the others!”

I scrambled with all my strength just to get a couple more inches, but Jennifer had me in her invisible vise. I felt my breath catch in my chest. My whole body was in pain, and my chest was burning. I arched backward, and with my last ounce of free will, I stretched toward the water only inches away, but it seemed like miles. My muddy hand came closer and closer to the slow-moving ripples. Finally, I felt the cold water gently kiss the very tip of my fingers, and I muttered the words
, “Coerce an unblemished soul for infinity, and let this be washed away
.”

The water in the lake shot up into a fine spray. It seemed as though it went all the way up to the stars, but that may have been because the oxygen had stopped going to my brain for several minutes.

Jennifer was soaked from head to toe, and so was I. But I saw what I’d hoped to see. The Maid of the Mist.

The thing about the Maid of the Mist is that she didn’t always show up when you needed her. She showed up when she felt like it, when the cause was worthy, and when her absence would cause more harm than good.

With each drop of cold water on Jennifer’s skin, the residue of the black magic she’d been wallowing in was washed off. She didn’t know it. She didn’t feel it. But the enchanted water of the Maid of the Mist had the power to wash away what had been accumulated through false and misguided methods.

If Jennifer were a real sorceress, someone with a bloodline tied to it, then this cleansing ritual wouldn’t have worked. But she was a wannabe, a hack, a freshman self-taught in the diabolical. And the diabolical had no real use for an amateur witch.

“Great! You splashed me!” Jennifer said, unaware her powers had left her. Her eyes were still filled with hatred for me. She waved a hand, expecting to see something. When she did it again and nothing happened, her eyes became wild. She looked as if she had just emerged from a cave, with her hair straggling in a hundred different directions and her teeth gritted together.

I slowly regained my composure and looked toward where Treacle had smashed into the tree. I began to hobble in that direction.

“Stop!” Jennifer yelled. I paid no attention to her. She was just a person… a regular person with no special talents for causing heart attacks, or making people fall to the ground, or punching someone in the stomach with invisible fists.

I wanted my cat to be all right. I wanted Treacle back to the way he was.

“Stop!” she yelled again. As if something snapped, she began swearing and stomping her feet. Waving her arms, she found no magic there. She looked like a person suffering from an epileptic fit of some kind. I couldn’t watch. Instead, I carefully got down on my hands and knees. Crawling through the grass, I felt for Treacle. In my head, I was screaming for him. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Then I heard it.

“I’m here.”
His voice was so little, but I heard it. Within seconds, I felt his warm fur beneath my hand.

“Are you hurt badly?”

“I don’t think so,”
he said weakly, letting me scoop him up into my arms and hold him close.
“It was like a nightmare in there. Her mind pushed into mine. It hurt. It was so black.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said aloud.

“Do you think I care if you’re sorry?”

I whipped around to see Jennifer standing just a few feet from us. In the moonlight, I could see she had one thing no witch could stop with just magic. She had a gun. I couldn’t speak.

“What have you done to me? I’ll kill you for this! I don’t need witchcraft for that! I’ll kill you and—”

“Put the gun down!” I heard Blake call out.

Jennifer’s face was shadowed, but she looked nervously to her left where Blake’s voice was coming from.

“Just put the gun down, Miss.”

He approached with his gun drawn and his flashlight trained on Jennifer.

She began to wave her hands and utter spells in long-dead languages that I wouldn’t dare say out loud. Without knowing what she had done, she had allowed the blackest sorcery into her body and soul. When it was removed, the damage had already been done. She was insane. “You deserve to die like Melvin! Like Lucas! Like Bob and Regina! You’ll pay for this, too.”

“Who’s Bob and Regina?” I asked, clutching Treacle close to me, feeling his warm, purring body and stroking his fur nervously.

“Put the gun down!” Blake cried out.

“…deserve to die.”

“I’m not going to tell you again!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Miss! Put the gun down!”

It was then that all the crickets stopped. I saw three flashes—one from Jennifer’s direction and two from Blake’s.

My shoulder felt as if it had burst into flames, and Treacle jumped from my arms. I collapsed to my knees then fell over. Everything was so quiet except for Blake’s voice. I heard him request an ambulance. I heard him say two people were down. Was I one of them?

The grass was cool against my cheek when I turned my head. My shoulder felt hot and cold at the same time. And it was wet. Something hot and wet was seeping through my shirt. My mind wasn’t thinking correctly. I should have just kept my mouth shut when Blake came to me.

His strong arms slipped underneath my head and back. He held my shoulder tightly. It hurt yet felt comforting. “You’re okay, Cath. I promise. You’re okay,” he said softly. “The ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be just fine.”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I muttered as I looked up into his face. I saw what looked like a kind smile. “I’m always glad you’re here.” I would remember seeing all the stars behind his head.

“I am, too,” he said.

After that, it was darkness.

W
hen I finally woke up
, I was in a bright room with flowers and wolf bane in pretty vases all around. I blinked my eyes a few times and tried to sit up, but my shoulder screamed out in a sharp, jagged pain.

“Ouch,” I whimpered.

“Oh, my gosh! For heaven’s sake, don’t move! You’ve been shot. Take it easy,” Bea said in her most motherly voice. Had I closed my eyes, she would have sounded just like Aunt Astrid. I looked up to see she had been crying.

“What’s the matter? Did I almost die?” I asked with a mouth as dry as the desert.

“What’s the matter? You hear that, Mom? What’s the matter? You go off and fight the Wicked Witch of Insanity all by yourself and get shot and then ask what’s the matter?”

The whole ordeal came rushing back. Not only had I been shot in the shoulder, I had one heck of a magic burnout, too. “Yeah, in hindsight, I guess it wasn’t such a great idea.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Aunt Astrid scolded. “However, a cleansing ritual—how practical. We were too busy trying to stoop to her level, and here you were taking the high road. You made us very proud.”

“I don’t feel proud. How is she?”

Neither Bea nor my aunt needed to answer. I saw the looks on their faces and knew Jennifer had died.

Bea climbed onto the side of the bed and took my hand in hers. “She was sick, Cath. There was no medicine that was ever going to cure her. No therapy that would have brought her back.”

“Detective Samberg doesn’t realize it because he is such a good man, but he helped her more than any one of us ever could have,” Aunt Astrid said. “Before she got to Melvin, she was wanted in New York City for the murder of a ten-year-old boy and his mother. She drove right into them at a crosswalk. Video footage makes it look like it was deliberate.”

“How awful. A sacrifice obviously.” I winced at the pain in my shoulder.

Bea nodded, still holding my hand and patting it as though I were a child with a fever.

“It was really divine intervention that Blake was there to begin with,” Aunt Astrid said. “How lucky for all of us that he was.”

I felt my cheeks blush as my aunt talked about him in such glowing terms.

“And…” Bea grinned like the cat that swallowed the canary. “He said you said you were glad he was here in town.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Sure you did.”

“No, I said something like ‘glad you’re here to help me with this bullet in my shoulder.’”

“That’s not what Jake said Blake said.”

“No. I said I was glad he was there at that moment. Otherwise, well, I’d be dead.”

Bea looked suspiciously at my aunt as if they had some insider knowledge about me.

“Blake needs to get his ears cleaned out,” I muttered, my eyebrows pursed together in aggravation.

“Knock, knock!” Jake said, as he walked in carrying a big box of chocolates and some crossword puzzle books. “How’s our girl feeling?” He leaned down to give me a kiss on the forehead then quickly peck Bea on the lips.

“I’m doing fine.”

“That was quite a stunt you pulled. Your aunt and your cousin won’t yell at you because they’re just happy you’re all right, but you had all of us worried sick. Bea called me up half-hysterical that you’d left the house without telling them.”

“I’m sorry?” I said as more of a question than a statement because I wasn’t sure if Jake was serious. Not until I looked into his eyes and saw the tears. Then I proceeded to feel horrible.

“You better be,” the big man said, folding his huge arms in front of his chest.

“I promise I’ll never go out and engage in a conversation or beat-down with anyone who is mentally unstable.”

Jake nodded then gave me a wink.

I smiled back and tried not to move too much.

“They told you the news about Jennifer, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Just then, there was another knock on the door.

“Oh, come in, Detective!” Aunt Astrid rushed across the hospital room to the door. “Please do come in.”

I saw that Blake was carrying a paper bag with some big thing in it. He must have been there to visit someone else and was bringing that person a package. He didn’t smile, even when Aunt Astrid hugged him. Instead, he looked around the room as if he were planning his escape.

“Hello.” He nodded.

Jake walked over to shake his hand and pull him a little farther into the room.

“Hmm,” Bea said quietly in my ear. “I feel your pulse has gone up. What could possibly be causing that?”

I pulled my hand away from Bea and wrinkled my nose at her.

“How are you feeling?” Blake asked, still standing almost in the doorway.

“I’m okay.”

“You shouldn’t have been out there alone. Statistics show women who are out past a certain time of night are seventy-five percent more likely to—”

“Well, I’m a big girl. I can go out when I want to.”

“You might want to consider purchasing some Mace.”

“I’ll take that under consideration.”

“There are also self-defense classes at the station.”

“Will you be there?”

“No.”

“Well, then maybe I’ll check it out.”

“That would be wise.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Fine.”

“Okay.”

After Blake and I managed to make everyone in the room uncomfortable, they all decided to head down to the cafeteria for a snack and some coffee. Blake hung back for a few minutes. “I picked this up for you. The doctor said you’d be out in a day or two, but you should probably rest as much as they’ll let you.”

“Well, you didn’t have to do that,” I said, trying to be nice. “In fact, if anyone owes someone a gift, I owe you.”

He stood a little closer to the bed, looking down at his shoes and gently touching the edge of the blanket by my feet. He kept shaking his head, but I continued.

“Look, I know you don’t really like me. I’m a little prickly, I know. But from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I owe you one.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do.”

“No, really, I was just doing my job.”

“I know, but it’s hard on you, too.”

“It’s okay.”

“Really.”

“You’re welcome.” He stood around for a few more awkward minutes then turned to face me. “I’ve got to get back to the office. I’ve got a lot of paperwork.”

“Oh,” I said, reluctant to admit I felt a little disappointment. “Well, thanks for stopping by.”

Blake nodded. Without a smile, he handed me the package in a paper bag that he’d been carrying, then in three strides of his long legs, he walked out. I waited, hoping that maybe he’d come back. But he didn’t. I was all alone.

I reached in the bag and pulled out the gift inside. It was a book.

Celestial Delights: The Best Astronomical Events Through 2030
.