“No, please.” Clara turned from one sister to another.“The police probably have the real one and any others will just confuse things.”
“Suit yourself.” Harriet began to bathe, working on one fluffy hind leg as if it were a drumstick.“But you said…”
“I know.” Clara sighed.“But I worry that anything so…creative will only make things worse for her. Becca is so down already.”
“If I could’ve gotten her into that outfit…”
“That wouldn’t have solved anything.” Clara cut her sister off. It was time for drastic measures.“Hang on. I want to see what she’s searching for with that machine.”
Leaping up beside the seated girl, Clara willed herself to be if not invisible then at least not easily detected. That went against the grain for a cat, and she could feel her two sisters eying her with curiosity. But unlike the usual morning, when Clara would be the first to rub her head against the young woman’s arm and try to cheer her up with a rousing purr, right now, Clara wanted to pass unnoticed. Better that Becca should keep on with whatever she was typing, so Clara could figure out what to do next. Clara knew that cats can’t read, per se, but they can get a lot from the images on a screen—even without psychic powers. But just as Clara crept close enough to focus, Becca closed the laptop and reached for her phone.
“I’m just being silly,” she said, turning toward the cat. “And I’ve got you kitties depending on me.”
Clara looked on in mute sympathy as Becca dialed.“I’m calling for Eric Marshfield.” As she spoke, she sat up, her posture as crisp as her diction. “Mr. Marshfield,” she said a moment later. “Thank you for taking my call. I’m contacting you about the open position? I couldn’t see a way to submit a resum? on your site.” The voice on the other end caught her up short. “I gather it’s data entry, but I can promise you that I—” Another pause. “I’m sorry, a friend told me about it. I gather it hasn’t been posted yet. Shall I send you my resum? anyway?” This time, Becca was holding her breath. “Well, then, thank you again for your time, and I’m—”
She stared at the phone as if the device had bitten her.
***
“Nexus?” Clara muttered to herself, sounding out the word she had heard her person mutter only moments before. Then the screen changed, and she understood. Becca still had the library access she had used in her last job. Good, the calico thought. Becca was good at research, and it made her feelbetter about herself. But the next screen that came up only made the little cat’s whiskers sag. Becca wasn’t reading up on criminal law or even the forensics of a stabbing. No, as the branching chart materialized in the screen in front of her person, Clara knew the situation was dire. Becca wasonce again tracing her own lineage in the futile search to uncover the magical roots that, in truth, led to Clara and her littermates.
“This is worse than I thought.” Clara jumped down as soundlessly as she had ascended, ready to address her sisters.
“Oh?” Laurel flicked her tail. Harriet, Clara noted, was already curling for her mid-morning nap.
“Becca thinks she can do this by herself..” Clara turned back. No, the young woman was still at it.“She thinks she can do it with magic.”
“Fine, let her.” Harriet wasn’t going to forget that missing scone.“What do we care?”
This time it was Laurel who swiped at her. Though whether that was out of sympathy with Clara or simply because she enjoyed provoking her fluffy sister Clara didn’t know for sure.
What she did know was that Becca needed her. Needed them all, actually. That was why they’d been placed with her. And although her sisters seemed to believe that such placement was random—much as Becca voiced the opinion that she’d “adopted” all three cats of her own free will—Clara knew better.
“Hecate, come to me!” While still seated on the couch, Becca had raised her hands from the keyboard. Head back, she opened her arms, as if readying for an embrace.
“Oh! That’s my cue!” Harriet wiggled her plump bottom, readying to jump.
“No!” Once again, it fell to Clara to restrain her oldest sister.
“What’s the matter?” The marmalade cat turned, her pique evident in her flattened ears.“You don’t want me to materialize anything? You said it yourself, Becca needs help.”
“I don’t want you to encourage her.” Clara’s voice sank to a hiss.“She’s not a witch. We’ve got to stop her from thinking she is.”
“Huh.” Harriet turned and began to groom. It was a dismissal, but Clara was grateful that her sister wasn’t going to put up a fight.“We could end this once and for all,” Harriet muttered, her mouth full of fur.“I could summon a knife and place it at that scone stealer’s apartment, and Laurel could get the police to go look for it, I bet.”
“That wouldn’t solve anything.” Clara had given up arguing with Harriet and simply stared at their person. She was trying desperately to think, and her sister’s interruption wasn’t helping.
“She’s right, of course.” Almost soundlessly, Laurel had joined them on the rug.“The clown, that is. We send Becca after the wrong person and, if we’re not careful, she’ll get killed too.”
The Siamese didn’t seem too distressed by that thought, but Clara turned to stare at her, her own fur standing up along her spine.
“What?” One syllable was all she could manage.
“Someone is out hunting.” Laurel looked up, her blue eyes cool and inscrutable.“Who’s to say that our little Becca wouldn’t be next?”
Chapter 21
That question was only one of the many Clara was still mulling over when Becca finally gave up, forty minutes later. By then, she’d tried a scrying spell, an incantation supposed to make the hidden known, and fifteen words of power guaranteed to grant wisdom.
As Clara or any of her sisters could have told her, none of them had a chance of working. Human tongues are simply unable to give the spells the proper feline pronunciation. As it was, the calico had gradually grown grateful for her person’s distraction. As she sat on the sofa, entranced by Becca’s gestures and strange pronouncements, she had had time to run through her own list of possibilities—many of a more mundane kind—searching for an answer.
“I should just implant the idea that she drop the whole thing.” Laurel had woken from her nap and now stretched, extending her claws dangerously close to Becca’s leg.“This obsession is becoming quite dull.”
“No.”Clara resisted the urge to bat at her sister. It wouldn’t do to provoke her.“You were right, what you said. I’m worried that she’s in danger.”
Laurel tipped her head, regarding her baby sister anew.“Really?” Her voice dripped with something akin to skepticism.“You care about her that much?”
“Of course!” Clara’s response was automatic, and then she caught herself. “You do too. Don’t you?”
Laurel gave the feline equivalent of a shrug, the velvet fur of her shoulders twitching as she rearranged herself on the cushion. She would never, Clara knew, admit to having bonded with a human. Still, she had to love Becca, didn’t she? Becca had taken them in. She was their person.
“She’s competent,” Laurel said, a bit begrudgingly, and Clara bit back her own reply. From her sister, this was high praise. Besides, Becca was finishing up.
“It’s no use, Clara.” She addressed the little cat with a sad smile. “Maybe all the magic I have was used up on that one pillow. Only, you’d think…” She closed her laptop and stood with a sigh. “I mean, this is important.”
Clara butted her head against Becca’s thigh. Her jeans were soft and warm, and the hand that came down to fondle her ears gentle. “You guys probably just see me as a walking dispenser of treats,” she said. Across the room, Harriet’s ears pricked up. “But I know what happened. I have power, and I should be able to use it. Imean, someone killed Suzanne, and I’d like to think it wasn’t someone in the coven…”