“If that means a normal, ordinary person, then yes,” I told him with a stony gaze.
Moss nodded toward Octo-Cat. “And him?”
I nodded again. “Totally normal.”
“Excuse you,” Octo-Cat hissed, stomping over to join us. “I’m anything but—”
“Shut up!” I shouted at him. This was not the time for that overblown ego of his.
“What are you hiding?” Moss demanded, turning toward Octo-Cat but still watching me from his peripheral vision.
“Nothing. I swear.”
He studied Octo-Cat for a moment before breaking out in an unfriendly smile. “Ah, I get it,” he concluded. “He’s just your average, everyday cat with an unfailingly high opinion of himself.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in. “Yes. Exactly.”
“So, somehow you got hit with magical resonance,” he continued.
I couldn’t tell whether it was meant to be a question or not. “Sure?”
“And that’s why you don’t show up on any of our tracking systems,” he continued. “You’re a non-magical entity with a single magical ability.”
I nodded along. This explanation certainly made sense, seeing as I was sure about only two things here—one, I wasn’t magical, and two, I could talk to Octo-Cat.
A collective gasp sounded from the crowd. Why did they find me so interesting, especially when they could all do such extraordinary things themselves?
“Does that happen often?” I asked, suddenly desperate to understand more.
Moss shook his head. “No, it really doesn’t. This started six months ago, you say?”
I pumped my head in agreement. Finally, someone would tell me the answers. I could feel them bubbling just beneath the surface. Peter hadn’t helped me, but Moss would. I just knew it.
“That’s worrying,” he said.
“Why?”
“If you were a true magical person, you would have been born that way. If you were hit with some magical residue, it should have faded within twenty-four hours.”
“So, what am I then?” I asked as my heart hammered away inside my chest.
“That depends,” he said with a thoughtful expression.
“On?” I was so close to begging him for more. Couldn’t he see how desperately I needed to know?
“Your cooperation,” he answered with a pensive gaze.
Nobody said anything for a few moments until Peter appeared at the edge of the glass. “You’re either big trouble,” he said with a scowl.
“Or our greatest weapon,” Moss finished, his eyes now shining with an evil joy.
“No, no, no. I don’t want to be a weapon,” I argued, shuffling backward until my back was flat up against the wall.
“What about me?” Octo-Cat asked. “Am I a weapon, too?”
“You?” Moss laughed and shook his head. “You’re just an ordinary, everyday tabby cat.”
Chapter Sixteen
Octo-Cat took several steps back until he bumped into the glass. “No,” he whispered over and over again. “No, it’s not possible.”
The crowd roared with laughter but, despite their glee, I could tell my cat was hurting. Badly.
“Don’t listen to them,” I pleaded, pushing myself to my feet so I could go to him.
He flinched at my touch, then bounded out of reach. “Don’t,” Octo-Cat said sadly, refusing to look at me.
“Always with the dramatics,” Peter said, stalking in on all fours to join us inside the fishbowl. He waved one arm in a circle and the glass turned into a shiny opaque surface, cutting off both the sights and sounds from outside.
“We’re alone now,” Peter confirmed, sitting down on his haunches. His great tongue lolled from the side of his open maw in clear anticipation.
“It would be easier for me to talk to you if you were human,” I said, clenching my eyes shut tight as I turned away. A part of me still didn’t want to believe that any of this was happening.
“Have it your way,” Peter said coldly.
When I opened my eyes again, both he and Moss had returned to their human forms while Octo-Cat remained turned away and sulking in his corner.
“Now are you going to cooperate or what?” Moss asked, his green eyes taking in my every move.
“Or would you rather do this the hard way?” Peter asked. Apparently, we’d returned to their previous good cop, bad cop routine. But I wouldn’t be fooled this time. Moss had already admitted that neither of them was good, and thus it stood to reason that neither of them would help us out of the kindness of their hearts. They wanted something, and I just hoped it wouldn’t be too high a price to pay.
I bit down hard on my lip as I watched them watch me. And then I couldn’t take the studied silence any longer. A million questions weighed on the tip of my tongue, and I let the first few spill out into the open air. “What do you want from me? And if you’re not the good guys, then who are you? Are you going to let us go?”
Peter puckered his lips unattractively and made a condescending tutting noise. “So many questions when you won’t even answer our one simple request.”
“Cooperate,” Octo-Cat murmured from across the room. He had his forehead pressed to the wall as if that was the only way he could remain upright. I’d never seen him like this. Not even close. At this point, I knew I needed to do or say whatever it took to get us out of here, to get him help.
“Fine,” I answered, keeping my gaze on that poor forlorn tabby to remind myself why I was suddenly so willing to assist my enemy. “What do you need from me?”
“Money,” Peter said with a smirk. “Lots of it.”
I faltered at this. After all this hocus pocus nonsense, were they really only after my money? “I-I don’t have much at present, but if you’ll allow me to make monthly payments, I can—”
“Not from you,” Moss amended. “But rather by way of you.”
That’s when all the pieces began clicking into place. Finally, I could see the picture for what it was. “The robberies downtown,” I murmured, unsurprised that this gang would stoop so low but somewhat disappointed in myself for not figuring it out sooner.
Peter licked his chops even though he was still in human form. “The first several were easy, but the jewelry store has a magic-sensing alarm.”
“That’s why you couldn’t get in the other night,” I said. And that’s why we’d seen those dogs running back and forth through town during our stakeout. All of it, everything fit together so neatly, and Moss had just delivered the tidying bow.
“Hey, try not to judge us too harshly,” the cat shifter said with wide eyes. “It was invisible, so we didn’t know it was there until it was too late.”
Oh, I was judging them all right, just not for this reason. “How did you get into the other stores?” I asked, emboldened by the thrill of this new information.
“Glamor,” Moss said simply as if this one word answered every question. I thought I recalled reading about glamor in one of the fairy books I’d enjoyed as a kid, but that was back when I hadn’t known that magic could be real, that it could also be dangerous.
It explained so much now that I thought about it, though. How the dingy basement had transformed into our current surroundings, how Peter had tampered with my mind on more than one occasion. Was that how they changed into their animal forms as well?
I wanted to know more, but more than that, I just wanted to be free.
“I don’t see how I can help,” I said, raising my fingers to my mouth and chomping at the nails to offer myself some sort of small comfort.
“Well, that part’s easy,” Moss said, stretching from side to side. “We have the code for the human alarm, and you’re not magic so you won’t trigger the magical one.”