Amulet Theft Victim left the door open behind him—apparently so his furry friends could come and go as they pleased—and walked down the porch steps to retrieve a package the delivery man had left by the garage door. It didn’t seem to annoy him that the delivery person hadn’t carried the package all the way to the front porch. A tolerant man, then.
Bas raised his nose to sniff the air. “I can smell the amulet, but the scent is faint.”
“There might be a faster way to track it. I held out a paw. “Excuse me,” I said, speaking to one of the cats meandering over the lawn. “Excuse me, might I have a moment of your time?”
The cat, a regal calico, turned to look at me, and her expression softened when she saw my youthful face. “So polite for one so young. What brings you here?”
I recognized a mothering instinct when I saw one. I tucked my front paws together, making my feet look even tinier, and tilted my head so the sunlight caught my blue eyes just so. “The man who feeds you. He had an amulet. A piece of clay shaped like a cat?”
“Yes,” the calico said, nodding. “I believe his granddaughter gave it to him, though where she got it, I couldn’t say. He was very sad to see it go missing. He’s worried the tiny human will think he didn’t like her gift.”
I didn’t know much about magic, but I was willing to bet the man’s granddaughter had had nothing to do with making that amulet. More likely the sorcerer had delivered it himself, in a guise that would make an old man not only accept the necklace, but treasure it.
“So, he didn’t know it was magic?” Bas asked.
The calico gave him a small smile. “He’s only human.”
“We want to get it back for him,” I said, indicating myself and Bas. “Do you have any idea where we might find it?”
Another cat approached from behind the calico. This one had sleek black fur, and a piece of his ear was missing. He stopped when he heard our conversation, and his ears flattened against his head.
“The trinket isn’t missing,” he corrected me. “It was stolen.”
“Stolen?” the calico echoed. “I didn’t see anyone.”
“You were sleeping,” the black cat informed her. “But I wasn’t. I saw him take it.”
“Who?” Bas demanded.
The black cat shot Bas a dirty look, then turned to me. “It was the mailman.”
A low growl rumbled in Bas’s throat, and more of the fur on his neck pushed through the bandages, making him look larger. “The mailman. Of course.”
“Someone you know?” I asked.
“I know his kind.” Bas looked down at the black cat and took a step forward. “Where can I find this mailman?”
“He doesn’t come here anymore,” the black cat scoffed. “He’s a thief, isn’t he? He’s not going to come back here after what he did. Not when he stole such magic.”
Bas blinked. “You knew the amulet was magic?”
Every feline in hearing range stared at the dog mummy, and I cleared my throat.
“We’re cats,” I said, trying to be gentle. “You think we wouldn’t feel that level of magic?”
“Stupid dog,” the black cat muttered under his breath.
Bas tensed, and I dug my claws into his back in a silent warning not to anger my brethren. One wrong word and the yard full of cats would become a yard full of enemies with razor sharp claws and eight lives to burn.
Blessedly, at that moment, footsteps sounded on the sidewalk behind us. Bas turned his head, then immediately pivoted so quickly that if I hadn’t already had my claws out, I’d have fallen off. I had a split second to observe that dead dogs must not feel pain, and then I was holding on for dear life as Bas charged up to a woman approaching Amulet Theft Victim’s mailbox.
The woman came to an abrupt halt, then rocked back on one foot, her right arm rising to protect her face. She didn’t lose her grip on the envelopes in her grasp, and she didn’t run, but I could see the fear in her eyes as she stared at the large dog bearing down on her.
“Bas,” I snapped. “Sit!”
Bas did not sit. But he did come to a dead halt to swivel his head around to stare at me as if I’d paid a grave insult to his dearly beloved grandmother.
“She’s the mail carrier,” I pointed out to him. “Perhaps she knows where her predecessor is now. We need to find a way to communicate with her.”
Bas wrinkled his muzzle in disgust and looked up at the mail carrier. After taking a steadying breath, he spoke.
“The mailman you replaced. Where is he now?”
The woman’s jaw dropped, her eyes bulging. She still didn’t let go of the mail. “You… Did you just… You talked.”
I lowered my face to my paws, a sudden headache forming between my eyes. The woman was doing that stuttering thing the witch did sometimes. I didn’t have to understand what she was saying to know that Bas was going to make the human crazy. It would be the human in the museum all over again, with the eye-bulging and the babbling. We’d never get the information we needed. How was I supposed to help him if he insisted on being so—
The headache blossomed, flowing up and out with enough force that I was certain it would take the top of my head and my ears with it. There was no holding onto it, and the magic poured out of me like root beer from a shaken soda can. I collapsed onto Bas’s back, blinking furiously to try and stay conscious. When I finally opened my eyes, the mail carrier was still there, and so was Bas.
Only now there was an elephant standing next to the mail carrier too.
I froze. Well, if the talking dog hadn’t done it, the elephant would. I should have brought the witch. Though, she hadn’t done much better, as I recalled. There’d been that rhinoceros inside the house…
To my surprise, the mail carrier instantly relaxed, shoulders slumping so rapidly the bag of mail nearly slid off her shoulder.
“I’m dreaming.” Her voice was higher now, and she was smiling so big I could almost hear laughter. “I knew it. Knew I had to be dreaming.” She shook her head and looked down at the letters in her hand, glancing through them before looking up at the address on the house. “It’s the stress,” she told Bas. “That’s what it is. New route. Faconi didn’t give notice, you know. He inherits a bunch of money from some aunt and—bam!—he’s gone.”
I frowned. Now she was making the “My Keys Were in My Pocket The Whole Time” face. She’d said a bunch of words I didn’t know, but one sounded familiar. Dreaming. Dream. Dreams. The witch used that word when she talked about the woman at the hotel. The sorceress.
I didn’t think this mail carrier was a sorceress. Maybe she thought Bas had made the elephant?
Regardless, she clearly seemed to be feeling better, so once again, my magic had been an immense help. “What’s she saying?” I asked Bas.
The dog ignored me. “And where has he gone?”
Where. I knew that word. He was asking her where the thief had gone.
The woman snorted. “We’re not that close. But my money’s on that fancy neighborhood on the south side. Faconi was always going on about how he’d have a mansion there someday.”
She shook her head and kept walking toward the Amulet Theft Victim’s mailbox. Bas started to turn, but suddenly seemed to notice the elephant. He tensed, then stared down at me.
I looked back at him. If he wasn’t going to ask, I wasn’t going to volunteer.
He must have been in a hurry, because he deliberately turned away from the elephant. “You said you can feel magic?”
“I’m a cat.”
He waited, as if I hadn’t just answered his question, then seemed to realize I had. “We’ll go to the neighborhood then, and you tell me when you feel the magic.”
I flattened my ears against my head. “I’m not a scent hound. The amulet isn’t so powerful it’s going to radiate magic in giant waves I can feel just walking through the neighborhood.”