“You are not magical,” he continued, unaware of my raging internal conflict. “But you are a reservoir. Kind of like a living, breathing cauldron. Your presence amplifies my magic. The longer we spend in each other’s company, the more of my magic will bind to you. You can’t use it for yourself. Only contain it for my later use.”
Now this was a big revelation, far too big for me to understand pre-coffee.
Merlin hopped up on the counter and studied my face.“In fact, it seems you’ve already collected some,” he said.
“What?” I croaked, lifting my fingers to my face.
My cat smirked.“Your eyes.”
“What about my eyes?”
“Stop panicking and go have a look.”
I marched toward the bathroom and flicked on the light. Instead of my usual dark brown, my eyes now appeared a deep forest green.
“Green!” I shouted, unable to believe the image that floated right before me. “Why are my eyes green?”
“Well, that’s easy,” Merlin said, appearing in the hall outside the bathroom. “Eyes are the window to the soul. Green is the color of magic. Now you are magic, thus your soul is tinted green.”
“You said I wasn’t magical,” I argued hopelessly. It was really hard to trust everything he said when so much of it seemed contradictory.
Merlin yawned and stretched out in a yoga-like pose.“You’re notmagical. You are magic. It’s a subtle distinction, but you’ll get it eventually,” he assured me.
Either Merlin had faith in me or was too stubborn to admit he’d been wrong in choosing me as his familiar. And at that precise moment in time, I really didn’t care to know which.
Ugh. Why was this my life?
16
I still hoped to speak with Merlin about Luna, but my magic bindings shut me down every single time I even thought about it too hard.
To avoid wasting time completely, I decided to ask him about something much safer—the open murder investigation.
“Merlin?” I asked as my second cuppa brewed. “Can you use your magic to find out who killed Harold?”
He thought about this for a moment as he shifted to follow the sunbeam that had slowly begun to migrate across the living room.“Possibly. But I would need to see his corpse to do so.”
I shuddered.“Let’s make breaking into the morgue our backup plan,” I suggested, wrapping my arms around my torso to hug myself.
“Suit yourself,” Merlin responded, then closed his eyes and purred. “If you do end up needing me, you know where to find me.”
Yes, I did. For right now, at least. His constant coming and going hadn’t bothered me much before. But now? Now every time we were apart presented another opportunity for one of us to be kidnapped.
Oh, if only I could warn him.
I knew he had just recently been made a full witch—something he said only happened when a cat officially took on a familiar. But still it seemed his casual attitude could be putting us both in danger. I, of course, was even newer to the whole magical powers thing, which meant he had no reason to listen to me if I asked for better protection.
And seeing as I couldn’t come right out and explain why I needed that protection, we were both stuck.
I sighed and added some milk to my new cup of coffee and stirred while I mentally sorted through what I already knew about my late boss’s death. It would be easier to focus on my magical problems if I got my more mundane ones out of the way.
Of course, I hadn’t ever conversed with Harold outside of work, and it was perfectly probable that some scandal in his personal life had led to his forced demise. Given my butt was on the line here, though, it made sense to at least consider the clues I’d picked up.
First, there was the fact that his long-lost daughter Kelley had recently reappeared in his life. And that Kelley’s mother had tried to prevent this reunion. Kelley was also present when Harold took his last breath, but she was too obviously distraught to even be considered a suspect.
Drake had been there, too. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen him since. Was it possible he hated our boss so much that he’d slipped him some poison?
I’d definitely have to look into that later.
The coffee house had been mostly empty besides the three of us and Harold. Only one customer had sat in the corner sipping her coffee, and she’d left as soon as we asked her to.
Hmmm.
Another thing to consider was that the poison could have been meant for me, and Harold was merely collateral damage. The more I thought about it, the more I feared this could be the case. I’d only just witnessed Merlin’s magic for the first time before rushing into work. That had been a test, he’d told me, to see if I was ready to serve as his familiar. Then later that night he had revealed himself to me.
I already knew he had an enemy in Luna, and she lived very nearby. She was also crazy enough to kidnap me and brew some kind of voodoo potion, which she forced me to slip to my cat last night.
Was this because her first attempt to get at me had failed when Harold took the poison instead?
Officer Dash had hinted at a toxicology report but never shared the results. Had it been completed? Did we know for sure we were dealing with a poison—or could some kind of magic be at play?
So many questions, and literally no one to ask. Maybe if I was careful about how I spoke with Merlin, I could suss out some answers about Luna indirectly. I finished my coffee and lowered myself to sit beside him on the living room carpet.
“Do you have any idea who might have killed Harold?” I asked him softly.
Merlin kept his eyes closed, but his whiskers twitched, telling me he had heard my question but didn’t much like it. “Do you want to break into the morgue?”
I shivered at the thought.“Can you go without me?” I asked, preferring that option much more. “Just teleport in, check things out, and come back.”
“I could,” he said, squinting one eye open to look at me. “Except I don’t know which one is him.”
Crud. I really didn’t want to go sift through a bunch of cold corpses, but I also really didn’t want to go to jail. Could I suck it up for the greater good?
“Got a picture?” Merlin asked, rolling onto his feet and standing on four shaky legs.
Ooh, a picture. Smart!Why hadn’t I thought of that?
“Let me search the coffeehouse’s Facebook page. I’m sure there’s at least one useable shot there,” I told him and then trotted off in search of my tablet.
Why hadn’t we thought of this option sooner?
Well, better late than never, I supposed…
17
It didn’t take long to find a clear photo of Harold on the company’s Facebook page. Even though Harold’s House of Coffee only had a handful of likes, its former owner wasted no opportunity to get in front of the camera and show everyone how important he fancied himself to be.
“I can work with this,” Merlin informed me when I shared the image with him. “I can’t teleport directly into the morgue, so this little fact-finding mission may take me a while.”
“Why can’t you?” I asked, uneasy at the thought of being away from him—and his magical protections—for an extended period.
“Same reason I took us outside of Luna’s house, then flashed us in through the window. If you’re going someplace you can’t see and don’t know well, you risk getting yourself stuck in a wall or in some other precarious situation,” the novice feline witch explained.
“Oh,” I said stupidly.
“Lesson number four. Magic is much harder to wield than it may look to outsiders,” he announced and cracked his neck to either side.
“I’m beginning to see that.”
A knock sounded on the front door, and I briefly glanced over to it. By the time I turned back to Merlin, he had already vanished.
I groaned and headed to find out what Officer Dash wanted. Because, yes, I already knew it would be her. She’d bothered me so much the past couple of days that I readily recognized the unique cadence of her knock.