I wheeled round. Still no sign of Dana.“You were… here?” I was starting to get really rattled now. How was she doing this? Camouflage?
“Sure. Haven’t you noticed? Oh, but I forgot. You don’t believe I can turn myself invisible, do you?”
I laughed but, though I intended to make it sound nonchalant and carefree, even to my own ears it sounded shrill and terrified.“That’s a good one, Dana. Good joke.”
“It’s not a joke, Tom. I am invisible.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“It’s possible. And that voice you heard? It belonged to the woman we saw killed earlier tonight.”
I have to confess I shivered from eyebrows to paw pads at these words.“That was… a ghost?”
“Yep. You should feel honored. Those were that poor woman’s very last words here on earth before her spirit joined the afterlife.”
“A dead woman’s ghost…” I swallowed heavily. “spoke to me?”
“Quite an experience, don’t you think?”
“Quite,” I said, and had to lie down for a bit, suddenly feeling faint.
“So now do you believe me?”
I moaned.“Come on, Dana. This is no way to treat a guy. Drop the camouflage act and show yourself, will you? This isn’t funny.”
There was a momentary silence, then all of a sudden the air in front of me seemed to shimmer slightly, then a bright light flashed that almost blinded me, and the next moment Dana was sitting next to me, licking her paws as if nothing happened.
10
The Plot Thickens
I gasped at the sight of her.“How did you do that?” I cried.
She studied her paw.“I told you. I can make myself invisible.”
“But that’s impossible!”
“You keep repeating that. Didn’t you see me with your own eyes? Or rather, didn’t see me?”
I had to admit that I had, though I could hardly believe it.“But, but, but…” I sputtered.
“Yes?” she said sweetly, looking at me from under her long lashes.
“But, but, but…” I tried once more.
“If I didn’t know you better, I would think that you’re suffering from speechlessness. But no, that’s impossible. Tommy the cat is never lost for words.”
“I, I, I…”
She groaned.“Look, the explanation is perfectly simple, and if you had listened to me instead of running off like that—extremely rude of you, by the way—you would have been prepared when Zoe Huckleberry came to bid you farewell and would have had something better to say to her than some nonsense about Halloween or guardian angels. God knows she only had a few moments left here on this mortal coil.” She shook her head. “What a waste to spend them talking to you.”
I still wasn’t completely recuperated from seeing Dana explode onto the scene like that, but I was aware that this was some sort of verbal abuse she was slinging my way. “For your information, we had a perfectly interesting conversation. And Zoe, if that’s her name, had some very nice things to say aboutme.”
“Like what?” said Dana.
“Like…” Here she rather had me. What had this Zoe ghost been saying to me? Then I remembered something rather neat. “Like the fact that she complimented me on my slim form,” I said triumphantly.
“She did not,” scoffed Dana.
“She did too. She kept calling me little one and—”
“You seem to forget I heard the entire conversation.”
“Oh,” I said. I had indeed forgotten this one small detail. Then something else occurred to me. “Say, if you were here, why didn’t you talk to her yourself?”
“I…” Now it was Dana’s turn to be speechless. She pursed her lips. “I didn’t want to interfere.”
I laughed.“Now that’s the lamest excuse for not talking to a ghost I’ve ever heard.” And that was the weirdest sentence I’d ever formulated. Talking to a ghost? Was this for real?
“I know,” she said, and stared up at the moon for a bit, chewing her lower lip. “I probably should have said something, shouldn’t I? I just didn’t think she’d be out of here so soon. I thought we’d have more time.”
“She did leave quite abruptly,” I said. And it was true. One moment she was here and the next she was gone with the wind. Or whatever it is these ghosts travel on when passing beyond the veil, if veils are what they pass beyond.
“I hope you realize now how important our work is,” Dana said, her mind having returned from the beyond to the present.
Actually, I hadn’t realized much, apart from the fact that ghosts seemed to enjoy my company all of a sudden, and that Dana had mastered some neat party trick creating the illusion she was invisible, but the girl seemed undone by the recent meeting with the dearly departed, so I bit my tongue and kept quiet.
“The FSA doesn’t proselytize, you know,” she continued, as I had expected she would. “Based on certain criteria, it very carefully selects its candidates and then enlists them. Tonight was your first test and I’m sorry to say that you failed.”
“I failed? How?” Even though I didn’t buy into Dana’s fantasy stories, I still felt rightfully offended.
“Like Zoe said; you had the chance to save her and you didn’t.”
I rolled my eyes at this one.“Well, if someone had told me what I was supposed to do, perhaps I would have done it, don’t you think?”
“That’s just the point: every single candidate enlisted before instinctively did the right thing even without anyone telling him, or her, what to do. You’re the first one to let the woman die.”
“Women have died before?” I said, confused.
Dana nodded emphatically.“Sure. Standard operating procedure. We stage a scene to see how the candidate will react and then monitor response time, physiological and psychological markers, emotional stress parameters, the works.”
“But that’s awful!” I said. “You’re murdering human beings just to see how some cat will respond? I find that just about the lowest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s just… horrible!”
Dana didn’t respond but merely beamed at me.
“I don’t think it’s funny,” I said, indignant.
Dana put a paw on my shoulder but I shrugged it off.“See, I knew you were going to say that,” she said, and grinned. “And that’s why you weren’t kicked out of the program. Even though you’re probably the weirdest candidate we’ve ever had, there’s something so… human… about you that simply begs for induction into the FSA.”
“I don’t want to be inducted into your rotten FSA,” I said with some vehemence. “I may not like all humans quite as much as I like Zack, but that doesn’t mean I condone sacrificing them for the purpose of that murderous club of yours! I think it’s disgusting, immoral, beyond contempt, and I plan to have a serious talk to whoever is in charge of this FSA. And I’ll have you know, I intend to stop this abomination and stop it now.”
To my surprise she let out a ringing guffaw at these brave words, possibly the bravest ones I’ve ever spoken. I was more than a little disconcerted.
“Bravo,” she said, as she clapped her paws, something I’d never seen any cat do before. “I think it’s time now to tell you all.”
“All?” I cried. “There’s more?”
“Oh, yes. A lot more.”
11
A New Partner for Agent Tom
“What more can there be?” I wailed. “Blood sacrifices under the light of the full moon? Gorging on human flesh? What?”
“First of all, we owe you an apology.”
“I’d say you do.”
“Because there never was a murder. No one died tonight.”
“Of course someone died,” I said. “Zoe Huckleberry. She came to say goodbye just now. You heard her.”
“Zoe Huckleberry doesn’t exist. She’s just a character in a play. And so is Jack Mackintosh.”
“Jack who?”
“The guy with the knife.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. She had completely lost me now.
“It’s like this. Every year in the springtime we select new candidates for the FSA. And one of the tests is what we like to call the murder scene. Now each year in springtime, the Brookridge Theatrical Society likes to perform an Agatha Christie type play—”