And I also knew deep in my gut that Parker was an okay guy. He’d been kind to me and seemed earnest in wanting to help me. Even if he’d been the one to get me mixed up in this whole magical business—which I still did not appreciate, by the way—it didn’t mean he deserved to die for it.
“But how can I help? I’m just a human,” I mumbled, feeling so useless in that moment.
Fluffikins’s eyes twinkled. “Ah, but you have magic now. What do you say? Join the good guys?”
Well, what choice did I have now? The stakes felt much higher now that someone I knew and liked was in jeopardy. I sighed and nodded.“If you’re sure you need me and that you’ll keep me safe, then I’m in.”
“Great. We’ve already wasted more time than I’d prefer, but luckily Melony is a low level witch. She’ll have needed to travel by the traditional means, so we still have time to beat her to our destination. Follow me.” The cat ran to the door and let himself outside.
I followed after, wondering if I was crazy for agreeing to help with what little information I’d been given.
“Now grab my tail,” Fluffikins shouted into the still morning sky.
I crouched down, closed my eyes, and clenched that tail like my life depended on it. The soft fluffy appendage turned hard in my grip and then it started to grow. When I opened my eyes again, I was no longer holding onto a tail but rather a broomstick, and I was no longer standing in my front yard.
I was flying.
18
The speeding wind whipped the bottoms of my pajama pants against my ankles—or rather it was the speeding me on top of the broom that I’d somehow managed to conjure from my talking feline escort’s tail.
Fluffikins flew effortlessly at my side. He looked as if he were suspended mid-leap as he zipped through the air like a bullet.
So there we were, racing against time to save a killer from being killed, because apparently he’d killed for the right reasons while his would-be killer wanted to kill him for the wrong reasons.
Yeah, I was confused, too.
I was also more than a little upset that I’d ended up wearing my frumpy PJs for this momentous encounter. I didn’t have much time to worry about either of these things, though, because Fluffikins and I arrived at our destination a couple short minutes after we’d departed.
I recognized the office complex from my visits the day before. This seemed like a good place to start, but would Parker even be there? He’d told me he had a regular policeman’s job, too, which meant he probably didn’t spend all day waiting around Paranormal HQ just in case the boss cat needed him.
Heck, for all I knew, Melony might have found him already.
Mr. Fluffikins muttered something under his breath, and the glass-topped conference room opened up like a blossoming flower. Pink glittering magic swirled about us as the building sucked us in like a Venus flytrap.
My broom disappeared and I lurched toward the floor. But then the pink stuff caught me and guided me gently into one of the many executive chairs that lined the table. This felt similar to the sensation I’d experienced in Mrs. Haberdash’s house, like I was floating in a bath of perfectly temperate water. The pink pulsed gently, calming and comforting me, providing a featherlight massage.
Fluffikins landed in front of me in a perfectly graceful and well executed maneuver that was all his own. The pink magic parted to allow him passage rather than coaxing him forward like it had done for me.
“I hereby call an emergency board meeting,” he said, his words echoing around the room. “All liaisons are required.”
The pink magic gathered into a ball and bounced up through the open roof into the sky above.
“Wh-what’s going on? Where’s P-Parker?” I sputtered. I felt the absence of the atmospheric magic acutely despite having only been under its effects for a few seconds.
Fluffikins paced the length of the table anxiously.“He’s on his way, along with the others. I rarely call an emergency meeting, but when I do, they have no choice but to travel here immediately.”
“What’s all this pink glittery stuff?” I asked, watching as it twisted and danced just above the open ceiling. “I didn’t see it when I was here yesterday.”
“You didn’t have magic when you were in the board room yesterday. It was here, but you couldn’t yet see it. It’s always here,” he answered distractedly as he continued to cross the table back and forth.
“What is it?” I wanted to know, but more than that I needed to keep him talking, to protect me from my own thoughts and worries.
“It’s but a small piece of the earth’s most concentrated and most powerful magic, taken right from its very core. Each of our agencies around the globe has been granted a part to keep us connected to the whole. It works to stabilize the balance within each region and prevent any one center from gaining too much power.” He spoke so smoothly and eloquently that I wondered if he was quoting something or someone verbatim.
“How does it do that?”
Pace, pace, pace.
I was growing more frightened by the minute, especially since Fluffikins appeared rattled, too.
He took a few more loops of the table and then plopped himself down across from me.“By sparking non-magical humans’ so-called intuition and influencing them to act in a way that is good for humanity as a whole, even if they believe they are acting on selfish desires.”
“Huh. I’ve got to admit, this is all a bit out there. I was just coming around to this whole Town Witch thing, and now you expect me to wrap my head around a living strain of magic that balances all of humanity?”
He shrugged.“You asked. I merely answered.”
“Why am I here?”
“Because the magic chose you. There was a reason you discovered Lila’s body, that you bumped into Barnes, even that you were there when Melony showed up to reclaim the hat.”
“I’m nobody special.”
He nodded.“My inclination would be to agree with you, but the magic is always right.”
I folded my arms across my chest.“If the magic is so high and mighty, then how come terrible things still happen every day? People are murdered, as we well know. Kids are taken from their parents, wars kill millions. Why doesn’t the magic stop any of that from happening?”
“Balance encompasses both dark and light, good and bad. It’s difficult to understand for the uninitiated. Still, it has chosen you as someone who will play a significant role in what is to come.”
“Now there are prophecies?” I gasped as goosebumps rose to my arms.
The cat’s eyes flashed, but he quickly looked away, focusing his gaze just over my left shoulder. “No, no. I have no idea what happens next, but whatever it is, you’ll be an important player.”
I bit my lip as I thought about this. Part of me wanted to yell at Fluffikins for dragging me deep into this agency mess without explaining any of it in a way I could actually understand, but another very big part of me understood that I’d have never agreed to get mixed up in things here if he’d led with any of the craziness that had come to light over the last few minutes.
“What if I’m not enough?” I asked instead. This wasn’t just my greatest worry now. It was my greatest fear in life. I hadn’t been enough for my ex-husband. My rate of producing books was quickly not becoming enough for my literary agent. With all those failures to my name, could I be enough for something that mattered this much?
Fluffikins fixed his eyes on me, unblinking.“Oh, but Tawny. You already are.”
19
Not even two minutes after Fluffikins’s summons, the other members of the board began descending upon the room to join us at the table.
First came Greta.“I put the best wards on the house that I could to bolster the ones already there. Lila’s spells are fading fast now that she’s no longer in residence,” she informed us before she’d even landed in her spot.
Next came the old guy in the suit.“You’ve removed me from a very important procession, I’ll have you know.”