Chapter 92: Chapter Ninety-Two - Fantastic Bad Ideas

Thank goodness for tiny bathrooms! Carlitta and Carlotta let Dad and I clean up enough in theirs so that we could get into our cars without messing up our interiors and then head home for shower number two.

I even had some Kitty City helpers who insisted on going into the bathroom with me to judge my cleaning habits. They didn’t seem impressed even though I scrubbed underneath all ten fingernails.

All of this was after we helped clean up their shop, of course.

After my second shower at home, it was almost four o’clock. Only eight hours to midnight. I was no closer to rescuing Studmuffin before then or finding a way to save both him and the ring from ending up in the wrong hands.

However, I had yet another plan. A good one? Well…let’s just call it a plan for now and see how it shakes out.

Before I left my apartment, my cell rang.

“Victoria, I just heard. I’m so sorry. What can I do? I’ll do anything to help. Anything at all. Flyers? Buttons? T-shirts plastered with Studmuffin’s picture with the words ‘Have you seen this cat? He’s awesome!’ Okay, I admit I don’t know how to do any of those things, but I’ll do anything else.”

I smiled at my best friend Cass Rudio’s word purge, my heart warming with how much she cared. “Wait, where did you hear it from?”

“From Lucy. I took an early afternoon nap, and she visited my dreams.”

“Ah. She visited mine too. She must be really worried.”

“Poor thing. It’s Caturday too, which is like a holiday for cats, yet she’s still up and at it.”

“Every day is a holiday for cats.” Studmuffin would probably agree with me, if only he were here. “Anyway, would you like to go with me to see Parker Lee?”

“Who’s that?”

“An appraiser. The appraiser who appraised the…ahem.”

There was a long pause and then, “Are you feeling okay?”

“Cass, that wasn’t a real cough. It was in reference to the Thing that Shall Not be Named Over the Phone.”

“I see… But are you feeling okay?”

“No,” I said with a long, weary sigh. “Thanks for asking though.”

“You’re welcome. Any chance you could pick me up at The Step Back Inn on your way? My Pinto hates snow almost as much as it hates mosquitoes.”

I opened my mouth to say yes, but then everything else she’d just said trickled in. “Why does your car hate mosquitoes?”

“Well, they bite it, of course. It’s got little bumps all over it, and I can always tell when it’s trying not to scratch them.”

Sometimes it was hard to tell if Cass was joking or not. This was one of those times.

“Okay…well…on the bright side,” I said, “I haven’t seen any mosquitoes since it started snowing. Anyway, I’ll be there in ten?”

“Sounds good. See you then.”

When I arrived at The Step Back Inn, I parked next to Cass’s snow-covered Pinto outside room four. After climbing out of Bernadette, my curiosity won out. I reached out with my gloved hand to clear off some snow from her car. Sure enough, little bumps spotted the sea-green paint job.

Mosquito bites. I hesitated for only a second since this was far from the weirdest thing I’d done all day and then scratched some of the bites. Over the howling wind, I swore I heard a relieved “Ahhhhhhhhh!”

“Happy to do my part,” I told it, “um, whatever your name is.”

I’d have to ask Cass if she’d named her car like I had.

Before I knocked on the door of room four, a blur of black hair and a lacy bohemian skirt and top yanked the door open and threw her arms around me.

My eyes instantly filled with tears. One of the best things about Cass was that she knew exactly what I needed and gave it to me freely.

“How are you feeling now?” she asked.

“Better,” I choked out. “Aren’t you cold?”

She released me and wiped away the stray tears from my cheeks, her brown eyes soft and kind. “I still feel the heat from yesterday’s earth, so no, I’m not cold. Far from it.”

“But it’s freezing.”

Smiling, she shook her head. “Not yet.”

I didn’t really know what that meant. All I knew was that Cass was an earth witch and not a book witch like me, so her magic must affect her differently. Even as snowflakes collected on her long eyelashes, she didn’t shiver once.

“Ready?” she asked, closing her motel room door behind her.

“Yep.” Once we were settled inside Bernadette, I asked, “Do you have a name for your car?”

She hid her snicker behind her hand. “I’ll tell you in a minute. She might get embarrassed if she overhears me telling you.”

Which meant her car not only had bug bites but ears too. That was sure some Pinto.

After we drove a ways down the road, Cass said, “She’s Little Booty Judy.”

I gasped and laughed at the same time which made me cough and sputter. “That’s…fantastic,” I wheezed.

“It’s on account of her tiny trunk space,” Cass said, chuckling. “She’s my favorite though. She’s like the familiar I never had with her purrs and quirks and almost constant affectionate tormenting.”

That sure sounded like someone I knew. “Do you want a familiar? I mean a cat version of a familiar?”

“Oh, yes, but does a familiar want me though? That’s the real question, what with my still-missing fingers, my mustard spots, and my family curse that will turn me into a pile of three when I fall over dead.”

“Any familiar would be lucky to have you. I’ve only ever had one”—and wouldn’t dream of trying to replace him—“but do familiars always choose their witches?”

“Usually, yes, at least from what I’ve seen and heard. Familiars see something missing from their adopted witch’s life and seek to fill it, not just with their presence but with their magic, mind, and heart.”

I smiled. These last almost eight months, Studmuffin had filled my life so completely with all of those things that I couldn’t imagine a life without him. There was no pre-Studmuffin anymore because it seemed like so long ago, like my life before had been someone else’s. With him, I was finally on the right life path, no question about it. We were an unstoppable duo of mayhem and magic.

Which was why I missed him like cRaZy.

“Maybe I’m missing too many things for a familiar to feel like they can fill.” Cass gazed longingly at the unraveling bandage on her right hand. Underneath was an empty space where three of her fingers should be. They ran away to Alabama a lot and stole things.

Before bed, I now pleaded with my fingers to be good and not go rogue, just in case. Also before bed, I often thought about how taco cat is spelled the same both forward and backward. Before Studmuffin had been catnapped, these were the types of things that kept me up at night.

You know, normal things.

“Still no sign of your fingers?” I asked, wincing at Cass.

“No,” she said with a sigh. “This is the longest they’ve ever been gone. Maybe they were finally arrested for stealing sunglasses. Do you think that’s the problem? Not the stealing sunglasses part, but the fact that I’m missing too many things in my life for a familiar to adopt me?”

“I don’t think that. Your familiar is surely out there. Studmuffin wandered into my life when I least expected, and it was snowing outside.” I pointed out the windshield to prove my point.

Cass grinned. “I won’t lose hope, then.”

“Good.”

We pulled up outside Age Is Just a Number Antiques and Appraisals. The building looked like someone’s old three-story house, but the sign out front proved otherwise. Through the large front window, a brightly lit Christmas tree stood tall.

“At least Belle’s Cove is enjoying this crazy weather we’re having,” I muttered as I climbed the front steps.

“Kind of strange that it’s snowing while Studmuffin is missing, isn’t it?” Cass asked from behind me. “You think those two things are related somehow?”

“Possibly, but I can only ride one seat-belt-free rollercoaster at a time.”

“No seat belts?” Cass tugged at my arm until I turned. Her face had paled to the color of snow, so her huge brown eyes seemed to float midair amid her windblown hair. “What kind of rollercoasters have you been riding?”

“No, it’s just an expression my dad says. It means one crisis at a time.”

“Rollercoasters with no seat belts are the only crisis. No more rollercoasters, Victoria. Okay?” She squeezed my arm tighter as though she thought I might step onto one right then.

“I promise. Not even if they have seat belts.” Easiest promise I ever had to make since I wasn’t a fan of real or expressional rollercoasters at all. I liked my feet planted smack dab in the middle of boring, thank you very much. Well, mostly. They sometimes wandered me into trouble sort of like Cass’s missing fingers. “You’re not a fan of rollercoasters either?”

“When I was little, my sister Rae Rae made me ride one for fun.” She shook her head hard. “It was awful. Both the fun and the rollercoaster.”

“Sorry, Cass,” I told her with a wince. “I won’t bring it up again.”

“Thanks. But talking about seat belts is fine. Seat belts I can get into.”

Whether intentional or not, I found that hilarious. I threw back my head and laughed, then looped my arm through hers. “Come on.”

When I pulled open the door, a light, airy voice called, “Merry Christmas! We’re closed!”

I gnashed my teeth together at the obvious lack of Southern charm and hospitality. “The sign on the door says open, so we’ll stay, and it’s not Christmas yet.”

The blonde middle-aged woman bent over empty boxes of Christmas decorations near the tree huffed loudly. “Well, Grinch, we’re closing early today—in two point five minutes to be exact—because of the snow and because I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping yet. Plus, who says that Christmas can’t be every day, hmmm?”

“The calendar?”

“Touché,” she said with narrowed icy-blue eyes. “You can come back on Monday.”

“I can’t wait until then. I just have a quick question for Mr. Lee.”

“He’s gone for the day.”

“Isn’t that his car out front?” I asked, pointing outside. “The one that says Live Love Appraise on the bumper sticker?”

“His wife picked him up hours ago when his car wouldn’t start. The battery or something.” She waved both hands at the window beyond the Christmas tree. “You know how it is with weather like this.”

“Yep. Sure.” Except the only thing I was sure about was that she was lying. Call it a hunch or a weird itch at the back of my neck, but Parker Lee was really here.

The blonde looked at her watch and sighed dramatically. “Ah, would you look at that. Your two point five minutes are up. So, go back to Whoville. Maybe they can help you grow your heart and fix your Christmas-spirit problem.”

Well, ouch. Now I wasn’t so sure if this visit had gone off the rails so fast because of her, or if it was just me. After all, I was in no mood to celebrate anything without my familiar, even Christmas in July. However, I wasn’t the one being rude about it either.

But we left anyway.

On our way out, Cass tapped me on the shoulder from behind me. “She’s lying,” she hissed.

“I know,” I hissed back.

Cass sucked in a breath. “You saw the appraiser’s future ghost standing in the corner too?”

That pulled me up short so fast I almost slid down the steps. “No. You did?”

She nodded. “Which means he has to be close by. The real Parker Lee, I mean.”

“Maybe he’s upstairs. What was his ghost doing?” I unlocked Bernadette, and we both piled into her warmth.

“Staring at the painting of himself on the wall. As we were leaving, he was pulling out a Sharpie from his pocket with a little twinkle in his eyes and likely a little self-improvement on the brain.”

“Do you think he’ll mind if we come back later?”

Cass shrugged. “The worst he can do is haunt us.”

“Oh. Yikes.” I shivered, not liking that idea one bit.

“But Ms. Merry-Christmas-Or-Else just locked the door. How would we get in?”

Sure enough, Ms. Merry-Christmas-Or-Else turned from the front door with her key in hand and shot us a laser-death glare that withered my Grinch-sized heart even smaller. Then she marched toward her car next to the Live Love Appraise one.

“Maybe we won’t have to get in. One second.” I looked up the appraiser’s number on my phone and called it.

No answer.

“On second thought, we’re going in,” I said.

“How?”

“Leave that to me.” I hovered my thumb over Travis’s name, my stomach clenching with guilt even though I hadn’t technically done anything to him.

He was mad at me, so mad that he hadn’t answered any of my texts for several days now. Why would he decide to now, even with the promise of not really legal shenanigans, which was basically his favorite thing ever?

I missed him. I missed him and Studmuffin, both together as be sties and apart.

I gazed up at the three-story shop. On the second story, a window was opened a crack, probably because of the heat we’d had just yesterday. Below it, the porch’s snow-covered overhang sloped sharply down.

My problem is I have really fantastic bad ideas. This one was so bad it was almost good.

“Cass,” I breathed, “on third thought, we’re going in.”