Chapter 96: Chapter Ninety-Six - Doors & Decorations

We found nothing. No clues. No fingers. No Studmuffin. Defeated once again. I was beginning to think I’d just have to make the trade—my familiar for the ring—no matter how dire the consequences were.

However, we did find the security room with camera footage and monitors on the top floor of Age Is Just A Number Antiques and Appraisals. We may or may not have borrowed a tape or two. In the wise words of the almighty Cass, “Paws before laws.”

Now, we were headed back to my apartment to regroup and restrategize. It was nearly eight o’clock, four more hours until I rendezvoused with Studmuffin’s catnapper. Was it Parker Lee or someone else? One whisker next to a water bowl and some familiar-looking fur didn’t prove much either way.

As I pulled into Sunray’s parking lot, my cell rang.

“Victoria,” Detective Palmer breathed once I answered. There was a hint of a question mark in his voice. “I should’ve called earlier, but I figured you got held up by the wintery roads. Everything okay?”

“Bernadette’s an all-weather car. She’s doing fine.” Of all the things to ask about, why Bernadette? Unless I’d turned him into a car aficionado when I wasn’t looking?

“Oh, good. So…did I get the time wrong?”

“The time for wha— Ohhhhhhh.” I slapped my hand to my forehead, really hoping I’d just stamped it with Idiot. My face flushed with embarrassment. “Detective, I’m so, so sorry.”

We’d had a date at seven. I was supposed to meet him at the restaurant and was now almost an hour late. I’d been excited and nervous and terrified, but I’d forgotten all about the entire thing.

Cass tilted her head, eying me closely.

“I promise I can explain,” I said, glancing over at Travis as he pulled in next to me in his yellow Mustang.

He grinned and waved, and despite everything, my heart stalled.

A little voice inside my head said, “Oh yes, do explain to the good detective. I’ll get the popcorn.”

I shushed that voice and continued. “Studmuffin’s been catnapped. Yesterday, I got a ransom note. I’m to meet the catnapper at midnight with the Ring of Everlasting Night. I’ve spent most of last night and today looking for him or trying to find a way not to hand over the ring in exchange for him. I’m so sorry, but I forgot about our date.”

Ugh. If I felt any smaller, I’d be stuck to the bottom of my own lava-filled boot.

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” he said gently. “Where are you now?”

“Home,” I said, gazing over at Travis.

His smile was pleasant while he waited in the heat of his car next to us.

“I’ll be there in five.” Detective Palmer hung up.

“A date?” Cass hissed.

“Yeah, one that didn’t happen.”

“What are you going to do?” She gestured broadly, to all of my problems, I supposed.

I switched off Bernadette, my mind already made up. “Be honest with all the men in my life, beg for forgiveness, and get my cat back.”

“Solid plan. I like it.”

“Thanks, Cass.” I reached over and squeezed her bandaged hand. “Have I told you lately that you’re my favorite best friend?”

She grinned so hard that her dark eyes twinkled. “No, you haven’t, but I’ll forgive you just this once. Want me to go on up so you and Travis can have a chance to talk?”

I handed over my keys and tweaked her nose, just in case. She was still the same Cass I knew and loved. “You’re the best. To quote Studmuffin, ‘this is known.’”

“It is known, isn’t it?” she said with a chuckle and opened the car door. “I’ll have hot chocolate waiting.”

Well, that would be a magical spell I’d like to hear because I sure didn’t have any hot chocolate in my bare cupboards.

She rushed inside while I clambered out of Bernadette. Travis joined me in the snow outside.

“Everything okay? I mean, other than everything that’s not okay?” he asked, lightly touching my elbow.

Even through my coat, an electrical spark zinged up and down my arm. “Yeah, it’s just— Detective Palmer is coming over, but I don’t want you to leave. He’s coming to help, that’s all.”

His face shuttered some, but he didn’t drop his hand from my elbow. He didn’t leave either. I’d call that progress.

“I see,” he said.

“I…uh, forgot I had a date with him tonight.”

His eyes widened. “A date with him, but not with me? I…see.”

What he didn’t say was clear as day: how many times had he asked me out and I’d said no?

I took a deep breath, readying myself for the awkward. I would rather curl up in a hole somewhere instead of trying to explain just a fraction of my faults, but this needed to be done.

“Listen,” I began, but I completely stalled after that. I tried to think of a way to shine a better light on myself, but I’d messed up with both guys. A lot. “I’m sorry,” I said simply. “Sorry for making you mad enough to stop texting me for a whole week. It was the longest week of my life.”

He gave a clipped laugh, one that had no humor in it. “Same.”

“I was confused that I liked you both,” I admitted, “but you were one of the first people I thought of to call right after I found out Studmuffin had been catnapped.”

“You should have. Right away. I would have come.”

“I know. Thank you. It means a lot that I can count on you.”

“But…” Travis nodded slowly. “You can count on the detective too.”

“I can,” I agreed and then offered him a tiny smile. “But remember at the beginning of this conversation I said that I wanted you to stay?”

“I remember,” he said softly, and then he peered at me a little closer. “Does this mean you’ll go on a date with me? Finally?”

“It does,” I said with zero hesitation. “And that’s not something I would ever forget. I promise. I’ll tell Detective Palmer I can no longer go on a date with him because…I choose you.”

Forgetting about a date with Detective Palmer might have been my subconscious’s way of telling me that he wasn’t for me. Or maybe I was just a terrible person. Either way, my final choice warmed me from within. Deep down, I knew that the perfect man for me was right in front of me. He had been for a while. I could count on him, he could make me laugh even on the darkest of days, and he loved Studmuffin with his whole heart. That part was obvious, and I wasn’t even counting his brand new mustache.

Of course, all of this meant I’d have to have another awkward conversation with the detective. Yay. But I’d do it.

The brightest smile I’d ever seen spread across Travis’s face, and that was really saying something. “Your dad is going to kill me.”

“You seem a little too happy about that.” I took his gloved hand, enjoying the electrical thrill it gave through my mitten, and led us into the waiting area.

“Well, I am already dead.”

“I’ll be sure to hide the holy water and anything sharp and wooden. I actually think he’ll be okay with it though. Look how fast you changed my mind about the Black family.”

He shrugged as we tromped upstairs, our snow-covered boots thudding loudly. “It was Gran’s peach cobbler and peach iced tea. I just showed up with an offer to buy Speedy Zone and mistook you as a customer working on your own car.”

I laughed. “Pretty sure you did more than that.”

As we entered my apartment, the sweet scent of hot chocolate suffused the air. Cass’s cauldron bubbled on the kitchen countertop. She must’ve stored it in the ether because I sure didn’t see her walk in with it. I’d have to ask her about that whole ether thing.

My stomach growled. Other than leftover cake for breakfast, I’d forgotten to eat.

Cass took one look at our clasped hands and did a little skippy hop as she grinned. “Sit, sit. I’m making enough for a small army, but it’s not quite ready yet.”

The two of us sat and Googled all the ways to get our Sharpie mustaches off of us. Five minutes later, we still had Sharpie mustaches, but they were much, much fainter than before. There was no cure for my turquoise mermaid arm though. Oh well. I kind of hated to part with it anyway.

Just then, a knock sounded at the door. It was Detective Palmer with snowflakes clinging to his forehead and long lashes, all of which gave him an extra coating of shine. Some lucky lady in the future would need sunglasses for sure.

For some reason, he was carrying a large wooden door. “Hi, Victoria.”

“Hi. Um, this is new,” I said, pointing. “Do you deliver doors now too?”

“No,” he said between huffs and puffs. “I just thought you’d like to see this one.” He stood the door upright on the ground.

Laughter tripped out of my mouth. A hole had exploded through the door, one that was witch-shaped with a broom and a motorcycle helmet on her head.

“I can’t believe it,” I said, blinking hard. “That’s me. I’m in the door.”

“That’s you?” Travis asked incredulously behind me.

“This was in the wreckage of Nadine’s house,” the detective explained. “I figured you’d like to see it.”

“That’s you?” Travis asked again.

“That’s awesome,” Cass said with a laugh.

Detective Palmer leaned the door against the wall next to my real door. “There’s no need to keep it. You can even use it as firewood to keep warm during this strange weather we’re having.”

Travis frowned. “Or for staking vampires.”

“Right,” I said. “I’ll put it somewhere else so there aren’t any accidents or dads around it, but for now—”

“Yes.” The detective turned his all-business, freight-train stare onto me. “Please show me the ransom note and tell me every detail that’s happened since you got it.”

“Since I got them,” I corrected. “There are two ransom notes.”

While I explained everything, we sat in the living room as Cass served us hot chocolate and stale crackers. The crackers had been shoved to the back of one of my cupboards, the expiration date surely long overdue. At the end of my tale, Boxy and Dad showed up with stew, the perfect complement to stale crackers.

“This is a gift from Chloe,” Dad said, holding up the big pot. Then he did a double take at the holey door. “Is that…?”

“Yeah.” I winced. I should’ve hidden it when I had the chance because his deep, deep frown reminded me of our earlier conversation. The one where he’d asked me to consider dropping my involvement in murder investigations because of dangerous reasons like doors. “It was in the way of me making even more bad decisions.”

From his seat on the couch, Travis laughed but quickly stopped when Dad’s sharp gaze cut to him.

“Travis,” Dad said tightly.

He cleared his throat and nodded. “Mr. Fox. Good to see you again.”

“If you say so.” Shifting the large pot of stew in his hands, Dad breezed past him and Detective Palmer at the kitchen table. “Detective.”

The detective nodded once, hardly glancing up from his notes and the two ransom letters on the table in front of him.

“Yay,” I whispered to Travis out of the side of my mouth.

“Yay?”

“You didn’t say two words to each other at my birthday party. This is progress.”

“Yeah, I’m just going to nonchalantly move the door somewhere else.”

“There are too many witnesses here. He wouldn’t do anything to you.” I happened to look up then and found Dad giving us the stink-eye from my kitchen.

Travis hopped up and headed for the holey door. “I’ll just…”

“Yep, good idea.”

While he hauled it down the hallway, Boxy stole his seat on the couch and pointed to his nose. Without missing a beat, I leaned over and pinched it. Still my favorite Boxy.

“Did I miss something?” he asked. “Because I think I missed something.” He circled his finger around his mouth, and it took me a second to figure out what he was talking about.

“Oh, my new mustache? Well…” Sighing deeply, I sank down next to him and filled him in on most of what happened at Age Is Just A Number Antiques and Appraisals. “I got a new arm too. My other arm is jealous.” I rolled up my sleeve and showed him my pretty turquoise skin.

Boxy whistled. “It has sure been a day, huh, Vic?”

“You can say that again.” But it hadn’t been a day that had revealed a way to get Studmuffin back without handing over the ring. I was running out of time.

After Dad and Cass passed out bowls of stew, more mugs of hot chocolate, and nose pinches to everyone, Cass turned on some Christmas music on her phone. It was low enough that the detective could still concentrate but loud enough to warm my soul a little. I loved Christmas, and even though it wasn’t technically that time of year yet, it sure looked like it outside.

To help calm my nerves and give my hands something to do, I lugged out my boxed Christmas tree from the living room closet.

“Ohhh, can I help?” Cass offered.

“Sure. It’s older than dirt, kind of lopsided, and probably has less than half of its embedded lights working.” I grinned at her. “It’s kind of perfect.”

“Sounds like it. We used to make our own ornaments when we were little, but because my siblings are chaos witches, they always turned out like burned nightmares. Pretty sure they did it on purpose to scare me since I was the youngest, but my ornaments…” She sighed wistfully. “Not to brag, but they were my favorite.”

“Let me guess. They were made out of things found in nature like pretty rocks?”

She grinned. “It’s like you know me or something.”

For some reason, it was hard to imagine the three Rudio brothers, RaeRae, and Cass sitting around doing things together. Maybe it was because I kept imagining RaeRae’s head encased in a block of ice. It’s hard to do much of anything when your head is an ice cube.

“I just have store-bought decorations since these hands don’t do art.” I held them up to prove it, even my turquoise hand.

“Nonsense,” Boxy said, half turning from his spot on the couch. “You do amazing art on the insides of cars.”

I smiled, having never thought about it quite like that. “Thanks, Boxy. You do too.”

“I think it’s more my ninja kicks and jazz hands than my artistic skill.”

“And the dragon raisins dipped in motor oil for luck,” Dad muttered next to him.

“What?” I laughed. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. It’s all of the above that you’re so good at what you do, even the dragon raisins dipped in motor oil.”

Boxy chuckled and nudged Dad in the ribs. “Notice how she hasn’t mentioned your car skills once. It’s almost as though you don’t have any.”

Dad rolled his eyes and grinned. “That’s because everybody knows I taught you both everything I know. It’s hard to deny the facts while they’re here staring you in the face.” He leaned into Boxy and blinked his big blue eyes at him.

I snorted as they continued to trade loving, brotherly jabs at each other. It would never get old having the two of them back together again.

Cass and I slurped our hot chocolate and stew while we decorated the tree and the rest of my apartment. Travis helped with the decorations that required height. Two hours later, everything looked so cozy and festive and…empty. If it weren’t for the paw-shaped hole in my heart, I would probably enjoy it more.

As we were putting away the empty ornament boxes, I blurted to Cass, “If you were to start your own coven, what would you call it?”

Cass laughed. “First of all, I wouldn’t ever start my own coven.”

“If you did though?”

She shrugged, a little smile still on her face as she gazed down at the unraveling bandage over her missing fingers. “Something nice. Something without judgment of those who have a lot of work ahead of them in the magic department.” She peered at me closely. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just a silly thing that’s going through my head to keep my mind off Studmuffin,” I muttered and then waved the idea away. “It’s nothing.”

“Okay, High Priestess Victoria, but if you start a coven, I’m definitely joining.”

“It was you who put the idea in my head when you first called me that at the library, remember?” I asked, grinning.

She nodded. “At the cat-shifter meeting. How could I forget?”

I couldn’t forget either. In fact, I’d been thinking about it a lot lately. Every coven I’d had the displeasure of running into had been pretty horrible. Where were the good covens that actually helped and accepted other witches? Maybe there weren’t any, and if that were the case, that was a terrible thing.

Travis strode up to us in the hallway and bent to retrieve a stack of empty ornament boxes. “I don’t remember anything about a cat-shifter meeting. Was I there?”

“You got the lump on the back of your head there,” I told him.

“Ah, I wondered where that came from.”

After he wandered back down the hall to put the ornament boxes away, I turned to Cass again. “I have another question for you: how do you put your cauldron in the ether?”

“Oh, easy. For me, I just say ‘open sesame.’”

“That’s it?”

Cass grinned. “That’s it.”

“Open sesame.”

A shaft of sparkling golden light poured in from a narrow split in the air. The ether was pretty. Just to test it, I threw my Santa hat inside. The hat vanished along with the light.

“Open sesame,” I said again.

A new split formed in the air, and I reached in to retrieve my hat and righted it on my head again.

“Thanks, Cass.”

She beamed. “Not a problem. Just know that the ether isn’t always secure. It’s a good solution for temporary storage though.”

“Got it.” I wouldn’t be storing the Ring of Everlasting Night there anytime soon.

Back in the living room, Boxy wandered over to the kitchen table where Detective Palmer still sat poring over the ransom letters. Then Boxy gasped and waved one of the ransom letters in the air.

“I recognize the A in pay,” he announced and then turned to me with wide eyes. “I know who catnapped Studmuffin!”