Pawsitively Dead (A Wonder Cats Mystery Book 2) (12 page)

T
he idea
of breaking into a government building and rummaging through some records had been enough to keep me flighty and distracted all day, but when I pulled up to the house, Astrid was asleep on her front porch swing, a pink, floral decorative pillow snugly wrapped in her arms. Waking her up was like poking a grizzly bear with a stick.

“Come on,” I whispered, hoping no insomnia sufferer was watching us. “We’ve got to get moving.”

Finally, after she gave some low grumbles and growls, her eyes flickered open and she smiled. “What are we waiting for?” She walked briskly down the front porch steps to my car and got in.

I hadn’t seen her that excited and animated in quite some time.

We drove to the orphanage in relative silence. I knew Aunt Astrid was mumbling a protection spell over us as we drove, and one of the perks was that every light turned green in our favor. But as the neighborhood began to turn, the sad, frumpy place I had seen in the morning transformed into a sinister maze of streets with jagged shadows and unseen eyes from pitch-black windows.

“Are you all right to do this?” I asked.

“Never better,” she said, smiling.

“This… I don’t get… is this something on your bucket list or something?” I asked. My head went back and forth between the road and Aunt Astrid. “To break a major law, commit a halfway serious offense before you pass into the great beyond? Because I’m starting to think you’re enjoying this a little too much. Usually I’m the one taking unnecessary chances.”

“I can’t help it,” Astrid said. “I find it exhilarating.”

She laughed, and I shook my head. We drove for just a little longer until we came up to Cline Street.

“Well, my stomach is in knots, so let’s get this over with. That’s the building just up ahead. I think we should park a little bit away from the building, but that means if we get into any trouble, we’ll have to run.”

Suddenly, Aunt Astrid’s face became serious. “There’s a protection spell already on that building.” She spoke in a quiet voice as if she didn’t want the building to hear her. “And it isn’t a friendly one.”

I stopped the car about a block away and turned off the ignition. My chest got a lot tighter. Maybe I should have told Blake my idea and waited the couple of weeks for a warrant. “Can we get through it?”

“Yes. It’s been there for a while and is pretty thin and worn. But be prepared for a little nausea. It isn’t a white protection spell.”

Goose bumps rose on my arms, and I shivered. We got out of the car and looked around suspiciously. Cat burglars we were not. Laurel and Hardy… well, maybe.

“The open window is on the southwest side of the building,” I whispered. “Just around that corner.”

As soon as we set foot on the property line, I felt it, a shift in the air that made it smell a little like metal. We stuck to the shadows as we inched our way around the building.

“I didn’t notice this during the day,” I whispered.

“You wouldn’t have. It is a nocturnal spell designed to protect…”

“The building?” I asked nervously.

“The contents of the building.”

“So you think the records might have more information than we first thought?”

“I’m not sure it’s protecting the records at all.”

I swallowed hard. Finally, I saw the right window. With just a little elbow grease, it slid right up. Cigarette butts littered the sill and the ground outside the window. Someone was obviously too set in their ways to adhere to the strict no-smoking policies implemented in every government building.

I gave Aunt Astrid a boost, and she shimmied into the open window with such grace that if I didn’t know her, I would have thought she had been doing it her whole life. She helped pull me up.

As I had predicted, the office was creepy and scary in the darkness. It was just an office with desks and files and not a whole lot more, yet I got the feeling that weird things roamed the halls at night.

“Where are the records?” she asked.

“Miss Molitor said they were in the basement.”

“Let’s go.” Aunt Astrid pulled a small LED flashlight from her pocket. It cut through the darkness and illuminated millions of little dust particles swirling in the air.

We exited the office and tiptoed down the hallway, checking each door until we found one at the very end of the corridor that read STAIRS. With a deep breath, I pulled the door open. It squeaked terribly, echoing throughout the building.

“Hasn’t been opened in a while, I guess,” I said, trying to calm my nerves.

Aunt Astrid gasped. Her flashlight shined on nothing other than stairs, but she obviously felt something.

“Let’s hurry,” she said, making her way down the stairs one step at a time, carefully holding on to the railing.

At the bottom, there were two more doors. One read Boiler Room. The other said nothing. We entered the nameless door.

I barely noticed Aunt Astrid had been mumbling almost the entire time we came down the stairs. Finally I looked at her face in the eerie glow of the flashlight and saw her sorting through the layers of the past to hopefully zero in on what we were looking for.

“There.” She pointed at an olive green filing cabinet with at least an inch of dust on top of it.

I walked up to it and pointed at the top drawer. She shook her head. The second drawer was also a no. Finally, Aunt Astrid indicated the bottom drawer. I sat on the dirty floor, yanked open the drawer with a metallic
clink, clank zzshronk
.

There it was. The file stood out as if it had been waiting for us to find it.

Thompson Family: 1808 – 2009

The file was thick with birth certificates and death certificates for dozens of obscure branches stretching out from their family tree. Names that were familiar in town but faces I just couldn’t remember. One thing jumped out at me so suddenly, I felt as if I had been slapped.

“We have to get going,” Aunt Astrid hissed urgently.

“I don’t believe this.” My mind couldn’t focus. I was shaking and felt a chill run up my spine.

“Cath!” Her voice sounded scared. “We’ve got to go! Now!”

“Should I take the file?” I was tripping over my thoughts and didn’t know what to do. It was like one of those dreams where I was struggling to run but my legs just wouldn’t move.

“No! Put it back! Put everything back! We need to get out of this building now!”

Finally my head clicked, and I heard her loud and clear. Stuffing the folder back where it belonged, I shut the drawer and jumped to my feet. Just then, we froze. We heard noises. I quickly tiptoed next to my aunt and held her hand. We stood there for what felt like an eternity. I watched her face as she sorted through the dimensions of the future and past and everything else in between. Her grip became tighter until I wasn’t sure if it was
our
present where we were hearing noises or something in another dimension trying to bust its way through to this one. It seemed to be all around us and even, I shuddered to think it, inside us, echoing in our heads.

“Let’s go!” I pulled Aunt Astrid toward the stairs.

I thought I might have to help her get up the stairs, but to my surprise and relief, she shot up them like a bullet. We burst through the wooden door into the dark hallway and pressed our backs against the cold concrete wall. Both of us held our breath.

Something was pursuing us. Something big and diabolical was rattling the foundation of the building.

“It was down there with us,” Aunt Astrid said in a terrified whisper. “I think it’s coming up the stairs.”

Reluctantly, I pressed my ear against the wood door. As sure as the stars were in the sky that night, I heard the footsteps. I heard the breathing. I heard the growling.

This time it was Aunt Astrid who grabbed my hand and pulled me back toward the office. Once inside it, we quickly shut the door and ran to the window that, thankfully, was still open.

While Aunt Astrid backed her way out onto the safety of the pavement, I felt my body shake with fear. This had to be how the men floating around the sunken USS
Indianapolis
felt while being rescued as sharks continued to attack them from below.

I wouldn’t turn around. I wouldn’t look at the office door for fear of what I might see. But I knew whatever it was had crawled up from the basement. It had moved up the stairs with slow, deliberate steps, and now it was making its way down the hall.

“Hurry,” I urged my aunt. “Please.”

She nodded and grunted as she swung her second leg over the sill and hopped down. Looking around quickly, she saw nothing and waved to me. “Come on, Cath. Hurry.”

She didn’t have to tell me twice. But against my better judgment, against my gut instinct, against my own will, I turned and looked at the wooden door with Administration stenciled across it.

A ghoulish face, distorted by the glass, grinned a sadistic grin at me as its red eyes burned into mine.

I dove out the window, slamming it shut behind me, and onto the hard pavement, where I scraped up my palms and tore a nice size hole in my favorite black jeans.

“Are you all right?” Aunt Astrid asked as she yanked me to my feet and pulled me toward the car. Had I broken a leg, she would have continued to drag me away from that place, all the while soothing and encouraging as she was doing. “It’s okay. We’re all right now. The car is just up ahead. Come on, honey. Let’s keep going.”

Once inside the car, I locked the doors, started the engine, and peeled out of there under the blurry gaze of a couple of men sharing a drink from a paper bag.

Only once I saw the cheery sight of Aunt Astrid’s front porch did I let out a sigh. It seemed as if I might have been holding my breath for the entire drive.

“Can I…”

“Sleep overnight here?” Aunt Astrid finished my sentence. “Absolutely.”

I sighed with relief. “Thanks.”

We didn’t say too much about what we had heard. I didn’t tell Aunt Astrid about the face I had seen. I would wait until the sun came up and Bea was with us. The hustle and bustle of a normal day under a normal sun could chase away the shadows and boogeymen.

“
I
stayed awake
all night waiting for the phone to ring. I was sure I’d get a call from Jake telling me my mom and cousin had been picked up for breaking into a government building,” Bea said, pouring hot tea into our cups the following morning in Aunt Astrid’s kitchen.

“You have no idea,” I said, wrapping my hands around the warm mug.

“Did you find out anything?”

Aunt Astrid sipped her tea and looked at me. I hadn’t told her what I’d read in the documents on the Thompson family. I felt a little guilty even mentioning it. It was obviously something that was intended to stay buried.

“Yes,” I said, looking back at Aunt Astrid.

“So? Don’t keep me waiting.” Bea’s eyes bounced back and forth between us.

“There was something there. Something that knew
we
were there and wasn’t very happy,” Aunt Astrid said.

“What happened?”

Aunt Astrid told Bea in great detail what had happened while I had my back to her as I read the complete Thompson file. She saw people coming and going, heard conversations about the building and the files, and she also saw where the protection spell had come from.

“Topher?” Bea gasped, looking at me.

“This is the first I’m hearing about this too,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. When we had gotten back to Aunt Astrid’s place, we were so shocked and exhausted that sleep overcame us almost instantly. Even if we had wanted to talk about what had happened, our minds just wouldn’t allow it.

“I’m not sure why but…” Aunt Astrid shook her head and pulled an apple pie, with one slice missing, out of her refrigerator. With three graceful movements, she swept up three rose-decorated small plates, pulled three forks from the copper canister on the counter, and snagged the pie server from the cutlery drawer.

“Well, I’m not sure what to make of this, but from what I saw in the file, that may not be so hard to believe.” I took another sip of tea as a heaping slice of apple pie made its way in front of me.

Pulling her chair up to the kitchen table, Aunt Astrid took a seat.

“There was a birth certificate in there. Well, there were lots of them throughout the years and nothing strange, nothing out of order except…” I felt as though I was gossiping, and that was bad enough, but I saw no other way to help get this situation under control. “I saw Thomas Thompson born to mother Alice Thompson and father…”

Bea’s back straightened, and her eyes widened.

“Lei Park. Min’s father.”

“What?”
Bea and Aunt Astrid cried at once.

“Hey, I’m not saying it’s true. I’m saying that that’s what was on the birth certificate. But why would it be there if it wasn’t true? I mean, the whole thing is really messed up, right?”

“Min’s father was Tommy Thompson’s father too?” Bea exclaimed. “How could that be?”

“Well, the certificate didn’t go into details, but I’m guessing that when they were younger, Mr. Park and Miss Thompson had a fling that resulted in a child.” I shoveled a huge scoop of apple pie into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say any more.

“Well, duh, that’s what happened,” Bea said. “But something like that would have gotten around. People would have heard about it. This is a small town, and gossip tumbles from mouths as easily as the water down the waterfall.”

“That is a beautiful comparison,” I said, giving Bea a wink.

“Thank you. But still, don’t you think someone would have spoken about this before?”

“People can keep secrets if they choose to. It’s just that so many people choose not to,” Aunt Astrid said.

“If that’s true, then it might explain why Topher seemed so agitated at the play,” I said, thinking hard while cutting myself another piece of pie.

“What are you talking about?” Aunt Astrid asked.

“The play. You guys were in your seats when I was in the back with Min and Blake. Topher came galloping along with his britches in a bunch, calling Min all kinds of names. It makes a little more sense that he’d have some animosity toward the men in the Park family.”

“But Topher was never rude to them before. He might be a bit on the eccentric side but never hurtful,” Bea insisted and sipped her tea.

“Right, but now he’s got an Unfamiliar attached to him, feeding him lies and pulling him down into that darkness where who knows what worms its way into his mind,” I said. “Maybe thirty years ago, he did hate Lei Park or everyone in the Park family for this indiscretion but came to terms with it. If there was still just a sliver of resentment, that creature would find it and infect it until it became a consuming cancer.”

“And all the while making it look like Old Murray was the problem.” Aunt Astrid nodded. “All along, that Unfamiliar had its vise grip on Topher and—”

“Pointed out to Topher that someone in the Park family was a closer living relation to Alice than anyone else in town. If he gets his hands on Min, or preferably Lei Park, then raising the dead and giving life to the Unfamiliar will probably work.” I swallowed hard as I thought about the face I’d seen staring back at me through the frosted glass at the orphanage.

“What?” Bea asked. “Your face just went pale.”

I wasn’t sure if I should say anything about it. Maybe I hadn’t even seen it. Maybe I had just gotten wrapped up in the moment and my mind was playing tricks on me. Maybe it was a result of the old spell hanging over that place like webbing.

“When we were getting out of that building, I saw something,” I said.

“The Unfamiliar,” Aunt Astrid said as if she already knew.

I looked at her with wide eyes. “How did you know?”

“I caught a glimpse of it moving through time. It rips the fabric of the dimensions like it’s going through paper.”

“What was it doing hanging out at an old government building that practically no one ever visits?” Bea asked.

“That I don’t know,” Aunt Astrid said. “But I knew we stirred it up just a few minutes after I was shown where the files that might help us were. I just thought we could get out of there before it made it through to our dimension. I guess I was wrong.”

I shivered. Even with the comfort of the sun and the protection of my family around me, I felt vulnerable, as if I was only wearing a towel and had to go slay a dragon.

“Does that mean the Unfamiliar sometimes detaches itself from Topher?” Bea asked, pushing her empty plate aside.

Aunt Astrid walked to her pantry and opened the door, revealing not just canned goods and baking supplies but three shelves filled with books. The one she retrieved was a small black leather-bound thing with fingerprints in flour on the cover. The pages inside were yellowed and almost transparent with age. She peeled them away from each other delicately, one at a time. “According to this…”

“What is that one? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it,” I said, peeking at the writing.

“This is sort of like the Cliff’s Notes on Unfamiliars,” Aunt Astrid said, her brow wrinkling over her nose. “It won’t tell us how to get rid of the little bugger, but it will tell us its schedule.”

I looked at Bea, who shook her head and shrugged.

“The Unfamiliar is strongest during the full moon, but last night was two nights
before
the full moon. It was weak, and Topher must have either pushed it out of his mind or was so exhausted when he fell asleep that it couldn’t get through to him. We can assume it whispers to him incessantly, driving him crazy one word at a time.”

“That poor man,” Bea said. “He needs a healing spell, but it’s no good to do one until the Unfamiliar is gone.”

“So it came sniffing around for us. It knows we’re here. It knows what we are. And it isn’t scared.” Aunt Astrid had barely touched her pie.

I finished my second slice of pie and washed it down with the remaining tea, which had gone lukewarm. “Well, it’s going to be up to something tonight. My gut is telling me that we need to let the Parks know they’re in danger.”

“How are you going to do that?” Bea asked. “Do you realize how crazy our story would sound? Not to mention how embarrassing for them? There’s no easy way to address the issue.”

“No, there isn’t. You want to do it?” I asked, looking at Bea with puppy dog eyes.

She put her hands up in front of her and shook her head. “No way. I’m getting my own house in order before I butt in on anyone else. Besides, you’re the one Min has eyes for. It would be better coming from someone he knows and cares for.”

“Has eyes for?” I felt my cheeks flash hot pink. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing.” Bea folded her arms across her chest and snickered.

Marshmallow jumped into Aunt Astrid’s lap, hopped up on the table, and made herself comfortable there.

“Treacle was here this morning. He looked like he had gotten into a little scuffle,”
Marshmallow said to me.

“I’m sure he did,”
I said.
“Did he say where he had been or where he was going
?”

“He didn’t want you to see him the way he looked, so I assume he was going to the shelter for a quick cleanup from Cody and Old Murray before
you could see him
.”

“Oh, that little sneak. Thanks for the tip
.” I scratched Marshmallow behind the ears, starting her purr engine.

“Sure, but you didn’t hear it from me
.”

Bea and Aunt Astrid didn’t hear my conversation with Marshmallow, but I think they could tell something was up.

“I’m going to go get this thing with the Parks over with,” I said. “It isn’t something that needs to be put off any longer. Plus, if it is the full moon the night after tomorrow, we have to be prepared.”

Again, I thought of that thing that had grinned at me. It suddenly wasn’t as scary as what I had to tell the Parks. I thought what I needed to do was walk off the two slices of pie I had just eaten while I came up with a script that would prompt the Parks without revealing the whole story.

Leaving Aunt Astrid and Bea to discuss the plan for the evening, I drove to the animal shelter to pick up Treacle. I’d drop him off at home with a little food and a stern talking-to, then I’d head off to the Parks’ house.