“I think he was talking metaphorically, you know, trying to show off,” Snowball said.

Sasha, the sleek Siamese jumped into the middle of the circle. “Let’s not argue. We need to help our humans any way we can.”

Pandora sat on her haunches and licked her paw. They were an elite species of cats sworn to help humans since ancient times—a task made more difficult by the fact that humans simply didn’t have the feline’s superior methods of communication. Some of them could learn, but others never did.

Pandora flicked her paw behind her ear as she thought about Willa, her human. She’d been with Willa’s grandmother, Anna, since the beginning.

Anna had understood her. 

Willa, on the other hand, obviously had no idea what Pandora was trying to tell her. Pandora missed Anna terribly, but she was starting to develop a small liking to her new human—even though Willa was rather skinny and her lap not nearly as comfortable as Anna’s. 

She didn’t yet have the rapport with Willa that she’d developed with Anna, but it had taken years to get to that point with the grandmother, so there was still hope. Though that didn’t help her much now … and it seemed that right now, communicating with her human was critical.

Pandora narrowed her eyes. “How can we help them?”

“We must make sure the evil ones do not gain ground,” Inkspot said in his usual vague manner.

“Anyone got an idea on how to do that?” Sasha’s luminous blue eyes scanned the crowd.

“Only true magic can stop them for good,” Otis spoke from his perch on top of the hay. “But it’s not time for that. The best we can do is to guide the humans to slow down the evil ones.”

“And how do we do that?” Pandora asked.

“By helping them find the killer before he gets what he wants,” Otis replied.

“But how can we help them if we don’t even know who the killer is?” Sasha asked.

A small cat padded into the middle of the circle. Her name was Truffles and she was a Tortoiseshell, predominantly black with orange mottling. Her large, greenish-yellow eyes glowed with excitement. “I think I know how.”

“You?” Inkspot turned his green eyes on the small cat. “Have you been talking to the wild ones again?”

The wild ones were the feral cats of Mystic Notch. They served no humans and lived on the streets of town and in the forests, surviving on scraps and taking shelter as they could. They had eyes everywhere and knew much about what was going on in Mystic Notch.

“The wild ones found something.” Truffles turned with a flick of her tail and headed toward the door. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to it. I think it might help reveal the killer.”

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven