I grabbed my jacket. “I know,” I said. “I’ll walk you out.”
The sky was an endless inky black pierced with brilliant stars overhead. Marcus put an arm around me. I leaned into him and I was anything but cold.
His SUV was parked behind my truck. And there was a small ginger tabby cat standing on her hind legs, looking out of the driver’s window.
Micah.
Marcus stopped in his tracks. He stared at the car. “How the hell did she get in there?” he said. “I swear I checked the backseat. She wasn’t there. This doesn’t make any sense.”
I opened my mouth to explain, and then closed it again. Marcus was in the middle of a murder investigation. This wasn’t the time. It really wasn’t.
His cat seemingly appearing out of nowhere in Marcus’s car did make sense to me. The little ginger tabby—who was missing the tip of her tail—was also a Wisteria Hill cat, although she didn’t share Owen’s and Hercules’s dislike of being touched by most people. She did, however, share Owen’s ability to disappear. I really didn’t understand how she’d evaded being caught at it by Marcus for so long other than she was a very intelligent cat. Like Owen and Hercules, it certainly seemed as though she understood everything that was said around her.
Marcus shook his head slowly, still staring at the SUV. “I feel like I’m losing my mind sometimes.”
I snaked one arm around his midsection and gave him a squeeze. “You’re not,” I said.
“She’s snuck into the car twice in the last two days,” he said. “No. Make that three times now.” He exhaled loudly, his breath lingering for a moment in the night air. “The second time I was halfway to work before I saw her in the rearview mirror sitting in the middle of the backseat. I don’t know how the heck I missed her before that and I have no idea how she got past me into the car in the first place. I have no idea how she got in tonight.”
My chest tightened as though I’d been picked up and hugged by King Kong. “She is small and . . . fast,” I said, wondering if I sounded as lame to him as I sounded to myself.
Micah was watching us out the window of the SUV, her head cocked to one side as though she was trying to figure out what we were talking about.
Marcus shook his head again. “I’ve gotta start paying better attention. It’s too cold for her to be stuck in the car for so long.”
“You’ve only been here for about half an hour,” I said. “And Micah lived outside before she lived with you. I think she’s all right.”
“I’ll start checking under the seats,” he said. “She’s so little she can fit in some pretty small spaces, and you’re right about her being fast. This morning, for a moment, I actually thought she had disappeared right in front of me.” He gave me a sheepish grin. “I guess that’s what happens when I don’t get enough sleep or enough caffeine.”
Or when your cat has some kind of unexplained magical ability.
Marcus opened the SUV’s door and picked up the little cat. I reached over to stroke her fur and she nuzzled my hand. “No more sneaking into the car,” I said.
Micah gave me the same unblinking look Owen liked to use when he was ignoring me.
I gave her one last scratch behind her right ear and Marcus set her back on the seat again. He wrapped both arms around me and kissed me again. And then again. I could have stood there all night. I wasn’t the slightest bit cold.
Marcus rested his chin on the top of my head and groaned. “I have to stop doing this or I’m never going to get out of here and Eddie is going to string me up.”
I broke out of his embrace and took two steps backward, folding my hands neatly in front of me.
“That doesn’t help at all,” he said.
I gave him a teasing smile. “What? I’m just standing here minding my manners.”
“More like taking my breath away.” He shook his head. “I’m going now. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He slid onto the seat, started the SUV and backed out of the driveway.
I gave a little wave and he was gone. All of a sudden I was cold. I wrapped my coat around me and hurried around the side of the house.
When I stepped into the kitchen I found Owen sitting in Marcus’s seat.
“You seem to have forgotten that the chairs are for people,” I said.
He gave a pointed look at the door and then shifted his gaze to me again, giving a sharp, insistent meow as though he somehow knew what had just occurred out in the driveway. For all I knew, he did.
I put a hand on my hip. “What was I supposed to do? Say ‘Yes, you actually did see Micah disappear because, oh, I forgot to mention she can do that kind of thing’?”
Being a cat of few words, he just continued to silently eye me. It was very disconcerting.
I reached down, picked Owen up and took his seat, setting him on my lap. I remembered when I’d first begun to suspect Owen and his brother had some unexplainable abilities. In Owen’s case the idea had begun to take form after he’d ended up at the library and had launched himself onto someone’s head. The someone was conductor Gregor Easton, who’d had no sense of humor about that sort of thing.
I remembered how Susan had laughed once the pompous conductor had been placated and Owen had been corralled in my office.
“Suddenly, there he was on the maestro’s head,” she’d said, shoulders shaking with laughter. “It was almost like one second he was invisible and the next he wasn’t.”
Luckily the phone had started to ring then, which had ended the conversation. I’d wondered what Susan would have said if I had told her that I thought it was possible the cat actually had vanished for a moment.
That incident wasn’t the first time I thought I’d seen Owen disappear. That had happened six weeks prior. I’d been in the swing in the backyard with Owen on the grass at my feet watching the birds. And then he wasn’t. I looked for him, certain he’d darted away to stalk some unsuspecting robin. Then he appeared again, about ten feet away in midair, in midleap over a tiny black-and-yellow finch.
“Owen!” I’d yelled. The bird flew away, I lost my balance and tumbled onto the lawn, and the cat landed on the grass, legs splayed, looking very undignified. As I settled on the swing again I’d decided I hadn’t really seen Owen disappear and then reappear. The sun had been in my eyes. My mind had been wandering. And then he did it again.
Was I having a breakdown, I’d wondered, or maybe a very bizarre hallucination?
I’d gotten up, walked across the grass and sat down next to the cat. “Owen, do that again,” I’d said.
He’d stared at me.
“C’mon. Disappear.” I’m not sure what I had been expecting, maybe some sort of slow fade-out, the way Alice in Wonderland’s Cheshire cat had disappeared, until only its smile was left. Owen looked at me like I’d lost my mind. And then he disappeared. Except this time he’d only disappeared behind the red chokeberry bush.
I’d learned about Hercules’s abilities at the library as well, back when it was being renovated. I was shutting things down for the night when the little tuxedo cat decided to explore one of the partially finished meeting rooms. When I bent to scoop him up he darted away.
“Hercules, come back here right now,” I’d said sharply. In return all I’d gotten was a low, rumbly meow. He had walked out of my reach, through the closed panel door in front of us, and disappeared.
I remembered how my knees had started to shake. I sat down hard on the floor. Hercules had vanished. He hadn’t darted past me. He’d walked through a solid wooden door just as though it wasn’t there and it was almost as though there was a faint “pop” as the end of his tail had disappeared. I’d felt all over the door looking for some kind of hidden panel but the door was thick and unyielding.
I’d sat back on my heels, wondering if I was crazy. I’d remembered a psych prof in freshman year telling the class that if you could ask the question then you weren’t. Of course, three-quarters of the time he came to class in his pajama bottoms.