“What are you doing?” I guffawed, resisting the urge to slap my palm into my forehead. “Trying to give the thing a high five?”
He turned back toward me and made a face, not embarrassed as I’d expect but more playful. “I’m checking to see if there’s a temporal anomaly.”
I chuffed at this.“And? Is there?”
“Well, I just realized that I have no idea what a temporal anomaly would feel like. Yeah, I’ve seen a ghost before, but that was more dumb luck than anything.” He tilted his head to the side. “How did you know it was here?”
My heart thudded in my chest. I hated lying, but telling him the truth about Merlin would result in me being locked away in some dodgy magical prison for the rest of my life. That one simple fact made lying essential, but it didn’t make me good at it.
“Oh, it’s my, uh, intuition,” I hedged. “Sometimes I can hear things other people can’t.” That was true, if only because the cats chose to talk to me instead of most other humans.
His eyes widened, and he seemed to look at me with a fresh perspective.“Whoa. So you actually heard it, then? Did it speak to you, like in words?”
I shook my head quickly.“No, no words. It’s more like the sound of, uh, waves crashing softly on the beach.”
“How does one crash softly?” he asked with a chuckle.
I couldn’t tell whether that was a rhetorical question, so I chanced an answer. “It’s hard to explain. Likeshhspspspspshh.”
“Sounds like how some people call their cats,” he pointed out with another soft laugh.
I smiled awkwardly.“Haha, yeah, it kind of does. Anyway, maybe I’m panicking over nothing. I mean, it all sounds pretty crazy, right?”
Drake walked back toward me at the other end of the hall.“Crazy is just what people like to call things they don’t quite understand. For what it’s worth, I believe you about your ghost, and I think it’s pretty freaking cool.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sigh of relief.
Drake raised his hand to touch my forearm.“You’re pretty freaking cool, Gracie. There’s something different about you. Especially lately. And, well, I really, really like it.”
I swallowed hard.“Th-thank you.”
His eyes softened around the edges as he ran his palm up my arm.“Look,” he murmured. “I know I backed you into this date, and that you were too nice to say no. But you can say no now. Okay?”
I nodded as his hand finally reached my shoulder.
He took another step forward.“May I kiss you?”
Oh, wow. That came out of nowhere.“No!” I said, perhaps a bit too emphatically.
Drake immediately dropped his hand and took a step back. He wore a smile, but it was definitely forced.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s just that I have a lot going on in my life right now, and—”
Drake held up a palm.“It’s okay. I get it. I didn’t think you were into me, but I had to find out for sure. I’ll leave you to your evening. If you need any more help with your ghost or just want to hang out, you know where to find me.”
He moved past me and made a beeline for the door.
“Drake, I’m sorry!” I called before rushing after him. “I do like you, and I’ve enjoyed hanging out with you tonight. But I just don’t know you that well yet. And the part about having too much going on to make space for a relationship. That’s one-hundred percent true.”
He tilted his head slightly to the side.“You don’t have to explain it to me. I’m definitely an acquired taste.”
“Hey, then maybe I’ll acquire it after we spend more time together,” I blurted out stupidly. I didn’t feel that way about Drake, and I wasn’t sure I ever could.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob.“So you think you might get a craving for some vitamin D later?”
My mouth fell open. I tried to issue a response, but it came out as more of a disgusted groan.
Drake spun around to face me.“D for Drake! That’s all I meant! D for Drake. Not… the other thing.”
I nodded mutely, my eyes still wide from shock.
“Yeah, I’ll just go jump off a bridge now,” he said, pulling the door open and stepping outside.
For a moment, I debated going after him, but then—
10
“Out of my way, out of my way!” Merlin yowled as he and Luna popped out from the birdbath in a cascade of green sparks.
“Hush, or someone will see you!” I whisper-yelled from my spot in the doorway. I glanced toward the road and was relieved to see that Drake had made his getaway before the magical display on my front lawn.
“That was a close one,” Merlin muttered as he and Luna passed by me on their way inside the house.
I shut the door and locked it. Just in case.
“What happened?” I asked, almost afraid to hear their answer.
Luna stretched to lick Merlin’s forehead, and he visibly let go of some of the tension he’d carried home with him.
“Thanks. I needed that,” he purred to his lady love while continuing to ignore me.
Luna attached herself to Merlin’s side. I wouldn’t have been able to pry them apart if I tried. And I definitely knew better than to try.
“We ran into some cats from Merlin’s past, and they weren’t exactly happy to see him. Or to see us together,” she explained in that lilting voice of hers.
“What did they do?” I asked. Merlin was hardly more than a kitten. Him taking me on as his familiar was the act that officially made him a full-fledged witch, and that had happened very recently. How could such a young cat already have such bitter enemies?
“They challenged him to a duel, which he—” She narrowed her eyes at Merlin. “—then foolishly accepted.”
“Whoa, you could have died tonight?” I spat with equal parts surprise and anxiety. “What were you thinking?”
“He wasn’t thinking,” Luna answered with a sigh. “But you must also remember that we cats do things differently than humans.”
“Duels with guns, right? Like in Hamilton?” I pictured Merlin wearing a period costume and circling another cat in colonial garb while they rapped about their grievances. Now there’s a show I would pay good money to see.
“Certainly not,” Luna said, her lip curled in disgust, almost as if she’d been able to picture the scene playing out in my head.
“Then?” I asked seriously.
Merlin spoke up at last, his fur twitching at the shoulders.“It wouldn’t have been so bad. We cats fight with what’s at our disposal.”
He raised a paw and unsheathed his claws.“We use a combination of magic and good-old fashioned rough-housing.”
Luna nudged him until he put his weapons away.“Cats strike with their paws. Magical cats strike with phantom claws.”
I shook my head, not understanding the strange metaphor.
“We bat at each other’s magic within,” he explained, then pressed his ears back against his head, raised a paw, and hit at the air. “Like that, but we don’t aim to injure faces or hurt pride. We attack each other’s magic until one of us doesn’t have enough left to continue the duel.”
“You kill each other?” The thought seemed so barbaric. But I guess if humans could take each other’s lives, then so, too, could other species. As much as I wished they wouldn’t.
Merlin shuddered.“No, it’s much worse. The loser lives on without magic. A fate worse than—”
“Ah-ah-ahem!” I cleared my throat loudly to stop him.
“What’s your problem?” Merlin asked, then glanced to Luna at his side and dipped his head in regret. “Oh, right. Sorry.”
“I know you didn’t mean it,” she said softly, still clearly hurt by his words. “Just as I know you wouldn’t want to risk your magic when we have an imminent threat in our own home.”
“Why did those other cats even want to fight you? Surely, nothing you’ve done could have beenthat bad.” Sometimes he was sarcastic and off-putting, but overall, Merlin was a good cat. He didn’t seem like the enemy type… Well, other than that thing with Luna. Actually, you know what? Never mind. He’d clearly made his fair share of enemies in his short life. Maybe that was just the way with magic. I was still new to this world and learning all its quirks.