“Someone find that lady and get her to the hospital! She’s overdoing it!” Clarence yelled and I breathed a sigh of relief.
A second later Nic was by my side, and I caught him up to his mother’s version of the story very quickly. I wasn’t sure why she took credit for my gifts, but I didn’t care if the others thought I was a good provider or not.
“Nic! There you are!” Clarence said, pulling my mate into an awkward hug. “Can you go home and wait for your mother to show up or call?”
“Huh?” I blinked before the question sank in.
“Did Medwin put you up to this or something?” Nic whispered.
“Up to what?” Clarence asked and then shouted an order at one of the guards.
“Being nice about er…. Everything,” Nic said.
“Kid, I’m just relieved we don’t have a paranormal creature attacking innocent people. Plus, Teal and his friends have been on my back about these guys for a while now. They’ve been waiting for them to do something that crosses that line and I guess they have. We wouldn’t have heard it without your mate being there but now we have their phone records and they’re gruesome. So, can you go home and wait for her? Maybe she’s already there.”
“Are you dying or something?” Nic asked, his brow furrowed in bemusement.
“No.” A guard shook his head. “Those texts disturbed him. They have a hit list. For a change he and Medwin aren’t on it, but some really ordinary people are. Like Jon has a list of people who wouldn’t date him that he wants to ---”
“Nope,” Clarence announced. “You’re not rattling that off. It’s in the past tense anyway. He’s dead and we’ll give the lady a medal for putting him out of all our misery if we ever find her. Any news on the Claudis witch?”
“It seems that she’s probably left the location. Unless she admired Annila’s work we have no reason why she even came here,” said another guard.
Nic looked to me and I opened my mouth ready to offer to stay and watch Clarence in case his mother was still out and about and covered in hyena blood. I stopped short when he reached out his hand and jerked his head for me to follow him. I let him lead me away from the crowd of guards and through some winding alleyways.
“We need to claim him. I want to know what’s going on inside that pretty head of his,”my cat pouted inside his inner sanctum. He’d always been a moody guy, but pouting wasn’t usually on his to-do list.“At least then we’d know where he was taking us.”
I had a gut feeling I already knew. Unlike Clarence, Nic shared a family link with his mother. It was shut off earlier but that didn’t mean it was now. Maybe he was actively not thinking about whatever he figured out so Clarence and the guards didn’t figure it out and get there before he did. His scent said he didn’t trust them at all with his mother’s safety and I couldn’t blame him. His mum and I had to take care of the bad guys, didn’t we? Clarence needed more proof before he acted. Being leader probably sucked in that way.
“I bet he doesn’t hesitate when it’s his family,”my cat chirped.
I bet he didn’t.
Nic came to a stop in an alleyway that smelled like it might have recently been a home to a colony of feral cats. Not big cats but those little domestic cats that were all sassy and were proper assholes to the humanoids they tricked into treating them like gods. Only feral cats didn’t go that path. I figured if I were tiny, adorable, and unable to shift I might try to hustle those of us with thumbs too.
“What are you smiling about? Do you even know where I’m taking you? If you figured this out, I’m going to have to ask how long you spied on me, Beal.”
“No, I was thinking about the cats that were here a while ago,” I shrugged.
“Oh, Colony A15. Yeah, they were fixed and most of them adopted. Those who weren’t were relocated to a better place for cats. No, they didn’t just off them and tell the public that either. You can go and visit these places,” Nic said. “Mum sponsored Colony Z14 a few years back while she was sick. She wanted to make as much of a difference to the world as she could.”
“We’ll sponsor one too then, if you like.”
“One thing at a time. Don’t get spooked.”
“I’m not afraid of the tiny, clawed devils,” I laughed.
Nic stomped his foot on the ground hard – three times, then two times, then six, and then finally he jumped up and down in place nine times before repeating the whole thing two more times. I wasn’t sure what he meant to accomplish but as soon as he finished the whole ritual for the third time some woman nearby shouted for everyone to hold their damn horses.
“Wh—” I started but Nic shook his head and pulled me back as the street below us opened up with a door.
“Oh! You!” A blonde lady who smelled like she was part bear and part raccoon rolled her eyes. “Come on. She’s been waiting for you. She won’t let go of the heads and stuff. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.” She glanced at me when she finished speaking to Nic. “You the ghost cat who responded to Nila’s Nic?”
“This is my mate. He’s with me,” Nic said before I had the chance to answer her.
“Well, I didn’t ask to suck his dick,” she rolled her eyes. “Bring him in. Usually, I’d make you wait until after your claiming vows to bring anyone in, but we’ll make an exception for your mum. We did get the truth out of her,” she said to Nic and then turned her attention back to me. “The next time you yank off a perfectly good beaver tail bring it to me. Don’t waste it on Mister Squeamish here, yeah?”
She turned away before I could answer her and motioned for us to follow her. The steps that led down were made of the same stuff the alley was paved with. Nic stepped down toward the dark abyss and because he was my mate I followed him down. The air wafting up smelled like magic and cinnamon. The door slammed shut behind us as soon as it could do so without knocking us on the heads.
