"Exceptions require Form 112-A. Would you like to start there?"
Their voices faded up the mezzanine stairs. Hazel dropped to her knees beside the full-moon medallion and pulled the spectral analysis wand from Nate's kit without asking. He didn'tobject—just shifted to give her a better angle and held his resonance tuner against the sigil's outer edge.
"Regional office dispatched someone." Nate kept his voice low. "That means other communities have reported similar disturbances."
"Mrs. Shufflewick's channeling yesterday said three neighboring communities." Hazel watched the wand's tip pulse amber as it traced the burn patterns. "But if they're sending aliaisonrather than an actual investigator..."
"They don't understand what they're dealing with." He paused. "Or they do, and they sent someone expendable."
A crash echoed from the mezzanine, followed by Vic's muffled apology and the sound of filing cabinets opening in rapid succession.
"Either way," Hazel said, "we just lost our head start."
The cats arrivedbefore the dust from Vic's catastrophic encounter with Mrs. Shufflewick's filing system had settled.
Fat Bastard came first, a gray-and-white thundercloud of misery barreling through the book return slot with a grace that defied his considerable girth. He landed on the reading table nearest the periodicals section and sat with the rigid posture of someone who had decided the world owed him a formal apology. Boba Fett slipped in through a cracked window—white fur with gray splotches catching the afternoon light—and took a position on the circulation desk. Jango Fett, calico and double-chinned and radiating the specific energy of a creature who had recently been crying, squeezed through the gap beneath the loading dock door and dragged himself across the hardwood like a furry shipwreck survivor.
Hazel lowered the spectral wand. Nate looked up from his resonance tuner.
All three cats opened their mouths simultaneously.
"The cruel she-cats abandoned us's for traveling toms!"
Fat Bastard's declaration rattled the window panes. Boba Fett nodded with the wounded dignity of a deposed king, while Jango flopped onto his side and pressed one paw over his eyes.
"They's didn't even say goodbye," Jango whimpered. "Just packed up they's little catnip bags and followed those fancy long-haired types right out of town."
"We's gave them everything." Fat Bastard's tail lashed the table. "Protection. Companionship. I's even let that Siamese sit in my's favorite sunny spot."
Nate shot Hazel a look that asked, very clearly, whether this was happening.
It was happening.
"Perhaps we could—" Hazel started.
"You's don't understand heartbreak like this," Boba cut in, his dialect thick with grief. "We's had somethingreal."
A black shape detached itself from the shadows between the biography stacks. Raven landed on the reading table opposite Fat Bastard with the precision of a surgical instrument and the expression of someone who had been holding her tongue past the point of physical pain.
"While you're composing poetry, that three-legged cat has been trying to warn us about something." Raven's green eyes burned. "If you paid attention to anything besides her adorable hobble?—"
"Don't you's talk about Jinxie's hobble!" Fat Bastard's fur stood on end. "That hobble ismajestic."
"That hobble isirrelevant." Raven sat straighter. "Three nights running, Jinxie planted herself on Delilah's scrying mirror. Not sleeping on it—sittingon it. Orienting her bodytoward the same compass point each time. She knocked a protection amulet off the shelf and batted it specifically under the front door. She's been trying to tell you something, and you've been too busy weeping into your kibble to notice."
Silence. Even Jango uncovered his eyes.
Mrs. Shufflewick descended the mezzanine stairs, Vic presumably buried under an avalanche of paperwork behind her. Her uniform had softened into a tweed blazer with leather elbow patches, and she'd exchanged the officer's cap for wire-rimmed spectacles that perched on her nose like small scholarly birds.
"Classic displacement behavior masking deeper communication attempts." She adjusted the spectacles and studied the assembled cats with clinical interest. "The romantic distress is genuine, but it's amplifying signals that would otherwise go unnoticed. Heightened emotional states in familiars frequently correlate with attempts to process magical information their conscious minds haven't yet decoded."
Hazel's fingers tingled. The same tingle she felt when the Codex pulsed in its alcove downstairs. "Raven, which compass point?"
"Northeast. Every time."
Nate was already pulling a regional map from the reference shelf. He spread it across the table, and Fat Bastard—still sniffling—padded across its surface and planted one heavy paw on a spot thirty miles northeast of Assjacket.
The sigil burns on the library floor pulsed once, faintly, in the same amber as the spectral wand's readings.
