He falls silent. The only sound is the steadyschwub-schwub-schwubof my roller and the voice of naughty Autumn in my head, demanding that I ask him more questions about his tail.
“Did you do a lot of painting in your old life?” I ask, trying to getRafe to talk again. I like the way his voice fills in all the spaces where my fear lives. “You’re good at this.”
“Not really. I painted a wall in my apartment once. I learned from a YouTube video, like you.” He frowns. “I miss that apartment. It had nice soft, scratchable carpet.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For helping.”
“I’m contractually obliged to help.”
“I offered a fair bargain, and you accepted it. But you’re actually doing a good job. If you were my husband, you’d be sloshing paint everywhere and saying that you didn’t know how to do it, and so I’d get frustrated and do it myself.”
“And let me guess,” Rafe says. “He’d go off and do things that he knew how to do, aka whatever he enjoyed?”
“I…I guess so.”
“Sounds like peak dog behaviour.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Cats,” Rafe explains, “are always brutally honest. If you ask a cat what it thinks, they’re going to tell you, whether you want the truth or not. Cats have no problem saying, ‘Icouldnot knock over the Christmas tree. That’s absolutely a choice I could make. But it’s covered in shiny toys, and I desire to see it destroyed, and so I shall.’ Dogs, on the other hand, want you tobelievethat they’re these poor dumb schmucks and if anything is wrong with their choices, it’syourfault for not teaching them properly. They know what you want them to do, but if they don’t feel like it, they will make it so that you feel guilty for asking them. They love to tie you in knots. That sounds like your husband. If you were my wife, you wouldn’t be lifting a finger to paint the walls. Not when you could be in my bed, writhing beneath me.”
Did he just…
Did he really say…
My cheeks burn. I’m blushing so hard that the heat creeps across my forehead and down my neck. It doesn’t help that I’ve spent allmorning trying not to look at his tail and imagining all the things it could do, and failing.
Rafe straightens. One of my bees tangles in the tufts of flame-coloured hair that stick up like cat ears. He cocks his head to the side as he watches the redness creep over my face. “You’re fun to tease, sweet little honey witch.”
I whirl away, furiously rubbing my roller in the paint tray. “Warrick wasn’t all bad. And he’s missing at the moment, and I’m very worried.”
It’s true. Iamworried.
“Sure. When my partner disappears, I flagrantly ignore their arguably dumb wishes and open a meadery,” Rafe says.
“That’s not fair. If I didn’t have this shop distracting me, I’d be sitting at home looking at all the places where he isn’t and calling the police ten times a day for an update. And you don’t have a partner. You’ve probably never had a partner because you don’t care about anyone but yourself!”
“Meow?”
I whirl around, splattering an arc of paint across the ceiling. “Don’t you turn into a cat just to win an argument—oh,” I notice the figures approaching the doorway. “Good morning, Inspector Hayes, Sergeant Wilson. Do you have news? Have you found Warrick?”
Rafe, now a loquacious Siamese, kicks his clothes off the counter and flattens himself, hissing at the cops like he’s their top suspect.
“You rented Old Widow Hardcastle’s shop?” Wilson eyes my painted walls with suspicion while several of my bees flit around her head.
Don’t let them take me,Rafe howls inside my skull.I’m too pretty to go inside.
“It was, er, a spur-of-the-moment decision.” I’m trying not to react to Rafe’s insanity, so I focus on Hayes’ slightly friendlier face. “I’ve always wanted to run a meadery – mead is a kind of honey wine, very popular in the medieval period – and with Warrick missing, I needed a distraction, or I would sit at home all day fretting and bothering you both when you’re trying to get on with things.”
I rush out the explanation, trying to calm my rocketing pulse. I sit down on my stepladder so they can’t see my legs trembling.
Tell Celeste I’ll pay her back for all the cheese I ate. And that window was anaccidentand no one can prove otherwise. You have to get me out of this, Autumn. It’s in your best interest to keep me around. Remember how good I am at painting? I’m good at many other things, too. I’ll die in prison. I’ll absolutelydie.
“Opening a shop isn’t a crime, Ms Abernathy.” Hayes holds up a brown file folder. “We’ve made some progress in the case. Are you free to talk?”
