Dog-Eared Delinquent

Chapter Three

I couldn’t escape the office fast enough that day. Physical distance, however, did little to calm my already frayed nerves. The whole drive home I kept looking over my shoulder, half expecting to see Peter following me in some kind of old junker. I knew I didn’t have any real hard and fast proof, but still, something within me screamed that he was out to get me, that we were quickly headed somewhere bad.

Very, very bad.

Sure, he could have been some harmless and ordinary, run-of-the-mill weirdo whose goal was simply to score a few laughs at my expense. He totally could have been. And yet…

Ever since I’d gotten zapped by that old coffee maker and woken up with the ability to speak to Octo-Cat, my intuition had also been dialed up to at least a nine. I’d been wrong about some things, of course, but that was mostly when I let my personal feelings cloud my judgment. Whenever I stopped and listened to that still small voice, it led me straight to the answer I needed.

And right about now, that tiny voice was practically hoarse from shouting beware over and over again the past several hours.

As much as I hated it, this wasn’t just about Peter moving in on my job and messing things up at the office. This was about keeping those I loved safe—and that now included the tabby cat who’d entered my life and turned it upside down again and again. How could someone I’d only just met already know the one very private thing I hesitated to share with anybody?

How could Peter have possibly figured me out when so few people knew what I could do and most of them were related to me?

I mean, Charles knew, but despite my disappointment in his response today, I trusted him not to tell a soul. Did that mean someone else at work had figured things out? Sometimes I slipped up and talked to my cat around others, but most people wouldn’t just jump to the conclusion that we could communicate with each other. The normal thing would be to assume I’d gone wicked crazy. That didn’t bother me since most days I was halfway there already.

I turned onto the secluded driveway that led to my huge manor house in the woods. The summer sun hung high in the sky, and my gardens were in full, beautiful bloom. In a lot of ways my life was pretty perfect—giant estate, wonderful family, cool cat, and a monthly stipend from his trust fund. So, then, why couldn’t I just let this thing with Peter go?

“You look like you’ve had a rough day,” Nan said, greeting me at the door when I entered our shared home just in time for a freshly prepared lunch. She and Octo-Cat both waited for me right in the foyer whenever I came home from work. Nan usually had a kind word and a hug. Sometimes, a joke.

Octo-Cat generally had a complaint. Today, he stretched out his toes, showing off his impressive claws, and moaned, “The sun is not bright enough today. It’s hard to keep my schedule when my warm spot disappears halfway through the morning.”

I shrugged off his concern, especially considering the sky had felt just as bright as ever during my return commute. “Sorry, nothing I can do about that.”

I’d long debated getting him a heat lamp, precisely because of how often I heard this particular complaint, but that kind of felt like rewarding bad behavior. Ah, who was I kidding? It was just a matter of time before I’d ultimately cave. Heck, maybe I’d get him one for Christmas. Today, however, I had other things to worry about.

I took a long, appreciative sniff as Nan and I headed for the kitchen. Ever since we’d moved in together a couple of months ago, she’d taken it upon herself to cook up three square meals per day, finding a passion for the culinary arts a bit late in life but not lacking an ounce of enthusiasm nor, thankfully, talent.

“French onion soup,” Nan revealed with sparkling eyes, which seemed to grow as she made this revelation. “Have a seat and I’ll bring it right out.”

I wanted to help, to give her a bit of a break, but she always pushed me right out of the kitchen and told me to hold my horses before they galloped away without me.

“What’s got you so down in the dumps?” she asked, setting a steaming hot bowl before me, then returning to the kitchen to grab a second for herself. My nan always knew when something wasn’t right. She had the gift of intuition, too, but I suspected that came more from being a mother than from a near-fatal run-in with a coffee maker or some other such mildly supernatural experience.

“They hired a new intern,” I explained, pushing my spoon through the thick layer of perfectly melted cheese and allowing it to fill up with broth, then shoving it appreciatively into my mouth. Mmm. So good.

Nan smiled when she saw how much I enjoyed what she’d prepared. Rather than taking a bite herself, however, she folded her hands before her and said, “Well, I’m guessing we don’t much care for this new person.” That was another thing about my dear, sweet nan—she always took my side. She didn’t even need to hear a single detail before she was ready to jump into the fray and fight for my honor. Heck, just a couple months ago, she’d hit a police officer multiple times for attempting to cuff me.

“We most definitely do not,” I answered, preparing a second mouthful of gooey goodness, complete with onion and cheese this time. “Not only is he creepy, but I also think he knows about me. You know, about what I can do.”

Nan shook her head and sucked air in through her teeth. “Well, that’s not good. Not good at all.” Finally, she dug into her soup, choosing to eat one of the broth-saturated croutons first.

“What are we going to do?” I asked after giving her a play-by-play of the awful day I’d had.

“That Charles deserves a good scolding,” Nan said with a grimace. “After all we’ve been through together, he won’t even stand up for what’s right.”

I shrugged and let my spoon clatter to the bottom of my bowl. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just being oversensitive about the entire situation.”

“Hey, I didn’t raise you to talk like that,” Nan shouted so loud and so abruptly, it made me jump with surprise. “We don’t discount or apologize for our feelings. We’re not robots. Right?”

“Right,” I agreed with a sigh. “Then what should I do about Peter Peters and all the weirdness?”

Octo-Cat hopped up onto the table and strode down the center line. As he did, loose hair floated off his body and a piece or two wound up in my soup. Guess that meant I was done.

“If I may,” he said grandly, halting right in front of me and gesturing to himself with a paw. “I believe I have the solution to this problem.”

“He says he has an idea,” I translated for Nan, who smiled and waited for more. She loved watching the two of us talk, even though she needed a bit of help understanding Octo-Cat’s side of the conversation.

“Not an idea,” he corrected with a huff. “The idea.”

“Well, what is it?” I asked impatiently. Sometimes his dramatics could be adorable, but this wasn’t one of those times. I was far too stressed to sit and watch a show. I needed real-world solutions here delivered in a real-time fashion.

“You need to pull a stray cat on this guy,” my tabby said plainly.

This, of course, meant nothing to me. “Come again now. What?”

“A stray cat. Not that I’ve ever been stray.” He shuddered and flicked his tail. “But I’ve seen enough of them to know their modus operandi. They’re free agents—strays—and most want to stay that way. But a cat can get real sick of eating trash when Fancy Feast is an option, you know? So, sometimes they have to make their eyes big, raise their tails, and do the pretty meow when a human is nearby. It hurts inside to fake it with a human—that much, I do know from experience—but it’s just a couple moments of cringiness to get a full belly of food. Get it?”

I thought about this for a moment, ignoring the fact that he’d probably just insulted me. His cat-based analogies often took me a bit of finagling to truly understand, but they often did offer good and surprisingly relevant advice. I recapped Octo-Cat’s speech for Nan, who seemed to understand instantly without even awaiting the full translation.

She nodded her approval to Octo-Cat, then turned back to me with a newfound fierceness burning in her eyes. “Operation: My Enemy is My Friend’s an official go,” she said in a low, husky voice that I assumed belonged to her tough guy persona.

Still, no matter how much I wanted to find out what Peter knew and, moreover, what he wanted, I wasn’t sure I could find a way to fake nice with someone I already despised so much.

Despite Nan’s Broadway past, I hadn’t inherited even one iota of her acting talent. So then, how was I going to trick Peter into revealing his motives here?