Dog-Eared Delinquent

Chapter Sixteen

Octo-Cat took several steps back until he bumped into the glass. “No,” he whispered over and over again. “No, it’s not possible.”

The crowd roared with laughter but, despite their glee, I could tell my cat was hurting. Badly.

“Don’t listen to them,” I pleaded, pushing myself to my feet so I could go to him.

He flinched at my touch, then bounded out of reach. “Don’t,” Octo-Cat said sadly, refusing to look at me.

“Always with the dramatics,” Peter said, stalking in on all fours to join us inside the fishbowl. He waved one arm in a circle and the glass turned into a shiny opaque surface, cutting off both the sights and sounds from outside.

“We’re alone now,” Peter confirmed, sitting down on his haunches. His great tongue lolled from the side of his open maw in clear anticipation.

“It would be easier for me to talk to you if you were human,” I said, clenching my eyes shut tight as I turned away. A part of me still didn’t want to believe that any of this was happening.

“Have it your way,” Peter said coldly.

When I opened my eyes again, both he and Moss had returned to their human forms while Octo-Cat remained turned away and sulking in his corner.

“Now are you going to cooperate or what?” Moss asked, his green eyes taking in my every move.

“Or would you rather do this the hard way?” Peter asked. Apparently, we’d returned to their previous good cop, bad cop routine. But I wouldn’t be fooled this time. Moss had already admitted that neither of them was good, and thus it stood to reason that neither of them would help us out of the kindness of their hearts. They wanted something, and I just hoped it wouldn’t be too high a price to pay.

I bit down hard on my lip as I watched them watch me. And then I couldn’t take the studied silence any longer. A million questions weighed on the tip of my tongue, and I let the first few spill out into the open air. “What do you want from me? And if you’re not the good guys, then who are you? Are you going to let us go?”

Peter puckered his lips unattractively and made a condescending tutting noise. “So many questions when you won’t even answer our one simple request.”

“Cooperate,” Octo-Cat murmured from across the room. He had his forehead pressed to the wall as if that was the only way he could remain upright. I’d never seen him like this. Not even close. At this point, I knew I needed to do or say whatever it took to get us out of here, to get him help.

“Fine,” I answered, keeping my gaze on that poor forlorn tabby to remind myself why I was suddenly so willing to assist my enemy. “What do you need from me?”

“Money,” Peter said with a smirk. “Lots of it.”

I faltered at this. After all this hocus pocus nonsense, were they really only after my money? “I-I don’t have much at present, but if you’ll allow me to make monthly payments, I can—”

“Not from you,” Moss amended. “But rather by way of you.”

That’s when all the pieces began clicking into place. Finally, I could see the picture for what it was. “The robberies downtown,” I murmured, unsurprised that this gang would stoop so low but somewhat disappointed in myself for not figuring it out sooner.

Peter licked his chops even though he was still in human form. “The first several were easy, but the jewelry store has a magic-sensing alarm.”

“That’s why you couldn’t get in the other night,” I said. And that’s why we’d seen those dogs running back and forth through town during our stakeout. All of it, everything fit together so neatly, and Moss had just delivered the tidying bow.

“Hey, try not to judge us too harshly,” the cat shifter said with wide eyes. “It was invisible, so we didn’t know it was there until it was too late.”

Oh, I was judging them all right, just not for this reason. “How did you get into the other stores?” I asked, emboldened by the thrill of this new information.

“Glamor,” Moss said simply as if this one word answered every question. I thought I recalled reading about glamor in one of the fairy books I’d enjoyed as a kid, but that was back when I hadn’t known that magic could be real, that it could also be dangerous.

It explained so much now that I thought about it, though. How the dingy basement had transformed into our current surroundings, how Peter had tampered with my mind on more than one occasion. Was that how they changed into their animal forms as well?

I wanted to know more, but more than that, I just wanted to be free.

“I don’t see how I can help,” I said, raising my fingers to my mouth and chomping at the nails to offer myself some sort of small comfort.

“Well, that part’s easy,” Moss said, stretching from side to side. “We have the code for the human alarm, and you’re not magic so you won’t trigger the magical one.”

“Won’t they catch me on the security camera, though?” I wondered aloud.

Moss shook his head. “Not if you send in the cat.”

“I don’t want to steal,” I argued. Couldn’t they see that I was a good person? That, despite the fact that I may have once absorbed some magical resonance, I was nothing like either of them?

That was when Peter snapped at me, lunging closer. “Do you want to live?”

If Moss hadn’t caught his arm and pulled him back, I have no doubt he’d have attacked me.

“Just do it, Angela,” Octo-Cat mumbled into the wall. “It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself.”

Oh. My heart broke for him all over again. He was right. I needed to stop dawdling. I could still save us both—and I would.

“When?” I asked, licking my lips.

A giant smile slithered across Moss’s freckled face. “Tonight.”

“And then you’ll let us go?” I asked, watching him closely for any sign that he might be lying.

“Yeah, you’re really of no use to us beyond this one thing,” Moss said with a quick, reassuring nod.

“But if we run into another magical alarm, we just may call on you again,” Peter added afterward.

I crossed my arms over my chest and pouted. “I don’t want to be at your beck and call.”

“Do you want everyone to know your crazy little secret?” Peter asked, cracking his knuckles so that I would look at his strong fists.

I bit my lip to keep from speaking. I had wanted to keep my ability a secret, but now it felt like the lesser of two evils. If the only thing Peter had over me was threatening to tell, then maybe I should just tell everyone myself.

“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth as I motioned toward Octo-Cat. “I’ll do it, but first he and I need some time alone.”

“So you can plan your escape? No way.” Peter transformed back into the dog and bared his teeth at me.

Moss put his hand on top of the pit bull’s head. “You go. I’ll stay and supervise.”

Peter continued to growl, and Moss smacked him upside the head. “They may not be magic, but they’re still cat people. It’s best I handle this. Now get.”

Peter whimpered as he shuffled away with his tail tucked between his legs. I would have laughed at the sight if I hadn’t still been so scared.

“I don’t get it,” I said to Moss, once the opaque glass closed again. “If you hate each other so much, then why do you work together?”

He sighed as if he didn’t like it much more than I did. “It’s part of the truce that the council enacted many years ago.”

“Who is this council you keep talking about?”

“The court that governs the magic world,” he answered, unbothered by all my questions now that I’d agreed to help carry out their robbery and Peter had left us on our own.

“The good guys?” I asked hopefully.

Moss nodded. “Yes, the good guys. Bad guys, too, though. In our world, they work together.”

I shook my head, unable to understand. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not to you, but if the magical world is to survive, we need perfect balance in all we do. The good with the bad. The light with the dark. The fact with the fiction.”

“The cat with the dog?” I asked, cracking a smile.

“Indeed,” Moss confirmed solemnly.

I thought this over, and it did seem to make sense, even though Moss and Peter’s world obviously worked differently from the one I knew. “Could you maybe give us a few moments to talk this out?”

We both watched Octo-Cat who still had his forehead pressed against the cold wood of the wall.

“He needs me,” I explained, keeping my eyes trained on my depressed feline companion the entire time. “And he also needs a pep talk if you want him to have any part of this.”

Moss situated himself in the other corner of the room, then looked to the side and mumbled over his shoulder, “Go ahead.”

I walked over to Octo-Cat and sat down beside him. “Rough day, huh?”

He let out one sarcastic laugh, then quickly fell silent again.

“They don’t know you, Octavius. Not like I do.” I begged him to understand, to not let them break him. He’d been through so much before—too much for this to be the thing that finally brought him down.

“They said I’m ordinary,” he choked out.

“They’re wrong,” I said firmly, stroking my hand across his fur.

“They can do such amazing things, things I never even dreamt of before,” he explained, still unwilling to meet my eyes.

“But you can do pretty amazing things yourself. And without any magic to push you over the top.”

Finally, he turned toward me so that his cheek rested against the wall. “Are you saying their magic is a cheat?”

“Yes,” I said with a huge smile. I loved when he helped to fill in the blanks for me. I could convince Octo-Cat of anything just so long as I appealed to his special brand of cat logic. I bobbed my head in continued agreement. “Definitely.”

He sniffed and cautioned a glance toward Moss. “If they’re cheating, then they have to be disqualified.”

“You’re right,” I said. I wasn’t sure what game we were talking about but figured it must be the competition for best cat in the room or something. “They should totally be disqualified.”

At last, a small smile played across his lips. “And if they’re disqualified, then I’m the winner by default.”

“The best cat in the entire world!” I said without missing a beat.

He stood and pushed himself away from the wall. “Okay, Angela. I’m on board.”

We locked eyes and smiled at each other—partners, friends, and now co-criminals, it seemed. “Let’s do this,” we said in unison.