Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria

Chapter 39: What magic book?

By now all the Dead Cats had heard about the fight and Polo’s kidnapping. They were in their own headquarters in the library storage room and Tweezer was recounting the details, as he knew them, for the umpteenth time.

“What’s Sting want a book for?” asked one of the cats.

“There’s a jillion books here. Why doesn’t he just take one?” asked another.

Marco sat sullenly on top of a card catalogue. Cats could listen to the same story over and over again and never tire of it, but he was growing impatient. This was getting them no closer to rescuing Polo or protecting the Book. He washed his face and listened. The Dead Cats’ conversation revealed one important point, and that was how little they really knew about anything.

He had his own set of questions. How could Cicero believe he'd betrayed him? How did Sting know about the Book? And how much did Bait really know?

There was movement outside and a head appeared in the window. The raccoon looked nervously around the room. “Which one of you’s Marco?” he demanded.

Marco stood up in surprise.

“This message is for you.” The raccoon cleared his throat and spoke like he was repeating the words from memory. “Deliver the magic book to me, I mean Sting, in one hour.” His head disappeared and popped back up. “Bring it to him at his headquarters.”

He disappeared again. Tweezer was rushing over to look out the window when the raccoon popped up for the third time. “If you don’t show, your little buddy’s dead meat.”

Now all of the cats ran over to the window, crowding each other for a view of the raccoon as he clumsily clawed his way down the tree.

They all began talking at once, but everyone was pretty much saying the same thing.

“Magic book? What magic book?”

Marco slipped out unnoticed.