Striker had thought of everything as usual. The red-and-white-checkered cloth spread out on the grass was loaded with food, including a bucket of fried chicken, a bowl of potato salad, and a plate of peanut butter cookies. A bottle of wine wrapped in a red cloth was nestled in the old-fashioned wicker basket.
I plopped down next to him, my leg aching only slightly. The ache was a reminder of the accident that had sent me from my crime journalist job in Massachusetts up to the remote area of Mystic Notch, deep in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Striker topped off my wine glass and glanced around as he stashed the bottle back in the basket. “Hopefully your sister is busy at the station and won’t come over and arrest us for public drinking.”
My sister, Gus, was the town sheriff, and even though we got along great, I wouldn’t put it past her to arrest us. She did everything by the book, at least when she wasn’t under some sort of enchantment spell. She wasn’t one prone to showing favoritism to family.
I lowered my glass to avoid prying eyes. Striker was the sheriff of the next county, and it wouldn’t be good for him to get arrested.
“I hope Pandora is okay alone in the shop. I had to go back to get my phone, and she’d knocked a book off the counter.” I bit into a chicken leg. Crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. Delicious.
“Never a dull moment with her,” Striker said around a mouthful of potato salad.
“I found an old key too. She was practically sitting on it. I know it’s silly, but I felt like she didn’t want me to see it.”
“Silly? I don’t know. I think Pandora is more intelligent than most cats. No idea why she wouldn’t want you to see a key, though.”
“I know, right?” I had to admit, the cat did seem overly intelligent, but it was preposterous to think she’d be hiding a key from me. Yet there had been incidents in the past where I felt she was trying to tell me something.
“Then again, a lot of things are strange here in Mystic Notch.” Striker gave me a pointed look.
I thought about the ghosts we could both see. Yeah, that’s right. Striker and I could see ghosts. It had been happening to me since the aforementioned accident. I’d hid it from everyone except my best friend, Pepper St. Onge, who ran The Tea Shoppe in town. You can’t imagine what a relief it was to discover that Striker could also see ghosts. Sometimes not the same ghosts, but still, it felt good to know I wasn’t the only one and that I didn’t have to keep secrets from him. Well, not that secret at least.
“True. At least Gus is back to normal.”
Striker shook his head. “I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or bad thing.”
I laughed. Gus was typically gung ho about law enforcement, but a recent hexing had turned her attitude from militant to lackadaisical. Thankfully, the hex had been reversed and things were back to normal. “And there are no deaths, so we won’t have to deal with any ghosts popping up and demanding we investigate.”
Ghosts could be pests, especially when they wanted their deaths avenged. It was doubly hard to accomplish that when we were trying to work around Gus, who had no idea ghosts existed.
“Maybe now we’ll be able to spend more time focusing on us.” Striker took my hand, his gray eyes looking into mine. My heart did a flip as I reached for another piece of fried chicken with my free hand.
It would be nice to have a break from ghosts and other odd things that seemed to happen frequently in Mystic Notch. I was curious and a little afraid to find out what “focusing on us” would entail. Even if I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that Pandora’s odd behavior meant that this was just the calm before the storm.
* * *
Pandora sat in her cat bed and eyed the box on the top of the bookcase. She needed to get that key! Not that she hadn’t tried. She’d leapt at the shelf, tried to climb up, and even attempted a risky jump from the filing cabinet. The box hadn’t budged. Unfortunately, several other items on the bookcase had, and they now lay on the floor. Willa would not be pleased.
She sighed and turned three times in her fluffy cat bed that sat in a patch of sun on the sill of the large store window. Settling down, she wrapped her tail around her face and closed her eyes.
But just as she drifted into sleep, she felt an evil presence. Bolting up, she saw Felicity Bates and her villainous cat, Fluff, walking down the street.
Ugh. Fluff was the most objectionable of cats. He’d tried to harm the Mystic Notch cats many times and had almost succeeded in killing Pandora and Hope, the chimera cat that was magically powerful. If there was a side of good and a side of evil in Mystic Notch, Fluff was definitely on the side of evil, and so was his human, Felicity.
Where Fluff had tried to harm Pandora, Felicity had tried to harm Willa. Felicity fancied herself to be some sort of witch. With her long red hair and flowing dresses, she looked the part. Pandora didn’t think she was very good at it, though, especially right now. She was walking a bit slowly, hunched over as she shuffled along. Her outfit was a little bland, with a dull-brown skirt and tan shirt. She did have a pair of nice Jimmy Choo sandals on. Maybe they hurt her feet and that was why she was shuffling. They didn’t really go with the dress, but who was Pandora to judge.
Fluff trotted along a few steps in front of his mistress, his long white fur ruffling in the breeze. He swished his fluffy tail in the hair like a duster.
He turned and looked in Pandora’s direction. She steeled herself for a telepathic battle of wills, but his gaze skipped right past her. Was he looking at the top shelf? Did he know about the key?
Pandora’s worries increased. If Fluff was after the key, she really needed to get her act together and make sure she could deliver it to safe hands before Felicity or Fluff got ahold of it.
But how? She had to tell the Mystic cats about it, of course. They would just reinforce that she needed to get the key. And she’d probably have to listen to a bunch of criticism about how lacking she was in the ability to communicate with her human. Communicating with Willa wasn’t as easy as it had been with Anna, and the Mystic cats had been disappointed in Pandora’s lack of progress in that area. The cats had a point though—if she were able to communicate, she could simply get Willa to give the key to Elspeth. But she’d tried so hard, and Willa seemed immune to cat telepathy. She’d had better luck getting through to Striker, but even then, she was only able to suggest simple things. There was no way she’d be able to communicate the importance of the key.
But luck might be on her side. The key had been well hidden in the book, and it was possible no one knew about it. If those with bad intent suspected that one of the relics had surfaced, they might think it was the book. Hadn’t Willa said she had a waiting list for it? No doubt Felicity was on that list.
Hopefully the interested party would come for the book and not figure out the magical key hidden inside was no longer there. That might buy her some time.
Pandora cast another glance down the street. Good, Fluff and Felicity had walked on past and were a block down. She could rest now. She curled up in her cat bed, satisfied that the key was safe in its box for now. She’d have to pay attention though—if anyone came into the shop asking for it, she would have to act quickly.