NEVER HAD ANYTHING SEEMED SO impossible as Juliette’s return to the Lamberts’ house. After all, she had been gone almost a month. No one in the neighborhood had seen her during all that time. Bowls of milk and food left out had never been touched. Snow had fallen. Winds had howled. Temperatures had plunged to icy depths. There was no way an old run-over cat could have lived through it.
“I thought it was Miss Bone’s hat,” Georgina kept gasping. “I can’t believe it’s Juliette. Juliette was hit by a car. She was dead.”
“Well, she’s risen back up,” Poco said proudly, “just the way I knew she would. I never lost my belief.” She lifted her chin in Georgina’s direction.
“Glad to meet you at last, Juliette,” Walter said. He went across the room to shake her paw. “I only saw you from a distance the first time. You were in midair, not looking too good.”
Juliette smiled up at him and began to wash her whiskers.
“She certainly looks fine now,” Georgina said, leaning forward to inspect her more closely. “Wait a minute! This does not look like a cat that’s been huddling in the cold. This looks like a cat that’s been lying around on silk pillows in an expensive hotel.”
“And eating tons of tuna fish,” Walter added, stroking her well-padded back.
“And having her coat washed and her nails clipped. Look!” said Georgina, holding up a well-groomed paw.
“And her ears and tail fluffed.”
“Juliette, where have you been all this time?” Georgina asked, bending down to look into the cat’s deep blue eyes. “What have you been doing?”
Poco had kept silent during all this questioning. Finally she spoke up.
“Juliette hasn’t been at a hotel. She became an invisible and went to another world.”
“Became a what?” Georgina’s eyes narrowed.
“Don’t act so surprised, George. You said yourself that’s probably where she was.”
“I did not! I never said that. I was only making a joke to your mother.”
“Well, you were right.” Poco nodded wisely. “Juliette and I had a long talk today. She told me everything.”
“Good grief!” shouted Georgina. “I can’t stand this!”
“Well, you will have to stand it because it’s true,” Poco said in her most maddening voice. “A leader of the invisibles invited Juliette to come. She happened to be passing by and saw Juliette in trouble with the car. So she just swooped down and carried her off. Wasn’t that nice?
Georgina’s eyes were fiery. “I hope you told Juliette about all the trouble we got into trying to find her. How Walter’s Ouija tricked us, and Miss Bone became our deadly enemy, how she started making you sick and boiling eyes and eating little animals!”
Poco lowered her head as Georgina said these things. An ashamed look came over her face.
“I’m so sorry. I see now how wrong I was.”
“You do?” asked Walter, in surprise. “But how? What happened?”
“Juliette told me everything,” Poco replied, while Georgina gritted her teeth. “We are both going to see Miss Bone right away. I will apologize. Do you know what a dreadful thing we did?”
Georgina was gazing furiously at the ceiling.
“I see it all now—thanks to Juliette, of course,” Poco went on. “We accused Miss Bone of being a witch, but we were really the witches. We changed her into something she never was. It doesn’t matter that we thought we were right. Juliette said there’s no room in the world for excuses like that. Witches like us are dangerous. Don’t forget how they burned those poor people in Salem.”
This was such a clear picture of exactly what they had done to Miss Bone that Georgina was astounded. Poco had made an impossible leap. “Who told you all this?” she shouted at her. “I know it wasn’t Juliette.”
“It most certainly was.”
“Well, I don’t believe it.”
“Well, you will,” Poco announced, “when I show you this last incredible thing.”
“What?” cried Walter and Georgina together.
With practiced hands, Poco lifted Juliette up in the air and gathered her together in a furry lump on her lap. Then she smoothed back the rather too-thick hair around the cat’s neck to reveal a narrow sparkling band. Everyone leaned forward to look. It seemed to be woven out of a sort of thin silver rope. Threaded here and there on the strands were tiny glass beads that glittered in the light whenever Juliette tossed her head.
“This was on her when she came back,” Poco said, sounding rather in awe herself. “My mother can’t imagine where it came from. And there’s something else. A charm.”
It swung suddenly into view, a small square metal box that hung by a link from the silver collar. Georgina’s eyes had turned bright and enchanted.
“Have you looked inside?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what’s in it?”
Poco smiled. “Catnip,” she said. “It’s a precious gift, all right. Who else but an invisible would think of such a thing?”
She unlatched the tiny box with careful fingers and allowed them to bend near. A strong minty smell rose from a mixture inside that looked like dried leaves. Walter drew back and sneezed.
“So that’s what catnip smells like. Tickly,” Georgina said. “But why did the invisibles put it on Juliette?”
“To protect her, of course,” Poco replied. She latched the box shut and hugged the old cat closer. “They put a spell on this catnip to keep Juliette safe. From now on she can only live the longest, happiest life.”
From the moment of Juliette’s return, the group began to settle down. No longer were they a cart rolling wildly along on two wheels. A new balance sprang up among them, and whether this had to do with Juliette being home, or the little box of catnip, or a sense they all had that some unknown power, partly good and partly dangerous, had been working silently behind the scenes, no one could say.
To begin with, Georgina no longer felt angry at Poco.
“I don’t even care that she’s talking to squirrels and birds again,” she told Walter. “I’m not asking any questions about where she gets her ideas. I’m just glad to have the old Poco back. There are some people you shouldn’t try to change.”
On her side, Poco recovered from Georgina’s insulting remarks and even went so far as to thank her for dragging them all to Miss Bone.
“If you hadn’t been so completely rude and horrible, we never would have gone,” Poco said. “And then we never would have found out how wrong we were.”
“You mean how wrong you were,” Georgina said, pressing her advantage.
“No, that’s not what I mean.”
“Well, that’s what you should mean!”
(They could still disagree about small matters, unfortunately.)
Meanwhile, Poco called Angela and told her the whole story, and Angela called Georgina to hear what really happened, and they all felt quite close together again.
“When are you coming back?” Georgina asked Angela. “There’s a lot to investigate around here. The unknown keeps popping up all over the place and we are beginning to forget what you look like.”
At this, Angela started to sniff and blow her nose. By the time she hung up, she had developed a terrible cold.
“Maybe it’s not so great down in Mexico as she’s been saying,” Georgina told Poco.
Walter Kew was the only one in the group who seemed uneasy about things. Daily he followed Poco and Georgina about, as if he were afraid they might disappear before his eyes. But since they had grown quite fond of him, it was no bother at all.
“Do you think I’m getting crazier?” he asked Georgina one afternoon when all three of them were trudging home from school. The winter vacation was over by that time. Mid-January was upon them—ice, snow, and all.
“Crazier than what?” Georgina said.
“Well, than I was before.”
“Were you crazy before?”
“A little,” Walter said. “You would have been, too, with all those spirits circling around waiting to pounce on you. Ever since Juliette came back, it’s been better, though. I think they may finally be moving on to someone else.”
“I hope it’s not me,” Georgina said. “Or Poco.” They both looked back at her. She had stopped to examine some bird footprints in the snow.
“I’ve given up using the Ouija board, too,” Walter said. “After poor Miss Bone, I couldn’t trust it again. There’s got to be a better way of figuring out the world.”
“So why are you getting crazier?” Georgina asked. “You sound perfectly fine to me.”
“It’s my parents.” Walter shook his head dismally. “I know I should leave the past to the past, but I can’t help it. I think about them. I wish I could talk to them and find out what happened. I keep wondering if they are somewhere, looking down at me. They wouldn’t completely disappear, would they? Maybe they miss me. Oh, it’s crazy, I know.”
“Didn’t Miss Bone know something about you?
“She wouldn’t tell.”
“Don’t give up that easily.” Georgina snorted. “This sounds like something that needs to be investigated.”
“It does?” Walter said, brightening. “Well, yes, I guess it does. For some strange reason, I never thought of it that way.”
Poco caught up with them then and made a great fuss over a robin she’d just been talking to who was trying a new experiment of not flying south.
“He wants to know the effect of winter on the robin body—besides cold feet, of course. That goes without saying.”
“Of course,” sighed Georgina.
“So far, the worst thing has been having no one to talk to,” Poco went on. “He says he’s been quite lonely since all his friends left.”
“That’s sad,” Walter said. “Who would guess that even birds can get lonely.”
Poco nodded. “So he was wondering if we’d mind if he tagged along with us for a while. He likes groups. It’s what he’s used to.”
“Tag along!” exclaimed Georgina. “Where is this bird?”
“Up there.”
They all looked up into a tree overhead. Sitting on an icy branch was a robin who cocked his head at them and then looked away.
“Good grief!” Georgina exploded. “I can’t believe it!”
“You never believe anything,” Poco said. “That is the trouble with you.”
“Well, you believe in everything, whether it’s true or not.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do!”
This appeared to be the sort of argument that might go on for several hours, so Walter stepped away. He pulled his cap down hard over his eyes and struck out by himself for another part of town. It seemed as good a time as any to begin a new investigation.