“Dusty flew up the stairs and out of a second-floor window,” Robin told Andy. “Then he flew up to the top floor where you were. It was all his own idea.”

Before she went to bed Robin made Andy give her the magic feather. She locked it up in her desk with the other one.

In the morning she went down to the laundry room and filled her pockets with birdseed. She put the seed in the pan on her closet shelf. Pepper stayed on the nest. Salt kept flying to her with his beak full of seed.

Andy came into the room and looked at the birds. He put Robin’s desk chair in the closet and climbed up on it. Salt made a flying dive at Andy’s head.

Robin shook the chair. “Get down, Andy.” She pulled him off the chair and out of the closet. Then she put the chair back in front of her desk and closed the closet door.

Mr. Gates made French toast for breakfast. Mrs. Gates was reading the Sunday paper at the kitchen table. Robin was just finishing her second piece of toast when she heard a yowl from the back yard.

Mr. Gates looked out of the kitchen window. “It’s a cat fight!”

Andy opened the back door. A black cat was chasing a white one across the fence. The white cat took a flying leap off the fence. It bounded across the yard and through the open door into the kitchen.

“Pearl!” Robin said.

The little cat ran to her and rubbed against her ankle. Robin picked her up. She could feel the cat’s heart thumping under the fluffy fur.

Mrs. Gates reached over to pet the cat. Pearl looked up at her and purred.

“Oh, I wish we could keep you,” Mrs. Gates told the cat. “But you belong to Zelda. Robin, you’d better take her back to the store right after breakfast.”

“It’s Sunday,” Robin reminded her mother. “The store is closed.”

“Maybe Zelda is there anyway,” Mrs. Gates said. “You’d better go and see. If we feed Pearl, she’ll keep coming back here.”

How could Robin explain to her mother that Zelda was a witch? Robin was almost sure that the black cat that was chasing Pearl was Zelda. Zelda may even have been one of the witches in the old house last night. She had turned into a cat and couldn’t turn back.

Robin had to go alone to return the cat. Mr. Gates insisted that Andy stay home and help him put up a shelf over his workbench.

Some of the Church Avenue stores were open on Sunday. People were going in and out of the candy store on the corner. And the man in the dairy store was selling milk and eggs. But Zelda’s at Home was closed.

Robin pressed her nose against the glass door and looked into the shop. Someone was sitting in the back reading a book. It was Zelda!