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This ain’t good.
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Gramma Jude was pulling up to the shelter’s curb just as Journi returned. The elder McCutcheon woman parked her lemon-yellow Volkswagen Beetle—a relic of the past that she kept alive with spells and good, old-fashioned elbow grease—and got out. Jude was a tiny woman, but nobody who stared into her sharp green eyes doubted that she was a force to be reckoned with. At seventy years old, she looked like a geriatric Annie Oakley with her gray hair braided down her back and her faded flannel tucked into men’s jeans, which were haphazardly shoved into two different boots. As she stepped onto the sidewalk, she turned her head and spit tobacco juice.
Journi paused and glanced at her gramma’s mismatched boots. “You find those in the lost-and-found bin?”
Gramma Jude looked down as if just noticing the fashion faux pas. She then shrugged, smiling to reveal her gold tooth. She told anyone who asked that it had turned gold after the Rise, but Journi and the rest of their family knew the truth—that she’d bought it at a pawnshop and kept a tiny dose of poison inside it, just in case. When Journi had asked her what “just in case” meant, the old witch had only grinned and winked at her.
“I was in a rush,” Gramma Jude said. “And I forgot my glasses.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Frieda said, rising from her lawn chair. “We’re in a crisis and you show up blind as a bat?”
Journi sighed. Jude and Frieda weren’t technically sisters, but you’d never know it. The two had met when Jude’s impulsive, adventurous brother John—then nineteen—had brought home a pretty, young, black waitress and announced they’d married. Despite the cultural differences, Frieda had held her own in the McCutcheon family—namely because she gave as good as she got—and had remained an integral part of it even after John had wandered off into parts unknown. Something Frieda had never begrudged him even though he’d been gone for nearly twenty years now. He’s a wild one, she’d said with a sad smile. He was never tame. I knew that from the beginning.
Though Gramma Jude had to reach up to do it, she patted Journi’s head as she walked by as if Journi was still a knobby-kneed “yoot” pulling on her apron. “You’re the only old bat I see,” Gramma Jude said to Frieda, scowling. “And what’s this about a crisis? You told me there were men in the streets.”
“I said emergency,” Frieda enunciated, shaking her head. “You forget your hearing aid too?”
Seemingly disappointed that there were, in fact, no men in the streets, Gramma Jude rolled the tobacco around under her bottom lip, concern lining her already-lined face. “What kind of emergency?”
“Where’s Mom?” Journi interrupted.
Gramma Jude eyed Journi’s paler-than-normal face and frowned. “You called in the PTA president? This is bad.”
As if bidden, Josephine’s voice sounded behind them. “I’ll have you know, Mother, that I haven’t been to a PTA meeting since Journi Renee graduated high school.”
Journi turned to see her mom standing on the sidewalk as if she’d simply appeared there. She’d gone all out for dinner theater and had traded in the tweed skirt for another tweed skirt and the turtleneck for a blouse. A blouse that was buttoned to the neck. If a holocaust wasn’t looming over their heads, Journi would have given her grief. Instead, she let out a relieved breath. “That was fast.”
“Of course it was,” Josephine said and touched Journi’s cheek, unconsciously siphoning some of her dread. “I could feel your fear all the way across town. I was already on my way when Frieda called. Is it happening?”
Journi didn’t have to ask what she meant. “Yes.”
Josephine paled but nodded. “Fill us in.”
“Frieda,” Journi said, gesturing for her phone. “You do the honors. I need to make a call.”
Cigarette pressed between her lips, Frieda handed her the phone and began relaying what Journi had foreseen to the others, her seriousness at odds with her scarecrow costume.
Turning away, Journi dialed the number Hayley had written on her palm.
The nanny picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hayley, it’s Journi McCutcheon from Say It Ain’t So.”
“Journi,” Hayley said, letting out a breath. “Have you found anything?”
Boy, had she. “Are you with Tilda?”
“Hang on,” Hayley said, and a TV in the background abruptly quieted. A moment later, she came back on the line. “Yes. We’re watching a movie. What’s going on?”
“Good,” Journi said. “Keep her close. Do you have a way to reach other nannies in the area?”
“Reach them?” Hayley asked, the concern in her voice thickening. “There’s a Facebook group for Columbus nannies. Why?”
“Whatever this is,” Journi said thinly, watching families wander by like antelope oblivious to the lion lurking in the nearby grass. “It’s spreading. Warn every nanny you know.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then Hayley asked, “You’re telling me other kids are in danger?”
Journi took a deep breath. “I’m telling you all kids are in danger.”
“When?” Hayley breathed.
“Soon,” Journi said. Given the speed at which the visions were popping, she had to assume the timeline had been jumpstarted. “Lock the doors. Stay inside. We’ll be there soon.”
The threat was growing, but Journi’s gut told her the Burke kids were at the epicenter of the storm. If she wanted to stop the impending massacre, she had to find out why.
Though Hayley sounded shaken, she said, “Okay.”
Journi hung up and sent a quick text to Miguel, letting him know what she’d learned. That done, she turned back to the others. “Anybody got any bright ideas?”
Gramma Jude gazed at a trio of trick or treaters across the street. “It would take time to cast protection spells on every kid in Columbus. Time we ain’t got.” She looked at Journi. “We gotta find the source of this hex. And fast.”
“Agreed,” Journi said, pocketing her phone. “Who do you know that could cast something this big?”
Gramma Jude considered it and spit, shaking her head. “In this town? Me. Maybe John. And we know it isn’t him.”
At the mention of her wayward husband, Frieda looked away, drawing on her cigarette.
“Nobody else?” Journi asked. She’d take any lead at this point. She couldn’t crack skulls if she didn’t know which skulls to crack. And she was very much in the mood to crack skulls.
Gramma Jude shook her head. “Luda Mae could have pulled it off, but not since the dementia. Besides, it’s not like the home wouldn’t notice if she was laying down death spells in her wheelchair.”
Journi cursed. “Balls.”
“What about adults?” Josephine asked, her concern overriding her aversion to Journi’s foul language. “Is this isolated to children?”
Journi nodded. “If Mrs. Burke is an indicator, pregnant women as well.”
“But who’d want to hurt a bunch of kids?” Frieda asked, shaking her head. “Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why does any psychopath want to hurt anyone?” Gramma Jude pointed out. “They ain’t walking the psycho path for no reason.”
“Yes,” Josephine agreed, her mouth pulled into a thoughtful line. “But the thought of one who goes after children is especially disturbing.”
As they discussed the subtle nuances of psychopathing, movement near the cat cages caught Journi’s eye.
Or, rather, the lack of movement.
The cats, young and old alike, were sitting unnaturally still, staring across the street. Had Journi not known they were real, she would have thought they’d been taxidermied. There was no blinking, no grooming, no ear twitching. The felines sat like furry stones, razor-focused on whatever had grabbed their attention. And that wasn’t the only bizarre thing. Their eyes were straight-up aglow. As if a string of blazing Christmas lights had replaced their elliptical pupils. Now, Journi didn’t know much about cats—especially post-Rise cats—but she had to assume the Lite-Brite routine wasn’t normal.
She followed their glowing, neon-green gazes across the street.
And her frown deepened.
Kids. The cats were staring at a group of costumed kids who were paused on the sidewalk comparing their hauls.
As Journi looked back at the cages, the hairs on her forearms rose. The cats weren’t simply gazing at the kids with interest. They were riveted. And they looked . . . hungry. As if they suddenly had an overwhelming hankering for Kibbles n’ Kids.
“Aunt Frieda,” Journi murmured. “I think we have a problem.”
The trio of elder women paused their discussion and glanced at Journi. When they saw her expression, they followed her gaze to the cages. Frieda frowned, her cigarette poised a couple inches from her mouth.
“Glowing pussies,” Gramma Jude observed with a lift of her wiry eyebrow. “I’ve seen it all.”
“Mom,” Josephine scolded, looking horrified. “For heaven’s sake.”
Gramma Jude shrugged as if to say, “Well?”
Aunt Frieda approached the cats and took off her straw hat before crouching in front of the cages, holding out her cigarette to keep the smoke away. She studied the rapt felines a moment and then looked over her shoulder at Journi and the others. “They’re under a spell.”
Josephine paled, and Gramma Jude spat tobacco, saying, “I could’ve told you that.”
“What kind of spell?” Journi asked, walking over to crouch beside Frieda. The cats didn’t acknowledge either of their presences in the slightest.
Frieda stamped out her cigarette and eyed the cats grimly. “Hard to say. What I can tell you is they got killin’ on their minds. I can feel it.”
Journi stared into the cats’ neon eyes with a pot of boiling dread in her belly. “Then they’re connected to this somehow.”
“It would seem so.”
Behind them, Gramma Jude murmured, “They’re not the only ones.”
Journi and Frieda followed her gaze to the shelter’s storefront windows. Inside the building, cats were gathering at the glass, their eerie eyes glowing with green otherworldly light just like their caged brethren. The fear that had been nibbling Journi all day began gnawing buffet-style. Something was very, very wrong here. “Aunt Frieda,” she said quietly. “How many cats inside the building?”
“Sixteen free roaming. Fourteen in the kennels. One in isolation,” she replied as if she’d already done the math and was as unnerved as Journi was.
Journi added the sum in her head and cursed. Including the eight in the outdoor cages, that made thirty-nine bewitched cats.
“Ladies,” Josephine said suddenly.
They looked and saw that she was pointing next door, her expression concerned. Another cat—someone’s pet going by its considerable weight and bling-encrusted collar—was sitting on the neighboring house’s porch railing. Like the shelter cats, it also seemed to be affected by the spell, its eyes eerily aglow. Overlooked by its owners, who were distributing candy on the lawn below, the cat watched the passing beggars, its shining gaze following them like a security camera following movement.
“This ain’t good,” Gramma Jude said, shaking her head. “Nope.”
Journi glanced up and down the street. Several houses had glowing eyes peering out of windows and from under vehicles. “Does everyone in Columbus own a friggin’ cat?”
Frieda rose, her own gaze scanning the neighborhood. “The good ones do.”
As a catless woman, Journi might have taken offense to that under different circumstances. Instead, she watched a jogger run by with her hellhound. The enormous, shaggy beast’s heavy paws pounded the sidewalk as it trotted faithfully beside its owner, its tongue lolling out and its eyes blazing with hellfire. Smoke curled off its wiry fur, and the scent of sulfur lingered in its wake. In other words, normal.
“It’s not affecting dogs,” Journi noted, only minutely relieved.
“Or squirrels,” Frieda said, pointing to a nearby tree, where a squirrel was leaping from branch to branch with an acorn in its mouth, oblivious to the supernatural storm brewing below.
“Birds neither,” Gramma Jude observed, indicating a pair of starlings perched atop the STOP sign at the end of the street busily preening their feathers.
“So, it’s just cats,” Journi said, her aversion to them feeling especially justified. “Why am I not surprised.”
Frieda rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Just then, a wet cracking noise sounded behind them. Journi turned to the cages sitting on the Hissing Booth’s lawn. The cats were still staring at the kids, but their eyes seemed to be glowing brighter now. Just enough to notice.
“Did you guys hear that?” Journi asked, her uneasiness stirring.
“Hear what?” Josephine asked.
Journi stared hard at the cats. Maybe she’d imagined it. After all, the air was currently filled with the sounds of kids’ laughter and spooky music. But then the cracking came again. This time, it was accompanied by movement. For the first time since the cats had gone into laser-beam mode, they stirred.
And, by stirred, she meant mutated.
All down the line, the cats’ bodies began to . . . change. Bones moved and jutted beneath fur, creating thick, sticky noises that turned Journi’s stomach. Snouts elongated, and haunting yowls erupted from the cats’ throats as their teeth extended, splitting the gums. The cages rattled as the grotesquely transforming animals writhed and threw themselves against the sides.
“Unholy hotdogs,” Journi breathed, slowly reaching into her back pocket for her slingshot and charmed marbles.
Though Frieda looked as taken aback as Journi felt, she held up a hand. “Don’t hurt them.”
The cats’ shoulders bulged. The cages’ joints groaned. Journi loaded her sling. “I’m more concerned with them hurting us.”
Josephine came to stand beside Journi, looking grim and proper in her starched cotton and tweed. She pulled a compact pink taser out of her practical purse and tested it, the crackling zap blistering the air.
Journi eyed her. “What are you planning to do with that thing?”
Undaunted, Josephine readied the taser. “Whatever I have to.”
Journi didn’t have time to reply. Behind the shelter’s windows, the cats inside had also mutated, and they were now butting their heads against the glass, the dull thumps reverberating in Journi’s bones. “Hell.”
Gramma Jude took a moment to install a fresh wad of tobacco in her bottom lip, then pulled a gnarled hawthorn wand out of a pocket sewn on the inside of her flannel. The wand was short, its pale wood worn and smooth from decades of use, and runes had been etched into its curving shaft. Gramma Jude adopted a fighter’s stance that would have looked ridiculous on any other seventy-year-old and muttered, “Entzünden.”
The wand’s tip flared with ethereal blue light, and the pulse of magic that was unmistakably Gramma Jude made Journi’s skin prickle. Journi had once asked her why she spoke in German when spellcasting, and Gramma Jude had mysteriously replied, “Because you gotta have friends in high places as well as low places, kid.” To this day, Journi had no idea what that meant, and she suspected Gramma Jude didn’t, either. But the old woman packed one hell of a magical punch no matter what language she did it in, so if Journi was to face down a horde of mutated cats, she was lucky to have her gramma at her side.
Aunt Frieda grabbed the closest thing to a weapon she had on hand, which turned out to be one of the old aluminum lawn chairs.
“Those cages won’t hold long,” Journi said, eying the wire holding back the still-evolving cats.
“Glass won’t, either,” Frieda noted, staring at the shelter’s windows, which were being repeatedly assaulted by the cats inside, the frames rattling.
Next door, the cat on the stoop let out an earsplitting screech as it too went berserk. The fluffy feline was hunched, its shoulders bulging and rolling beneath its fur as it transformed. Into what, exactly, Journi still wasn’t clear. Its owners leaped from their seats to stare open-mouthed, as did the trio of trick or treaters who were still holding out their bags for candy.
“We’ve got to get people out,” Journi said, gripping her slingshot with white knuckles. “Especially the kids.” To her mother, she said, “Go warn them. And get the CST down here.”
Josephine nodded and pulled out her phone even as she ran.
There was no love lost between Journi and the Columbus Supernatural Taskforce. If you were a magic user of any caliber and your business wasn’t registered and consequently micromanaged by the Paranormal Business Association, the CST assumed you were an anarchist or a criminal disguised as a business owner. She’d had to call them to Say It Ain’t So exactly twice. Once, because a competing soothsayer had shipped a trojan hedgehog to the office and, upon being unboxed, the bedeviled animal had exploded, coating her and the entire room in blood, slop, and hallucination-inducing magic spores. And once because a colony of wereants had infested the office’s walls and proved too difficult for even Gramma Jude to banish. Both times, the CST had been sluggish in their response and had, in so many words, implied that if Journi was registered—i.e., babysat—it wouldn’t have happened. But, despite being a merry band of asshats, the CST were good at what they did, and Journi wasn’t about to let her loathing of them get in the way when lives were at stake.
Journi loaded her sling with a marble, hesitating. It was hard to know where to aim. The Frankencat next door? The cages, which were beginning to bow outward as the cats inside continued to expand and mutate? Or the rattling shelter windows that looked entirely too thin to withstand much more abuse?
Up and down the street, cries of alarm rose, mingling with the eerie melody wafting from some nearby speaker. Urgent footsteps raced by behind Journi as people fled, heeding Josephine’s urgings. Likely, both because she was convincing and because post-Rise folks weren’t the dillydallying kind. Anything and everything was possible, and you learned to run first and ask questions later. If someone told you mutant, baby-eating cats were coming, you believed them.
“Frieda, you watch the cages,” Journi said and then turned to Gramma Jude. “You got the shelter?”
Gramma Jude spit, her steely gaze locked on the windows, which were smeared with ectoplasmic goo from the cats writhing against them. “Got ’em.”
Gritting her teeth, Journi turned toward the stoop cat—the most immediate threat. She started toward it cautiously. Already, the cat had nearly tripled in size. Its fur, once cream, was now tipped in neon green, which complimented its glowing eyes nicely. Its bulging shoulders rivaled those of a pit bull, and its gaping mouth hung open to accommodate obscenely long fangs. It was panting, its tongue curled, and its ears—now almost-comically tall and tufted—were laid flat against its skull, adding a touch of feral to its grotesque new look. It let out another yowl, the sound splitting the hubbub, and bounded off the railing.
Right toward its owners, who had stubbornly refused to abandon it.
Okay, so maybe not all post-Rise folks were brimming with intelligence.
The man, presumably the husband, was white-faced and frozen, tugging on his wife’s sweatshirt. The wife, who had dropped the candy bowl at her feet, was crouched, holding her shaking hand out to the leaping cat-beast.
“Mr. Sniggles?” she asked uncertainly. “What’s . . . wrong, little man?”
Mr. Sniggles, who clearly hadn’t been little since his kittenhood, misjudged his still-wobbly legs and tripped, rolling down the final two steps.
“Oh, my baby,” the wife gasped.
“Get back!” Journi shouted, cursing as she tried to line up her obscured target.
The woman, noticing Journi for the first time, looked over with wide, shocked eyes. When she spotted Journi’s grim expression and slingshot, her face paled. “No! Don’t hurt him!”
The cat, who had knocked himself senseless during the tumble, got to his now-enormous paws, their claws scraping the walkway. As if to dispel its disorientation, it shook like a freshly bathed dog, and as it did, tiny barbs shot out of its green-tipped fur like accidentally released missiles.
Journi dove to the side, but she wasn’t fast enough, and two of the needlelike barbs sank into her thigh. White-hot pain seared the muscle all the way down to the bone, and she cried out just as she collided with the sidewalk, where she rolled like a loose bag of potatoes. Momentarily stunned, she scooted clumsily backward until her shoulders hit what felt like a tree. Thankful she hadn’t lost her weapon in the fall, she swung up the slingshot, sucking in a deep breath to fend off the pain in her throbbing leg.
The husband-and-wife duo hadn’t been as lucky. Their close proximity had essentially turned them into walls of meat. The husband lay writhing on the ground, his mouth stretched into a soundless scream, shimmering green barbs peppering the entire right side of his body. The wife, however, had fared even worse. She lay on her back, her face and chest doing their best porcupine impersonations. Her arms twitched intermittently, but her eyes were open and empty, staring sightlessly at the sky. Journi didn’t have to check for a pulse to know she was dead.
“Dammit,” Journi breathed, her heart pounding.
Apparently recovered, the cat-beast leaped, clearing the deceased woman and her husband in one bound to land on the sidewalk beyond.
Directly in Journi’s shooting range.
The cat-beast paused, its nostrils flaring and its ears swiveling as it listened for something. Bluish netherslime dripped off its spiked hide like a colt shedding its afterbirth. Across the street, something caught its attention, and even from thirty feet away, Journi saw its pupils dilate like those of a house cat spotting a mouse.
She followed its gaze and saw a little girl, no more than seven or eight years old, standing alone, most likely separated from her group during the initial chaos. She was crying, clutching a plastic pumpkin full of candy while looking around for help. A few straggling trick or treaters ran past her without slowing down, their costumes trailing behind them.
Journi looked back at the beast. The creature that had once been a cat flexed its haunches, preparing to spring. Preparing to eat the lost girl. It was excited about it too. Drool dripped from its gaping maw, and its tail switched back and forth, scattering the dried leaves on the sidewalk.
No. No way. Not on her watch.
“Here, kitty, kitty,” she called, aiming the slingshot.
The beast didn’t so much as acknowledge her, but that was fine. Killing didn’t require eye contact.
The fading evening sun shone through the glass marble in her sling, the swirling magic inside glimmering. She hesitated. Only a moment. Just long enough to regret the outcome. Her aversion to cats was no secret, but this fat feline had been someone’s pet. It had been pampered, loved, and regarded as a member of the family. Before today, the most bloodthirsty thing it had probably ever done was swat someone for petting its belly a millisecond too long. But then Journi thought about the dead wife and likely dying husband, as well as the frightened girl across the street, and she released her sling.
The charmed marble flew, a shimmer of magic runoff trailing in its wake like a comet before it hit home.
There was no time for the beast to react, much less flee. After all, it was damn hard to flee without a head. Upon impact, the marble—and the cat’s skull—exploded into a brilliant flare of light and bone shrapnel. Almost instantaneously, the released magic congealed into a bubble around the headless creature with an audible boink. The bubble, formed of a translucent, greenish-blue substance that very much resembled gelatin, hovered a few inches from the ground, bobbing like a beach ball in a swimming pool as it absorbed the internal impact of the explosion.
It was like the world’s grisliest advertisement for Jell-O.
Inside the bubble, bone bits, barbs, blood, and oozing netherslime coated the jellied sphere. The cat itself, seemingly frozen within the sphere’s gravity, was a gruesome sight. The lower half of its body was intact, but its upper half was a raw mess. All that remained was the bloody neck stump. Journi had to hold back a surge of nausea. She never knew what would happen when she fired one of Gramma Jude’s marbles, but this was . . . impressive.
“Sweet baby cheese sticks,” Journi whispered, letting out a shaky breath.
Had the jelly sphere not encased the exploding cat, effectively containing the deadly barbs, she likely would have joined Mr. Sniggles’ dearly departed owner in the Great Litter Box in the Sky.
“Journi!” Josephine’s concern-threaded voice called. “Heavens, are you hurt?”
Journi looked over to see her mother running down the sidewalk toward her, her beige purse bouncing against her hip.
“I’m fine,” Journi said and stood.
Or, at least, attempted to stand.
Shards of pain sliced through her barbed thigh, and she grabbed onto the tree in a half-risen crouch, letting out a startled gasp.
“What is it?” Josephine demanded shrilly, reaching for her.
Journi held up her empty slingshot, its band swinging. “Don’t touch them,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I think they’re poisonous.”
Josephine blanched and rummaged in her purse. A moment later, she whipped out a pair of yellow rubber dish gloves.
Despite the throbbing pain, Journi stared at her. “What are those for? Spontaneous dishwashing?”
Josephine gave her a dry look, pulling on the cheerful, elbow-length gloves like she was Laura Dern from Jurassic Park. “For emergencies. Such as my daughter getting poisoned by a mutant cat.”
“Fair enough,” Journi said, then gestured with her chin toward the fallen husband. “Go help him first.”
Gloved up and grim-faced, Josephine followed her gaze to the man lying now-motionless on the ground across the way. She looked from him to the hovering cat corpse and then back to Journi, her internal battle written all over her face. “It might already be too late for him.”
The pain in Journi’s thigh was beginning to numb, the sensation both hot and cold as it spread outward. She had no idea if that was a good or bad thing, but she and luck had never been besties. “And it might not be,” Journi said. “I’m fine. Go.”
Josephine hesitated, her frown deeper than the Grand Canyon, but then she hurried off, kneeling by the man in a pool of tweed skirt.
In the distance, sirens wailed as the CST neared the scene. Gritting her teeth, Journi glanced toward the shelter. Gramma Jude was in a standoff with the building, her wand outstretched and mouth moving as she chanted. Cracks had formed in the shelter’s windows, and the cat-beasts inside raged against the failing glass, their eyes wild and fangs bared. The cracks in the glass pulsed with blue light, making it look as if the large windows contained jagged, throbbing lightning. It was glue, Journi realized. Gramma Jude was holding the windows together with magical glue.
But she wouldn’t be able to hold them for long.
New cracks were forming by the minute, and sweat beaded on Gramma Jude’s wrinkled brow, her wand arm trembling. If the CST didn’t get here within the next few minutes, things were going to get furry fast.
Frieda wasn’t fairing much better. There wasn’t a free inch of space in the cages now, and the grotesquely deformed cats were chewing rabidly at the wires, their paws thrusting from the openings, raking air. Frieda was circling the cages performing what looked like reiki, her fingers splayed as she murmured something Journi couldn’t hear, her expression one of concentration. The cats’ feral gazes were following her, but Journi couldn’t tell if it was because Frieda’s technique was working or if they were just hungry. Either way, going by the bowing of the cages, time was running out.
Looking down at her cactus leg, Journi clenched her jaw. She didn’t have a stash of rubber gloves in her satchel, but she figured she couldn’t exactly re-poison herself. There were two barbs sticking out of the black denim covering her thigh. Holding her breath, she plucked them out one by one, her fingers shaking. She only felt dull throbbing, the entire leg almost fully numb now, and by the time she finished, she’d begun to feel lightheaded.
From around the street corner, CST’s herd of matte-black armored trucks swung into view, their sirens wailing and red-and-whites flashing. Journi sagged with relief. The cavalry had arrived.
Within one minute, the caravan of trucks had parked and birthed three teams of black-clad agents, the red emblem on their chests standing out in the deepening shadows. Orders were barked, and organized formations of armed men and women sprinted for the shelter, splitting like water around rocks as they moved to surround the building, the lasers of their weapons swinging over the bricks in erratic patterns. Journi almost laughed. Oh, the irony. Cats and the elusive red dot.
Relieved, she watched as agents and medical personnel zeroed in on Gramma Jude, Frieda, and Josephine. The women could hold their own, but that didn’t mean Journi wanted them on the frontlines. She was more than glad to hand the reins over to the CST. Besides, she needed to get to Hayley and Tilda.
“Miss, are you hurt?”
Journi looked up just as a plump black woman whose round cheeks made her look almost cherubic—something that was completely at odds with her no-nonsense expression—appeared in her line of vision, crouched, and aimed a penlight in her eyes. “I’m Sergeant Sargent with the CST. We’re here to help. Have you been injured?”
Journi’s lips tingled, and they felt like Styrofoam pool noodles when she spoke. “Your name is Sergeant Sargent?”
The officer regarded her flatly. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
Journi was so dizzy now, she was certain cotton candy had replaced her brain, but she did her best to explain the situation to Sergeant Sargent, including the fact that she’d been hit with poison barbs.
Nodding, Sergeant Sargent waved to someone beyond Journi’s line of sight. “Medical. Over here.”
A heartbeat later, a startlingly pale man with glittering ice-blue eyes appeared, crouching beside Journi with a severe, what-have-we-got expression. He was painfully gorgeous, his sleek auburn hair falling over the shoulders of his tactical jumpsuit in a shiny wave. His mouth was set in a firm line, but Journi knew if he was to smile, she’d see fangs. He was a vampire. He too hit Journi with the penlight routine, and she squinted.
“What is with you people and lights?” she asked and was surprised to hear how slurred her words were. “And vampires on the med team? Seems counterintuitive.”
To be fair, he appeared well fed. Not like the gaunt, bedraggled one she’d passed on the street earlier. This glitter-eyed gingersnap wouldn’t be thirsting for anyone’s blood tonight. At least, not because he was truly hungry. She wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse. A few years back, she’d had a less-than-charmed experience with a fanged phlebotomist during a blood drive, and she’d walked away an extra pint short. She’d been wary of vampires ever since.
The vampire ignored her and did a swift, efficient check of her vitals, while Sergeant Sargent moved to inspect the jelly ball, her gun drawn.
“Where were you hit?” the vamp medic asked, his voice cool and clipped as he surveyed her for damage.
Journi tried to point at her thigh but succeeded only in slapping it. Not that she felt the slap. Her leg had all the feeling of a telephone pole. “Poison cat,” she mumbled.
He examined the punctures in her jeans, feeling her thigh with slender, gloved fingers. The microwounds hadn’t bled much, but he brought his fingertips to his nose and sniffed nonetheless, the act more diagnostic than appreciative. After a quick search of the grass beside her, he discovered the discarded barbs and collected one. Producing a handheld device from his breast pocket, he opened the clear-plastic lid, placed the barb inside, then closed it, pressing a button. A blue ribbon of light scanned the barb, and a moment later, a series of codes populated a pop-up holoscreen. He studied the results for a fraction of a second, nodded as if it was as he’d expected, then returned the device to his pocket, unzipping his trauma bag.
“You’ve been infected with a grade-two transmogrification-based, black-magic venin,” he explained, withdrawing a syringe filled with purple serum and uncapping it. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Is that grape soda?” she asked, and it came out sounding garbled.
In response, he jammed the syringe into her thigh without any foreplay whatsoever.
Turns out, it wasn’t as numb as she thought.
Pain seized her thigh, and she cried out, sitting bolt upright. “Fuuuuuucckkk!”
Her entire leg was suddenly alive with sensation and not in a good way. She could practically feel the magical antivenin eating the poison that had migrated through her nervous system. It was like being filled with electrocuted Pop Rocks—minuscule explosions erupting deep within her veins and muscle tissue. At some point, she blacked out entirely, but she came to an unknown number of minutes later with a gasp. At first, all she saw were flashing lights and disorienting shadows, but then the syringe-stabbing vampire medic swam into view, his crystalline baby blues focused on her.
“Better?” he asked, monitoring her pulse by touch.
She opened her mouth to ask him if he’d acquired his bedside manner while in prison, but she closed it when she realized she did, indeed, feel better. Her breathing had returned to normal, and tingling was all that remained of the numbness in her thigh. She touched her mouth, which no longer felt puffy and hot. “Yeah . . . thanks.”
He nodded once and gathered his things.
Journi located her slingshot, which she’d dropped when she’d dropped, and stood. An initial wave of dizziness washed over her, during which she had to grip the tree for balance, but her equilibrium evened out a few breaths later. She surveyed the scene.
The shelter’s lawn and the street were alive with activity. Sergeant Sargent barked orders at a trio of agents in hazmag suits who were examining the jellied cat, while a triangular formation of hooded mages took over Gramma Jude’s work of reinforcing the shattered-but-holding windows. Inside the shelter, sporadic bursts of magic lit up the shadows for a few seconds at a time, and the sounds of muffled yowling and the pop-pop-pop of gunfire could be heard. On the lawn, a translucent stasis dome had been activated over the cages, its surface aglow with ethereal lavender light. The cat-beasts inside were frozen in varying stages of attack like a paused horror movie. Frieda’s giant inflatable black cat had been punctured, and it lay airless on the ground, the nylon fabric rippling as the internal fan mechanism fought to the bitter end. The table had been knocked over, and foil-wrapped candies lay strewn across the grass like fallen soldiers. In the distance, the city’s sirens wailed, warning people to get off the streets and out of magic’s way, and every few minutes, screams or shouts of alarm could be heard from blocks away.
Just another Friday night in paradise.
Journi shoved her slingshot into her back pocket just as Sergeant Sargent strode over, demanding, “What happened here?”
Despite the portly woman’s brusque approach, Journi instinctively liked her more than the other CST clowns she’d met. Bluntness she could handle. Superiority was another story.
“I have reason to believe this is citywide,” Journi said. “Maybe further.”
Sergeant Sargent studied her for a hard moment, then spoke into her earpiece. “Squad Delta Blue to dispatch. Suspected code nineteen in progress. Requesting patrol in the vicinity of . . .” She paused and met Journi’s eyes as if to say you’d better be right. “Everywhere.” She issued a few more commands and then lowered her fingers, speaking to Journi. “I need to know what you know.”
The fact that she hadn’t immediately accused Journi of being behind the mutations was another point in the sergeant’s favor. And an indication that she possessed empathic abilities. Journi gave her a quick rundown of what she’d learned at the Burkes’ earlier that day. “I can’t be certain,” she finished, “but my gut tells me that’s where the roots are.”
Sergeant Sargent considered her and then nodded. “I’ll send a team. You and your family need to move out.” She glanced at the clear band encircling her wrist, where numbers and glyphs glowed. “Quarantine ward going up in less than three minutes.”
Journi had no intention of being stuck behind an impenetrable force field with frozen mutated cats. She nodded, and the sergeant turned away, but Journi stopped her.
“Hey,” Journi said, meeting the woman’s serious eyes. “If you can spare the cats, do. They mean the world to my aunt, and she’s done a lot for this community.”
The sergeant considered Journi and then said, “Protocol dictates we use non-lethals whenever possible, but I won’t risk the lives of my agents. I’ll do what I can.”
Journi let out a breath. It was all she could ask. “Thank you.”
Sergeant Sargent glanced at her wrist again. “Now go.”
Journi jogged through the holographic DARK MAGIC CONTAMINATION ZONE—DO NOT CROSS barrier and hurried toward her scooter and Gramma Jude’s Beetle, where the trio of elder women waited, looking steady but shell-shocked. Frieda wore an especially tense frown, her eyes red-rimmed.
“Are you okay?” Josephine demanded, running forward to meet Journi. “They wouldn’t let us back in. We’ve been so worried.”
“I’m fine,” Journi assured her, giving her a quick hug. “How’s the man?”
Josephine pulled back, relief emanating from her. “I think he’ll live. His eyes were open when the CST took over.”
Journi swallowed a pang of sympathy. He might recover, but once he learned that his wife and cat had died, he’d probably wish he hadn’t. “That’s good,” was all she said, though, and looked at Frieda. “They’re going to do their best not to harm the other cats.”
Hope flared in Frieda’s eyes. “I couldn’t get through to them. The spellwork was too dense. It was like they didn’t even see me.” She crossed her arms over her chest, her naturally husky voice sounding rough. “And Mr. Sniggles. The Robertsons adopted him from me six years ago. He was just a kitten.” She brought shaking fingers to her mouth. “Sylvia was a good woman.”
“I’m so sorry, Aunt Frieda,” Journi told her quietly. “We’re going to find out who did this.”
Frieda looked up, determination glinting in her weary gaze. “Damn right we are.”
Though Gramma Jude looked a little ragged around the edges after expending so much energy, she mirrored Frieda’s statement. “Damn right.”
Even Josephine nodded. “What now?”
Journi opened her mouth to respond, but her phone rang. Digging it out of her satchel, she answered.
Hayley’s terrified voice came over the line. “Journi? I think it’s happening.”
A day late and a dollar short, that one.
“What’s wrong?” Journi demanded even though she had a pretty good guess.
There was a commotion in the background, followed by a scream. A moment went by, and it sounded like Hayley was running. A door closed. “Something is wrong with Horace,” she said finally, out of breath. “He’s . . . I don’t know. He’s not the same.”
“Giant, glowy-eyed, slobbering cat-beast?” Journi guessed, assuming Horace was Tilda’s cat.
“Yes,” Hayley hissed. “How did you know?”
Journi gestured for Gramma Jude, Frieda, and Josephine to get in the car. “It’s happening here too.”
Hayley gasped. “What do we do? I don’t know what to do.”
When the doors of Gramma Jude’s Beetle closed and everyone was safely inside, Journi climbed onto her scooter. “Have you called the CST?”
“I tried,” Hayley admitted. “But I couldn’t get through. That’s when I called you.”
Probably because everyone in the city was clogging the lines.
“Stay calm,” Journi instructed her, pulling on her helmet. “Has anyone been hurt?”
“Tilda is with me. But Olivia . . . I don’t know,” she said, sounding as though her fear threshold was dangerously close to dissolving. “She was downstairs when Horace changed. We got separated.”
Journi fastened her chin strap—not an easy undertaking while holding a phone—and grimaced. Mrs. Burke wasn’t her favorite person by any means, but Journi didn’t want her dead. Maimed and disfigured, maybe, but not dead. “Where are you now?”
“We’re upstairs. In Tilda’s room.”
“Stay there,” Journi said, kicking the kickstand. “We’re on our way.”
“Please hurry,” Hayley whispered, her voice trembling.
Grim-faced, Journi hung up and drove around to Gramma Jude’s window. Gramma Jude cranked it down and stared up at her. “Where to?”
“Follow me,” Journi said, revving the scooter’s purring engine. “We’re going on a cat hunt.”
