Now this was the life.
True, I did have to ride in a cat carrier, but it was in a nice cabin and so much quieter than the pet area under the previous plane had been.
I waited until we got in the air, then whispered to Kaye who sat beside me, “So, what happens when we get here?”
She looked around surreptitiously. “You know I can’t really answer you, right?” Then she raised her voice for the benefit of the other passengers. “It’s okay, Mr. Moss. You’ll be okay.”
Smiling at our neighbors, she shrugged an apology. “Sorry. He’s not used to this.”
“Yes, I am,” I yelled. Of course, all they heard was yowling and cat cries. “I love it!”
Kaye chuckled but shot me a withering glare.
“Hey!” I yelled as a flight attendant walked by. “Hey, bring me a vodka tonic!”
“Shhh,” Kaye said and stuck her finger through one of the slats on the carrier. “You’re okay.”
I nipped the tip of her finger. Not enough to hurt her, and certainly not enough to draw blood, but just enough to make her yank her hand back.
“Moss!” she hissed. “Rude!”
I chuckled darkly and amused myself for the rest of the flight by yelling things that would be hard for her to ignore, but that nobody else could understand.
Like, “Kaye likes to go in the airplane bathrooms and dance naked!”
And “Hey, everyone! This lady right here has a crush on her phone automation system!”
She snorted at that one.
Then, “Please, help me! I’ve been kidnapped by a giant robot bird! It ate meeeee!”
She just rolled her eyes and stuffed her face in her book after that one.
Fortunately for her, the flight wasn’t that long—just from Georgia to Virginia—which meant my little game ended much too quickly for my liking.
When everyone’s cell phones had service again, Kaye pulled on her earbuds and pretended to talk on the phone. “Yes, I’m going to kill this kitty when we get home. He’s been yelling the whole time.”
I just grinned at her. “Admit it, you think I’m funny.”
“I do not think he’s funny,” she said. “But I do think he’s very annoying.”
We had to stop talking as she strode through the airport. It was much too noisy, and Kaye needed to focus on navigating us to the exit. Before we merged with the rest of the foot traffic, she unpacked a couple bungee cords and latched my carrier to her rolling suitcase. I protested loudly at this latest indignity.
Once we got moving, I found it to be a much nicer, smoother ride. Definitely preferable to being sloshed around in someone’s arms. Couldn’t let Kaye know that, though.
Besides, I couldn’t see much and didn’t want to attract any strangers’ attention, so I just listened to the bustle of travelers around me as Kaye moved us through the terminal and then went pick up the rental car her agency had booked ahead of time.
All in all, it didn’t take long until I was out of that wretched carrier and sitting pretty in the passenger seat. Kaye offered me some water from a collapsible pet dish, then we were on our way.
“Where to now?” I asked, eager for the next part of our adventure.
“The agency has a safe house nearby. We’re lucky that our cons set up near it. It makes things easier, having a readily available and magically warded place to stay. Hotels always make me nervous.”
Her line of work was potentially dangerous, I got that. But this one seemed pretty open and shut to me.
“Do you get a lot of people after you?” I asked, if only to make conversation.
Kaye shrugged. “Well, I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’ve got my share of enemies.”
“You don’t have to count me among them,” I said graciously. “None of my predicament is your fault.”
She raised her eyebrows and glanced at me. “Oh, yeah? Whose fault is it, then?”
I hissed softly. “A silly woman in Maine, her cat, and an old friend of mine.”
“Not yours?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow at me before turning her focus back to the road.
“Heck, no. I was just trying to make a little extra money. I wasn’t hurting anybody. Besides, I made sure all the places we hit always had insurance. They’d get theirs, and I’d get mine. Everybody wins.” I sniffed. “Really, a string of victimless crimes, if you think about it.”
“Ah,” she said noncommittally, then hit me with, “It’s a shame you don’t take any responsibility for your actions.”
I ignored that little barb. She didn’t know the finer details, and she didn’t know me. Not yet, anyway.
The rest of the drive to the safe house was relatively silent. Kaye had put me off with her whole holier-than-thou spiel, and I didn’t feel like working to keep up my end of the conversation.
Somewhere along the way, she got a phone call, which routed through the car’s Bluetooth system. I did listen with interest to that. It was some agent friend of hers.
“Hey, Walter,” she said when she put the phone on speaker. “I’ve got Moss with me.”
So she’d told people about me. Interesting.
“That’s fine,” a male voice came over the line. “I was calling to see if you’d had any luck from your sources about the auction.”
“None at all,” Kaye grumbled and made a face. “Still haven’t cornered him?”
“No. And enough time has passed that we’re getting antsy. Whoever buys that magic is going to have far too much power. It’ll disrupt the balance for sure, but who knows what other things will happen as a result. Exposure, deaths, injuries. There’s no telling.”
Kaye glanced at me. “I’ll mention it to Moss. Maybe he’s heard something.”
“I appreciate it. Let me know.” The line went dead, and I waited, insanely curious, to see what they were talking about. What auction? Was anything good up for grabs?
I had to admit, cliche or not, my curiosity seemed amplified as a cat. Curiosity killed the… oh, you know what I mean.
“Auction?” I prompted when my partner offered no further explanation.
“Are you sure you want to talk to me?” Kaye asked in a small voice. She was a little sensitive. Seemed mighty inconvenient, given her line of work.
“Oh, stop pouting and tell me,” I groused.
Kaye sighed and shook her head. “There’s a magical auction that’s been going on. Most of the stuff is the usual black market fodder. Artifacts, relics, oddities, that sort of thing. But we’ve had a new player surface in the past decade or so. He’s kind of changed the game from the top-down. We’ve never had any luck catching him.”
“Well, what does he sell?” I asked as we drove down a winding mountain road. It was quite peaceful and pretty here, even to a cat.
“Power,” she said flatly.
“Come again?” I turned my attention back to my babysitter.
“Power. You know how if a witch or wizard ignores or tries not to use their power, it actually accumulates and tends to spike to other things?”
Oh, boy, did I know. From what I understood, that was how that Angie had gotten the power to talk to her cat and partially how I’d landed behind bars.
“Yes,” I grumbled as a shiver of regret wracked through me. “I sure do.”
“Well, this guy accumulates his power. If it starts to spike, he fills a talisman with it. Then he lets it build again. This particular talisman we’re after has nearly a decade’s worth of power built up in it.”
I blinked slowly at Kaye, sure I’d heard her wrong. “You’re joking. That’s incredibly dangerous.”
Not only for the magical community as a whole. But for the wizard himself. That talisman would be incredibly volatile and likely to blow a gasket at any moment.
Kaye shrugged. “Apparently he’s risking it. And there have been whispers that there’s about to be another auction, but nothing has come up to let us try to get more info. It’s totally silent now.”
Whoa. “I’m not that kind of criminal,” I said. If I’d had hands, I would’ve held them up in mock surrender. “I didn’t even know the auction thing existed, much less that someone could buy that much power. Heck, even if I had known, I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with that kind of mess.”
Kaye nodded her agreement and turned the car up a gravel drive. “Agreed. Anyway, we’re here. Welcome to our home for the next few days.”
It was a little log cabin ensconced by colorful winding gardens—something straight out of a romance movie.
I sighed and waited for Kaye to open the door.
It looked like a place an elderly couple would go to refresh their romance, not where cops would set up for a stakeout.
Well, at least I would be comfortable when off the clock.