Despite what I’d been expecting, the inside of this place did not match the outside. I’d expected floral prints and soft pastels. Maybe even a heart-shaped bed, but that’s not what we got.
Noting my confusion, Kaye explained, “In this area, there’s a lot of vacation cabins and rentals. So, this place, to blend in, needs to look like a vacation home.”
She spread her arms around the inside. “At least from the outside.”
The living room area had a single worn sofa, sitting beside a lone coffee table.
“No boob tube?” I asked, realizing in horror that we lacked any form of recreation in here.
“No reception,” she said. “No electricity unless we power up the generator.”
Well, that was unfortunate.
“We’re powering it up, right? Nobody told me anything about roughing it.” I sat back and glared at my court-mandated babysitter.
“I suppose we can,” she said. Waving her hand twice, then nodding once when the lights came on, Kaye clicked her tongue. “There. Happy?”
That might’ve been the first time I’d seen her use magic. I’d started to suspect she didn’t have any before this little display. “A magical generator?”
“Of course. What did you expect?” She rolled her suitcase through to the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” I said as I followed. “I haven’t seen you doing much magic. I thought maybe that was on purpose.”
“Nah.” She ignored me for a bit as she inspected the contents of the cabinets, then held up a package and smiled conspiratorially. “MREs. Not too bad. Have you had them?”
I twitched my tail, which felt like the cat equivalent of shrugging. “No, but it’s not cat food, so I’m in.”
“True.” She put the package back. “I’m no rogue black market wizard, but I do like to let my magic build up. I try not to use it until I need it or until I get that itchy feeling between my shoulder blades.”
I understood. I wasn’t a wizard, not really. I had the power to cast glamor, but that was my only magical power. Technically, I was a shifter. But still, if I didn’t shift or play with my glamor magic every few days, I got itchy, like I’d rolled around in freshly mown grass and hadn’t showered yet.
“Well, now what?” I asked.
She plopped down at the kitchen table. “Now we hang out here for tonight, then we go pretend to be tourists tomorrow.”
And that was exactly what we did. Kaye took a magically warmed bath and read a book while I explored the terrain outside. It turned out the woods in the evening held a lot of wonders for a cat’s imagination, even a semi-cat like me. All in all, not a bad way to spend the evening.
Bright and early the next morning, we loaded into the rental and followed the directions to the place Kaye had learned about on some social media post bragging about having seen the real Bigfoot. Sure enough, within a half hour, we pulled into a large gravel parking lot deep in the woods.
“Fresh gravel,” I called back in the open car window. For the last quarter mile or so, I’d ridden with my face out of the car, sniffing. “Put down within the last week.”
It would’ve been cool to know how a cat would know that, but I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.
“So, he either had it specially laid, or he magicked it here,” Kaye mused. She parked and closed her eyes. “I think magicked. It feels like a blanket in the area.”
I agreed with that assessment. I couldn’t use magic in my current condition, but I definitely felt it. “Okay,” Kaye said. “I’m going to try to get a ticket to the tour. You skulk around and see if you can figure out what’s going on.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t get too close?” I asked.
Kaye winked. “You know how I’ve been saving up my magic? I put a cloak on myself. I’ll feel just like a human to them.”
Twitching my tail, I hopped out of the car window. “You’re the boss,” I said.
“Stay close,” she hissed after me. “I don’t trust you that much yet.”
I stuck out my rough little tongue at her, then trotted toward the woods surrounding the gravel. Hurrying, I circled the lot and drew close to the ticket booth. It smelled like sawdust and also like something burned. This thing was freshly built, too. Keeping one eye on the booth, I stayed close to the bushes and underbrush as I approached the path leading off the back of the booth.
Kaye was fourth in line when suddenly a thump came from inside the booth. “No more tours today!” a gruff male voice yelled from inside. “This is the last one!”
Kaye recoiled, and her eyes darted toward the forest, landing on me quickly. Maybe I wasn't as hidden as I’d thought. Geez. It wasn’t exactly easy to blend in the woods with almost-white fur.
“Come back tomorrow,” he called. I watched as the man from the file folder walked down the path with a couple of sightseers who had already claimed their tickets.
Kaye moved to follow, but the man held up a hand. A buzz of magic filled the air. I didn’t know what he’d done but whatever it was stopped Kaye in her tracks.
Her gaze found me again, then she jerked her head hard toward the car. She wanted to leave? What in the world?
“Let’s go,” she said with a nod when I trotted up to her on the other side of the car, out of eyeshot of the man. He was gone down the path, but just in case.
Kaye scooped me up.
“Wait,” I protested. “Why don’t you let me go look?”
“I spooked him,” she said in a low voice. “It would be dangerous to try now, and because I tried that cloak my magic isn’t as strong as it should be for something like this. I made a mistake.”
“He can’t sense me as a magic user, can he?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, the magic on you is strong, there’s no way he’d know you’re not just a cat.”
“So let me go.”
Kaye plunked me down in the passenger seat. “I don’t trust you not to take off.”
When we were about halfway back to the safe house, I remembered my microchip. “What was the point of sticking a chip in me, plus this fancy collar, if you’re not going to let me try to actually help with this case? I’d like to get this thing over and done with, so that we can go back to your place and relax.”
Kaye snorted. “If that’s what you want. Okay, fine. Now’s as good a time as any to prove yourself.” She pulled over to the shoulder of the road and turned the car around. “Let’s get back. I’ll park way down the road, and you can go in.”
“That’s more like it,” I muttered, a huge smile stretching between my whiskers. “Let’s do this.”