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I zipped over to Gramps’s house. He had lived in his old neighborhood for forever. I puttered along the back alleyway and parked in his driveway. Sabrina hopped off the bike and tailed me to the back door. My hand shook, finding it locked. Under a fake rock, I snatched the key.
"Gramps," I cried out. "It's David. You here?"
I scoured the house for him. Darn it. Did he return to work?
"Why don't you call him?" Sabrina asked.
I whipped out my phone and jabbed a few buttons. The phone automatically dialed the number. Ring. Ring. Ring. Right before it went to voice mail, Gramps answered. "Yeah?"
"Gramps. It's David. We found Tom Stevens."
Silence fell over the line. Gramps finally said, "Where are you?"
"Sabrina and I are at your house. Where are you?"
"I'm at your parent’s store."
"Do you want to come to me or me to you?"
"I'll be right there."
We hung up. "He's coming." An awkward silence filled the room. Midnight, slunk into the room, meowing. He rubbed on Sabrina's leg.
"Hey, Midnight." I petted the cat. "How are you doing kitty?"
The cat blinked at me and padded over to his bowl.
“He wants to be fed,” Sabrina translated off-handedly.
I had forgotten she had the ability to communicate with animals. Had Midnight disclosed his real form to her? I opened the refrigerator and pulled out an opened can of tuna, found a clean plate from the cupboard and placed the tuna on it. I presented the cat with the food and replaced his water.
"Your grandfather feeds his cat tuna fish? Wow. He's spoiled."
"You wouldn't believe how spoiled."
The cat swiped at me.
I refrained from telling her Midnight wasn't an ordinary cat but shapeshifted into a Sekhmet, an Egyptian warrior god of Upper Egypt. Many Sekhmet's lived in Olympia undetected during the day as stray cats, and at night they shifted into their human body with a lion head. Both male and female Sekhmet's lived in the area. The agency had relocated the creatures here and many other places in the world, years back when they had been hunted almost to extinction in Egypt.
Midnight resembled a lion rather than a cat, albeit black, with long fuzzy hair on his neck and thinner hair on the rest of his body, and a long tail with a clump of fur at its tip. Gramps tried to keep his mane clipped short, making him semi-normal. He loved to be groomed and petted. He and Gramps had an unusual relationship. Gramps had taken him in when he had gotten hit by a car, shortly after my grandmother had died. He took Midnight to the vet, doctored him up, and nursed him back to health, knowing the cat's real identity. Midnight repaid Gramps with companionship, wisdom, and knowledge. He was wise in spells and how they worked more than Gramps.
Now Gramps and Midnight helped one another. Gramps fed and took care of the cat, while Midnight helped Gramps with cases, giving him information or advice. With Midnight being ancient, he knew everything. He preferred his cat form because to shapeshift into a half human; half cat took a lot of energies to sustain. When he was in human form, he talked as a person, but in cat form I had no idea what he thought or what his meows meant.
I motioned to Sabrina to follow me into the family room where I turned on the television. I slid onto the couch. She sat on the same couch, but a couple of feet away from me. Soon, Midnight came in and curled in a ball on Sabrina's lap. The stupid cat even got closer to her than me. She stroked Midnight. He purred, like an idling car engine.
A heavy silence filled the space between us, so, of course, I broke it. “How weird, huh? I mean, your dad being in the mirror.”
Her eyes started to fill with tears again. Her voice came out shaky. “Do you think you can get him out?”
I swallowed. I had no clue how to answer her because I didn’t know. “My grandfather will know how.” I forced a smile, trying to reassure her.
She pulled out my handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her tears. She handed it to me. “Do you want this back?”
“Uh, why don’t you keep it?”
“What am I going to tell my mother?” A catch caught in her throat.
“Maybe you should tell her the truth.”
She sniffed, nodded, and shoved the handkerchief back in her pocket.
I reached out my hand to touch Sabrina’s.
Midnight swiped at me with one paw.
I jerked my hand back. “Stupid cat.” Midnight smiled. I curled my lip at him.
A few minutes later Gramps roll into the back driveway. The car door shut and he clomped into the house through the back. He tossed his keys. They jangled on the counter. "David."
I pushed off the couch and headed for the kitchen.
When Gramps spotted Sabrina with me, he drew his brows together. "Where'd you find Tom?"
"In a house on Water Street."
Gramps shook and tilted his head as if he hadn't heard me right. "Why’d you go there?"
"It’s a long story.” I waved his question away.
"But Tom was in there?"
"Yes."
Gramps glanced at Sabrina, and then came back to me. "Where is he?"
"We didn’t get him out. He's stuck."
"Stuck? How?"
I grimaced. "He's stuck in a mirror."
Gramps' eyes widened. "What?"
"I don’t know how to get him out, so we left him behind. We nearly got caught ourselves. I’m sorry, Gramps.”
Gramps rubbed the bristles on his chin, making a chafing noise. He sighed. "Do you have any idea whose house it was?"
"No. But two people came in separate cars."
"Did they see you?"
"I don't think so. I didn’t see them.”
"Did you get the plate numbers?"
Darn it. I should have known to get it. I shook my head. "Sorry. We were in such a hurry to get out without being seen, we jumped on my bike and took off."
Gramps nodded. He bit his lower lip in thought.
"What are we going to do? Do you know how to get him out of there?" I didn’t have a clue!
Gramps hesitated. "Yes. Why don't you give me the address? I'll call my boss and see what he wants to do." He scratched his head. "I wish I knew who we were dealing with."
"Who has this kind of ability?" The thought of such dangerous magic made my veins run cold.
Again, Gramps gave thought. "I don't know, but the person has to be an experienced wizard."
"No kidding."
His face relaxed. The worry lines on the eyes and forehead softened. "The main thing is Tom’s alive."
"How long can someone survive in a mirror?" The second I finished my question I regretted it. Why didn’t I keep my big mouth shut?
"Do you think he'll die in the mirror?" Sabrina’s lower lip trembled.
"No. He'll be fine." Gramps patted her shoulder. When she turned away, Gramps tilted his head and widened his eyes at me. He guided her to the door. "Why don't you go home now? David and I have work to do."
"Can't I help?"
He shook his head and sighed.
I followed them. "I'll give you a ride home."
"I don't need one. I live two blocks from here. I'll walk. It’ll do me good. I need time to think."
"Okay."
"Oh, I forgot to give you this David." She handed me a comb with the several strands of hair in it. "It belongs to my father. Remember you wanted me to get you something personal of his?"
I took it from her hand. "Yeah. Thanks." I didn't need it now since we knew where Tom Stevens was, but I took it. I walked her to the back door and opened it for her.
“Let me know what happens.”
“I will.” I waved goodbye to Sabrina and turned back to Gramps.
Gramps muttered into his cell phone. "Yep. Uh huh. No. Okay. Will do." Click.
"What did he say?"
"I asked my boss what he wanted us to do." Gramps pursed his lips, his thick bushy brows coming together.
"And?"
"We're on our own."
I released a derisive laugh. "Figures."
"Yeah. Well, let's go in my lab and figure something out." We wandered into the garage Gramps had turned into a wizard lab. I loved the room’s spaciousness. His lab had jars lined on wooden shelves against one wall. Plus, Gramps had more unusual items, everything from toad gizzards to coffee grounds. He made weird potions, inventing many of them, and they worked!
He perused the shelves, snatching one jar after another and setting them on the wooden table. I claimed a tall stool and thumbed through a super thick spell book that folded open on the table. "So is there a spell in here to get Tom out of the mirror?"
Gramps didn't answer me right away, absorbed in making his concoction. "It's going to take two of us to get him out of there. One will have to open the mirror, and the other will have to pull him out." He shook his head. "Tom won't live much longer in there. The mirror is cold and sucks energy from a person. I didn’t want to say it in front of Sabrina."
I swallowed. "We've got to save him."
He paused. "You care for Sabrina don't you?"
Heat surfaced my face. "Yeah. She's cute."
A lopsided grin formed on Gramps's face. "That's what I said about your grandmother when I first met her."
"Sabrina's not interested in me. She likes Henry. All the girls like Henry. And there's Sam. He has a crush on her." I tapped the page of the book with my finger, not reading the words.
"Your grandmother had a lot of men chasing her, but I won out."
"That must have been one powerful love potion you made," I grinned.
He shook his finger an inch from my nose. "You think you're funny, don't you?" He smiled. "Nope. Never used any potion or spell on your grandmother. Just pure, honest love. I stuck it out through thick and thin. The others didn't. I showed her what I was made of, but it took time."
"I think to get Sabrina to notice me it'll take all of this lifetime and half of my next." I might have been sarcastic, but there was truth in my words.
"How old are you?" Gramps asked.
"Sixteen."
"And she?"
"Fifteen."
"Awe." He huffed. "You've got your whole life to snag this girl. What's the rush?"
"She's not a salmon, Gramps. You don't snag a girl."
"So what's the saying you young kids use today?"
"Hook up."
He scrunched his face. "I guess that's still fishing isn't it?"
I laughed, realizing he didn't understand what it meant. "I suppose so."
I changed the subject. "So what'd you pull out?"
"Herbs for removing hexes."
"Do you think this is a hex rather than a spell?"
"Yep."
"What's the difference?"
"Not much. Hexes use more herbs versus spells and more candles, powders, salts, you know. But I intend for us to use a double whammy of both."
"Okay."
Gramps laid his hands on the lids of the jars.
"Whatcha thinking?"
"I'm trying to figure out what to use on the glass to open the mirror and erase the layer of magic on it. I thought about using Windex, but it just cleans glass."
I gave it thought, and snapped my fingers and pointed my index finger at him. "I've got it."
"What?"
"Etching glass cream."
Gramps tilted his head and pulled the sides of his mouth back.
"Remember? Mom used it to put names on our glasses for Thanksgiving because we mixed our drinks."
Gramps rubbed his chin. "Oh, yeah. It was Thanksgiving, and Henry gulped down my rum and coke and got drunk."
"Yeah."
Gramps chuckled. "So where do we get this glass etching cream?"
"At the craft store. I'll run over there on my motorbike. There’s one not far from here."
"Okay."
I strode to the door and halted, turning back. "I'll need some money."
Gramps dug into his pocket and handed me a ten. "Will that do?"
"I think so." I had a couple of dollars on me, but I needed it for gas. I zipped over to the store and parked my bike in an out of the way parking spot. Once inside, I got directions, and I found the cream. I bought the smallest container they had, which the ten bucks covered.
When I returned to Gramps house, he had the potion almost finished. I set the jar on the table by him. "So what's in there?"
"Herbs for removing hexes, including bamboo, chili pepper, huckleberry and hydrangea, squill, toadflax, and vetiver. I got some of them out of my garden. I added Tom's hair and a four leaf clover for luck."
"What did you use as a base?"
"Vinegar."
I nodded. All potions needed a liquid base, something to bond them together and infuse the magic into the herb, substance, or item. The ingredients were linked to the person’s senses; sight, smell, touch, taste, and hearing, something physical.
Gramps moved with ease, combining the right number of ingredients, placing them in a pan. He heated them until they boiled. Next came the good stuff. He drew in his magical energy with a deep breath, releasing it into the potion. It glowed with Gramps’s translucent purplish-blue power, a color he had developed over time from years of working with white magic. I had a long way to go and a lot to learn before mine reached his color.
Gramps turned the burner to a simmer, and he started another formula.
Wanting to help, I retrieved a spray bottle and handed it to him. Once the potion simmered and cooled, he poured it into the bottle.
"What are you making now?" I asked.
"A potion to make us invisible."
I didn't need to ask why. We needed to get back into the house undetected tonight. One hurdle down and one to go: Getting Tom freed and us out of the house alive!
