Молли Фитц - Dog-Eared Delinquent

I looked past Moss in a frantic search for some kind of escape route. That was when I realized we had an audience.

Chapter Fourteen

The lair appeared to be a boy’s club. I didn’t spot a single woman among the spectators, although I supposed any of the many cats or dogs could have been female. I sank down in the corner where the two wood walls joined together and tried not to look intimidated by the night’s bizarre turn of events.

After nursing his wounds a bit longer, Octo-Cat slipped out of my arms and began to pace the length of the glass. “Chin up. Don’t let them see you break,” he instructed, almost as if he’d been imprisoned before. I’d definitely be asking about his kittenhood once we were free of this whole mess.

“What happened when you were with Peter?” I asked quietly, hoping nobody else would be able to pick up on our whispered conversation.

“Oh, Angela. It was all my fault.” He turned to me suddenly, immense sorrow reflecting in his normally steady amber gaze. “Everything would have been fine, but on the drive downtown, Peter took a turn really fast and I couldn’t help it. I-I-I-I yowled!”

My cat now blubbered in earnest as if realizing for the first time ever that he wasn’t actually perfect. The poor thing. This entire experience had to be as life-altering for him as it was proving to be for me, perhaps even more.

Octo-Cat tried to keep a stiff upper lip as he continued, but broke down at several points in his story. “He slammed on the brakes and dragged me out by-by-by my scruff, then threw me in the trunk for the rest of the drive. I m-m-made a plan to leap at him and go for the eyes when we stopped, but it wasn’t hi-hi-him that opened the trunk. It was the other him.”

The dog. I still couldn’t believe Peter could change into that pit bull at will. This was the stuff of fairytales, and honestly, it didn’t belong in my picture-perfect little coastal town.

“Did you learn anything good?” I asked as I watched my cat continue to pace back and forth. I hated how worked up he was, but also found myself quite relieved that he was moving and talking like normal again.

“Not until we got here,” Octo-Cat answered with a sigh. “But I’m afraid I was so out of sorts after I c-c-crashed down the stairs that I missed most of it. And…” He sniffed hard, then tried again. “And!”

He broke down into incomprehensible sobs once again. His shoulders heaved with distress as he struggled—and failed—to get the words out.

“It’s okay,” I cooed, tapping my fingers softly on the ground to call him to me. “You can tell me anything. It’s not going to make me love you any less.”

Octo-Cat trotted up to my side, then turned his face away and mumbled. “My new Apple Pet took a lot of the impact and it-it-it... it shattered, Angela!” he finished at last.

“Oh, Octavius,” I said, using his full first name to help remind him of who he was. I hated seeing him so broken up like this. “Please don’t worry about that. In fact, if it makes you feel better, that wasn’t an Apple at all.”

He turned back toward me, his eyes wide now for a different reason—complete and unadulterated horror. “ What?” he demanded.

Oh, no. I was in such a rush to help him that I hadn’t thought about how this particular revelation would impact me. I should have just kept my big mouth shut. I guessed now that the cat was out of the bag, though…

“It wasn’t Apple,” I said again, trapped by the intense scrutiny of his angry gaze. Now I was the one who had a stutter. “Apple Watches n-n-need to be tethered to a phone to work out of range, and I w-wanted you to be safe, so—”

“Angela!” he shouted, then evened his voice out and went into full-fledged lecture mode. I hated lecture mode. It meant that he was too angry to even insult me now. “If you’d gotten me an Apple like I requested, none of this would have happened in the first place.”

“That’s not fair,” I shot back. The way he’d described being discovered by Peter had absolutely nothing to do with any failings of the GPS.

He pressed his ears back flat against his head and stooped toward the ground. “I can’t believe you let me think that I could have been the one to mess things up so royally. How could you let me doubt myself like that?”

I hung my head, properly chastised. “I’m s-sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough, Angela,” he said with a small tutting noise. “If you would’ve followed my very simple, very clear instructions, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

At least as I felt worse, he appeared to feel better and better. Perhaps we’d even each other out. “Fine, it’s all my fault. Happy?”

Octo-Cat shook his head again, slowly this time. “I thought I’d trained you better.”

“You can catch up on my training later,” I promised with a giant, unhappy sigh. “Right now we need to focus on finding a way out of here.”

“Well, that’s easy,” he said with a quick shrug.

I scrambled to my feet. “Great! Then tell me.”

Octo-Cat deadpanned as he revealed, “There isn’t one.”

“Great.” I let myself sink back to the floor before realizing that maybe I shouldn’t just take his word at face value here. “What makes you so sure there’s no way out?”

“Magic,” he answered matter-of-factly.

“I thought you said you couldn’t see magic.”

“I can’t, but I think maybe now I can feel it a bit.” He flexed a paw demonstratively. “Can’t you?”

“Well, I…” I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to see if I felt any different than I had before we’d entered the lair. I gave it a good try, but ultimately came up short. “Yeah… no,” I said pathetically, wondering if my cat’s newfound ability might be all in his head anyway.

Octo-Cat growled and flicked his tail. “Even so, we just saw one human turn into a dog and another into a cat. We saw this place appear out of nowhere and then get an insta-makeover from dirty dungeon to swanky night club. I think it’s safe to say we’re in magical territory now.”

He had a definite point.

“But what do they want with us?” I mumbled, watching Peter as he laughed and joked with a small group of people I’d never seen before.

“I don’t know.” Octo-Cat was back to pacing while Peter paused and looked toward me, victory dancing across his face.

I refused to let him win, especially since I didn’t fully understand the stakes. “How did Peter even find out about me in the first place?”

“I also don’t know that.”

I swallowed hard, then asked the toughest question of all. “Are they going to kill us?”

Octo-Cat paused and looked at me over his shoulder. “Well, they already killed me once, although I don’t think that was intentional.”

“Did you really die back there?”

He nodded grimly. “It was my fifth time.”

“How did you die the other four times?” I asked, having always wondered about this. If we couldn’t break out of our magical prison, then at least we could pass the time learning more about each other’s pasts. It seemed we were always so caught up in our current adventures that we rarely had time to stroll down memory lane side-by-side.

Octo-Cat plopped down, facing me, and I could tell I was in for a good story that would hopefully take my mind off our current predicament. “Well, the first time was at the beach. I—”

One of the glass panels slid to the side with a swish, cutting off what I was sure would be a riveting tale. Perhaps Octo-Cat would be willing to tell it to me later.

The cat version of Moss slipped through the opening, and the moment he’d crossed the barrier, the glass wall slammed shut again.