Молли Фитц - Kitty Confidential

And I felt just awful for her. “I heard. My condolences. You, uh, weren’t close, were you?”

She stared at me for a moment as if she hadn’t heard the question. Her dangling earrings were so long, they hit her cheeks as she shook her head. “Ethel was Richard’s great aunt. She was very old and had been sick for a long time. I think we were all expecting her to go sooner rather than later.”

“Still, that sucks,” I offered.

Diane gave me a polite smile then excused herself.

Seriously? The best I could come up with was that sucks? Good thing none of my degrees were in counseling. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to go back to school. After all, school had always been my happy place. That was part of how I’d ended up with so many degrees to begin with.

I returned with a full carafe of water and a bag of coffee grounds that had expired some time last year but thankfully still smelled fresh. During my very brief absence, the meeting room had filled with even more folks. The Fultons must have been one big family. Either that, or Great Aunt Ethel had been one wealthy--and presumably generous—woman.

Mr. Fulton looked to me with one eyebrow raised in question.

“Almost ready,” I assured him as I rushed past the room of people to my quiet, little coffeemaker corner.

Quick as I could, I filled up the tank with my freshly gotten water, scooped some grounds into the filter, and pressed the big red button to initiate the brewing process.

Nothing happened

So I pushed it again… and again… and another thirteen times to no effect.

“Plugging it in would help,” Bethany shouted loud enough for everyone to hear and causing them all to laugh at me and my well-meaning incompetence.

Ugh, talk about wicked embarrassing!

I groped around the back of the machine until I found the cord. Everyone was still laughing when I pushed the plug into the closest socket…

First I felt a gentle prick on my fingertips, then my entire body lit with pain. For about two milliseconds, I became hyper-conscious of my surroundings—every smell, sound, feeling, even what the air in that room tasted like just then. The individual laughs transformed into a collective gasp that tore through the room.

Then with a sharp zzzzztt it all fell away.

And I fell unconscious to the floor.

CHAPTER TWO

Iwoke up on the conference room floor. Funny, I couldn’t remember passing out, yet there I was.

My heart womped a million miles an hour, but most of my body had become fuzzy and tingly. I tried to move my arms, but they seemed content to lay splayed out at my sides. One by one, my senses started to come back online.

Pop!

Mrs. Fulton’s shriek was the first thing I heard, then others in the room began to murmur amongst themselves. Some voices I recognized, but others were completely unfamiliar.

Bethany said, “It’s probably time we threw that old thing out.”

Mr. Fulton ignored her as he rushed toward me. “Angie… Angie…” His panicked voice grew closer until he’d arrived right at my side. “Are you okay?”

Meanwhile, Mr. Thompson mumbled something about liabilities and workman’s compensation—exactly as anyone who knew him would expect him to do in such a situation.

I was still trying to remember what had happened when an unexpected weight pressed down onto my chest and made it quite difficult for me to breathe. The overpowering smell of tuna filled my nostrils, and the sudden intensity of it brought on a coughing fit.

A voice I’d never heard before hovered over me. “Well, how about that? This one had more than one life, after all. People, pssh. So fragile.”

“Oh, she’s breathing!” Diane shouted.

“Of course she’s breathing, honey,” her husband responded with a note of relief in his previously panicked voice. “She’s also coughing.”

“And here I thought the car trip wouldn’t be worth it,” that same unfamiliar voice chimed in, pairing the words with an unkind chuckle. “That was, paws down, the best entertainment I’ve had all week.”

Finally, my eyes flew open, and I found a gleaming amber gaze watching me from just a few inches away. Wait… Why was there a cat in the office, and why was it on me? I struggled to sit up, but my limbs were still too heavy to lift on my own.

“Oh, honey,” that voice drawled again. “If you expect to keep walking, then you probably should have landed on your feet.”

I let out a loud groan. I could feel the activity humming all around me, but the only thing I saw was the danged cat who was definitely intruding in my personal space right about then.

“What happened?” I asked before coughing again.

“I think the coffeemaker electrocuted you when you tried to plug it in,” Diane revealed. Her shaky voice made it obvious she’d been crying. I felt so bad that my clumsiness put her through that.

“Oh, jeez. This one’s even stupider than the first. I’m really looking forward to living with her while the rest of the family figures out where to dump me. Such a pity. They don’t know greatness when it’s staring them in the face.”

I moaned and attempted to lift my head to get a better look around the room. “Who is that?” I demanded.

“It’s me, Angie,” Mrs. Fulton said, squeezing one of my hands in earnest. “You asked what happened, and I told you about the coffeemaker.”

“No, the guy who just called both of us stupid.” I wished I could sit up to see past this annoying cat, but he was the only thing that filled my vision in that moment. Of course, I had lots of questions about the coffeemaker and how such a tiny old appliance had managed to zap me unconscious, but the need to identify the unknown speaker weighed on me much more heavily.

A cruel snicker sounded nearby. “I called you stupid, because you are stupid. Honesty is the best policy, the truth will set you free, yada yada, and all that other nonsense you humans like to say.”

If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have sworn that strange, lilting voice was coming from the cat. Man, how hard had I hit my head when I fell?

The cat leaned in so close that his whiskers tickled my face. His unnervingly large eyes moved frantically from side to side as if stalking some kind of prey. Oh, how I hoped I wasn’t that prey. I’d barely escaped the coffeemaker. If something sentient set out to hurt me today, I wouldn’t even stand a chance.

“Did you… Did you really hear what I said?” the voice asked again, and again it really sounded like it was coming from the cat. Did he eat a tiny human or something? None of this made any sense.

“Yes, I hear you, and I think you’re rather mean,” I answered with a huff, giving the best attitude I could, considering my prone position.

“Angie, who are you talking to?” Diane asked with words that sounded unsure and just as worried as I felt myself.

“I’m not sure who it is, but he keeps insulting me.” I closed my eyes tight, then slowly opened them again.

The cat seemed to smile, but not in a friendly way. Once again, I wondered if he considered me easy prey. Heck, I considered me easy prey, too.

“No one’s insulting you,” Mr. Fulton insisted. “We all just want to make sure you’re okay.”

The cat smiled again, bigger this time. “Ooh, ooh, me! I’m insulting you, you big, stupid bag of skin.”

“He just called me a big, stupid flesh bag. Can you really not hear him?” I blinked half a dozen times, then pinched myself. Nothing seemed to change.

“Russo, I think maybe you should take the rest of the day off and a trip to the emergency room,” Mr. Thompson commanded after clearing his throat loudly from somewhere near the door.