Page 31 of Catnapped

“How did that get missed?” I crouched and examined the box, discovering some charcoal marks, which had worn away over time and from exposure to the elements. “Oh. Practitioner wards. They’ve finally worn off enough that they’re no longer effective.”

“Are you good enough at practitioner magic to check this over before I open it?”

“I can literally summon the Devil if I really want, Darian. I think I can handle checking over a box.” I examined the cardboard, finding six distinct protective wards, all of which had been smudged in some fashion or another. “Whoever was protecting this box didn’t want anyone to find it. Every side had a different ward on it. They’re too destroyed to see what they were intended to do, but the base outline makes me think they are protective and to prevent people from noticing it.”

“Is it common for somebody to put a ward on every side of the box?”

I shrugged. “Would I do it? No. I’d put it on the top of the box, and if I wanted it to stick, I would have put tape over it to make sure nothing happened to the ward. The person who made the ward is probably a hack.”

Hacks annoyed me. Hacks gave all practitioners a bad name, as the hacks tried to make use of cheap tricks rather than practicing refined control over magic. Runes, symbols, circles, or whatever form of expression the practitioner chose to use could do almost anything, including transform iron into gold.

I’d done the iron into gold experiment a few times, although I’d always reverted the gold back into iron when finished.

Magic had a way of exacting prices for its use, and while I’d successfully performed the transmutation, I didn’t want to find out what the other prices might be involved beyond requiring a ridiculous amount of iron to create even an ounce of gold.

“I take it you dislike hacks.”

I pointed at myself. “Hacks give people like me a bad reputation.”

“Diana, you claim you can summon the Devil. You’re exactly why people are wary around practitioners. They aren’t scared of the hacks. They’re scared of people like you.”

“Just because I can doesn’t mean I will! When I want to summon the Devil, I call him like a sensible being. Now, if he ignores my calls, well, he deserves to be summoned for daring to ignore me.”

“That is not helping your case.”

“Why not? It’s rude to just randomly summon somebody. Call first.”

“That does not change the fact you’re capable of summoning him—and if you can summon him, you can probably summon any divine you want. Sensible people fear someone with that sort of power running around. My mother can’t summon Lucifer. She doesn’t have the skills or aptitude, and frankly, I feel my dad only showed up because he found the situation interesting. Don’t tell my mother that. She’s convinced she forced him to show up.”

“Raguel showed up because he wanted to, didn’t he?”

“That may have happened. Mom is convinced she could force either to stay at her whim. My fathers do not correct her about her misconceptions, although they have warned me against following in her footsteps. They think I’d just chain summon succubi for my depraved enjoyment. I keep reminding them I’m not like them and have zero desire to have multiple partners. Anyway, we keep from correcting my mother because it might encourage her to try harder to summon other devils and angels. Mom can summon lesser demons and devils against their will and cage them, however.”

“That’s still a major accomplishment.” I pointed at the metal box he held. “Do you want me to check that or not?”

He handed the box over, and I ran my finger in some of the dust covering everything and drew a circle on the top of the box, which I sliced in half with a single swipe, concentrating on purifying the exterior of the container and erasing any runes that might be etched inside. Dark shadows engulfed the metal, and when it dissipated, the box shined as though freshly cleaned and left out in the sun. “This should be safe, but I make no promises about the interior.”

“If I drew a circle and then disrupted it, what would happen?”

“Nothing, probably. When I first started, that was a complicated circle I often spent an hour or two drawing and perfecting before I’d disrupt it. Time and practice means I can use simpler runes to accomplish difficult jobs. Summoning circles always remain complicated, as you have to capture the essence of the specific entity you wish to draw into the circle. Lucifer’s summoning circle would take me about eight hours to draw properly, and don’t get me started about the literal headache involved with summoning a higher power like that.”

“That implies you have,” Darian stated, and he took the box to the nearby table, set it down, and flipped it open. “What do we have here? Somebody has been naughty.”

I got to my feet and joined him at the table, wrinkling my nose at the presence of a gun and ammunition in the box, along with several vials containing orange fluid. “The gun doesn’t surprise me all that much, but what’s that stuff?”

“I have no idea, and I’m not brave enough to open it to find out. This will go to the police, although I may get a sample to have tested. I bet my dad could do a damned good job figuring out what it does.”

“And prevent any contagion if it’s a virus sample.” I frowned. “But what does that have to do with my cat? The CDC has extensively tested lycanthropy infections in animals. It just doesn’t happen. A lot of lycanthropes have pets and do shelter work now because the animals can’t contract lycanthropy.”

“Well, it would take a lot of experimentation and observation to see if a strain can take root in an animal. That could explain why the Devil was so confident that Mr. Flooferson would be kept safe. They can’t monitor if he’s been infected or if the infection is taking root if they harm him. And if he is infected, then he would be in a good position to survive testing.”

“But what would he transform into?”

“A human?” Darian shrugged. “It’d be very strange if a cat suddenly started transforming into a wolf. But if the adapted virus could turn animals into humans, then that would definitely be something the divines couldn’t work directly to stop. That’s humanity trying to play at being gods for certain.”

My eyes widened at the thought of my cat, who could be a troublesome little demon on a bad day, having access to hands. “They might end the world, if cats could become human. The entire world would end. There wouldn’t be a need for the End of Days. Cats would take over the world, and they’d have the hands needed to do it. The only reason cats haven’t already taken over the world is due to their lack of opposable thumbs.”

“Take a few deep breaths, Diana.”