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Next came the old guy in the suit. “You’ve removed me from a very important procession, I’ll have you know.”
“It will wait,” his cat boss snarled. “What we have now affects the entire region across all departments.”
The old guy blinked hard and his mouth hung slightly agape. “All?”
Fluffikins nodded solemnly as two more liaisons fell from the sky and took their rightful seats. “Now let’s begin.”
“Wait? Where’s Parker?” I choked out as I searched the sky for his familiar form. “Why isn’t he here yet?”
“If he is able, then he will come,” Greta said from the seat beside me, reaching under the table to squeeze my hand.
If? But hadn’t Fluffikins said attendance was required? Did Greta mean he might already be dead or incapacitated?
I clung tight to her hand, needing whatever small comfort I could find there.
“Beginning now.” Fluffikins began to pace up and down the table once again. This time like a general. “First let me say, I’m sorry to have acted without the full board’s knowledge, especially now that I see my quick action did not have a positive effect on the outcome.”
He paused, but nobody spoke to fill the silence. We all waited.
“Lila Haberdash was compromised,” the cat revealed. “And so she requested that I organize her death so that we could control the passage of the town’s magic to its next host.”
Gasps rose up around the room. Only Greta beside me did not react. She already knew, I realized then. She knew everything, all of it. And she clearly disagreed, at least with my involvement in the fallout. Not because she didn’t like me, but because she wanted to protect me. My first impression of her had been completely wrong.
“How was she compromised?” the old guy asked.
Fluffikins stopped and raised a paw to his forehead as if in pain. “Lila’s grandniece, Melony Haberdash, manipulated her grandfather into revealing the family’s magical legacy, including how power was passed from one heir to the next.”
“So she was going to kill Mrs. Haberdash,” I supplied.
“Yes, Lila certainly thought so. Magic isn’t meant to be revealed until the preparations for a transfer are nearly complete, precisely to prevent this kind of thing from happening. But Lila’s brother, Melony’s grandfather, always resented that the magic had skipped him as the first born and gone to his sister. My guess is Melony didn’t have to press too hard to gain the information she sought.”
“I warned you,” the old guy said with a sad shake of his head. “Lila was a great asset to this town, but she didn’t come from good stock. That brother of hers never recovered from losing out on the position, even though he wasn’t even suited to it in the first place. Now he’s sending his heirs two generations down to cause trouble? We should have taken him out years ago when he first started causing trouble.”
“Lila never wanted harm to come to her family. I think a small part of her always hoped they could reconcile,” Greta answered. “It was only right to respect her wishes.”
“Lila was one of the good ones,” Fluffikins agreed. “Unfortunately, her family took advantage of her kind heart.”
“What’s Melony going to do now? And how do we know she’s acting alone? If her grandfather started this, couldn’t he still be in on it?” I asked aloud. On the inside I still yearned for Parker. What if Melony had already gotten to him? What if I never saw him again?
“We don’t know what the plan is, only that it needs to be stopped,” Greta explained softly, still holding tight to my hand.
“Well, where is she? Can’t we lock her up in a magical prison and throw away the key? We’ve got to do something!”
“It’s not that simple,” the cat argued.
“Magic always comes to a violent end,” Greta said, echoing the same warning she’d given me earlier.
“Then why would you put Parker at risk like this? If you knew Melony was coming for Lila, shouldn’t you have all known that she would come for him when she realized what had happened?” A mass of rage began to form in my gut. They’d knowingly endangered Parker. It wasn’t right.
Fluffikins sighed. “We didn’t have as much time as we’d hoped. Ultimately, Barnes volunteered to pick up the mantle because he didn’t want to risk Greta in his place.”
She squeezed my hand under the table. “He said the worst thing that could happen would be to compromise our schools. If we want a better world, then we need to guard the future like the treasure it is.”
No
wonder I liked the guy. He was handsome, brave, and loved kids. If I wasn’t such a pessimist about love, I may have succumbed to the crush that was threatening to overtake my heart. Instead I swallowed down all the many things I was feeling in that moment and asked the one thing that mattered most. “How do we stop Melony?”
I decided then and there that I would help in whatever way I could. Whether it was to protect Parker or to avenge him, I was fully in.
