Murder, Magic, and Moggies

  Murder, Magic, and Moggies

  Pearl Goodfellow

  Copyright © 2018 by Pearl Goodfellow

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  This is for all wannabe magicians and witches out there. For the souls who believe that magic exists, and who find ways to use it to improve their lives and of those around them.

  Magic is everywhere. Most of us have simply forgotten.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Author’s Note

  1. Murder on the MEOWntain

  2. A Charitable DIEnation

  3. Bohemian RhapsoDIE

  4. Dead. Naturally.

  A sneak peek of book 5: A Sense of FURboding ….

  Foreword

  Dear readers,

  I’ve crafted this series so that you can read each offering as a stand-alone. However, because I truly love the world of Hattie Jenkins & The Infiniti, I have also created a back-story that will build throughout the series, along with deeper character developments, more in-depth world building, and evolving romantic relationships.

  For this reason, it would be my recommendation that you read the series in the order they’re written. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on some read-worthy background story arc. If you do jump about the series in no particular order, I’m convinced you will still thoroughly enjoy the ride, and dare I say, you might want to know more about this zany, spirited world.

  I’ve never had so much fun writing before, and I have formed a deep and every lasting relationship with my characters, I swear. I wish they were my friends in real life! :)

  Pearl

  Author’s Note

  Please be aware, if you already own “The Infiniti Investigates” then you already own this book.

  The series has gone under a cosmetic overhaul, but the content remains the same; by that I mean the cats are still their adorable selves.

  If you download this pimped up version in error please contact Amazon for a refund.

  To all new readers of the Infiniti, Enjoy!

  Pearl

  Murder on the MEOWntain

  Even before I found the body I was dreading the trip up to the Gorth Spires. Not that I had a really hard time getting there. Grandma Chimera’s old broom had been in the family for three centuries, but the old besom was just as steady as when my great-grandmothers used her for a ride across the night sky.

  Still, some were less convinced than others as to the broom’s integrity. Like my cat, Fraidy.

  “Are you sure this thing won’t fall apart?” Fraidy asked from his riding spot on the straw, his whiny voice cutting through the air flying past us like a buzz saw through Mainland imitation wood. The trees beneath our feet zipped along as if we were passengers on a mini-jetpack.

  “Fraidy, bro,” my other accompanying cat, Shade, admonished while he clutched the straw right alongside his less courageous sibling. “How are you ever going to earn another name if you can’t handle a simple broom ride?”

  “But, I’m just saying,” Fraidy replied, as my broom tilted upward toward the mountain. “What if something happens?”

  “Here’s what’s likely going to happen,” I said, finally losing patience. “I’m going to land on Nebula Dreddock’s ridiculous eyesore of a helipad in a few minutes. She is going to imperiously summon us into her presence. She’s then going to waste a lot of our time complaining about how an actress her age—who, by the way, still looks like she’s twenty and who also has a hit play—has it so hard. When she’s done enough complaining, she’s going to make us hump these supplies to her dressing room; we get paid, and we can go home. So please…let me have a few last moments of peace before I have to deal with another effort at world-championship whining, okay?!”

  I love all of my eight cats dearly, but this was one of those days. Of course, it wasn’t until shortly after that conversation that I realized just how much of one of those days it was.

  Like the true prima donna she was, Nebula’s mansion — more like a castle -- was situated close to the top of the Spires. The only reasons she hadn’t decided to rest it firmly at the apex was because the oxygen was too thin that high, and she was too cheap to either fix the air or take off that much rock. But Giddy Heights was still the loftiest residence in the area and the only house on the whole expanse of the Spires. Nebula indeed held the pride of place here. From the gardens of her mansion, sweeping views of the Gorthland Humps, and the Gorthland Swamps were visible below.

  Nebula’s private helicopter squatted in its usual spot as I took the broom over the lip of the helipad. But, something was wrong. I could feel it the moment I set my transport down on the pad proper.

  What got my attention were the lights. Usually, when I came to make a delivery here, the whole mansion was lit up like Nebula was throwing a party for every major Tinseltown celebrity from the Mainland. But this time, the house sat, dark and hunched, like a warty toad. I shivered involuntarily. If I were an Unawakened, I’d have chalked this absence of light up to something innocent, like the power being out or Nebula having a splitting headache.

  But I am a witch from a long line of conjurers; much as I sometimes wish I wasn’t. My point is, we know trouble when we feel it.

  I glanced down at Fraidy, who was a trembling ball of black fur at my feet. No surprises there.

  “What was that about everything going the way it was supposed to?” he asked, his eyes wide and pleading.

  Shade, on the other hand, just ran straight for the door, which was, for whatever reason, slightly ajar.

  “Hey!” I called out.

  “Chillax, Boss,” Shade chuckled. “Just going to do a little recon before you head in.”

  The second he touched the shadows, my cock-sure tomcat vanished from sight. It’s a pretty easy trick, considering that his body is a sheer black like all the rest of his siblings, including Fraidy. Well, if he thought I was going to just stand there frozen, while he got to do all the investigating, he could think again. I felt a familiar tug of excitement in my stomach.

  “What are you doing, Hattie?” Fraidy asked when I reached for the delivery pouch from the basket on my broom. “Shade said—“

  “And I’m saying that I’ve got a delivery to make and a schedule to keep,” I responded, still feeling a little impatient with his fearful act. “You want to stay with the broom; that’s up to you.”

  I then shook him off my leg, so I could walk unimpeded. Having a complaining, dangling cat attached to your body is tiring, trust me.

  Fraidy gave a muffled whine of despair as he darted after me, and into the home of the immensely wealthy, and fabulously famous, Nebula Dreddock.

  Maybe it’s because I was raised by a very traditional witch. Or, perhaps it’s because I’ve never been so rich that my taste was compromised so drastically, but, I’d always considered Nebula’s house to be outlandishly vulgar. Gaudy artifacts and trophies from both the Mainland and parts unknown, hung helter-skelter from the walls, or even more in-your-face, laid out in elaborate arrays of humongous display cases. Hideous color schemes incorporating deep purples, fuchsia, pastels and other less identifiable colors covered every inch of the place but the floors, which were a mercifully simple teakwood. Rugs made out of every known predator in the world, curtains of rich brocades, silk pillows, velvet chairs, and various tubing systems of neon lighting rounded out the overpowering, decorative package. The whole place looked like a cross between a Vegas penthouse and t
he inside of an LSD casualty’s head. If anything, all the lights being off made the place less offensive to the eye.

  “Psst!” Shade hissed from the kitchen door just as Fraidy and I approached.

  My eyes pierced the darkness of the kitchen trying to locate my wandering kitty. Thankfully, Shade turned his eyes on. Golden orbs appeared in the dusk as Shade flashed us his sunbeam eyes.

  “What’d you find, Shade?” I asked, doing my best to ignore the shooting pain in my leg.

  “The cook,” he said. “Check her … er … it .. out.”

  “Oh no, the cook’s dead, isn’t she?” Fraidy asked, his head abruptly turning in the opposite direction from Nebula’s servant, as he dangled from my pant leg.

  “The cook’s a golem, silly,” I said. “An anthropomorphic being created from inanimate matter. This one’s been fashioned from clay,” I said, rubbing a finger gently across the cook’s forehead. “They don’t die that easy. And, will you please let go of my leg now?” Fraidy reluctantly retracted his claws, and now stood quivering on the floor, one paw firmly planted on my foot. His need to be close to me couldn’t be argued with.

  “Oh no, you mean something that could kill a golem was here?” Fraidy enquired of his less fearful brother.

  I gritted my teeth. No point trying to talk him down, it would take mere seconds for the screwed-up logic in his head to find a new reason to be afraid. Still, I had a case of the jitters myself. You didn’t have to be Einstein to know that something was definitely amiss at the Dreddock residence.

  The cook looked like a sturdy-looking woman in her mid-to-late thirties, standing stock-still over a pot of water which was now boiling over. A rocketing droplet of the hot liquid landed on Fraidy, causing him to finally step off my foot and scarper at full speed to the nearest corner.

  “Shade, can you—” I began, as I moved the pot off the eye and turned off the stove.

  “Not that many places in here to hide, boss lady,” Shade assured me. “Say, any reason why a clay pot like this would be wearing perfume?”

  “Perfume?” I asked, pushing back the hair on her forehead.

  “Well, I’m not sure what it is exactly,” Shade admitted. “But she smells a little bit like lilac. Or is it lavender? I always confuse the two,” my good natured tom answered, scratching his head.

  I waved Shade’s confusion aside as I inspected the golem cook's forehead.

  Golems weren’t human, but until the Mainland got around to producing realistic AI robots, golems were the finest imitations of any person in existence today. A product of Cabalistic tradition, they are generally clay beings, given life by magic first perfected by rabbis of times past. But if this was a traditional model, this particular golem had a weak spot that had likely been exploited. And, almost certainly very recently if the boiling pot of water was anything to go by.

  My eyes caught an anomaly on the cook’s head, and I leaned in for a closer look. Just as I thought, the magical writing which had, up until now, kept the golem operational had been defaced. In place of the Hebrew characters for the word “emet” (‘truth,’) somebody had removed the first letter to create the word ‘met’ (‘death.’) Not that I was about to share this fact with Fraidy.

  “So…she’s dead?” Fraidy called out from his unseen hiding place.

  “No, Fraidy, just the golem equivalent of unconscious,” I told my cowardly cat as I let go of the golem’s hair. “All we have to do is replace the missing letter, and she’ll be fine.”

  “So, where’s the lady of the house while we’re doing our prowling thing?” Shade asked, his tone turning grave.

  It was a fair question. On a hunch, I decided to go to her bedroom/dressing room as first port of call. As vain a woman as Nebula was, it would be the first place I’d have expected to find her.

  And, that’s where we did find her, but not in any condition to receive us. Nebula was sitting in front of her three mirror vanity, her usual array of cosmetics scattered across the surface. She had a death rictus on her face as she slumped backward in her chair, like a lifeless rag doll. No movement came from Dreddock’s chest, no rising and falling of the breast cavity to indicate that she was breathing.

  The room we now occupied lay toward the back of the mansion, so we weren’t able to see the blazing lights from this chamber as we flew in.

  I sensed a ‘closeness.’ I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I felt that terrible things had happened in here, and the residual vibrations of those shadowy events still hung, like slithering energetic tendrils in the air.

  A chill, so bone-deep, snaked down my spine and filled me with a sense of disquiet that I hadn’t experienced since I lost both of my parents.

  We surveyed the scene wordlessly.

  Nebula’s porcelain skin seemed a shade paler in death; a side effect from the years of Wraithsgourd treatments she’d been taking since well before I became her supplier of choice. A deep scratch, almost like a claw mark, lined the actress’ exposed arm. The tiny drops of blood that marked the end of the scratch had barely dried, the deep red driblets still glistening in the glare of lights.

  I turned my attention to Nebula’s head. I could spot the gray roots of her dyed black hair; the one organic detail Wraithsgourd could do nothing to hide. Her almost solid black irises stared up at the ceiling as if she’d just discovered the secrets of the universe. Her perfectly manicured hands hung limply at her side, the nails only partially painted. I spotted the nail polish bottle and brush upended on the plush rug, under Nebula’s chair.

  Shade jumped up on the dresser, tiptoeing like a feline ballerina so as not to disturb the crime scene. His head moved in a careful arc from left to right so he could absorb the clues.

  My confident tom put a paw up to his chin, and hummed, “Hey, Hattie, you remember that Scrye spell Onyx wanted you to practice last week?”

  I gave my cat a look. “You’re dancing on quicksand, buddy. Don’t tango to that beat too long.”

  Yeah, I’m a witch. Yeah, I do a few things on a daily basis to make my life easier; like make my flying broom look like a bird whenever I’m in the air. But I mostly stick to my herbs — which also happen to be my full-time job — for a reason.

  “Just saying, boss,” Shade said patiently. “I think it’d be a good idea to try that one now.”

  “Why you g-gotta make her s-see something horrible at a time like this?” Fraidy moaned from the doorway.

  “C’mon, brother,” Shade retorted, holding his arms out. “You know why. This chick’s a witch-in-denial; a denouncer.” He said, stabbing a paw in my direction. “We need her to pick up the mantel and return to her calling.”

  Denouncer. Gloom had got at him, then? Gloom was my one and only female kitty, and clearly she had been sharing her views on me with her brothers. I made a note to have a word with the grumpiest of my kitties when I returned home.

  Fraidy and Shade bickered about the merits of using magic while I examined the vanity mirrors before me. Having three reflective surfaces around the scene would make the spell easier, I’ll admit. But still…I knew that the Scrye spell wouldn’t turn up anything pretty. Mentally drowning out the feline debate, I drew a breath, made a pentagram with my finger in front of the mirror and said, “Tsap, wohs tahw sah emoc erofeb.”

  My vision whited out…

  I was sitting in front of the vanity. Well, it wasn’t ME exactly, but rather, Nebula Dreddock’s reflection I saw in the mirror. She/me was patting at our cheeks, applying our daily layers of expensive cosmetics. I was an invisible passenger inside Nebula’s image. In her skin, yes, but, just along for the ride.

  I watched as I lifted Nebula’s hands to our hair, and fussed with our bangs. We were humming a tune that took me a few seconds to recognize. It was a tune from “Fallen Angel,” the musical Nebula had been headlining since she came back to the Coven Isles about two months ago. The play was making the rounds on all the civilized portions of the islands, which gave her an excuse to stay here;
her original home before she became famous and left for the bright lights of the Mainland. The house at the top of the Gorth Spires; Giddy Heights.

  I felt a sense of unease as we commenced painting our nails. At first, I thought it was just in anticipation of what I knew was coming. Then I realized that our skin was starting to burn. Faster than a sports car can go from zero to sixty, the pain under our skin went from dull to sharp, making us look away from the mirrors and drop the nail supplies. We started clawing at our skin in a vain attempt to get the pain out. The scratching was all for nothing; the fiery pain remained constant, no matter how much counter-input our nails gave. I could feel a scream try to bubble up from our throat as we slumped backward in our chair. Our vision blurred, fading to a misty gray fog, when a figure appeared just at the edge of the scene. The Scrye spell wavered, and obscured the event enough so that I couldn’t make out any features on our mysterious visitor.

  The best view I got of the intruder was a vague outline buried deep in folds of bland gray or beige fabric.

  I came out of the vision with a sharp jolt. I breathed in deeply to confirm that I was actually more alive than the corpse I’d just been sightseeing with.

  “See, Fraidy?” Shade said with his usual confidence. “Boss lady came out of that just fine.”

  “Fine?!” Fraidy shrieked from the door. “I’m surprised her head didn’t do a three-sixty degree turn from that … that … p-posession!”

  “Sweetie, I’m fine,” I coaxed as I drew the pentagram in reverse to formally close out the spell.

  Fraidy gave out another frightened whimper. “We really need to find a phone.”