upload

“I ate it!” Merlin finished with wide eyes. “I’m not usually a fan of dark magic meat, but a meal is a meal. And I had to get rid of it somehow. At least this way we know he won’t be coming back.”

I shuddered at the thought of the mangled carcass stirring in my cat’s stomach.Yuck, yuck, yuck.

“But who would send a zombie after us, and why?” Luna asked, concern reflecting in her wide blue eyes.

“Surely you’ve noticed we collect enemies like they’re going out of fashion,” Merlin teased. “Granted, things have been suspiciously quiet for the last few weeks.”

“Hang on. There’s someone else we should be asking these questions,” I murmured, then marched up and down the hallway, banging on the walls. “I know you’re in there!” I shouted. “Come out. We need to talk to you!”

It didn’t take long for one very angry ghost to phase through the wall and regard me with an icy glare.

If looks could kill… Actually I think our resident ghost was hoping her sour expressionwould render me dead, but she was completely powerless and also bound to our house.

Virginia spent most of her time inside the walls, the only real place she could get any privacy. At first she’d enjoyed popping in and out of rooms and trying to spook us, but the less we reacted to her jump-scares, the more she’d voluntarily begun to fade into the background.

Still, the former evil henchwoman might know something about our new zombie master foe. And anyway, it never hurt to check.

“Why did a zombie attack us today?” I demanded as she bobbed before me, nearly translucent from her lack of magical energy.

“Is that what all the fuss was about?” she asked drolly. “And no one thought to wake me? I love seeing you three get your derrieres handed to you.” Virginia was too classy to talk about butts in English, clearly.

I rolled my eyes at her. Half the time our elderly ghost reminded me of a sassy teenager—and that was when she wasn’t trying to kill us somehow, someway. I had to hand it to her. She didn’t give up easily.

“Had I known a zombie was coming, I’d have done what I could to help,” she added with ahumph.

“Funny, I’m pretty sure you don’t speak bird.” Luna growled and crouched low as she faced Virginia.

“Nor do you,dear,” the ghost said, mocking her former master’s affectation.

“You’ve been spying on us,” I countered. It wasn’t a question.

Virginia shrugged.“Remember, you’re the one who made it so that I can’t leave this wretched place. Of course I’m spying. Problem is I’ve got nobody to tell.”

I bit my lower lip and nodded. Virginia was right, of course. She couldn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t inside the four walls of this house. Meanwhile the cats and I knew better than to let unvetted strangers into our abode.

One thing was immediately clear: our zombie maker wasn’t working with our ghost. On the one hand, that was good news. Nobody had unfettered access to us the way Virginia did.

But on the other hand?

I had no idea where to look next.

And something told me it would be much harder to defeat zombies if we didn’t know when or where they’d be coming. Well, at least we’d had the last few weeks to rest up. A fight was definitely brewing, and judging from this morning’s showdown, it wouldn’t be one that we could easily win.

4

“Should we go do some research in Nocturna?” I asked the cats, referring to the hidden fantasy city that was only accessible via an active witch’s cauldron—or in our case, via the birdbath in the front yard where Merlin also brewed his potions as needed.

“We can’t always run straight to Nocturna. There are other ways of solving things,” my cat groused. One of his sharp teeth protruded over his bottom lip, giving him an irritated yet comical appearance.

“So says the guy who has a certain Tom cat looking to take him down,” Luna teased. One thing I’d learned quickly while hanging around these two was that cats’ love lives were even more complicated than humans’. First they’d broken up to pursue their magic, then they’d become sworn enemies, had a big showdown, got back together suddenly, and now kittens were on the way. Merlin had also upset a few of Luna’s other suitors who believed she’d made the wrong choice. One had even challenged Merlin to a magical duel, which the Maine Coon had foolishly accepted.

Returning to Nocturna meant risking Merlin’s magic, because if he fought and lost, he’d have to spend forever without it. Unfortunately, Luna and I couldn’t enter Nocturna without Merlin since he was the only active witch. And if he lost his magic, not only would we be permanently locked out of the city, but we’d also be sitting ducks on this side of the cauldron. Whatever supernatural entity was after us now might not stop pursuing us if we lost our only source of magic, even though we’d be completely helpless without it.

And that’s what made this whole thing so frustrating. Our zombie master was literally manipulating life and death. I preferred to remain among the living, thank you very much.