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I glanced down the block, and sure enough, I spotted a tiny white blur on the horizon. I don’t think I’d ever seen Luna move so fast, but I also had no doubts it was her, especially given Merlin’s unhappy reaction.

When she caught up with us, she plopped her butt on the ground right in front of Merlin.

“I told you to stay home!” he seethed.

“And I told you I’m not sitting this one out,” she shot back in a raspy whisper.

“And I told you we need to avoid talking while we’re outside where anyone could hear.”

“You didn’t tell me that, dear,” Luna pouted. “See, I’m already missing things. I refuse to be written out of our adventures just because I’m about to become a mom. We work best as a team. You need me.”

“Okay, but seriously, stop talking while we’re in public!” I hissed as a beat-up minivan rolled past us. The driver gawked at me like I was some kind of crazy person, and he was absolutely right.

Once he passed, Luna let out a high-pitched meow and rubbed her face against my hand—to signal her agreement, I supposed. Well, at least one of them saw things my way. And Luna was right, too. She’d been an integral part of our adventures so far, and we wouldn’t have escaped either alive without her help.

Merlin stared at us both with wide green eyes, flicking his tail back and forth unhappily. He didn’t speak again, though, so I guess that meant he agreed to keep mum for a bit.

“I have no idea where I’m going,” I admitted in a whisper, crouching low again. “Can one of you take the lead?”

Luna meowed and trotted ahead, turning back only for a second to make sure we followed.

Merlin emitted a low rumble, but otherwise fell in line. He hated when he wasn’t the one in charge, not that such a thing happened very often.

Luna set a pace much faster than my normal gait, and after a few more blocks I found myself breathing heavy as sweat beaded at my hairline.

“This isn’t working,” I complained. “Nobody is paying any attention to us.”

Merlin opened his mouth, ready to come at me with either an“I told you so,” or “serves you right for trying to silence my voice.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say nobody,” a smooth voice responded from a nearby azalea shrub before Merlin could speak. All the words ran together with no breaths in between, creating a creepy, snake-like sound. Still, even though I couldn’t immediately place it, I knew I’d heard this voice before. Imean, how could I forget something so eerily distinct?

Luna charged straight into the bush while Merlin hung back on the sidewalk with me. Soft feline voices whispered back and forth, and a few moments later Luna peeped her little white face out and motioned for Merlin and me to come closer.

Oh, I really hoped the owner of this azalea didn’t make an appearance anytime soon, because I had no idea how I’d explain my way out of this one. Merlin entered the bush easily, but I had to drop to my hands and knees and bring my face close to the earth to see through the tangle of leaves and branches.

Three glowing pairs of eyes met mine—blue, green, and yellow. When it came to the new arrival, I couldn’t see anything more than those bright, sun-like eyes, but that was enough for me to place him.

Mr. Fluffikins had arrived.

Which meant we definitely had trouble on our hands.

6

“I was called to investigate a disturbance in the area,” the black cat explained.

We first met Fluffikins after Merlin had summoned lightning in the house and blasted a hole straight through the roof. I didn’t have the money to fix it, and Merlin didn’t have the correct type of magic, so he and Luna phased in and out of various neighborhoods around Southern Georgia until they found Mr. Fluffikins.

His magic was different than what Merlin’s was or what Luna’s had been. Instead of being tied to a particular element in nature, Fluffikins wielded a special kind of magic generated from the earth’s core, and with it, he could do almost anything.

He used his elite skills to manage a team of mixed paranormals in the nearby town of Beech Grove. While small, Beech Grove served as the magical hub for this region of the state, which made the little black cat crouched before us the single most powerful magical being for miles. If he’d been called in to investigate a disturbance himself, then that definitely meant it was something big.

I bit my lower lip, trying to keep all the questions I wanted to ask from tumbling out one after the other.

As I’d learned at Merlin and Luna’s wedding, Fluffikins was all about ceremony and precedent. He wanted things done a certain way—nay,demanded they be done a certain way. And when it came to magical hierarchy, my cat outranked me mightily.

Sure enough, Merlin took the lead for our side of the conversation, holding his nose high to show that the other cat didn’t intimidate him, even though that may not have been true. “Might that disturbance be related to zombies?”

Fluffikins tilted his head to the side; his eyes appeared to float in the darkness.“Zombies, no. Nothing so terrible as that.”