An unholy shriek woke me from a dead sleep.
Meeeeeeeeeeeh!
I darted upright in bed and grabbed my cell phone to serve as a flashlight. “Who’s there?” I demanded.
But was only answered by Merlin, thumping down the hardwood floor in the hallway.
Meeeeeeeeeh! the shriek sounded again, and this time I realized it was Luna crying her heart out.
And so it went. Shriek, scamper. Shriek, scamper. Until at last I made my way into the hall and found them both staring at the far corner of the ceiling with their ears pressed back against their little kitty heads.
“What’s going on?” I asked, knowing full well both of them were capable of more than just uncivilized meows.
“Gh-gh-gh-ghost,” Merlin said, then took another sprint down the short hallway.
I glanced up to the spot where Luna still had her large unblinking eyes fixed… and saw absolutely nothing.
“What do you see?” I asked her. Generally, she was the more logical of the two—or at least the one more likely to open up to me.
“I can’t see anything,” she whispered wit
hout removing her gaze from the ceiling. “But there’s an energy that’s forming. It’s not wholly in our world yet, but it will be soon.”
“So you see a pre-ghost?” I summarized.
“Something like that.”
“But how can you tell? You’re not magical anymore,” I reminded her.
Luna couldn’t stifle the hiss that escaped her. “I may not be a witch, but I am still a cat. Magical or not, we can all see into the supernatural realm.”
“Like Nocturna?” I asked, referring to the magical nighttime city that was only accessible to magical creatures at the twilight hour.
Merlin growled and began to kick up his hind legs.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” I cried, reaching down to pluck him into my arms. “No tornadoes inside the house.”
He growled in dismay until I set him back down.
“We must get rid of it before it takes its full form,” Luna told me as she worried her bottom lip with her top fangs.
“The fact that it’s here so soon in its after-life journey is a very bad sign,” Merlin revealed, and when I looked down at him he had arched his back and puffed up to maximum volume.
I grabbed him into my arms again. “Definitely no lightning inside the house!”
“Then what should we do?” Luna asked with a gasp.
“Let me make some coffee,” I said, admitting defeat at last. It was clear that neither cat would let me go to bed until I found a way to bust this newborn ghost… or at least to send it off to haunt some place far, far away from here.
* * *