Pandora opened her eyes as soon as she heard the door shut behind Willa. A quick glance around showed Hanna busy with a customer, making it the perfect time to escape. She climbed out of her warm sherpa-lined bed and had a good stretch before taking off for the storage closet in the back of the store and the secret opening inside of it that led outside. After a few strategically placed bats of her paw on the door, the storage closet creaked open, and Pandora disappeared inside.

She zipped around various mops, buckets, and brooms to the far corner then slipped behind a box of cleaning supplies and into the tight tunnel through the wall. With a bit of squeezing, she soon emerged out into the alley beside the shop, where the warm sunshine directly opposed the chilly breeze ruffling her fur.

From there, she sped toward the woods at the edge of Mystic Notch, where her seventh sense had told her the other cats would be meeting. She was excited to share her updates on her plans to get Willa focused on finding the killer and how she brought her human and Striker’s talents together. She hoped the others had been as lucky as well and they could get this murder mess wrapped up sooner than expected.

Near the edge of Elspeth’s property, just outside the barn, she found the other felines waiting. Otis was there, along with Inkspot and Tigger. Beside Tigger sat Truffles—a small tortoiseshell cat with black-and-orange mottled fur and eerie greenish-yellow eyes.

Pandora made her way around the circle, sniffing and greeting each cat in turn, before settling into a spot beside Sasha to listen. Conversations were already underway.

“Well, I’ve been following people all day,” Truffles said, “trying to figure out who’s the killer.”

“Same here,” Sasha said. “No luck so far.”

“You cats are going about this all wrong,” Otis said, shifting his sizable bulk. “If Albert was killed trying to deliver that note, then whoever did it will surely have started recovering ingredients in order to reverse the pleasantry charm by now. You look for evidence of that, and you’ll find your human.”

“What evidence?” Hope, a young chimera cat whose half-orange, half-black face was divided exactly down the middle of her nose, asked. Her eyes, one blue and one green, looked curiously at Otis.

“Well, digging, I suppose. If Hester buried the ingredients, then the human would be digging. We should be able to raise our senses and smell the freshly turned earth mixed with the scent of a cover-up.”

“Speaking of humans,” Inkspot said in his deep, rumbling voice. “How are things going with your human, Pandora?”

“Better than expected.” She licked her paw to avoid looking too proud of herself. “She’s coming along nicely. I was able to get her to imbibe the dandelion tea and speak with Albert’s ghost directly. I also got her and the other human, Striker, to join together with their powers. They should be able to find the murderer any day now, as they will be more powerful with their forces combined.”

Otis scoffed. “Sounds doubtful to me.”

Gaze narrowed, Pandora gave her nemesis a measured stare. Despite their differences, having that pleasantry charm lifted would make life harder for all of them. Given Otis’s penchant for lying around and being lazy, she couldn’t imagine he’d like his days inconvenienced in any way. Especially not by having to run around the Notch and babysit humans who were bickering and turning to evil deeds. Therefore, he must be rooting for her to succeed deep down inside. She took comfort in that idea and decided not to whap him hard with her paw for being nasty.

“I didn’t know Striker could see ghosts too,” Truffles said. “Then again, you’re the only feline amongst us who can also talk to the spirits, so if anyone would know, it would be you, Pandora.”

“True.” Pandora gave a slight shake of her head. “I think I’m making good headway with Striker too. He seems a bit more receptive to my suggestions than Willa.”

“While some of us spend their time manipulating weak-minded humans,” Otis said, his tone as grating as always, “others of us are trying to solve this case. We need results and fast.”

“Me-yow!” Kelley yelped from the shadows, and all eyes turned to her as she trotted into the group. She sat down, curling her tail around her haunches, and Pandora noticed the poor thing’s tail was covered in brambles and burrs. That looked as painful as heck.

“What happened?” Inkspot asked.

“I have news. I ran all the way from the river, through Farmer Duffy’s field.”

“The field?” Sasha’s blue eyes were wide. “But you know that place is full of burrs and brambles.”

“I know.” Kelley looked at her tail. “But I did not want to waste time. The news is of the utmost importance. The killer has already started digging up the first ingredient.”

“The first ingredient?” Truffles said. “What is it?”

“Eye of newt?” Otis asked.

“Raindrops from the petals of the foxglove plant?” Sasha suggested.

“Salamander legs?” Tigger said.

“I have no idea what it is.” Kelley gingerly tried to comb out her mangled tail, wincing. “All I saw when I was in the woods was the hole the killer left behind. I smelled their desperation and victory, and there was a subtle scent of ancient times.”

“Ancient times?” Inkspot’s voice was a low growl. “Then it must have been one of the ingredients.”

“Whatever they took had been kept in a jar too. The glass had been smashed everywhere. It’s a wonder I didn’t cut my paw trying to get out of there. Whoever killed Albert wasn’t so lucky. I smelled their blood—O positive.”

“That doesn’t help at all.” Otis scowled. “That’s the most common type in humans.”

“Maybe it will be of assistance,” Inkspot said, wandering over to help Kelley with her matted fur. “At least we now have one clue. We can be on the lookout for a human with a cut or scratch from the glass.”

“Does anyone know how many ingredients are in the charm?” Pandora asked.

The others shook their heads.

“I’d say anywhere from five to ten. That seems pretty typical for a charm,” Tigger said.

“And the killer only has one?” Sasha straightened. “That should give us a little time.”

“We don’t know for sure how many the killer has,” Otis said. “No telling where the rest might be hidden either. I doubt that the human, Hester Warren, was dumb enough to bury them all in the same place. She’d scatter them around, hide them in different places. For all we know, the rest could just be sitting somewhere on a shelf in an old building.” He gave Pandora an assessing look. “Maybe even stowed away in a church or with those musty old books your human loves so much.”

“I think our best bet at this point is to break up into groups,” Inkspot said, his tone commanding. “Each pair will follow a suspect. There is Nathan Anderson, Felicity Bates, Desmond Lacroix. Time is of the essence. We need to discover the identity of the killer before they find all the ingredients, or there’s no telling what will happen.”