Page 58 of Caged Kitten

Pictures flashed by my mind’s eye, snippets of memory, the figures shadowy but their faces clear, tinted by a sepia filter. After the bounty hunters—two men and one woman—had crashed Café Crowley and hurled Tully into an unused oven—

Wait.

Those fuckers tossed my familiar into an oven?

My hands balled to such tight fists that my nails bit furiously into my palms. But the images didn’t stop, moving fluidly like some artsy indie flick, flashes and flares, the figures almost dancing.

Screaming for someone to call the police, a horrified Annalise had freed Tully from the oven, which must have locked when the hunter slammed the door shut. He’d then shot out of the café, hot on their trail, scenting their footsteps through Seattle. Found them at a bar, the trio wasting away my bounty on liquor. Detected my location from their conversations—Siberia—and snuck aboard a plane.

My familiar couldn’t teleport, but he excelled at shadow magic. Tully could blend with a shadow no matter the intensity or size, and in the darkness, he disappeared.

The images came faster now, time passing, Tully hitching rides around the globe, catching snippets of chatter from other supers about Lloyd Guthrie’s new criminal empire at the top of the world. He eventually found the prison, but it stayed hidden behind the ward. From his perspective, the vast grassland was empty except for the faint rainbow shimmer, but he sat for days in the shadows of the nearby mountains, watching trucks and cars rumble down a dirt road and then vanish into oblivion. Warlocks came and went to a nearby village, and although he didn’t take the time to show landmarks or much of the scenery, it was obvious Guthrie had stationed his mob henchmen—now guards at his prison—there with their families.

Tully had found a family.

The Thompson family.

He had chosen the least threatening of the Xargi warlocks as they climbed off the transport bus and rubbed up on his leg. Purred. Really put on a show. Exhausted but receptive, Thompson had brought my familiar home to his three kids and a wife pissed to be living in the middle of nowhere instead of their Manhattan brownstone.

But the young Thompsonites seemed to adore Tully, bits of their arguments over which bed he’d sleep in that night making me grin. At least they had taken care of him, this huge, bushy stray who slept by the fire and on their laps, who watched Thompson’s wife cry after he left for work and the kids disappeared for lessons at the village’s pop-up academy.

This morning, my darling boy had followed Thompson into the prison. Slunk in the shadows. Hid on the bus. Crossed through the ward when it opened for the guards.

Searched cellblock after cellblock, darting between the shadows, sniffing doors, searching, searching, searching so frantically…

Until he found me.

The last thing he showed me was a misty image of myself stretched out on this shitty cot, hair frizzy and cheeks sunken, eyes stamped with faint black circles that were probably permanent at this point.

And then I was back in the cell, color and light trickling into my field of vision, stronger and sharper with every hard blink.

“Oh, Tully,” I whispered shakily as I wove my fingers into his fur, tears swelling again, “you’re my hero.”

He returned the sentiment with two deliciously slow blinks and then let me clutch him to my chest again, purring up a storm. I eased onto my side, curling around my familiar and basking in his feel-good aura. With Tully in my arms again, I forgot about Lloyd Guthrie, about my guilt over lusting after other men when a gorgeous dragon shifter had claimed to be my fated mate. I forgot about the awful cafeteria food and the backbreaking labor of solo bakery duty. For just a little while, it was me and Tully, together again, and nothing else mattered. Nothing.

But the silence shattered—it always did. My belly looped at the arrival of familiar voices, locks clinking open and inmates returning from their work assignments. The fact that Deimos worked in the library was beyond my understanding; of all the possible positions, that had to be the cushiest. And then there was crazy Constance at the other end of the spectrum on janitorial duty, so, in the grand scheme of job titles, mine could have been a hell of a lot worse.

Lips wobbling, I stroked Tully’s velvety soft ears, his face, holding back tears and wishing we could have just a little while longer—to suspend my miserable reality for an hour or two so I could well and truly forget this place.

For now, I’d take what I could get. Tully wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I, and that had to be good enough.

I felt Elijah before I heard him, his hulking presence looming in my doorway. If we didn’t spend the day in the bakery together, we were each other’s first visit once we returned to the cellblock, as if driven by instinct, like birds headed south at the first breath of winter, drawn to the other’s cell.

“Katja, are you…” I peeked over my shoulder when he trailed off and found him blocking the entire doorway with that magnificent mountain of a body. Sweat glistened on his forehead, his cheeks, his scruff so fucking gorgeous—just one glance at it and I swore I felt its bite along my inner thighs. He frowned down at me for a moment, then cocked his head to the side, pointing at Tully. “Is that… a cat?”

“Say it louder,” I hissed, tucking Tully closer to my body. “He’s my familiar.”

Rafe’s head popped over Elijah’s shoulder, the vampire squinting against the sunlight, just out of its golden reach, and his dark brows furrowed even deeper when those beautiful aquamarines landed on Tully. His mouth opened and closed a few times, confusion obvious, but before he could get a word out, there was Fintan’s olive-skinned magnificence peering over Elijah’s other shoulder, a dusting of black soil on his forehead.

“You guys have to see this,” the fae purred, eyes alight with dangerous mirth. “The fuckwit brigade has officially…” He stopped suddenly, expression shifting to genuine befuddlement and then unabashed delight as he struggled to shoulder his way around Elijah. “Is that a cat?”

Rafe rolled his eyes, and I bit back a grin, pleased to have a wall of hotness hiding Tully from the influx of guards. “Gentlemen…” Knowing Tully would hate me for it and doing it anyway, I hoisted him up Lion King style to show off the one man in my life who would never, ever disappoint me. “This is my familiar. His name is Tully, he’s brilliant at shadow magic, and he’s my very best friend.”

Elijah’s lips lifted affectionately, and he studied Tully with the eyes of the dragon, all molten gold and primal. What I wouldn’t give to know what his inner dragon thought about all this—prison, captivity, the collar, me. Fintan, meanwhile, offered a tentative nod, eyeing Tully warily, and Rafe managed an awkward wave, boxed out of my cell by the other two. From the slight arch of his brow, I knew precisely what tonight’s chat would be about.

And I couldn’t wait.

Just as I was about to beckon them in—we occasionally hung out in each other’s cells if Deimos’s crew was being especially obnoxious, so it wouldn’t be too suspicious—an alarm screamed through the cellblock. Light strobed around the common area, and the footsteps of additional guards implied a bunk raid.

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