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    Twinkles Takes a Holiday: Night Shift Witch, #4
    Twinkles Takes a Holiday: Night Shift Witch, #4
    Twinkles Takes a Holiday: Night Shift Witch, #4
    Ebook128 pages2 hours

    Twinkles Takes a Holiday: Night Shift Witch, #4

    By Cate Lawley

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    About this ebook

    An evil genius threatens Christmas.

    His name is Twinkles.

    Furry and full of himself, Twinkles the cat takes self-interest to a new level. Not a huge problem…until he disappears, turns himself into a human, and maybe kills a few of Santa's reindeer.

    Star and Ben never dreamed cat-sitting could be this difficult. But things only get worse as more (reindeer) bodies start piling up.

    Using his newly discovered opposable thumbs, Twinkles phones his petsitters. His claim? He's innocent. He'll do anything if Ben and Star will clear his name and save Christmas, even cuddle.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCate Lawley
    Release dateMar 9, 2019
    ISBN9781386049036
    Twinkles Takes a Holiday: Night Shift Witch, #4

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      Book preview

      Twinkles Takes a Holiday - Cate Lawley

      Prologue

      The Cat’s Meow (Twinkles)

      My life is pretty fabulous.

      No cooking—ever.

      A maid who cleans at least daily.

      Soft, high spots perfectly placed to catch luscious streams of sunlight.

      A personal servant (or human…you say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to) to stroke my back and scratch under my chin.

      But…

      Daily catering gets old when it’s always the same old canned food.

      Bathrooms should be tidied frequently. Is it too much to ask for morning, noon, and night service?

      A bed can be soft and perfectly placed, but it’s still located within a house. What is house but another word for cage?

      And a human who gives scratches is all well and good when that human is actually home. My human happens to be gallivanting in parts distant.

      Sometimes, I just want to be human. Have two legs, stride around like I own the place. Use my opposable thumbs to rule the world.

      Little things.

      I’m not asking all that much.

      But I never thought my wish for humanity would come to fruition.

      I wouldn’t say the message on the answering phone surprised me. Or the very particular instructions to delete the message. Or even the package that followed.

      I wished. It happened. I am feline and accept all favors of fate as my due.

      1

      Mostly a Cat

      Where’s the cat? A note of near-panic entered my boyfriend Ben’s voice. Star, where is that evil maniac?"

      Twinkles wasn’t evil.

      Self-interested, yes. Completely unconcerned with pleasing the humans in his life, also yes. Intent on actively causing drama or even harm…probably not?

      My mentor Camille had placed a lot of faith in Ben and me when she’d left her precious cat in our care. Granted, no one else could be trusted. Certainly not a human.

      Twinkles was a cat…mostly. He was the primary reason I hesitated to adopt a dog or a cat or even a hamster. I didn’t want a mostly-cat cat or a mostly-dog dog. And as a witch, I rolled the dice when I took a pet into my household.

      Most witch pets were just pets. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them, in fact. But occasionally, for reasons unknown, a witch’s pet became something more. Just my luck that the cat I was pet-sitting happened to be one of the point-one percent.

      If there hadn’t been hints concerning his true nature previous to his twenty-fifth birthday, reaching that advanced age looking no more than any other cat of three or four had sealed the deal.

      But there had definitely been hints.

      He understood everything. Cats were clever, but Twinkles got nuance. And since I’d been inside the little so-and-so’s head, I knew for a fact he understood us very, very well.

      Twinkles was probably how the whole concept of familiars got started back in the dark days of witch burnings. Not Twinkles personally—obviously; he was twenty-five—but witch-affected pets like Twinkles.

      It wasn’t just understanding humans. These witch-affected animals could problem-solve and complete complex tasks. Twinkles, for example, had constructed a ladder of pillows, books, and a footstool to climb up to the thermostat and increase the temperature by ten degrees.

      Oh, and there was that one time that Camille took him out on a leash. Why she thought he’d be safe within five miles of a traveling children’s petting zoo, I didn’t know. That poor reindeer… The story had made the rounds at the time. Twinkles had been a pseudo-celebrity in the magic community for at least a week or so.

      And all of that without opposable thumbs. Add hands, and there would be a mice-chasing, sunbathing, sudoku-loving sociopath running around creating more chaos than a gaggle of dehydrated vampires.

      The more I considered the foibles of witch-affected pets, the more I had to wonder if it was purely a cat problem. I had a difficult time envisioning a dog with Twinkles’ particular condition.

      Truly, the point was moot. Dog, cat, hamster—it didn’t matter. After the mess of the past few days, no way was I interested in adding a furry companion to the fold.

      Ben and I were less than fully prepared for the care and feeding of Twinkles the mostly-cat, and that had put both of us off the idea of pets.

      How unprepared we both were had just become disturbingly clear, because Twinkles was AWOL.

      Ben could check under the sofa five times and peer into every shadowy corner of Camille’s house, but he wouldn’t find him. I could feel that Twinkles was absent.

      So, Ben? I rocked back on my heels and waited for him to stand back up. He’d gone for a sixth look under the sofa. Not a good sign, since Ben was usually the calm one of the two of us. Super chill, my boyfriend—except for now.

      He brushed his hands on his jeans, but then he saw the look on my face and started backing up. I don’t like that look. That’s a bad look.

      Without asking for details, he headed straight for the liquor cabinet.

      Not that Ben was a big drinker. He was usually the designated driver and perfectly happy to cart my lightweight self around. But these last few days had been…difficult. Trying. Borderline disastrous.

      On the plus side, I had definitive proof that Ben was head over heels, completely gone for me. No way would a guy who wasn’t completely in love with me put up with the feline shenanigans of this last week.

      He’d been scratched, peed on, bitten (in a rather sensitive area), and locked in a kitchen pantry. And that was what I’d witnessed firsthand. I suspected Twinkles of several other less-than-admirable acts, but Ben wasn’t talking.

      The day before yesterday, when Ben had come home looking shell-shocked, I’d decided no more unaccompanied trips to Camille’s house to check on the fluffy menace. Strength in numbers and all that.

      There is no telling what that little ball of fluff will get up to if he’s escaped the house. Ben added a few cubes to the seltzer water he’d poured. It looked like we weren’t quite to the point of booze. How so much nasty can live in such a cute, furry body, I do not understand.

      I’ll drive if you want to, you know, drown your sorrows in apple pucker.

      He laughed, thankfully. That was what I’d been going for. I hated seeing my guy all twisted up, especially over witchy goings-on.

      Keeping a clear head is probably a better choice, but I’m glad you’ve got my back—in case the apple pucker starts calling my name. Wait, why does Camille have apple pucker?

      I gave him the don’t-ask face, then grabbed a pen. Better to brainstorm places Twinkles would be likely to go than revisit past (bad, very bad) alcohol decisions. Apple pucker had definitely been one of my Ben-free, girly nights. There had been a lot of pucker shots (apple and watermelon), a lot of Lifetime movies, and a little crying.

      Right…Twinkles. What did Twinkles do all day long? I made a quick note to check on the neighbor two doors down with the pretty Persian and the neighbor directly behind with the barking dogs.

      Ben leaned over my shoulder and read my notes aloud. I’m thinking revenge before love.

      The scowl on his face prompted me to ask, Any chance you want to tell me what happened day before yesterday? I know he’s gone a little crazy with the scratching and the biting—

      Oh, it was more than scratching and biting. Even though he was a redhead, Ben didn’t blush much. The perk of being a generally chill guy who also had a lot of experience dealing with other people’s strong emotions. Being a funeral director meant a lot of tears came his way. And yet he was blushing now.

      But if he didn’t want to talk about it, that was his prerogative.

      You have anything for the list? I asked, firmly shelving the Twinkles-Ben mystery for now.

      He has a ridiculous love of pizza. Add that local pizza place he likes so much to the list.

      That place was a good six or seven miles away, maybe more, and didn’t deliver. You do remember that he’s incredibly lazy.

      "But also clever. That cat is not normal."

      Very true.

      And with that in mind, we came up with a list of places to check, regardless of distance from Camille’s home. It was about an even split of things we knew Twinkles loved (restaurants, primarily, but also the Persian a few houses down), places he would find entertaining (the yarn store, though he tried to

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