“Hi Henner, Hi RJ,” I answered, and couldn’t help the fact that I sounded dejected.

  “What’s the good word?” Henner asked.

  “There isn’t one,” Bailey called over my shoulder. “We were just leaving to try to catch a cat that can’t be caught.”

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked as I faced Henner. “It’s four in the morning.”

  “We work through the night, remember?” RJ replied. “We were just going over some of our readings from our last job and entering them into our research database.”

  “Right,” Henner said. “What are you ladies doing here at this hour? And what was Bailey talking about? A lost cat?”

  “I didn’t know you had a cat, Poppy,” RJ added.

  “I don’t,” I said on an exhale and shook my head. I was nervous about saying too much in front of RJ because, as a human, he wasn’t privy to the monsters who lived in Haven Hollow. There was a strict policy in Haven Hollow (a policy enforced by contract) whereby no supernaturals were allowed to admit they were supernatural. Humans weren’t supposed to know or find out about us. While Henner, Marty and Bailey were in the know, RJ wasn’t. And that could cause issues…

  “What’s going on?” Henner asked.

  I looked over at Bailey and swallowed hard. “RJ…” I whispered and made a face I hoped she’d understand. She nodded back at me.

  “Wanda can take care of him later,” she whispered back. While the words sounded ominous, they really weren’t. With the use of a forget spell and one of my potions, we could wipe RJ’s mind clear of whatever he happened to learn tonight. I nodded and Bailey took the words from me, which I appreciated. I was just… beyond exhausted by this point.

  “Hellcat, Wanda’s familiar, drank an experimental potion and got himself transported to another dimension,” Bailey told them. “He keeps popping in and out of this one.”

  “Poppy and Wanda used a tracking spell to follow him through town, but that does not appear to be helping much,” Libby added.

  Bailey nodded. “So… Poppy thought maybe you could use some of your ghostly gadgets to locate him.”

  “Familiar?” RJ repeated, frowning as he looked at Marty. “Aren’t familiars associated with witches?”

  “We don’t have time to talk about that right now!” I managed, wanting to bypass the conversation altogether. Yes, Wanda could wipe RJ’s mind, but that didn’t mean I wanted to get into the hows and whys of it all, especially now when time was absolutely of the essence.

  “But, I was just explaining to them,” Marty added as he turned to face Henner and RJ, “that, as long as Hellcat is alive, the Spectrothon 2000 won’t be able to detect him.”

  “The Spectrothon 2000 won’t be able to detect him, true,” Henner countered as he nodded and wrapped his arms against his chest. He was dressed in his customary Halloween attire—a black hoodie sweatshirt with an image of a ghoul or something equally uninviting. Below that he wore black shorts, high socks and black combat boots. And, of course, one couldn’t forget the military issue beret.

  He looked up at me and gave me that Henner smile, which was always encouraging. “The Spectrothon might not work, but something else could.”

  I smiled even though the chances were still stacked against me, I was sure. “Something else?”

  “Sure. I developed a scanning phasiometer that converts subspace frequencies between hyper-bandwidths. It’s designed to locate convergences between space-time anomalies and predicts where those anomalies will occur before they actually do occur.”

  “Is this another instance of twenty-first century talk?” Libby asked.

  No one responded. Instead, Marty turned to face Henner, and there was shock in his face. As for me, I hadn’t understood a word Henner had just said. And I was fairly certain Bailey was equally lost. Judging by RJ’s expression, he probably was too.

  “You didn’t tell me about that!” Marty exclaimed.

  “It’s still in the prototype stage,” Henner shrugged, “but I’ve had some promising results with it so far. We can give it a try, anyway.”

  “Thank you,” I started.

  Henner nodded. “We’ll have to go over to my place.” Henner stepped out onto Marty’s porch. “The phasiometer is in my basement.”

  “I can give Henner a ride,” I started as I glanced over at the Jeep. Wanda was still in it, none the wiser.

  Marty adamantly shook his head. “You are NOT using any prototype subspace phasiometer without us,” he snapped, crossing his arms against his chest and looking perturbed at the very thought we wouldn’t involve him. He was like a big kid—a big, handsome, funny and charming kid. “We’re coming with you, ladies.”

  Chapter Seven

  Marty turned to face his fellow ghost-hunters. “Come on, RJ. You and Henner can ride with me.”

  “Shouldn’t RJ stay at the house?” I asked immediately, really not wanting to involve him in this whole expedition. “I mean… in case you guys get a… a ghost hunting job?”

  RJ shook his head. “I’d rather go with you guys and find out what the heck is going on with this cat of Wanda’s. Besides, I doubt anyone will call this late.”

  Marty looked at me and shrugged as I shrugged right back at him.

  The next thing I knew, the three guys pushed onto the porch and Marty shut the front door behind him—just like that. They headed for Marty’s car—which was a long, black funeral hearse from the 1970s.

  Marty walked to the rear of the hearse and opening the wide back door, revealed a glossy black coffin. The coffin belonged to Lorcan, who hired Marty to drive him around during the day while he slept. Lorcan was paranoid that someone might try to kill him while he was lost to the land of Nod. Why he had such paranoias, I wasn’t sure and hadn’t bothered to ask. It was just one of those things that characterized the strangest vampire I’d ever heard of—never mind the fact that Lorcan was also a dentist.

  “I’m sure Lorcan won’t mind if we go for a night drive,” Marty said.

  “He won’t mind because he isn’t in there,” Bailey told him. “He’s…”

  My phone quacked again.

  “He’s behind Wanda’s shop now,” Lorcan announced as soon as I put him on speaker. “My goodness, he is making a ruckus! At this rate, he’ll wake the whole town.”

  “Is he slowing down at all?” I asked.

  “Hard to say,” Lorcan answered. “It does seem like there are longer pauses between his disappearing and reappearing. Perhaps that counts as slowing down?”

  Henner pricked up his ears. “That’s a good sign.”

  “A good sign?” I repeated, shaking my head as I looked at him for an explanation. “Good in what way?”

  “It means the anomalies are getting farther apart,” Henner answered with a shrug.

  “What does that mean?” Bailey demanded.

  Henner looked at her. “Whatever is causing the space-time streams to overlap is wearing out because the two streams are spreading away from each other. And those particular anomalies will eventually fade.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of!” I cried.

  “What?” Marty asked.

  “That the spell could wear off and Hellcat could get trapped in another dimension… or time stream… or whatever Henner called it.”

  Henner frowned and rubbed his chin. “You’re right, Poppy. I didn’t think of that. Finding out where the next anomaly will take place won’t help us stop the poor creature from ending up in one stream or another.”

  “Can’t we catch him and hold him in this dimension?” I asked.

  Henner shrugged. “Perhaps in theory. I suppose we would first have to discover the anomaly so we can figure out what the rules are?”

  I swallowed down the urge to scream. We didn’t have time for this! Panic and frustration threatened to unhinge me. After what I’d already seen of Hellcat’s appearances and disappearances, one more anomaly might be one too many. The very next time he appeared could be his last. He might appear in the stratosphere and fall to his death. He could appear under the wheels of a vehicle—or worse, my vehicle—and get squashed. A thousand nightmare scenarios haunted my mind, all taking turns plowing into each other.

  “Calm down, Pops,” Marty said as he reached out and putting his arm around me, pulled me into the heat of his body. I rested my head against his chest for a few seconds and just tried to calm my breathing. Marty did have a way about him that was soothing, and when I pulled away, I actually felt a little bit better.

  “It’s all going to work out,” Henner promised.

  I gave him a smile, even though I couldn’t buy into his words.

  Then starting for the driver’s door of the Jeep, Bailey and Libby piled into the back. As soon as I sat down and buckled myself in, Wanda said, “Turn south at the Interstate.”

  I ignored her and fired up the engine. Marty, Henner, and RJ got into Marty’s hearse and the old thing started spitting once Marty turned on the rumbling engine. I knew from experience that if he didn’t let the thing warm up for a minute or two, the engine would die. So that’s exactly what he did—while I counted the lapsing seconds and my heart pounded through my ears.

  Wanda continued to call out directions, but I managed to tune out everything she was saying. After another minute or so, the hearse let out a shriek of smoke, followed with a few bangs and then started down the driveway from Marty’s house. I followed it to the big old mansion on the hill that everyone in Haven Hollow knew as the ‘Tayir House’.

  Most of the town’s inhabitants considered the Tayir House a haunted house, and I didn’t blame them. Betanya Tayir, Henner’s grandmother, was a Blood Witch who had vanished under mysterious circumstances. Her house, which Henner inherited, looked more like a haunted house than anything I’d seen since… well, since I moved into my own house.

  The hearse looked decidedly eerie pulling up to the massive front doors of the Tayir Victorian mansion. The Tayir House was located at the very end of Tayir Street, which was located on the outskirts of Haven Hollow central. There were a few farmhouses positioned at the mouth of the street, and then the pavement gave way to pits and dips, with large tree roots busting through. The foliage on either side was out of control and now spread into and across the road in some places.

  “Henner lives here?” I asked, my tone revealing my shock.

  Stone gargoyles leered down from the roof corners and with the darkly painted façade and the gingerbreading which was missing in places, the house was ominous and then some. The enormous monstrosity seemed to lean over anyone standing beneath its towering spires, making us look and feel like miniatures. I almost hesitated to go in.

  Just then, Lorcan contacted me again.

  “I have spotted Hellcat on top of Mount Jefferson,” he said.

  “Dammit,” I mumbled, because Mount Jefferson was at least ten miles away.

  “Scratch that,” Lorcan continued. “Now he has reappeared in front of Sweeter Haunts candy store.” That was good to know because Sweeter Haunts was just in town—a few miles away. So much for the theory that Hellcat was slowing down...

  I parked the Jeep behind Marty’s hearse and noticed Libby didn’t take her seatbelt off. “You go do your business. I’ll stay here with the living compass.”

  Wanda lounged in the passenger seat, spouting directions to no one. She wasn’t going anywhere, and it was a good idea for someone to babysit her, or witchsit her as the case may be.

  I handed Libby my phone. “Tell Lorcan what’s going on the next time he calls. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”

  Bailey and I got out and met the three guys at the door to Henner’s massive house. The hinges creaked in the most stereotypical way possible when Henner hauled the gigantic oaken doors aside. They scraped on the stone steps and RJ made note that he’d have to come back and shave the doors down so they stopped scraping. Henner didn’t respond.

  Inside, the place was really more of a fortress than a house. I half-expected to see archers or maybe pots of boiling oil tipping over the parapet to pulverize us.

  The five of us stepped inside and entered a huge foyer with high, carved plaster ceilings. Hanging in the center of the foyer was an enormous, iron chandelier that had to have had at least one hundred lightbulbs—and at least half of them were missing.

  Two matched sweeping mahogany staircases rose on either side to a landing overlooking the entrance. Was that a ghostly apparition moving through the upstairs landing, or was it just my imagination?

  The cobwebs hanging from every balustrade, corner and overhang definitely weren’t my imagination…

  Henner walked over to the side of one massive staircase and slid aside a hidden panel on the wall beneath the steps. He reached into the panel and switched on a light that illuminated what appeared to be a staircase within the staircase? I walked over to inspect it further and found exactly that—a narrow staircase descending down, and in a perpendicular direction to the staircase that housed it. And this staircase wasn’t magnificent like its parent—it was ordinary, with a plain wooden railing and carpet on the steps. There were no spider webs or ghosts or creepification anywhere, so that was good.

  “Well, come on then,” Henner said as he motioned for each of us to enter.

  When he shut the door behind us and we each took the stairs single-file, we emerged at the bottom of the stairs in a basement the size of Wrigley Field. Mountains of furniture, trunks, wardrobes out of a C.S. Lewis novel, and racks of disembodied clothes filled the space from one wall to the other. White sheets covering armchairs and couches gave everything a spine-chillingly Halloween cast.

  Henner set off down a narrow pathway cleared through the junk. “This way! Excuse all this stuff. It’s been down here ever since my grandmother died.”

  And that was really saying something considering Henner had donated nearly a duplex full of furniture to Wanda when she’d moved to Haven Hollow. Looking at all the stuff surrounding me now, I had to wonder if Betanya Tayir was a hoarder?

  Marty and RJ followed Henner much more easily while Bailey and I chose where to place our footfalls more pointedly. There was just so much… stuff everywhere. And it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for a rat to come scurrying across our path, even though that was something I decidedly didn’t want to think about.

  My friends crowded close to me so we could hardly move, but I didn’t complain. I didn’t want to be alone down here for a second longer than we had to. How Henner managed to live in this place was beyond me, but it did sort of shed light on his personality a little bit more.

  The journey through the basement went on and on with no end in sight. I started to see things in the shapes and unidentified shadows. Just when I couldn’t stand the tension a second longer, Henner came to a section that had been cleared out and furnished as if it were a regular apartment.

  It appeared as though he’d stacked several wooden wardrobes on top of each other to create walls. Within the wardrobe walls, an electric heater, a couch, a bed, and a table with chairs occupied the little chamber. Piles of electronic equipment, computer parts, and half-disassembled machines festooned a counter along the opposite ‘wall’. Across from that were old televisions that were piled one on top of the other—there had to have been at least twenty of them.

  “This is my workshop,” Henner explained, his expression one of pride. “The rest of the house is a little uncomfortable.”

  “Uncomfortable? Nooo,” Bailey said with a smile as she winked at Henner.

  He chuckled. “I spend most of my time down here.” Then he crossed to the counter and rummaged in the mountains of components stacked there. There was no way I could have separated one thing from another.

  He dug something out of the confusion. “Here it is.”

  “It?” I asked.

  He nodded as he lifted what looked like a creature from one of the Monsters movies. Tubes, appendages, and coils sprang from a lopsided center. The conduits and wires bounced and waggled when Henner waved it at us. Or maybe it waved itself.

  “And here we have it!” he announced.

  I wrinkled my nose because it didn’t look exactly… like anything recognizable. “What… what is it?”

  “I call it the Hennerific.”

  “Um…” Bailey started. “Can you remind us what the Hennerific is again?”

  He turned to face her. “Sure. It’s a scanning phasiometer, remember?”

  Bailey smiled. “How could I forget?”

  “How does it work?” I asked, wanting to stay on topic. Time was of the essence and soon it would be light, which meant we wouldn’t be able to rely on Lorcan’s help any longer.

  “Simple,” Henner began. “We take it to the location wherever Hellcat was last spotted, and when one of the anomalies appears, the device will identify it.”

  “Identify it how?” RJ asked, looking at the thing like it was sasquatch, himself. RJ was obsessed with finding sasquatch and, no, he had no idea Roy was exactly that. “The Hennerific will give us a reading on where and when the next anomaly in the series will appear.”

  “How will it do that?” Marty asked. “I don’t see any reading instruments on the thing.”

  “You’ll see,” Henner answered with a self-satisfied smile.

  “You said you got some promising results with it before,” I pointed out, looking at Henner. “How accurate is it?”

  “Well, like I said, it’s in the prototype stage, but we can give it a try.”

  I nodded. “Right. It can’t hurt.”

  “We’re all out of other options,” Bailey said, and I nodded again. Then, wanting to get this show on the road and realizing we had a trek ahead of us in order to weave back through the basement and up through the house, I waved Henner back the way we’d just come. “We need to get going. We don’t have much time.”

  “Righty-o,” Henner said, and started forward as everyone fell in line behind him. He stopped short all of a sudden and I nearly plowed into the back of him.

  “Hold it,” Henner called as he scratched the top of his head and turned around to face me, tapping his foot as if to some phantom tune. “You said the cat drank a potion and basically cast a spell on himself. Is that right?”