“Yes,” I answered. “Something like that—I was concocting a new potion which spilled into my Mai Tai which Hellcat immediately swallowed.”

  “Alcoholic cat,” Marty said, shaking his head. “That’s a first.”

  “I once heard about this story of a sasquatch that kept breaking into someone’s house to steal all his whiskey,” RJ added from behind me.

  “If you have any of the original potion, we can feed it into the detector,” Henner said.

  “What will that do?”

  “It will add data so the phasiometer picks up specific frequencies when we…”

  “We would have to drive all the way back to Poppy’s house to get a sample of the potion,” Bailey interrupted from where she stood directly behind me. “We don’t have time for that.”

  “She’s right,” I answered. “We were pushing it even in coming here.”

  “For all we know, Hellcat could be dead already,” Bailey added.

  “Did you have to say that?” I asked as I faced her.

  “Sorry,” she answered sheepishly.

  “It’s going to be alright, Pops,” Marty said from behind Bailey as he flashed me a sweet smile and reaching out, rubbed my shoulder.

  Henner turned around and pushed past us, starting for his workshop again. “I need to make some adjustments to the Hennerific.” He carried the Hennerific to the counter and set it down with a big thud that made me nervous he might have just broken the thing.

  I scowled at the back of his neck. “Adjustments? We’re kind of in a huge hurry, Henner.”

  “I have to calibrate it to what we’re looking for,” he replied over his shoulder, already taking pieces apart and placing them on the counter. “If you had a sample of the potion, it would work better, but since you don’t, we’ll have to do it this way.”

  I slumped onto a couch I discovered amid three towering piles of what I could only term ‘electronic gadgets’ and then cast a hopeless glance around me. My nerves were on the ragged edge of collapse. “This is all my fault.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Don’t start that again,” Bailey chided. “We’ve been through this already, Poppy, and it’s not your fault. Hellcat got himself into this mess. It wasn’t like you were forcing him to drink everything in sight.”

  Marty wandered over and sat down next to me, putting his arm around me and pulling me into him again. He was warm, and he smelled good and that boyish smile of his always did something to make me feel better. Not to mention, that after breaking up with Roy, I did miss the touch and feel of a man’s strong arms wrapped around me.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Pops. We all know you and we know what a great person you are,” Marty finished as I felt tears threaten my eyes.

  “Thank you… it’s just…”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said again and I wasn’t sure how it was possible, but he pulled me in even closer. I closed my eyes as I rested against him and then remembered we hadn’t updated Astrid in a while. So, I whipped out my phone and did exactly that. She didn’t respond which was just as well, because I figured she and Finn were probably sound asleep by now. Or that’s what I hoped, anyway.

  “What does Wanda say about it?” RJ asked as he appeared in front of me. “He’s her cat. Is she really upset?”

  “That’s the weird thing,” I answered, shaking my head. “She doesn’t seem to be upset at all.”

  “Well, now that she’s in a trance she’s basically catatonic,” Bailey added as she nudged me with her elbow. “You see what I just did right there?”

  I nodded and laughed before looking back at RJ and further explaining, figuring there was no point in trying to cover up anything anymore. By this point, all of it was wide out in the open. “Wanda said Hellcat has his own magic and she thinks he’ll be fine. She expected him to come home on his own.”

  “Maybe she’s right,” Henner shrugged as he spoke over his shoulder, with both arms now in the Hennerific up to his elbows. “Familiars are notorious for keeping their true powers hidden even from the witches and wizards they visit. Some authorities believe the witch or wizard is really just a conduit for the familiar’s power. That’s why people of olden times thought familiars were forces of darkness and representatives of the Devil and all that crazy stuff. They thought witches and wizards were communing with evil and allowing it to operate through them.”

  “That might be true, but you didn’t see Hellcat,” I answered, shaking my head, as Marty pulled me even closer to him and I rested my head against his chest again. I could hear his heartbeat and it was somehow comforting.

  “I think I’ve seen Hellcat enough times to never want to see him again,” Marty laughed and the sound echoed through him. I held him even more tightly. I’d always had a soft spot for Marty, even though I’d most recently been in a relationship with Roy. But, there was always something about Marty that just drew me to him—whether those feelings were more than friendship, I wasn’t sure. Somehow I never thought they were, but now I found myself second-guessing such thoughts. Marty was handsome, kind, employed (sort of) and he was funny and Finn loved him—really, what more could you want in a man?

  “Regardless of Hellcat’s infamous… belligerent disposition, I feel terrible for him. You… you should have seen him. Yes, he was furious—but it was more than that,” I answered.

  “Right,” Bailey said. “He was scared.”

  I nodded. “Hellcat was really scared… I mean, he was scared after he was mad about it happening in the first place.”

  RJ shrugged. “There’s still a chance the cat could find his way back, even if he did get trapped in the other dimension.”

  “True,” Henner said. “This isn’t over yet.”

  RJ nodded as he looked over at Henner, who had gotten all the guts back into the Hennerific and was now busily doing something else to the contraption. “And I’ve got all the faith in the world in Henner.”

  “Thanks, RJ,” Henner answered, without bothering to turn around.

  Marty looked down at me and gave me another squeeze and a smile. “It will work out in the end, Pops. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so.” He paused. “I have a good feeling about this.”

  I looked up at him. “Do you really, or are you just saying that?”

  He winced and the truth revealed itself across his face. If Marty was anything, it was a terrible liar—his eyes always gave him away. “Well, I might be just saying it to cheer you up. I’m your friend, too, which means it’s my sworn duty to make you feel better.”

  I had to smile, even if I didn’t feel like it. “Thanks, Marty. I appreciate it.”

  “I’m ready,” Henner called as he turned around and gave me a beaming smile. “Let’s go get that crabby cat.”

  With that, we all stood up and trooped behind Henner through the labyrinthine basement on our way back upstairs. The entire time we did so, Henner fiddled with his gadget.

  “How did you say that thing works again?” Marty asked Henner, from behind me as we all piled up the stairs and fanned out once we were in the foyer of the Tayir House once again.

  “Spectral vibrations activate the input coil and feed them through to the phasiometer’s conductor helix rods. The potentiometer converts the frequencies into binary data that the CPU can…”

  “Do you mind?” Bailey snapped, looking first at Marty, probably since he’d asked the question, before spearing Henner with a sharp expression. “I seriously can’t handle whatever the heck you just said—it’s making my blood pressure spike.”

  Henner dropped his head and shrugged. “I was just answering the question.”

  “Can you keep the scientific disquisition for after we save Hellcat’s life?” Bailey continued, shaking her head before she looked at Marty again. “You shouldn’t have encouraged him.”

  Just then, Libby appeared in the foyer and handed my phone to me. “Lorcan is on the line,” she said.

  “You were right, Poppy,” Lorcan’s voice echoed through the dark house. “The appearances are most definitely getting farther apart, but Hellcat is no longer traveling outside Haven Hollow. He’s appeared five times—all within a few blocks of your store.”

  I pricked up my ears. “My store…”

  “I believe he’s attempting to land in or around your store,” Lorcan continued.

  “It’s the potion he drank,” Henner told me. “Its frequencies are vibrating in coherence with the other potions in your store. The same ingredients are synchronizing with the…”

  “Yeah. We got it,” Bailey snapped. “Let’s go.”

  Henner blinked at her, seemingly surprised by her short fuse, but Bailey wasn’t in an explaining mood.

  “To my store,” I said.

  No one said another word and, instead, we made for our vehicles with the intention of driving back towards Haven Hollow’s town center and Poppy’s Potions.

  ***

  It was maybe another seven minutes or so before I pulled into the empty spaces in front of my store. I parked and everyone got out—except Wanda and Libby. And that was just as well, because Wanda was still out of it and doing a great rendition of the driving directions from Google Maps.

  Henner was first to step out of Marty’s hearse, and he set his device on the sidewalk outside my store. I couldn’t tell if Henner had done something to it, but for a second, it looked as though the thing came alive by itself. Its many arms rotated downward and anchored themselves on the pavement around the thing’s body. It flexed and raised its body up so it was now balancing on its arms. It looked alive, like some kind of mechanical spider.

  Even Bailey drew back from the thing in shock and horror—and she was pretty hard to spook. “What is it going to…”

  “The Hennerific is harmless,” Henner said, taking a step away from it as he took what looked like a remote control from his pocket. He activated a few switches and a steering toggle. The phasiometer crawled a few feet toward the store, pivoted, and then advanced up the block.

  My phone rang again and I put it on speaker.

  “The cat is moving your way,” Lorcan announced. “He just made four appearances outside stores down the street.”

  I peered up into the dark sky. “Where are you, Lorcan?”

  Lorcan laughed through the speaker. “You’re looking right at me, my dear. I’m on top of the Creamery.”

  I strained my eyes and barely made out a dim outline of what might have been a man or might have been a trick of the shadows.

  “Here he comes.” Henner did something to his machine. “He’s coming through.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “There!” Lorcan boomed—his voice ringing through the air and the speakerphone. “By Miss Hazel’s convenience store!”

  Everyone whirled the other way in time to see Hellcat explode into view. This time, he emerged only a few feet off the ground. If he fell from that height, he’d land on his feet and walk away unhurt.

  He didn’t land, though. He blinked out almost as soon as he appeared. He didn’t even have time to screech. Henner activated his machine and the creepy device scampered across the pavement to halt right under the place where Hellcat disappeared. Henner followed it, wearing an expression that didn’t bode well.

  The rest of us hustled over to him. “Well?” I demanded. “Can you track him?”

  Henner frowned at the controller. Then he let it fall to his side. It dangled from his limp hand. “Sorry, Poppy. I can’t…”

  “Why not?” Marty cut in, shaking his head in apparent exasperation, or maybe it was frustration. “You’ve been talking this thing up since we left my place!”

  “I just realized I can’t use the phasiometer because the two time streams are already too far apart. There’s no way to tell when they’ll join again, or even if they’ll join again.” He shrugged and then frowned. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”

  “What does that even mean?” Bailey asked.

  “Does that mean Hellcat won’t come through anymore?” I asked. “Is it too late? Was that the last time we’re ever going to see him?”

  As if in answer to my worst fears, Lorcan barked out of the phone one more time. “He’s on the move! He’s heading out of town again.”

  I whirled away. “Forget it! We’ll have to track him the old-fashioned way.”

  Marty rushed up to me and grabbed my elbow. “Not so fast, Poppy. I think I might have the solution.”

  “Whatever it is, spit it out quick,” I barked, not in the mood to ask for details. Hellcat’s life was now hanging in the mix, and my patience had been completely stripped from me. We’d been at this now for over five hours and the sun was already making its ascent into the sky, which meant we wouldn’t be able to rely on Lorcan for very much longer.

  Marty leaned in close to me and lowered his voice to a hush. “The Spectrothon 2000.”

  I had to stop and think for a second before I put the puzzle pieces together. He was talking about his wacky ghost-hunting gizmo we’d discussed earlier—the one he’d said wouldn’t work. “What about it?”

  “We can use that to track Hellcat.”

  “But, you already said it wouldn’t work,” I countered, shaking my head as I crossed my arms against my chest and wasn’t sure whether I wanted to yell at him or cry. “You said Hellcat had to be dead in order for the Spectrothon 2000 to work, Marty.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought until something just occurred to me.”

  “What just occurred to you?”

  “Think about it, Pops.”

  “I am thinking about it and nothing is coming,” I snapped.

  “Hellcat isn’t of this world, Poppy.”

  “So what?”

  “So, he’s in another plane which, if you think about it, is basically the same thing as being dead, isn’t it?” He spoke with exaggerated slowness so my addled brain would be sure to understand.

  I furrowed my brow, trying to grasp this lunatic line of thinking even as it started to sound less like lunacy and more like something that actually could… make sense. “I guess so.”

  He dragged me over to the hearse. “I’ve been thinking about it and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it could work! The Spectrothon 2000 is designed to detect energetic entities caught between this world and a parallel plane. It’s the same thing we humans call being dead, but there’s a chance the Spectrothon could work for this, too—a distant chance, yeah sure.”

  “But it’s the only chance we have left.”

  He nodded. “I’m not making any guarantees, but all I’m saying is maybe we aren’t out of options, yet. Hellcat might not be technically dead, but he did get trapped between this world and the next—whatever and wherever that is.”

  Marty opened the back of the hearse. The glossy, enamel black coffin took up most of the room inside.

  Lorcan’s voice barked from my phone speaker, “What precisely do you think you’re doing, Mr. Zach?”

  “Cool it, pal,” Marty called back, shaking his head. “I won’t disturb your precious silken sheets.”

  He stuck his hand into a compartment against the sidewall of the hearse and pulled out what I first mistook for one of those radar guns police use to catch speeders. It looked like an oversized water pistol with an enlarged disc at the front end.

  I frowned at it. “What is that?”

  “The Spectrothon 2000. Henner invented it. He combined the oscilloscope, thermal scanner, EMF meter, ultrasound, infrared and UV meters, motion sensors, barometer, psychrometer, ion meter, and static meter into one device.”

  “Wow.” I didn’t bother to mention I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Marty nodded. “Wow, is right. He even registered it for a patent, but the certification hasn’t come through yet.” He flipped it over and inspected it. “It’s pretty bad ass.”

  “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  He held it out in front of him, like he was going to shoot it (whether the thing even fired or was more like a ghost vacuum, I wasn’t sure). I reared back to get away from it. “Don’t point that thing at me!”

  “It’s perfectly safe for the living. It only detects ghosts, and it doesn’t harm them, either. It only tells us where they are.”

  “How will you use it to find Hellcat?”

  “Well…” He paused to think the question over. “I guess it will only work if it’s pointed directly at him—or somewhere he’s about to cross from the other side.”

  “That doesn’t do us any good, Marty,” I answered, shaking my head. “We already have Wanda tracking him and Lorcan tracking him and neither one of them has been able to pinpoint his location!”

  “Right. But the Spectrothon 2000 will be able to read whether a portal is opening to let Hellcat through, which means it will be able to detect the cat before he arrives.”

  “Okay, that could be useful.”

  “Right.”

  “Right,” I answered as I chewed on my bottom lip and glanced toward the Jeep. “We’ll need to be in the same car, which means you’ll have to squeeze in the back with…”

  “We’re coming too,” Henner cut in. “You’re not hunting a spectral cat with my equipment and leaving me standing on the pavement, wondering if and how it worked.”

  “Yeah!” RJ added. “We’re coming, too.”

  “There isn’t room in the Jeep for all three of us,” Marty remarked. “We’ll have to take the hearse while you drive the Jeep.”

  I sighed. “Fine.”

  I walked over to the Jeep and looked at Wanda, who was still slouched in the passenger seat. A second later, Lorcan materialized directly beside her, outside the Jeep. He started studying her again and then me.

  “Is she still well?”

  “She’s fine, Lorcan.”

  He nodded and when he faced me, there was a somber expression in his gaze. “There are very few things I care about in this life, Poppy,” he said in a small voice. “And this difficult witch is at the very top of the list.”