When is a murder not murder?
Kitty Kats, her fearless daughter Diana, and enigmatic Muse—the king of cats in exile—return to unravel a chilling murder mystery.
While cat-sitting for an old friend, Kitty faces nostalgic memories of her late husband. She uncovers a web of dark secrets that lurk beneath her friend's happy-go-lucky life.
Meanwhile, Diana unearths an illegal mining operation that threatens to unravel the fabric of Wyrdwood.
Muse, the aloof monarch of cats, faces a villain from his distant past. The claws are out, and Muse is definitely not amused.
Join this magical trio as they navigate treacherous caverns, unmask secrets, and confront their enemies.
When is a murder not murder?
Kitty Kats, her fearless daughter Diana, and enigmatic Muse—the king of cats in exile—return to unravel a chilling murder mystery.
While cat-sitting for an old friend, Kitty faces nostalgic memories of her late husband. She uncovers a web of dark secrets that lurk beneath her friend's happy-go-lucky life.
Meanwhile, Diana unearths an illegal mining operation that threatens to unravel the fabric of Wyrdwood.
Muse, the aloof monarch of cats, faces a villain from his distant past. The claws are out, and Muse is definitely not amused.
Join this magical trio as they navigate treacherous caverns, unmask secrets, and confront their enemies.
“Eagle Crenshaw, you better not leave me here!” I did not like the screech of panic in my voice. “I’m too young to die!”
Eagle disappeared from view. “I hear something. Hang on.” His footsteps moved away, becoming inaudible.
Unfortunate choice of words: hang on. I was literally hanging by the seat of my pants. My cohort in crime-busting, Eagle, had crawled through the cave’s tunnel ahead of me on his belly, like a soldier, like a pro, and had emerged into the larger cavern beyond.
Being smaller and more stubborn, I refused to get down on my stomach. No way I was going to ruin my new jean jacket.
I figured I could make it through on hands and knees.
I’d been wrong. Amateur move.
My jeans waistband had gotten stuck on something, and no amount of writhing had freed me.
My nerves jangled. Stupid. Stupid! If I died there, my mom would kill me.
I had no business going into that cave with Eagle. Who was he, really? I’d only known the man for a week or so. He’d approached me at my workplace to see if I would help him with a case. Eagle’s a private detective. A Normal who can’t see magick. He lost his previous partner who had the spark. I don’t mean the partner died. He just left.
So, because this is Wyrdwood and you can’t spit without hitting the descendent of a god, mythic hero, or monster, he needs someone to guide him. He chose me, for some reason I have yet to understand. I do see beyond the veil. Both my parents descend from kith—magickal family lines. My mother comes from the dakini spirits of Tibet, and my father came from a long line of sphynxes. At this point, my blood is so watered down, I’m surprised I can see anything sparky. But, I can. This means that I see kith in their true form if they’re not actively camouflaging themselves to look Normal.
A kith’s true form expresses their magickal DNA. Depending on how blue your blood is—or green or black or lavender—your true form shows it. We’re almost all hybrids and mutts, of course. We’ve been interbreeding for generations.
The world at large—the Normals—can’t know about us. They’ve proven—ad nauseum—that they will massacre every last one of us. Is it jealousy? Fear? Yes and yes. The end result is that they will exterminate our asses if they find out we exist. Fortunately, we have magick. And we have Wyrdwood.
Wyrdwood is one of a dozen or so shelter towns in the world. The magick of the area keeps us hidden from Normals so we don’t have to expend our own energy to keep up a veil. There are beings here in Wyrdwood—ancient beings—who fuel the magick that hides us.
Honestly, I don’t know how kith in unprotected places do it. It’s exhausting always having to pretend to be something you’re not. In Wyrdwood, we live safely side-by-side with Normals. Heck, we have tourism. It’s a beautiful place for a vacation. Kind of like Disneyland, except the characters walking around are normal on the outside and cartoons on the inside.
Some Normals know about us. Eagle is one of those. He can’t see us, but he knows we exist. He believes in magick. There are humans like this. Maybe a loved one showed them, or maybe they discovered it on their own. For Eagle, it was his ex-partner who brought him into the fold. In order to enlighten a Normal, you have to get permission from the mayor. I assume they did that.
Someone—Eagle wouldn’t say who—had hired him to get pictures of an illegal mining operation. He took me with him because, “No one should ever spelunk alone.” I was beginning to understand why.
Spying on gold miners had turned out to be less fun than Eagle had promised. What made me think I could stop a cabal of criminals who were doing who-knew-what-damage to the environment?
When Eagle first asked me to help him, I was skeptical. I was still skeptical while hanging by the seat of my pants in a cold, damp cave and watching him walk away from me. What if he’d been grooming me so he could get me away from civilization and hold me prisoner? What if…
I reined in my imagination with one word. “Stop.” Of course, he was not a murderer nor a pervert nor a psychopath. I may not have known him for long, but I’d spent more time sitting in his car with him than I’d spent with my own mother since moving back into her house.
He’d be back. As long as he didn’t get stuck somewhere too.
What if we both died? What if the cave collapsed on us? What if…
“Stop.”
I wasn’t taking any chances. I wiggled and tugged. I grunted and growled. I kicked and clawed. I lashed and thrashed. I even farted. Nothing helped. I was stuck.
Exhausted, I collapsed, all of me but my butt which was held up by whatever had snagged my jeans. I rested my forehead on my arm and closed my eyes.
The rock walls, ceiling, and floor were closing in on me. In my head, I was having my own Death Star trash compactor moment.
My phone was in my back pocket, so I couldn’t even call for help.
At least, I had a flashlight in hand. He hadn’t left me in complete darkness. I had no choice but to wait.
Eagle and I had very different definitions of “right back.”
I thought about my new job at the Sheriff’s Department. I was a computer engineer, not law enforcement. Last thing I wanted to do was confront—much less touch—criminals or guns. Instead, I dealt with email accounts, databases, and internet connectivity. They were my jam.
The job was going well. I learned long ago that it’s best to under-promise and over-deliver. I’d established a routine and systems to make my work more efficient. They paid me for a full eight hours, though I really only worked about four—because I was just that good.
I spent a lot of work-time browsing the Internet. Most days, I cruised websites looking things up for my mom. She was internet-clumsy, at best. She needed me. It surprised me how much that made me happy. When my dad died, she was thrown out of her element. She went from being a housewife-diva who wore high heels when she vacuumed to being a one-woman-band who lugged around all the instruments on her back. Her life became a cacophony because she had never learned to play the harmonica.
Suffice it to say that the gaps in her knowledge of the practical world became glaringly and painfully obvious. My dad took care of everything except the housekeeping.
I, on the other hand, was lucky my husband was a loser, so I learned how to take care of myself, the bills, and the repairs. When the po-po threw him in jail for running a Ponzi scheme, I moved in with Mom. I had no choice. They froze all our assets.
So, I help Mom as much as she’ll let me. Funny that. The daughter teaches the mother how to manage grown-up responsibilities. I just wish she wasn’t so stubborn about it.
I am well aware of the contradiction between my day job and the fact that I was moonlighting as the sidekick to a local private detective. It helped, of course, that Eagle was easy on the eyes. We had a vibe going that felt good. Being his sidekick made me feel alive, adventurous, and important. We spent most of our time stalking—I mean ‘surveilling’—people. That meant sitting around in his car, at restaurants or bars, or even on foot. He took photos. He provided the snacks, and I provided the witty banter. It was a win-win.
I was having fun—or, at least, I had been until the cave.
So there I was, hung up in an underground tunnel, waiting for Eagle to—hopefully—come back. The weight of all that rock and dirt above me pressed down—not literally, but mentally.
My life flashed before my eyes…and then something moved against my leg.
I jerked. “Oh hell no. Hell, no!” I lifted up as high as I could go and stuck my arm down under me to where I could undo the top button and a couple inches of zipper. Then, I scrambled forward as fast as I could.
I left my pants and boots behind.
The floor of the cavern was lower than the tunnel opening, so I dropped down head-first and hand-walked forward until I was all out. I stood up.
Eagle was back.
“I made it.” I lifted my chin, sniffed, and straightened my underwear.
“I see that.”
Too much silence followed that exchange, and I was acutely aware that I was half naked. I took some comfort in the fact that my socks covered my ankles.
Eagle averted his eyes. “The miners are down that-a way.” He indicated that-a-way with a jerk of his head.
In the cavern, I could just make out the sound of running water punctuated by the low rumble of voices. “I hear them.” I kept my voice low.
Eagle whispered too. “It’s all open space from here on out.”
“Good.”
More silence.
Then, Eagle began to undo his belt. He opened the top button on his pants.
An uneasy trepidation filled me. “What are you doing?”
“You can have my pants.”
His pants? Oh hell no, again. I dove headfirst back into the tunnel, shining my light around and hissing to scare away whatever had touched me. My flashlight caught a pair of red glowing eyes that blinked at me before the little monster turned and ran away. No idea what it was.
“Git!” I gave it a little extra encouragement to flee.
I had to scooch in all the way to my knees, but I managed to grab my jeans. Without me in them, they were a cinch to shake down and pull out. My boots caught inside the pant-legs and came along. I backed out of the tunnel, saying a little prayer of gratitude that I hadn’t worn my thong.
When I emerged, Eagle dropped his gaze.
I inspected my pants. No creepy crawlies, centipedes, snakes, rats, bats, or goblins. I put them back on. “I guess this is my home now.”
“What do you mean?”
“No way I’m going back through that tunnel. You’re going to have to bring me food and water. It’s your fault I’m here.” I buttoned and zipped the jeans. “I’ll need a sun lamp.” The cavern was large and had a somewhat-flat floor. “A bed and TV. Mimi, my dog. Oh, and you’ll have to run electricity, plumbing, and a fiber-optic cable.”
“Anything else, your highness?”
“I’m decent. You can look now.” We both knew he’d already gotten an eyeful—not that I cared. I wore less at the beach. We all have bodies, after all. At least, that’s what I told myself while I ignored my fading blush.
Eagle faced me. “I could knock you out and drag you through.”
I widened my eyes as much as possible. “Okay, caveman. Oog.”
That earned me a crooked smile. “Well,” he said, “if I have to bring you food, there’ll be no more of that crap you eat.”
I held up both hands, palm up. I shook my left hand. “Panic attack I’ll have halfway through that tunnel.” I shook my right hand. “Versus never having ice cream again. Okay, you win. Just don’t hit me too hard.”
Eagle chuckled.
I inspected my boots for invaders then put them back on.
Eagle headed toward the opposite wall, taking his circle of light with him. “Stay quiet. These guys aren’t foolin’ around. They have guns, and they’ll use them.”
I nodded, aware of how much noise my footsteps were making. I whispered, “And in here, no one would ever find our bodies.”
In this second installment of the Wyrdwood series, Kitty Kats and her daughter Diana are trying to solve two mysteries while navigating the changes in their personal lives. Kitty lost her husband a few months ago and Diana is piecing together her life after her husband was sent to prison for fraud and all her accounts were seized. Now Kitty’s old friend Harold has died under suspicious circumstances so while she is cat sitting for his widow Martha, Kitty can’t help but investigate. Meanwhile, Diana is helping her friend Eagle find out more about some shady miners who are doing something nefarious in the caves outside town.
I really enjoyed the story and the creativity of the Wyrdwood world. Kitty and Diana are both funny and genuine characters with a realistic mother-daughter relationship. The mysteries were intriguing but also light and not too intense or dark. But by far my favorite part of the book was King Muse, Kitty’s tuxedo cat who is a lot more than he seems. The chapters written from his POV were hilarious and so fun to read. The contrast between what he was thinking when he behaved a certain way and how that behavior was perceived by his human “owners” was knee-slappingly funny. I can imagine my cat thinking some of the things Muse describes when I take him to the vet or refuse to let him outside. I found myself wanting to read the whole story from his perspective and was pleased that we got more from him towards the end.
The book also got the combination of exposition and plot right. As with any story with supernatural elements, a certain amount of world building or exposition is necessary, are witches good or bad in this universe? Do people have magic? and if so how do their powers work? Can mermaids walk on land or do they just swim? The supernatural rules have to be explained first before the story can begin. Some authors do a little too much explaining and by the time you get to the plot, you’re exhausted and feel like you’ve been cramming for an exam on fae culture or dragon politics. Others don’t do enough exposition and you find yourself confused about what the magical characters can and can’t do.
This book was the perfect mix and did a great job sprinkling in explanation as it became relevant to the story. It felt like the Wyrdwood universe unfolded a little at a time as the story went along.
If you are looking for a quirky, funny, and light cozy mystery with magic and royal cats mixed in, look no further than Catsitter’s Curse.