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  She sighed. “Don’t start, Mr. Ploppers.”

  “I’m hungry. You’re late.” His tail twitched as he sat there, statue-like in his regalness.

  “You have food, dude. I bought that contraption so you’d always have food, even on days I’m out late.” The contraption Alice was referring to was an electronic timed cat bowl that released just the right amount of food he would need throughout the day.

  It was one of many measures she had taken to help him control his weight problem, but with his thyroid issues and picky tastes, controlling his weight was a constant battle. Still, he was a lot healthier now than when she first adopted him from the shelter.

  “That food sucks,” he whined. “I hate it. And the fancy food bowl sucks worse. It doesn’t feed me enough. I’m starving.”

  She shook her head and started walking toward the kitchen. “Knock it off. You could survive a harsh winter with your fat stores.”

  He followed her as she passed the fridge. “Sucks. Hate it.”

  Alice rolled her eyes, put her keys down on the kitchen counter, and made her way to the cabinet where the gourmet wet cat food was.

  “You could stand to lose a few pounds anyw—” she started.

  “Don’t body shame me.” He darted in and out of her legs, rubbing on them as he passed.

  Alice whipped her head around. “Where’d you even hear that phrase? Are you turning on the TV while I’m at work?”

  He stopped his cat assault of her legs and insisted, “Tuna.”

  Alice rolled her eyes again. All this eye rolling was giving her a headache.

  “Tuna it is, your majesty.” She bowed.

  While he thought he was being indulged whenever she gave him the fancy cat food, what she was really doing was sneaking his thyroid medicine into his wet food. But she’d never let him know that.

  She dumped the food onto a plate and set it down on the wooden floor. Mr. Ploppers was on it without so much as a thank you. She bent down to scratch his ear and managed to coax a few seconds of purring out of him before standing up with an exhausted huff.

  It’d been a full day, working at her office, volunteering at the shelter, and ultimately tracking Chauncey through the woods. The reunion between dog and owner had been a sweet one, leaving Alice proud of her accomplishment. Mrs. Abbott had been profuse with her thanks and offered Alice a reward, which she’d flatly refused. She instead asked Mrs. Abbott to donate to the shelter, if she wanted. Mrs. Abbott said she would, which made Alice doubly happy about finding Chauncey.

  Alice had something of a routine when she got home at the end of the day, but being so late, she decided a shortened version would be acceptable. Her first stop was the backyard. She opened the sliding glass door in the living room and stepped out onto her faded cedar deck. She clicked on the deck light and peered out at one of her two sacred spaces.

  Her backyard was something like a zen garden, though it never stayed static for long. She liked to play around, to plant or prune, depending on whatever struck her fancy. The grass was a vibrant green, currently at a nearly perfect height. In another day or two it’d be ready for a mowing and manicuring.

  The mowing she’d do with an old fashioned lawn mower that was also held together by magic. There were spells she probably could research and learn that would allow her to mow with magic alone. But the mower was one of those tools she found oddly satisfying to use, and the act of mowing itself was peaceful and calming.

  On the outskirts of the grass, sandwiched between the eight foot tall wooden fence and the grass, was an eclectic blend of plants and vegetables. A rose bush here, a grapevine there. Some azalea bushes in the corner. All neatly surrounded by pale brown rocks.

  As she looked out, she thought of the fishing pond where she found Chauncey just a few hours ago and instantly realized she absolutely had to have a koi pond back there. Maybe a nice wooden bridge, a path zigzagging through. The bulk of the yard was the center grass patch, but maybe it was time that changed.

  She suddenly couldn’t wait to do more work back there.

  But not tonight. Tonight she was tired.

  She made a quick stop at what she referred to as simply her “magic room.” If a guest were to happen down the hall, they wouldn’t notice the door to the room. She’d carved a rune on the door a long time ago that kept it virtually invisible. Like most spells, there was an imperfection; if someone entered the house looking specifically for the room or the door, it would appear clear as day. But otherwise, nobody would ever see it.

  This kind of spell was fine for day-to-day use, and something that required no further maintenance on her part. Should there ever be a need to hide the room completely, there were stronger spells she could cast.

  She entered the room, flipped the light switch on, and closed the door behind her. While Mr. Ploppers wasn’t strictly forbidden here, she did prefer her solitude.

  Alice had collectibles, books, and her share of decorations throughout her home and office. But at heart she was a minimalist, and nowhere was that more apparent than the magic room. There were no windows. The walls were plain white. A black cushion sat in the center of the room with a candle on each side. In front of the cushion, a single red rose grew seemingly out of the floor.

  This room swirled with magical energy. She felt it every time she set foot inside. Because of this, the look and feel of the room was extremely malleable. How it looked today might be totally different from how it looked tomorrow.

  Sometimes it seemed to have a mind of its own. Sometimes she barely recognized it as her own room.

  Tonight, though… everything was as she had left it.

  Normally she’d sit and meditate for at least a half hour, often longer. But she was skipping that tonight, which was okay. Generally speaking, skipping a part of one’s routine was a great way to derail said routine. But Alice was comfortable enough in her ways that she wasn’t too concerned about it.

  Still, there was one thing she wouldn’t skip.

  She sat cross-legged on her cushion and snapped her fingers at each candle, lighting them one at a time. Then she closed her eyes, placed her hands on her knees and quickly found her center. She reached out and re-established her lifelong connection with the most important person she’d ever known.

  “Good night, Dad,” she said. Barely five seconds passed before she heard his reply.

  “Good night, Alice.”

  Alice flopped onto her couch, ready to indulge in two of her worst habits: a Mountain Dew before bed, and some homicide investigation shows. She loved a good mystery, and even though much of the programming could be salacious, she couldn’t stop watching.

  She grabbed her blanket and snuggled into the corner as the deep-voiced narrator went on about a cheating husband, a secret family, and a web search about how to properly dispose of a body. She’d seen this episode before, she was sure. Either that, or there was an alarming amount of people like that in the world.

  She liked to think otherwise.

  Mr. Ploppers hopped up onto her lap and turned in circles. He kneaded the blanket briefly before finding a comfortable spot.

  “You love me,” Alice said.

  “Shut up. You’re warm.”

  “It’s July,” she said. “And you’re purring.”

  “I can’t control that,” he replied drolly.

  She watched in silence for another minute. Mr. Ploppers seemed to have dozed off. Softly, she whispered, “You love m—”

  “No,” he interrupted, his tail flicking with displeasure.

  Oh well. Perhaps next time she’d get him to admit it.

  3

  Alice arrived at her office at 8:55am the next morning. A little later than normal, but no harm done, as she always unlocked the door and flipped the “open” sign at precisely 9am no matter what time she got there. Customers never showed up any earlier anyhow.

  In fact, sometimes entire days went by without a single customer coming in. That was okay too. As a modern priv
ate investigator, the bulk of her business came from the Internet. She maintained a website with all the relevant information: her official private detective credentials, her degree in criminal justice, and a few testimonials and success stories.

  She also kept a presence on all the major social media sites. It wasn’t something she loved doing, but it was a required aspect of any modern business, and at the very least she was competent at it.

  She threw her keys on the reception desk and flipped on the lights. Nobody manned the reception desk. No one ever had, and probably no one ever would. It was all for show. An old desktop computer sat square in the middle with a few knickknacks and picture frames featuring their original stock photos scattered strategically around it.

  The idea was to create a certain atmosphere, a suggestion that this wasn’t just a one-woman operation—even if it was. The office beyond the reception desk was very small, which was perfect considering how little foot traffic it actually attracted.

  A mostly glass door separated the reception area from her office, where she headed now. She approached her desk, which, unlike the reception desk, was real and fully functioning.

  The rest of the office she’d decorated to evoke an old noir detective feel. No bright colors, some old filing cabinets with random stacks of paper on top of them, a few small picture frames on the wall, black and white pictures of old cars at a gas station, and a pretty yet generic landscape picture of a road winding up into the wooded mountains.

  She pulled her work laptop out from the top drawer, flipped it open, and pressed the power button. She glanced at the clock on the wall. 9:00am. She walked back to the front door and flipped the sign, looked outside… and screamed.

  A man was standing right outside the door, staring directly into her eyes. “Holy moly!” she yelled, putting her hand over her heart as if that might slow it back down to normal. “You scared the ever-living kittens out of me!”

  The nerdy and stout Danny grimaced and took a step back from the glass door. “Sorry!” he mouthed, putting his own hand up in a gesture of apology.

  Danny. Great. 9:00 on the dot and he was just… waiting there. Alice put her hand over her eyes and shook her head. Shaking the cobwebs loose, she imagined. Well, might as well let him in.

  She unlocked the door and held it open. Danny eased by her, overly cautious not to make any contact.

  “I’m sorry, Alice,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “I know you didn’t, Danny. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I was just going to get some donuts and wanted to see if you wanted any. My treat.”

  Alice perked up at the suggestion of sweets. “Donuts?”

  “Yeah, my treat.” He pushed back the black-framed glasses that slid off his nose.

  “Well, since you’re going anyway…” she began, her exasperation dissipating at the promise of a tasty treat or three. “But that’s a big ‘no’ on the ‘treat’ part.” She reached into her pocket for a few dollars.

  “It’s no problem, Alice. I don’t mind treating,” Danny said. Danny was many things, an absolute sweetheart being one of them. He really didn’t mind treating, she knew. Especially where Alice was concerned.

  She considered for a moment, hand still in her pocket. She was not one for taking charity. But she knew Danny and knew it’d mean a lot to him. “Okay. Just two, though.”

  Danny smiled. “Okay. Anything special?”

  “Something with a lot of sprinkles. Then maybe a jelly one. Or, wait, no! Get the kind with the vanilla cream oozing out. If they have it, of course.”

  “They usually do. Mountain Dew?”

  She considered it. For her, it was never too early—or late—for a soda. But her mood suggested something else.

  “Milk, please.”

  He stood there for a moment, as if contemplating the change in her usual drink. “Okay, milk—”

  “Strawberry milk!” she decided. It was Danny’s turn to be startled, this time by the sheer force of Alice’s Most Important Decision of the Day.

  She smiled sheepishly at him, a bit embarrassed by her outburst. Danny’s face lit up at her smile, and apparently that was all he could take. He mumbled something about being back in twenty minutes, then shot out the door.

  Alice returned to her office and sat down in her old wooden chair behind her desk, a bit flustered by the sudden interaction. She liked Danny, even though he could be a bit much. He was a tad taller than her, dark haired, a little pudgy, with overly huge black glasses that hid the fact that he was kind of cute with nice blue eyes.

  But Danny was also kind of creepy. At least that was what most people thought of him. Alice knew better, though coming into that knowledge had been one of the most shameful experiences of her life.

  Danny owned the comic book and toy shop next door, Awesome Stuff. When she’d first opened her office a couple of years ago, she had also thought of Danny as creepy. He didn’t say much, and she often would catch him just staring at her. He’d always look away, horrified he’d been caught looking, and any get-to-know-you conversations early on quickly devolved into awkward head ducking and foot shuffling.

  She had begun avoiding Danny, and that had been fine. He didn’t push or follow her around or anything like that. But a year ago, after he was charged with sexual assault, Alice had all too quickly judged her “creepy” neighbor guilty. Although she had nothing to do with the case, she decided on her own to astral project into Danny’s apartment right above his store and look for clues regarding his guilt.

  Astral projection definitely wasn’t a go-to magic tool for her. Firstly, it brought up some serious questions about privacy and trespassing. And secondly, she could only pull it off somewhere she felt completely safe, and she wasn’t skilled enough to travel much farther than a block.

  Since his store was right next to her office, however, distance and feeling safe wasn’t much of a problem. The bigger problem was whether she should have done it. At the time, she was worried for her own safety, working right next to an accused predator. She also, deep down, wanted to find proof that he was innocent.

  So in a moment of weakness, she broke one or two of her moral codes to project into his apartment.

  What she’d found had been terrible, but not in the way she’d expected. Danny had an old fashioned journal next to his nightstand. In it, he was very open and expressive, writing out all his deepest thoughts, fears, hopes. What she found in those pages was a lonely man, a boy at heart. No surprise there; he was, in fact, a year younger than Alice. But there was no anger or malice in his journals, only low self-esteem and a total lack of confidence.

  And a total unrequited love of Alice.

  Having used her magic to turn the pages, she found out Danny had a puppy dog love for her. But all his words were sweet and complimentary; there was no creepiness there, no intention to stalk or attack or anything resembling something untoward. In fact, his journal alternated between psyching himself up just to say hi to her or finding some way to start conversations, and decisions to just leave her alone.

  A short time after her astral projection, Danny had been exonerated of the charges. There had been no doubt, ultimately, of his innocence, leaving Alice with a deep and lasting shame.

  She had learned so much from her father about acceptance and generosity, yet she had been so quick to judge Danny because he had been awkward and weird.

  Since then, she’d made an effort to befriend Danny. She was careful, though. She didn’t want to lead him on or give him the impression she had romantic feelings toward him, because she didn’t. She found him to be a kind and generous person. Quiet… unless she got him talking about any kind of geek culture topics. Comics, movies, movies about comics. Then he became a motor mouth.

  He could still be a little exasperating, though. It was hard for Alice, finding a balance between being a friend and making up for the guilt she felt for invading his privacy so inappropriately. Was there any value to her friendship wit
h Danny if she was a friend out of guilt alone?

  But after some time she gradually realized that wasn’t the case. Her platonic fondness for him grew, and she was now at the point of being comfortable calling him “friend.”

  Just as she was about to go through the paperwork on her desk, the front door opened again. She looked up, expecting to see Danny returning for some reason. Instead, in walked a stranger… A customer, maybe? She stood up and walked out of her office to greet the man.

  “Good morning, sir,” Alice said. “Welcome to Munroe Investigations. How can I help you?”

  The man’s dark eyes darted around the room. Disheveled to the extreme, his mousy brown hair hadn’t been brushed or washed for several days. He wore a plain blue t-shirt that was inside out and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. The shorts, at least, seemed neat enough. But the dress socks really didn’t go well with the sneakers.

  The man seemed to notice Alice checking him out and looked himself up and down. “Oh,” he said. “Jeez. I’m a mess, huh?”

  “No, no,” Alice insisted. “Not at all.”

  “I’m sorry. My mind wasn’t really focused on what I was putting on when I left the house this morning.”

  “Really, it’s okay.”

  He looked at her with sad and exhausted eyes, saying, “I’m embarrassed.” His shoulders slumped in sudden defeat.

  Alice rushed over to him. She reached up to the much taller man and put both hands on his shoulders. “Hey,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “It’s totally cool. I’m surprised I somehow haven’t gone to work in my jammy pants yet.”

  The man smiled weakly at her words, his unshaved face almost hiding his dimples. “Thank you,” he said, staring off. As he stood there, he looked lost, as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing. He glanced back at the entrance, making Alice worry he might’ve been reconsidering why he had come.

  “Let me show you to my office,” she quickly offered, curious just what kind of case this gloomy man had brought her.