Spliced

Cat barely noticed a perceptible difference in her surroundings and yet, it felt like something had shifted in the atmosphere. She looked up from where she had been studying the harpoon gun. Was it darker in here?

“You feel that?” she asked Zephyr who was crouched down looking at the books in the shelf.

He looked up. “Huh?”

Cat ran her gaze around the room looking for changes. “Something’s different.”

“You mean that flicker of light? It was probably just some clouds moving.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than Cat.

Cat studied the room as if at any moment she might find the thing that was out of place. Like it might leap out and try to attack them. But nothing moved. Even the dust was still.

Now that Zephyr’s attention had been drawn away from the bookshelf he did notice how much darker it was in here. He got to his feet. “You know I don’t think the will is in here.”

She met his gaze as if being pulled from a dream. Her eyebrows narrowed and she focused more on what was here rather than what wasn’t. “It does look like it’s getting dark. Who’s idea was this, to look for a single piece of paper in a big dark house this late in the day?”

“Well day time is hard, Kass and Amanda both work half their Saturday mornings, so do you I believe.”

“Only if I want to,” Cat interrupted.

Zephyr continued. “Plus there’s the thing with Lily, Sirius and Falco are unpredictably away at sea, and as for Indi, well I think she just wanted to explore a haunted house, which is inevitably more exciting at night.” He sighed and eyed his surroundings nervously.

“I’m not sure that’s the case, you can’t see as much at night. I think it has more to do with it being so hard to get Indi out of bed early enough, although I suspect she’d do that for a chance at haunted house exploration.” Cat peered out the window. Yup, it was definitely darker outside. Much more so than a few minutes ago, as if they’d skipped some time.

“Don’t you think we should keep moving?” Zephyr asked. “It is getting darker.”

There was a hesitance in his voice that Cat hated, a trepidation. She much preferred decisiveness. She rolled her eyes. “You’ve got that big torch, I don’t know why you’re so worried.”

“Yeah well it does make it harder to find things or see things, as you already pointed out, and I didn’t see any light switches. What kind of house doesn’t have light switches?”

“An old one,” Cat replied. But she was only half paying attention. There was still something making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge and she couldn’t figure out what it was. “Let’s grab the others and go.”

Zephyr nodded, his shoulders relaxing in relief.

Cat laid the harpoon down next to the gun and moved toward the staircase that Indi and Wolf had disappeared up. As she walked she gave another glance out the window. It was hard to tell, because of all the clouds, but she could have sworn that the sun was much lower in the sky than it should have been. For a moment she wished she had a watch. She rolled her eyes at herself and paused at the base of the stairs. Turning to Zephyr she asked, “Do you have the time?”

He was closer than she’d expected. When had he gotten so light-footed? She cursed herself for not noticing where he was and momentarily wondered if he used his quickfoot magic to move closer least he be left on his own.

He held out his wrist. The time was about what she’d expected, based on what it felt like, and yet... she gave one more stare at the dying light outside. Then she shook herself off and began the climb up. There was no point wondering. Cat, was after all, a woman of action. Whatever it was that was going on, it would make itself known in time. She just had to keep moving forward.

Zephyr was so intent on staying close that he nearly trod on Cat’s heels as she climbed. She was forced to pause a moment and send a glare his way to get him to back off. He gave that puppy dog look that Cat hated so much, but he did keep back and out of the way from there on.

She did feel a little bad for having led him on all those months ago, if that’s what you could call it. Really, in Cat’s mind there was nothing wrong with casual flings. She’d had a million of them. It just, obvioulsly wasn’t Zeph’s thing. He should have gotten over it by now, and yet sometimes she still caught that wistful glance. It just made her want to run further. She never got that from Baz. Her breath caught at the thought of him and of that thing of his that was growing inside her. Unlike Zeph, he wasn’t a one-woman man, at least she didn’t think he was. He was like her in a lot of ways. A part of her wondered then if there could be more there. After all she’d never really given him the chance. She’d always been the one who came and went. It was just, he’d never seemed to mind. That was what she had liked, at least she thought she had. Now.. she shook her head. It was silly thoughts. Relationships weren’t something she wanted. They couldn’t be. She didn’t even know what they were supposed to look like.

They found the upstairs empty. No sign of either Wolf or Indi.

“Perhaps they went through here.” Zephyr pointed his torch at a small door at the back of the room.

As Cat set her gaze on it and she felt her whole body go cold. She couldn’t explain why but there was something behind that door. Something unpleasant.

When Cat didn’t answer and instead just stared at the door Zephyr was the one who moved towards it.

As he reached to open it Cat cried out, “Wait!”

She immediately cursed herself at the sound of fear in her voice.

Zephyr turned, surprise in his eyes, clearly not used to hearing that tone from Cat.

Realising that one of the them needed to check at some point Cat decided she had better be the one to do it. She pulled herself from her spot and took the torch from Zephyr. Moving her gun into the same hand temporarily she then started to pull the door open. Once it had started moving she kicked the rest of it out with her foot at the same time she leveled the torch in one hand and gun in the other. She took a quick step back as the door swung open to reveal nothing but an empty crawl space.

Zephyr didn’t say anything. He was the last person who would mock anyone for being afraid.

Both of them waited in silence for a few seconds before Cat finally got up the courage to look further into the crawl space. It went a long way both directions before turning. There were obvious other tunnels that branched off along the way as well but no sign of either Wolf or Indi. Cat was impressed at the brightness of the torch and decided she’d ask Zeph where he had gotten it from later. It’d be useful for shining around under the car when she was working late.

Zephyr stuck his head in next to hers. “Any sign of them?”

Cat still had that feeling that something wasn’t right. Something other than Wolf and Indi’s disappearance. She pulled her head out of the crawlspace. Zephyr did the same. He looked at her expectantly.

“I don’t think they’d go in there without telling us,” Cat replied feeling a desire to close the crawlspace door. “They certainly wouldn't go in there and then close the door behind them.” She looked at Zephyr and noticed that his eyes were growing wider and more worried looking.

“Maybe they just went into the next room and the door shut itself behind them?” Zephyr suggested.

“It’s staying open now,” Cat pointed out.

“Then where did they go?”

“That’s a good question.” Cat shut the door to the crawl space.

Zephyr jumped as it clicked shut. “What do we do now?”

“Amanda knows some locator spells.”

“Couldn’t you dreamwalk?”

Cat shook her head. “Not here.” Dreamwalking meant being almost unconscious and she didn’t trust Zeph enough to make sure they weren’t attacked.

“Outside then?” Zephyr asked with raised eyebrows.

Cat considered it. “We might as well find the others on the way. There’s something about this place I don’t like.”