The Restorer of Magic: A Grimalkin Novel

By Adeana Terrill

When the local vampire lair is destroyed… the Sacramento Supernatural community is filled with fear, anger and worry.
Now a Sovereign Vampire is sending a trio of powerful warrior/wizard vampires to find out who killed his servant… and fear turns to panic and confusion. Did such a powerful vampire really care what happened to one of his 'offspring?' Or was there some ulterior motive?
For the region from Sacramento all the way up to Tahoe has a lot more magical power than most other places in the magically dwindling world but no one knows exactly why.
No one that is but Tabitha McTavish, a member of the feline shape-shifting race called a Grimalkin... and a Restorer of Magic.
In the chaos that ensues many of the secrets that Tabitha has been keeping are revealed to friend and foe.
Now Tabitha must wage a battle to save Sacramento from the vampires… while dodging a mysterious wizard and a pack of strange super-werewolves who have found out her powerful secrets and have no intention of letting her escape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329675148

Book preview

The Restorer of Magic: A Grimalkin Novel

The Restorer of Magic

A Grimalkin Novel

By Adeana Terrill

Copyright © 2015 Adeana Terrill

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-329-67514-8

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced, scanned, uploaded or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidence.

Dedication

For

My vibrant, inspiring,

Great Aunt

Helen Ray

Who encouraged my love of reading and my attempts at writing.

With Love, Sunshine

Acknowledgments

My awesome daughter Meagan, who did a lot of homework and housework on her own as I worked on this book.

My loving husband Patrick, who is a computer wizard and a constant help to me.

I owe him a night out for all the meals he missed while I wrote this book.

My marvelous publisher Lulu.com

Chapter One

I jumped the chain link fence surrounding the old empty lot and ran flat out over the dead yellow grass and hard packed dirt. I reached the far side of the lot before jumping a second fence.

I couldn’t hear anything behind me at the moment, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there and I felt certain I hadn’t lost them yet.

I ran across the empty two lane road and jumped yet another six foot high fence without touching it. To any human seeing me it would have been more than impressive… but the werewolves behind me were almost doing the same thing. I say almost because they were doing it in wolf-form and had four legs compared to my two.

I looked up and saw the half-full moon shining down and lighting my way through the brush as I began to run up the slight incline of the canal’s levy. It wasn’t a full moon, I should have been safe from the four creatures chasing me… the fact that I wasn’t was very annoying, and very worrying.

If it had only been one, or even two, I might have turned back and kicked their tails. But four were too many, especially if they were up on pack hunting techniques. And unfortunately, with as many evasive actions as I’d had to make to keep them from being able to separate and surround me, I had a feeling these four were not only well versed in their hunting skills… but also very familiar with working with each other as well. Nethers!

As I reached the top of the levy I could just make out a flash of movement a little further back, but I definitely had the feeling there were no longer four behind me.

Drastic times meant drastic actions. At this point they may have just thought from my scent that I was a female werewolf. But I was about to do something that would let them know I wasn’t a pathetic werewolf, although since they were chasing me in wolf-form and it wasn’t even a full moon… maybe these four weren’t as pathetic as most other werewolves.

I took a deep breath and summoned my power as I ran along the top of the levy, next to yet another fence, this one meant to keep people from falling into the canal. Then the power flared over and through me as my form suddenly began to shift and grow, slowing my pace only a fraction of a heartbeat as I went from my human-form to my Lokin-wolf form.

There are two differences that would tell the werewolves that I wasn’t like them. The first was that when werewolves change it takes a while, the weaker the wolf the longer the change. I change really fast, in a heartbeat so-to-speak.

The second reason was that while most werewolves were only a little larger than real wolves, maybe one and half times real wolf size or even double the size for exceptionally large males. I was a LOT bigger than real wolves, and usually a LOT bigger than even the larger werewolves. I might be a female…but I was not on the small side for my kind.

I stood just over five feet tall at my shoulders, although I could look a little taller in my thick winter fur… and I was almost ten feet long, including my tail. I weighed, well a girl never likes to state her weight so I’ll just say I was over four hundred pounds and let you worry about the rest.

I gathered speed and jumped as I threw myself sideways up and over the fence, then began gathering speed to jump the actual canal.

I heard sounds now, behind and further along the outside fence in front of me, but it was more like startled yips back and forth than any attack signal. I think I really was confusing them.

I had been hoping for that, and could understand, because if they had never met one of my kind before… meeting a Lokin could shock them.

The reverse, however, is that if they had met one of my kind before, the werewolves might have definite thoughts on what to do to me… and it could be completely different than what they had intended before they knew.

I gathered my muscles and leapt the canal. I might weigh a lot but I had tons of strength and magic to help me… which also helped me keep out of reach of the smaller and lighter werewolves.

Now that I cleared the canal I just had one more fence to hurdle before I could reach the big field a short way from a housing development I could see about a quarter mile away. The werewolves wouldn’t… at least they shouldn’t… follow me where they might be seen by a bunch of humans. At least that’s what I was counting on as the river wilderness area was too far away to be a feasible escape route at the moment.

I ran parallel to the fence again, gathered myself and leapt up and over just as I heard the rattle of a chain link fence not too far behind me. Abomination! At least one of them didn’t seem as confused as the rest.

I leapt over the last fence and sprinted for the housing development. Behind me, I heard both a splash as a werewolf obviously failed to make the canal jump, and a fainter squeaking of chain link as yet another wolf had problems clearing the fence on the top of the levy without a nice straight run at it.

Hah! I was at the edge of the front yard of the first house when a dog in the backyard started barking.

I had barely reached the second yard when I heard the low howl and then growl that let me realize the wolves were calling off their hunt.

I lifted my head and gave a triumphant howl, which promptly set every dog in the area off barking. Then I summoned my magic and quickly changed shape back into my human-form.

Another give away that I am not a werewolf is that my change is more magical and less… gruesome. I also get to keep my clothes. Some of the Fae try to relate the ability to their own Glamour, but it isn’t quite the same… well maybe a little. At least in regards to the more powerful faeries that can really affect things physically, not just throw illusions over them.

I moved quickly through the houses that were on the very edge of town, and deeper into the city proper. Compared to some of the little towns I had travelled through this one was huge and it had Folsom Lake not too far away.

I had been shocked when I followed the ley-line out of the Nevada desert into the Lake Tahoe area and sensed not only a werewolf or two… but lots… and the strong magic needed to support them… stronger than the ley-line had been since leaving the Salt Lake node area.

I’d been hard pressed to travel through the werewolves’ territory in secrecy but as I followed the magic south-westerly I found not only more signs of other supernatural and magic-using peoples… far more than was normal for a ley-line of the strength I had been following… but the presence of yet another large pack of werewolves.

I went into the town of Placerville in one pack’s territory and when I came out the other side… it was another pack’s territory. Placerville itself had no scent markers for either pack so I figured it must be a neutral zone between the two packs… or something really powerful lived there that kept the wolves out and that I couldn’t detect.

This surprising area, filled with so much magic and other supranaturals, seemed like the perfect place to lose myself. I had hoped to limit my power and mute my scent as much as I could so I could try to hide in plain sight, learn more about this world, maybe eventually get a job and…

But now at least one pack werewolves knew about me so it was already time to move on.

If female werewolves weren’t so rare I might have thought to pretend to be a common werewolf and join the other pack. But I’d wind up with a bunch of overprotective males trying to push me around and court me all the time… and I was just too dominant, and powerful, to let that happen. So… I couldn’t stay. Oh well, I was on the run anyway; running from a few more monsters wasn’t really a big deal.

I walked for a while, taking a long, turn-filled way back to the American River. Once there I would make my way down river and stop again in a couple of towns as Sacramento was too close now to escape the werewolves following me if they were really determined.

I would have liked to go back upstream to that wilderness area close to Lake Tahoe, but the variety of supranaturals wasn’t as prolific there so it made hiding harder… and for all I knew these wolves might be from that pack and still following me rather than the local pack who may not even have found me yet. Ugh… yes, definitely easier just to move on…

I moved off the road as I entered an access point to the park/wildlife area that extended several hundred yards from the river. I raised my head and began to scent the air.

The scents of human and dog were strong but this seemed to be a common river access area and so to be expected. But I also scented rabbit, deer, squirrel, coyote, pretty standard stuff I would expect to scent here in this slightly wild area.

But I felt uneasy. What if the werewolves thought of this? I mean, if they did follow me from up river… then they knew I was travelling down river. Not a good thought.

I glanced longingly at the area, took a deep scent of the river… then turned and walked away.

I hadn’t managed to keep from getting captured just on luck alone. For some reason, tonight’s surprise encounter had thrown me off my game.

So where did I want to go now? Redding popped into my head, but it was awfully close to Mount Shasta, and I knew for sure that the Fae ruled up there, and they were not all the cute fairies and elves that they tried to make the other supranaturals think they were… a lot of them would eat werewolves for breakfast, and I didn’t want to chance a run-in with any of them.

But the thought of moving into the southern central valley of California was just… too depressing. I mean, I could probably lose myself there for a while… but what kind of life would it be? Not really a lot of places to be a werewolf… let alone a Lokin.

From my understanding, even the few Fae that didn’t hang around the Mount Shasta area refused to live anywhere near central or southern California. And many of the Fae could tolerate a lot more civilization than most Lokin could.

Although supposedly a few Fae lived in the Sequoia National Park where a ley-line that came from Salt Lake went through the top of Death Valley then crossed the mountains into the Sequoia National Park before getting into the town areas around Visalia and Porterville.

I was almost back to the street entrance when I scented the werewolf on the breeze and froze.

Okay, so some werewolves could be hundreds of years old and I was only twenty-three… but I still shouldn’t have let them catch me like this.

Think fast, I told myself.

I could only scent one, which meant the others were probably scattered, trying to surround me… or find me if they came from a different route and didn’t have my trail yet.

If it was just the one… I could take him and hopefully be gone before the others could reach us. If it wasn’t a trap of some kind meant to either lure me in… or drive me into the rest waiting somewhere else for me.

Abomination! My best guess was that, after seeing me, they would know that just one of them couldn’t take me on alone, so I would think they would still stay in pairs while they did any searching. The fact that this one appeared to be alone, set all my alarms shrieking.

I couldn’t tell his exact location based on the breeze… but I knew it was slightly to the north of me. Unfortunately, if the others were down wind I wouldn’t get a scent of them… but they would get a scent of me.

I needed to move, but if the others were close enough just a small sound might lead them right to me without giving me much of a warning.

Come out, girl said a deep voice from maybe only a hundred feet away to the south of me. We don’t want to hurt you. Talk to us.

I heard movement then realized it was deliberate. There was movement to my east and movement to my west. I had let myself get surrounded by a group of… not so pathetic or stupid… werewolves.

How stupid and pathetic did that make me?

*****

Suddenly everything began to darken and the sounds began to fade until there was a silent blackness surrounding me. I felt like something was close, maybe…

The sound of glass shattering drew my gaze to the fluttering of my bedroom curtains as my window turned into flying shards of glass and a dark form entered and landed on the foot of my bed.

I tried to sit up but I couldn’t seem to move. I was about to panic when I recognized the form… It was a raven, and a large one. But I had a definite feeling that it was more than just a normal raven. Its feathers were black as night, almost fading into the hazy, almost foggy, blackness of my room…

A DREAM.  I realized I was dreaming… well, dreaming again, and my impending panic faded into curiosity.

Why would I dream about a raven breaking into my bedroom?

It cocked its head at an odd angle giving me a really good look at one huge solid black eye as it seemed to study me intently.

The raven took a few awkward-looking steps closer before stretching out its right wing and running its feathers along my bare foot. Despite the fact that I knew I was sleeping with sheets thrown over me and the raven couldn’t actually touch my bare foot… it tickled a little, but I waited to see what would happen next.

It was only a dream after all, what could happen?

But even as I thought of that the bird shook itself and feathers suddenly began to flutter around my room, a few landing on the floor, a few on the bed and one on my foot. Then the raven hopped over to perch on the sill of my broken window, cocking its head this way and that as it seemed to be trying to memorize me, my room, or who-knows-what.

Little did it know it was rousing my interest as well… and not in a good way.

I felt myself tensing, fighting to get some movement… even if it was a dream… when the bird opened its beak as if it might actually say something… and it did.

Squawk…See you soon.…Squawk.

And then it flew out the window and into the black fog of my dream.

I found myself free to move and I bounced out of bed, rushing to the window and looking out into the night. But of course all evidence of the birdie visitor was gone, except for the shattered glass on the floor which, being a dream, never cut me or the bird judging from the lack of blood evidence.

But feathers… there were feathers… I looked and counted seven of the things.

I reached down and picked one up, held it to my nose and began to take a sniff…

Rrriingg

My eyes flew open and I realized the phone was ringing.

Rrriingg

And with bleary-eyed disappointment I realized the dream was gone. It had just been getting interesting… had I caught part of a scent? What did it mean that it would ‘see me soon?’

Rrriingg

I glanced at my nightstand and the glowing numbers on my alarm clock there. It said 2:36 am.

Crap. I hopped out of bed, ran down the short hall to my living room desk grabbed the phone receiver out of its cradle, and nearly hissed my Hello!?

Is this Tabitha McTavish? An unknown male asked in a voice that was deep, melodic and slightly sultry.

Suddenly my sleep fuzzed brain snapped to full wakefulness and attention. That someone I didn’t know was calling me in the middle of the night on my home phone was not a good sign… could something have gone drastically wrong… or worse… could something have happened to my mom and dad and this guy was with the hospital or morgue or something?

Panic started my stomach knotting.

Who is this and what’s this about? My voice went up a few octaves and I knew that whoever I was talking to could hear the fear and worry reflected in my voice as I spoke but I couldn’t control it, nobody should be calling me on this phone except family, or business… unless something was terribly wrong. Is somebody hurt?

There was a pause. It felt like several minutes passed but I’m sure it was really only a few seconds.

No, no one is hurt Tabitha. The deep, melodic voice continued, but not as sultry as before. I did not mean to alarm you, or not unduly so. I had called a few times earlier this evening and received no answer so I simply thought I would try again.

I felt confused as this didn’t sound like any type of call I would have expected.

So you’re not with the hospital or morgue or something? I had to ask, to clarify as I was still uncertain if I should be freaking out or not.

No, no. I am not associated with any hospital or morgue. I am not calling about someone being injured or killed. Nothing has happened to any of your family or friends. His voice had changed a little, become more clear and calming and seemed to have a bit of a strange accent now that I really listened to what he was saying.

Nothing was wrong with anyone.

Everything was okay… So why the heck was this guy on the phone?!

I felt my temper flare now that relief was replacing fear. Now I was getting ticked.

"Look, you, whoever you are. You nearly scared me to death thinking someone had been in an accident or something! Nobody just calls anyone at two-freaking-thirty in the morning! And if you called before don’t give me crap about getting no answer, I have a perfectly good answering machine!"

I was working myself up to a really good Spitting Fit as my dad would call it. Every word I spoke was getting louder and more heated and my body was singing with tension and the desire to hit something. And NO, it was not a silly hissy-fit that other people often threw for no real reason at all… I had every reason to get upset here!

And where do you get off calling me Tabitha? Who the hell are you and what the frell are you doing calling me at all, let alone NOW?!

My name is Argos Mekeryll. I am new in town and wish to meet with you.

Why the hell would I want to meet someone as rude as you?

Because I plan to become your mate.

My voice froze in my throat. He wanted to become my what? … My mate?

A slight fear jumped through my body. He had said Mate, not husband or lover… did he know what I was?

I was so surprised… he actually spoke again before I could say anything.

I will send my car to pick you up tomorrow night at eight o’clock. You may dress as you please, I will supply the food. He paused for a moment before adding softly. Again, I am sorry for causing you any unnecessary fear or worry.

Then the phone went dead.

What the…. FREAK! He hung up on me? The slime-ball deliberately calls me at two-freaking-thirty in the morning, waking me from an intriguing dream, worrying me silly that maybe someone I loved had been in an accident and then HANGS UP on me?!

I slammed the phone back in its cradle as I began pacing. I don’t have a cell phone as my temper has broken way too many and even a non-corded phone tends to get thrown about so it’s an old corded thing for me.

And how DARE he tell me he’s going to be my mate! How dare he tell me anything, let alone that I was going to get in a strange car tomorrow night and meet him! If I did meet him he’d be a dead man… he’d be a freaking dead man!

I paced through my cabin restlessly. I was so mad I couldn’t sit still. I was fuming!

And how did he seem to know about me? How did he even know this phone number?! Did he know this address? A human wouldn’t talk about a mate like that. Was HE human? I thought about the voice. There hadn’t been anything to indicate it wasn’t human but then I usually didn’t sound non-human either.

Crap! I had been so out of it from being woken up from the dreams I hadn’t even thought about the phone or where I was or anything… was I losing it or what?!

Had he been in contact with one of the local supernaturals? And if he had… did he actually know what I was or was he just going by what they told him? Because, no one in town knew what I actually was, and if he did then he had to have learned it somehow.

I mean, even most of the were-creatures only knew that I was a shapeshifter who had the ability to take two other forms, those of an orange tabby cat and a tiger. No one that I knew of here knew of the special things I could do, or the special things I could give a mate.

Who and what was this Argos Mekeryll?

A lot of my anger was fading away into worry… and unfortunately… curiosity.

Curiosity; one of the major flaws of my kind.

Darn if I wasn’t sure now if I might not get in that car tomorrow and find out what was going on…

Except that I had other, far more important things I had to deal with tomorrow.

Of course he’d hung up on me before I could tell him that… so he could just wait and stew when I didn’t show. I just hoped he showed up at my apartment… and not here at my cabin.

I paced and thought and worried and griped a while before finally giving up on any idea of sleep. I was too keyed up.

I looked at the clock and it said 3:12 am.

Frell! I wanted to go run off this tension… but at the same time I suddenly realized that I had had another dream, one before my raven-bedroom dream. I had had a dream that sparked my attention and my writer’s creative juices.

So instead of trying to go back to sleep, or going for a run, I turned on my computer and sat down to work on a new novel.

I put down everything I could remember before thinking more about the story.

Where to go from here…?

First, how the heck was a Lokin different… and apparently better… than a werewolf? Why the heck was she being chased? And what was the interaction that was happening when my dream faded? I had the feeling that in the dream two of the werewolves had changed back into human form while the other two were still in the wolf form.

Maybe a conversation would answer the other questions.

I closed my eyes and let my mind play back over the dream as I let my fingers wander over the keys for a few minutes before opening my eyes again and looking at what I had typed.

We mean you no harm. My fingers had typed We just want to know what a female Lokin is doing out here alone.

My fingers paused as I considered what I had just written. I wasn’t sure that it sounded right…

I tried to come up with a conversation that I was sure should happen here… but could the two werewolves really have changed back to human form and still had time to catch her?

I mean, I could write it, but how many people would be thinking… ‘That’s a bit fast, most werewolf stories have the wolves taking longer’.

Sure there are a few books that have werewolves changing really fast, maybe even in just a blink of an eye...

But they are not as common… and I know the truth, and it’s a lot easier to write about what you know, and maybe change it around a little, than it is to just make stuff up as you go and have to remember it all later.

So what reason could I give for a fast change for the werewolves…? I could almost remember that part of my dream… almost, but not quite.

A lot of the books I’ve written started out with ideas I got from my dreams and this one was no exception. Then they seemed to come to life on their own as I continued to write them from where the dreams left off… but this one really seemed to be dragging.

This dream story had been so real and interesting, but every time I went to put it to paper, or computer, it just seemed to stop flowing and the images seemed to fade from view.

Should I try to start a new book and come back to this one later? But then, I hadn’t really had any other ideas lately. There had just been too many other things on my mind.

If I could write a story about my real life and all its problems, it would probably be the next sci-fi/fantasy/horror best seller.

Of course, I wouldn’t live very long after the book came out, that was for sure. Too many of the monsters would want me dead for risking exposing them… or for finding out I had been killing some of them, even if only the evil ones.

Then again, some of them might not care about any of that and would be more interested in other things from my book and might try to keep me prisoner forever to make use of my special abilities.

So, I didn’t write about my real life and even from one story to another I was always careful to change details, even general information about supernaturals so as to keep anyone from suspecting any possibly harmful facts or that I was anything but an imaginative human writer.

Finally, at about 4:30 am. I decided to put the book to bed because it wasn’t going anywhere and I was still just too keyed up… I needed to go for a run. I closed my laptop and sent my senses searching outside my cabin. It wouldn’t do to get caught using magic or shape-shifting… especially by one of the local werewolves.

When I was certain there was nothing outside, I walked to my back door, made sure my key was in my pocket and then summoned my magic and shifted into the form of a housecat. In this form I was a pretty standard looking orange tabby cat with a little white on my chest and left back foot. I had a nice orange breakaway collar with a cross on it, a name tag and magnetic tag as well.

I stepped toward my back door and the locking cat door set in it. The white magnetic heart-shaped tag on my collar got near it and it unlocked long enough for me to walk outside, then it locked again as I got further away. I put the cat door in the back door of my cabin for convenience and stealth, but without a lock I had to worry about raccoons and other varmints getting into my home.

I stepped away from the door and travelled down the stairs from my back porch. Once I reached the ground I hit the walkway, crossed my gravel driveway and ran for the bushes on the far side of my yard. Then I summoned my magic again and shifted into the form of an average looking bobcat before continuing on. Tonight, because I really wanted to run… I was heading south-west.

The bobcat form wasn’t too odd if anyone saw me and was big enough to keep any stray dogs, coyotes or owls from being able to do much harm before I might have a chance to change into something big enough to handle the situation. Even close to home I had to be careful in my little housecat-form.

Living in a rocky, mountainous area, often close to people and their dogs, or close to werewolves or other things that liked to chase cats… I usually needed to be cautious and relatively slow on my excursions. But where I was going tonight was generally werewolf free and used only during the day by humans and their dogs. So I could just run and run.

Soon I had left Kyburz and Pollock Pines behind and as I just passed Camino I reached the area where Carson Road hit Highway Fifty. There I crossed to the southern side and hopped onto the beginning of the El Dorado Trail.

The El Dorado Trail is a work in progress. An old rail trail, it is slowly being converted to a bike and foot trail. About half is done at the moment with asphalt bike lanes and parallel dirt paths, mostly around the town of Placerville and mostly used by its citizens.

But the rest is still a natural trail all the way out to the Latrobe road area. And plans are for it to run from the Sacramento county line, south east of the Folsom city area all the way up to South Lake Tahoe… eventually. But for now I like to run it once in a while and watch for any changes.

I ran and ran, eventually stopping for a brief rest while watching the sun come up. Then I turned and headed back home because I expected a very busy day soon.

I was trotting next to the asphalt bike trail when I heard the first scream.

No! Please… somebody help me! I heard from up ahead of me.

I put on some speed and rounded a slight bend in the trail to see a woman in a purple running suit screaming and struggling as two men dressed in camouflage clothes were trying to manhandle her off the trail and into the bushes several yards from the path.

It didn’t look good. I knew what they were about to do… or at least what they might have done if I hadn’t been here.

I jumped into the bushes just off the side of the trail so no one would see, pulled my magic and shifted to my jaguar-form. Normally I would use my tiger-form but if the Sacramento werewolf pack heard about it they would wonder why I might have been here.

I let out a loud Roar, more high-pitched and different from my tiger but still scary, as I rushed from the bushes. I hadn’t seen any guns but at least one of them probably had a knife or something. It was risky, especially when the woman was bound to report a wild leopard or jaguar on the loose later, but I had to help her.

I charged forward, my four feet moving easily.

I heard the startled exclamations from the men as they turned to see a spotted jaguar rushing toward them. I was a large female jaguar but of course the sight of any jaguar rushing toward someone who wasn’t expecting it was bound to be terrifying.

I roared again as I closed to within forty feet. The men forgot the woman completely and took off running back into the bushes on the far side of the trail, not even trying to draw any weapons, which was good because if I got hurt it might interfere with other stuff I had to do today.

I stopped and let the men go. The woman, in her torn purple and white jogging outfit, was hysterical now. She jumped to her feet but still managed to show some semblance of control as she didn’t run off into the brush as the men had but ran away down the trail back in the direction she must have come from because I hadn’t scented her as I approached the area.

I waited until they were all well away and there didn’t appear to be anyone else approaching because of the screams or the roars, then I shape-shifted back into my human-form and quickly grabbed up a piece of brush and began wiping out any of my jaguar foot prints. I also wiped out my own human footprints.

I left my bobcat footprints, and shifted back to bobcat and walked around the area the woman would say the jaguar had been. I didn’t want people hunting a cougar by mistake and hopefully the cops would see the prints and think everyone heard and saw the bobcat and over reacted because of the volatile situation.

When the area looked as normal as possible I headed home. I didn’t want to be anywhere around when the cops showed up, and they would, as this part of the trail was very close to town.

Chapter Two

I got back to my property and wandered through the thick brush and trees I kept to keep my privacy. After about a hundred and twenty feet the thick brush and most of the trees faded away into a cleared area around my cabin so I shifted back to my housecat form before I left the brush into the more open area where I might be spotted if someone was on my property.

I’m lucky in that I live on almost five acres of land, my lot being nearly square at about four hundred and fifty feet by roughly four hundred and seventy feet with my cabin nearly smack dab in the middle of it.

About forty feet from my cabin I walked onto my stepping-stone walkway. Besides going from my driveway up to my front porch as well as my back deck, my walkway also wandered all the way around my cabin, allowing viewing and access to my many various planter boxes scattered along the way.

Of course most were covered with wire as the wildlife in the area tended to eat most of the stuff I tried to grow. But I loved the area, animals and all, so a little compromise was fine with me.

I reached my back deck/porch and heard the sound of one of my wind chimes quietly making music, I liked my wind chimes… it was just too bad it wasn’t very windy at the moment.

I went through the cat door, shifted to my human-form and made it to my bedroom just as my 8:00 am alarm began to sound. I hurried to turn it off and then I headed for the shower. I didn’t normally need much sleep but these last few days had been busy and I knew I was going to need a nap later. But after I took a hurried shower I got dressed, grabbed a can of soda, a couple of granola bars and managed to get out the door, into my old brown Fort truck with its beat up camper shell, and on the road by 8:40 am.

It was Sunday and I was on my way to Gilroy for the last day of the Garlic Festival. I was writing a freelance article and needed to get there before noon. I had been there Friday as well but I needed to get back for some close of Festival information and to check out of my hotel sometime today.

And if I was lucky I could find someone who happened to be there Saturday that I could get some pictures from. Then, once I got all the information I could, I had to write the article… at least the last part as I had already written most of it on Friday… and submit it to my possible buyer before I headed home.

So I spent the day taking lots of pictures, interviewing a few people, and buying lots of garlic. I love garlic and while I have it planted in several of my garden boxes they don’t grow year round and those I do get never seem to get that big, so I buy some if they look good when I get the chance.

I even had a few strangers take pictures of me with my camera; one was while I was taking a bite of garlic ice cream with the background sign that said Garlic Bowl MMXIII clearly visible. The other was of me holding a large basket of garlic I had just bought from a vendor.

Of course I had lots of other food while I was there; garlic fries, white rosemary garlic pizza, garlic salmon, garlic lumpia, garlic onion rings,