Page 38 of Feline Good

Chapter Nine

It was early afternoon when Maya coughed, covered in dust and cobwebs, a curse falling from her lips in complaint. After showering, they scarfed down a quick breakfast before squeezing in time to look for the amulet. Theo had been scheduled to work today, but she delayed opening in order to give them time to search the attic and take down the Valentine’s Day decorations. She’d promised to make the extra hours up to him by removing the cat ears from the uniform. It hurt to make the change, but Maya knew she had more entertainment than she could handle as it was.

“I don’t think it’s here,” she announced.

“We should keep looking. I mean, you said it has to be in the building, right?”

Maya thought for a moment before nodding solemnly. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s here somewhere. This was all we had.” She gestured to the dark, damp storage area of her attic, but she meant the bar in general.

“That settles it.” August nodded. “We keep looking. We need the amulet beyond anything else, if only for peace of mind.”

Knowing he was right, Maya only grumbled slightly before she moved another box out of the way. At first, she’d assumed they would have to help her, but it seemed that strange energy seemed to flow through her again like a wave of electricity coursing through her veins and lighting her up from the inside out. It was with their borrowed shifter strength that she effortlessly picked up heavy boxes and sorted through things she’d never seen before.

“Maya, come here for a second.” A hesitant tone colored Asher’s voice, and Maya made her way to him, crossing around and over boxes and piles of her parent’s former life.

Mostly they’d found old clothes, stored up from when Uncle Malak moved in after her parents died. Some baby furniture was in one corner, broken down and stuffed up there to collect dust. Maybe they had hoped Maya would use the same items for her own children some day.

A pang splintered her heart, and she rubbed her chest as she approached Asher.

“Whatcha got, kitty cat?”

“Seriously? Kitty cat?”

Maya grinned down at him where he sat on the floor. “Dead serious.”

With an eye roll, he patted the spot beside him, and she sat, waiting for him to reveal whatever it was he discovered.

Slowly, he pulled a box closer and motioned for her to look inside. Her breath caught as she spied the stacks of photo albums and loose pictures.

“Oh my god,” Maya breathed, reaching inside and grabbing a handful of the old pictures.

Some of them were old— the written dates on the back tracking all the way to her parents birth years. Others were newer, random snapshots of her life, starting from the day she was born until just after her graduation. They stopped after that, and Maya tried to push away the reason why.

Flipping through the photos carefully, she nudged Asher in the side to witness her as a baby in a fluffy white dress.

“You were so cute.” Asher teased.

“Were? She still is cute.” August patted her head as he approached them from behind. Gesturing to the spot beside her, she motioned for him to sit and join.

He obliged and pulled the photo out of her hands to look at her tiny, grumpy face as she cried in her pretty white dress. “Not too happy here, hmm?”

“I guess not.” Maya winced at the thought of pitching a fit for her parents. Sifting through the other photos, her thumb traced the face of a beautiful, slim brunette smiling as the sun beamed down on her, joy etched in the very essence of the photo itself. “I don’t remember much about them.” The sadness in her tone was as palpable as the happiness in the image.

August’s warm hand traced a comforting pattern on her back as she slid the photo to the back of the stack to reveal the next one. “You were so young. I’m sorry, Maya.”

Her emotions swelled to a breaking point as she flipped and saw the vaguely familiar faces of her family. Her only family.

Her blonde strands fell from behind her ears to cover her face, but she didn’t tuck them back, not as the tears welled and threatened to spill over. Biting her bottom lip as it began to quiver, she breathed deeply through her nose as her sinuses burned with the pressure of holding back her tears. She remembered so little of them, only having flashes of memories.

A single chilly afternoon, eating ice cream with her dad, even though her nose turned red and her fingers hurt. Shopping with her mom and hurrying home to put the new clothes away, hiding the receipt from Dad. She even remembered a Valentine’s Day. Her parents and Uncle Malak had sent her a valentine to school— a stuffed animal with a pink balloon attached. A cat, of course, because their love was as old as the Egyptian bloodline they’d hailed from. That’s what the card had said, she recalled.

Maya could have smacked herself in that moment. There had been little hints, key words, but she wondered why they had never just told her directly, or even left her a clue. At least a more solid clue that she could grasp in her hands rather than bat around like an idea in her head.

Flipping through more photos, she found one of Uncle Malak, his handsome, tanned face staring back at her proudly, with his arm draped over her shoulder. Clad in a black and gold graduation gown, she beamed up at him, holding a bouquet of flowers he had given her as a congratulations. She shuffled to the next picture and what she found broke her heart. It was the same picture as before, but slightly shifted. Uncle Malak still had his arm around her, but a fierce expression of disdain shaded his features as they both stared at a figure that had shouldered his way into the photo. Alex. Maya’s innocent face, framed by tacky, layered bangs, gazed at him as if he held the world in his hands.

Bile rose at her so obvious young love for the one person that deserved it least.

Suddenly, she wanted to hold the stuffed cat her parents and Uncle Malak had gotten her. Jerking her head up, she glanced from box to box, all the ones they had gone through and deemed unhelpful.