“Try not to stomp on his dream.”
I snorted. “He’s doing that all by himself.”
“He does come out of left field, but give him time.”
“Do you think being an interior designer is too big a dream for me?”
“No. Neither was being a ghost tour guide, and I have a feeling Jo-Jo is every bit as determined to succeed as you are. Who knows? He could do amateur night at the comedy club and be a huge hit.”
I shuddered. “From what I’ve seen, even amateur night is a long way off.”
Saber came back to my cottage at four. His raid on Hot Blooded hadn’t been productive, and duty still called that night, but we indulged in a delightful afternoon tryst that stretched into hours. My mellow mood held even when Saber left again to stake out Ike’s club. He promised he’d be back, though he didn’t mention when.
If Saber’s absence was convenient, it wasn’t an obvious dodge to being there for Jo-Jo’s practice run. Neil was another kettle of mullet. He said he was cleaning his house in Davis Shores, just across the Bridge of Lions. Sure, he was preparing to put his home on the market, but Neil cleaning when he could be with Maggie? Riiight.
Maggie and I might’ve invented somewhere else to be, if we’d planned ahead. But Jo-Jo showed up right after I’d changed from my Minorcan ghost tour guide costume into shorts and put my thick, unruly hair in its customary ponytail. Jo-Jo was rather endearingly excited to try out his new material on us, and he’d cleaned up pretty well. His hair was loose but washed, and he wore blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and black flip-flops. Guess he’d hit WalMart sometime last night. Maggie left the floodlights off, so we took seats under the glow of rope lighting strung on the arbor. Settled on the comfy teak chairs for the private floor show, we hoped for the best.
Jo-Jo gave us comedy carnage. I was certain his jokes alone had put the first nails in vaudeville’s coffin. He started with, “How many vampires does it take to change a lightbulb? None. We don’t change no stinking lightbulbs.”
Maggie stayed silent, I worked not to grimace, and somewhere a kitten meowed like it was in pain. I could relate. Next Jo-Jo tried, “Take my ghoul friend, please.”
Maggie cleared her throat. I winced. The feline meowed again—louder, longer, closer—and I felt the brush of magick in its cry. What the heck?
I glanced around, while Jo-Jo tried a belligerent, “Hey, you. Yeah, you, white bread. Are you undead or are you always that pale?”
He paused and shook his head. “No good, right?”
“Frankly, no,” Maggie admitted.
Jo-Jo waved her off. “No problem. I got a million of them. A priest, a rabbi, and a gnome go into a vampire bar—”
“Rrryyyow!”
No stranded kitty made that sound. It was a brain-jarring panther cry, and it came from Maggie’s roof. I looked up to see Cat, the magical shape-shifter who had helped capture the French Bride killer. She sprang from her crouch at the junction of the roof and arbor, sailed gracefully through the air, and landed with a thud a slim paw’s swipe from Jo-Jo.
“Rrrryyyow,” Cat screamed again.
Jo-Jo screamed, too, some variation on “Aaaiiieeee,” as he half-jumped, half-flew to the top of the arbor. It was the funniest Jo-Jo had been all night, but I didn’t have time to enjoy a laugh, because Hugh Lister banged through his back porch screen door and barged straight through the jasmine hedge, shouting.
“Goddamn it, can’t you people be quiet one—Jesus H. Christ in Dockers, what the hell is that thing?”
FOUR
005
“What thing is that, Mr. Lister?” Maggie asked calmly.
We’d both shot to our feet the second we heard the screen door slam, hoping to shield Cat from view. Had it worked? Had she downsized yet?
I glanced over my shoulder as Hugh snarled, “That thing.”
“Rrryyow.” Cat emerged from between my legs, still making a racket, but she’d shape-shifted to look like a hefty house cat with a silver-colored chain around her neck. A chain that was scads too large. Was that a charm hanging from the chain?
“You mean the cat?” I asked. “Is she yours?”
“Hell and damnation, no, that animal isn’t mine. I hate cats, and I could’ve sworn that one was bigger a minute ago.”
Maggie blinked oh-so-innocently. “Bigger than what?”
“Bigger than it is now. It looks stupid in that necklace.”
Cat parked on her haunches, stared at Hugh, and let out an eerie wail that made him take a step back.
“They make awful noises when they’re in heat, don’t they?” Maggie said.
Cat snorted, and Jo-Jo moaned theatrically from the slatted arbor roof.
Hugh whirled and stared at Jo-Jo neatly caught in the outer halo of rope lighting. “Why is a man crouched on your arbor, Ms. O’Halloran?”
“Allergies,” I said quickly. “Really bad allergies to—”
“Cat hair,” Maggie supplied.