A Witchy Inheritance

Chapter 5

Part of me though, remembered when I was very little I had been staying at my aunt's house while my parents had gone on a business trip somewhere out of state, I only stayed with my aunt a handful of times before she married my uncle and had kids of her own. When I was older and stayed over I spent most of my time playing with my younger cousins. There had been less than a year between my mother’s death and my aunt’s wedding.

We had been in the kitchen and were making some kind of cookie from scratch and she told me, ' magic is everywhere. It is all around us you simply have to know where to look and how to look at it.' In my little kid mind all I remember thinking about that statement was a sense of wonder and spending the weeks after I got home trying to see the magic she was talking about. Eventually I gave up seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Then her husband died and my grandmother died and she became more eccentric than ever before. I would visit her out a family obligation, when I could, the conversations began to become more disjointed as her house became a little messier and she became a little paranoid. One of the last times I saw her she told me that having magic wasn't all that it was cracked up to be and that because of it she was sure someone was after her. I waved the words aside feeling pain in my chest at the woman who had once taken care of me when my parents were too busy. I assumed it was just an early stage of dementia. But now, I watched a man change into a cat right before my eyes and everything she ever said to me about magic was flooding back. Is that why she gave her cat to me? Did she assume I would be more understanding about a cat that turned into a person than her daughters? Surely, they heard more about magic than I ever did.

Realizing I had been staring at the small black furball in front of me for a long stretch of time without saying anything I finally cleared my throat and said the first thing that popped out of my mouth. "I'm not going to pretend to really understand this but why did my aunt will you to me? Unless I'm missing something you appear to be a fully functioning adult capable of taking care of yourself and not an object that could just be left to someone."

I watched as the small black cat seem to give a heavy sigh before standing up and facing away from me, taking a few steps towards the house, once he was just outside the doorway he turned his head so he could look at me over his shoulder motioning for me to follow him inside.

This wasn't necessarily a conversation for public consumption but at the same time following an unknown man or cat into my house didn't seem like the safest idea especially if he could overpower me in a moments notice. Part of me though had stopped panicking, I don't know when it happened but it was as if my subconscious decided on its own Cicero wasn’t a threat, which didn't make any sense. But the cat just looked at me patiently waiting for me to make up my mind. I still had my pepper spray and I knew how to use it but I couldn't see my aunt setting me up to be in a dangerous situation. These boxes had been mailed to me with this man's possessions in them and although my aunt spouted some crazy things in her time none of them were ever menacing or something I worried about, beyond that last statement that she thought someone was after her.

If anyone asked in that moment how I came to my decision I don't think I would've had an explanation for them but against all better common sense and judgment I walked towards my own front porch. When it became clear to the cat that I would be following him he headed inside. As I passed the heap of clothing I scooped it up and continued walking into the dark house.