Flickering Creatures | ONC 2024 Longlist | ✔︎

(5) Secrets Lurk

For all his unreliability, Titus was aggravatingly exact about anything he set his mind to. He was up with the sun the next morning, and had already eaten and groomed by the time Bella stirred and found herself in imminent danger of being left behind. She scowled as she snatched a bite to eat before beating Titus out the door. He didn't even give her the satisfaction of looking annoyed.

Now that they were actually doing this, Bella's wings itched to fly ahead and confront Hyacinth's second Witch immediately. As though sensing this, Titus wove an extremely leisurely path through the town, sniffing flowers, greeting villagers, then forgoing available fence posts to sharpen his claws on a barrel-flowerpot halfway across town. Bella landed in yet another tree to wait for him, vibrating with impatience. The temptation to ditch his company burned through her feathers, but she did not trust him enough to leave him unsupervised.

And so it was the better part of half an hour before they traversed the small town together, winding up outside the house of Daphne's grandparents. Bella scouted it quickly and returned to land in a bush beside Titus. This proved too weak to support her, and she succeeded only in tattering her wings before hopping ingloriously to the ground. Titus licked a paw, waiting for her to recover her dignity.

"She's out back," said Bella. "On the bench under the maple tree. What are you planning?"

"What I said before," said Titus, stepping past her like so much dirty laundry. "Talking to her."

"Care to fill me in on how you plan to approach the conversation?"

"By keeping you out of it, I believe."

Only a passing villager's eyes kept Bella from launching herself at him. Even just rolling him in the dirt a couple times would be satisfying at this point. She'd lost count of the number of times he'd stopped to groom on the way here—a fitting demonstration of his order of priorities.

Titus had already sashayed up the path, tail cocked in a friendly question mark. Bella took flight again and glided from tree to tree, keeping pace with the cat as he approached the oblivious teenager. Daphne was buried in a textbook in the backyard's quaint sitting area, curled on a rocking bench with a blanket draped about her shoulders. An array of potion bottles—some empty, most full—dotted the rest of the bench's plush cushion.

"I was wondering if I'd find you here," said Titus.

Daphne startled so violently, she cracked her chin on one knee and sent several potion bottles tumbling. She dove after them, then spotted Titus and froze like a deer in Wight-lights. The cat sat primly and wrapped his tail about his paws.

"My apologies," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you. There's no need to worry; I just want to talk."

"About what?" said Daphne warily, gathering her potion bottles and retreating to the bench in slow motion.

Before Titus could answer, Bella swooped down to a garden sculpture. "We want to know why we caught you lurking around Bryony's house yesterday morning, messing with—"

"What my companion here means to say," said Titus, cutting her off, "is that you might have been one of the last people to see Bryony before she potentially disappeared, and we would very much like to know what you saw."

He couldn't just go about revealing Bryony's disappearance to a prime suspect. Daphne's eyes flew wide at the mention. She'd frozen again, halfway through rearranging her potion bottles; she still had one in each hand, seemingly forgotten.

"If that isn't too much trouble," added Titus, then, "Do you mind if I join you?"

Daphne unfroze and scrambled to clear the potion bottles, stuffing most of them into the school-issue transport bag on the ground beside her. Titus thanked her and hopped up on the cushioned bench, making himself comfortable.