Chapter 13
Isaac left Anne’s office with three things: the stolen Birkin bag, Niles the cat, and a mission to save the world. World savior was a heavy cross to bear, but Isaac thought he could handle it. Anne’s pep talk had helped him gather his courage. After all, he was a wizard with the world's confidence at his back. The world wasn’t asking a powerful psychic like Anne to save it. Instead, the world asked humble Isaac, confirming what he already knew. He was special. Plus, if saving the world didn’t get him off the Slytherin shit list, nothing would.
His next step was to question Jane Furbury for more information. It only made sense to go straight to the source of the look-alike cats. And with one of her treasured cats as a hostage, Isaac felt confident he could press her for some answers. But before Isaac could meet with her, he’d have to have a place to meet, and he didn’t know where she lived, yet. He reasoned that she would be off the clock by now, and, given her profession as a cat lady, he guessed he could find her at home, alone.
Traffic was sitting at a standstill on Lincoln as Isaac headed to his apartment, so he took the opportunity to listen to a voicemail Dr. Rousseau left him. According to the message, Isaac was to call him back as soon as possible and confirm their next appointment, but Isaac used his phone to text Liz instead. He asked her for Jane’s home address.
Isaac’s stoplight went through an entire cycle, red to green and back to red again, without him moving a single car length, but he didn’t let it get to him. Not today. Not with the fate of the world in question. Isaac thought he should appreciate every little moment he was given, even if he was stuck in traffic, so he rolled down his window to stop and smell the roses, and the scent that wafted back in from the streets smelled like charred meat.
There was a taco stand on the sidewalk nearest to Isaac. String lights accented it, but Isaac couldn’t make out the features of the hungry patrons lined up around the block. Smoke from the grill obscured them, turning them into specters. It billowed out into the night in waves, but it was impossible to tell where the smoke ended and the fog began. The gray night was oppressive. Aside from the neon store signs up and down the boulevard, the blooming bougainvillea was the only other oasis of color that stood firm against the June Gloom. The pink flowers were everywhere, wherever there was a fence to separate neighbors from one another. Taking it all in, a wave of ecstatic depression passed through Isaac’s nervous system. The vibes were immaculate. He felt like he was living inside a sixteen-year-old girl’s moody Tumblr post. Skinny love.
An hour later, Liz texted Isaac back as he entered his apartment. Not only was she not going to divulge the breeder’s address to him, but now she wanted to know why he wanted the address in the first place. And where were his script pages? She needed them by the end of the day—Mr. Lennox’s orders. Isaac knew what he had to do, ghost her, so he turned off his phone and went to find Seth, who was alone, sitting on their couch and cleaning Isaac’s break-in-case-of-emergency-zombie-apocalypse pistol for him.
“Hey, Seth…”
“This is a beautiful piece, Isaac. Such a shame that it looks like it’s never been fired.”
“Thank you,” Isaac gulped. “I’ve been saving it for a rainy day.”
“Tough to find one of those in southern California.”
“On another note,” Isaac began, uncomfortable with Seth’s comment, “how would you rate your skills in locating the home address of a person of interest?”
“Fair to good, I’d say. I used to run a little recon back in the day. What you got?”
Isaac told Seth everything he knew about Jane, which didn’t take more than three sentences. When Isaac finished, Seth went right to work and quickly discovered that the name of the breeder, Jane Furbury, was only a stage name. Her true identity was a mystery. The best lead they got on her location was found by creeping on her Instagram account, @Furbury_fur_babies. Isaac and Seth became her 9,834th and 9,835th followers, respectively.
Jane’s account brand was your general basic-bitch vibe. Her pictures included little succulent plants, latte foam art, and scenes from a thrifting adventure. After scrolling through several pages of similar dreck, Seth wondered aloud if Jane’s labias were also colored Millennial pink and how he’d like to find out. But what separated Jane from her influencer peers was that each picture included a movie star cat in the frame, even the ones where Jane was in public. Isaac would have figured a cat at brunch would have violated a health code or two, but apparently not. While Isaac examined a photo of a shabby-chic tabby cat posed with a Taylor Swift album, he thought to himself: how powerful could cats be if they let themselves be subjected to such abject humiliation?
The pictures most beneficial to Isaac’s ends were the ones set at Jane’s house, especially those taken on her balcony. Seth had this neat little skill where he could use the relative sizes of landmarks in the background to help triangulate her location. After crunching the numbers, Seth determined that Jane lived in the Silver Lake neighborhood, a conclusion corroborated by the appearance of the actual Silver Lake in the background of numerous photos. Further assisting their efforts, Jane attached a geotag to a few of her photos. That was the good news. The bad news was the traffic report to Silver Lake. Was saving the world worth going eastbound on the 10? Isaac and Seth debated the question before deciding the world could wait.
There was no easy access to Silver Lake since the hipster enclave was positioned right in the middle of the Bermuda triangle formed by the binary code of freeways known as the 101, the 110, and the 10. Seth said he had an easier time infiltrating the Korean DMZ at high noon than breaching Silverlake. He wasn’t joking. There was nothing to do but bide their time. Eventually, the good people of LA would clear off the roads, return home, and contend with their nightly existential crisis brought upon by the paradox of choice of aimlessly surfing Netflix. Isaac envied their simple lives. He missed the lifestyle, especially as he strapped on his seatbelt, with Niles on his lap, when it was time to leave.
Rush hour may have been over, but they didn’t account for the Dodger homestand, which thickened traffic ten or so blocks from their destination, adding another hour to their ETA. By the time they reached the right part of Silver Lake, it was nearly midnight. Seth put the car into a crawl as they navigated the serpentine hills. Isaac hung out the passenger’s side window with his phone out, doing his best to match the landscape they were passing with the landscapes found on Jane’s Instagram photos, a Herculean task made nigh impossible at night.
The open window had the added benefit of letting some fresh air into the car, a kind consideration for Seth, whose cat allergies were acting up. Already, several of his sneezes triggered Isaac’s PTSD, who couldn’t help but white knuckle his armrest and pray for Seth not to lose control of the car as his dad once did. Unfortunately for Isaac, his out-sized reactions only encouraged Seth to sneeze more to prank him.
Finally, after 30 minutes of combing through the area, they were ready to give up. They’d have to return in the morning and hope a little sun would shine some light on the situation. Isaac wondered aloud if it would be easier to find an Airbnb for the night rather than traverse the city again, but Niles vetoed the idea when he began yowling in alarm. Isaac tried to shush the cat but failed. Before Isaac could react, the cat leaped from Isaac’s arms and flew out the open passenger window.
“Shit!” Isaac screamed in horror. Seth pulled the car off to the side of the road, so Isaac could race out to chase Niles. “Come back. Heel! Heel!” Despite his commands, the Birman bounded into the night without pausing to look back at Isaac, who continued his pursuit. Chasing after Niles was like trying to get a table at Jon & Vinny’s on a Friday night — impossible. Isaac weaved through thickets, hurdled white picket fences, and dodged abstract-shaped topiary but couldn’t close the gap on Niles. It was an achievement just to keep the cat in sight. Isaac was out of breath and about to call it quits when Niles abruptly stopped in front of a modest, one-story house that sat alone at the end of a street.
They were at Jane Furbaby’s house. The multitude of cats gave it away. They littered the lawn, and so did their busted kennels, with their doors swinging freely in the wind. One cat, two cats, red cats, and Russian blue cats, but with all of these cats surrounding him, it only made it more obvious to Isaac that there weren’t any cats of the Niles/Captain Flapjacks make and model, the mythical Birman.
Isaac didn’t understand. Could these cats really contain such power as to make Anne cower before them? It was hard to believe one of them was the key to saving the world until their glow-in-the-dark eyes followed Isaac while he walked toward the house, boring a million holes into his soul. Isaac stared back at the cats hard, but he eventually folded, unable to meet their gaze any longer, choosing instead to submit to them by looking at his feet as he ascended the porch steps to follow Niles.
When Isaac saw his feet land on the welcome mat, he looked up, and the hairs on Isaac’s neck reached for the sky. Even though the front door was wide open, beckoning him to enter, the inside of the house was dark and unwelcoming. Isaac rang the bell as a courtesy, but it went unanswered except by the cats inside, who meowed as one.
Spookier still, Isaac’s call should have been answered. Someone should have been home. There were two cars in the driveway. He surmised the first one belonged to Jane based on its vanity license plate that read “KATQUEN.” The other, parked behind the first, was a nondescript silver Prius, a car so ubiquitous in LA that Isaac’s eyes roved over it without registering it.
“Hello?” Isaac called out once he stepped inside the house, but nothing human responded. Carefully, he stepped around and over the resident cats as he pushed further into the darkened house, feeling them writhe around his legs. The soft sensation of their fur was unnerving. There were also more empty cages and carriers in here, some of which he recognized from the Super Jesus set as belonging to the Birmans. Whoever was here was here for a jailbreak.
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Isaac started his search for Jane by following the custom catwalk that ran along the wall, guessing that it would lead him to the breeder’s bedroom, but he never made it that far. His foot shot out from underneath him to stop his forward progress. It flew into the air as the slip turned into a fall, and he hit the floor with a dull thud. He looked around for a banana peel to blame, but none was found. Instead, he found a pool of blood.
Screaming, Isaac scrambled back to his feet. That’s when he saw the motionless mass lying on the kitchen floor.
“Dios Mio,” Isaac whistled. He had found Jane Furbury all right. Above her body was a framed poster of a cat. It showed a cat clinging to its life from the end of a frayed rope, and the words printed below it read, “Hang in There.”
When Isaac’s breath and pulse returned to their regular rates, he tip-toed over to the corpse to examine it. It was his first dead body. Finally! The wait was over. He had come so far since that day at the county morgue. Had he matured? Had he leveled up? He didn’t feel any different. Was this all there was? He couldn’t understand what all the hype was about. How underwhelming. If he ever returned to Dr. Rousseau, he would have to bring this up during their session.
But never mind that. This was Isaac’s chance to solve a crime and be the hero. He didn’t binge-watch CSI: Miami for nothing. A part of him had always known he would need the skills of a crime scene forensics team. So he did what he was trained to do. He stood up, looked off into the middle distance, and muttered with as much David Caruso as he could muster, “This is going to be one long cat nap.”
After letting his one-liner linger in the air for a dramatic beat, Isaac dug into the scene. This was indeed a rare opportunity. If he was ever going to do Seth a solid and figure out if Jane’s labias were colored Millennial pink, then now was the time. Did Seth specify whether he was talking about the innie or the outie labia? Isaac guessed the outie because, for a white girl, he thought a Millennial pink innie was the cost of doing business.
But never mind that! Again! He had to focus on the murder. The first clue was located on her neck, where the breeder’s jugular was severed. It was gruesome. This was either a crime of passion or someone sending a message. It was a true wonder! He had never seen a pair of tonsils from this angle before, so he took another moment to stare and admire the rare sight. It was like sneaking a peek at the dark side of the moon.
Isaac began to wonder if this was the work of vampires. The neck wound was the leading indicator, and it fit the pattern of clues he had gathered so far, but working against his pet theory was the large amount of blood left behind. Would a vampire leave so much food on his plate? Were there no starving vampires in India? And how did vampires survive a full moon? Wasn’t moonlight just sunlight but through the transitive property? Is that why werewolves were created? To ensure humanity was subject to some sort of fear through all phases of the lunar cycle? Questions abound for Isaac, but his thoughts were interrupted by a sputtering cough from the body beside him.
“You’re alive!” Isaac jumped back, startled.
The breeder’s eyes fluttered open. “Save...” She struggled to choke out the words due to the hole in her neck. “Save…”
“I’ll save you,” Isaac assured her. “Don’t worry. Who did this? I’ll avenge you in the name of your ancestors.”
“Save… the… cat…” were the breeder’s last words.
Isaac froze. “What did you say?”
“...”
“What did you say?” Isaac shook her, but that didn’t work either. She wasn’t going to respond. The light had left her eyes. Now he was viewing his first dead body.
Had he heard her right? Her words were garbled since she was working with half a voice box. He couldn’t understand what was happening. Isaac began to cry for himself.
“What are you doing here?” a cold voice accused Isaac. He turned around to discover Liz standing behind him. “What have you done?” The question seemed rather rhetorical to Isaac, a total absence of surprise on her part.
“Nothing!” Isaac scrambled away from the corpse. He put his hands up in a gesture of non-aggression, except the move backfired when she saw how red they were. “It’s not what it looks like,” Isaac argued, but Liz wasn’t ready to take any chances. She whipped a gun out of her waistband and leveled it cooly at Isaac, hand steady. The weapon was slim, but that didn’t make it any less menacing to Isaac. He began sweating, and his skin felt scaly as the adrenaline kicked into his system.
“Why do you have a gun?” Isaac tried.
“You’re still so new to the industry.” Liz chuckled, but she didn’t put any fun into it. “Now tell me what you’ve done with the Birmans.”
“I only had one. Niles was his name.”
“I know Niles.”
“He led me here. I swear. He’ll tell you,” Isaac pleaded. “You’re right. I am new to the industry. As I left the set, Niles followed me out. I wasn’t going to be rude and push him away. Are you not supposed to take the props home? Was that wrong?”
“No, you’re not supposed to take the cats home with you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know any better. We’ll just have to chalk this all up to a big misunderstanding. Consider it strike one. Does that sound fair?”
“How about I count to three instead?” Liz said while slipping the safety off the gun. She had Isaac right where she wanted, but not for long. A random black cat leaped at her, claws extended. They sank into Liz when the cat landed on her ankle. It hurt her like hell, and the pain only worsened when the cat began climbing up her leg, moving to her more fleshy and sensitive areas of her body. Liz swung around, doing her best to shake the cat off her. It didn’t work. She even whiffed several times as she tried to pistol whip the cat.
Isaac took advantage of the mayhem by letting his animal instincts take over and tackled Liz to the ground. He dislodged the cat in the collision, but that didn’t matter much because he had her underneath him. She was under his control. The gun Liz dropped in the commotion had skittered away to a safe distance. He could kill her if he wanted.
“Listen,” Isaac demanded while he held her wrists. “I found her like that. I only got to her a minute ago. Honest. Seth, my roomie, he’s here. He can vouch for my whereabouts. Seth!” Isaac screamed. “Seth!” He looked around, but Seth was nowhere to be found, and neither was Niles.
Liz struggled to free herself from Isaac’s clutches, but it was to no avail. She panicked, surprised by the strength his slight frame held. Liz had underestimated him. Her Wednesday night Krav Maga classes did not prepare her for this moment, and she was beginning to freak out. That’s when Isaac let her go. “We’re on the same team,” he said. “I don’t think you murdered the breeder either.”
“Her name’s Jane.”
“It’s not your fault,” Isaac said in his best Robin Williams from Good Will Hunting impression. “It’s not your fault.”
“I know that!” she spat, rubbing her wrists to soothe them.
Screeching cats interrupted Liz before she could go on a rant, but the noise stopped as suddenly as it started. Isaac’s chest grew tight with fear. He could feel something approaching. It was the same stalking sensation that had overwhelmed him in Beverly Hills when he was at Super Jesus’s house. He had felt hunted then, and he felt hunted now. His mind flashed to his last meeting with Anne and how she had foretold his saving of the world. But what danger would he be protecting it from? Anne said she didn’t know, but Isaac suspected she just didn’t want to tell him. His imagination now filled in the blanks with vampires, Nazis, and Illuminati child killers.
Isaac clutched his heart when two golden eyes broke the darkness, reminding Isaac of the final scene in his dream-script. Again, his soul felt exposed under their glare, just as the cats had made him feel on the lawn, except these eyes floated above the floor at a height that meant this was no ordinary house cat.
A low, guttural snarl replaced the silence. Liz and Isaac crept closer to one another without looking at each other. Then Isaac screamed, but Liz kept her head about her. “So it wasn’t you.”
“I knew it.” Isaac whimpered, sensing the ambush lying in wait behind the fog of war. “It’s a vampire.”
“Probably not,” Liz whispered. She looked at her gun in the no-man’s-land between them and the eyes. She mentally measured the distance and then dove for the gun, but she wasn’t alone. Meeting her in the middle was an honest-to-goodness mountain lion. No joke. It was a mountain lion, and it was one Isaac recognized.
Attacking Liz was the mountain lion nearest and dearest to the hearts of all Angelenos, P38, whose exploits in the Hollywood Hills were the subject of local legend and glossy magazine profiles in National Geographic. P38 sightings were rare, so Isaac took the time to marvel at the moment. He wouldn’t take this opportunity for granted. Rumour had it that P38 avoided detection by navigating the city using LA’s labyrinthine sewer system, reminding Isaac of another mythical beast, the basilisk that wandered Hogwarts through the school’s plumbing. What a beautiful creature, Isaac thought, as he watched the graceful arc the cat’s paw took as it swung its way down towards Liz. A true specimen!
Wap! The cougar’s paw connected with Liz’s head.
Liz screamed. She was getting the worst of her entanglement with the powerful P38. She was on her back and held up only her forearm as a shield against the P38’s snapping jaws in what Isaac thought was poor form. If Isaac were to give notes, Liz should have also been using her knees to aid her. But to her credit, Isaac admitted, she kept him at bay and suffered only a scratch so far. Then, Liz groped for the gun with her other hand but came up empty-handed. “Help!” she cried.
“Help!” Isaac agreed. He looked around helplessly. Right about now, he expected Seth to barge in and save Liz and his skins. That's how this should have worked. That’s how his inclusion into Isaac’s life was meant to pay off. Seth had courage. Seth had the training. Seth was battle-hardened. But what did Isaac have? According to his calculations, Isaac was supposed to be in the “Fun and Games” portion of his Save the Cat story, but he wasn’t having any fun at all. He was scared.
Isaac couldn’t move as he watched Liz do her best to fend off the beast. She landed a hit when her knee slammed into a soft spot in P-38’s underbelly. Isaac began to back away. As far as he was concerned, Liz had this situation handled. But that lie was less comforting when Isaac heard her scream. P-38’s had a mouthful of hair as he whipped Liz’s head back and forth. The sight was horrible.
Isaac could ignore her fate no longer. It was time to get up off the sidelines! So he charged P38, putting his shoulder into the cougar. To his amazement, he was able to send the creature flying. How did he do that? Isaac looked down at himself in wonder. But by doing so, he didn’t see that P38 had landed on his feet and was ready to pounce again.
That’s when the glint from the gun caught Isaac’s eye. He launched himself at it and got it cleanly into his hand, but he missed wildly with all three shots he fired. Despite that, his efforts were enough. The loud sound from the blasts was enough to scare the great cat away. P38 escaped, slinking off into the night to live and fight another day.
“Thank you. Finally.” She turned to Isaac, her chest heaving with exhaustion.
“Anytime.” Isaac tried to play it cool. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“There is something.” Liz smiled, prompting Isaac to lean into her, ready for his first kiss.