Monster Madness: Mysteries of Meri (Familiar Kitten Mysteries Book 37) by Sara Bourgeois

Author:Sara Bourgeois [Bourgeois, Sara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

I couldn’t sleep.

Hangman’s House was having one of its episodes. Not the dramatic kind where doors slammed and lights flickered, but the subtle kind that set my teeth on edge. Doorknobs turning just enough to catch the moonlight. Curtains moving in rooms where the windows were closed. The kind of restlessness that meant the house sensed something I couldn’t.

Beside me, Thorn shifted, mumbled something about evidence, and settled back into exhausted sleep. He’d been at the station until after midnight, processing what they’d found at the mansion. I’d tried to wait up, but he’d texted that I should sleep, that they had more questions than answers.

Now, at what the grandfather clock downstairs insisted was 2:47 a.m., sleep felt impossible.

That’s when the tapping started at the bedroom window.

Not the random tap of a tree branch or the rhythmic drumming of rain. This was deliberate. Urgent. The kind of tapping that came with claws.

Meri sat on the windowsill, every inch of his black fur bristled with agitation, his eyes reflected the moonlight like tiny lanterns.

I slipped out of bed and cracked open the window. The November air bit immediately through my nightgown.

“What’s wrong?”

“The Pike girl is in the cemetery. Right now.”

My blood went cold. “What? How do you…”

“Whisper told Bonkers who told me. She’s observant, that silver cat. Saw the girl walk past. Barefoot. In her nightgown. In November.” His tail lashed. “Like she was being pulled by invisible strings.”

I grabbed my robe, shoving my feet into slippers. “Should I wake Thorn?”

“By the time you explain, she could be anywhere. Or eaten by something that should be resting.”

The cemetery. Not just any cemetery, the old Coventry cemetery across from our house, hidden behind its wall of ancient trees. Where the original witch families had been buried for centuries. Where the most powerful and fearsome witches in our history were supposed to be resting peacefully.

Supposed to be.

“The dead don’t usually approve of midnight visitors,” Meri said, jumping down to the porch roof. “Unless something dead is already inside her, giving her passage.”

I slipped out the front door as quietly as I could. The November air was brutal, cutting through my robe like it wasn’t there. But what made me shiver wasn’t the cold, it was the fog.

Fog in November happened, but not like this. This was thick, alive, rolling across the street like something out of a Victorian ghost story. I could barely see ten feet ahead.

“This isn’t natural,” I whispered.

“Nothing about tonight is natural,” Meri replied, a shadow at my heels.

The tree line that hid the cemetery looked different in the fog. During the day, it was just old oaks and maples, thick enough to screen the graves from casual view. But now, wreathed in that unnatural mist, the trees seemed to lean together, whispering secrets in a language I didn’t want to understand.

The path through them, usually hard to find even in daylight, stood clear as if lit by moonlight that couldn’t penetrate the fog.

“That’s not right,” Meri muttered. “The path doesn’t reveal itself to just anyone.

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