My Cat is The Antichrist Page 4

  “That room Drake showed us, does everyone know about it?” Lizzie asked.

  Jana sighed. “No, not even the servants know about all the secret rooms in this house. You parents rooms have always been off limits. They cleaned their chambers themselves, and I don’t think they ever let their friends inside. When Mattan and everyone came here, they didn’t know about you and Drake, but they seemed to know about most of the secret rooms. I know Mattan found the information about you in a room in your father’s study.”

  “What do you want to do first, Tabby? The room in your parent’s bedroom or the one in the study?” Lizzie asked.

  “You should take that bedroom Drake showed you. It’s yours by birthright and the master suite. The room you slept in last night was an old maid’s quarter when maids used to live here. If you had gone one bedroom down, you would have seen it was adjoined to a better suite.”

  I don’t think Jana meant to make Lizzie and I feel bad, but that “Maid’s” room was bigger than our entire apartment back in Kentucky and furnished better than anything I’d ever owned before. Well, at least past the age of two when I was sent away. Maybe it would make me feel closer to my parents sleeping in their old bedroom. I had no idea. It depended on what I would find in their secret rooms first.

  I thought whatever major secrets I would find would be in their bedroom, the room no one knew about. But I knew what everyone knew about me so far was in that room in his study. I needed to see those photos. Maybe my parents didn’t know how bad it had gotten for me while I was in foster care and that was why they never came to get me.

  There didn’t seem to be any danger here, aside from weird cats who seemed to be able to show me things. I didn’t really think he was some sort of familiar. If my parents had been witches, Jana’s family would have seen something by now.

  I didn’t even need to tell Lizzie where we were going first. Jana started fussing as we both picked up our plates and tried to find a sink to wash them in. It was going to take a while before I got used to someone waiting on me. We ignored Drake’s wailing and took Jana’s directions to my father’s study and how to open his secret room.

  Chapter 6

  Lizzie and I wandered down the hall trying to find the study. It was like the damned cat knew we were going there instead of the room he showed us. Drake was letting out these awful, hoarse wails and was intent on trying to trip us the entire walk there. We were clutching each other trying to stop the other from face planting when one of us was about to go down.

  “Quit being a little shit, Drake,” I fussed like he actually understood me. “I have time to explore that room.”

  That cat—he seriously hissed at me, and if he were capable of rolling his eyes at me, he would have. He let out that hiss and took a swipe at my legs, then sauntered off down the hall like he was totally done with us. I wondered if all cats were that weird or if it was just a Drake thing.

  I knew we found the study because the doors were gilded like the bedroom doors. I wondered why all of the doors were unlocked. They had these locks on them that looked like it took a key from some old horror movie. My father’s study looked like it was from some old movie. There were built in bookcases on every wall and a huge fireplace that had nymphs and satyrs carved into the mantle.

  I was already told one of the grapes a satyr was holding would open a door next to the fireplace. I started running my fingers along the marble. Lizzie took the other side of the mantle.

  “I get how Esther and Odelia knew about the room they took us to last night, but if Mattan had a falling out with my parents, how did he know about this room?” I asked. “I get all these family were close, but clearly, they kept secrets. How did Mattan know to look here? Don’t you think it’s weird out of all the safe rooms he could possibly find, he finds this one? We have hardly been here a day, and we know about three. The cat showed us one of them, but it’s weird.”

  “I didn’t say anything because I wanted you to get answers about your family, but there’s something about Mattan I don’t trust. You said he didn’t check out your tits at all and you were totally naked in front of him, but he was eye fucking me the entire plane ride because he liked my little outfit. Why me and not you? Every time we go out together, clueless dudes who don’t understand Lolita culture and just Goth and can’t tell us apart. We don’t even have the same theme in tattoos. Mattan never checked you out once, but he was creeping me out.”

  “Lizzie, since when do you let someone creep on you without making them cry? We’ll sign his papers, and then I can ban him from the house.”

  “Hah!” Lizzie yelled as one of the grapes she was fiddling with pressed in and a door started sliding open. “No, we need Mattan. We’ll play the same game with Mattan we do when we’re trying to get a big tip from a creeper who wants a quickie in the alley.”

  Mattan wasn’t going to know what hit him any more than the unsuspecting idiots at the bar who liked to try to withhold tips for a blowjob. We’d get what we needed, and Mattan would be out on his ass. I already knew he did something to make my parents dislike him and no one creeped on my soul sister without consequences.

  We walked through the door, and this secret room was totally different than the others. It was about the size of my bedroom back in Kentucky and looked like a research facility. There was a large wooden desk with what looked like a pretty high-tech computer on it. I was expecting file folders with photos if Mattan found info on me. I went straight to the desk drawer, and nothing was on paper. There were flash drives and nothing else.

  I turned the computer on, and I already knew what I was going to see. A big fuck you box asking me for a password. Lizzie leaned over my shoulder.

  “You remember that cute little hacker girl I dated? I’ll bet the flash drives are encrypted too. You don’t put data about a big secret child you don’t want anyone to know about on anything electronic without locking it down like a fortress, even if it is in a secret room.”

  “Did the sexy hacker girl teach you anything?”

  “Actually, several tricks, but nothing that would get us into this computer. The big question we need to be asking ourselves is how Mattan got in.”

  I shrieked and nearly threw the keyboard across the room when this hoarse sort of moan came from across the room. I thought it was the ghost of a corpse in the wall, and then I realized Drake had joined us again. He jumped on the desk and appeared to be strutting around like he was in some music video with male dancers in boy shorts.

  I scratched him behind his ear since he was posing so hard to get our attention. “I sure do wish you could talk, Drake.”

  Drake started purring like the motor of a boat, and I swore it looked like he was smirking. I had no idea if he would bite me if I tried to grab him when he started walking on the keyboard. One of his webbed feet must have hit the enter key, and the computer booted right up. I just stared with my mouth wide open.

  “No fucking way!” I yelled. “The cat knows the computer password and how to use a fucking computer? Lizzie, are you seeing this or am I going insane?”

  “Well, that seals it, Tabby. You’re a witch, and Drake is your familiar. It’s the only thing that explains what we just saw. We need to start figuring out how to communicate with Drake because he has the answers you want.”

  “You want to start asking my parents friends how to talk to the cat when everyone we’ve talked to so far says we aren’t witches. Do you think Drake unlocked the computer for Mattan too? Maybe my parents just trained Drake really well. If he was my family’s familiar, why would he help Mattan?”

  “Easy, stupid. To get you home. Maybe you have some big, cosmic destiny it’s time for you to fulfill.”

  “I’m not a fucking Hobbit, Lizzie!”

  “Well, I can’t explain how the damned cat got you into the computer either. Let’s just listen to that cat for now because he’s the only one who seems to know anything. He wanted us in the bedroom, but he helped us get into the computer. Let’
s see what’s here for now.”

  I started pulling flash drives out. They had dates written on them in marker. I started with the one that had my date of birth on it. I saw happy family videos of me and my twin. It was the first I was seeing of Drake. There were plenty of close-ups of the both of us. Even at only a few days old, Drake’s eyes weren’t blue like most babies. They were an inky black, and he had a thick head of black hair. His skin was pale white, and his cheeks didn’t even get red when he had screaming fits. And he seemed to have a lot of those.

  My parents seemed to be making a documentary about our lives or watching us for something. The cameras were almost always on us, and our parents commented on everything we did. It seemed like I was the calm to Drake’s storms. When he was furiously screaming, nursing him or rocking him did nothing. Placing him next to me in the crib was the only thing that would get him to calm down. Once he was next to me, he would start cooing and sucking his fists.

  My parents never said anything that had meaning to me or would give me an answer about what happened to Drake and me. I just got this vibe they were concerned about it from the tone of their voices. It was like they seemed to think it was something deeper than the twin bond I’d always read about.

  Drake, the cat, hopped in Lizzie’s lap and purred as he took a nap while we continued to pull out flash drives and watch videos. I watched Drake my twin, and I grow into toddlers. I grew into a blonde-haired cherub, and Drake stayed black-eyed with thick black hair. He didn’t look like either of our parents. We didn’t look like twins at all.

  We seemed close over video, but it seemed to concern my parents. I crawled after Drake like a little lost puppy, and I laughed as we played roughly. It seemed like harmless toddler play to me. Drake did like to take my toys, but it seemed like I liked to wrestle with him just as much as he liked to wrestle with me. I was always laughing, and it never seemed like I was being hurt on the videos.

  It seemed to scare the shit out of my parents. They didn’t think it was a twin bond. They seemed concerned that I would follow Drake wherever he went and they seemed to think our harmless wrestling would lead to him hurting me for real. They never actually said those words. They never voiced those fears. I just picked it up from repeated phrases on the videos.

  “She’s following him again.”

  “Drake plays too rough with her.”

  “It’s like she’s not trying hard enough to fight back when they are wrestling.”

  They never gave me any clues about why the Rothledges and the Lambs shouldn’t mix. Lizzie and I watched video after video of Drake and I playing and my parents flipping out that I seemed to love my twin. Drake loved me too. On the video, it looked like we had a game. Drake would steal my toy, and I would have to wrestle him to get it back. Even when he always won, I’d get my toy back. We both seemed to enjoy this game, but my parent’s commentary seemed more and more concerned.

  They never said anything on video that would give me a hint. They never said anything that would tell me why me and Drake’s playing concerned them so much. I grew more and more frustrated as I watched videos on the flash drives and got no answers. Before I knew it, the dates on the drives skipped six months. My parents recorded us often.

  It was in that six-month window my twin disappeared, and I ended up in Kentucky. The rest of the flash drives were just still photos of me and written reports from a private investigator my parents hired to watch me. I only read a few, but they were very detailed. My parents were totally aware of the fact that the majority of the foster homes I ended up at, I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a room with six other kids.

  I turned the computer off after only reading the investigators reports up until I was six. The investigator wrote about me like some science project. He wrote about the child never having seconds for dinner, never having a birthday party, having Santa ruined at an early age, getting picked on for wear too big boy’s clothes, getting picked on for being an orphan, like he was just writing about the weather.

  My parents didn’t keep any more videos. They didn’t keep notes. I had no gauge of what their reaction was to where they sent me because as much as they seemed to detail the first two years of my life, they just stopped after they sent me away. I could tell they loved me from the videos they did take.

  The videos weren’t just them documenting Drake and me together. There were a lot of videos of my mother singing me to sleep or braiding my hair. There were videos of my father playing games with me. It was quite obvious on the screen they loved me. There were videos of them doing the same things with Drake, but he didn’t respond the way I did to my parent’s attention. Drake only smiled with me.

  Lizzie saw the same videos I did and already knew what I was thinking. With Lizzie, I never had to say a word. The secret room was getting too small. In reality, it was bigger than my bedroom in Kentucky, but it felt like the walls were closing in. Drake hissed and leapt off Lizzie’s lap when she grabbed my hand.

  “Okay, so we have a level ten clingy stalker, dumped by the man of your dreams, no tips all night and the rent is due all at once situation here. Except now, we don’t have to make do with five-dollar pizza and cheap vodka. We’re raiding your parent’s bar, and now you’ve got an arsenal of servants to make us comfort food.”

  “Add a man I actually know here for a totally non-committal booty call that doesn’t lead to anything, and I might forget about this for about two hours,” I said, following her to the kitchen.

  Chapter 7

  When Jana saw how upset I was, she just shooed us away. Lizzie and I found the alcohol stash and were mixing drinks. My parents had a lot of good booze I’d only read about, but my bar didn’t have. When I got my money, I was giving Jana and the rest of the staff a raise. While Lizzie and I were getting shit faced, they cooked us this huge, elaborate meal and a fucking cake. Like, this cake that looked like it could have been served at some celebrity wedding, and it was just for Lizzie and me because I had a shitty day.

  I’m sure they all thought I was insane because as soon as I saw that two-layer fondant thing with pink icing roses all over it, I was already piss drunk. I burst into tears, starting hugging everyone, and professing my love for them. That was one of the few things Lizzie and I differed in. Lizzie was an angry drunk, and I loved everyone and everything once I was all liquored up. I told the staff, the cake, and the food I loved it, then I picked up a wailing Drake and danced around the kitchen telling him I loved him too.

  I pigged out on cake and food, then apparently the butler and valet I didn’t know I had carried Lizzie and me up to my parent’s suite and put us to bed. I passed right the fuck out until really late the next day. When I finally woke up, Drake was sitting on my chest looking impatient. He glanced towards the sitting room like he wanted me to go to that secret room.

  I was hungover as hell, and that room was going to have to wait. My head was pounding, and the small sliver of light from the curtains was hurting my eyes. Lizzie was still snoring next to me, and that damned cat had to start wailing again because he wanted me in that room.

  I knew Drake hadn’t pointed me in the wrong direction so far, but he was a cat and didn’t understand human hangovers. I thought I was just going to have to deal with a wailing hairless cat, but then I heard shouting outside the bedroom door. Jana was screaming at someone, trying to keep them out. What fresh hell was this?

  My new bedroom door flung open, and Mattan came bursting in. His eyes were wild, and I finally saw what Lizzie saw on the plane. Mattan was older than my parents would have been and I thought he was totally harmless when I invited him in. My creep radar was normally perfect, and I’ve got no idea how I missed that hungry glint in his eye. It wasn’t sexual, at least not where I was concerned. Mattan wanted something from me. And I thought he knew exactly what happened to my twin and why I was sent away.

  I was starting to doubt Drake was some sort of familiar or protector. He jumped off my chest and started rubbing agains
t Mattan’s legs purring up a storm. I was still in my clothes from yesterday, and my head was pounding, but apparently, Mattan needed a little boundary lesson.

  “You’d better having a very fucking good reason for not only coming over here without calling first, but breaking into my bedroom while I’m trying to sleep.”

  Mattan looked utterly shocked. “So, the Lamb is really the Lion. Curious.”

  “Get the fuck out my bedroom!” I yelled, pointing at the door. “You will wait in the living room until I’m ready to see you, you’re actually going to tell me what you know this time, and if Lizzie is with me when I get down there, you’re going to look at her like she’s your daughter and not creep her out again. Get it?”

  “As you wish. I apologize,” Mattan said, bowing his head. “I suppose I was so rude because I was curious what you had discovered.”

  What I’d discovered? I was pretty sure Mattan already knew the answer, I just didn’t know why he was making me work for it. Or what that comment about the lamb and lion meant. It sounded like something one of my more religious foster families would spout.

  Lizzie snored her way through Mattan’s visit and me yelling. She wasn’t the nicest person to wake up, and she was probably hungover as hell. Her moral support would be nice, but we didn’t have to do everything together. And she needed her sleep just as much as I did.

  I took a quick shower and dressed for battle. I wanted Mattan scared of me, and I didn’t think he scared easily. He probably thought I was some helpless female and I’d dealt with his kind before. I pulled on my leather trousers with the metal grommets down the side. I had a purple belt that matched my hair with huge spikes on it. I buckled up my favorite steampunk bondage corset that always made me feel like a badass. The last thing was battle hair, and then I was ready to go down and confront Mattan.