Tiger Lily

Nine

"Ugh." I pushed an inch thick cobweb out of my way, shuffling forward through the layers of dirt and dust and doing my best to avoid the spiders that seemed to come down out of nowhere. "This place is gross."

I was going forward, always turning right at an intersection. That's what you were supposed to do, right? Well, anyways, there was nothing bad that had happened to me- yet. I was still waiting to find the body with a bottle of booze in one hand and a golden necklace in the other. But other than that, and the fact that the air in here was plugging up my nostrils and making me want to sneeze, nothing was actually that bad in here. A little cleaning, dusting, and bottles of Febreeze later, and this place would be in ship-shape condition. I could start a game room or a maze going in here, charging like five bucks for admission...

But, of course, you can't hold a sneeze in forever. You get that tickled feeling and it makes you wrinkle your nose, and, well, you probably know. I really had to sneeze, and it was nasty when I did end up letting go of it.

Dust flew everywhere, and I sneezed again, which uncovered something I definately did not want to see. Nope, I definately did not want to see what this sneeze uncovered.

A body.

A dead body.

I shrieked, startled, and jumped backwards, right into the other wall. What the heck?! But I needed to calm down, hard as it was with a dead body in front of me. I heard pounding footsteps over my head and stood stock still, waiting for them to pass. I needed to assess the situation calmly, and I couldn't in my current situation. But I knew someone who could.

That's right. I stripped and let Dea out and she took over, her cool demeanor and confidence making me take a deep breath and slow my pounding heart rate. I tried not to look at the body, but it was only strips of cloth and bones, so I was okay when I peeked at it from the corner of my eyes. Eventually, I built up enought confidence that it wasn't scary anymore, and I could look at it full on. Once I did, I wasn't even sure why I had been afraid earlier. It was just bones and cloth. Nothing intimidating, like a zombie or anything. I was fine.

She calmly padded over to the body and started sniffing, jerking one paw back only when a hand fell off the skeleton. Layers of dust floated off when her sniffer got too close, but she seemed fine and completely in control of herself, not the skittish freak I had been. And I had freaked out. Gosh, I should have gotten a handle on myself.

Nothing surprising here. He probably just got stuck in here during Prohibition or something and couldn't find his way out. He has something shiny. Do we want to touch it? she reported to me. Shiny? Shiny could be good.

Shiny could also be bad.

Let me take over. Just for a bit please. I'm just going to investigate a little bit more and see exactly what this thing is. Your paws are too big to get too close to the skeleton without crushing it completely. And I've calmed down enough not to squish it with my feet.

I had seen enough Indiana Jones to know how this could end up if we made the wrong move. When she let me take over, I shifted back again immediately and put my clothes back on. After that was over with, I proceeded to stalk carefully towards the body. Crouching down with the flashlight gripped tightly in my mouth, I shone the light on the shiny thing Dea had mentioned and my eyes widened. There were two things: an ancient looking lever and a bright, shiny, emerald amulet. Something didn't add up, but my brain wasn't focusing on that. It was focused on the amulet. It wasn't too big, the emerald wasn't much bigger than the top part of my thumb, but there was something about it that pulled me closer. And I was wary of that. There were things that were cursed in this world; werecats weren't the only paranormal thing in the world. There were witches and warlocks, ghosts and spirits, demons, and werewolves, only to mention a few. There were no such thing as dragons anymore; they had been hunted to death by humans long ago, back in the Middle Ages with the knights and King Arthur. And as for unicorns, well, let's just say they aren't the wonderful, peaceful, bright, kind, delicate animals humans have portrayed them as. They are alive, but they are endangered and hide in the most reclusive regions of the world including most of Antarctica and the Arctic (which is mostly northern Greenland and Canada, and I think there was a reporting of a couple in the very northern tip of Russia).