Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,1

them. No more relying on my familiar Tully to sit on top of the safe to ensure all the money from the day got deposited. Annalise was the relief I never realized I’d needed until the end of her first week; back then, she had taken so much stress off my shoulders that I’d broken down crying, right here in my office, and all because something had finally gone right.

“I find it relaxing,” I told her with a shrug. Who would have thought the girl who absolutely despised arithmetic growing up found solace in numbers—but it wasn’t just that. Doing inventory myself, combing over every shelf, rooting through every cupboard, fed the paranoid beast inside me, and best of all, I did it alone. After long days surrounded by people, mostly human with the odd neighborhood witch or local shifter dropping by, I needed the downtime to de-stress—to relish the fact that I’d made it through another day, week, month, year without him finding me.

Annalise’s dirty-blonde brows shot up, her incredulous smile making me only a smidge self-conscious.

“You’re crazy, Kat.”

I chuckled right along with her, because that was the normal thing to do, all the while ignoring the stab of loss in my chest. It had dulled over the years but still flared in moments like these, when someone inadvertently reminded me of those long gone. Few people called me Kat these days—it was just far too close to kitten.

You’re crazy, kitten. I heard my dad’s voice often in the five years since I’d lost him, after I held his hand through that gruesome death rattle. It wasn’t real, and I knew that; unlike the odd spirit that made my beloved café its October haunt, Dad never dropped by.

Not that I blamed him.

Who would want to leave the beyond to come back here, of all places?

Still, a quick hello, kitten, just once, whispered in my ear or spelled out in office supplies across my desk, would be nice.

More than nice.

I missed him.

I missed all of them.

“Go,” I ordered with a nod in the general direction of the employee back exit. At this hour, only my car and hers occupied the gravel lot, and it was just getting darker. “Have a good night—and say hello to Charlie for me.”

My manager and my shift supervisor had been dating for almost a year and living together for the last six months. While Annalise was a statuesque blonde who modeled on the side, mostly for her social media fan base, Charlie was this short, squat, pink-haired punk who added a bit of authenticity to the off-beat vibe at Café Crowley. Weirdly enough, they totally fit.

And while it had been so sweet to watch from the sidelines as they fell in love, they were a poignant reminder that, as a workaholic, my love life had been dead for years—just like my coven, just like my brothers, my mom, my dad. Depressing.

Maybe that was why I looked forward to inventory nights so much. Tough to think about all the bullshit when you had to count every single thing on the premises at least three times for accuracy.

“Will do.” Annalise waved as she slid around my office doorway, vanishing into the night moments later when the heavy metal back door clunked shut down the hall. Picturing it clearly in my mind’s eye, every detail, I floated my hand right to left like I was sliding the dead bolt.

“Stricta cincinno,” I murmured. Spell cast, the door’s various locks snapped into place, officially sealing me in for the night. With the last of my staff gone, I piled the stacks of spreadsheets I’d been working on since this afternoon in a single mountain, and my chair let out another high-pitched squeal when I stood. I shut off the office lights in passing, swiping at the switch next to the door. Plunged into darkness, the back-of-house corridor stood long and quiet to my left, and the only thing keeping it from being a total blackout was the parking lot’s lamplight streaming through the back-door window. Some feared the dark, the silence; I found comfort in it, in the promise that at least here, I was safe.

Shouldering through the Staff Only door and crossing the threshold into front of house, I surveyed my Halloween-drenched kingdom with a sigh. As always, Annalise had killed it on all the closing procedures. Everything was locked up, floors swept, chairs on tables. To my left sat the café portion of Café Crowley, and what had