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One muggy July morning, Journi McCutcheon arrived at her up-and-coming soothsaying agency in a foul mood. Why? Because the first thing she'd seen upon waking was a six-foot-long, neon-green snake clinging to her window and asking if he could ssspeak to her about his lord and sssavior, The Great Slithereen, through the glass. After screaming, tripping over an ottoman, and slinging coffee across the rug, Journi had growled at the rude reptile until he'd nervously tipped his tiny tweed hat and hurried off.
Now, stepping onto the sidewalk in front of Say It Ain't So, Journi paused to glare at a clear cube about the size of a toaster oven waiting on the building's stoop.
Inside the cube was a kitten.
And a bomb.
"Not this again," she sighed and gingerly approached the thing.
For the past month, a mysterious gift-giver had been leaving packages that were growing steadily more dangerous.
Crouching, Journi inspected the glass prison and its furry captive.
From inside the seamless, likely bespelled cube, the tiny black feline stared up at Journi with a calm that belied its perilous situation. Around its neck was a collar, and attached to said collar was a bomb.
Journi knew it was a bomb because she'd purchased the same voice-activated model last year when blowing up a possessed tree stump that had been terrorizing the flora and fauna of a local park.
Retrieving the yellow sticky note affixed to the cube's top, Journi read the handwritten words.
Say the magic word by eight o'clock or kitty goes BOOM. Follow the clues or else.
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