Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case: A Nocturne Falls Mystery (Jayne Frost Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

some of the town and learn where things were. Not bad.
    I grabbed my keys and my purse and headed out. I could unpack later. Food, on the other hand, was a priority. No elf could survive long without a proper intake of vitamins and minerals.
    Just kidding. The only real nutrition info I was interested in was how many grams of sugar the item contained. And in my case, the more the better.

I lugged my groceries back in three reusable bags that I bought at the store after realizing I’d filled the conveyer belt with more stuff than could easily be carried in paper or plastic. I put the bags down outside my door to open it, and as I was digging in my purse for my keys, I heard crying.
    Animal crying.
    I went still and listened. It sounded feline and close and a little feeble. I followed the noise to the apartment next to mine. As I approached, the sound got more insistent and was accompanied by scratching.
    I grimaced. “Kitty? You okay?”
    The cries turned to honest-to-goodness caterwauling, which I took to mean that the cat wasn’t okay. “Hey, settle down in there. Your owner is going to get mad at me.”
    Yeah, that helped. More crying ensued. I glanced toward the elevator. The cat’s owner must be working their shift right now. I wasn’t about to meet one of my new co-workers by heading down there and telling them their cat was having issues.
    I’d never had a cat. Maybe crying like a newborn was what they did, but the poor animal seemed to be in real distress. “Okay, hang on, kitty cat. I’ll be right back.”
    I hustled my groceries into my apartment then ran back into the hall. None of my neighbors seemed to be bothered by the cat’s crying, so they were either all working in the shop or heartless.
    Until I got to know them, I’d go with working. I put my hand on the door. “I’m back, kitty.”
    More scratching at the door. What I was about to do would not go over very well if whoever lived in this apartment found out, but hopefully that wouldn’t happen.
    I used one of the skills I’d inherited from my mother’s side of the family; my ability to enter a residence without an actual access point. Chimney or no chimney. All I needed was a break in the structure, like where a door closed or a window met the sill.
    A shimmer of magic, a moment where the weird, compressed feeling left me with a modicum of nausea, and I was standing on the other side of the door blinking away the urge to upchuck. I don’t know how Uncle Kris did that all night long on Christmas Eve. It made me feel hungover instantly. But I guess you got used to it.
    Something rubbed against my leg. I looked down and saw a skinny, black cat. “Hey, dude. Are you okay?”
    The animal was wearing a red collar with a silver disc hanging off it. I bent down (which did not help the nausea) and checked the tag. It took a moment for my eyes to focus, but I managed to read it. I looked at the cat. “Your name is Spider?”
    He (Spider sounded like a boy’s name) trilled at me, so I took that for a yes. Then he cried again, a long plaintive wail that dug into my heart.
    “What’s the matter, little man?”
    He trotted off toward the kitchen. I stood and bit my lip. I’d only come to check on him, not traipse through a co-worker’s place. But there seemed to be no one home.
    I went after Spider and found him standing in front of two dishes. One was empty and one had a small puddle of stale-looking water in it. Whoever owned this cat wasn’t taking very good care of him. “Okay, you’re hungry. And probably thirsty, huh?”
    I gave the water dish a good rinse, then filled it and put it back. Spider started drinking immediately. “Wow. You needed that.”
    On second glance, the apartment looked more than unoccupied. It felt abandoned. There was a fine layer of dust on the surfaces and a mustiness to the air. A hunch made me open the trash can lid. A paper plate lay on top of the garbage. It held the crusts of a sandwich, and the bread was