Cat's in the Cradle

Day 21 of the 30 Days of Fright

There are a few things more irritating than being haunted by your mother. Unless, of course, your mother was Vivienne Voss, legendary cat burglar, unapologetic fashionista, and posthumous pain in the ass.

Thalia Voss was hanging upside down in a silk harness, thirty feet above the marble floor of the Rosenbaum Museum, silently regretting every choice that had brought her to this exact moment, especially the one involving not eating lunch.

“You’re swinging, darling,” said the ghost of her mother, who hovered nearby in the indignant glow only the dead can muster. “Like an amateur on a ceiling fan. Honestly, where is your core strength?”

“Oh, I left it in Ibiza, next to my patience,” Thalia hissed, trying to steady herself with the grace of someone whose thighs were beginning to cramp.

Below her, nestled in a glass case and guarded by enough lasers to rival a Bond villain’s pet project, was the prize, The Monarch’s Mews. A leather bound folio of scandalous poems and deeply incriminating love letters penned by a famously stoic queen with a thing for falconers and metaphors. Unpublished, uninsured, and uncomfortably specific. Worth millions in the right market. Taboo in three countries and one aggressively litigious book club, and the Voss’s wanted it.

Well, Thalia wanted it. Her mother mostly wanted to supervise.

“Are you going to tell me how you stole it in 1973, back when men wore cravats and burglars had manners?”

“It was 1971, and I was wearing a red dinner gown and a confidence you still lack,” Vivienne replied. “Also, that museum had decency. Look at this one. All glass and steel and vulgar lighting. No flair.”

Thalia adjusted her descent, slowly unwinding her rope. Her harness creaked.

“Should I perish, let it be in glory, not in clingy athleticwear,” she muttered.

“If you do, I’ll ensure your tombstone reads, ‘Died as she lived: overdressed, underwhelming, and ignoring her mother’s advice.’”

Thalia exhaled through her nose. “You’re not funny.”

“You’re not graceful. We all suffer.”

She landed beside the case, crouched low, eyes scanning for hidden alarms.

“Pressure plates,” Vivienne said, pointing her ghostly finger at the pedestal. “Three, if they haven’t upgraded. Of course, you’ll want to use the bypass technique I taught you. Unless you’re feeling experimental again. Like Paris.”

“You swore never to mention Paris.”

“You swore never to wear cargo pants. And yet here we are.”

Two nights later

Thalia Voss crouched on the ledge of the fourth story of the Armitage Estate, lockpicks in her gloved hand, tension in her spine, and her mother’s disembodied voice in her ear like a bad conscience with pearls.

“You’re too slow, darling. Honestly, I taught you better than this. Is that the slim jim I left you in Prague? You bent it! Look at that curve. That’s shameful craftsmanship.”

Thalia gritted her teeth. “Could you haunt literally anyone else?”

The latch gave with a click that echoed too loudly for Thalia’s liking. She slipped inside and landed silently on the plush carpet of the west wing.

Somewhere in this absurdly gilded mansion was the Bleeding Pearl a ruby the size of a gumdrop with a long and scandalous history of being stolen, retrieved, restolen, and, at one point, embedded in the hilt of a ceremonial dagger used in a French soap opera. It was worth a fortune. Which is why Thalia was here. And why, of course, her ghost mother had tagged along.

“That mirror is Rococo. I stole one just like it from a man who knew three languages, but didn't know how to say please.”

Thalia ignored her and crept down the hall. The security was a paranoid masterpiece, cameras, lasers, pressure plates waiting like forgotten landmines. She’d waltzed through it all with the grace of a bored ballerina and the timing of a clock set five minutes fast just to annoy you.

Almost.

Beep.

“Bloody hell,” she hissed, dropping to the floor as a quiet alarm began to pulse in the walls. “Mum?”

“I might have leaned on something. I forget my own strength.”

“You are literally incorporeal,” Thalia snapped, dashing into the gallery room as heavy doors began to hiss shut.

And there it was. Perched on a pedestal under a glass dome, lit like a sacred relic.
The Bleeding Pearl.

She shattered the case with a glass cutter and a gloved hand.

“Lovely. You always did have my hands. Just slightly less grace. And tad more swearing.”

Alarms were screaming now, and Thalia could hear the whirring of something mechanical and large warming up in the hall. Probably an expensive security bot that looked like a coffee table but punched like a rhino.

“Mother!”

“Yes, darling?”

“Plan B!”

“You have a Plan B?”

“Run now, scold later!”

“I can do both, you know,” Vivienne said, gliding alongside as Thalia sprinted into the narrow vent that led to the roof.

On the rooftop across the street, she landed hard, tucking into a roll, the gem clutched to her chest.

And for a long moment, there was silence.

“Well,” Vivienne said, her voice soft now, quieter, like the way she used to whisper when Thalia had nightmares as a child, “you did it. I couldn’t have pulled that off better myself.”

Thalia blinked.

“What?”

“That’s what I came back for, darling. Unfinished business, as they say.”

Vivienne’s form began to fade, the edges of her ghost blur trailing into the night like smoke in moonlight.

“I never told you I was proud of you.”

And then she was gone.

Thalia stared at the spot her mother had been, heart thudding against her ribs harder than the fall from the roof.

Then she laughed, a soft, breathless thing.

“Bloody finally.”

~by Heather Patton / The Verdant Butterfly

---