"Wait."
The clutter in the alley was enough to block the view from its entrance. With a leap, Shade transformed into a silver cat and jumped onto the wall.
For some reason, although Shade was taller than average for his age, the cat he transformed into was very small—smaller even than Little Mia. This made him seem even tinier beside the cat Winslet had become.
There had been no comparison before, but now that both had turned into cats, the "Cat Witch" immediately noticed. She instinctively raised a paw to swat Shade on the head, but he blocked it at once.
The gray-black cat was not embarrassed in the least. She elegantly flicked her tail, turned around atop the wall, and then led the silver cat down.
The trail of Sir Kaming she had caught truly had not gone far. One cat following the other, they reached Old Hank Lane near Lovegood Lane, then broke into the seemingly uninhabited No. 9 Old Hank Lane.
This was also an old two-story building. The door had been locked from the inside, and there was almost no furniture within. The floors and walls were entirely moldy, clearly unused for years, yet distinct footprints could plainly be seen in the dust on the floor.
Those footprints eventually led the two cats to a small bedroom on the 2nd floor, where they abruptly vanished at the doorway. No one had come to this house in a long time, so there would be no conversations to hear. At last, it was Shade's thaumaturgy's turn to prove useful:
"Echoes of the Past!"
He returned to human form and cast the spell again. A chaotic jumble of sounds followed, but they could barely make out someone groaning in pain. The voice sounded very much like Baron Kaming's:
"There