Meetings & Motives
A surveyor who trusts maps.
A dying witch protecting a town.
Seven cats who have clearly been expecting him.
Greg Barnes came back to Whispering Falls for what should have been a routine land survey.
Verify the south boundary. Check the markers. File the paperwork. Drink too much diner coffee. Try not to get emotionally attached to a town full of people who feed him bread, remember his breakfast order, and behave as if the cats are part of local government.
Then the numbers stop behaving.
A boundary marker has been moved. A missing survey record leaves a dangerous gap. A hidden tunnel runs beneath the Blackwood estate. And somewhere under the ridge, an old stone is warm when it has no reason to be.
The estate belongs to Evie Blackwood, a woman with sharp eyes, a failing body, and a secret her family has carried for generations. Evie is a witch, though she says it more plainly than Greg expects, and the land she tends is not just land. It is part of an old ward system that has protected Whispering Falls for longer than most people remember.
Greg is not magical. He is methodical. He measures, documents, questions, and writes everything down in his green notebook. But the deeper he digs, the clearer it becomes that someone is trying to take more than property.
And the cats know it.
Bartles, Jaymes, Pip, BoyBoy, CraziGurl, Cleo, and Theo hold their posts, give their opinions, interfere with fieldwork, and quietly guide Greg toward the truth he was never supposed to find.
Meetings & Motives is the emotional prequel to the Whispering Falls Cozy Magical Cat Mystery series. It reveals what happened before Clara Mercer came home, before the estate became hers, and before the cats had to train a brand-new witch.
Perfect for readers who love atmospheric small towns, quiet magic, found family, clever cats, old secrets, and mysteries rooted in land, legacy, and love.
Reader note: This prequel includes terminal illness, grief, the death of a beloved character, and a restrained, non-graphic act of violence near the end. It is warm, magical, and cozy in tone, but it is also the story of what was lost before Book One begins.
