“You’re changing the subject.”
“I’ve always wanted to ask. I’ve never understood why you bother to paint your nails when you don’t file them into sharp little points. Useless. Although I do like the legs.” She turned her head to survey the backs of her legs, running one hand down the smooth black costume. “Nice and long. And shapely.”
Tabby sighed. This year her familiar had taken Tabby’s own human form for her night on the town, which made having this conversation beyond weird. It was like looking at a mirror image of herself when the mirror wasn’t quite right. Her face, but not really. Her legs, but not really. And did she really have that much in the cleavage department?
Last year her familiar had chosen Angelina Jolie for her human form. Photographers had hounded Tabby for days, convinced she was hiding the star in a back room.
“At least tell me where you went,” Tabby said.
The purr got louder. “To a party.”
“Where?”
“Downtown.”
“Did you take something from the store with you?”
The store had been crazy busy last night. No one would have missed a random bottle or bag of something.
“Oh, you know. A little something for the host. I understand it’s the polite thing to do.”
Green-gold eyes that were pure cat couldn’t quite hold the innocent look the familiar been trying for, and a giggle burbled up in her throat.
“I think he really enjoyed it.”
Tabby closed her eyes and counted to ten.
Getting mad at her familiar wouldn’t do either of them any good. Like any self-respecting spirit—or cat for that matter—her familiar never took responsibility for any of the trouble she created.
Trouble that Tabby would have to make right.
Somehow.
She opened her eyes just as the last pink in the sky gave way to the golden light of sunrise. With a faint sparkle in the air like tiny bits of glitter and a whiff of catnip and lemongrass, the human form her familiar had used winked out of existence. In its place stood a very self-satisfied, long-haired black cat, who proceeded to twine around Tabby’s ankles.
“One of these days you’re going to be the death of me,” Tabby said with a sigh as she bent down to scratch her familiar behind the ears. “My little Terrique cat.”
3
Teddy stared at himself in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door.
A golden retriever stared back.
The full-length mirror had come with the apartment. Teddy had never gotten around to taking it down, mostly because he never thought about it. It wasn’t like he ever used the mirror to check himself out, but it sure was coming in handy now.
“Holy crap,” Teddy said as he turned back and forth in front of the mirror.
Or at least that’s what he meant to say. What came out of his mouth was something that sounded like a cross between a yip and a whine.
He was definitely a dog. A brown-eyed, long-haired, black-nosed golden retriever, right down to the silly doggy grin that definitely did not match his mood and the tail that refused to stay still.
No way in the world this should have happened to him. Not last night.
Teddy had purchased a fairly expensive spell from what he’d thought was a reputable magic shop to prevent anyone from using magic during his party. Halloween and party tricks went hand in hand, and the last thing he wanted was someone playing magical tricks on his guests.
Well, it seemed like someone had played a pretty nasty trick on him.
As far as he knew, the spell he bought should have worked. Since he couldn’t cast it himself, he’d arranged to have one of the store’s own wizards do the honors. She’d arrived shortly after sunset in full wizard costume, complete with pointy hat and face makeup that made her look like a female version of Gandalf. She’d done something with a few bits of herbs, a couple of fibers from the carpet, and a piece of Teddy’s hair. When she was done, she pronounced his apartment warded against all spells and incantations until sunrise on November 1st.
The spell didn't prevent magical beings from entering the apartment. Teddy had been very clear about that, because otherwise the half-elf his roommate was dating couldn't have set foot inside the door. Which would have ticked his roommate off, since the two of them spent most nights behind the closed door of his bedroom.
His roommate.
Daniel.
The hair between Teddy’s shoulder blades bristled. This had to be Daniel’s fault!
Not only had he talked Teddy into throwing the party, he’d come up with the guest list. None of the people Teddy had invited would have cast a spell like this, so whoever had turned him into a dog must have been part of Daniel’s guest list.
Daniel. The skinny little twerp who’d someone managed to land himself a beautiful half-elf for a girlfriend when Teddy couldn’t even get a date.
A growl built up in Teddy’s throat and his upper lip lifted away from his front canines.
His very sharp canines.
The sight of himself in the mirror looking very much like a vicious guard dog startled him, and any anger he’d felt toward Daniel—justified or not—disappeared like the steam from his coffee on a warm, breezy morning.
Daniel wouldn’t intentionally hurt him, he knew that. The two of them got along well enough, or at least they had so far. Daniel didn’t take any of Teddy’s food from the fridge, and while he wasn’t the neatest guy in the world, he kept the sloppy side of himself confined to his own bedroom. Blaming Daniel for his current situation was childish.
That still left him with the question of who? And how?
Teddy didn’t know a lot about magic, but like every kid back in high school, he’d had to sit through class after boring class designed to warn impressionable teenagers that magic was nothing to be trifled with. Hands Off Magic, they’d been called, which was just as stupid as Just Say No and about as effective for those already tempted.
The one thing Teddy remembered—well, two things, actually—was that if you screwed up and cast a spell you didn’t mean to and you wanted to reverse it, you needed to know exactly what was in the original spell, and that most spells didn’t last past dawn.
He wasn’t sure why dawn was such a big deal. He thought it might have something to do with the energy of a new day, which sounded right because it explained why werewolves turned back into people once the sun rose.
Only it seemed like his classes got that part wrong. Sunlight was still streaming into his living room since he had no hands to grip the rod he needed to turn to close the blinds, and frankly, closing the blinds had been the last thing on his mind. All that bright sunlight should have blasted whatever spell that had turned him into a dog to smithereens, but it wasn’t doing a darn thing.
So if his classes got the sunlight thing wrong, were they wrong about needing to know the ingredients? Not that he had a clue what could have been in the spell.
The only option he could think of was to go down to the magic shop where he’d purchased the (defective; it had to be defective) spell and see if they could help him out.
He’d actually trotted all the way to the front door of his apartment before he remembered that he didn’t have hands. Or, more precisely, thumbs.
He couldn’t grip the doorknob to turn it.
And of course, it was one of those smooth round numbers, not a lever-type handle he could have tried to paw open.
“Crap!” he said.
Another yip came out of his mouth, this one louder than before.
He sat back on his haunches and stared at the doorknob. If he clamped his teeth on it and turned his head just right, he might be able to get it to turn.
He gave it a good try, but the metal made his teeth ache, and good lord, did that knob taste nasty.
Teddy backed away from the door, shaking his head and making a terrible hacking sound as he tried to get the horrible taste out of his mouth.
Strike that idea.
He sat back down and fought the urge to whine. This was ridiculous. He might like look like a dog, but his mind was still his own. He should be able to figure this out.
As far as he knew, he hadn’t ticked anyone off badly enough to cast a spell like this on him. Especially not someone who could afford to buy a spell just for fun.
Spells were expensive, as he’d discovered. Hefty licensing fees were tacked on top of the cost of spells, which was supposed to keep magic users from casting them willy-nilly.
Well, whoever’d turned him into a dog clearly wasn’t worried about money.
Had any of the people at his party been that rich? Teddy doubted it. Daniel worked at a sporting goods store selling workout clothes for minimum wage. Teddy was only a little better off. He worked at a bank.
And oh lord, he was going to be late for work!
Not that he could go to work looking like a dog. He couldn’t even call in sick.
He’d probably get fired. His manager was a notorious hard case about people who were no call, no show.
Could this day get any worse?
Apparently it could.
Daniel chose that exact moment to rush out of his bedroom, blanket in hand. Before Teddy could even think about how he could communicate with his roommate, Daniel threw the blanket over Teddy’s head and wrestled him to the floor.
“Gotcha!” Daniel said.
4
Tabby hadn’t planned on taking inventory at Emporium Magique the morning after Halloween.
Not after spending the entire night casting spells and dealing with customers.
Most of the spells had been minor, but the cumulative effect was still the same. Tabby was about dead on her feet.
Not for the first time, she wished she could use one of those handheld gadgets to do inventory. But electronics and wizards don’t mix, so here she was, counting the spells and potions left on the shelves by hand and comparing them to the handwritten tally of items sold during the night.
She didn’t even have enough energy left to cast a spell to make the counting go faster.
“You could at least help me,” Tabby said to the little black cat currently stretched out on a half-empty shelf watching her through lazy eyes.
“What would be the fun in that?” Terrique said.
Not that she actually spoke out loud when she was in her cat form. Tabby heard the voice of her familiar in her head. Annoying as all get out when she’d been a wizard in training and instead of helping Tabby learn spells like a familiar was supposed to, Terrique had sung show tunes—off key—during every exam Tabby had.
When Tabby used to complain, Terrique always got a smug, self-satisfied expression on her little cat face. “You passed, didn’t you?”
She had. And she’d never forgotten the ingredients to any spell, although whenever she mixed spells, she heard phantom caterwauling in the back of her brain.
Were all wizards this weird? Or did they start out as normal people who’d slowly been driven insane by the spirits assigned to assist them?
This morning, Tabby would have voted for insane.
“Isn’t your purpose to assist me with whatever I need?” Tabby pulled out a box full of sleeping spells. She counted each bottle in the box without touching it. The last thing she needed was any help falling asleep. “I seem to recall getting that lecture right before I met you.”
Along with a lecture about not abusing the spirit assigned to her as a familiar.
Terrique stretched out a paw, claws extended, then brought it to her mouth to wash. “Who says I’m not?”
“Oh, the bazillion or so boxes that I still need to...”
Tabby let the sentence trail off. Helping her with inventory wasn’t what Terrique was talking about.
That was another thing about familiars: they never got to the point using a straight line.
And they never said more than they absolutely needed to say.
So Terrique thought Tabby needed help, and not with the shop.
What with, then?
Tabby had a pretty decent life. She owned her own magic shop, a place that had started out as little more than a hole in the wall that she’d expanded over the years into a pretty nifty magical emporium, if she did say so herself. She employed a bunch of up and coming wizards, helping them to earn a living while they practiced their craft like others had helped her along the way.
Sure, all the time she spent working meant she didn’t have much of a personal life, but she couldn’t complain. She had her bubble baths and her daydreams about a brown-eyed man she’d never met, and if she was a little lonely from time to...
Oh, no.
Tabby had made the mistake of telling Terrique once about her brown-eyed fantasy man.
“You didn’t,” she said.
Terrique kept washing her paw.
“You cast a love spell on some poor unsuspecting guy because you what... feel sorry for me?”
Tabby thought she saw amusement in her familiar’s green-gold eyes, but Terrique didn’t say anything.
Wonderful. Just wonderful. Her familiar thought she needed a love life.
Tabby closed her eyes and counted to ten. Again. And reminded herself it did no good to get mad at her familiar.
Again.
Well, at least now she knew where to look to see what was missing so she could fix whatever Terrique had done.
Love spells weren’t in high demand on Halloween, but the store always kept a decent supply on hand. The Christmas holidays were right around the corner, and then came Valentine’s Day. Her staff would be spending a lot of time in January creating new love spells to build up the store’s inventory. Right now she had three shelves full of heart-shaped bottles.
Tabby took down each box and carefully counted each spell, then compared her final count against the number she should have had in stock.
The numbers matched.
Terri hadn’t taken a love spell.
She couldn’t concoct a spell of her own. Familiars knew what ingredients went into creating specific spells, but just like ghosts, they didn’t have the right kind of life energy to activate the spells, so anything they tried to create fizzled and died. Good thing, too. Tabby didn’t want to imagine what life would be like if ghosts could whip up spells to cast on the living whenever they felt like it.