Gertrude picked Lucifer up from the floor and set him on the counter. “No. Your cat.”
“Oh.” She looked relieved. “He’s not really mine. I was just taking care of him for Ms. Lawrence.”
Lucifer was still lethargic from his transformation, but not so much so that he missed the mouse skull nestled among flowers on Gertrude’s hat. He wondered whether she had killed the mouse herself. Her eyes were as cunning as a predator’s. He didn’t know whether he liked Imani standing so close to this witch, with only a counter to separate them.
Gertrude leaned forward with interest. “Where did she get this…creature?”
“I don’t know. I just found him wandering around after Ms. Lawrence disappeared.” Imani bit her lip. Her dark eyes flickered to him, full of such pity he had to look away. “He was sad and lonely, and no one had been feeding him. He’s Mrs. Lawrence’s—her mom’s. He’s her familiar.”
Gertrude adjusted her witch hat. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. Every Christmas when we visited, we saw Lucy. He’s very smart. More so than most cats.” Imani petted him.
He nuzzled into her hand.
“I would believe it.” Gertrude tapped her fingers against the wooden desk. “Students aren’t permitted to keep familiars. If Mr. Khaba catches you with him, he will take him away. I’m surprised none of your teachers have reported you already. I am going to keep him in my room.”
Lucifer froze. He didn’t know this witch. Gertrude had visited Abigail’s house once with Clarissa. She’d been crabby and terse—almost as bad as Vega Bloodmire. He didn’t trust her not to cut him up for ‘paw of cat’ or ‘eye of cat’ in some potion.
Imani’s brows furrowed together. “But he has special needs. He isn’t like other cats. He might shred up the books if you keep him here.”
Gertrude’s lips pressed together like an old woman’s. “You can write me a list of his needs, and I will take care of it.”
Lucifer cuddled closer to Imani, meowing so she would fight to keep him. He trusted her. Abigail had liked this girl. If he couldn’t be with Abigail, Clarissa was his second choice—even if it meant putting up with his brother—and Imani was his third choice. Not this stranger.
The moment Gertrude stroked him behind the ears, his agitation eased away. He melted into her touch. He flopped onto his back and allowed her to pet his belly. Gertrude could charm someone as easily as an incubus. That was dangerous.
What kind of witch was she?
* * *
Lucifer was helpless to resist Gertrude’s cuddles as she carried him. He wanted to fight her—he knew he should have at least squirmed away—but his body betrayed him. Whether it was his touch affinity making him a slave to petting or because Gertrude was using magic against him, he was putty in her hands.
Gertrude carried Lucifer into her office, through an almost invisible door in the stone wall, and down a short passage to her private quarters. He had been in Gertrude’s room once before with Abigail during a party, though he hadn’t known it was Gertrude’s at the time. Unlike the other teachers’ rooms that only had enough space to contain a bed or two and a few modest furnishings, this room had a small kitchenette and its own bathroom attached. An easy chair was placed before a fireplace. The frame of the bed was made from books. Tall stacks rose from the floor in columns so high they disappeared into the shadows of the ceiling. For a brief moment, the only light in the room came from the skylight above. Then Gertrude snapped her fingers, and strategically placed candles glowed to life.
Lucifer didn’t like the idea of being held captive by a witch. He had escaped Baba Nata’s apprenticeship with Abigail. He hated the idea that he had fallen into the lap of another witch who might have figured out what he was and how to use him.
He considered spraying her precious library books and clawing at her to get away, but she hadn’t actually done anything to hurt him. It didn’t help that Gertrude was gorgeous and was adept at stroking him behind the ears in such a way that he melted into a puddle on the floor.
He stored that touch magic so that he could use it later, but often he found himself so intoxicated by her touch it was difficult to think like a human—and a Witchkin. The very touch that he needed so that he could fuel himself to become a man threatened to send him deeper into a carefree feline mindset.
Gertrude was like catnip laced with crack.
“You have a curse, and it happens I have studied curses in depth, as well as how to break them. If any library has a book on the topic, it might be ours.” She tapped her chin. “If I can get to it.”
He tilted his head to the side, eyeing her with curiosity. Did she truly mean to lend aid to him? He couldn’t imagine what reason she had to help a stranger. Unless she wanted something. Witchkin never performed good deeds for anyone—not without expecting something in return.
She set up a litter box in the bathtub of her restroom and fetched him a meal of leftover dinner from the kitchen. The meat had been cooked for so long it had turned to mush, and it was spiced so heavily he couldn’t tell what it originally had been. He ate, filling his belly, though it hardly touched the true void eating him from the inside out.
He wanted Abigail.
“I’m going to keep you here with me tonight,” Gertrude said. “Tomorrow I’ll send you to play outside if you promise to return. If you don’t, just know I won’t be able to help you break your curse.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Put the Cat among the Pigeons
Lucifer knew one thing he needed to do in order to break his curse. He needed to store up touch magic. He started by cuddling up to Gertrude that night. The following day, he ran to the forest and hunted. The kinesthetic movement fueled him incrementally, though it would have been faster to charge his affinity to mate with another cat.
He couldn’t smell the pheromones of female felines near the school as he had in the past. The farther he ventured, the more mysterious scents tickled his nose. The forest was full of magical creatures. The deeper he traveled, the more he felt the forest magic shifting around him. When he remained on the path, the trees remained stationary and silent. But in the shadows, the trees danced and whispered. They shifted around him, disorienting him. It wouldn’t take much to lose his way.
He didn’t want to be lost in the forest. If he did, he would surely end up at Baba Nata’s cottage, and she would claim him once again.
As limiting as it was to remain on the path as a human would, Lucifer did so. He didn’t find a female cat to mate with. When he returned to the school in the early evening, he followed Imani’s scent until he found her with a group of her friends in the forgotten wing of the school. It was run-down and drafty, the walls crumbling and covered in graffiti.
There was something different about the air here. It tingled with electrical magic. He liked the feel of this place—which made sense for one with a Red affinity who was at home with electrical impulses, touch included.
What was stranger was that Imani practically glowed here. If she was a Red affinity like him, he could see why Imani might have been drawn to this section of the school. It would be comforting to a Red affinity if that’s what she was.
It was dangerous for Red affinities like them. Fae and Witchkin alike might use them to intensify their magic, or kill them because Fae didn’t want such a powerful weapon to fall into an enemy’s hands. Lucifer couldn’t tell whether Imani knew what she was.
The other girls she sat with weren’t like them. They seemed on edge in this section of the school. Their affinities shrank inside them as if afraid to come out and play. He couldn’t imagine why they met in this wing, painted with surreal murals that reminded him of Alice in Wonderland.
He padded up to Imani and nuzzled against her. She picked him up and petted him. “Looks like someone escaped Miss Periwinkle.”
He touched his nose to hers to ask for her forgiveness for abandoning her. She continued to stroke him. He purred agai
nst her. This recharged his affinity far better than chasing mice. Especially in this strange wing of the school thrumming with electrical magic.
When Baba Nata had mentored him, she had given him information about his magic in small miserly doses. It had taken years for him to understand what a touch affinity meant, but he didn’t think that was the full extent. The component of movement seemed to make his affinity stronger. In those early days of being a cat when his brain had still been capable of digesting larger chunks of reading at a time, he’d perused books on physics and mechanics, wondering whether his magic wasn’t so much about being an incubus, and it was instead about generating electricity.
Eventually Imani grew distracted by her conversation with her friends and stopped petting him. He nudged her to remind her he wanted to be petted. She resumed stroking his fur but stopped a minute later. He approached Hailey Achilles next, the athletic girl with chestnut hair. She eyed him suspiciously, even though he’d never scratched her when she stayed with Abigail during the holidays. Though he had scratched Felix enough she might have wondered if he would do the same to her.
He nudged her hand, and she petted him. He was wary of her affinity for fire, especially since he’d heard about her “accidents.” She complained the entire time that he was getting cat hair on her.
His ears pricked at the mention of Clarissa’s name.
“I hope Ms. Lawrence is all right. Have you heard anything about her?” Imani asked.
Hailey rolled her eyes. “Mr. Thatch said she has the flu, but he’s obviously lying. He lies about everything.”
Lucifer snorted in agreement.
Maddy Jenning said, “I tried divination. I think she’s alive but sick, just like he said.”
Lucifer didn’t know whether he should be relieved Clarissa was alive or worried Abigail’s adopted daughter was ill. If he had been a man instead of a beast, he wondered whether he could have muddled through his feelings better.
For all he knew, he was turning feral and his soul was decaying into an animal’s.
Lucifer moved on to Maddy, the beautiful blonde water siren, next. She snuggled him and cuddled him as though he were a baby. He enjoyed the taste of her magic, cool and refreshing like stream water, not so different from Gertrude’s. With her blonde hair and blue eyes, she looked like she could have been Gertrude’s sister or cousin.
Lucifer cuddled with Greenie last, the Amni Plandai girl with plants growing in her hair. Her magic tasted the most like Abigail’s, which left him feeling depressed. She wasn’t Abigail. Fueling his affinity this way so he could be a man to rescue her would take forever.
If she was still alive. He didn’t know that she was. He wished he hadn’t hesitated before and had simply asked his brother.
One hour with these teenage girls and their abundance of loving provided Lucifer with far more strength than all day in the forest. Still, it wasn’t enough. He needed more. It had taken months of storing up magic. This method wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t afford to wait that long again.
That evening, he showed up before the library closed. Gertrude had a bowl of meat waiting for him. After hunting mice in the forest, he wasn’t particularly hungry, but he ate half of it, mostly to show Gertrude he appreciated the effort. He was never one to turn down a meal.
She sat in her armchair reading a spell book. He hopped onto her lap and perused the text. It was written in Latin. He hadn’t studied foreign languages in years—since he’d been an apprentice. He recognized a few words on the page, “curse” being one of them.
Gertrude scratched him behind the ears and closed the book. “Is your curse similar to a Sleeping Beauty Curse? You can only be cured by sexual intimacy?”
He hid his head under his paws, not wanting to answer. He didn’t want her to know what he was. Already he’d given away too much about himself. Yet, if he was going to break his curse and rescue Abigail, he would need help from someone. He was going to have to trust her. At last he lifted his head and nodded.
“Your curse is similar to a Sleeping Beauty Curse?” she asked.
It wasn’t, but that was the closest he could get to an explanation. Gertrude wasn’t like Abigail with an alphabet board. Nor did she keep bottles of ink on her desk that he could dip his claw into and write a message.
“Is that how you broke your curse before?” she asked. “You were intimate with someone?”
He didn’t know how to explain he could use other people’s sexual energies to aid him, so he nodded again.
“Were you intimate with Abigail?”
Hearing her name filled him with such despair and loneliness that he meowed pitifully and sank onto her lap.
Gertrude stroked his fur. “It’s all right. I’ll find a cure for you.” Magic tingled in the air around her mouth, and the words felt like a promise.
* * *
Lucifer snuck into his brother’s office the following day while Felix was teaching class. Lucifer needed to get a message to Gertrude.
Lucifer scavenged paper from a student’s essay. He felt a pang of regret that he was stealing someone’s homework. He dipped one of his claws in the well of ink to write a message. He ended up getting black paw prints on the desk and paper in the process and crossed out quite a few words as he wrote, to make his message clear.
Can you turn into cat at full moon? If we mate, I might return to human. It worked with Vega Bloodmire, and it worked with Abigail.
Also, Vega said if I don’t change into human soon, my soul will turn into cat’s, and I will be cat forever.
No pressure.
Lucy
He brought the paper to her, Gertrude was hiding behind a mound of textbooks she was stamping. He nudged her ankle with his head and dropped the slightly crumpled paper at her feet.
She stooped to pick it up. “Well . . . this is the cheekiest pickup line I’ve ever heard.” Her lips curled upward in amusement.
He sat straight and tall, trying to look the part of an aloof cat who didn’t care whether he had offended a woman’s sensibilities. Had he been in human form as a man, he didn’t think he would have been able to camouflage his embarrassment so easily.
“So you’ve mated with Vega Bloodmire?” she whispered.
He wasn’t usually one to kiss and tell, but the circumstances required it. He inclined his head.
“She knows about your curse?”
He nodded.
“Have you tried mating with female cats?” she asked.
He sighed, frustrated by his inability to fully explain himself. There weren’t any female cats in the area. He’d found the remains of a male cat in the forest that morning. What had been left looked as if it had been torn apart and eaten. He had a feeling the forest wasn’t safe for teenagers or cats at night.
He hoped Imani and her friends weren’t the sort to sneak out after dark.
* * *
The tension in the air marked the end of the school year was near. Gertrude was busy calling students to the library to collect overdue library books. Class sets of textbooks piled higher on the counter of the library and overflowed onto wooden carts. It would only be a couple more days before the school year ended and students packed up.
When Imani’s supposed “guardian” came to collect her, Lucifer took note it was the same Fae man with long silver hair who had attended Clarissa and Felix’s wedding, Prince Elric of the Silver Court, Vega Bloodmire’s fiancé. He had been present when the Raven Court attacked and those harpies had kidnapped Abigail.
Lucifer yowled upon seeing the man and launched himself at the Fae.
“No! Lucy!” Imani chased after him and tried to stop him.
Lucifer was quicker than she was, but not fast enough to stop Fae magic. All the man had to do was look at him, and Lucifer froze midflight, his claws extended toward the man. Lucifer tried to move, but he was stuck in that launched position, inches from the man’s face.
“What’s this?
Someone’s familiar,” Elric asked, stepping out of Lucifer’s path and examining him.
Imani reached him, trying to remove him from his position, but she was unable to move him either. “I’m taking care of him. He’s Mrs. Lawrence’s familiar.”
“Ah. I believe I remember this creature.” Elric guided Imani away by an elbow. He raised a hand at Lucifer. “Behave.”
He released his spell, and Lucifer continued hurtling through the air, only there was no one in front of him now. He crashed into the wall, bounced off with all four legs, and twisted to land on the ground again.
Imani rushed to him and hugged him. If it hadn’t been for her sweet nature, he would have clawed her to get to the man, but he didn’t want to hurt her.
“Can we take him with us to your estate?” Imani asked. “I can make him behave.”
The man’s eyes changed from violet to the yellow-green of a cat’s. “I’m afraid even magic won’t make that fellow behave.”
Lucifer wished he could have told Imani not to go with this Fae. She was too naive and trusting. If she was a Red affinity as he suspected, the Fae would use her to intensify his powers. He might even be grooming her under the guise of kindness in order to make her a wife. Red affinities were the few guarantees out there who could ensure Fae would be able to sire offspring. Most likely that’s what Elric was after.
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed. He hissed at Elric to show Imani he didn’t trust him, and neither should she.
“Miss Periwinkle said she would take care of him, but she doesn’t understand him like I do.” Imani hugged Lucifer consolingly. “He isn’t like other cats. He’s special and needs my protection.”
“That cat needs no one’s protection.” The man’s smile was indulgent, almost fatherly.
Lucifer didn’t buy it for a minute.
Elric placed a hand on Imani’s shoulder, staying clear of Lucifer’s claws. “If Ms. Periwinkle says she’s going to care for him, I believe she’s fully capable of doing so. You’ll see him again in a few short months when summer vacation is over.”
Son of a Succubus Series Collection Page 11