by Emma Coal
“Alright, I want to make a bargain with you, little human, little cat. Do you like me?”
The cat, remembering her name and remembering what she was before as well as currently, responded in the affirmative.
“Meow.”
“I want to be your friend. We only just met and I want someone to talk to. Will you agree to be my friend, at least for a while?”
Grace pawed at the lid of the basket and then blinked in the sunlight as it was opened. She stuck her head out and peered at Phelan with his narrow green eyes and angular face. She nodded carefully.
Phelan smiled. “Well then, an exchange can be made.” He pulled out a necklace. It was a choker made up of curling rods of silver shaped into vines and there was a rose bud caught in bloom within a faceted crystal that shimmered, showing all the colors in the rainbow.
Grace sniffed it curiously but she stepped forward when he held it flat for her.
“With this necklace, Grace the feline becomes Grace the shifter, able to change at will, with the condition that she stays with me as a friend for a time.” Once he finished speaking he fastened the necklace around her neck.
Grace looked down at herself expectantly. She sat down in shock. Why was she still a cat?
Phelan grinned and she flinched at the show of teeth though she tried to fight it.
He reached down and stroked her head. She returned the affection hesitantly, meowing quizzically.
“Kitten, you have to change. I didn’t make you human I made you both.”
Grace blinked in shock and then concentrated. To her surprise and consternation she changed. Instead of a cat sitting primly on the ground, she was a human woman sitting cross-legged with not a stitch on before the lupine man.
“Do you know where I can find some clothes?” she asked, every inch of her exposed flesh pink with embarrassment as she tried to hide the important bits.
Phelan looked away obligingly though he had been staring.
“My apologies. Look in the basket.”
“I was just inside it. There’s nothing in there!” she said, feeling like he was trying to stall her.
“It’s a magic basket.”
Grace opened the basket and felt around inside. To her extreme relief, she grasped cloth. She pulled out a crimson dress decorated with golden thread. It was quite low cut and tight around the bodice and arms though with a flowing skirt.
They both stared at the dress.
“That was not the dress I was given,” said Phelan.
“Magic basket like you said, now turn around,” said Grace firmly.
With a shrug, the fey turned. When she was done they both admired the dress.
“It’s quite soft looking,” said Phelan.
“Yes, but I think your house has a problem understanding seasons.” She was already beginning to feel sweat trickle down her back.
“Why don’t you turn back into your feline form? I’m eager to get home.”
Grace peered around the shed at the house. She sighed. “I suppose I should go. He’ll have to get used to me being gone at some point.”
“We can figure out something when we return.”
Grace tried to change. She stared at Phelan. “I can’t do it.”
Phelan sighed and shifted form. In the morning sun his pelt shone. He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards his back. Apprehensively, Grace climbed up and they loped into the countryside.
Chapter Twenty-One: Rose
That night they sat in front of the fire in the study. They’d eaten, this time a lovely roast and Grace had fought with herself on whether she cared if it was spirited away from some family in the village. Her conscience had lost to her stomach.
She curled her legs more tightly to one side. She’d changed to the rose dress the house had made her before.
“So, what does being your companion mean? What are we to do?”
Phelan shrugged, a movement Grace was beginning to resent as it meant very little.
“You could have helped me as a friend instead of making my form dependent on staying with you.” She stroked the jewel of the necklace. It was more a choker so she couldn’t see the thing around her neck. It made it easier to forget about, at least.
Phelan laughed warmly and Grace felt annoyed at how delicious he sounded.
“I’m not human, I need something in exchange. I never said how long you had to be my friend, perhaps you don’t need to stay for long. Even I don’t know how long will satisfy.”
“Humans want compensation as well. Fey aren’t so different,” said Grace dryly.
“By the way, my father is on his death bed for all I know. You said we’d figure something out. What are you going to do?”
Phelan casually picked some of dinner out of his teeth. “He has the mirror, doesn’t he? Shouldn’t he be able to see us?”
“I suppose, but that doesn’t mean he can look into it anymore. My brat of a sister has taken care of that.”
Phelan rose off of his side and Grace shifted nervously.
“You are talking to someone with power, you know,” he said, smiling.
Johan shifted on his bed. He’d dozed off but now that the sun had set he was restless. He’d returned with only the vaguest of recollections. His daughters had found him in the study and hugged and kissed him with such enthusiasm but when he’d told them what had happened they’d refused to believe.
“Where is your sister?” he’d asked.
“Oh, she’s run off,” said Elsbeth haughtily.
“We need to find her. She needs protection,” he said confused.
Louise pushed him back into his chair. “Father, you’re the one who needs to be taken care of. Look at these clothes and you must be running a fever with the nonsense you’re uttering.”
“I suppose,” he said uncertainly. His middle daughter had helped him to his room, her dark blond hair brushing against his chin as she hooked his arm in hers. She’d left him there with orders to rest and that she’d bring him supper. Once the door had closed, Johan had relaxed and something heavy had tumbled out of his hand and onto the floor.
The silver of the mirror’s handle had warmed to his body temperature and he’d been too shocked to notice it before. He looked down at the thing, not realizing its significance. The next morning he used it to trim his mustache and happened to think of Grace. To his shock, the mirror clouded and then he could see the face of his eldest daughter!
Johan tried to keep quiet to his other daughters but the stress was too much. On the morning when the new tabby cat appeared at the farmhouse he’d developed a fever and couldn’t help but tell them what he saw. After that, he was confined to his bed and Elsbeth took the mirror.
Elsbeth stared into the mirror, brushing her dark hair to one side. She adjusted the hair of one eyebrow. She examined her nose for freckles. The mirror, though it had come through circumstances she didn’t dare think about, made her feel like a princess. Who but a princess would have such an ornate silver looking glass and who but a princess would be able to admire herself so much in it?
When the looking glass tried to float away, Elsbeth struggled against it, even though she had no idea why the thing was suddenly so hard to hold. She cried out when it wrenched itself out of her grip and glared down at the red welt in her palm then up at the offending object. The looking glass disappeared down the corridor. Elsbeth followed, screaming like a banshee. Whatever was going on, it was going to stop! She didn’t like things happening that she didn’t understand.
“What’s wrong?” Louise opened the door to her room just after the mirror passed. She looked at her sister. Elsbeth pointed. Louise stared and then had to grab the doorframe to steady herself. Elsbeth grabbed her on the shoulder.
“It’s going toward papa’s room.”
Both sisters followed the mirror. It stopped in front of their father’s study, hovered at the door momentarily and continued on to Johan’s chamber. The mirror halted and turned the glass towards the sisters
halting Elsbeth, who had been trying to grab it, in her tracks. Gracefully, the looking glass went into a nose dive and slipped under gap between door and floor.
Johan turned from his seat at the edge of the bed, where he had been gazing outside the window. He gasped in surprise as the looking glass floated in front of him and then gracefully fell into his hand, allowing him to grasp it. This time there was no need to think of anything. The image on the surface was sharp. Grace smiled and nodded to her father.
The door opened as the two sisters and the cook hurried in.
“What’s the trouble?” said cook, looking around as if she expected to find burglars.
Johan waved them over. “Come see,” he said happily.
They peered at the mirror. In it they could see Grace holding up a sheet of paper. Written on it in large, curling script were words.
“I’m fine. I’ll live in the manor in the fog for a while. By the way, I’m a cat.”
At this point, the tall strange man stepped up close behind her and grabbed her under her armpits. The sisters gasped at this boldness. The cook snorted. As they watched, Grace disappeared and a familiar red-blond tabby appeared in the man’s arms. She meowed.
Elsbeth shrieked.
Louise fainted.
Cook shook her head. “I should have known.”
Johan grinned from ear to ear. “She’s not lost. She found a solution!”
He frowned. “But I don’t know about that son-in-law. I don’t know at all.”
Look forward to seeing book two in the Beastly Beauty series; Fiendish Ties, out in the spring of 2019.
About The Author
Emma Coal
The author lives in her own fictional world. One filled with corsets, long flowy dresses and an abundance of knitting. She is usually hard at work thinking of heather, steam and the bygone times before the cell phone took over. She feels the world is what you make of it and that one can reminisce about a particular kind of existence even as one types it out on a computer.