Anica wailed. “I didn’t mean to! It just happened! What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean we?”
Anica had no choice but to humble herself. “I can’t do it by myself. My magic is gone. I need you to help me figure this out, Lily. Please.”
“How sweet it is. But I don’t seem to have any immediate answers. Maybe we should call in some experts.”
Anica shook her head so hard she felt like she popped a vertebra in her neck. “I have other references we can consult.” Returning Lily’s book to her, Anica walked over to her bookshelf and pulled out three different volumes. She’d bought them on sale and hadn’t used them much, but something was better than nothing.
“I’d feel better if we had an experienced witch or wizard on the premises,” Lily said. “Not Mom and Dad, of course. I know you wouldn’t want either of them to see this cock-up, but—”
“I don’t want anybody to see this except you and me.” Anica walked over to the sofa and set the books on the coffee table in front of her. If she consulted anyone besides her sister her transgression would be spread all over the wizard world by tomorrow morning. Lily might have the impulse to blab, but Anica had dirt on Lily. Lily could be contained.
“Okay, but this really cool witch and wizard came into the Bubbling Cauldron the other day. He’s a little flaky, but she seemed pretty sharp. We talked magic a little, and she knows her stuff. They live in Southern Indiana, and I have their number. They could be here in a few hours.”
Anica picked up the first book and turned to the table of contents. “I’d need more information on them than that. For all I know, they’d report me to the Wizard Council the minute they heard what I’ve done.”
“Actually, I think they’re on the Wizard Council.”
“Lily!” Anica stared at her in horror. “I can’t consult somebody on the council! They’d be obligated to turn in a report on me. I’m sure we can fix this ourselves and nobody will be the wiser.”
“Whatever you think—you’re the one with no magic powers.”
Gritting her teeth at the thought of being powerless, Anica turned to the chapter on transformation. Unless she solved this problem, she would have to depend on Lily for any little magic chore she had. And she had a bunch of them.
But that wasn’t the most important consideration. She had to solve it because otherwise she had ruined Jasper’s life. Why, oh, why had she allowed herself to be carried away on a tide of negative emotion?
She knew better. She’d built up a successful business because she always thought things through, weighed the odds, acted only when she was ready. She wasn’t impulsive. Jasper’s behavior had caused her to overreact, just as he’d accused her of doing. That wasn’t like her at all. He must have gotten under her skin even more than she’d realized.
“Finding anything?” Lily walked over to stand beside the sofa.
“Not yet.” She kept searching through the book. “There’s information about transforming, but it’s all similar to what’s in your book. I’m hoping to find a reference to that old spell. I think that’s our only chance.”
“I think so, too. Maybe—” From inside Lily’s backpack, her cell phone played “Born to Be Wild.” “Excuse me a minute. That’s probably work.”
While Lily took her call, Anica picked up the second book, but each reference turned out to have no more information than what they’d already tried.
“Still nothing?” Lily came back over to the sofa.
“Nothing.”
“Hey, I have to go back to work. I got Chad to cover for me, but his girlfriend’s sick and he has to go take care of her.”
“You’re leaving?” Anica tried to keep the apprehension out of her voice.
“Yeah, if I want to keep my job. The Bubbling Cauldron is the only wizard-owned bar in town and I prefer working for magical people.” She put on her leather jacket and hooked her backpack over one shoulder.
“Surely someone else could tend bar tonight.”
“I could already be in trouble for calling Chad. Devon, the owner, doesn’t like us to switch places without his okay, but he was unreachable, so I just did it. If I bring in yet another bartender and he finds out, he’ll go ape shit. He knows his magic, but he’s also a control freak.”
“I didn’t realize. But if you ever get fed up with him, you know you always have a job with me at Wicked Brew.” Anica wasn’t sure how that would work, but as a sister she should offer.
“Thanks, but no, thanks. You’d probably make me get up at the crack of dawn.”
Anica smiled at that. “Yeah, I would.”
“Besides, I have another reason I want to keep this job. There’s a really cute guy who’s been coming in for drinks. I’d like to see if that can go anywhere.”
Anica didn’t want Lily to lose her job, either, but she wished her sister had a better reason for wanting to keep it than because she had a crush on one of the customers. That was Lily, though—short-term goals but no long-term plans for the future. Meanwhile Anica had her own business and a healthy IRA. She played ant to Lily’s grasshopper.
But her reign of imagined superiority had come to an abrupt end tonight.
Lily paused with her hand on the doorknob. “I can check back when I get off work.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Anica got up to lock the door after Lily. “I’ll call you if I find anything promising in these books. Obviously I won’t be able to work the magic myself.”
“I’ll be happy to come over and handle that chore.” Lily winked at her. “Once I do you’ll have a naked man in your apartment, which will be my cue to leave. After going through this trauma, you might as well take advantage of the situation.”
Anica glanced toward the bookshelf, where Jasper was scrunched up in disapproving silence. “Somehow I don’t think he’ll be in the mood. I sure wouldn’t be after something like this.”
“My dearest sister, don’t you know about the most important difference between men and women? A woman has to be in the right frame of mind, but a man is always in the mood.”
Chapter 4
Easy for you to say. Jasper glared at the brunette striding out of Anica’s apartment. Clearly no one had ever turned Lily into an animal with fur and a tail. Although he had to admit he was growing somewhat fond of the tail. He liked the way he could flick it around.
In any case, even if Lily managed to transform him back into a man, sex wouldn’t be his first thought. He’d be out for revenge.
The longer this business continued, the more he was forced to question his belief that it was all a dream. Yet everything in him resisted the idea that Anica was a witch who had turned him into a cat. Witches were fairy tale beings who didn’t exist in real life.
But her bookshelf contained a ton of books on magic. When he’d leaped to the top he’d knocked off a crystal ball. To his immense satisfaction, it had cracked on the way down and taken a chunk off a marble tabletop in the process. He would have been happy to destroy some more stuff, but first he’d have to fight Orion again, and that hadn’t been much fun.
That fight was the main thing making a believer out of him. He’d done some damage to Orion but the other cat had managed to scratch him in several places, too. The wounds didn’t feel like imaginary dream scratches. They stung like a sonofabitch.
And he wanted to clean them, but without opposable thumbs that would mean licking, and he so was not going there. It sounded icky and Anica had convinced him licking chocolate would land him on the surgical table of a castration-happy vet. Even in a dream he didn’t want to lose his nuts.
But his intense sense of smell also undermined the dream theory. Crouched on the bookshelf with the smooth, lemon-scented wood under his claws, he was on sensory overload. He could smell the chocolate mousse, the dust collected on the books, the lime from the margarita still sitting in the blender. He could smell Orion, and his hackles went up automatically. Underlying it all was the scent of Anica—the soap, th
e shampoo, the perfume, and a sweet aroma that was all female. Too bad he hated her.
His hearing was just as acute. He picked up Anica’s breathing, the flipping of pages, the hum of the heater, water rushing through the pipes in another apartment, the ticking of a quartz clock, even the swish of Orion’s tail across the carpet.
Jasper couldn’t quite accept that he was making this up in his sleep. He wasn’t that good a dreamer. He couldn’t quite accept that he was a cat, either, which left him in limbo. He needed to come down on the side of one reality or the other if he wanted to keep from going crazy.
Because this dream, if that’s what it was, seemed never-ending, he decided to play it as the cat. He might wake up any minute, or Anica could find a counterspell in one of her reference books. . . . Although it looked as if she wouldn’t be able to work the necessary magic. She’d have to rely on Lily.
If he could talk he would ask why they hadn’t researched spells on the computer sitting on the delicately carved desk in a corner of the living room. Maybe nothing would be available—it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever checked out—but everything in the world seemed to be on the Net these days. Then again, maybe her computer didn’t work. It did look sort of old.
“Shit!”
Jasper blinked. He’d never heard that word come out of Anica’s mouth.
That was only the beginning. With a string of swear words that would do a construction worker proud Anica slammed the cover on the third book, stood and turned in his direction. “I hate to say this, Jasper, but I think we’re both fucked.”
If he’d still been a guy, he would have laughed. The sight of blond, angelic-looking Anica using the F word was just plain funny. He should be worried about the implications of her statement, but he was getting really tired.
In fact, he could use a nap. Somewhere he’d read that adult cats slept eighteen hours a day. He was probably way overdue for a snooze.
“I’m going to call Lily and tell her we’ll tackle this tomorrow, when we’re fresh.” Anica walked back into the bedroom, probably in search of her phone.
She returned with the phone pressed to her ear as she talked to her sister. “Yes, I’ll seriously think about calling the Lowells in Big Knob, but I don’t want to rush into anything. Right now let’s practice damage control. Promise you won’t say anything to anyone.” She paused. “Thank you. I really appreciate that.”
Jasper could sense the anxiety level in the room lowering. Anica was ready to take a break from the drama and settle in for the evening. His energy level was dropping, too, so he was okay with that program, but he hoped he wouldn’t be spending the night on the top of the bookshelf.
“Okay, Lily.” Anica shifted her weight as she talked on the phone.
Jasper noticed how her purple silk dress clung to her hips. He’d planned to take that dress off tonight, but after this episode she could be sexier than Cameron Diaz and he wouldn’t give a damn.
“Right,” Anica said. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Yeah, I know. Not until noon. Take care.” She closed her phone and looked up at Jasper. “I’m ready to call it a night, but I have to clean you up first. Otherwise you might lick that chocolate mousse while I’m asleep.”
He weighed the pros of getting clean with the cons of whatever watery fate she had in mind for him.
“I’ll run bathwater for you.”
For some reason, the bath concept seemed a little less scary than it had at first.
She gazed up at him. “Jasper, I’m sorry about this. I promise to do the best I can to make everything right again. We’ll take care of it tomorrow.” With a sigh she turned away and walked into her bedroom.
He could tell she was really sorry. As well she should be. If this was all real, and he was increasingly worried that it was, she’d behaved in a totally irresponsible manner by casting a magic spell she didn’t know how to reverse. He had no sympathy for her.
The bath water thundering into the tub sounded like Niagara Falls. He’d had no idea the world could be such a deafening place for a cat. Orion kept his watch at the bottom of the bookshelf.
Jasper didn’t relish sleeping with one eye open all night, but he was dependent on Anica to keep Orion from attacking him. It wasn’t his fault that he was invading the other cat’s territory, but he had to suffer for it all the same. Damn, how he hated this helpless feeling, and it was all Anica’s fault.
She came out wearing a white terry robe. Her feet were bare. In spite of his anger, he found himself wondering what she had on underneath the robe.
“All right, Jasper. Come with me.” Reaching to the top of the bookshelf, she pulled him down into her arms.
He could have resisted, but he was tired of hugging that narrow plank of wood. Even better, Anica nudged Orion aside. “Not you,” she said.
How she managed to get him into the bathroom and close the door on Orion, he wasn’t sure. But he’d rather face her than a cat bent on his destruction.
“The water’s lukewarm, Jasper,” she said. “I’ll make this quick, but I have to get that chocolate mousse off of you.”
He took a look at the water in the tub as she lowered him toward it. For one panicky moment he pictured drowning in the water, and he struggled. She held him tight in her arms and the terry robe kept his claws from digging into her skin.
Nevertheless he somehow ended up standing in that water while she scrubbed him down with a loofah. His scratches stung and he hated every minute of it, but he understood it had to be done. He searched for a distraction, which he found with very little trouble. As she leaned over to wash him, her terry robe fell open just enough to reveal her cleavage.
Think like a man, Jasper told himself. Take what bennies you can get and enjoy the view. He concentrated on the sway of her breasts as she worked him over with the loofah, and for seconds at a time he’d forget that he was a cat getting a bath.
He peered intently at the opening in case he could catch a glimpse of a rosy nipple, but no such luck. Looking up he noticed that her hair was coming out of its arrangement and blond curls clung damply to her cheek. She looked sexy as hell, and he was so engrossed that when the bath was over and she wrapped him in a big towel, he was almost sorry.
“There you go. Such a good kitty.” She dried him with the towel while she crooned endearments.
Kitty? He growled at her, damned insulted that she’d called him that. He was a guy, with a manly job navigating the tricky waters of the commodities market. He supported the Bulls and the Bears with season tickets.
What else? He drove a Beemer and played a mean game of pool. He’d been known to smoke the occasional cigar, and he loved a cold glass of beer. He was so loaded with testosterone it wasn’t even funny. And yet the more she rubbed him down, the more he had the urge to . . . purr.
The sound rumbled up from his chest, surprising the hell out of him. A manly man didn’t purr, dammmit! But cats did, and whatever she was doing with that towel was terrific. He couldn’t stop the purr from getting louder. It wasn’t unlike an erection that wouldn’t go away.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it, Jasper?” She gave him one last swipe with the towel and set him down on the bathroom floor.
And damned if he wasn’t still purring. Apparently it was some sort of cat reflex that he couldn’t control. Hanging on to his anger was getting tougher by the minute. If he didn’t concentrate he was liable to end up on his back getting a tummy scratch.
No, by God. She was the enemy. Assuming this was real and not a dream, she’d turned him into a cat over some minor infraction. Once he was himself again she’d pay for that. And he would be himself again. No way was he ending up as a cat forever. That was simply unacceptable.
“I’m glad you let me give you a bath,” she said in an indulgent tone. “Are you hungry? I have some leftover chicken in the refrigerator. Let me get you some. It’s the least I can do.”
Spoiling him wouldn’t let her off the hook, but he’d take advantage of everything h
e could while he was in this situation. Besides, he couldn’t be expected to eat those dried rabbit droppings that passed for cat food. Surely she’d continue to feed him people food.
She scooped him up in her arms and carried him out of the bathroom. Being carried meant he wasn’t in charge of his movements, which he disliked, but it also meant he wouldn’t be attacked by the demon cat who was waiting right outside the bathroom door, ready to pounce. And being cuddled against Anica’s breasts wasn’t the worst thing in the world, either.
That cursed purr started up again. He sounded too blasted agreeable, and he tried to will the purr gone, but short of hacking up a hair ball, he didn’t know how to stop it. Come to think of it, he regretted raising the whole hair ball issue. Other cats might indulge in that disgusting behavior, but he had no intention of doing it.
Orion didn’t seem very happy, which made Jasper exceedingly pleased. The orange cat made noises that sounded like a kitty version of swearing as he trotted right along with them toward the kitchen.
From his favored perch in Anica’s arms, Jasper gazed down at Orion. Eat my shorts, fur face.
Anica set Jasper on the counter. “I’ll feed you up here, so Orion can’t get to you.” Then she crouched down and tried to pay attention to the demon cat, but he wasn’t having any of it. He stalked away, out of reach.
“This is only temporary, Orion,” Anica said. “You’re my main man. Jasper will be gone by tomorrow.” Then she muttered something that sounded suspiciously like I hope.
While Anica pulled a bowl out of the refrigerator, Jasper took inventory of the kitchen from his position on the beige laminated countertop. His brief time on the floor of this apartment had taught him that he couldn’t see shit from ten inches off the ground. No wonder cats sought higher vantage points.
The appliances were standard apartment issue—white and slightly beat up. The cabinets were oak laminate and also a little worn around the edges. Both the kitchen and the living room were on an outside wall facing a neighborhood park, so there was a window over the sink, and Anica had several small pots of stuff growing on the sill.
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