“You got it. Great.” Anica was winded and her words came out chopped and breathy.
“Of course I got it.”
“I’m glad I met you before we go in there. Let me have the sandwich.”
Lily handed over the bag. “You’re welcome.”
“Sorry. Thanks.”
“I’ve never seen you this rattled, not even when you lost the spelling bee in seventh grade.”
“Look, assuming the cat Julie found really is Jasper, I’ve decided what I need to do about him. I want to talk with him privately, so I wonder if you could distract Julie while I do that. I don’t want her to hear what I have to say.”
Lily’s brows arched. “You’re going to promise to be his love slave after he transforms? Whoops, you’re blushing. Don’t tell me that’s it.”
“No, that’s not it.” Anica was embarrassed by how positively she reacted to that idea.
“I don’t know, An. From the way you described his personality, he might go for that. It would be a whole lot better than having him trash your business reputation. And a whole lot more fun.”
Anica looked her sister in the eye. “I’ll keep it in mind as an alternative.” She wouldn’t consider such a manipulation, of course, but pretending she would, even for the shock value, sent lust shooting through her system.
“I don’t believe you’d ever do it but I’m impressed that you didn’t lecture me for suggesting such a thing.” Lily gazed at her with new respect. “This experience is having quite an effect on you. Welcome to the world of fallible beings, big sister. Life’s a lot more interesting here.”
“I’m not sure interesting is the right word. Terrifying is more like it. Come on, let’s go see if Julie’s found our boy.” She started down the alley.
“Your boy, Anica,” Lily said. “Your boy.”
He wasn’t her anything, but Anica didn’t bother to contradict her sister. During the time that he was a cat Jasper was her responsibility. She’d mucked that up, but no more.
“Julie,” she called out. “Where are you?”
Julie came around the corner, her hands shoved in the pockets of the black pea coat Anica had insisted she go back for. She’d been ready to search the city wearing nothing but her skinny black pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Anica was becoming fonder of Julie by the minute.
“He’s still here.” Julie kept her gaze trained on a point on the far side of the wall, a spot Anica couldn’t see. “I’ve been keeping watch over him, but he won’t let me come close enough to grab him.” She sniffed. “Is that chicken in the bag?”
“Yep. I asked Lily to pick up a sandwich in case we needed something to tempt him with.”
“Smart.”
Anica went around the corner to see the box. Her breath caught. There sat Jasper, gazing at her with his golden eyes. She wondered how others could miss the glow of human intelligence in those eyes. He didn’t look like an ordinary cat to her, but then she knew he wasn’t one.
He didn’t approach her. Instead he sat near the cardboard box Julie had mentioned and watched her. His nose twitched, which probably meant he’d caught the scent of chicken.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Julie said.
Anica had forgotten the girl was there. By now Lily had joined them, too. “Yes, it’s him, all right. Hello, Jasper.”
Jasper didn’t even blink.
“He’s a very good-looking cat,” Julie said. “Pretty sleek for being a stray. Do you think he belongs to someone?”
“No,” Anica said. “No, I don’t.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose him not being neutered is a giveaway. Most owners would have taken care of that by now. He looks like he’s at least five or six years old. I love cats. I would have one, but my brother’s allergic and he comes over all the time.”
There was a spell for that, a combination of hypnosis and magic that cured pet allergies, but Anica would have to let Julie and her brother know she was a witch in order to use it. And she’d have to get her magic back.
“Julie,” Lily said, “we haven’t met, but I’m Lily, Anica’s sister.”
“Glad to meet you.” Julie seemed a little dazed by Lily.
Anica didn’t blame her. Lily often had that effect on people.
Lily lowered her voice as if letting Julie in on a secret. “I think it’s best if we move back down the alley and let Anica see what she can do without all of us standing around.”
“Oh. Sure, sure.” Julie began retreating immediately. “That makes perfect sense.”
“Besides, I want to ask you where you got those fabulous skull earrings.”
“They belonged to my great-aunt.”
Anica decided to think about that fascinating bit of news later. She waited until Lily and Julie were out of sight and their voices had faded. Then she pulled the sandwich out of the bag and took off the paper it was wrapped in.
Jasper didn’t move from his spot. It almost seemed as if he was guarding something.
Anica looked at him. “I had Lily buy this sandwich as a gesture of goodwill, but you don’t care, do you? The thing is I need to take you back to the apartment.”
Jasper stared at her without moving.
“I apologize for not keeping you safe,” Anica said. “I needed to go to the shop and I hated to ask Lily to come over again. I thought Julie would work out. I never dreamed Edna was such a nutcase. I’m sorry for the trauma, Jasper.”
Still he didn’t come to her.
Anica sighed in frustration. “Look, I have something to say, and I don’t want Julie to hear it. Could you come a little closer? I won’t make a grab for you, I promise. It’s just that this is a sensitive topic.”
Jasper stood, stretched, and moved another three feet toward her.
He was still out of reach, but if she lunged at him, she might be able to get her arms around him and hold on. She’d promised him she wouldn’t, though, so she resisted the temptation.
Keeping her voice low, she laid out her proposition. “I’ve been selfish to try and solve this on my own. Or just with Lily’s help. I wanted to keep it quiet so my parents wouldn’t find out, or the rest of the magical world, for that matter.”
Cocking his head to one side, Jasper seemed to be listening intently.
“I can’t keep making you drink that potion when I don’t know if it will ever create a permanent change. I’m shooting in the dark, Jasper, and I’ve finally admitted that’s not good enough.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to call the couple that Lily met, the ones who are on the Wizard Council, and ask them to help me reverse this spell.”
Jasper’s chest heaved as if he, too, had taken a deep breath.
“Will you come home with me so we can get to work on that?”
Instead of moving forward he looked over his shoulder at the cardboard box.
“Come on, Jasper. Everything will be okay.” She really thought he’d come over to her, but instead he turned and walked back to the cardboard box.
She slumped in defeat. She’d promised him that she wouldn’t trick him in order to capture him, but maybe she shouldn’t have made that promise. “I don’t know what to do, Jasper. Tell me what you want me to do.”
Sitting down near the opening of the cardboard box, he meowed in a way that was almost a command.
“Do you want me to come over there?”
He meowed again. Then he crawled inside the box.
Curious now, Anica walked over to the cardboard box, got to her knees on the dirty pavement of the alley and peered inside. Jasper sat near the opening, but farther in a pair of cat eyes glowed in the shadows.
The unknown cat hissed a warning. But that wasn’t the only noise coming from inside the box. Soft mewling sounds mingled with the warning hiss.
Anica turned to stare at Jasper in wonder. “You brought me over here so I could help them, didn’t you?”
Jasper met her gaze and began to purr.
Chapter 12
Transporting the mother cat and her t
wo kittens back to the apartment building was more of a project than Jasper had anticipated. He’d been so tempted to leave them there, go home with Anica and forget the homeless family ever existed. Although he wasn’t normally into acts of charity, the sight of that emaciated mother trying to nurse her hungry babies probably would have haunted him forever.
Lily had gone off to buy a carrier, and by the time she returned the mother cat had devoured every bite of the chicken sandwich that had been meant for Jasper. He tried not to mind too much. After all, Anica was about to risk public humiliation in front of her magical community for his sake, so he should be able to sacrifice a little chicken. Besides, Anica would feed him as soon as they got home.
The chicken helped soothe the mother cat’s fears, but she still might not have gone in the carrier if it hadn’t been for Julie. That girl had a way with cats, it turned out. She talked to the mother in a soft crooning voice as Lily and Anica transferred the first kitten.
There were only two, so it shouldn’t have been tough, but the moment the first was in, the mother cat leaped after it and tried to take it back out. Anica managed to get the second kitten in the carrier before that could happen, and the family was confined.
“I’m taking them.” Julie picked up the carrier and started out of the alley.
“We can trade off,” Lily said. “They’ll get heavy.”
“I don’t mind,” Julie said. “But I meant I’m taking them to my apartment. They can stay with me until the kittens are old enough to adopt out. Then I’m keeping the mother. Come to think of it, I might keep both kittens, too.”
“What about your allergic brother?” Anica scooped Jasper up in her arms and he offered no objection. He was happy to be going back to a warm apartment where no one would throw bricks at him.
“You know, I just realized that I don’t want to go through the rest of my life not having cats because of my brother’s allergies. He doesn’t have to have animals if they bother him, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get some.”
Jasper thought that was a fine attitude indeed. From his new perspective of having bricks thrown at his head, he could see that pets needed all the friendly humans they could find. He’d never realized how dangerous the world could be for an animal. To think he’d come damn close to losing his boys. Too damn close.
In a restored Victorian house on the edge of the town of Big Knob, Indiana, Dorcas Lowell was trying to get an oil stain out of her husband Ambrose’s good designer slacks when the phone rang. She detested laundry and had tried various magic spells to get rid of the stain, but she’d only smeared it. She would have turned the job over to her husband, but he was worse at laundry spells than she was and he’d ruin the slacks for sure.
She wouldn’t have to be doing this if he’d give up that ridiculous red scooter he’d insisted on buying a couple of years ago. He thought he looked like a biker dude on that contraption, which was now acting up and throwing out oil on his good slacks.
“Ambrose! Phone!” Working on the stain wasn’t the sort of job Dorcas wanted to interrupt for a phone call and return to later. Once she’d launched herself into the task, she wanted it over in three minutes or less, not dragged out by interruptions.
Finally she realized that Ambrose wasn’t going to answer and, even more irritating, he’d forgotten to turn on the answering machine. He hadn’t mentioned going out, but for all she knew he was riding around town on that blasted scooter, deep in his Hell’s Angels fantasy, getting more oil stains on his clothes.
“Zeus’s balls.” She abandoned her stain duty in the laundry room and walked into the kitchen. She could just let the phone ring, of course, but intuition told her the call was important. The caller was persistent, at any rate. Dorcas had a habit of counting rings, and this was the tenth. The caller still hadn’t given up.
Dorcas picked up the cordless from the wall mount beside the kitchen window. “Hello?”
There was a slight hesitation, as if the caller was deciding whether to speak or hang up. “This is Anica Revere,” a woman said at last. “My sister, Lily, tends bar at the Bubbling Cauldron on Rush Street in Chicago.”
“I remember Lily.” Dorcas had been quite taken with the tall brunette. Lily might need to ground herself a little more but she had spunk. Dorcas admired that in a witch.
“She gave me your number. I . . . I have a problem and I need some help.”
As Anica told her story, Dorcas gazed out the window toward the lake. The ice was melting, which meant that the two lake monsters, Dee-Dee and her mate, Nor-ton, would soon want to come out of their cave under the water and take moonlit swims with their growing children.
The lake monsters had to be careful that the residents of Big Knob didn’t see them, which was becoming more of a challenge now that there was a whole family of them living in the lake. Ambrose had erected a flagpole down by the shore, which he’d billed as a patriotic gesture. In reality it was a signaling device. When the flag was right side up the lake monsters had to stay hidden. When it was upside down they were free to come out.
But as Dorcas concentrated more fully on Anica’s problem, she decided the lake monsters would have to wait another week before they began their swimming season. Dorcas and Ambrose were needed in Chicago.
“We’ll be there first thing in the morning, Anica,” she said. “In the meantime I’ll do some research on the spell you cast. Because I don’t know what we’re dealing with, I think it’s better if we meet you at a place where Jasper can’t hear what we have to say.”
“Then come to Wicked Brew.” Anica gave the address. “Can you make it by eleven?”
“I think so.” Dorcas winced at how early they’d have to be on the road, but she shouldn’t complain. Not so long ago they weren’t allowed to leave Big Knob at all. They’d been sent here—banished, in fact—to rehabilitate George, the dragon who had been shirking his job as Guardian of Whispering Forest. The Wizard Council had decreed that they couldn’t leave, not even for a vacation, until George had earned his golden scales.
Dorcas and Ambrose had finally helped George accomplish that and now they could travel. They’d bought a Toyota Prius and had made several trips to Chicago for the plays, the food and the nightlife. On their last trip they’d discovered the Bubbling Cauldron, run by wizards and staffed by magical people.
“I’ll look for you around eleven, then,” Anica said. “Also, I probably don’t have the right to ask you, but . . .”
“What is it?”
“I know you’re both on the council and I suppose you’re required to report everything to them.”
Dorcas laughed. “They might like that, but I don’t see it as my sacred duty.”
“Then would you mind not saying anything about this to anyone except your husband, at least for now?”
“You know an alert came down to the Wizard Council when you lost your magic. Most likely there’s already a note in your file.”
“But they don’t know why I lost my magic unless somebody tells them, right?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.” Dorcas was sympathetic to those who screwed up. After all, she’d done it herself. She’d messed up a spell involving the Grand High Wizard’s brother-in-law, which is why she and Ambrose had been shipped off to Big Knob, the Wizard Council’s version of Siberia.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone, then,” Anica said.
“We can be discreet.”
A relieved sigh traveled across the miles between them. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t solved your problem.”
“No, but I have faith that you will.”
Dorcas wasn’t so sure. Transformation spells were tricky, especially the older ones. She didn’t want to rub that in, though. Anica Revere sounded as if she might be at the end of her rope and Dorcas knew exactly how that felt.
“See you tomorrow, Anica. Give my best to Lily.” She replaced the phone in its cradle. Hera’s hemorrhoi
ds. Now she had to finish working on that stain. Maybe she’d have to resort to Spray ’n Wash, but that would be admitting she couldn’t do laundry magic. No self-respecting witch would ever admit that.
Once Anica got Jasper back in her apartment, she wasn’t willing to leave again until the next morning when she went to meet Dorcas and Ambrose Lowell at Wicked Brew. She’d thought keeping the shop operating smoothly was important to her until she’d almost lost Jasper, but her priorities were clear now. Her employees would have to handle things at the shop, and if they couldn’t, well, she’d shut the place down temporarily.
She sent Lily home to sleep and gave Julie enough cat food and litter to get her through a couple of days with her new charges. Fortunately the responsibility of a mother cat and kittens had distracted her new friend from the subject of witchcraft, but Anica knew Julie would ask again. If she’d been given skull earrings by a great-aunt, then she might come by her curiosity naturally. She might have a few magical people lurking in the branches of her own family tree.
After Lily and Julie left, Anica sliced up some chicken for Jasper, who had certainly earned it.
His self-sacrifice surprised her. After the way he’d manipulated her affections Anica had categorized him as a self-serving jerk. A sexy jerk, but a jerk nevertheless. Yet he’d been determined to save this mother cat and kittens before going home with her to fix his own problem.
When she went into her bedroom to change into sweats, she left Jasper scarfing up chicken from the bowl she’d set on the counter, and Orion pacing underneath, meowing his protest.
By the time she came back out, Orion and Jasper were at opposite ends of the sofa, grooming themselves. She sat down next to Orion and leaned over to give him a good scratch. “Poor guy. I know it’s tough to be the one with your nose pressed against the candy store window, so to speak. Your life should be back to normal soon. You . . . smell like chicken.”
She knew Orion couldn’t hop up on the counter, or else he would have done that while she was slicing the chicken. Jasper certainly had. He’d been right by her elbow while she unwrapped the package.
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