by Jaime Munn
Stalker. I almost laughed. Instead, I smiled at Erica. “Let her try stalking me,” I said, though I silently added, but only from tomorrow. As if to agree, F.C. hissed. Erica noticed him like she’d thought he was a lifelike sculpture up until then.
“When did you get a cat?”
“Last night. Grace is not my only stalker, but F.C. and I came to an understanding, so it’s okay.”
“F.C.?”
“Frankenstein’s Cat.” I almost said familiar cat but caught myself in time.
“I see. I suppose it works with the calico patches. He has lovely eyes though.”
I glanced at F.C. and back at Erica, but said nothing. I wondered what colour she thought they were.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I insisted on getting her home personally, after she’d finished her cup of sugar coffee and downed the last of the chocolate bar. I raided the chocolate drawer before snatching up my handbag and instructing F.C. to keep a watchful eye on things. I didn’t know if I could make the familiar bond stretch for the half an hour it would take to get Erica home, but I couldn’t see a taxi allowing him in without a pet carrier. For some reason, cats always get a bum rap when it comes to smelly pee. Hey, at least it’s not skunk.
By the time we reached Erica’s house, I felt like there was an elastic band inside of me stretching all the way back to the store. It wasn’t a painful feeling, but it was persistent. My awareness of it didn’t fade over time. It was definitely going down on the con side of the list I should have had before binding a familiar. I started thinking about all the pet unfriendly places in town. Maybe I should have left F.C. looking like a little man and taught him to wear clothes.
Erica’s house was the oldest on the street, but well maintained and breathtakingly beautiful. I had admired it even before I’d crossed paths with the owner. The house itself was colonial English in style, double story. You got the sense that it had somehow squeezed itself into a corner plot. It was red face brick with crisp white painted borders and columns with pale yellow accents. A topiary hedge formed the boundary with an elaborate wrought iron gate providing access to the front garden, which was immaculate and tightly managed. Our progress seemed painfully slow given that my cab was waiting with the meter still running.
The trill of birds from the trees almost made the neighbourhood feel like it was out in the country somewhere. I wondered if Erica ever spent a tranquil morning on the veranda with coffee and biscotti enjoying that old world charm that seemed seeped into the walls of her home. Livia had once said that Erica had inherited the house from her grandmother and that it had been in her family’s hands for generations. It almost had the air of a place lingering on the cusp though the honey-amber light was absent. I wondered if somewhere within the house was a room where the veiled world leaked in.
We paused at the end of the cobbled pathway that ran from the gate to the house giving Erica a moment to gather her strength. The sweeping stone staircase to the front door looked almost too much for Erica, but somehow we managed. On the inside the house was more modern than I would have imagined, but there remained traces of colonial décor. The spaces were all large. The windows let in a lot of light, but the one thing that seemed most obvious in the simple elegancy was how empty the house felt.
I seated Erica on a large chair in her lounge and got directions to the kitchen. At first, I felt that I could get lost in so much space, but the sense of size was deceptive. Though it felt like a manor house with wings and concealed servant’s quarters, it was, in reality, a three bedroom house with two bathrooms and a kitchen as large as some bachelor apartments in the city. I hunted through the cupboards and found the biggest assortment of teas known to man with a cheap can of coffee hidden behind them. Taking my cue from that as to Erica’s preferences, I boiled the kettle and steeped her a cup of sweet tea. I took it through to her and insisted that she drink it. She grimaced at the first sip.
“Nilla, I’ll be fine. You get back to your store and don’t worry about me,” she said firmly after a few more sips. I studied her carefully.
She would be fine in a day or two. I hoped that that would be the end of her encounter with Grace, but knew it was wishful thinking. Grace St John had a very strong vested interest in her young niece. Erica would be seeing a great deal of the wicked witch if she spent much time with young Emma. Despite not knowing what had happened, Erica had gained a distrust of Grace that would eventually make her a target. I covered my concern with a fake smile and nodded.
“Yes, I need to get back.” I could feel the tether to F.C. getting more insistent and itching like an amputated ligament. “But I’ll drop by this evening to check on you.”
“You don’t have to,” Erica said, but she didn’t argue with me. She sounded a little relieved at the thought of some promise of company.
I wondered how she’d slept the night before. Rooting around in someone’s head led to nightmares as sure as sugar fed magical witchy reserves. I wished that I could give Erica and Livia both protection spells against mental incursions, but it would have to wait.
I knew that Livia’s brush with Grace had been brief or I would have noticed it at dinner last night, but still, as I left the Hanley Manor, I wondered if I shouldn’t pay my best friend a call.
In the cab I found myself telling the driver to take me back to Which Light. I could feel F.C. was almost ready to start a shorter version of the Incredible Journey to reach me. I suddenly wondered if he still had poison claws. I hadn’t seen them since they retracted into his new fluffy paws. As my familiar, I didn’t think he could do anything that would harm me. If there were still toxins in his system the familiar spell would have given me an immunity to it, but that didn’t mean that anyone else was similarly blessed. I contemplated getting F.C. to claw up Grace, but the satisfaction of seeing the witch hoisted on her petard did nothing to sway my live and let live philosophy. Only she didn’t want to let me live.
I got back to the store before my familiar broke down the door.
F.C. gave me a hiss in greeting but settled into a soft rumbling purr while I stroked him behind his ears. The image of his naked homunculus features were beginning to fade in my memories, softened now by fur. I checked his claws. They seemed ordinary, but intuition told me otherwise. I told him not to poison any of my friends. He stared at me with his black eyes looking smug and superior. I felt I’d just got a shoulder-shrug of indifference, but he’d still heed my words. It was now part of his nature. Feline independence was more a game of charades when the familiar bond had fused into the psyche.
Although I expected her at every ring of the door bell, Grace didn’t show her face. Quite possibly because it would look as bad as Erica’s had, conceivably even worse. Grace had been a very busy naughty girl. I doubted she had any more firepower right now than I had. It was only a brief cease fire though. She’d already be drawing together her next move to put me six feet under or worse. What would it be this time? An abominable snowman? I snickered at the thought of it in the summer heat.
An hour later Livia wandered in with two cups of coffee. She was wearing dark glasses. I raised an eyebrow at her although I knew that Grace’s tampering to get her to deliver her Trojan gift would have left a mark.
“I have a splitting headache,” she said shortly. “Erica has called in sick and today must be idiots shopping for art day.” She set the takeaway cups down on the counter a little heavily. If it weren’t for the plastic tops, the coffee would have sloshed all over the desk. I patted the seat beside me, but Livia had spotted F.C. and was giving him the once over. He was doing much the same. “What the heck is that?”
“It’s a cat,” I said. “A tom cat.”
“More like an alley cat,” Livia replied. F.C. yawned at her, showing his sharp teeth. I wondered what she was seeing. Erica had seemed quite taken with F.C. while Livia seemed on the verge of going to the dark side of the anti-pet brigade. I hadn’t thought her to be one of ‘those’ people, the kind I avoided li
ke they were stricken with the bubonic plague.
“He’s not that bad,” I said feeling a little nervous.
“He needs a parlour,” she said removing her dark glasses to peer at him, a deep furrow across her brow. “My migraine must be screwing with me; I swear it looked like a horrible little gnome a second ago.”
I felt a rush of relief and a stirring of surprise. Was there something to my friend’s firm belief that she was something of a psychic after all?
“I know I said you needed someone in your life, but don’t think you’re off the hook because you got adopted by a cat,” Livia said turning her attention back to me. She scowled, stroking her forehead. “Damn Erica for taking another day off.” She put her dark glasses back on. “She did sound awful on the phone though. Maybe I should stop by later and see how she’s doing.”
“Take her lunch,” I suggested. “I’ll contribute dessert.”
I wondered how to sneak a little more sugar into Livia’s diet. She’d made a good start though by picking an English toffee and hazelnut latte from Coffee-on-Main. I patted the seat beside me. Livia rounded the counter and slumped into the chair.
“I should have gotten a job where the weekends were my own,” she complained.
“But then you’d miss all those opening galas that Erica throws for each new exhibition. You’d never get to wear all your shiniest shoes.”
Livia nodded, agreeing solemnly with my point. We downed our coffees over a little chit chat and then she left.
I took another break, as the morning continued its quiet trend, to go to the supermarket and pick out a dessert with the most sugar in it. I found a pack of assorted crème brûlées, two of which were a divine sounding caramel and coffee flavour that I thought Livia would find hard to resist. I dropped them off at Tangles on the way back to the store, stealing one of the caramel and coffee crème brûlées for myself. It was decadent. I almost went back for more.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I was just wiping the last traces of it from my mouth, after literally licking the container clean, when the doorbell chimed. I was surprised to see Sofia standing in the doorway.
“Sofia,” I greeted her after a brief moment of surprise. I wondered how much of it I had telegraphed through my expression. She looked vaguely embarrassed to be there. I felt a shadow of fear pass over me. Perhaps Grace St John was stronger than I had thought and she’d sent Sofia to lure me into a trap. It didn’t last long. I refused to believe that the wicked witch was that superior. The dark side wasn’t any more powerful than the light.
“Hi, Nilla.” Sofia’s voice sounded subdued, as though something had stripped of its allure.
I wondered if it was because she was ashamed of how things had played out at our last encounter or if it was a quiet resentment that had been building in her since. She glanced at the stairs that led down to the basement. I tried not to let fears seep out of the corners of my mind as I wondered what could have brought her back so soon.
I rose from my seat, locked the door and replaced the open sign with the back in ten minutes and gestured towards the unsightly meeting space reserved for clients and lamp storage. One day I needed to make, at least, an attempt to style it less like a second class citizen I resolved.
I glanced at the creepy Victorian angel lamp and its light never flickered. I looked across at F.C.’s spot on the counter only to find the cat already halfway towards the stairs, stalking Sofia like she was his new plaything. I saw her first, I thought, and nearly laughed at my sudden possessiveness.
The moment Sofia turned back to frown at F.C. the homunculus cat sprawled on the floor casually and began to lick his fur. She shook her head and moved silently down the stairs into the basement. F.C. resumed his stalker ways. I stepped ahead of him. He made a soft whine of complaint that I utterly ignored.
We sat down at the table, and I waited for Sofia to speak. She looked vulnerable and soft, like some ingénue from a classic film, although I knew that beneath her skin lay an untamed beast that revelled in an unfettered freedom that I could only imagine. I supposed that the strength of her wolf and delicate innocence were not incongruent images. F.C. was distracted from his former prey by the many boxes lining the walls and on inelegant, rough shelves. I wondered what he made of suddenly becoming all cat or did he even remember being anything else at all.
Sofia followed my gaze. “That’s not a cat,” she said.
I shook my head. “He might not have started out that way, but he’s all cat now.”
“He doesn’t smell all cat,” she said. “He smells…like a chimera. It’s like a scent orgy every time I catch a breath of him. There’s a trace of you in that scent, and it’s strong.”
“He’s my familiar.” I was surprised how easily it slipped from my tongue like I’d had F.C. since college. Not that I’d been to college unless visiting a client on campus counted.
“That’s new,” Sofia studied me. “Not long ago he was something dark and dangerous. There’s still something of that in him. I want to snarl at him and show him my teeth. My wolf doesn’t trust him at all.”
I wondered if I should let Sofia’s animal instincts guide me, but if F.C. was dangerous, the threat would not be to me. Not ever again at least.
“I like him,” she added unexpectedly. She turned her gaze unerringly to where F.C. sat atop a pile of boxes, watching us with his black eyes, tail swishing silently through the air. As though accepting that his superior position had given him the best viewing spot, he let the tail swish against the box and set up a slow, hollow thump, thump, thump, rhythm. It was strangely comforting, but I got the impression it was more of an ‘on with the show’ kind of regal command. I ignored that.
I waited for Sofia to find the courage or the resolve to say what she had come to say.
“I spoke with my friend, the one who has the pelt,” she said, at last, looking down at her hands as they rested on the table. “She already knows that there might be a greater cost in the spelled pelt. She said that every wolf has their moon,” Sofia smiled, “even the ones who come by it without the bite.”
At the centre of werewolf culture was the infectious bite and its wild unpredictability. I could see how her friend’s response would appeal to Sofia. While the wolf inside of her had probably completely accepted the wolf in her friend, the knowledge that even the werewolf by spell suffered the same wild consequence of what was both gift and curse probably made her human side feel a stronger shared bond between them.
“She said I was stupid and naïve and lucky that I hadn’t sold my soul to some black witch,” Sofia continued, her smile vanishing and an aura of isolation spreading across her so thickly that I wanted to reach out and hold her hands between my own. “But she was touched that I had thought to try it at all. At least I think she was.”
I wondered who the wolf was that Sofia wanted the pelt for. I felt a sudden surge of jealousy and struggled to thrust it aside before it seeped from my pores, and her wolf breathed it in.
“I spent a long time thinking about it. I have another idea that hopefully isn’t as stupid or as likely to end up making me darkness’ plaything.”
I held my breath.
“Is there a way to make communication possible?”
I exhaled. Communication was simple, but I didn’t know how to tell her that her moon cursed friend might be all wolf on the inside too with thoughts too crude for anything more than a base understanding of wants and needs. The person inside the wolf could no longer exist, utterly lost in her transformation. But I thought that Sofia might know that better than me. Maybe she had reason to believe that the person in the wolf was locked inside, waiting to reach out and be heard.
“It’s possible...almost entirely probable that I could arrange something,” I told her. I hadn’t thought much about her dilemma. Though I felt a flush of shame at that, the blame lay squarely at Grace’s feet. “I’ll need some of your friend’s fur though. I don’t know how she or the pack will feel about gi
ving that up to a witch.”
Sofia nodded, understanding. “And if it is agreed, you will do it?”
“I will.”
Sofia breathed out a short sigh of relief. She pulled a small wrapped parcel out of her pocket and set it on the table. It was wrapped in sparkling, colourful paper and struck me with a little too much déjà vu. I pulled back from it. Sofia’s eyes widened in surprise.
“I’m sorry, I just wanted to thank you for being so understanding. It’s just a little thing…” Her voice trailed off.
I shook my head and took the gift before she returned it to her pocket, cursing Grace St John all over again. I hoped that her dark shadow would soon shrink away from me. I pushed the problem of how to achieve that to the back of my mind.
“My last gift tried to kill me,” I said. Sofia’s eyes widened further. She turned to look at F.C. who seemed all Cheshire cat in the amber light and in the play of shadows as he smiled down at us.
I opened the wrapping without trying to preserve the paper. Livia would have loosed a small scream of horror, but Sofia drank in the carnage like it was good for the soul. For her wolf it probably was.
Inside was a finger’s width thick tube of glass that was wider at one end and tapered to a smaller point. It was an intricate construct of brass and colour, a stained glass shape that I realised with delight was handmade by Sofia. Knowing what I did of her art, I lifted the tube to my eye and looked through the smaller opening. It was a kaleidoscope. The amber-lit basement turned to a room filled with brightly coloured stars; rays bending and twisting as I turned the tube. The object itself was barely impressed with the werewolf’s psyche like Sofia had used gloves throughout most of the creation of the kaleidoscope. What I sensed was her wolf It seeped through me. A wild and mysterious creature with fierce and all too human passions. I had to keep turning the kaleidoscope in my hands and remember to breathe while I stilled the hammering of my own heart and fought off the blood pounded heat in my veins.