"Wut?" Followed by a yawn. "Aw, crapnuts," Rudy cursed.
As a human librarian, picket lines were not something I had encountered on a regular basis. Not that crossing this one would be particularly challenging; their largest sign was a four-by-six index card that read, "Scabby Catty!" Two mice held it aloft on used popsicle sticks. Half a dozen other mice of various shades of black and brown marched back and forth across the doorway, carrying small signs bearing slogans like, "No TAU, No Work!,” "Only one-way familiar!,” "United we stand! Collared we fall!"
The mice chanted, "No TAU! No Bond! No TAU! No Bond!" with a fevered intensity that grew as I sat and watched them perform, waiting for their energy to die down.
"You think it was the flyers at the auction that pissed Oric off?" I asked my passenger.
The Talking Animal Union nominally ensured that familiars were not abused. What it actually did was grab newly awakened animals (formerly human or not) and auction them off to the highest bidder. A former human might find themselves bonded for life before they had time to wrap their heads around having a tail. Animals who awakened had it even worse, having to grapple with language, existential dread, and some human bossing them around all at the same time. I wanted nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, it was like going to Sicily and not doing business with the mob.
"Hey, you're the one who prepped all the Grantsville familiars not to put up with the TAU railroading," Rudy snickered.
"They still got nine good familiars out of the deal. You'd think that'd be enough for a peace treaty," I grumbled in my throat.
"I think we're at the cold war and political machinations stage. Normal life in the big city," Rudy said before raising his voice to address the protesters. "Okay, ladies and gents! Ya made your point, now clear out." He hopped down from my shoulders and made a shooing gesture. The protesting mice froze but didn't budge, all swiveling their tiny heads to focus an eye on Rudy, as if the two-pound squirrel represented a larger threat than the two hundred-pound cat behind him. Which, on further consideration, he probably did.
A brown mouse piped up with a voice so high I could barely make it out. "No can do, Uncle Rudy." He clutched a sign that read, "One TAU to rule them all!!"
Rudy rubbed his paws together as if they were dirty. "Who ya gunna listen to? An ancient owl with his tail feathers in a twist - or me?"
The tiny spokesmouse began to shake. His eyes flashed up at me in that "I can't say what I want to say with YOU standing there" way then back to Rudy, voice pleading. "We're on a job! We can't not do the job! We're troubleshooters like you."
Rudy's tail twitched back and forth like a club looking for something to hit.
I placed a paw between Rudy and the much smaller mouse before the squirrel could decide which firecracker to throw at him. "I'm opening that door. Try not to get squished," I said, striding forward and pressing my neck against a plastic panel next to the door. A beep sounded, and with a whirr of an electric motor, the door slowly swung open, making the mice scatter to avoid it.
"Hey! You can't cross the picket line!" the mouse protested.
"I've never been TAU, and Oric's never made me a very convincing argument for it," I said, my head through the doorway. Pausing, I turned to look at Rudy, who clearly had a dilemma on his hands. Unlike me, Rudy was at least technically a member of the Talking Animal Union, even if he disliked them as a whole. To them, rodents were good enough for the odd jobs, and that was it. "I could open the back door."
"That's not the point!" both the mouse and Rudy said. Then they both resumed staring at each other.
"I ain't breaking, Uncle Rudy. You never break your jobs!"
"You're blocking me from my hole, kid. I live here," Rudy countered.
Sighing, I went inside, leaving Rudy with the world's smallest picket line that had apparently become more effective than O'Meara's strongest ward at keeping the squirrel out of anywhere.
Despite the drama, I had to smile as the lights flickered to life within my living and working space. I took a deep draught of cool, humid air straight out of the Pennsylvanian springtime as my paws padded over the uneven ground of a forest and onto the island of hardwood flooring that contained our kitchen and office. The former hobby shop that Rudy had bought us was about two thousand square feet, with a ceiling much higher than that of the building that contained it. The massive tree that rustled in greeting as I came in the door took up at least a quarter of that space. Oddly shaped for an oak, Coraline had a very thick trunk about ten feet tall before thrusting out two suspiciously arm-like branches, each thicker than me.
"Hello, mystery," I called at the tree.
Rudy refused to speak about Coraline's origin back in Grantsville or how he had transported her from the dying town. This entire apartment had been set up while I was on contract with Veronica. The only clue I had was the faint odor of a bewildering variety of morsels - I mean rodents - in the dirt surrounding Coraline. They'd scoured every other available surface with bleach. On one hand, this meant I was once again accepting living with someone who had secrets... which was how I'd been turned into a cougar in the first place by my girlfriend and my elderly Archmagus neighbor. On the other paw, it would be really difficult to function independently without Rudy's agile paws and advice.
I pawed open the cabinet and pulled a can of premium cashews off the shelf with my teeth. Positioning them on the ground, I activated the focus around my right foreleg, mentally prodding the nearly invisible thin chain. In my vision, a soft yellow shaft, the color of kinetic energy, extended from the underside of my paw . The shaft bent under my thoughts and touched the pad of my first digit. With the aid of my magic thumb, I peeled off the plastic lid and then ripped up the aluminum fresh lid underneath. The smell of cashews and salt barreled up into my nostrils. The thumb dissipated back into the chain; inactive, it would take an expert scryer to notice the small spell. I had never used it outside the apartment. You never knew when a bit of minor telekinesis would come in handy.
Taking the rim of the can in my teeth, I opened the door and passed back through the picket line, ignoring the protestations of the mice scattering out of the way of my paws. Tasting the direction of the cooling evening breeze, I paced out ten feet upwind of the protest and set the can on the sidewalk. As I turned back around, every single rodent's nose poked into the air, twitching fiercely.
"Hey! Those are my nuts!" Rudy took a bound and a half towards me, looking confused.
I grinned. "Thought your friends looked a mite hungry. I figured a can of premium California cashews might put everyone at ease."
All of the mice - excepting their leader - were starting to take half hops toward the open can of nuts, their signs sagging.
"Lemme guess. Oric promised you nothing but peanuts," I said, trying and failing not to let my tail lash with satisfaction as the leader mouse turned on his comrades.
"Guys! Guys! Stop! It's a trap! We can't abandon the line! Don't listen to the cat!" he pleaded, stepping in front of a larger black mouse. "Come on, Chuckles! Think of the money! Not the food! The money!"
Chuckles stopped and sniffed in Rudy's direction, his beady eyes squinting. "You're really Old Uncle Rudy from the stories?"
Rudy paused from nibbling on a cashew to look back at the mice. Unburdened by moral dilemma and ten times the size of the mice, the can had drawn him like a sailor to a siren. He'd already jammed a cashew into each cheek pouch and was gnawing at a third when he looked up at Chuckles.
"I'm the Rudy that sailed the Gulf of Mexico in a matchbox!" he declared in a slightly muffled voice. He pulled the nuts from his cheeks to continue. "I'm the Rudy who knows the nine forbidden secrets! And I'm the Rudy that spoke the word ‘Ratatusk’ to the hanging man!" He turned one eye towards me so the others could not see it and winked.
"We'll take the cashews," Chuckles said, stepping around the smaller mouse. The little mouse grabbed onto Chuckles's tail but only succeeded in getting dragged a foot. Soon the others follow
ed suit, abandoning their posts and their signs. They did not heed the imploring of their leader.
I had to give the little guy credit. He didn't give up, stomp-hopping back to the stoop, scooping up a fallen sign that read "SCAB CAT!" and marching his tiny heart out.
I looked back toward Rudy, who was watching the rodent crew descend on the cashews like a horde of zombies on an infant. "Come on, Rudy. We got things to do." I stifled a yawn. "Like sleep."
Rudy hesitated a moment before jumping up onto my shoulders.
"This is a picket line! You can't cross it!" the mouse hollered as I carefully stepped over him.
"Just like a conga line, you can't picket line all by yourself," I responded, pressing my collar against the lock again.
"Hey! Mouse! What's your name?" Rudy called as I was halfway through the door.
"Colin, sir!"
"I like your spunk, but take a hint next time!" Rudy said as the door shut behind us.
"You're only going to encourage him, you know," I said, making a beeline toward my bed.
Rudy's weight disappeared as I passed by the desk. "I couldn't let you walk all over him without saying something!"
I curled up on my own deluxe bed, which consisted of the biggest beanbag chair we could find on the Internet. It was just as comfortable as you can possibly imagine. Closing my eyes, I set myself on getting as much shut-eye as possible before life tossed yet another boot at my head.
I have learned that life must be a millipede. It never seems to run out of boots.
7
One Good Fire Magus
My eyes opened, and wakefulness smacked me upside the head. I found guilt gnawing on my guts with the ferocity of a two-headed mole rat. (Trust me, two-headed mole rats are ferocious. Pray that you never find out firsthand.)
I looked at the boarded-up shop windows of our office. Nothing but streetlight leaked around their edges. Not even sunrise. My best guess at the time noodled around four in the morning. The nest of leaves in the tree on the other side of the room did not stir. An old song about responsibility ran around the edges of my brain. The "not quite yet" line appealed immensely.
A few Slim Jims from the fridge settled my stomach but not my nerves. Voices whispered that this was a stupid idea. That she wouldn't be up. She'd be asleep. That I'd look pathetic caterwauling at her door. Just as I had been avoiding her, it was clear that she had been avoiding me as well. A strange dance had been happening between us for two months... or so I hoped.
But this couldn't wait any longer. I had to talk to O’Meara.
I wandered until I caught the scent of burnt cinnamon. Not that I didn't know where she was, but my feet had taken the least direct route possible. The thought of this conversation had been twisting in my stomach long before my contract with Veronica had concluded.
My feet could only delay so long, and I soon found myself sitting on a slightly charred doormat. It occurred to me as I sat there, staring at the button next to the door, that I was about to attempt to wake up a fire mage in the latter half of the middle of the night. One who was somewhat prone to jumping at loud noises. Scanning the house, I saw no wards, but there was also a distinct lack of open windows. I don't know why I bothered looking, to be honest; most homes in Vegas were hermetically sealed bubbles. Nobody opened their windows except the Ifrit. Not that invading O'Meara's home without permission and hoping she'd be too deep in slumberland to notice wouldn't result in a crispy cougar.
Grimacing, I pawed at the doorbell. The electronic buzz that pretended to be a bell tone echoed through the house.
Nothing happened.
I should probably have just turned tail at that point. But I had come too far to let my existential dread of this meeting win.
"Come on, O'Meara," I pleaded with the silent house. Closing my eyes, I probed the house with my other vision. O'Meara's red aura was not within. Not a spark of magic existed inside. I wondered if O'Meara had found a boyfriend or something and squashed the territorial instinct that rose. The fire magus wasn't mine in any way, shape, or form. She'd rightfully make me beg for her help.
Sitting back on my haunches, I let my gaze widen, taking in the subtle pulse of magics around me. And there, in the distance, a pulse of red wobbled in my vision. O'Meara, my very first bond, could never hide from me.
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry when I saw that the building containing O'Meara was a bar called O'Malley's and sported a four-leaf clover motif, along with a flickering neon sign that proclaimed topless dancing on Thursday and Saturday nights. The scent that greeted me was human urine, mostly from the fellow that currently pissed against the wall of the building. Muffled, vaguely Irish-sounding tunes were sneaking out through the windows and then making a break for it as somebody opened the front door. My ears folded backwards to protect my tender eardrums.
The someone who had just exited the bar froze and then started to sway a bit as I walked past him and caught the closing door with a paw.
"I could've got hat furg you," he muttered.
"Thanks, but I'm cool." I nosed the door open and went inside, careful to position my tail straight up so it didn't get closed in the door. For cougars, a straight-up tail is considered pretty lewd, but since the only cats I know barely reached my knees, nobody had called me on it.
O'Meara stood behind the bar, her red hair pulled back into a ponytail that did nothing to restrain its wildness, making her hair resemble a rocket firing. Her eyes glared over deep bags at a notebook in her right hand, which she looked about to jab with a pencil she clenched in her left. I couldn't tell you what the rest of the bar looked like. I never saw it. The air stank of beer with a hint of burnt cinnamon. That was enough. Even as guilt gurgled in my stomach, I found my way onto the barstool in front of her.
The barstool had other ideas. I hadn't actually been in a bar since I'd been turned into a cougar and lost whatever alcohol tolerance I had managed to acquire. So when the stool lurched beneath me due to its legs being uneven, I overcompensated. My nose impacted the bar as the seat shot out from under me. I landed on the floor before any instincts had time to fire.
The bar erupted into drunken laughter. Amazing how loud four people can be when they're all laughing at you.
Pain radiated from my nose and into my muzzle, encountering the creeping warmth from my ears. I sneezed once, then pretended that my paw needed the dire attention of my tongue. The laughter took way too long to die away.
"Well, that's one way to break the ice." O'Meara's round face peered over the bar at me, a smirk dimpling one cheek. "Can I get you anything?"
"Well, I've already had a good banger, so how 'bout a bowl of water with ice," I said, before muttering, "and my pride" under my breath.
"Go get us a booth and I'll bring it over."
I nodded and slunk over to an empty booth, its seats padded with green vinyl cushions pockmarked with cigarette burns and stab wounds. Vegas dives always lay it on thick. I jumped up into the seat, and a few moments later, O'Meara squeezed in opposite me, with a bowl of water for me and a tumbler of a brown spirit for her. Neither of our bodies fit well in the tiny space. The edge of the table cut into her belly, and the seat was too narrow for me to sit and face her. Instead, I lay sideways and craned my neck to look at her.
"So, what's a magus like you doing in a place like this?" I said, deciding that my brain had no reserve of wit that was going to make this any easier. O'Meara was tired, and a tired O'Meara meant grumpy and therefore not inclined to let a cougar off a metaphorical hook.
"Working. Waiting." She took a sip of her whiskey or scotch and looked at me expectantly. I knew precisely what she was waiting for. It made my heart hurt. It longed to just give up on the whole Freelance Familiar thing, bond O'Meara, and be done with it. And yet, I couldn't help myself from thinking that would be a waste. That damn dragon had let me do things that nobody else could, allowing me to be independent and not be permanently attached to any one magus. Perhaps it was merely my pride tal
king, but if I could set this example and get away with it long enough, things would start to change.
Leaving Veronica had been hard enough. After our ordeal in that alien desert, we had worked well together despite frequent disputes. The fact that I insisted on a day off every week had been a particularly sore point. O'Meara and I blended on an entirely different level, so wide was our trust, our bond so deep that our thoughts could intermix.
Would I be strong enough to leave O'Meara if I bound her again? Or would I become just another familiar - just another example of an uppity familiar who settled down eventually?
But the fact remained: I needed a magus. Without a bond, I was just a talking cat. Paying clients would expect me to work on their own behalf, not mine. If Freelance Familiars was going to work as a concept, I needed a magus in my corner. Otherwise, things would slip through my powerless paws. Things like finding out what happened to Trevor. I had to be okay with bonding and rebonding. We had to be okay with that.
My gaze had fallen to my paws. I looked around to find O'Meara watching me, her whiskey down to a single finger, still waiting for me to speak.
I took a deep breath and forced the words out. "O'Meara, I want your help."
She smiled, but it was sad. "You want our magic but not me."
"That's not what I said!" My stomach dropped out from under me as her words seared my insides. "I want your help."
"And you'll get it!" O'Meara snapped. "I owe you more than I can ever repay."
"O'Meara—" I started to protest, but she reached over and forcibly shut my jaw with her fingers.
"Let me have this moment, Thomas, without your excuses. I need to say this."
The grip on my muzzle felt more like steel than flesh, and the scent of her fury was searing, but her eyes stayed cold. "I do not understand you, Thomas Khatt. You fucking saved me. After all that with the technomagi in Grantsville, you forced House Morganna to restore my soul by going on a hunger strike."
High Steaks (Freelance Familiars Book 3) Page 4