Putting on the Witch

by Joyce

  CHAPTER 20

  Dorothy and I went upstairs, leaving Brian to sort through the mess we’d created. Dorothy was right—he was a very congenial person. I hoped it wouldn’t be long before we heard wedding bell news from them too.

  Olivia was glad to see us. She was never good at being alone. “Thank goodness you’re back! I was beginning to wonder what was going on!”

  We explained everything that had happened, and then Dorothy made a decision.

  “I’m going to sneak up on that cat,” she whispered. “It’s crazy for us to be afraid of her. I’m sure she’s just frightened and needs someone to talk to.” She slowly began opening the door between our rooms.

  “Be careful,” I warned. “She already doesn’t like you, and she has claws.”

  “So do I when I need to,” she assured me as she smoothed back her dark cap of hair. “I’m not afraid of some shape-shifting cat. And I don’t want her in there sleeping on Brian’s bed like she owns it. She’s got some explaining to do, sneaking in here without letting us know that she was more than just a cat.”

  “Be careful, Dorothy,” Olivia warned. “Some of those shape-shifters can be vicious and nasty.”

  “We don’t know that about her,” I reminded them both. “She might be in hiding or didn’t know that we didn’t understand what she was.”

  “Oh, she knew!” Olivia disagreed.

  “Do you want my help?” I asked.

  “No,” Dorothy whispered. “I’ve got this.”

  Two minutes and a few howls and hisses later, Dorothy ran back through the doorway and slammed the door behind her, locking it for good measure. “That cat thing is insane. I think she was trying to kill me. Look what she did to my arm.”

  I didn’t repeat myself that the shifter could be scared and react accordingly. I examined the deep, long gouges where the cat had scratched her. “Let’s see if we can heal those. They look angry.”

  As I uttered a spell for healing and held my amulet, I had Dorothy sit down and relax. “I’m not going in there again. Brian is going to have to handle her. But he can’t keep that cat.”

  “Shh. If you want to heal, you have to think healing thoughts. Let go of what happened. Let yourself heal quietly.”

  She closed her eyes and complied, relaxing on the bed. I could feel her energies aligning with mine to make the magic stronger.

  As the scratches began to heal, I agreed with her assessment of the cat situation. “Funny how she was so docile and quiet when you first gave her to Brian. Maybe it’s something here at the castle that’s bothering her.”

  “That wouldn’t be surprising,” Olivia added. “None of us should have come to this terrible place.”

  “Where did you get her anyway?” I asked.

  “There was a man by the library with a box of kittens he needed to give away. He said he couldn’t keep them because he had to move. That’s how I got Hemlock too. I thought getting a rescue cat would be great. I didn’t know she was an evil shape-shifter.”

  Listening to her tell the story made me suspicious. “Let me look at you,” I suggested. “I’m just wondering if that was a witch who gave you Kalyna. You could have been spelled not to notice the cat was a shape-shifter. Normally witches recognize werewolves, shape-shifters and the like.”

  Dorothy held very still, and I gazed deeply into her confused brown eyes. Because she was new at using her magic, it was still possible to take advantage of her. But if she’d been spelled, there was no sign of it in her.

  “Am I okay?” she asked as I moved back from her.

  “You’re fine. It was just a thought.” I smiled at her and stroked her hair. “You’re still in training. Anything could happen that you wouldn’t recognize yet. We should have thought about that in the first place.”

  “It won’t be long though, sweetie,” Olivia said, “and no one will be able to take advantage of you—not with your daddy’s magic.”

  I sighed, wishing Olivia wouldn’t glorify Drago’s dark magic in one breath and disparage it in the next. I supposed it reflected her own feelings of uncertainty about him in her life. Not that anyone was ever truly all good or all evil. We were all a mixture of both.

  Brian and Elsie knocked and then quickly entered the room as though demons were chasing them. When the door was shut tight and spelled, we all joined hands, glad that we were together.

  “What happened?” Dorothy asked. “Is everything okay? They didn’t arrest you did they, Elsie?”

  “She was fine,” Brian said with a grin. “I felt sorrier for the servant and the security guard who tried to detain her until Oscar could get there.”

  “It was stupid for them to think I was stealing something,” Elsie huffed. “I would’ve told Oscar or Abdon the same if it came down to it.”

  “Well, it’s over now.” I hugged her. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “And I’m afraid it was for nothing. The fingerprints we got didn’t match.” Brian broke the circle and put his arms around Dorothy.

  “So only Hedyle is left.” Elsie sat in a corner chair. “I know you don’t want to talk to her again, Molly. I’ll get her prints. She doesn’t want anything in my head.”

  “We have another problem too, Brian.” Dorothy held out her arm for him to see. “You have to get her into the carrier. Once we can leave the castle, I’ll take her right back to the man I got her from. She’s a little devil.”

  “I’m sorry.” He winced when he saw the scratches, which were now mostly healed. “Let me see what I can do. Stay here, honey. I don’t want her to hurt you again.”

  They kissed again, and Brian disappeared into his room, closing the door behind him.

  “I think we need to take some time here and figure out the meaning of those three words that Molly heard Makaleigh say as she was dying,” Olivia said in a stern voice. “We’ve been running around, trying to figure this out the way the police would. That’s not working. We need some magic—I’m willing to bet that those words are magic.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” I sat at the desk and took out a sheet of plain white paper before I wrote the three words at the top. “All right. There they are. I have to assume the spelling, since I only heard them. If we can find something close to that, maybe we can figure it out.”

  “Let me take a look,” Dorothy said. “I learned the entire Dewey Decimal System in three days. People were amazed. If I can do that, I can figure out anything.”

  We were about to get started when there was a knock at the door. Elsie answered it. One of the many servants in the castle said that our presence was required in the ballroom. “All witches are required.” The servant nodded and left us.

  “I probably should just wait up here anyway, and you can tell me what they said,” Dorothy suggested. “This is likely much more important than whatever they’re going to say. And I don’t want to leave Brian alone with that she-devil.”

  “What about Brian?” Olivia asked. “That man is still knocking on his door, but he’s not answering.”

  “Let’s go through the communicating door and find out,” I said.

  The servant had given up, moving to the next door down the hall. I walked into Brian’s room and abruptly stopped when I saw him.

  “What’s wrong?” Elsie almost bumped into me. “Oh, Brian.”

  “Let me see.” Olivia swooped around us and went toward the bed where Brian was sitting.

  “Why are we—?” Dorothy quickly followed us.

  Brian was sitting on the bed, staring blankly as he stroked the black cat that was perched on his lap. His eyes were fixed and glazed. His movements, slow and sluggish.

  “What has she done to him?” Dorothy ran toward him.

  The small black cat became a much larger, person-sized black cat with six-inch-long claws that extended as Dorothy got closer. The cat had to be a few hu
ndred pounds of lean muscle covered by shiny black fur. Her yellow green eyes focused on Dorothy with angry intent.

  “He is mine now, witch. Stay away.”

  “The kitty talks now.” Elsie frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good thing.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.” Dorothy continued to advance.

  One of the cat’s long claws grazed Brian’s throat. “Before you move, I shall rip the flesh from his vein and he will bleed to death. There is nothing you can do. Leave him to me.”

  She stopped and glared at the cat. “I don’t believe you. You didn’t go to all this trouble to enchant him only to rip his throat out. What do you really want?”

  “And don’t say you want Brian,” Olivia challenged. “That’s not happening.”

  “Go away. I will kill him if I must. It would not be my choice, but your actions could force my hand.”

  “Or paw, as the case may be.” Elsie was ready to fight for Brian. “You want him? You’ll have to get through us.”

  All of the claws on the paw came out on Brian’s neck. The cat hissed at us and seemed ready to fulfill her promise.

  “Let’s take a step back on this,” I suggested.

  Dorothy, Olivia, Elsie and I went back into the other room.

  “What do we do?” Dorothy whispered. “We can’t leave Brian with her.”

  Elsie shook her head. “The ladies certainly have a thing for him, don’t they? I thought the sea witch was bad, but now it’s the evil cat. How does he do it?”

  “Actually he didn’t do this.” Olivia defended him. “Dorothy got the cat for him.”

  “Mother!” Dorothy was on the verge of tears. “I didn’t know the cat was an evil shape-shifter. She seemed like a pretty black cat. Nothing else. I would never have taken her if I’d known.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” I agreed. “No one here thinks you’re responsible. Brian doesn’t blame you either.”

  “That’s nice, but it doesn’t matter,” she said. “Is there a spell or something we can use to get rid of her? Maybe we can shrink her down again? We can’t just leave him in there with her.”

  “I’m sure there’s something we can do.” Olivia looked at me hopefully. “Well, maybe not me personally, but the three of you.”

  “A spell to make her reveal her true form?” Elsie considered. “Then when she turns back into a woman, we can hit her with something.”

  “But what if her true form is the cat?” Dorothy asked. “That could make it worse.”

  “I don’t see how it could be much worse.” Olivia fretted. “Oh, I wish we were home. I wish we wouldn’t have come to this ball at all.”

  “What about a sleeping spell?” Dorothy suggested. “It wouldn’t matter what form she was in if we put her to sleep, right?”

  “That’s a good idea,” I agreed. “Between the three of us, we can probably manage a pretty potent sleeping spell. She doesn’t have to be out for long.”

  Elsie clapped her hands. “I can even remember one. How’s that for serendipity?”

  “Let’s do it,” Dorothy said. “Let’s get her out of there. I want Brian back in one piece.”

  We agreed on a sleeping spell—the one Elsie could remember—and practiced it a few times before we moved back into the bedroom where Brian was on the bed with the cat.

  We could have stayed in the other room for the spell. It would have been safer, but the magic would be stronger if we could see Brian and the cat, especially with using only half magic. Normally that wouldn’t have been a problem, but we didn’t know how powerful the shifter was. Some shifters had other magic that could fight against ours. Some could only shift form. Either way, we’d be covered.

  Elsie began the spell for once. She knew the incantation perfectly as she closed her eyes and called on her fire magic. Dorothy and I joined in, adding water and earth magic. Even Olivia voiced the spell, though she had no air magic anymore. Together we chanted the spell for sleep as we felt the power surge through us and join together.

  “Look!” Dorothy called out a few minutes later. “It worked! She’s asleep.”

  “I knew we could do it,” Elsie exclaimed. “Now all we have to do is get her off Brian.”

  Olivia went close to the big cat. “That’s a lot of cat. Let me make sure she’s out.” She made a few of the dangling curtain edges dance across the cat’s nose. “I think she would have responded to that if she could, don’t you? Maybe you could make her shift back again. She’d be easier to move. I doubt the woman weighed as much as the cat.”

  “We don’t want to do that,” I said. “If we try to do another spell on her, it could negate the first one and she could be awake when she changes right back into the big cat.”

  We carefully walked up to Brian and the sleeping cat. Dorothy smoothed his brown hair back and told him she loved him. He was still staring straight ahead, a vacant expression on his face, despite the spell on the cat. His hand still moved in the familiar stroking pattern the cat had set up.

  Elsie had poked the monstrous cat a few times, and it didn’t move. She shrugged, and we managed to slide it from the bed to the floor. Dorothy had to hold on to Brian to keep him from sliding off with it.

  “That thing is dead weight,” Elsie whispered. “Now it’s down, what do we do with it?”

  “Couldn’t we spell the closet to hold it?” Dorothy wondered. “If so, we could use the moving spell on it and put it in there.”

  Olivia managed to rattle the closet door. “I don’t think this is strong enough even with a spell on it, ladies. Maybe you should put it in the bathroom.”

  We put our heads together and created the spell for moving heavy objects. We’d used it before to bring books from the New Hanover Public Library, where Dorothy worked, to Smuggler’s Arcane. It seemed to work well for the cat too, until there was a loud banging at the bedroom door and we lost focus.

  The cat that had been slowly, beautifully levitating across the room suddenly dropped hard and fast to the floor again with a bang. It was enough to wake the beast. She snarled and growled at us.

  Abdon, who’d been pounding on the door, opened it abruptly. “Why are you witches still up here? Didn’t you get the message that all witches were to come to the ballroom at once?”

  As soon as the cat saw the door open, she pounced on Abdon, knocking him to the wood floor. She growled low in her throat, her face in his, and then leapt from his chest through the open doorway and into the hall. Before anyone could react, Kalyna had disappeared.

  “What the—?” Abdon was furious and holding his hand over his chest. “That thing broke one of my ribs. Why is it here?”

  Elsie gently helped him to his feet. “Just stand still now. We can have that fixed in no time.”

  “No, thanks. I’ll see my doctor. Why was that cat up here? How did you get it past security? I believe we said no familiars.”

  “Hey.” Brian looked around as though he’d been asleep and had suddenly awakened to a room full of people. “What’s going on?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” Abdon demanded. “Did you bring your familiar with you, Brian? I didn’t even know you had one. You know, I’ve always seen having a familiar as a sign of personal weakness.”

  So that’s why he never had a cat. It made sense. Brian had always been expected to live up to his grandfather’s strict standards of conduct.

  “It’s a long story,” I replied. “Did you want to hear it now or after we go downstairs with everyone else?”

  Abdon frowned and then grimaced as he was reminded that his rib was damaged. “Never mind. Come downstairs. We’ll discuss the cat later.”

  That was fine with us. Maybe he’d forget about the incident later. We could only hope.

  Olivia had immediately hidden in the elaborate sunburst light on the ceiling when she saw Abdon. “I’ll just
stay up here until you all get back,” she whispered. “This is one time I’m glad I’m not going.”

  I agreed, the last one out of the room following Abdon to the meeting downstairs. “I’m sure we won’t be long,” I told her. “I don’t think Kalyna will be back right away.”

  “Not that I’m worried about her.” She dismissed the idea. “But I’ll let you know before you come in. How are we going to catch her now that she’s somewhere in the castle?”

  “One thing at a time. Let’s see what Abdon wants us to do now.”

  CHAPTER 21

  It looked as though all the guests who’d started the evening so joyfully before were now in attendance again in the ballroom.

  They weren’t as happy now.

  The party mood had evaporated long before, even though the food and drink was constantly refreshed. Champagne still flowed, and servants answered food requests. It didn’t matter. The fun had gone out of the event. Everyone wanted to leave and wondered how much longer they would be trapped there.

  It was a grumpy, half-dressed crowd that waited for Abdon to appear. Almost everyone needed a shower, even though they’d been given accommodations. The women wore little makeup, and the men needed a shave. They could have done this with magic. It seemed to be a silent protest to what was happening at the castle.

  Abdon moved to the top of the stairs. I thought it was probably to be above the rest of us. Elsie, Brian, Dorothy and I blended in with the others in the impatient group of witches. People around us murmured angry words they didn’t dare say loudly for fear of council retribution. I shuddered to think of being trapped here for much longer if we didn’t find the killer.

  Abdon held up his hand for quiet, and everyone stopped talking. The other ten members of the council joined him on the wide landing.

  “None of us could have foreseen Makaleigh’s death yesterday.” Abdon began his speech in a stern, demanding tone. “Yet it is our obligation to find her killer before the spell wears off in about eleven hours. Once the door opens to the castle, the killer will be free. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want that on my conscience.”