Thoroughly Kissed

by Kristine Grayson

  But she was such a perfectionist that knowing made all the difference.

  A knock at her door made her jump. She sighed. If it was that football player again, she’d complain to his adviser. She got up and pulled the door open. The department secretary, Helen Knoedler, stood outside, hands clasped in front of her.

  Helen had been with the department longer than anyone. She was a tiny elderly woman who seemed grandmotherly until she opened her mouth. Then she spoke with a voice so deep and powerful, it should have come from a man who wielded an ax instead of a woman who reminded Emma of a sparrow.

  “I don’t know what you did,” Helen said dryly, “but Michael wants to see you first thing tomorrow.”

  Emma felt that blush return. He was probably going to take her to task for being so harsh on the students. Or maybe he was going to talk to her about staring at him. Or maybe he realized she was the person who had been spying on him when UPS delivered his boxes the day before.

  Helen watched her reaction then raised her eyebrows. “You know him?

  “I just met him this morning. Sort of.”

  “Well, you made an impression.”

  So did he. “What’s first thing?”

  “He gets in about nine, or so he tells me. Can you come?”

  “Sure,” Emma said. “My first class isn’t until eleven tomorrow. Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Not a clue,” Helen said. “And I don’t want to know. I’m still handling the paperwork the changeover has caused.”

  “I saw Mort yesterday,” Emma said. “I can’t believe he’s leaving.”

  Helen frowned at her. “He’s not leaving. He’s just not going to chair the department anymore. He’ll be back in his office, harassing all of us next semester.”

  Emma smiled. She was glad of that. She hadn’t realized that Mort would continue teaching. That was good. He needed to.

  Then her smile faded. “I hadn’t met the new chairman before. Was he brought in from somewhere else?”

  “Michael?” Helen laughed. She had a deep-throated chuckle. “He’s one of those rare lucky ones. He went to school here, then managed to get a job here. That almost never happens. Most graduates who stay in town—”

  “Drive a cab.” Emma recited the litany. “I know.”

  “He’s been around forever. He was just on sabbatical in England.”

  “England? What was he doing there?”

  “Walking everywhere. The man is a health fanatic. And he was studying something. I never did pay attention.”

  Emma felt a chill run down her back. She hoped it wasn’t the Middle Ages. She definitely didn’t agree with his comments on Alfred the Great. She had no idea how he would react to some of her “speculations,” which weren’t speculation at all.

  They were actually memories.

  “Why would he want to see me? I mean, we met this morning?”

  “Michael is a different animal from Mort. Now Mort would take you out for a beer and ask you about yourself.”

  Emma smiled. “I remember.”

  “But Michael believes in doing things by the book.” Helen shook her head. “Which means I’ll have to redo my desk, believe me. So what he wants with you is beyond me.”

  Then she grinned.

  “Except the word is—and my ancient eyes tell me it’s true—you are the most beautiful professor to grace the history department in some time. Michael’s single.”

  Emma felt her blush grow. She wanted to put hands to her cheeks and stop it, but she couldn’t. She had never learned how to control that response. “Wouldn’t it be illegal for him to date me? I mean, technically, he’s my boss.”

  “Technically, sweetie, the university is your boss. He’s just the head of the department. And while this campus frowns on teacher-student relationships, you’re at least two degrees and one bestselling book away from that distinction.”

  Emma swallowed hard. She didn’t want to fend off her boss for the rest of her tenure.

  “Don’t look so solemn,” Helen said. “Michael was voted one of Madison’s most eligible bachelors a few years back. He’s what we called in my day a good catch.”

  “I’m not trying to catch anything,” Emma said.

  “Looks to me, honey, like you’re afraid you will catch something.”

  That was more accurate than Helen knew. Emma shrugged. “I like my life.”

  “You and that cat.”

  Emma frowned. “How did you know I had a cat?”

  Helen reached over and plucked a black hair off Emma’s sweater. “I know the signs,” she said and held out an arm. She had short gray and orange hairs on hers. “But a cat isn’t a substitute for a man.”

  “I don’t need a man,” Emma said.

  “I never took you for a feminist,” Helen said.

  Emma grinned. “Oh, Helen,” she said. “I’m the original feminist. That part of my history simply got lost in the translation.”

  ***

  By the time Emma got home, the beautiful spring sunshine had given way to showers. The rain was cold, too, and reminded her of one of the worst days of an Oregon winter.

  She lit a fire, ordered a pizza, and peered out the dining room picture window at the matching house down the block. The lights were off, so Professor Found wasn’t home yet. She wondered what he was doing—having dinner with old friends? Seeing a movie with a woman? Catching up on his new work in the office?

  Then she caught herself. Mooning. The worst thing she could do. The man was too handsome by half, and she didn’t need to be thinking about him.

  Thinking about him was almost as bad as looking at him, and looking at him made her forget all her vows.

  Which would someday come back to haunt her.

  She closed the blinds all through the house and put on some Brahms. She had fallen in love with her CD player, and the way music was available at the touch of a button. That was, in her personal and quite private opinion, the absolutely best thing about this brave new world she had woken up in.

  If someone asked her, of course, she would lie and talk about indoor plumbing (which used to terrify her) or refrigerators (on her first day, she had asked Nora how they captured winter) or the amazing availability of food (even though she missed growing it by hand). But in reality, it was the luxuries that caught her. Shoes that actually kept the feet dry. Lights at the touch of a finger. And music whenever she wanted it.

  Not to mention books and movies and audio books. Stories, like her father used to tell her, only more complex. When she had been a young woman, education was beyond her means—there was no such thing as education for all—and there was no way to mass produce books. No one had even dreamed of movies, and theater as people understood it now hadn’t really been invented yet either. And the idea of television, well, it still boggled her. She had a few favorite shows, but she watched them in private, because she still stared at the box gape-mouthed, unable to fathom how other people took it so completely for granted.

  Darnell was asleep in front of the fire, his long black body stretched out so that his stomach absorbed most of the heat. She had asked the person who took her order at Pizza Pit to make sure the delivery guy knocked this time. The last time, when he’d rung the doorbell, had been a disaster.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, the doorbell rang. Darnell leapt out of his sleep onto all fours like a lion defending his turf. He growled softly in the back of his throat.

  “Stay here,” she said, knowing it would do no good.

  She walked to the front door, grabbed the cash she had placed on the table beside the entry, and peered through the peephole. Sure enough, it was the pizza guy, looking very damp, the pizza steaming in its thermal pouch.

  Maybe she would have to add pizza as one of this age’s greater ach
ievements. She certainly ate enough of it.

  She pulled the door open and put out a foot to hold Darnell back even though Darnell was nowhere in sight.

  The pizza guy was young—a student, obviously, and just as obviously, he hated the job. He mumbled the price and as she opened the screen to hand him the cash, Darnell came at a flying run from the fireplace.

  She figured her foot would be enough, but it wasn’t. Darnell was prepared for it. He leapt over it as if it were a fence and he were a horse, and he wrapped his paws around the delivery guy’s leg, biting and growling and clawing as he did so.

  The poor pizza guy screamed and dropped the pizza. The thermal container slid down the brick steps, but didn’t open.

  Emma bent over and pulled Darnell off the boy’s leg, but the damage was done. The delivery guy’s jeans were torn and his skin was scratched and bleeding.

  She tossed Darnell inside, and slammed the screen door shut. “I’m sorry,” she said. “But—”

  “Jeez, lady your cat’s nuts. I’ve never seen an insane cat before. Has it got rabies?”

  Actually, it took her a moment to understand the delivery guy. He actually said, “Jeezladyyercatsnutsiveneverseenaninsanecatbeforehasitgotrabies?”

  “No, he doesn’t have rabies.” She was amazed she could sound so affronted. She’d never seen a cat act like Darnell either—at least, not a domesticated house cat. She’d seen nature videos of lions back when she was in her learning phase, and the leader often attacked anything that threatened the pride. Apparently, she was Darnell’s pride.

  The delivery boy was wiping at his legs.

  “Look,” she said, handing him the cash. “I’m sorry. There’s an extra tip in here—”

  “They warned me you had a nuts cat, but I didn’t believe them. I mean, what can a nuts house cat do? Hiss at you? Now I’m going to have to get shots.”

  “He’s vaccinated.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not.” The delivery boy stomped to his car.

  Emma looked up, and saw that Professor Found’s front door was open. He was standing on the stoop, staring at her. He’d probably come out when the delivery boy had screamed.

  She blushed again—three times in one day had to be some kind of record—and hurried back inside the house. Darnell was sitting in front of the fire, cleaning his face, looking quite proud of himself.

  “You’re not a lion. I don’t care what you think of yourself. If you ever met a real one, you wouldn’t know what to do.” Then she squinted at him. “You don’t even look like a lion.”

  Darnell stopped washing and glared at her. Apparently she had affronted his sense of self.

  She shook her head and reached for the pizza. Then she realized she hadn’t brought it inside.

  She sighed and went back to the door. Sure enough, the pizza was still in its thermal container at the bottom of the stairs. She glanced at Professor Found’s house. He was still on the stoop. When he saw her, he raised an imaginary glass to her.

  Her face grew even warmer, but she wasn’t going to count that as a fourth blush. The other one hadn’t ended yet. She scurried down the stairs, grabbed the pizza, thermal container and all, and hurried inside her house.

  How embarrassing. He’d seen her at her worst teaching, and then this. She had no idea how she would face him in the morning.

  Maybe having Michael Found for a neighbor wasn’t the good thing it had originally seemed like. Maybe he had arrived just to make her life a living hell.

  Well, the only thing she could do was be on her best behavior in the morning. And maybe then, they’d get off to a better start.

  Not that she wanted anything closer than a cordial working relationship.

  Even if he was the best-looking man she’d ever seen.

  Chapter 2

  Emma dreamed she was sinking. It was a pleasant feeling. She was on a soft surface, wrapped in a warm comforter, her feet nice and toasty. But everything was moving down, as if a hole had opened up beside her, and if she wasn’t careful, she would roll into it.

  Then she heard a muffled snore and felt hot breath on her neck. That feeling did not come from her dream.

  She scrambled awake so fast she nearly did tumble into the hole.

  She was on her back, staring at the white ceiling. Sunlight poured into the room, illuminating the quilts she had hung on the wall to give the place color. She still had that feeling of lying at the edge of a precipice.

  And then she heard a whistled exhale. She turned her head to the right, and saw a huge black lion asleep on the bed beside her.

  She screamed and tried to get out of bed, but the lion was lying on the comforter, and she was wrapped up in it as if it were a cocoon. She cursed as she tried to pull herself out, then finally scrambled backwards, hitting her head on the oak headboard.

  The lion opened its eyes. They were golden, sleepy, and confused. It yawned and stretched, its hind feet sliding off the foot of the bed, and its front paws touching the tip of the headboard.

  Then it yowled. If an animal could look terrified, the lion did. It raised its head to her, overbalanced itself, and fell off the bed with the loudest thump Emma had ever heard.

  Just like Darnell would do if he were surprised.

  She put a hand over her heart and peered over the edge of the bed. The lion was lying on its back, its head raised like a sea otter’s, and was peering down at its body as if it had never seen it before.

  “Darnell?” she whispered.

  The lion made a plaintive mew, which, if the sound had been made by a house cat would have been small and sad, but since it was made by a lion, shook the entire room.

  “Oh, my,” she said, putting a hand to her mouth. Poor Darnell. “Oh, my, Darnell, who did this to you? Why would someone do this to you?”

  She peered around the room to see if there were signs of any magical person invading her bedroom. She no longer had any enemies, at least that she knew of. Aethelstan would never do anything like this, and neither would his sidekick, Merlin. Nora hadn’t come into her abilities yet.

  Emma froze. Come into her abilities yet. She closed her eyes. Even if someone wanted to hurt her—and if they did, why had they gone after poor Darnell? (Unless that pizza delivery guy was actually a mage… but he was too young, and she would have known. At least, she thought she would have known. Oh, dear. Maybe all the pizza people…) Her eyes flew open.

  Darnell was struggling, his gigantic paws in the air. There wasn’t enough room on the floor for him to roll over.

  She was the only one who had thought of him as a ferocious lion, and she hadn’t mentioned that to anyone else. She wouldn’t mention it to anyone else.

  “Oh, Darnell, I’m so sorry.”

  And scared. Her mouth was dry. She was twenty years too young for powers. She was only thirty.

  At least, she was only thirty in years that she was awake. If she counted the years she had been in that magical coma, she was one thousand and forty.

  Magic wouldn’t work that way. It wouldn’t count all those nonyears—would it?

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  Darnell mewed and waved his paws weakly. They were so big—bigger than her hand. She flopped across the bed and scratched his large stomach. His mane spread out on the floor like a nimbus of hair around his familiar—if much larger—face.

  “We have to think this through, Darnell,” she said, continuing to scratch. He squirmed a little—tummy scratching was one of his favorite things—and then he started to purr.

  She could feel the rumble all the way from the floor to the bed.

  If it was her magic that had caused this, then she was in serious trouble. She hadn’t studied. She didn’t know how to control it. All she had were a few words and phrases that Aethelstan had taught her for emergencie
s.

  She clenched one fist as she had seen Aethelstan do. “Change back,” she whispered to Darnell. “Be my house kitty again. Change back.”

  His hind paw kicked the air in rhythm to her scratching. She had hit a good spot. But he was still huge, he still had a mane, and his tail had a tuft at the end of it that hadn’t been there when they both went to sleep the night before.

  “Change,” she whispered. “Reverse. Go back.”

  Nothing happened. No light, no sound, not even a different feeling.

  Her breathing was coming hard now. She couldn’t leave him alone, not oversized like this. He would be able to break out of the house—heck, he would break the house and everything in it, and he wouldn’t even realize he was doing anything wrong.

  Then the authorities would come for him and do whatever they did to loose lions. Loose black lions. Loose black lions of a type that didn’t occur in nature. He would be a freak and he would get all sorts of media attention and she would have trouble busting him out of wherever they held him and—

  Oh, she had to clamp a hold on her vivid imagination. She had to focus.

  And then she remembered a single word, one of the emergency words, that Aethelstan had given her. In the old language. He had said it meant “reverse.”

  She sat up and waved her arm as she had seen him do, and uttered the word at the top of her lungs.

  There was a bright white light, a crackle and sizzle, and then a small explosion. It felt as if something had left her and danced in the air before dissipating.

  She sat for a moment, not wanting to look at the floor.

  What if she had turned him into something else? What if he hadn’t changed at all?

  What if she had killed him?

  A small black house cat with lovely gold eyes jumped onto the bed, and butted his head against her arm.

  “Darnell,” she said and scooped him close. “Oh, Darnell. I think we have a problem.”

  Darnell whined, then squirmed. His interpretation of the problem was obviously different from hers. His was that he wanted breakfast, and wanted it now.