The machinery of his perfect life didn’t operate itself. It required a loyal servant, someone bound by more than money or even love.
Somebody had to iron his shirts.
Taking a deep breath, I put my hands on my beads and turned every shred of my power to defense, even though Warren might notice and wonder why. I started at my feet and worked upward, casting the protective spells around me like spray paint.
Then I spun on my heel and began marching back to Hawk Ranch. He might have decided Tierra was too compromised as a replacement and it was time to get rid of her as well. Every second counted.
But the path was a deathtrap. It would be convenient for Warren if I fell off the same hazardous spot of the trail where four other tourists had died in the past decade—tragedies that were well publicized in the local press. I wasn’t familiar with the area, I wasn’t much of an athlete, and the emergency responders would note with sad contempt how lame my sandals were for hiking on a rocky cliff.
Warren’s voice came behind me, too close for a man who’d made a show of huffing and puffing his way here. “You walk like her,” he said, still sounding vague, absentminded, harmless. “When people talk about family resemblance, they mean a person’s face. They forget about gait. She favored her right foot just like you do.”
Mentioning my mother—could he possibly have known her?—broke my focus. I didn’t stop walking, but I glanced over my shoulder, my grip on my focus loosening very, very slightly.
It was enough. One breath later, I saw him tap his watch.
The earth and sea began to spin out of control.
Chapter Forty-Six
A massive force was pushing me toward the cliff’s edge as if the world had turned on its axis and now the center of gravity was on the horizon.
Too late, I understood the tap on his watch. He was controlling something that was controlling me—partially with magic, partially with a machine.
Hair flew into my mouth, hair that Willy had warned me about using for magic. I pushed it away, then felt my entire body being pushed.
My thoughts spun.
Tierra had used stolen biomatter in her magic show, a crime that left her vulnerable to blackmail. She’d made Ty, a doll in her own image.
Tierra had been Warren’s apprentice. She’d learned everything from him. He made sculptures, not puppets, but how different was the magic? They both captured a likeness.
I flung myself on the ground and clung to the grass. If I could just stop myself from sliding toward the edge, I’d be fine. I just had to hold—
A wave of nausea overcame me, and involuntarily I curled over, my stomach roiling, cramping, spasming.
I wasn’t in control of my own body. Warren must’ve hexed something. A puppet, just like Tierra—
No, not his style. It would be a sculpture. My thoughts fragmented again, and I fought to bring them together.
Like Tierra, he would’ve used stolen biomatter. And then set the sculpture in motion somewhere else. How could I fight that?
My vision went sideways. The earth hadn’t shifted on its axis; it was spinning. Like a top. A pinwheel. I squeezed my eyes shut and lashed out around me with all my power, scattered though it was, trying to slice in every direction.
But there was no direction, only chaos.
Fighting the urge to vomit, I turned as much focus as I could spare to the magic objects on my body. There was no time to wait for herbs, mouse skulls, oak leaves, dog fur, redwood, beads…
Through the blur, I saw fairies standing around me, unaffected by the spinning of the earth, sky, sea. The little green sprites danced among themselves, indifferent to my suffering, but I called out to them, begging between gasps.
“Help— Help—” I cried, audibly or silently, I wasn’t sure.
The grass in my fists ripped out of the earth, and I rolled away and down and around into the shrubs and flowers growing along the bluff.
“Help!” I gasped again, wildly grabbing at plants. Waxy, fleshy-leaved succulents snapped in my fingers, but the scratchy coyote brush held fast.
I opened my eyes and saw the gnome from the Hawk garden standing in the air a few feet above my face.
“Please,” I begged.
The branch under my arm snapped, my arm flew to one side—
And then I had a moment of peace. Just a flash, the blink of a fairy’s wing.
I reached under my shirt and collected the cat fur into my fist. It could trigger an immediate shift if I let it, although—
No time to think. I invited my cat nature to take over. Anything to stop the pressure sucking me to the west into open air, into death.
A cat could survive. A cat had the grace and lightness of foot to dance through a hurricane.
At last I felt my fingernails turn sharp and narrow. Claws could dig more easily into the earth than my own soft, stubby digits. When I shifted into a cat, I’d be shielded from the spell acting upon my human body. Whatever magic that eventually trickled through the shape-shifting enchantment would be weaker, aimed at a being that wasn’t there.
Except, even after nine seconds, I was still there. My stubby digits were still here, along with the big, soft, clumsy human rest of me. The only feline part of me was my claws—and, I realized, biting my poor tongue again—my teeth.
The hexed statue must’ve been stopping me from shifting completely. Pulling my tongue away from my sharp incisors, I stretched my claws into the earth and dragged myself a few inches away from the cliff while my vision, slightly more stable than it had been a moment ago, searched around for my assailant.
He stood just next to me, running his hands through his tousled Einstein hair and frowning at me as if I were a stain on his shirt.
My world continued to spin, but if I pivoted a few more degrees, my head cleared the worst of it. Only my legs were stuck with the strongest pull.
I dragged myself along the ground closer to Warren, happy to recognize additional strength in my arms in my semifeline state. Or maybe the rest of me was lighter.
“Break,” I said, my voice high and nasal. “Break the spell. Or—”
He lifted a foot and kicked me in the shoulder. Pain burned through me. As I sprawled on my side, my consciousness spun out of control again. It was tempting to give in to it, move with the current, stop fighting the pressure to fly…
I clawed my way sideways again to reduce the nauseating force at my head and then swatted his leg with my… paw. Now my hands were furry and clawed. My arms were still human. I was hideous.
He recoiled at my touch, looking disgusted at the sight of me as well as the feel, and shifted his weight to kick me again.
Mentally claiming the beads at my neck which I’d designed to survive a shift, I sprang forward and dug into his pant legs. The fine wool was no match for my claws. I was able to pull myself off the ground onto my knees and then up to his chest. Then, reaching around him with my human arms, I reattached my claws into his back.
Now when the vertigo shook me, it shook him too.
“No!” He pushed on my shoulders, trying to dislodge me. “You’ll kill us both!”
“Meow,” I said, deepening my claws.
They’d said I had an Incurable Inability, but at that moment I didn’t feel too bad about taking Warren Hawk down to a bloody, watery death with me. I might even survive.
I kicked off the ground and dug my toes into his thighs. As my feet had shrunk into cat paws, my sandals had fallen off. The first time I’d shifted, I’d learned how annoying it was to be stuck in cat shape wearing tight socks. Since then, if I expected I might need an emergency exit, I left the hosiery in the drawer.
I was wrapped around him, part human and part cat, when he stepped to one side, moving our heads into the current of vertigo. He cried out, his knees buckling, and we toppled to the ground. Lashed together, we rolled and thrashed around in the grass until we were less than an arm’s length from the cliff’s edge.
“Let go!” he cried, his vo
ice quivering with nausea.
I tried to open my mouth to speak, but my tongue scraped across razor-sharp teeth, so I bit him on the neck instead.
He really screamed then. If I’d completely transformed into a cat, I would’ve had small teeth. But caught in an in-between state, they were sharp and human-sized and quickly cut through skin.
Lucky for him I didn’t like the taste of human flesh. Even as a cat, I preferred birds, sadly too much; I always felt guilty about it later.
Disgusted with his sorry skin, I unclamped my jaws. “Where’d you put me?” I had trouble forming consonants. “Where’s my statue?”
The spinning caught our legs and pushed us into the coyote bushes. With our combined weight, we began to roll over the branches and push rocks off the ledge. The crashing waves roared far below.
“The wheel!” he shouted. “The pottery wheel!”
I’d figured it was something like that. He’d made dolls of his wife, of Phil, Nathan, Tierra, and now me. Probably Birdie too, but I wasn’t sure.
I clamped my finger-claws around the nape of his neck, a delicate and primally vulnerable spot, and squeezed. “Turn it off.”
“I can’t!”
I put my mouth near his ear. “I don’t believe you.”
“I can’t! Not here!”
“Break the spell!” I twisted his head toward mine and shouted into his face. “Turn it off!”
“We’ll both die!”
Just as I bared my fangs, our feet slipped through the bushes. We were hanging out over open air.
“All right! I’ll—” He lifted an arm and flapped it up and down. “I can’t reach it. My watch!”
I turned my attention briefly to his wrist. Power was definitely coming from his gold watch, but could I trust him?
I tightened my grip around his body but slid to one side so he could reach his watch with the other hand. He slapped at it unsuccessfully for several long, terrifying seconds as we slid forward another inch, then a foot.
And then the spinning stopped completely. We clung to each other, to the edge of the earth. I waited for the nausea to subside.
When my vision steadied, I released him, leaving him hanging, and scrambled up the cliff. I had much more speed than in human form, even with my strange hybrid shape. Light on my paws, I leapt over the tangled bushes and uneven rocks and landed on flat soil.
Warren climbed up behind me, his gold watch surging with power. I didn’t need to finish the fight; now I was sure it was him, not Tierra, and Raynor would have the evidence to take him down. I turned to run.
But there was another figure charging straight at me.
She was more powerful than Raynor had expected. Maybe she’d been behind the cypress or under a shielding spell, just waiting. Maybe she’d been at the funeral home too. But why was she attacking me? I’d done nothing to hurt her.
I tried to fight the ongoing shift into my cat form, but it was painful, mindless, instinctive, and I only managed to slow it down. The hexed statue of me that Warren controlled had interrupted the shift once, but now the process stumbled on, unevenly and slowly but unstoppable.
I held my hand—paw—over my heart and thought of Random, my beloved dog, which surely, if anything, any animal, could block the cat taking over so I could talk to Zoe just for a moment and warn her about—
“You!” Zoe ran past me and tackled Warren. Coming so fast, never hesitating, she didn’t give Warren time to run or struggle. Heedless of her own safety, her own life, she carried him off the cliff with her, clinging to him just as I had—but without the will to live.
I flung back my head and let out a tortured, purely animal cry. I was too slow. If only I’d understood earlier.
Another step of the shift took over, and I had to focus on stopping it. Just another minute. This was my body. I controlled it.
I crept over and looked down at the horror with my own eyes.
Below on the shore was Warren’s mangled form—broken on the rocks, battered by the surf. The gold watch on his wrist, surging with a last burst of power, flashed three times, then went dark.
I arched my back and realized I was on my hands and knees. Fur had grown thickly on both arms, and I was rapidly shrinking.
Not yet! Please not yet! I need to help Zoe—
Light flashed in the open air ahead of me.
There sat Zoe. She wasn’t dead on the rocks but floating safely on a white mist—no. It was something else. My fairy vision recognized a being, one I’d never seen before. Willy’s words came to me: a bodiless one.
But not a demon. A demon wouldn’t feel so gentle, so loving.
Zoe’s eyes were open, and she looked surprised. Alive and surprised.
The mist spirit was as thick and white as a bird’s wing. It tilted and carried her down to the soft sand where she smiled, hugging her arms around her, and then began to cry as she was suffused with warm, bright light.
At last I could fight it no longer. Drowned in my own spell, I became a cat from whisker to tail. Ceasing to care about the affairs of human beings and fae and bodiless ones, I turned away from the view below and trotted away.
There were so many tasty birds to meet.
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was dark when I regained my human form. Disoriented and naked, I tried not to think about what I’d been eating. I couldn’t remember details, but I wasn’t hungry. A bad sign.
I’d had the sense to return to my clothes, strewn along the edge of the cliff where I’d fought Warren. Where Zoe had pushed him to his death. The Protectorate had already cleaned the scene and departed, swift and invisible—possible with their magic.
When had Zoe figured out it was Warren who had killed Phil? And who—or what—had saved her?
I didn’t know if I could believe what I’d seen in the mist. A bodiless spirit carrying Zoe to safety could’ve been Phil, and I was tempted to believe it had been. But the shape-shift had held me in its spell, and visions of white wings and bright, loving light could’ve been a distortion of my own mind.
I pulled on my bra, my shirt, my jeans, but only found one sandal. In the dark, sneezing violently as the cat allergen wracked my body, it took more than ten minutes to find the second one.
The underwear… Well. I wasn’t going to worry about that. I had a vague memory of shaking it off near a tourist couple on the beach. Hopefully they hadn’t had time to take a picture.
My sense of balance was terrible, and with my tendency to sneeze fitfully every fifteen seconds or so, I couldn’t walk on the path—too close to the edge—so I turned away from the coast and dragged my tired feet through the sloping grassland. The moon had risen above the mountains to the east, which meant I’d been running around as a cat for several hours.
And I was violently allergic to cats. I sneezed and wiped my nose with one of the velvet bags I found in my pocket. Why did I always forget tissues?
“There you are,” said a voice from ahead. Darius, sitting on a rock. He jumped up and strode over to me. “Warren is dead.”
I sneezed on him. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Did you see anything?”
I put my hand to my head, feeling the world spin. Not a hex, just a memory. “He tried to kill me, but I got away. He killed Crystal and Phil, thought I’d figured it out.”
“Had you?” Darius asked.
“Sure. I knew from the beginning,” I said.
“You did not.”
“Well, I figured it out when he tried to kill me too,” I said. “Nothing gets past me, am I right?”
I tripped over a lump of earth and flung out my hand to grab Darius. When we resumed walking, I didn’t let go. Hanging on his arm was less embarrassing than actually falling down.
“Are Tierra and Birdie all right?” I asked.
“Tierra was asleep in her room. Didn’t remember how she got there,” he said. “Birdie kept her door locked and wouldn’t talk to anyone until I told her you were missing and we neede
d her help.”
My body released some of the tension it had been holding. “They’re both OK?”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Birdie threw a book at my head, but she’s fine.”
I closed my eyes for a moment and smiled. I would’ve liked to have seen that.
“The ranch needs to be searched. Warren hexed me with an object,” I said. “I felt it. A sculpture. He had it on a pottery wheel. Triggered it remotely.”
I stopped walking, realizing I’d had the same feeling in the Jeep when we’d been bringing back Crystal’s ashes. Now I remembered how I’d lost control of my hands right before the boulder had come crashing down. We’d been just outside Hawk Ranch, close enough for him to have defensive spells set up.
He’d interfered with my grip on the wheel, then pulled the rock down. The feeling I’d had of an evil spirit in the back seat might have been the opposite; in her eagerness to get home, Crystal might have guided us to safety.
Darius squeezed my arm, bringing me back to the present. “Are you all right?”
“Warren’s magic,” I said with a shudder. “I think it was the same kind that Tierra uses on the dolls in her show. She was his apprentice.”
“Did you shift into a cat to escape the hex?”
Just the thought of cats made my nose run. “His spell kept me human for a while. And then—” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to tell him about Zoe pushing Warren off the cliff because I didn’t want her to be punished. Maybe I was playing judge and jury, which I always said I didn’t approve of, but I told myself it was all right if it was on the side of mercy.
And I definitely wasn’t going to tell Darius about thinking I’d seen a misty, angelic savior that might have been Phil. He was just starting to respect me again.
“And then what?” Darius asked.
I was too weak to hide a lie with magic, so I told a half-truth. “I was able to shift a little bit,” I said. “It gave me claws and flexibility. Good thing I’d been prepared to shift and run in case things got dangerous.”
Hex at a House Party Page 31