The two women and the orange cat gazed at Jasper, waiting for something to happen. Anica and Lily hoped to see the cat become a man. Orion obviously expected that Fate would deliver this interloper to him once again so he could whip his ass. No cat could stay on a bookshelf forever.
Nothing happened.
Lily examined her wand. “I don’t know the problem. It was working before I came over here. I used it to change the TV channel in the bar from ESPN to
American Idol.
”
Panic tightened Anica’s muscles. “Test it on something else.”
“Good idea.” Lily pointed her wand toward the kitchen. “I use this one all the time at work.
Tequila smooth and lime so tender, dance a tango in the blender
.”
From the grinding noise that followed, Anica concluded that Lily’s wand worked just fine. Her spell must be wrong. “Can you try another spell?” She was almost afraid to ask, for fear the next chant would be even more embarrassing, but they had to keep trying.
“Let me see what I can find.” She grabbed the book and flipped through it. “Maybe this one. Mangy cat so discontent, sorry you are impotent. Change thy form and be a gent.”
Anica groaned. “Do they all have to insult his sexuality?”
“Actually yes. They recommend getting the transformed being angry, which acts as a kind of catalyst to help reverse the spell. That’s assuming the spell is similar to those in this book. It must not be, since we haven’t changed a whisker on that cat so far.”
“Can I see the book?”
“Be my guest.” Lily handed it over.
Anica read quickly and with increasing despair. “These spells are much more elaborate, involving pieces of hair and stuff. I didn’t do any of that.”
“Where did you get the spell in the first place?”
“Remember that old
History of Magic
text I found in the used bookstore right next to campus?”
“Not particularly. You were the one who went gaga over that musty old thing, not me.”
“I’ll go get it.” Anica walked back to the bathroom and returned with the book, which she opened to the page with the incantation on it. “I memorized this for fun back in my freshman year. I thought it sounded cool. I didn’t even know if it would work.”
Lily came to read over her shoulder. “Anica, there’s no counterspell listed under it.”
Worry made Anica impatient. “Don’t you think I know that? If there had been one, I’d have used it.”
“So why did you use a spell with no counterspell?”
“I forgot it didn’t have one! And the spell was a reflex, something I did without thinking it through, a knee-jerk reaction.”
“Amazing. That’s so unlike you. He must have been a gold-plated asshole to make you lose it like that.”
“Well, he was, but that doesn’t mean he deserves to be a cat for the rest of his life.”
“Or that you should lose your magic for the rest of yours.”
“What?” Anica glanced up at her sister.
Lily squeezed her shoulder. “I read it in my spell book just now, but I didn’t want to tell you. It said clearly that if a witch or wizard transforms a person into an animal, no matter the reason, they must reverse the spell within ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes?”
“That’s all the time they have before they lose their magic abilities. And those abilities won’t be restored until the person is restored to his or her original form.”
Anica slammed the cover on the
History of Magic
and laid it on a chair. “Show me where it says that.”
Lily retrieved her spell book and thumbed through until she found the passage. “Here.”
Anica’s hands trembled as she took the book and read the passage Lily pointed to. Sure enough, that’s what it said. “No wonder my wands don’t work! My stupid
History of Magic
might have said something about this little side effect!”
“I hate to point this out, but it’s a history book, not a spell book. I doubt they expected you to work magic from it.”
Anica wailed. “I didn’t mean to! It just happened! What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean
we
?”
Anica had no choice but to humble herself. “I can’t do it by myself. My magic is gone. I need you to help me figure this out, Lily. Please.”
“How sweet it is. But I don’t seem to have any immediate answers. Maybe we should call in some experts.”
Anica shook her head so hard she felt like she popped a vertebra in her neck. “I have other references we can consult.” Returning Lily’s book to her, Anica walked over to her bookshelf and pulled out three different volumes. She’d bought them on sale and hadn’t used them much, but something was better than nothing.
“I’d feel better if we had an experienced witch or wizard on the premises,” Lily said. “Not Mom and Dad, of course. I know you wouldn’t want either of them to see this cock-up, but—”
“I don’t want
anybody
to see this except you and me.” Anica walked over to the sofa and set the books on the coffee table in front of her. If she consulted anyone besides her sister her transgression would be spread all over the wizard world by tomorrow morning. Lily might have the impulse to blab, but Anica had dirt on Lily. Lily could be contained.
“Okay, but this really cool witch and wizard came into the Bubbling Cauldron the other day. He’s a little flaky, but she seemed pretty sharp. We talked magic a little, and she knows her stuff. They live in Southern Indiana, and I have their number. They could be here in a few hours.”
Anica picked up the first book and turned to the table of contents. “I’d need more information on them than that. For all I know, they’d report me to the Wizard Council the minute they heard what I’ve done.”
“Actually, I think they’re on the Wizard Council.”
“Lily!” Anica stared at her in horror. “I can’t consult somebody on the council! They’d be obligated to turn in a report on me. I’m sure we can fix this ourselves and nobody will be the wiser.”
“Whatever you think—you’re the one with no magic powers.”
Gritting her teeth at the thought of being powerless, Anica turned to the chapter on transformation. Unless she solved this problem, she would have to depend on Lily for any little magic chore she had. And she had a bunch of them.
But that wasn’t the most important consideration. She had to solve it because otherwise she had ruined Jasper’s life. Why, oh, why had she allowed herself to be carried away on a tide of negative emotion?
She knew better. She’d built up a successful business because she always thought things through, weighed the odds, acted only when she was ready. She wasn’t impulsive. Jasper’s behavior had caused her to overreact, just as he’d accused her of doing. That wasn’t like her at all. He must have gotten under her skin even more than she’d realized.
“Finding anything?” Lily walked over to stand beside the sofa.
“Not yet.” She kept searching through the book. “There’s information about transforming, but it’s all similar to what’s in your book. I’m hoping to find a reference to that old spell. I think that’s our only chance.”
“I think so, too. Maybe—” From inside Lily’s backpack, her cell phone played “Born to Be Wild.” “Excuse me a minute. That’s probably work.”
While Lily took her call, Anica picked up the second book, but each reference turned out to have no more information than what they’d already tried.
“Still nothing?” Lily came back over to the sofa.
“Nothing.”
“Hey, I have to go back to work. I got Chad to cover for me, but his girlfriend’s sick and he has to go take care of her.”
“You’re leaving?” Anica tried to keep the apprehension out of her voice.
“Yeah, if I want to keep my job. The Bubbling Cauldron is the only wizard-owned bar in town and I prefer working for magical people.” She put on her leather jacket and hooked her backpack over one shoulder.
“Surely someone else could tend bar tonight.”
“I could already be in trouble for calling Chad. Devon, the owner, doesn’t like us to switch places without his okay, but he was unreachable, so I just did it. If I bring in yet another bartender and he finds out, he’ll go ape shit. He knows his magic, but he’s also a control freak.”
“I didn’t realize. But if you ever get fed up with him, you know you always have a job with me at Wicked Brew.” Anica wasn’t sure how that would work, but as a sister she should offer.
“Thanks, but no, thanks. You’d probably make me get up at the crack of dawn.”
Anica smiled at that. “Yeah, I would.”
“Besides, I have another reason I want to keep this job. There’s a really cute guy who’s been coming in for drinks. I’d like to see if that can go anywhere.”
Anica didn’t want Lily to lose her job, either, but she wished her sister had a better reason for wanting to keep it than because she had a crush on one of the customers. That was Lily, though—short-term goals but no long-term plans for the future. Meanwhile Anica had her own business and a healthy IRA. She played ant to Lily’s grasshopper.
But her reign of imagined superiority had come to an abrupt end tonight.
Lily paused with her hand on the doorknob. “I can check back when I get off work.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Anica got up to lock the door after Lily. “I’ll call you if I find anything promising in these books. Obviously I won’t be able to work the magic myself.”
“I’ll be happy to come over and handle that chore.” Lily winked at her. “Once I do you’ll have a naked man in your apartment, which will be my cue to leave. After going through this trauma, you might as well take advantage of the situation.”
Anica glanced toward the bookshelf, where Jasper was scrunched up in disapproving silence. “Somehow I don’t think he’ll be in the mood. I sure wouldn’t be after something like this.”
“My dearest sister, don’t you know about the most important difference between men and women? A woman has to be in the right frame of mind, but a man is
always
in the mood.”
Chapter 4
Easy for you to say.
Jasper glared at the brunette striding out of Anica’s apartment. Clearly no one had ever turned Lily into an animal with fur and a tail. Although he had to admit he was growing somewhat fond of the tail. He liked the way he could flick it around.
In any case, even if Lily managed to transform him back into a man, sex wouldn’t be his first thought. He’d be out for revenge.
The longer this business continued, the more he was forced to question his belief that it was all a dream. Yet everything in him resisted the idea that Anica was a witch who had turned him into a cat. Witches were fairy tale beings who didn’t exist in real life.
But her bookshelf contained a ton of books on magic. When he’d leaped to the top he’d knocked off a crystal ball. To his immense satisfaction, it had cracked on the way down and taken a chunk off a marble tabletop in the process. He would have been happy to destroy some more stuff, but first he’d have to fight Orion again, and that hadn’t been much fun.
That fight was the main thing making a believer out of him. He’d done some damage to Orion but the other cat had managed to scratch him in several places, too. The wounds didn’t feel like imaginary dream scratches. They stung like a sonofabitch.
And he wanted to clean them, but without opposable thumbs that would mean licking, and he so was not going there. It sounded icky and Anica had convinced him licking chocolate would land him on the surgical table of a castration-happy vet. Even in a dream he didn’t want to lose his nuts.
But his intense sense of smell also undermined the dream theory. Crouched on the bookshelf with the smooth, lemon-scented wood under his claws, he was on sensory overload. He could smell the chocolate mousse, the dust collected on the books, the lime from the margarita still sitting in the blender. He could smell Orion, and his hackles went up automatically. Underlying it all was the scent of Anica—the soap, the shampoo, the perfume, and a sweet aroma that was all female. Too bad he hated her.
His hearing was just as acute. He picked up Anica’s breathing, the flipping of pages, the hum of the heater, water rushing through the pipes in another apartment, the ticking of a quartz clock, even the swish of Orion’s tail across the carpet.
Jasper couldn’t quite accept that he was making this up in his sleep. He wasn’t that good a dreamer. He couldn’t quite accept that he was a cat, either, which left him in limbo. He needed to come down on the side of one reality or the other if he wanted to keep from going crazy.
Because this dream, if that’s what it was, seemed never-ending, he decided to play it as the cat. He might wake up any minute, or Anica could find a counterspell in one of her reference books. . . . Although it looked as if she wouldn’t be able to work the necessary magic. She’d have to rely on Lily.
If he could talk he would ask why they hadn’t researched spells on the computer sitting on the delicately carved desk in a corner of the living room. Maybe nothing would be available—it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever checked out—but everything in the world seemed to be on the Net these days. Then again, maybe her computer didn’t work. It did look sort of old.
“Shit!”
Jasper blinked. He’d never heard that word come out of Anica’s mouth.
That was only the beginning. With a string of swear words that would do a construction worker proud Anica slammed the cover on the third book, stood and turned in his direction. “I hate to say this, Jasper, but I think we’re both fucked.”
If he’d still been a guy, he would have laughed. The sight of blond, angelic-looking Anica using the F word was just plain funny. He should be worried about the implications of her statement, but he was getting really tired.
In fact, he could use a nap. Somewhere he’d read that adult cats slept eighteen hours a day. He was probably way overdue for a snooze.
“I’m going to call Lily and tell her we’ll tackle this tomorrow, when we’re fresh.” Anica walked back into the bedroom, probably in search of her phone.