Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1) (4 page)

Sabrina cleared the room with this spinning dance until a small coffee table with a simple glass vase was the only thing that remained. With a flick of her fingers a whip of energy wrapped about the vase's neck, lifting it from the table. She propelled the table to the wall with a swat of her other hand as the vase slowly spun towards her.

"This," Sabrina said as she reversed the motion of the vase with a slight turning of her wrist, "is the most basic of magic. A simple channeling of force from the higher planes. In this case, pure kinetic energy.” She bounced the vase between two alternate waves of force, slowly herding it to the center of the room. "All magi are attuned to a single sort of energy, their birth element. That is the element that they will use as a lens to understand the world. Yet, true magi do not allow themselves to be limited by their innate element."

A tendril of force caught the vase and tossed it straight up. Sabrina threw one of her hands up, and the brightness of the energy gathered in her fingertips left a trail in my vision. At the peak of the vase's accent she lashed out with a single finger, the energy projecting like an ultralong claw. The vase shattered with such force that I felt the shockwave in my whiskers. I closed my eyes, waiting for the shards to rain down into my fur and flesh. It didn't happen. Instead an awful grinding sound made my hackles rise.

Opening one eye, I saw the vase, or what was left of it, still hovered in the place it had been shattered, a small maelstrom of glittering shards. Sabrina held it there, using wide strokes of both hands to trap the glass between two intersecting waves of force, grinding the fragments into dust between them. Her facial expression was one of utter concentration, lips pressed into a thin line. Cornealius too stared at the pulverizing glass, eyes narrowed. I wondered, as the familiar, how much he had to do with the actual magic. Rudy watched through one eyeball with his mouth hanging open. I looked at the grinding glass and could not help but ask myself, what if she did that to a person?

Once the vase was ground to a glittering dust cloud, the force wave spread it into a rough circle on the floor. Sabrina released a breath, her wrinkled skin shining and her cheeks pink. Cornealius grunted and flopped down onto the shelf. Sabrina tittered like a slightly drunk schoolgirl, "One has to show off every so often, Cornealius."

"Archmagus candidates should not perform like a circus act," Cornealius huffed, standing his long body up on end and crossing his fore legs as if they were human arms. His eyes burrowed into mine, and then Rudy’s. "Not a word about this to anyone, either of you."

Sabrina waved dismissively. "Nonsense, all the Archmagi will remember I force dance, and certainly anyone I arrested back in the day knows. Don't you two worry. Cornealius is just a bit protective of little old me. Likes to keep everything we do hush-hush."

Cornealius glared at her, perhaps sharing words that were not for our ears via their bond. Sabrina only smiled in response, not that patronizing grin she put on for me but a sly smile that made her eyes glitter with amusement. It gave me an intense desire to know what actually made Sabrina tick. Yet I doubt even the power of speech would have helped me much in that moment.

"Now, Thomas, dearie, come and sit in the center." Sabrina gestured to her glittering circle. She glanced at Cornealius, who made a disgruntled snort as he leapt to the ground and hurried towards us to sit at the outer edge of the circle as I walked into the center. Sabrina leaned down and showed me an oval stone about a half-inch wide, set in a slender brass fitting. She flipped it around, and I swallowed nervously when I saw that the back of the stone had a dozen tiny metal barbs protruding from the back. "All right, open your mouth, Thomas."

I looked down at the barbs and then back at her very cool expression.

"All magic has a price, dearie. Now open wide."

I hesitated for just a moment to consider my options. Mostly I wondered where exactly she was planning on jamming the little torture device. The fact I couldn't ask her that simple question made up my mind. Talking would be worth a little pain. I slowly opened my mouth a little bit.

With a deft motion she grabbed my nose and yanked my muzzle skyward. "Keep it open now!" Her other hand curled around my front teeth and dug fingertips into the soft tissue under my tongue. The sudden pain brought my third lids over my eyes and drove my jaw wide open. I tried to pull back, but she was in my ear, her voice calm and cheery. "Don't you move now. Don't you move a single muscle. Let me look at it."

A pitiful mew escaped my throat as she twisted my head this way and that, examining the inside of my mouth. "Now brace yourself—this will pinch a bit and if you bite me I will bite back. Nod if you understand."

I nodded, blinking against the pain of her fingers digging into my lower jaw.

"Good—hold still."

I felt sweet relief as her fingers pulled out from under my tongue only to be followed by a new jabbing pain as needles sliced into the roof of my mouth. I yelped and started to twist away.

"Hold still—I know it hurts. Don't bite me," Sabrina repeated like a mantra as she held the device in place. The needles burned as they bit deeper, like each one had struck a nerve. Then she let go, the opal hooked into the flesh on the roof of my mouth. I shook my head. The pain flared again as my tongue ran across it.

"There we go. Not so bad." She had taken a good two steps back from me and smiled with a sort of smug pride. "That will be an anchor for the spell. Eventually the spell will root in your soul, and the little stone will fall out." She took a deliberate step outside the circle.

A moment of panic seized me. I was inside a stranger's house, I had allowed her to implant something in my body and now they were going to cast a spell on me. Normally I would have laughed at the possibility, but I had just watched this iron woman in a fairy godmother mask rearrange the furniture with tai chi moves. I had to have been in a state of shock not to run out of that house screaming. Instead I stayed perfectly still as I watched the circle around me glow with heat that caused the wax below it to bubble and smoke as the dust became a solid circle of glass. Both Cornealius and Sabrina looked through me into each other's eyes. Her thin grey brows furrowed in concentration.

The room began to thrum as a prickle of energy ran along my spine from my tail to my whiskers. A pulse of purple flashed through my vision accompanied by an odd pulling in a direction that is hard to describe—inward and to the left. Strange images invaded my vision. I saw myself from every angle at the same time. My feline body suspended in a web of lines stretching out beyond myself. Then on one of those strands a man walked up to me—he had my eyes, my human brown eyes set in a not quite right face, too thin, too long. He shuddered, his head rippling as water in the rain. Then the old man stood before me, red blood dripping from his nostrils and eyes. His mouth moved but made no sound, his teeth tangled in purple threads.

The visions parted, scattering back along the strands from whence they came. I stood back in the middle of the circle as a shape struggled into existence above me. A nest of purple threads danced with a bright orange fiber, which seemed to be stitching in and out of existence, moving in a way I could not follow. The magus and her familiar continued to weave until I realized they had formed a muzzle. My muzzle, but with a difference. Human lips sat on the tip under the nose, huge and cartoonish.

"Speak, Thomas," Sabrina commanded.

"What should I say?" I thought in response and was shocked when I heard the words in my ears! My heart did a flip-flop. They were doing it! "Oh, my!" The voice wasn't quite as I remembered myself, but who actually knows their own voice? I bounced a little with excitement.

"
Don’t move
!" Sabrina's voice bolted me to the floor.

"Yes, ma'am," I said timidly, but hearing the words brought a grin to my face.

"Keep talking."

I did. I started with my name. "My name is Thomas Khatt. I'm a librarian. I worked for two years in the McKennision Memorial Library." Why I decided to recite my résumé I'm not sure.

As I talked about myself, the mask slowly lowered itself and slid over my muzzle. I felt my own thin lips begin to move as it did, and my long tongue twisting in ways it really shouldn't be able to.

". . . Thank you." I finished as the purple and white threads tied into the thing in my mouth and the tingling sensation abruptly dissipated.

"There, all done," Sabrina said with a sigh. She and Cornealius slumped simultaneously. "The stone will fall out in a couple weeks. The talking spell will usually anchor itself by then. If not, then the union will be able to replace it."

"Thank you," I said again, more to hear my own voice again than to show additional gratitude. Sabrina stood and broke the glass circle with her foot before walking over and patting me on the head. I didn't dodge this time and even allowed her to scratch my ear a little. I fought off a sudden urge to press up against her.

"Now I know you have lots of questions, and I promised to explain a bit more. But Cornealius and I could use a bit of a rest. It's been a very long day for us. We'll be back down soon, kitty cat."

She floated past me, scooped up Cornealius and quickly disappeared into the blinding light.

As soon as they were gone, I looked up at Rudy, who was huddled in the corner, watching me. "What's this about a union?"

Chapter Six

Rudy
sputtered, "What? Oh, yeah, the TAU. Oric will probably show up in a day or so and whisk you off to their never-never land. Lucky." Rudy glared down at me from his perch near the ceiling.

"TAU?" I paced below him, eyes crossing, trying to look at my muzzle, the spell wire looked to thread in and out of it.

Rudy responded with the tone of voice of a phone employee reading the company boilerplate. "Talking Animal Union. We represent all animals with the gift of speech or capable of speech within the domain of the council of Merlins. An animal being defined as a being possessing corporeal form but lacking hands and viewed as nonhuman by those on the other side of the Veil. The TAU endeavors to insure familiars are well treated and allows no bonding to take place without its blessing.

“Yeah, the Talking Animal Union. Anybody who’s got no thumbs but can think is invited to join. These days you’d better be familiar material, though, not that you’ll have any trouble with that, with the whole apex predatory thing.”

I blinked. If I was going to study the spell more, I'd have to find a mirror. I'd try to figure out how the thing worked later. At the moment it was thrilling to have regained the power of conversation, even if the only conversant available had a sour note to his high-pitched voice. I eyed the sofas, trying to determine which would be the most comfortable to chat Rudy's small ear off from. "You don't sound happy with them."

"Well, yeah, the entire union’s run by grumpy ex-familiars who’d eat me for lunch if I ain’t careful.” He chuckled. “A few have tried anyway, but they’ve all run afoul of Rudy’s Rocket.” He shook his minuscule fist at an unseen ex-familiar.

“Really?” I said.

“Oh, don’t you worry—you’ll get it too if you try to eat me! I’ve added bigger cats than you to the ol’ gallery.”

I estimated that Rudy would be about one bite—two if I decided to eat the tail too. “I’m not planning on eating anyone that talks.”

“That’s what all you preds say.”

I decided to change the subject. “So what makes a, uh, person a good familiar?” I jumped up on a sofa. It creaked in a threatening manner.

"Those, for one." Rudy pointed to my eyeballs. "Binocs make magic easier for some reason."

"Magic is visual?"

"For humans, yeah. It’s what they got. They're blind to magic, at least in the raw. Cats are supereasy. You guys see magic everywhere. I hear it. Dogs smell it. Burrowers feel it."

"So only animals that see magic can be used as familiars?"

Rudy smacked his face with a paw. "No, that’s what the circle is for." He pointed at the broken glass. "The circles make magic inside them cast a shadow. But in order to see it right the Magi's gotta look at it from two different angles, and they all want depth perception they say rodents don’t have, which is utter bitter almonds.” Rudy pointed his nose at me and gritted his teeth in concentration as both his eyes turned towards me. “Can you see both of my eyes?”

I could and nodded.

“See, it can be done! Cats ain’t special! You’re just easy. Nobody wants a rodent as a familiar, but it fixes the whole familiar shortage problem in two secs." Rudy slumped as he talked, clearly not enjoying this path of inquiry. "It’s not complicated—well, magic is, but familiaring ain’t."

"So magi need a familiar to do any magic?"

"Weren't you listening to Sabrina? Even without all her stuff she could hit you with a lightning bolt as long as she ain't grounded."

I quirked my nonexistent eyebrow at the squirrel.

"That’s why she floats everywhere—otherwise she'd just shock herself. It’s real showy with all the sparks and stuff, but she can't arc lightning bolts into anybody more than five feet away without Cornealius. That’s force dancing; it’s real powerful, dangerous stuff. But you saw how it strained Cornealius."

I settled on the couch, curling up on one end. "Yeah. That's not normal?"