Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1) (9 page)

"What the hell is this? Some sort of life-affirming seminar?"

"The question is a little rhetorical. But the fact is you are not the man who dwells in this house." He opened his wings and gestured to the space around us. "This space is really not your work."

My lips were threatening to curl up from my teeth. "What the hell are you talking about?" I gestured at the bookcases next to the TV. "I spent hours alphabetizing those books! See that dent in the couch? That was made by my buttocks."

"Point is, and I'm sorry, Thomas, the man you remember being is dead. He is gone forever."

I opened my mouth to protest when a very warm body pressed up against my side and circled around my rump, making sure to step on the base of my tail, sending shivers up my spine. "Think about it, kitten, think about the man you were. Would that man really have run out on Sabrina? Would he have had the guts? The Veil doesn't swallow humans of action. All that bravery in the face of the unknown? That's not the man, that’s the cat." She was so warm, her voice so smooth, that my anger slipped away like melting ice cream between my fingers. "And you make a much better cat than a man—strong, handsome." She twisted herself around me, looking up at me with those deep blue eyes. "You'll be well loved, Thomas. We will find the perfect person to take care of you. All the meat you can eat, and a personal groomer so you don’t have to taste where you've been every day."

It didn't sound so bad when she put it like that. Maybe she'd even come to visit me—she was so pretty with her bluish fur. Everything would be all right if I made her happy. But Angelica. Angelica would miss me. "I can't go," I protested meekly. "My mat- my girlfriend."

"Don't you worry about her. We take care of everything. Give your friends a story—let them grieve." My gaze drank in her beauty, and Angelica fell from my mind. How could anything else hold a candle to this creature, glowing with her divine blue light? My muscles soaked in her warmth like dry sponges as she entwined herself further around my front legs. "Now, are you ready to go, kitten?" Something small and red fell onto the little goddess's back, trailing a thin wisp of sizzling smoke. I looked at it.

Bang!
Pain exploded in my head and then paws as the ground slammed into them. Danger! Danger! That other voice screamed in my head and seized control of my limbs, launching me into the bedroom, propelling me over the bed and pressing my body flat against the floor. Wherever this body had come from, it certainly did not like loud bangs.

"My
fur
!" Cyndi's voice screamed across the house. The acrid scent of singed fur followed a feline yowl. "I'll kill you, rodent!"

"Woah! Hey now!" Rudy shouted as a hollow thump echoed, followed shortly by the scrabble of claws and several angry yowls.

"Cyndi!" Oric hooted as I poked my head over the bed just in time to watch Rudy dashing into the bedroom, the white cat hot on his tail, a blackened spot on her back and murder clear in those ice blue eyes. Rudy zigged to the left with a bound and then zagged, the same move that he used on me not fifteen minutes ago. Cyndi turned but didn't follow the zig—she adjusted for the zag, barreling right at Rudy, her claws outstretched.

She missed. Rudy twisted his body at the last moment and her paws shot under him, his body rolling up her forelimbs. Her face smashed into the Zippo on Rudy's chest with a surprising loud
smeck
! Rudy shot under the bed, a fuzzy cannonball, while Cyndi somersaulted head over tail. She came up snarling, her intentions clear as she prepared for another pounce.

"Cyndi, stop this at once!" In a flash of purple Oric appeared in front of the enraged cat, wings spread to form a wall between her and Rudy.

"Out of my way, Oric!" Cyndi hissed, and then sneezed out a fine red mist onto the floor.

"This is not the way to conduct a recruitment! I told you to stick to the rules! No charms." His head rotated 180 degrees to flash me a nervous smile. "I do apologize for Cyndi's behavior. And Rudy, please put the lighter away; I'd like to keep what remains of my hearing."

Cyndi's eyes narrowed, her rage focusing entirely on owl. "You double-crossing mite-ridden meat sack."

"I'm afraid I have to put you back on probation, Cyndi, for unethical behavior."

Cyndi leapt at him with a sawing hiss. Yet the fight ended before she landed. In a blink, Oric disappeared and reappeared directly above the cat. One taloned foot seized her by the scruff, and the other slammed her head into the floor.

She let out a low mrowl of pain.

"Cyndi, you should know better than this. You’re lucky you’re small enough for me to pin, otherwise I'd have to rip out your eyeballs." Oric spoke in the tone of a bored waiter listing the specials. "I'm very sorry, Thomas, for this breach in professional decorum. We'll have to table our conversation for a later time. Adieu."

With a very soft pop, he disappeared, taking his companion with him, leaving a faint purple afterimage in my vision. I blinked it away with a growl of disgust.
That was the TAU?

Rudy emerged from under the bed with the soft click of a closing Zippo. "Well, that went about as well as I thought it would when the TAU made
her
an officer."

My head was in a total jumble, still grappling with the idea that the pretty cat had been screwing with my mind, and I couldn't be sure everything still worked. A part of me still craved the little cat's warmth. "What the hell did she do to me, Rudy?" My voice was a whisper.

"Oh, she hit you hard with her little trick."

"She had me wrapped around her little finger, Rudy. That hardly qualifies as a trick. I didn't think familiars could do magic."

"It’s not magic—it’s more a talent, like magi and their anchor. They called Cyndi's former master the Mind Twister before she kicked the bucket two years ago. If you’re with a magus for a while, you pick up a few tricks of your own. It ain't predictable, and it ain’t even always useful. Have you heard about O'Meara's first familiar, Rex, the one who got himself executed by the council of Merlins?”

"Uh, no."

"It’s a sad story, bro. Anyway, his talent? His dog breath was so bad it ignited flammable stuff. O'Meara had to get him a fireproof bed. That was it. No fireballs, no gout of flame, just a little flick of fire if he wasn't paying attention. I slipped a string of firecrackers under his nose once." Rudy tittered with the memory. "Oh, man, did he yelp."

I hoisted myself up onto my feet with an eye roll. "While that is certainly illuminating, I already knew you had a sadistic streak, Rudy." My stomach had begun to recover from the shock, and Rudy's scent stoked the burgeoning hunger in my belly. I meandered back towards the kitchen.

The squirrel followed, still prattling at me. "Anyway, I couldn't let those two take ya like that. I'd never ever get paid that way. If the TAU brings you in all on their own, they don't have to share any of the tass you collect. You're still Sabrina's claim even if she’s too busy to come pick you up."

"She knows I'm here?"

"Well, if the old fossil had a cell phone, she would, but lucky you, she's barely mastered the telephone line so far. Electronics and the lightning lady don't get along."

"So they don't know I'm here."

"It’s kinda obvious that you'd come back here after you finished sulking. Where else are you going to go? Live in the forest? The deer would die of laughter with your pouncing accuracy." Rudy gestured to the shattered cabinetry as I pawed open the fridge.

"Har har." I dug into the refrigerator, looking for survivors of this morning's rampage. Not being able to go to a grocery store alone would drive me back to Sabrina’s within a few days if I couldn't find a way to restock my meat supply. I looked at up at Rudy, perched on the top of the fridge. I might have licked my chops.

"Holy Walnuts, Thomas, eat something. That look of yours is making me twitchy. Even more than the stink of this place usually does."

"You can work a keyboard, can't you?"

Rudy turned his head to stare at me with one black eye. "Yeah?"

"Sabrina owes you an iPhone for watching me, right?"

"Yeeeeaah?"

"Look, I can double that."

"I'd love to see where you keep your wallet. Are you secretly a kangaroo?"

"No! Look, Thomas Khatt is still a legal entity. You can use my laptop. Help me make my rent payment that's due in four days. I have a few stock funds that my parents set up that I've managed not to tap yet. If we cash those out . . ."

The squirrel's tail drooped as I continued to plead, trying to find some way, any way to hang on to my human life. He shook his head sadly. "And what happens when your girlfriend comes back? What you gonna do? Stand on your hind legs and say the whiskers are a fashion statement? Thomas, the Veil don't work like that. You’re on one side or the other, and you’re on this side. It sucks. Most magi are either greedy horrible people or insane, especially the few in this town. When Oric comes back, walk to the TAU under your own power. He’ll be eager to sweep Cyndi’s charm attempt out back and bury it under a tree. Then you got a halfway decent chance of getting a newbie who's not spoiled."

I didn't have much to say to that other than to growl grumpily. There had to be a different option. There had to be.

Add
desperation to the things that make squirrels disappear, because after several minutes of making a second attempt at explaining how he could help me pretend to be human, I realized that he had skedaddled. Probably right up that tree with the extension cord wrapped around it.

Damn it—couldn't anyone in this world be polite enough to listen to me think up panicked half-baked plans for solving my situation? I slunk onto the couch, giving a significant look to the empty space where Angelica would sit. She'd listen to me, or at least nod politely, while being sure to mock my weakness later. From her empty spot my gaze shifted to the Xbox controller sitting on the coffee table, my usual coping mechanism. I looked at it, looked at my freakishly large paws and laughed. Mother would be thrilled to hear that brain-wasting video games were off my list of activities until I found somebody to install a brain-machine interface in my noggin.

Had I been a proper cat it would have been the perfect time to take a nap; but instead, I paced the house, pointlessly bouncing back and forth between the bedroom and the kitchen like a tawny-colored Koopa shell. I jumped at every car that rolled down the street, fearing it would be Sabrina coming to collect me. But as the sun began to kiss the trees on the horizon, the iron godmother and her weasel had yet to make an appearance.

I found myself staring into the bathroom mirror. The triangular face staring back at me still triggered that sensation of wrongness as I looked at it. Yet how much longer would that last? I'd been quadrupedal for a day and my body felt like I'd been born in it. At this rate, one or two more days and I'd be sticking my tongue where the sun don't shine without a thought about it. My paw that had been covered with soot this morning had nary a mote of dust on it. And I couldn't even remember when I had groomed it.

Oric had said the man I had been was gone. There certainly wasn't much trace of him staring back at me in the mirror. I studied my eyes, looking for a glint of humanity in my amber orbs. If eyes were windows to the soul, then my soul appeared to be feline. My tongue was still purple with magic, although it had faded considerably since the morning.

I had begun to turn away from the mirror when a silver glint caught my eye. The chain! I had nearly forgotten about it with the whole rodent preparing to set my house on fire thing. Rudy certainly hadn't mentioned it, and no wonder—the collar had become nearly invisible. The actual chain itself had thinned from its former girth of industrial-strength chain closer to the width of a piece of jewelry. Unless I pawed at my neck, the only hint of the chains was a ruffle to the fur as if it had grown around a scar. Scrags’s warning about bonds looking into the future might mean the old man had known I’d need the chain, but for what?

Slumping down onto the floor of the bathroom, I ran through my options. I could stay here and wait for somebody to collect me. I could run off into the woods, live as a cougar and hope I was smooth enough to avoid getting shot by an excited hunter come hunting season. Or I could go back to Sabrina’s, let her collect my bounty and do as I was told with a bit of dignity.

Really, what did I want? Failing getting my body back, finding a job and getting on with my life, I needed to do one thing. Say good-bye.

I went to my laptop and pawed at the keyboard until the screen lit up. Rudy had created a new account on it called RoastedNutz. I stared at the keyboard and then at my paw, which nearly took up half the keyboard if I slammed it down among the keys. Carefully I flexed out my claws and spread my fingers. It took more than a few tries, but I eventually switched to my account and pecked out the password with my broken claw. Using the touch pad proved to be a much more difficult problem than typing. My paws felt like oven mitts, and the cursor would jump to the left or right whenever I tried to click. Eventually I gave up on the paw and used my nose.

This took me hours, and by the time I finished sending those emails, the world outside my windows had faded to grey. I closed the laptop with a feeling of accomplishment. Perhaps I wouldn't be so reliant on thumbed persons after all?