Part 5 (1/2)
Anica walked back into the kitchen minus her cat.
Jasper stared at her, his heartbeat picking up. He was at her mercy and he didn't really know what she was capable of doing. He prepared to run if necessary, to fight if he had to.
”Don't worry,” she said, as if reading his mind. ”I put him in the coat closet. He actually loves it in there, and the darkness settles him down.”
Some of Jasper's tension drained away. Thinking like a cat, he could imagine how a cozy dark place would appeal. Now that he'd had his chicken and some water, he could go for a cozy dark place, himself.
”Since he's tucked away, feel free to use the litter box if you want.”
His brain went on tilt. Litter box? Oh, dear G.o.d.
Anica continued to explain the setup in a perfectly normal voice, as if she weren't bringing up the most horrific concept he'd yet encountered about this transformation.
She pointed to the end of the kitchen. ”The litter box is in there, on the floor of the pantry. I always leave the pantry door open for easy access.”
She could have a freakin' red carpet leading through that pantry door. He wasn't going in there. Not now. Not ever. He was a man. He got the indoor plumbing concept.
”I think I might be better off leaving Orion in the coat closet for the night,” she said. ”He's had a rough time-not that you haven't-but that's his security spot. It'll only be for tonight, anyway.”
She paused, her finger tapping her chin. ”I'm not sure where you'd rather be for the rest of the night. I don't have an actual kitty bed, because Orion usually sleeps with me.” She shrugged. ”I'll leave it up to you.”
Turning off the kitchen light, she walked into the living room and doused the lights in there, too. When she walked into her bedroom, she left the bedroom door open.
Jasper sat on the counter and contemplated his next move. Where should he spend the night? He could take a chair in the living room, or he could crawl back under her bed. He could also sleep on her bed, but that would appear too friendly, as if he actually liked her.
At the moment, though, he had a more pressing problem than where he'd spend the night. He had to pee.
Chapter 5.
Anica didn't sleep worth a d.a.m.n. When she woke up, groggy and disoriented, at five, the misery of the previous night came rus.h.i.+ng back.
Having Jasper loose in the house all night had been a bad idea, psychologically speaking. She should have locked him in the bathroom or the kitchen-anywhere so that she'd know where he was.
While half-asleep she could have sworn she'd heard the toilet flush. Then she'd had nightmares that he'd spontaneously changed back into a man, which she supposed could have happened. She'd been so irresponsible to invoke a spell she didn't completely understand.
She'd acted out of arrogance and wounded pride. Because she was so good at her craft and normally had no problem countering the spells she cast, she'd never dreamed she couldn't undo anything she created. How wrong she'd been.
If-no, when-Jasper became a man again, he might well be murderous with rage. She couldn't really blame him. Under the same circ.u.mstances, she'd be ready to do damage to the person who'd cursed her.
Because she'd never seen Jasper truly furious, she wasn't sure what sort of reaction to expect from him when she and Lily transformed him. She'd take his clothes to the one-hour cleaning service this morning so he'd have something to wear, but that was the least of her worries.
She wasn't afraid that he'd sue her, because no one would believe that he'd been changed into a cat. But he could do something like ruin her business with some well-placed comments to her regular customers, who knew he'd been dating her. He could use the power of the Internet to disparage the quality of the coffee and the food.
She lay in the dark, listening for the sound of Jasper moving around the apartment. To her surprise what she heard was the slow click of computer keys. Her pulse raced and she sat up. Had he regained his human form, and was he already using her computer to find ways to destroy her?
Heart pounding, she listened carefully. Whoever was typing couldn't be Jasper, or at least not Jasper in his normal state. She'd seen him text on his BlackBerry. The guy knew his way around a keyboard. This sounded more like a nontypist, someone laboriously using the hunt-and-peck method.
Her imagination conjured up all sorts of horrible possibilities. Jasper might have turned into something between worlds, half man and half cat, a creature that would make people scream with terror. Or maybe her use of the ancient spell had conjured up some magical monster sent to punish her, and it had begun by typing up a list of her sins to send to everyone in her address book.
How could a magical being get into her apartment, though? She had protective spells cast around every door, window, and vent. Oh, wait. If her magic was gone, then those protective spells would be gone, too. That meant they'd disappeared from her business, too. She hadn't even considered that, hadn't thought to ask Lily to replace those spells for her.
Slowly she drew back the covers and slipped out of bed. Normally she'd grab her wand before going out to face an unknown threat, but obviously her wand wasn't working. She searched the dim interior of her bedroom for a weapon, although mere weapons would be no use against magic.
Still, she couldn't make herself go out there without some sort of defense. Unplugging the hand-painted ceramic lamp sitting on her bedside table, she took off the shade, unscrewed the bulb and wound the cord around the base. Aimed correctly, the lamp could crack a skull-if that skull was human.
As she crept down the dark hallway the sporadic clicking continued. Her chest tightened and she stopped to draw a shaky breath. She needed to calm herself. Whoever was typing must not have her imminent death in mind. Otherwise they would have attacked her in her sleep. Unless he wants to destroy my reputation before he destroys me.
Whoever or whatever it was would be facing the screen with its back to the hall. She grasped the lamp by the narrow neck and raised it over her shoulder as she made her way to the end of the hall. Heart pounding, she peered into the living room.
The ghostly light from the monitor revealed Jasper, who was still very much a cat, sitting at her desk. She sagged with relief to discover he wasn't some malformed mix of man and cat, and that no monster had invaded her s.p.a.ce.
But her worries weren't over, not by a long shot. The implications of Jasper at the computer were enormous. She understood that and yet she was fascinated by how he'd managed to do it.
His haunches rested on her chair, and he'd braced his left front paw on the desk so he could use his right front paw to press the keys. He studied the keyboard before each tap, the way a touch typist would have to do because they'd long ago forgotten the exact location of each key. He was using Word, which meant he'd successfully navigated the mouse. The scene looked like a video from YouTube that would of course be t.i.tled ”Cat and Mouse.”
Under other circ.u.mstances Anica would be laughing her head off as she watched a cat in command of a computer. But this wasn't a trumped-up video, and a cat with the mind of a man-an enraged man at that-was a scary thing.
No telling how long he'd been at this exercise. If he'd managed to use the mouse, then he could have already been surfing the Net. He could have sent a bunch of destructive e-mails while she was asleep.
She'd never imagined he'd turn on the computer, but why not? It was a perfectly logical move given his limited choices. She had to give him points for ingenuity, even if she was worried sick about the consequences to her.
She walked toward him. ”Good morning, Jasper. I see you've decided to use the computer.”
He turned his head and gazed at her with wary eyes.
In a moment of blinding insight, she realized he was as afraid of her as she was of him. While he was a cat, she had the power of life and death over him. He couldn't know that she wouldn't use that power, although she was seriously thinking she'd restrict his computer access for the time being.
His gaze flicked to her right hand.
She'd been so intent on the computer problem that she'd forgotten that she was carrying her bedside table lamp. He could very well think she meant to brain him with it.
”I couldn't imagine who was out here typing,” she said. ”I brought this to defend myself.” She lifted the lamp slightly. ”Lame, I know, but I've never bothered to keep anything around for protection. I always could count on my wand, plus the protective spells I'd placed around the apartment. Now I have nothing but a hand-painted lamp.”
Setting it on the floor by the desk, she picked up Jasper and sat at the desk with him in her lap. The message on the screen was obviously to her and amazingly didn't contain any swear words. Considering how he struggled to type, he might not think it was worth it to waste time cussing her out.
Besides, as she'd recently realized, he might be afraid of how she'd react. He needed her in order to revert back, or rather he needed the combination of her and Lily. He couldn't afford to tick her off.
The words were constructed the way she'd expect from someone with only one paw at his disposal. He'd used his texting skills to cut down on the typing, and he'd turned on the capitalization function, so everything appeared in caps.
CALL WRK NMBR BSNSS CRD IN WALET SAY IM SCK WAKE LILY UP CHNGE M.
She could guess that had he finished, the last letter would be an E. His demands were reasonable. She couldn't imagine why she'd agreed not to call Lily until noon just because no one ever called Lily before noon. This was an emergency.
”I'll call your work number at nine a.m.,” Anica said.
”And I'll call Lily this morning, but not right this minute. If I call her at five twenty, even if I get her over here, she'll be of no use to us. An incompetent witch is worse than no witch at all.”