by Sarina Dorie
The gray of his eyes was less like a thunderstorm, the threat of gloom gone. For a moment she thought she was seeing a different person. Something about the smile tugging at his lips reminded her of Lucifer’s smile when he’d been human. Or perhaps it was simply the way Lucifer had gazed at her when they had been young and in love.
Mr. Thatch held the base of the glass to lend support. It was obvious Clarissa was weak from the way her fingers trembled as she tried to hold the goblet on her own. There was such affection in her eyes, Abigail didn’t know how she had missed it before.
Lucifer sat perched at the end of the bed, watching Mr. Thatch’s every move. He looked ready to pounce at any moment. He was a good protector. He always had been, as a human and as an animal.
It was times like this, when Abigail noticed two people in love—whether they were willing to admit it or not—that she remembered what she was missing in her own life. She glanced at her wedding ring and then away. Her heart had broken enough times in her life that she didn’t think she could ever imagine loving again.
Mr. Thatch removed the empty glass from Clarissa’s hands. “Are you hungry? Can you manage some soup?”
Clarissa leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m not hungry.” Her eyes were heavy with fatigue, but it was obvious how much Clarissa adored this man.
He didn’t release her right away. He stroked her hair from her face and eased her back onto the pillows.
There was something in his eyes, but it wasn’t admiration. Perhaps longing, but Abigail wasn’t certain. Apparently there was more to the reason he had given up his room for Clarissa than not wanting people to see her injuries. He’d wanted to keep her close, to protect her. Abigail found herself liking him more as she witnessed this new side to him.
Clarissa’s eyes settled on Abigail, and she smiled. “Hi, Mom.”
Abigail carried the plate of seven-layer bars over. “How’s my baby today?”
“Oh, Mom! I’m not a baby.” Clarissa rolled her eyes.
“Am I embarrassing my baby?” Abigail teased.
Felix Thatch shifted farther back from Clarissa. “Your mum is here. She can take care of you better than I can.” He set the empty goblet on the dresser.
Lucifer remained seated on the bed. He waved a paw at Mr. Thatch. Had Mr. Thatch done anything untoward, he would have attacked, so Abigail could safely assume it wasn’t that.
“Do you think you can hold down some food?” Abigail asked. “How about a seven-layer bar?”
Clarissa’s eyes went wide. “Well, maybe just one.”
“What kind of bars are these?” Mr. Thatch feigned indifference, lifting his nose up at the dessert, as if he hadn’t eaten a dozen of the earthquake cake brownies the day before.
“They have pecans, coconut, butterscotch chips, and chocolate chips,” Clarissa said.
“And love,” Abigail said.
“Would you like one, Mr. Thatch?” Abigail waved the plate under his nose.
“I shouldn’t, especially not so late. Furthermore, I wouldn’t want to steal medicinal home remedies from my patient.” He inhaled the aroma rising from the plate still warm from the oven. “Then again, I should check for toxins that her enemies may have slipped in when you weren’t looking.” His eyes twinkled as he said it, some of his usual melancholy lessening.
Clarissa exchanged a mischievous glance with him as if this were a joke between the two of them. He accepted the plate from Abigail and set it beside Clarissa who stole several bars for herself.
Lucifer butted his head against Abigail’s leg. He noticed the fondness between them too.
Abigail leaned down to scratch behind her familiar’s ears. He lifted his face to nuzzle into her hand. He bit at her wedding ring, the gesture more playful than hurtful. She withdrew her hand. She wasn’t ready to remove the ring yet.
It had been four years since Adam had died in a car accident. Sometimes Abigail wondered how her life would have been different if Lucifer had never been cursed and had instead grown into a man. Would she have married Adam? She did love him, though in a different way from how she’d loved Lucifer. She often wondered if Lucifer would have chosen to return to the Unseen Realm or would have remained with her in the Morty Realm. He had once loved her. She supposed he still might if he remained loyal enough that he chose to stay with her.
Lucifer butted up against her again, and Abigail picked him up. He squirmed in her arms, apparently not wanting to be held.
She set him down again. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. All he could do was bat at the air and look toward Mr. Thatch.
“I don’t know what you want,” Abigail said. “Do you want to cuddle with Clarissa?”
Lucifer snorted.
“Do you want to cuddle with Mr. Thatch?” Abigail asked, knowing that was unlikely.
He extended his claws, his displeasure quite evident.
Mr. Thatch gazed at the cat in amusement. “You have a most peculiar familiar.”
“Peculiar is one way of putting it.”
“Earlier he hopped onto the dresser when I was fetching some clothes. He leaned in so close, one might have thought he was studying me to dissect.” Mr. Thatch crouched down to pet the cat, but Lucifer swaggered away, evading his touch.
The cat rubbed his body up against Abigail instead. He continued to watch the magic teacher, eyes narrowed.
“He didn’t claw at you, did he?” Abigail asked, knowing Lucifer well enough to know what to expect.
“No. He simply seemed . . . curious. He placed his paw on my chest and kept staring into my eyes.” Mr. Thatch’s brow furrowed as he studied the cat. “I had the distinct feeling he was trying to communicate with me.”
Lucifer meowed and looked to Thatch again. He wanted to tell Abigail something, but she couldn’t fathom what.
She waited until Mr. Thatch had left to pick him up again. “If only you could speak and you could tell me what’s going through your head.” But that was the problem. He wasn’t human anymore. Nor had she brought her alphabet board with her.
“Mom,” Clarissa said. “This is a magic school. Why don’t you just ask Mr. Thatch to help you divine the truth about what Lucifer is trying to tell you?”
Abigail hesitated. “I don’t trust divination. Those who have prophetic visions don’t always understand the details. And some twist the facts to their own benefit.” She thought of Baba Nata, her adoptive mother. Baba had always tempted Abigail with “the truth” of her fate, but she had kept enough details from Abigail that it had never been helpful.
Clarissa was silent, no doubt thinking of her own miserable experiences with Baba Nata and how the witch had hurt her. They’d both been affected by the loss of Missy, Abigail’s other adopted daughter. Abigail still couldn’t forgive Baba for haunting Missy with visions of a future that Missy had tried so hard to prevent that she’d set herself on a path toward that future.
Abigail stroked Clarissa’s pink hair.
“Maybe there’s a spell to make a cat talk,” Clarissa said.
Abigail bit her lip. Could that be what Lucifer wanted? He sensed Mr. Thatch had the ability to help him?
Lucifer darted back and forth in agitation.
“Is Mr. Thatch the most powerful wielder of magic at this school?” Abigail asked.
“Well, he’s a Merlin-class Celestor. I suppose that fancy title means something. Vega Bloodmire—my evil roommate extraordinaire—is probably powerful. Though I would sooner trust her to turn Lucifer into a frog than help him talk. I’d bet Jeb—the principal—is pretty powerful too.”
Lucifer yowled at that. She suspected he didn’t care for the principal.
“Is that what you want?” Abigail asked him. “Do you want to see if there’s some kind of magic Mr. Thatch can use to help us?”
Lucifer halted. His head tilted to the side in thought.
Abigail suspected their thoughts were the same on the matter.
“There’s always a price for powerful magic. A sacrifice.”
“Mom, that isn’t how his magic works!” Clarissa flopped back into the giant bed, looking like a child in the large expanse meant to fit Mr. Thatch’s taller frame. “And it isn’t how he is. He isn’t like Baba Nata and asking for gold—or fingers and toes.”
But he would ask for something. That was how the world of the Unseen Realm worked.
Abigail looked to Lucifer again. She loved him. She wanted him to be happy. He had sacrificed his humanity to be with her. If Professor Felix Thatch needed her fingers and toes in order to cure him, how could she refuse?
CHAPTER NINE
Curses and Kittens
Abigail noticed how agitated Lucifer grew when Mr. Thatch entered the room. He rolled over onto the floor and chased his tail like a dog. He butted his head against Felix Thatch’s leg as though he wanted to be petted, but then ran away.
He seemed to be saying, “Look at me. See me.” It was the same way he often got Abigail’s attention, but she couldn’t fathom the reason.
Lucifer had to be trying to tell Abigail something. Never before had she been provided with the opportunity that she could help him; for the first time since leaving Baba Nata, Abigail was surrounded by people with powerful magics and in a realm where magic was practiced freely.
Abigail gathered up her courage, fearing Felix Thatch’s answer. He might refuse to help her out of spite—though he had seemed amiable enough to her. It was more likely he would say yes, and that was when the real trouble might begin.
The following morning while Clarissa slept, Abigail went to him in his office. He sat writing at his desk. A raven shifted in her cage in the corner.
Abigail attempted to swallow the lump in her throat. “Mr. Thatch, from what I understand, you’re considered to be one of the most powerful Witchkin at this school.”
“That’s what they tell me.” He set his quill down.
She wrung her hands. “I wondered if you would be willing to examine my cat. He’s been behaving unusually.” She didn’t like the vulnerability of this, the truth she had to admit so that he would know the extent of her problem.
He arched an eyebrow at her. “By which you mean he hasn’t performed acupuncture on anyone’s face with his claws?”
Apparently, he hadn’t heard Sam’s horror story.
“I can tell Lucy is trying to tell me something. I thought perhaps it was about you, but maybe it’s about himself. Lucy isn’t actually a cat, you see.” Her chest felt tight with anxiety at admitting the truth to this man who was almost a stranger to her. “He’s a boy. A wicked witch turned him into a cat and cursed him so that he couldn’t return to his true form.”
Tears filled her eyes as she remembered her mentor’s final act of cruelty to punish them both. Baba Nata had lived up to her title the Witch of Nightmares. She had eaten children to strengthen her forbidden magic and hurt Abigail on multiple occasions to fuel her spells. Abigail had to ensure that Lucifer never fell into Baba’s hands again—especially when he was so vulnerable and unable to protect himself as a cat.
“I thought he might be trying to tell me—Clarissa suggested—” Abigail faltered. She didn’t want to involve Lucifer and Clarissa in her request, in case that meant Mr. Thatch would need to ask the sacrifice from one of them. “I came to ask if you might be able to turn him back.”
He stared at her for a long moment, his lips twitching as though he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to it. His face remained a wooden mask, hiding what lay within.
“Would you care to meet my familiar?” he asked, looking to the raven in her cage.
There was something more to the question than he was saying. He was as enigmatic as Lucifer.
“Perhaps you’ve heard of her reputation. She can be as . . . cantankerous as your Lucy.” A smile twisted his lips upward, but the expression was fleeting. “I can vouch for her behavior. It is unlikely she will misbehave.”
Abigail stepped closer. “I would like to meet her.”
He opened the door of the cage and offered his arm. She hopped onto his wrist, her claws digging through the tweed fabric of his jacket.
He waved a hand at the bird. “This is Priscilla. She resembles a bird, but she is, in fact, a human who was turned into a bird against her will. The Raven Queen did this to punish me because she knew it was the one act that would wound me beyond all else.” He stroked the back of the raven’s neck.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Abigail had once feared his alliance with the Raven Queen. Now she suspected that couldn’t be further from the truth. “Priscilla was someone dear to you?”
“Indeed. Even now in this form, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do to protect her.”
He wasn’t volunteering who Priscilla was to him. Abigail supposed he wasn’t comfortable sharing that much of himself with someone.
He cleared his throat. “Most of the staff think Priscilla is simply a pet. Mr. Khaba has accused her of being a spy for the Raven Court, though Jeb—Headmaster Bumblebub—knows the truth. He once had Priscilla as a student. Despite what age has done to addle Jeb’s brain, he retains enough mental faculty to understand the importance of discretion.” He raised an eyebrow at Abigail, saying so much with that look. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know how important she is to me, lest others use her to hurt me.”
Those words sank into Abigail, resonating with her own fears. She had never shared Lucifer’s secret with anyone either. It felt like a betrayal of confidence. She hadn’t even told her family. Now that Clarissa knew about magic, there was no harm in it, except that it would lead to questions about their past.
Abigail still wasn’t ready to face that past.
“I haven’t told Clarissa about Lucy.” She sucked in a breath, the truth rising in an unstoppable tide about to break through her dam of composure. “It’s my fault my adoptive mother turned Lucifer into a cat. It was because she didn’t want us to run away together. I should have told him not to come with me.” Tears filled her eyes. She felt silly telling this man about her problems and her past.
He handed her his handkerchief and shifted from foot to foot uncertainly. He touched a hand to her shoulder, the gesture hesitant and uncertain. “I’m sorry for your loss. It’s difficult to . . . grieve when the loved one isn’t truly gone and the mistakes of our past haunt us every day.”
She wiped away her tears. They had something in common. Guilt.
He took Abigail’s hand and lifted it to the bird’s breast. “I have tried to find an answer to Priscilla’s predicament.”
Abigail stroked the downy feathers. The bird watched her with an unblinking black eye, the mysteries contained within unreadable.
Mr. Thatch removed his wand from the vest pocket under his jacket and waved it in the air, revealing a round window that displayed shelves of books. Abigail’s scalp prickled, and she tasted starlight. She hadn’t been educated at a school, but she knew this was Celestor magic, a kind of celestial affinity that used stars for their power. Lucifer had once used spells powered by starlight. He had excelled at many kinds of magic, more than she ever had.
Mr. Thatch grabbed hold of the circular window and lifted it higher to display a different row of books. He waved a hand at the shelf. “These are the volumes I have collected that go over transformations, metamorphosis, werewolves, werebears, and other shape shifters. I have made it a point of studying the techniques and practicing them on my own. I have learned to transform myself as well as objects. Thus far, I have found none of them to be useful in breaking a curse.”
He took hold of the disk again and shifted it down, pointing to another row of books. “In these tomes, I document my attempts to undo transformations, Fae curses, and even trials to reverse time itself in the hope that I might be able to change the past. All these books are full of my failures.” Bitterness laced his voice. “There are other books—rare volumes I don’t have a
ccess to—on the headmaster’s shelves that I have been . . . banned from reading for my own good. Because of my past serving the Raven Queen, I can’t be trusted with forbidden magic. You come to me seeking answers for a problem I don’t know how to solve for myself.”
Abigail stroked the raven behind her head as she had seen him do. “So nothing can be done for them?”
Priscilla hopped higher up his arm, leaning her head toward his, her beak close to his ear as though she wanted to whisper a secret.
“On the contrary, we have a responsibility to do everything we can.” He stroked Priscilla’s belly. “Sometimes those who shift into animals lose themselves in their animal form. Left too long, such familiars go feral. I must occupy Priscilla with activities that will challenge her mind and make her think as a human in order to remind her of who she is.”
From the way Lucifer behaved, lashing out with his claws, it was possible he’d already lost the ability to think as a human. “How do you make her remember she’s human inside?”
“I read to her. I give her errands. I converse with her.” He gazed at the raven with fondness in his eyes. “When I find a book of interest to her, I set it out so she can read it, though she has brought it to my attention that she finds the books I’ve selected for her to be drivel.” He cooed at her. “No more Little Women for you. Priscilla only wants books written in this century.”
Priscilla pecked at him, and he grinned.
Abigail had never seen Felix Thatch smile so wide as when he gazed at his familiar. She wondered whether he had anyone else in his life or he saved all his smiles for a bird who was no longer human.
Abigail found her own lips curling upward, though her heart played a sad note as she shared her own secrets. “I already do all those things with Lucy, though he prefers books on physics and magazines like Popular Mechanics and Scientific American—anything related to science that is forbidden in this realm.”
His smile faded as his thoughts turned serious again. “I’ve considered going back to the Raven Queen and begging for her to return Priscilla to her true form. She would take pleasure in seeing me grovel. If it were simply a matter of humiliating myself, I would do it. The problem would be the price for this favor. She would force me into her employment again. Priscilla would be less safe than ever, though it wouldn’t simply be her body at risk of cruelty, but also her soul—at the Raven Queen’s hands.” His eyes stared into Abigail’s, dark and stormy in their intensity. “Have a care from whom you ask favors. It’s tempting to go to the Fae to resolve our problems, but I cannot stress enough the importance of caution.”
