Anica walked over and gazed at him for several long moments. He kept eye contact. Staring was what cats did best, he discovered.
“Are you the kind of person Lily thinks you are?” she murmured. “Are you just a tomcat on the prowl?”
“Anica!” Lily cranked up the music. “Get your butt in here!”
With a sigh Anica walked down the hall, her heels sinking into the carpet and the sway of her hips making the hem of the dress dance around her legs.
Jasper watched her go and felt a tug of regret. He wished he could talk so he could convince her that Lily was wrong about him. Sure, he had a line he used on women. Didn’t every guy? An innocent line wasn’t exactly a criminal act.
Looking back on it, he wished he hadn’t done that with Anica, for obvious reasons, but that was water over the dam. Her seductive walk reminded him of what could have been, would have been, if Sheila hadn’t picked that night to come to his favorite restaurant. Sometimes life wasn’t fair.
He noticed that they’d left the closet door open. He’d be wise to go settle into the closet and seek forgetfulness in a nice long nap. Hanging around Anica was not a productive move on his part. But as he listened to the beat of the music he wanted to go in and see how she was making out with the dance lessons.
The blender whirred again and this time they might plan to drink the margaritas they made. Soon the sisters were laughing, and one of them turned the music up another notch.
Jasper edged down the hall and peered around the corner.
Anica stood with a margarita glass in one hand, and as he watched she drained it. Then she sashayed over to Lily. “Okay, I’m ready.”
“Good! Now move your hips like this.” Lily undulated like a woman having vertical sex.
“Lily, that’s so trashy!”
Lily smiled. “That’s the idea. You could do it in bed with a guy, couldn’t you?”
Anica blushed. “Yes, but this is—”
“Fun. Try it.”
Still blushing, Anica made a halfhearted attempt.
“More.” Lily demonstrated again. “Exaggerate.”
Anica took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.” She executed the move exactly the way Lily had.
Jasper’s eyes narrowed to slits of pleasure as a purr rumbled spontaneously in his chest. She was getting to him. Not good.
He wanted to watch Anica dance all afternoon, but he couldn’t seem to shake the desperate need for a nap. That would be the cat influence taking over. With a yawn he trotted back to the bedroom and hopped up on the bed. He fell asleep to the music of Gloria Estefan and Anica’s laughter.
He woke up to the scent of warm chicken. A quick check told him that his cat status hadn’t changed. It should have by now. A sick feeling of dread curled in his stomach.
Or was that hunger he was feeling? He followed the chicken smell, which took him through the living room and to the doorway of the kitchen. The scent of tequila and lime still hung in the air, but Lily was gone. Anica, wearing a pair of flannel pajamas, stood in the kitchen. Jasper missed the red dress, but he had more urgent concerns than ogling Anica.
Orion wove a figure eight through Anica’s ankles. The hiss he sent in Jasper’s direction seemed more obligatory than threatening, but Jasper paid little attention. All his focus was on the kitchen clock. Six thirty. More than twelve hours had passed since he’d lapped up that evil brew, and nothing had changed.
Anica turned to him. The look of concern in her blue eyes told him all he needed to know. She was worried.
“I see you’re awake,” she said. “I fixed you some chicken.”
Theoretically, Jasper should be too upset to eat, but that didn’t seem to be the case. He was starving. Even so, he didn’t want to push his luck with Orion, so he waited until Anica had placed Orion’s bowl of food on the floor and the big cat had shoved his face into it. Then Jasper leaped to the counter and began to eat the chicken Anica had warmed for him.
“I don’t know what to think, Jasper,” Anica said. “We’ll see what happens tonight, and if you’re the same in the morning, I’ll have to swallow my pride and call in that couple, the one on the Wizard Council.” She shuddered.
Although he was intent on eating, Jasper listened with one ear. The thought of a governing body called the Wizard Council blew his mind. But if such a thing existed he wanted them in on this. The crisis was at hand.
“In the meantime, I can’t do much except wait.” Anica kept talking as she started washing the margarita glasses. “Too bad I couldn’t ask Lily to renew the protection spell on this apartment, but I didn’t dare put her through any more magic spells today. Between repairing my crystal ball and the coffee shop cleanup and protection spell, she was on overload.”
Magical people should be able to handle that sort of problem, Jasper thought. Maybe Anica could have cured Lily if she had her own magic working.
“Anyway,” Anica continued as if trying to convince herself, “the coffee shop was the interesting place to break in to. They won’t be so excited about a boring little apartment.”
She dried the glasses and put them in the cupboard. “But speaking of that, I can’t even remember if I locked the dead bolt.” Putting down the towel, she left the kitchen.
Once she was gone Orion meowed softly. It seemed to be directed at Jasper. He peered over the edge of the counter and sure enough the orange tabby was gazing up at him, a pitiful look on his fuzzy face.
Orion had suffered a lot in the past twenty-four hours, and Jasper thought he needed some sort of reward for that. Anica hadn’t offered him one, but she might be too distracted to think of it.
Orion wasn’t supposed to have the chicken, but Jasper couldn’t stand looking at that sad face. He picked up a bite of meat and dropped it to the floor in front of Orion. Orion scarfed it up at once and licked his chops. Then he glanced up at Jasper in obvious longing.
Jasper dropped the last two pieces of chicken on the floor. He didn’t need to worry about food, anyway. If nothing happened tonight, then tomorrow Anica would call in the wizard top brass, which should do the trick.
Once he became a man again he would head for the nearest restaurant and order a steak dinner. Orion would be stuck with those dry little pellets, maybe forever.
“Dead bolt’s on,” Anica said as she walked back into the kitchen. “Not that a dead bolt will stop fairies, but I doubt they’ll bother with this place,” she murmured, almost too softly for Jasper to hear.
He hoped she was right about that. He’d seen the kind of destruction a band of teenage fairies could create. He hoped they didn’t show up here, especially when he was in this vulnerable cat form.
Anica spent the rest of the evening reading, and Jasper spent it watching her read. Damn boring. He wished she’d try a few of those dance steps instead.
Finally, around ten, she yawned. “Time to go to bed.” She gazed at Jasper and Orion. “Can you two guys manage to share my bed without fighting?”
It could have been a line out of a porn movie if the two guys in question hadn’t been cats. Jasper wondered if Anica was starting to forget he was a man in a cat suit. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
Chapter 9
Anica wasn’t sure what woke her, but as she lay in the dark, she heard someone, or something, moving around the apartment. Could be the cats. Rising cautiously on one elbow, she checked in the dim light to see if they were on the bed. Both were gone.
Okay, so it was the cats. At least they weren’t fighting, which was a relief. Maybe they were even getting along, becoming friends. Comforted by that thought, she settled back onto her pillow.
She’d barely closed her eyes when the sound of teenage laughter drifted in from the living room. Her eyes snapped open and a chill ran through her. Not cats. Fairies.
Throwing back the covers, she jumped out of bed and instinctively reached in her bedside table drawer for her wand. Not until it was in her hand did she remember that it was useless. But the fairi
es might not know that.
Now that she was fully awake, she noticed a red glow coming from the living room. Where were the cats? Kneeling by the bed, she lifted the skirt and peered underneath. “Orion?” she called softly. “Jasper?”
She couldn’t see much at all, but when she groped under the bed as best she could, she didn’t come in contact with any furry bodies. They could be anywhere in the apartment. Wand in hand, she crept out of the bedroom. She’d never realized how much she depended on her magic until this moment.
On her way down the hall she told herself that the fairies were only teenagers who had slipped away from their parents and were looking for thrills. They weren’t dangerous, only mischievous. If they’d been dangerous, they would have invaded her bedroom.
They’d probably figured out that if she was careless enough to leave her shop unprotected, she might have done the same with her apartment. They might be after her wine and tequila, forbidden to them at their age, and any food she happened to have on hand because, like most teenagers, they were always hungry. They were often destructive, too, but being magical, they considered it only temporary destruction, easily fixed.
Fairies and witches moved in different circles, so a prank played on a witch wasn’t as likely to be discovered by fairy parents. As she neared the end of the hall, she caught a glimpse of what was going on in her living room and was not amused. The little snots had decorated it like a sex club.
Nude paintings hung on the walls. Her sofa and chairs were upholstered with images of couples in various sexual poses, and the entire room glowed red. That was bad enough, but many of her magic books had been pulled from the shelf and strewn carelessly around the room. One of her favorites lay open on the coffee table, a page torn.
Three fairies, two boys and a girl, were gathered around her computer ogling an X-rated Web site while they drank tequila shots from three souvenir shot glasses she’d picked up on vacation. They dressed like teenagers everywhere, with the boys in logo T-shirts and baggy pants belted around their hips and the girl in low-riding, skintight jeans and a knit top that hugged her rib-cage and stopped short of covering her ruby-enhanced navel.
She looked like a surfer girl with her golden tan and long blond hair. The boys’ hair was gelled within an inch of its life and stood up in angry brown spikes. Anica thought the two might be brothers.
Tattoos covered all three, although the kids could make those disappear in an instant if necessary. Likewise their faux piercings. Fairies couldn’t tolerate metal, so all the jewels were magically attached and could be removed in no time.
That was one big difference between these three and nonmagical teenagers. If nonmagical teenagers got a tattoo or a nose ring, they were stuck with it. Fairies could choose to add or eliminate body art whenever they wanted.
There was no point in trying to turn on the overhead light. The fairies had surely made the light switch inoperable. Anica tried to catch a glimpse of the cats, and finally found Orion in a far corner, tail twitching, fur sticking out.
He crouched as if awaiting his opportunity to leap on the intruders and scratch their eyes out. His belligerent body posture said quite plainly that he was pissed. His home had been invaded once again and he was plotting his next move.
Anica would rather that he didn’t get involved. Ordinarily fairies didn’t harm animals, but if these three had consumed enough tequila, all bets were off. Jasper was nowhere around. Maybe he’d freaked at the sight of the fairies and was hiding in a cupboard.
If so she could hardly blame him. The guy hadn’t believed in witches until yesterday, and tonight he’d been confronted with hormone-drenched teenage fairies. His sense of reality had been seriously damaged recently.
So she had to put a stop to the fairy mayhem, and she had to accomplish that with a bluff. She wished that she had on the red salsa dress and sexy heels instead of her blue plaid flannel pajamas and bare feet. Too late to do anything about that now.
Raising her wand with as much authority as she could muster, she cleared her throat and waited for them to abandon the computer screen and turn in her direction.
They did that slowly, as if they had no fear. Safety in numbers, maybe, but if she’d had her magic working, their confidence would have been proven foolish. Three wet-behind-the-ears fairies couldn’t stand up to a witch in full command of her powers.
Too bad that wasn’t her at the moment. She counted on their ignorance of that fact. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” she said in the sternest voice she could muster. “Put everything back the way you found it, or suffer the consequences.”
Both of the boys looked a little worried, but the girl stood and thrust out her tight little boobs. “I’m not afraid of you. We got in here so easy, just like we got in your shop last night. Your magic needs a serious tune-up, witch.”
Mouthy kid. Anica longed for the power that she’d had so recently, so she could teach the girl the proper way to speak to someone who had been practicing magic before she was born. She gave the girl her best witch stare. “You might want to reconsider that position.”
“Ooooh, I’m so scared.”
Anica itched to take the girl down, magic or no magic. “Remove your illusions from this apartment and remove them now.”
The girl stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and lifted her chin. “What if we don’t feel like it?”
The boys must have drawn courage from her defiance, because they both stood and glared at Anica. “Yeah, what if we don’t feel like it?”
Anica adopted her most ominous tone. “You will regret it. I promise you, you will regret disobeying me.”
“Prove it.” The look in the girl’s silver eyes said that she’d sensed Anica’s lack of magic the way a predator senses the fear of its prey.
Physically Anica was no match for them. The boys were taller than she was, and the odds were three against one, even without figuring in their magical abilities. Their command of magic, immature though it was, made the odds even worse.
She’d failed to intimidate them. Now what? “Your parents would be so disappointed if they could see you now.” Even as she said it she knew it was a lame statement. It might have worked for her at that age. It worked for her now, in fact. But these three weren’t like her, and that was the scary part.
One of the boys, the taller one, stepped forward. “What our parents don’t know can’t hurt them, can it?”
The girl tossed her golden hair. “And you can’t tell them because you don’t know who we are.”
“I know you’re three fairies with no respect for magic,” Anica said. “Anyone who can treat magic books that way is—”
“Your books are stupid,” the shorter boy said.
“Yeah, totally.” His brother picked up the tequila bottle. “Here’s what I think of this one.” He tilted the bottle slowly, enjoying his power as he prepared to pour tequila on the open pages of her favorite book.
“Put that bottle down, and put it down now!” The male voice rang with authority.
Anica spun around to find the source of that commanding voice and almost dropped her wand. Jasper stood in the kitchen doorway wearing two small towels tied together at each hip to make a kind of loincloth front and back. Other than that, he was magnificently naked.
And no longer a cat—no sir, not even a little bit. Very much a man. A broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped man. The dark hair sprinkled over his glorious chest was exactly enough. Ditto the hair on his muscled calves.
She gulped. “Jasper, you’re—”
“Going to take these three apart, I think.” He advanced toward them, his fingers flexing. “I could use magic to do it, of course, but I prefer the satisfaction of ripping their limbs from the sockets with my bare hands.”
In a daze of admiration and gratitude, she watched him move. He had a certain catlike grace, but otherwise nothing about him reminded her of Jasper the cat. Everything about him reminded her of why she’d craved him from the mom
ent they’d met.
He’d decided to try his own bluff, obviously, and convince the fairies that he was a wizard. They’d have no reason to think otherwise if he was standing naked in her apartment. Witches traditionally had wizards for lovers. She was the rebel who had bucked the system.
All three teenagers’ eyes grew wide as they watched Jasper approach. The tall boy holding the bottle of tequila smacked it down on the coffee table. “Insane wizard approaching! Abort, abort!”
In a flash, all three fairies reverted to their smaller, action-figure size. They sprouted wings and began to glow.
“What the hell?” Jasper stared at the fairies as they flew toward the door.
“They’re leaving!” Anica cried. “We can’t let them leave until they’ve changed everything back!”
From a corner of the room an orange streak hurled itself at the last fairy in the flock. With a leap that was astounding considering his bulk, Orion snagged the fluttering creature and landed with it clutched in his paws.
“I’ll be damned.” Jasper walked over to the cat and crouched down. “Good work, buddy. You got one.”
Anica did her best to concentrate on the situation they were in, which was dicey to say the least. But when Jasper crouched down the kitchen towels shifted tantalizingly. She had to use all her self-control not to try to glimpse what was behind those kitchen towels.
This is not the time, girl. It might never be the time. Even though Jasper had stepped in to save the day, that didn’t mean that he was particularly fond of her.
Orion pinned down his trophy with both paws while the fairy protested in a high-pitched voice. Orion glanced over at Anica as if asking permission to eat it.
“You can’t munch on the fairy,” Anica said. She looked around for the other two, but they were nowhere in sight. They’d probably taken advantage of the distraction when Orion caught their friend and miniaturized themselves to the size of a gnat. Then they could slip out the way they’d come in, through the old-fashioned keyhole in her apartment door.
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