I can’t be sure, but I think Pen has a crush on my human form. She doesn’t know I have the ability to morph. I’ve been told human Talisman is quite the looker with his black hair, green eyes, and brooding demeanor. Of course, who could doubt it? The problem is that I have trouble hearing when I’m in human form, because it’s so hard to make that transition that I usually hear nothing but ringing in my ears. By the time it subsides, I’m back to being a feline. I’ve seen Penelope say things to me and lean in like she wants to hug me, but then I’ll be gone before anything can happen and I didn’t hear her actual words.
Thank God, though. It’s like that scene in Back To The Future when Lea Thompson tries to kiss Michael J. Fox because she doesn’t know she’s his mother. I’m okay with a peck here and there, but a woman coming at me with an open mouth in any form creeps me out. Ick and double ick. I love Penelope with every inch of my body, but she’s my owner and will never be my lover.
Trouble is, Dr. Luke should be that man, and because of her teenage fantasy about the dark, handsome stranger that keeps popping in an out, she’s looking for love in all the wrong places. For a witch, Penelope has a lousy sixth sense. I need to start sleuthing out what’s going on with her lack of powers and lack of good judgement. Those things should be getting stronger as she gets older but they’ve been pathetically weak of late.
“You’re all done, you wickedly handsome man.”
My favorite groomer, Marjean McIntosh laid down the dryer and then gave me a tuna flavored soft treat. Delicious. I always knew I was her favorite.
“You can head on out to the reception area to Penelope, Tali. The door’s open to the clinic.”
Apparently, she knows I’m smart, too, and I don’t need a crazy kitty carrier. My comrades should just calm the hell down. When they hiss, growl, scratch and carry on, it gives all of us a bad and undeserved reputation.
“Oh, Tali! You are the most gorgeous kitty ever to walk the face of the earth,” Penelope gushed as she swung me in to her arms and inhaled deeply of my freshly washed, floral scent.
She was about to carry me outside to the car when Dr. Luke appeared behind the counter holding Walter’s file. He cleared his throat and looked down as if he were fascinated by his expensive, Italian loafers.
“Hi Penelope.”
Pen kept me close to her neck, and we walked toward the desk where, Anne Marie, Dr. Luke’s long time receptionist, had wheeled her office chair out of the way as she pretended to look through the file cabinet.
“Hi, Dr. Collier,” Penelope replied as she blushed red from the roots of her hair to the tops of her manicured toes. Would these two fools ever get out of their own way?
Dr. Luke glanced up and then quickly looked away. Almost like continuing to stare at the woman he’d been in love with for years would cause his eyeballs to melt out of his head.
“Penelope, I asked you to call me Luke, remember?” he prompted. “We’re old friends and you’re my best and most loyal client. With all the business you bring here yourself and all of the referral business, I can’t even thank you enough.”
“I know that’s what you said but I feel so funny calling a doctor by their first name,” Pen explained. “Even if we are … friends.”
Penelope’s voice sounded strained, and she cleared her throat of some imaginary frog that lingered there.
“I’m sure about it, and there’s no need to feel strange. I feel weird when people call me Doctor Collier. That was my dad before he passed away and left me this practice. Please … from now on. It’s Luke to you,” he implored as he handed Walter’s file to Anne Marie. “Penelope, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
Oh, God. Here it comes again. The big set-up for the big let-down. I only wish my powers included being able to cast a love spell on these two ignorant morons. Unfortunately, the only powers I possessed were telepathic with other animals and humans and the ability to occasionally morph into human form in an emergency. I can't make humans do my bidding. I glared at Pen, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t break this incredibly perfect man’s heart. Again.
“What?” Pen asked as she started to panic. I could feel her racing pulse and see it as it throbbed in her swan-like neck. “Is it Walter? Is something wrong? Oh, I’d never forgive myself if I gave an ill dog to Harry. I never violate my own rule and let a new owner take a pet from me before it’s been given a clean bill of health. Please Dr. Collier, er … I mean, Luke. Please tell me that Walter’s alright.”
“No, no. Walter’s fine,” he reassured her. “I wanted to know if you wanted to …”
Right in the middle of Doc’s invite, Harry burst through the door with Jessie hot on his cowboy boot-clad heels.
“Doc Collier, I need my dog and I need him now before this old biddy drives me to drink the whiskey I haven’t touched since Prohibition.”
Chapter 4
“Amelia, I think Dr. Collier was about to ask me out on date when I picked Tali up from his bath and brush today. I don’t know what to make of it.” Penelope leaned back in the comfy sofa of her living room and took a sip of her herbal tea.
“Really, Pen?” Ami rolled her eyes and snorted. “You know exactly what to make of it. He likes you. And you like him. What are you waiting for?”
“It’s that man. The one with the black hair that I keep seeing but he disappears before I can talk to him. There’s just something about him.” As she spoke, Penelope wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow. “Like I’ve seen him before. Or, I knew him in another life.”
Or, she knows ‘him’ in this life. If she would stop getting herself in to mishaps, I wouldn’t have to morph. Then, she wouldn’t be distracted by the highly hot but highly mute human Talisman. This had to stop and it had to stop now. Maybe I could get Ami to see the light. Of the pair of them, I had a better chance with her.
Penelope and Ami sat before the hearth sipping their tea in Pen’s beautifully appointed, mauve parlor, complete with two wingback satin, upholstered chairs. The low light in the living room made for the perfect ambiance for girl talk, but not for the job at hand. I knew there was a book of love spells somewhere in the room, and I jumped up on to the built-in bookshelf to the right of the fireplace and perused the titles there.
The Joy Of Cooking Eye Of Newt.
No.
How To Jump Start Your Broom.
Double no.
Love Witch and Wizard Style.
That had to be it.
While Pen poured them both another cup, I batted my paw toward the book and it fell to the ground with a large thump. Then, I sat there, perfectly still like a Grecian statue so neither woman would sense that something was up. Luck was with me; the book it fell right at Ami’s feet and opened to the exact page I’d been looking for.
Ami reached down and picked it up. She intended to slam it shut and return it to its rightful place, but the headline of the chapter caught her eye and she scrunched up her face in consternation.
“Hmm … True Love’s Kiss. Have you ever had True Love’s Kiss, Miss Penelope DeLacroix?” she asked.
“Have you, Miss Amelia Foley?” Pen countered, not wanting to answer.
Because Ami already knew the answer. They’d shared everything since the second grade. They’d both had boyfriends and crushes over the years, but neither woman had fallen deeply in love. I already knew that Penelope’s true love happened to be none other than Dr. Collier. Ami’s hadn’t appeared yet. Or, if he had, we hadn’t met him.
Ami read the chapter, while Pen held her tea cup in an iron grip. I watched them both and prayed to Bastet, the Egyptian God of Cats, for a miracle. That bad-ass feline was definitely my celebrity crush. When would Ami understand that Penelope needed to share True Love’s Kiss with Lucas? I just knew that would break the funk she’d been in. The one that was siphoning off her powers, even though I hadn’t figured the ‘why’ out quite yet.
“Pen, it says here that True Love’s Kiss is the most pure form of love in the en
tire Universe,” Ami noted as she glanced up to find me staring deep in to her big, brown eyes. “Tali, why are you staring? It’s rude.”
Good grief.
“Anyway, if two people share True Love’s Kiss, that pure white light energy can break any spell or chase away any demons that may inhabit the lover’s body,” Ami continued with her explanation of what she was reading.
“Really?” Pen said.
“Kind of like Sleeping Beauty, I guess,” Ami continued. “Do you think that Jessie and Harry need to share a True Love’s Kiss in order to break the spell that you cast? The one that isn’t going according to plan? If so, I think we’re all in for a rocky ride. Jessie is chasing and Harry is retreating like the troops at Gallipoli. I think the spell only reached Jessie and somehow, Harry was immune.”
“I know,” Penelope admitted as she sighed and slid her fingers over her face. As if she needed to cover her eyes in order to hide her distress over the spells that continued to go so wrong. “I’ve cast that spell a hundred times and nothing like this has ever happened before. I don’t know what to do. Jessie is walking around like a lovesick fool over a man she used to despise and Harry is running around like a depraved stalker is after him. Throw in Elias Stout poking his pointed nose around and we have a recipe for trouble.”
Ami continued to peruse the pages for clues. Pen was right. If Elias got wind that some type of spell had been cast on Jessie to make her personality morph in to Paula Deen, he’d stop at nothing until he’d outed Penelope. Then, all hell would break loose and Pen would have no one to protect her. All the more reason to hook her up with Dr. Luke so I could have an ally in my mission to keep Pen safe.
“Pen,” she exclaimed. “It says right here that only True Love’s Kiss can break the spell. Do you think that we have to get Harry alone and cast the spell on just him? Or, do they have to be together when you try the do-over. Oh, I’m so confused.”
The one I trusted to understand wasn’t getting it. She hadn’t read the most important part. The dedication.
It said:
Just one kiss to break the spell …
I was going to have to morph in order to get her to go back to the page I wanted. I was going to need hands in order to get my point across. Damn. I didn’t want to have to morph again so soon. Especially, when Pen was already thinking about my human form which distracted her from Dr. Luke.
I trotted in to the kitchen and looked around. Penelope had left the walk-in pantry door open. Perfect. I slid through the oak doorway and concentrated hard on my jade amulet. The tell-tale tingling started in my tail and worked its way up to the tips of my ears. Once I saw the electric coffee maker at eye level and heard the usual ringing in my ears, I knew it was over. I’d morphed successfully. Now, how to get Amelia to read the passage quickly before I changed back. The power in my jade amulet usually only lasted about fifteen minutes, max.
Even though I was pressed for time, I didn’t want to terrorize the two women, so I thought it would be best if I slipped out the back door and then walked around the house to ring the doorbell. If I just ‘appeared’ in the kitchen, Amelia might grab the nearest knife and whack my privates off. I still needed that bad boy to potty for crying out loud.
I trotted around the house as fast as I could and rang the doorbell before I realized I had forgotten an extremely important fact. The most important fact of all. When one morphs in to human form and they aren’t wearing any clothes, then they aren’t wearing any clothes. That’s right folks. Standing buck naked at the front door with Penelope three feet from swinging the door open and Amelia hot on her heels. I was just going to have to go with it. Just as Penelope flipped the dead bolt, I noticed the American flag flying proudly on the front porch.
George Washington and all our founding fathers, please forgive a desperate cat for what he’s about to do.
I ripped the flag down and off its wooden pole just in time to wrap it around my waist so Penelope wouldn’t see my, er … assets. I’d seen them before and they were spectacular. Poor Dr. Luke couldn’t possibly be as well-endowed as I was. It had to be at least three inches.
“Ami,” she said as she swung the door wide. “There’s a present on the doorstep and it’s not even Christmas.”
Ami skidded up behind her and then peered at me through the space between Pen’s arm and rib cage.
“Hmm …,” she said as her brown eyes got as wide as saucers. “It’s a great present and its wrapping is so unique, so … patriotic.”
Pen motioned for me to step over the threshold and in to the foyer as she spoke, “I think it’s time I know your name, mystery man. Also, what do you want with me and why do you keep appearing at the strangest times. Almost like you know when I need you.”
Shoot. I didn’t have an answer to that question. Because, I didn’t have an answer to anything. I blew by both of them, not only because I didn’t have the gift of speech to make small talk but because I was on a time constraint. I’d already wasted five minutes getting clad in my USA team gear and using the front door.
As I trotted in to the living room and picked up the book of love spells, I hitched the flag up around my flanks and made sure it was secure. I didn’t want to flash them a glimpse of my perfectly round behind. That view would ruin Penelope for anyone else.
I opened the book and slapped it down on the engraved coffee table. The one that Pen adored because it had been handed down for generations. Her grandma had just presented it to her for her twenty-fifth birthday. As I shuffled through the pages to find the spell I wanted, the one at the beginning, Ami reached me and peered around me.
I pointed hard until my finger was white from the effort of pressing against the page. She read it over a few times and then looked at me in confusion.
“Hot guy,” she said. “I have no idea what you’re trying to tell me.”
Chapter 5
“We haven’t seen anything, Master Sage.”
Clyde foraged through the trash can until he found what he was looking for while his mate, Bonnie, stood watch. A raccoon could find a plethora of tasty treats in the garbage. A human’s waste was an animal’s treasure.
Sage sat on his perch atop the light pole and surveyed everything beneath him. Rather like a monarch reigning over his kingdom.
“Clyde,” he said in his perfect British accent. “You can’t tell me anything more about Bianca Chokecherry and her family? I find this hard to believe since you’ve been rummaging through her trash nightly for the past three years. You had to have found something of interest along the way that might lead us to a clue about Penelope’s curse.”
Clyde shook his head in the negative as he held up a brown apple core and started gnawing away at it. The crass behavior caused Sage to point his beak heavenward as if he could no longer stand the sight. Of course, I could read the ancient one’s thoughts, so he tried to temper his negativity where I was concerned, but others weren’t so lucky. I had to admit, I got some good laughs when Sage and I were together. He cocked his feathered head to one side.
Blighter.
“All right, then,” Sage said out loud. “Cheerio.”
He spread his massive wings and soared high above me as I kept my paws on the ground and trotted down the cobblestone street toward the park. Sage had some bird friends there that might know something, and he’d suggested that we try talking with that group before heading home. There had to be someone in their community who knew something about Bianca Chokecherry and her evil family. The only think I knew for sure is Bianca didn’t like Penelope so I didn’t like Bianca.
As I moved swiftly over the pavement, my mind drifted back to the time a few years back at the annual Shadow festival when Bianca had given Penelope a purple stone carved in the shape of horse, Penelope’s favorite animal. She even had one that lived at the shelter. Mr. Oats was a twenty-year old gelding that was starting to get arthritis in his hocks, so Pen could only ride him a couple of times around the yard before he’d start whinnying i
n protest. He'd been abandoned in the middle of town square after he'd pooped a giant pile of manure in his owner's flower bed.
I often wondered if there was something about that horse-shaped stone that had to do with the siphoning off of Pen’s powers. Like the rock was cursed itself or its curse transferred to all who held it. If that was the case, someone would know about it and those that could fly so they had a bird’s eye view were my best bet.
Sage settled himself on the back of a park bench, careful not to sit near any bird poop. Even though his shit was as white as the rest of his brethren, he still felt he was classier than they were. No one seemed to argue with him on that score and that suited me just fine. Sage was an elder as well as an old friend, and I respected him for that reason alone. He actually did have the wisdom and grace his kind were known for.
As soon as Sage arrived, a myriad of other birds flew into his vicinity and remained still. The birds waited patiently for Sage to reveal the reason why he’d come tonight. A crow, named Coal, let out a shriek and pecked his beak in to the ground near the bench. He brought a fat earthworm up from the ground and slurped it down his throat in one gulp.
“Sage, my old friend,” Coal said. “What brings you to the park tonight? Anything we can help with?”
“It’s good to see you, Coal,” Sage replied. “I’m wondering if any of you have any information on Bianca Chokecherry or her family.”
Coal peered behind him and gave a questioning look to the twenty or so birds that had gathered there. One stepped forward to talk. A vibrant, yellow finch, named Tweety. I’d heard that kid before, performing at the local bird Karaoke. She had the most glorious voice. Too bad I’d rather kill and eat her than listen to her. Thank God Sage was here to stop me from indulging in my natural instincts.
Fur Magic Boxed Set: Talisman, Sage, Fawn, Lola: Paranormal Romantic Comedy Page 3
