My head jerks down to eye Percy, who is still tucked beneath one arm. I’d been so shocked by the news of the explosion that I’d forgotten to keep him hidden. Luckily, everyone else is too caught up trying to pacify their own pets, and no one seems to have noticed.
“Did you…speak?” I ask, staring at his one unblinking eye.
He narrows said eye and turns his head away.
Of course I did.His voice is still inside my head.What do you think I am doing? Does it appear as if I am performing a jaunty song and dance?
My pulse is drumming in my ears, and I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head. “But you can’t…I can’t…I don’t have a permit.” I open my eyes again, my brows knitted. “You can’t be my familiar.”
It appears that I am, Hairless One. Believe me, I’m not happy about it either. First, you stuff me beneath that awful cardigan. And then you attempt to feed me fish from atin. A travesty!He huffs out a breath.This is not how I envisioned my life going, either.
My mouth is still open, and I shut it again. To be honest, I’ve never thought about how familiars don’t get a say in the decision tobond with a human. It’s the human who purchases the permit, and the Office of Magical Animals that opens the connection post-approval. This revelation brings up all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts about the bodily autonomy of sentient creatures.
And, aside from that, this whole situation is just so verywrong. Percy might not be aware of the Ministry’s rules and regulations, and how serious a transgression it is to have an unregistered familiar, but I am. For Percy to have connected with me without the official bonding ritual…Something has gone seriously awry. The normal procedure has been circumvented, as though the magical world has tilted on its axis, and the usual controls have just slipped away.
Was it some sort of power surge? Has an unprecedented swell of magic somehow short-circuited everything?
I don’t have time to find out. Already the animals, who are all going feral, have started to cause injuries to their human hosts. Conall’s arms are covered in burn marks from where his guinea pig has scorched him, and Isla’s blond hair is a snarled mat from her parrot’s grasping claws. Danny is nursing a bite wound inflicted by Artemis’s fangs, and Heloise…I don’t even want to know what injuries Heloise is sustaining, being dragged along by a unicorn that can gallop at up to sixty miles per hour.
“Can you help?” I ask Percy. “Can you channel the excess magic?”
He raises his nose, sniffing the air, then wrinkles his lips back in a Flehmen response to taste it. Then, finally, he says,I certainly can. Unlike these amateurs,Ihave been adapting to excess magic for months.
My voice is breathless. “Then do it. Please.”
What will you give me?
My heart lurches in my chest. I don’t have time to negotiate, but the cat isn’t giving me much choice.
“I’ve already offered you everything I have,” I say, flustered.“Fish…cheese…beef jerky.” My voice is rising with my stress levels. “The only other thing I have is a tin of baked beans—”
Sold, Percy says, and I only have half a second to shoot him an incredulous look before he shifts his weight beneath my arm and lets his eye fall shut.
For several seconds, nothing happens. “What are you doing?” I ask.
He doesn’t bother to open his eye.I am asking the other familiars for their consent, he says, as though it is the most obvious thing ever.Before I drain their magic.
“Oh.” Of course he is, and rightly so. I fall silent, chagrined, thinking about the myriad of ways animals are better than humans.
Eventually, his small body starts vibrating, his black hair standing on end…
And then slowly, slowly, the magic starts to stream into him. The other animals begin relaxing. They stop thrashing and writhing and biting and scratching, and their owners slump their shoulders, letting out sighs of relief.
Percy, meanwhile, is getting hotter and hotter. Sparks begin to fly off his fur, and although at first I can ignore it, it starts becoming more frequent, more relentless, the amplitude of the electricity higher. And my arm starts to burn where he touches my bare skin, smoke billowing from his black patchy coat.
“You’re gettinghot,” I whisper-hiss, and Percy just opens his eye. I could swear he raises one eyebrow at me, even though logically I know cats lack pronounced facial expressions.
Of course I am. If you thought that I could channel this amount of magic and remain at 38.6 degrees Celsius, then your common sense is sorely lacking.
I clench my teeth. Just my luck; I finally get a familiar and it turns out he’s a colossal jerk. Girding myself against the pain, I tryto stay quiet. But just as the other animals all calm down, Percy has a surge of extreme heat that sears into my arm like a brand.
“Dragon’s balls!” I yelp, dropping him, and the other students all look up. Percy—the little shit—sprints off like a black blur, slipping into the forest of legs.
I bolt after him. I can’t risk him being caught, and me being found out. It was foolish for me to even pick him up—I only did because I had thought that he wasscared.
So foolish.
He sprints down one corridor, and the next, and I follow, cursing him the whole while. “Come back, you little turd!” I shriek, the words choked off by my shortness of breath. “As soon as I catch you I’m sending you right back to Gertrude’s!” It’s an outrageous lie, and I’m sure he knows it as well as I do.
