Rafe shifts back into his human form and rests his chin on my shoulder to read with me. I try to concentrate on reading my grandmother’s horrific handwriting while ignoring the warm buzzing in mybelly at his closeness. He hasn’t put his clothes back on, so this is difficult.
“Stop. That says something about familiars.” Rafe’s hand closes over mine. My hand freezes midair, and I drop the page I was turning. His deep voice rumbles against my earlobe as he reads aloud.
A witch must carefully consider her choice to make a familiar, as she shares some of her magic with the creature. This means the witch can use her familiar to cast spells when she cannot, but it also means that she weakens herself. Witches connect telepathically with their familiars, who also gain the ability to communicate with other witches in the coven.
“That’s weird,” I say. “It’s suggesting our telepathic connection is because I’m part of the Widow Hardcastle’s coven, but I’m not.”
“It also doesn’t say anything aboutcursedfamiliars. This one has potential.” Rafe points to a picture of a black cat with lightning bolts coming from its eyes as it stands atop a tower of skulls. “If I can’t be a human again, at least I could have lasers coming out of my eyes.”
“Those aren’t lasers…I don’t think?” I peer at the spell, which looks like it has something to do with familiars of Thor, the god of lightning. But the sloping, cursive writing is too difficult to read. I turn the page, blinking hard as the letters swim together.
I’ve already skipped over a whole section that’s in Latin or Orcish or some other strange language. It had pictures of plants I’d never seen before, so I don’t think it had anything to do with curse magic or familiars.
This new page shows a range of objects with notes scrawled around them. Three bees march across the page. They cluster together, circling around one word. I blink at it, whispering each letter under my breath until it resolves itself. Curses.
Thank you, bees.
“Here’s something. Do you want to read it?” I ask, trying to keep my voice casual.
“Sure.” Rafe picks up the book and puts on a posh BBC announcer’s voice. “Anyone with sufficient rage or indignation can cast curse magic on a living creature or object, but a witch’s curse isparticularly potent. A witch must be careful, for curse magic is extremely corrupting. Creating a curse can stain a witch’s soul.”
I wonder why Widow Hardcastle felt that turning Rafe into a cat was worth the corruption of her soul, but then leave her shop to him. And I think again about her horrible death. Who would want to murder her?
“That doesn’t help us.” Rafe slumps onto a paint can, dropping the book on the counter with a dustyclonk. “It doesn’t say anything about cursing a familiar or breaking a curse.”
“Luckily, I know exactly where to go to get answers.”
VI
Mina: We don’t keep the occult room open to the public, but if you come around any time, I’ll let you in. Don’t ask my husband Heathcliff about it, unless you want a lecture about the dangers of magic and the proper handling of spellbound books.
We get too busy finishing the painting, cleaning out the backroom, and making pre-inspection plans to visit Nevermore Bookshop, so I leave Rafe at the shop after dinner with a promise that we’d check out the occult collection as soon as we can.
The next day, I wake in my cold, Warrickless bed, make tea, water the garden, check on the bees, and walk into the village to collect Rafe for his first excursion outside the shop as a human since his curse. We’re both unsure if simply being in my presence is what keeps him human, or if he’ll randomly transform back into a cat when he gets a certain distance from the shop, but today’s the day we find out.
At least, we’ll find out if I can get Rafe out the door.
“You have to wear something. You can’t walk around the village naked. People will talk.”
“Let them talk! Let them marvel at my magnificence. I agreed to wear those wretched garments for the purposes of painting the shop, since my masculine physique is so glorious that you can’t
focus on your work when in my presence?—”
“That’snotthe reason.” My cheeks burn.
“—but I will not be seen out in public in garments that look like a rabid badger got bitten by an accountant. I’m a cat. I have standards.”
“Don’t you mean an accountant who got bitten by a badger?”
“No, Autumn. I do not.”
Finally, after promises of pies from Celeste and an online shopping session, I manage to coax Rafe into putting on Warrick’s clothes. As he stuffs his tail down a trouser leg, I replay the sensation of his naked body pressing mine into the counter over and over again, and a very different kind of excitement races through my veins.
We stop for pies and then meander toward my cottage on Badgers Lane. The walk takes forever because Rafe keeps getting distracted. He bends down to smell flowers and taunts the cats he sees asleep on garden walls. “It all looks so different when you’re not ten inches tall.” He points to a statue of Winston Churchill near the war memorial. “That thing is terrifying from the ground. He means serious business with that finger.”
We pass by a garden wall overflowing with flowering wisteria. Rafe stops to sniff, his blue eyes sparkling. “I’d forgotten how much I love wisteria. As a cat, it has this nasty, musky odour, but today it smells like candy floss. And look.”
He bounds over to the garden gate, where a bursting bed of pink and purple zinnias overwhelm the winding path. Rafe reaches over and plucks one of the purple blooms. His fingers brush my earlobe as he tucks the flower behind my ear.
