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“Why did you leave all your furniture behind?” he asked as I put a frozen dinner in the microwave to heat up. Thank the Goddess that the kitchen had one of those built-in units above the stove, or I would’ve been forced to get takeout somewhere. Trying some of the local restaurants was something I planned to do in the not-too-distant future, but right then, I was just too tired to even contemplate going back out.
“Garage sale stuff that wasn’t worth moving,” I said briefly as I reached for the bottle of chardonnay I’d bought at Walmart.
It couldn’t really be classified as drinking alone if I had a talking cat for company, right?
Archie absorbed my reply and appeared to decide it wasn’t worth further investigation. He looked at the wine I was pouring into a glass and let out a sound suspiciously like a sigh.
“I’d pour you some,” I told him, “except I doubt your kitty metabolism could handle it.”
The fur on his back arched, and his eyes slitted. “Don’t,” he said, “under any circumstances refer to me as a ‘kitty.’”
“Duly noted.”
He stalked off into the living room, and I allowed myself a sip of chardonnay. Not bad. Actually, I’d been sort of surprised by how good the wine selection at the local Walmart was. It seemed like I might not have ended up in as much of a backwater as I’d feared.
The microwave beeped, and I pulled out my tray of Lean Cuisine pasta carbonara. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t have eaten anything like that — frozen meals tended to be pumped full of sodium and preservatives — but if I was too tired to go on the hunt for takeout, that meant I was doubly incapable of actually cooking something.
All I had to sit down on was a canvas folding chair I’d bought a few years earlier to take to summer concerts in the park. It was already set up in the living room, so I went ahead and took a seat, balancing the Lean Cuisine tray on one leg since I didn’t have anywhere else to put it. Another sip of chardonnay, and then I set the glass on the floor.
Archie gave it a jaundiced look but didn’t move from his spot near the windows. For a few minutes, I ate in silence. Then I asked, “Did you ever get anyone to try to break the curse?”
“Who?” he said derisively. “I already told you, there aren’t any other witches in this town.”
“Well, now,” I replied, even as I realized that wasn’t precisely true, since I was now a resident of Globe. But that was a very recent occurrence. “I mean, not even the whole time you’ve been in a cat’s form?”
He reached up to scratch behind one ear with a hind paw, then settled back down on the floor. The bare wood didn’t look very comfortable, and I was glad that a new rug would be arriving the next day with a bunch of my furniture.
“The witch who cursed me was the only one,” he said. “I suppose after that Packard flattened her, word got around that Globe wasn’t a very safe place for witches.”
And here I’d decided to make it my new hometown. But I was obviously a very different kind of witch from the one who’d stolen his human form from him, so I had to hope I’d be okay.
When I didn’t say anything right away, he went on, “I don’t suppose you’d want to give it a try.”
Could I even attempt such a feat? My magic had always been contained in small, safe things — casting spells of banishment and protection, using divination to give people advice on their futures and their relationships. Turning a cat back into a man was an order of magnitude greater than anything I’d ever heard of.
Or maybe several orders of magnitude.
“I don’t know if that’s something I can do,” I admitted. “I’m just a hedgewitch.”
His tail whipped back and forth in annoyance. “What’s a hedgewitch?”
“Someone self-trained, who doesn’t work with a coven,” I replied. “Someone who practices small magics. But,” I hurried to add, “that doesn’t mean I can’t do some research and see if I can dig up anything that would help you…once I get settled.”
I could tell he didn’t much like the idea of the sort of delay waiting until I had everything put together might cause, but it seemed he didn’t want to argue, because he grudgingly responded, “All right,” and closed his eyes.
Maybe he was asleep, or maybe he was just sulking. Either way, I needed to finish my makeshift meal.
As I picked up the glass of chardonnay and took a sip, I reflected that my first night in Globe was definitely nothing I could have ever expected.
4
Opening Night
That first dayturned into another day, and then another. Before too long, the apartment was fully furnished, and I had to admit I probably enjoyed all that new furniture more than I should have. Yes, there was something to be said for antiques, for pieces that had been previously loved and which had absorbed the unique energies of their former owners…but there was also a lot to be said for having tables without burn marks from careless cigarette butts or scratches from too many moves.
As I’d promised Archie, I tried to do some research on spells that might get him out of his predicament, but so far, I hadn’t found very much. Most of the spells contained in my own books of magic were confined to benign topics like healing and abundance enchantments, and while the darker texts might have provided some information on how to turn someone into a toad — or a cat — they were pretty unhelpful about offering any actionable data on how to turn someone back.
Oddly enough, my unexpected roommate and I got along better than I’d thought we would. He had me put the cat bed in the second bedroom/office, and since I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in there, it wasn’t as though we tripped over each other much. He also had a tendency to slip out as soon as I opened the front door so he could wander the neighborhood. How he’d managed to avoid getting hit by a car or eaten by coyotes all those years, I had no idea, but I supposed there was something to be said for having a human brain in a cat body.
