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This time, both brows lifted. “He sure looks like a cat to me.”
“I know,” I said. “But he’s really a man who was hexed into cat form by a witch when he told her he wasn’t interested in her attentions. He’s been a cat for almost seventy years.”
A long, long pause. Calvin looked over at Archie, still sprawled on the rug, although now his tail kept twitching, as if he was caught in the throes of a particularly vivid dream.
“That’s really a man?”
“An asexual man,” I said hastily, since I wanted to make sure Calvin couldn’t possibly get the wrong impression about the way I’d been cohabiting with the cursed cat for all these months. “That was why he turned down the witch. He really isn’t interested in anyone.”
Calvin’s expression had turned impassive, which could have meant almost anything. “And you know all this how?”
“Because he told me,” I responded.
“Hetalks?”
“Yes,” I said, “but I’m the only one who can understand him. He said it’s because I’m a witch.”
To my relief, Calvin didn’t contest this assertion. He only sat there quietly for a moment, appearing to digest everything I’d just told him. “And so you’re worried because you don’t know what’s going to happen to Archie once we’re married and sharing a house.”
“Exactly,” I replied, relieved that he’d been able to sum up the situation so easily. “That is, I’ve been doing my best to break the curse — I have a whole shelf of spellbooks I bought in the hope that one of them would help me — but so far, I haven’t had a single speck of luck.”
Calvin reached over and took both my hands, holding them gently in his. One thumb moved over the oval white sapphire in my engagement ring, as if he was familiarizing himself with its contours.
“It’s all right,” he said, tone quiet and possibly just the smallest bit amused, as if he was thinking that only I would be the one to end up cohabiting with a cursed cat. “We’ll figure something out. And who knows? Maybe you’ll break the curse before then.”
A tension I’d been holding somewhere in my gut seemed to vanish as he spoke those words. No, we hadn’t decided exactly when we were going to get married, and there were a whole heck of a lot of logistics that needed to get figured out between now and then, but I’d just cleared the most important hurdle. Calvin knew about Archie and hadn’t been completely disbelieving, or worse, put his foot down and said he absolutely wasn’t going to live with a cat who really wasn’t a cat at all.
But then, I should have realized Calvin would never behave in such a way. He’d accepted pretty much everything about me, so why wouldn’t he accept Archie as well, warts and all?
Now, getting Archie to accept this sudden change in my circumstances?
Thatwould be the real trick.
5
Loose Lips and Latte
Not gonna lie— after I slid out of bed and left a slightly snoring Calvin behind, I couldn’t quite prevent myself from staring down at the ring on my left hand as I went about getting some coffee brewing and putting the last of the dishes from the night before in the dishwasher.
“What happened?”
A very groggy-sounding Archie, standing at the entrance to the kitchen. Although his eyes were open and he stood on all four paws, he still looked like he was listing to starboard, as if he hadn’t quite regained all his balance from his catnip bender the night before.
“An overdose of catnip, I think,” I told him. “It really shouldn’t have affected you that way, though. I looked it up, and most cats seem to get over their catnip high within a half hour or so, maybe an hour at the most.”
He rubbed a paw over one bleary golden eye. “Well, that wasn’t the case with me.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re not really a cat,” I said, which was about the only real hypothesis I could offer on the matter. “I’d ask you if you wanted some coffee, but I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”
His tail flicked once in disdain. “I was more of a tea drinker anyway.”
Why did that not surprise me? Rather than respond directly to his comment, I just said, “There’s fresh water in your bowl, and I’ll open a can of food for you if you think you’re ready to eat. I didn’t want to waste any in case you still weren’t up to it.”
Archie was silent for a second or two, as if my words were taking longer to process than usual. But then his whiskers twitched, and he replied, “I think I should eat. I’m very hungry.”
“As you should be,” I said. “Considering you slept through your dinner last night. I’ll get you some breakfast now.”
I headed over to the pantry and got out a can of his favorite salmon surprise. As I was scooping the food into his bowl, however, I heard him exclaim, “What the devil is that?”
