All Hallows' Hangover Read Free

someone managed to land himself a beautiful half-elf for a girlfriend when Teddy couldn’t even get a date.
    A growl built up in Teddy’s throat and his upper lip lifted away from his front canines.
    His very sharp canines.
    The sight of himself in the mirror looking very much like a vicious guard dog startled him, and any anger he’d felt toward Daniel—justified or not—disappeared like the steam from his coffee on a warm, breezy morning.
    Daniel wouldn’t intentionally hurt him, he knew that. The two of them got along well enough, or at least they had so far. Daniel didn’t take any of Teddy’s food from the fridge, and while he wasn’t the neatest guy in the world, he kept the sloppy side of himself confined to his own bedroom. Blaming Daniel for his current situation was childish.
    That still left him with the question of who? And how?
    Teddy didn’t know a lot about magic, but like every kid back in high school, he’d had to sit through class after boring class designed to warn impressionable teenagers that magic was nothing to be trifled with. Hands Off Magic, they’d been called, which was just as stupid as Just Say No and about as effective for those already tempted.
    The one thing Teddy remembered—well, two things, actually—was that if you screwed up and cast a spell you didn’t mean to and you wanted to reverse it, you needed to know exactly what was in the original spell, and that most spells didn’t last past dawn.
    He wasn’t sure why dawn was such a big deal. He thought it might have something to do with the energy of a new day, which sounded right because it explained why werewolves turned back into people once the sun rose.
    Only it seemed like his classes got that part wrong. Sunlight was still streaming into his living room since he had no hands to grip the rod he needed to turn to close the blinds, and frankly, closing the blinds had been the last thing on his mind. All that bright sunlight should have blasted whatever spell that had turned him into a dog to smithereens, but it wasn’t doing a darn thing.
    So if his classes got the sunlight thing wrong, were they wrong about needing to know the ingredients? Not that he had a clue what could have been in the spell.
    The only option he could think of was to go down to the magic shop where he’d purchased the (defective; it had to be defective) spell and see if they could help him out.
    He’d actually trotted all the way to the front door of his apartment before he remembered that he didn’t have hands. Or, more precisely, thumbs.
    He couldn’t grip the doorknob to turn it.
    And of course, it was one of those smooth round numbers, not a lever-type handle he could have tried to paw open.
    “Crap!” he said.
    Another yip came out of his mouth, this one louder than before.
    He sat back on his haunches and stared at the doorknob. If he clamped his teeth on it and turned his head just right, he might be able to get it to turn.
    He gave it a good try, but the metal made his teeth ache, and good lord, did that knob taste nasty.
    Teddy backed away from the door, shaking his head and making a terrible hacking sound as he tried to get the horrible taste out of his mouth.
    Strike that idea.
    He sat back down and fought the urge to whine. This was ridiculous. He might like look like a dog, but his mind was still his own. He should be able to figure this out.
    As far as he knew, he hadn’t ticked anyone off badly enough to cast a spell like this on him. Especially not someone who could afford to buy a spell just for fun.
    Spells were expensive, as he’d discovered. Hefty licensing fees were tacked on top of the cost of spells, which was supposed to keep magic users from casting them willy-nilly.
    Well, whoever’d turned him into a dog clearly wasn’t worried about money.
    Had any of the people at his party been that rich? Teddy doubted it. Daniel worked at a sporting goods store selling workout clothes for minimum wage. Teddy was only a little