All Hallows' Hangover Read Free Page B

spell on some poor unsuspecting guy because you what... feel sorry for me?”
    Tabby thought she saw amusement in her familiar’s green-gold eyes, but Terrique didn’t say anything.
    Wonderful. Just wonderful. Her familiar thought she needed a love life.
    Tabby closed her eyes and counted to ten. Again. And reminded herself it did no good to get mad at her familiar.
    Again.
    Well, at least now she knew where to look to see what was missing so she could fix whatever Terrique had done.
    Love spells weren’t in high demand on Halloween, but the store always kept a decent supply on hand. The Christmas holidays were right around the corner, and then came Valentine’s Day. Her staff would be spending a lot of time in January creating new love spells to build up the store’s inventory. Right now she had three shelves full of heart-shaped bottles.
    Tabby took down each box and carefully counted each spell, then compared her final count against the number she should have had in stock.
    The numbers matched.
    Terri hadn’t taken a love spell.
    She couldn’t concoct a spell of her own. Familiars knew what ingredients went into creating specific spells, but just like ghosts, they didn’t have the right kind of life energy to activate the spells, so anything they tried to create fizzled and died. Good thing, too. Tabby didn’t want to imagine what life would be like if ghosts could whip up spells to cast on the living whenever they felt like it.
    That meant her familiar must have taken something else from the store. But what? If Tabby couldn’t figure that out, she’d be here the rest of the day and all night going through each box of spells and potions until she found whatever Terrique’s little cat mind had substituted for a love spell.
    If she’d even taken anything from the store. The costume she’d been wearing when she sauntered in the door right before dawn had been more revealing than anything in Tabby’s closet. For all Tabby knew, Terrique could have talked someone she met on the street into giving her a spell to cast.
    If that was the case, Tabby was screwed. So was the poor unsuspecting guy Terrique had cast the spell on.
    Tabby didn’t like it, but it looked like she had to keep working on the inventory until she found a missing spell.
    Or until some poor soul stumbled into the store, convinced he was madly in love with her.

 
     
     
     
     
    5
     
    Teddy tried to scramble to his feet, but Daniel held him firmly pinned beneath the blanket.
    Teddy’d always thought Daniel was a skinny little dude who never spent any energy he didn’t have to, but he’d tackled Teddy like he was one of the muscle-bound jocks he sold sportswear to.
    And he was a lot heavier than he looked.
    “Take it easy, big fella.” Daniel’s reedy voice sounded muffled through the blanket. “Not gonna hurt you.”
    “Then get off me!” Teddy said.
    Unfortunately, the words came out as a deep, throaty growl.
    “Whoa! Calm down. Calm down.”
    Daniel was leaning over Teddy’s back, mouth next to his ear. Teddy got a good whiff of weed, which answered the question of who’d smoked pot in the apartment last night. That also explained why Daniel had been so concerned that his bedroom had a window when he’d answered Teddy’s ad for a roommate.
    But why hadn’t Teddy noticed the smell before?
    Because you didn’t have the nose of a dog before, idiot.
    The realization made Teddy freeze. Worse than looking at himself in the mirror and seeing a dog look back—that could be an illusion, right?—finding out that his sense of smell was as sensitive as a dog’s made the whole thing seem real.
    And permanent.
    What about his eyesight? He’d heard that dogs didn’t see as well as they smelled. Teddy’d always had perfect eyesight, and the thought that he might not anymore scared the crap out of him.
    And dogs had shorter life spans, too.
    He didn’t want to die young. He had too many things he wanted to do. And he’d never even