The Familiar Read Free Page B

He needs to know that final is final. He'll not be forgiven, not by you. Not ever."
    Eunice makes her goodbyes and places the phone back in the cradle as a smug expression plays across her face. She airs her thoughts out loud, perhaps to herself, perhaps because she knows I'm still lurking under the bed.
    "I cannot believe that disaster zone of a girl found someone to get engaged to and nearly ruined everything! In any case, that's sorted things nicely, if I do say so myself."
    She walks through the hall to the small kitchen / breakfast room combo at the end. She calls out, "Cat!"
    I don't have a choice. My cat self has a painfully empty stomach due to being freshly reanimated and cowering in the woods all night, and while I might regret it, I sweep out from under the overhang of the bedspread, stopping only briefly to bat at the fringe, and then rush along the hall toward the sound of the can opener and the smell of something savory. I leap from the floor to the chair to the tabletop, where my blue ceramic dish contains a pile of fishy-smelling slop. I eagerly shove my little pink nose into it and chew away daintily as Eunice rubs me behind my tiny black ears and waits for the kettle to boil.
    I hate myself for purring. Cat forgives everything so easily when food is involved.
    "Well, Tom, I'm sorry that you can't join me for tea. I prefer the company of Cat right now, given your behavior last night. Such a shame you're not always as sweet-tempered as a kitten."
    I glance up from my meal, and she gives me a quick scratch under the chin. "You do look charming. Perhaps I'll leave you that way, and you can go fully cat from now on." She's a shark when she smiles. "How would you like that, Tom?"
    I try to arrange my face into an expression of horror, but I'm sure my wide-open eyes and plastered-back ears just make me adorable. No, I wouldn't like being fully cat from now on. Every time I'm Cat too long, I start to lose my human self.
    The last time Eunice forgot to let me spend time in human form, I almost didn't come back from it. She was having her brief but unsavory affair with Kevin after school in one of the cabins she owns in Corey Woods. She was in her late fifties at the time. Despite Eunice's trim figure and piercing blue eyes, young Kev must have been one hard-up teen to do it with a woman old enough to be his granny. And Eunice? I've never been able to figure out what she'd want from such a soft, greasy chunk of high school wedgie bait.
    It was a week, at least, before she got the itch for me again and sprang me from Cat's body. I held her immobile with my teeth gripping the back of her neck, and she arched, scratched, and growled when I treated her to a little lovin' the tomcat way. Later, as we lay together, perspiration shining on our exhausted bodies, she rubbed up behind my ear with one hand as if I were still Cat, and said, "The teeth were a nice touch."
    Despite her approval, there's no way she'd want me asserting myself
outside
of the bedroom. She never left me as Cat that long again.

"Something special today, or just the usual, Robert?"
    Although he keeps his eyes on Eunice, I can tell he's aware of me playing possum on the top of a shelf with one eye cracked open.
    It was a long time ago, well before he fathered that mess of a boy who turned out to be Kevin, but Robert was my rival for Eunice's romantic attention. The two Andrews men couldn't be much different. Robert is dapper and well put together. He's never gone in for the casual style that's so popular these days. Even now, when he's just out shopping for herbs, his crisp cotton suit is perfectly tailored to fit his tall, thin frame. If I'm any judge, he's still handsome for an old man.
    Although he never progressed in magical power to a point that allows him to challenge Eunice in spell-making, he's been the high priest of the coven for twenty years and the mayor for longer than that. Between the two of them, they own most of Giles. I'm convinced he