Chapter 3
III
Veronika: I know we haven’t had much to do with each other since I started working for Warrick, but I’m worried about him, and you’re not answering my texts.
I just want to know what the police said.
You waited too long to talk to them. I should have listened to my gut and called them earlier, but I didn’t want to step on your toes.
Well, the toes are being stepped on if you keep ignoring me!
“You…you’re not a cat!”
I’m aware that’s a ridiculous thing to say when confronted with a naked man in your shop. But I’ve never been good at thinking on my feet. My brain is short-circuiting with the non-computing information in front of me. I settle for waving my paint-soaked roller in his general direction.
How did he get in here? Did I leave one of the back windows open?
The man-who-is-not-a-cat-because-that-would be-impossible stops licking his hand and looks up to me.
His hair is the same flame-colour as Rafe’s points, and it sticks up into two scruffy points at the side of his head, almost like cat ears.
“Your observation skills leave something to be desired. I am sometimes a cat. Right now, I’m not. ”
His voice sounds exactly like the one I’ve been hearing.
“What are you?”
“Apart from an incredible lover, a passable fiddler, and the scourge of husbands across England, you mean?” He admires his nails.
“I’m a cursed familiar, I think? That’s the closest thing I can find in the spellbook on sale in the window of that witchy shop across the way.
It’s hard to search the index when you don’t have opposable thumbs and the tarot reader is trying to decapitate you with a broom.
I know what you are, though – you’re a witch. ”
He juts his chin proudly in the air, as if he’s won something from me.
I don’t give him the satisfaction of replying, mostly because everything he’s said has me stunned silent.
“I know you’re a witch because I’m here, talking to you, in all of my human majesty.
I’ve been trapped in this feline body since before the old hag died, and do you know what no one misses?
Hairballs.” He makes a face. “Having a bendy spine is fun, though. I’ve never had such proximity to my own nutsack before. It’s hours of entertainment.”
My brain is slowly catching up to what he’s telling me. “You’re…you’re really Rafe?”
That’s impossible.
I’m a witch. I know that magic is real. I know that right next door is a werewolf, and that just outside the village is a property development for vampires with windows that block out UV light and a communal blood cellar.
I know that Nevermore Bookshop houses the best collection of occult and magical books in England, and that the shop itself sizzles with magic, and I suspect, based on various goings-on I’ve heard in the village, that it brings infamous fictional characters from classic literature to life, and sometimes they cause chaos and mayhem.
So there is every chance that this very naked, very attractive man is actually Rafe the cat.
But the kind of magic required to create a cursed familiar…that comes around barely once a century, and it would require the power of a full coven. The Widow Hardcastle was just a grumpy hedgewitch. Wasn’t she?
“I’m really Rafe, once an affable rapscallion, master cat burglar, and sometimes-musician, now an affable rapscallion with a yowl that won’t quit and a furry nutsack.
” Rafe steps towards me. I notice his tail hasn’t shifted with the rest of his cat form.
It’s grown to about the length of his full height, swishing with such force that it knocks over my bottle of cider.
He catches the bottle with his tail before it hits the floor.
“I’m still a cat burglar, though. The irony isn’t lost on me.
I think this was the Widow Hardcastle’s idea of a joke.
She kept telling me this curse was for my own good. ”
“Don’t come any closer.” I brandish the roller. “I have this paint thingie, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
The human version of Rafe rolls his eyes. “Please. I’m already down three lives. I’m not going to lose another one to a witch with a paint roller. Do you have any more steak morsels? They were excellent. They were from the smelly mutt next door, weren’t they?”
“Who are you calling a smelly mutt? Celeste is lovely.”
“She once chased me up a tree because I showed her my backside.” He hops off the table, his, er, dangly appendages swinging between a pair of muscled thighs. “Well, if you won’t help me, I’m off to get some dinner.”
“Wait, you’re the ghost who’s been haunting the place and stealing food from Celeste’s kitchen?”
“I assure you, I am no ghost.” He runs his hands along his narrow hips in a way that’s supposed to be seductive but instead comes across as seductive as fuck.
“All of this is thoroughly corporeal. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back later.
Probably not until tomorrow morning if Celeste left out the bacon again—”
“Sit down,” I snap.
Rafe’s lips form an O of surprise.
I surprise myself. I don’t snap at people. I never tell anyone what to do.
A bee crawls along the top of my ear, buzzing with agreement.
Rafe plops his glorious arse down onto the counter.
“I meant for you to sit on the paint can, but fine. That’s fine.” My mouth tastes like crackers left out in the sun. “Now, I’ve had quite a day. And I’m the new owner of this shop—”
“You’re not,” he interrupts. “I’m the owner of the shop. Widow Hardcastle left this place to me.”
“Okay, technically that’s true, but—”
“I’m a property baron.” He puffs out his chest. “So if you want to stay here and serve people delicious hats—”
“Bouchet isn’t a hat! It’s a mead made from caramelised honey!”
“—then you need to appease me, for I am now your overlord. And trust me, if I want to sabotage your shop, I will do it. I have claws and teeth and an enduring love of mayhem. I am a chaos gremlin and a tiny Egyptian god rolled into one, and the only way to appease me is to strike a bargain.”
“I can’t bargain with a naked talking cat. What even are you? I don’t know anything about cursed familiars. I didn’t know familiars could shapeshift. You might be a…a demon! The first rule of being a witch is to never make a bargain with a demon.”
“I’m demonic between the sheets, that’s an established fact, but I’m not a demon per se.
I’m your common variety orchid thief who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Widow Hardcastle decided I should be taught a lesson, so she turned me into this magnificent creature.
” He grabs his tail. “According to her, when you change a human into an animal, they’re always able to shapeshift between the two forms, but she worked a spell that kept me as a cat.
It was part of my punishment. She’d only let me turn into a man when she needed something from a high shelf.
When she was killed, I got stuck as a cat, but being near you seems to activate my ability to shift.
If you’re a witch, do you know why I keep the tail even when I shift?
I’ve learned some neat tricks with it. Want to see? ”
Yes.
My cheeks heat. I hope he can’t see my blushing.
“Er, no. I want to know what’s going on.
Why were you trying to rob the Widow Hardcastle’s shop?
She sold begonias in pots and bouquets of lilies.
Surely she didn’t have anything worth stealing.
And if you were trying to rob her, why would she keep you as a familiar and then give you her shop? ”
Rafe throws a leg over the counter and straddles it, his tail swishing behind him.
“Your innocent old lady was a crafty plant dealer with a reputation among certain botanical circles for trading in orchids so rare no one had even published them yet. I’ll happily tell you the whole sordid tale, since you’re the first person I’ve been able to talk to in six weeks, and the mouse hiding in the upper right corner of the room is sick of my shit.
I broke in one night and was minding my own business, searching for the orchid my client wanted—”
“Stealing isn’t minding your own business!”
“Do you want the story or do you want to niggle over the details?”
“Yes, fine. Sorry.”
“I should think so.” He takes on that haughty expression ubiquitous to cats.
“As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, I was here to steal a rare orchid. I’d scoped out the place and it looked empty, and I knew the witch didn’t live onsite, so I jimmied the lock on the back window and climbed inside.
I had the orchid in my hands when she emerged from the shadows, brandishing a wand and foul words on her tongue.
I dropped the orchid and legged it, but by the time I got to the window, my legs didn’t work the way they were supposed to and the window was suddenly a lot further away.
I tried to jump, but she caught me in midair.
That’s when it was all over for me. I’ve lived here in the shop ever since.
I can roam around outside, but only as a cat, and it’s scary out there. ”
“She just…forced you to live here as a cat, against your will?” Even for crabby Widow Hardcastle, that seemed cruel.
“She said she was teaching me a lesson about the path my life had taken. Let me tell you, after your first week of going in a litter box and having to wait for someone else to open your meat tins, you do start to question your life choices.” He hangs his head.
“But, on the plus side, I can lick my own—”
“Okay! I get it!”
“You know, it’s quite something being able to twist that way. I’ve done things to myself that I’ve never been able to—”
“Yes, yes!” I cover my ears. “And you just stayed with her, even though she cursed you?”