Page 12

EIGHT

Across the road was a parade of souls ripe for Thorn’s picking. In her pocket, her grip around her dagger tightened.

How about that man in the white pants? He looks suitable. Or that one in orange boots. Or that one in a vest. At her feet, Bandit caught glimpses of their prey through the transient gaps between zooming cars.

“I don’t trust your judgment in this case,” Thorn said.

Exercise yours, then. You’ve been pussyfooting around for half an hour.

She kept taking a step off the curb, and then hopping right back. “People are downright rude. These cars aren’t even slowing down to let us pass.”

A car did slow to a snail’s pace just then. Thorn was about to seize the opportunity when the driver’s window rolled down and a head stuck out. “Hex me, witch!”

“A hex ball costs twelve dollars,” Thorn replied.

Meg had taught her the basics of modern currency and inflation.

She had also taught Thorn the norms of modern fashion, but when it came time for Thorn to pick out clothing online, she had found only one single outfit from one single store acceptable.

The next day, ten of the same black dress were delivered to the cottage.

The shop: Party Emporium. The dress: a witch’s costume (deluxe).

The driver retorted with the most common modern profanity before he hit the gas.

Thorn blushed. “Bandit, maybe I am beautiful by the standards of this century. It appears that man fell in love with me at first sight. Too bad I refuse to fornicate upon first meeting.”

Should have taken his soul.

A woman came up to stand next to Thorn. Between looking left and right at the traffic, she stole glances at Thorn’s hat and shoes, and her white cat.

Thorn stared right back. This lady looked very well adapted to the twenty-first century with her sleek pants and towering heels, complete with a cell phone glued to her ear.

She could be just the guide Thorn needed to reach the other side.

A few seconds later, the modern woman stepped off the curb.

“Bandit, now!” But Thorn was barely halfway across the road when she heard a jumble of screeches, thuds, and howling meows from right behind her. Cars screeched to a stop.

She turned. A bicycle had crashed to the ground, its rider under it. He crawled out as a couple of people ran up to him.

“I’m all right,” he said. “But where’s the cat?”

Bandit was nowhere to be seen, but there was a trail of blood leading back into the park. Thorn ran.

It wasn’t long before she found him in a bush. He was the color of a vampire parrot: white, speckled with bright red. His eyes were shut.

“Bandit! Bandit!” In moments of anger, Thorn was very much able keep her cool, but in moments of worry for her loved ones’ safety, she was a blubbering, fumbling mess.

She forced herself to focus and remember how Meg had taught her to make calls. It was hard to see through the tears welling up in her eyes. Once the line connected, she didn’t even wait for Meg to say hello before blurting out, “Bandit got run over! Please come to the cottage!”

She scooped up Bandit. He didn’t resist, which was very worrying. She ran as fast as she could.

The tour group and guide were gone. There was no one here to help her.

Gently, she laid Bandit down on her bed.

Then she frantically yanked her ingredient drawers open, even though she knew they were mostly empty.

In the olden days, she’d always kept them well stocked with medicines for wounds and all kinds of ailments.

After all, she lived alone. If she sustained a big gash from climbing a tree or caught the croup from a snotty child touching her wares at the market, she had to heal herself.

If she died in that cottage, Bandit would eventually have to eat her face.

Even if she thought of her looks as average, she’d prefer to be a ghost with a face.

The repetitive motion of pulling the drawers gave her mind some clarity.

She hurried up the ladder and grabbed a handful of beard of goat from a top drawer.

She had gathered it from the park yesterday.

Coming down, she missed a rung and nearly broke something but luckily grabbed hold of the ladder just in time.

“Hold on, Bandit.” She hastily crushed the green leaves with several drops of water in her new marble mortar and pestle. It was only one ingredient of several she usually needed for a healing poultice, but it was better than nothing.

When the poultice was ready to be applied, she dropped to her knees by the bed. She couldn’t tell where exactly Bandit was injured; there was just so much fur and blood. “Bandit, where does it hurt?”

She gently took his back paw and palpated his toe beans. She could feel that he still had five lives left, so he should be fine. But sometimes a catastrophic incident could make a cat lose all their remaining lives at once.

He opened his eyes but said nothing. His chest rose up and down too rapidly. Her hands were shaking so much, a blob of poultice dribbled off her fingers.

Then someone kneeled down right next to her.

“Mad warlock,” she whispered.

His eyes widened just a tiny bit at her nickname for him, but at the next second, he was unlatching the medical box that he’d brought with him.

The sure, deliberate way he fished out his tool and hooked it into his ears quieted Thorn’s thumping heart.

Then she remembered that the stray cats said he did experiments on them.

“You’re not siphoning off Bandit’s blood!” She slapped his hand away. The audacity of this man, taking advantage of a horrific situation to perform a bloodletting ritual on a cat that a witch had already claimed as her familiar. And right in front of said witch!

He held up the chest piece of the device. “It’s a stethoscope. I’m going listen to his heart and lungs.”

Thorn wouldn’t normally trust the words of a mad warlock, but on the side of his medical box was a logo of a happy cat and a dog. Surely a person who hated cats wouldn’t print that on their belongings. She dropped her hands to her lap.

The assured way the mad warlock checked Bandit over made her feel better. She didn’t know yet if it would help, if Bandit would be okay. It was just the knowledge that someone else was here trying to save Bandit, too, sharing her worry.

But as the minutes ticked by, her anxiety started to creep back in, because Bandit wasn’t unleashing his wrath on the mad warlock for the—albeit quite gentle—manhandling. When Thorn so much as nudged Bandit without his permission, he’d swipe at her.

“His breathing is stabilizing.” The mad warlock opened Bandit’s mouth, and the cat didn’t shred him into oblivion. Nothing short of a miracle. “When I press on his gums, they go pale, as they should, but then they turn nice and pink again almost immediately. Which is what we want to see.”

But then the man held on to Bandit’s paw a nanosecond too long.

SUFFER THE MURDER OF MY MITTS, WARLOCK! Sharp claws pierced through the bed linen.

The mad warlock took his hands and face out of Bandit’s radius of doom just in time. “I think he’ll be fine. No other wounds except for lacerations on that front right foot. Paw pads tend to bleed heavily.”

“Just cuts on his foot? Why does he look like he’s about to lose a couple of lives?”

“He must have gotten a bad scare. And that foot does need to be cleaned and bandaged.”

OVER YOUR DEAD BODY, WARLOCK!

“Bandit, I don’t have everything I need to make a wound poultice,” Thorn said. “And no one can help you if they’re dead.” At least, not right now—her drawers were far too empty to brew up a flask of Ghostly Summons.

She felt the mad warlock’s eyes on her. People often stared at her out of morbid curiosity, disgust, or pity. But the way he did it, it was as if he was genuinely interested in figuring out who she was.

“I need you,” he said.

Thorn’s heart skipped so many beats she might have died. Had a man fallen into her lap just like that? No potions required.

“Please hold Bandit for me.”

As Thorn silently chided herself for being a delusional fool, the mad warlock threw the blanket over Bandit and swaddled him tight.

Kill him now, witch. Or kill me.

“Hug him tight with one hand and feed him this with the other.” The man handed Thorn a small tube packet.

Bandit licked the end of the packet once, then completely surrendered himself to the god of treats. He no longer cared that the mad warlock had unwrapped his front paw from the blanket. Nom nom nom.

“What if this was poison?” Thorn asked, dismayed at her familiar’s lack of self-preservation.

I still have six lives to risk.

“It’s cheese and tuna,” the mad warlock said.

“Oh, I was talking to the cat. And, Bandit, you only have five lives left. Remember that gigantic wild boar you thought looked slow and delicious?”

Nom nom nom.

Thorn turned her attention to the warlock. He was applying something to Bandit’s foot. “What’s the pink potion? Wouldn’t it be more effective ingested?”

“This is an antibacterial solution to clean the wound and prevent infections.” He dabbed at Bandit’s paw with a wad of gauze and set about wrapping it up. He was so gentle, and Bandit so greedy, that Bandit only half hissed once, when a turn of the bandage was a little too tight.

“Sorry, Bandit,” the mad warlock said.

Thorn thought then that maybe he wasn’t a mad warlock but just a warlock.

With Bandit safe, she finally felt the muscle aches pulsing through her whole body.

She hadn’t sprinted like that since four years ago, when she was running from the boar Bandit had antagonized.

Four years might not seem like a long time, but for anyone past thirty, that contained millions of opportunities to fall into disrepair.

“What is he meowing?” the warlock asked as he examined Bandit’s foot, now encased in a yellow bandage adorned with black paw prints.

“He’s demanding more of this.” Thorn held up the empty packet.

“Tomorrow. I’ll come back. He needs his bandages changed daily for about a week. But if he isn’t eating, or if he’s lethargic or just isn’t acting right, call me.”

“I don’t have your number.”

“But you called me”—he eyed the cell phone in her hand—“ah, I see. You must have meant to call Meg.”

How did he know it was Meg you called? And how did he know to come when it was Meg you called? He must have spies. He’s an evil warlock! Take his soul. Then check that box of his for more packets.

“But he just saved you,” Thorn whispered.

From a scratch on my foot.

“You must have speed-dialed me by accident. Meg forgot to wipe her contacts from her old phone, then. She’ll be here soon. I called her on my way over.” The warlock was still on his knees, putting all his tools back in their rightful places in his medical box.

While he was focused, Thorn pulled out her dagger and unsheathed it. As she crept toward the warlock, she studied him: his luscious hair, his impressive beard. Even his forearms were hairier than her legs. What beautiful ignorance.

She swung.