Page 30 of Found in Obscurity

He’d be spitting those pills right out, no question about it.

And if the checkup wasn’t enough, he’d been taken away to be given a flea bath, and wow, rude. He didn’t have fleas, and he had taken very good care of himself living alone and in animal form for so long. He regularly dipped himself into creeks and lakes along the way, and overall looked very fluffy and nice, thank you very much.

Still, he had snipped and huffed through the bath, and then through the blow-dry. The only thing that had kept him from escaping altogether was the small hope that the vet might have been able to find a physical sign of the spell, or curse, or whatever the hell had been put on him to stop him shifting. He’d never trusted anyone enough to get checked out since it had happened five years ago, so maybe there was a trace ofsomething.

Just like everything else, it wasn’t going to be that easy.

He was proclaimed to be in perfect health. No abnormalities. The brief hope he had of Lorin learning that something had been done to him was squashed, and no matter how fleeting it had been, it still felt draining. He’d have to find a different way to tell Lorin. Some way to show him.

But it would happen another time. Now that it was all over, he was very much done with the day and wanted to go home.

Lorin’s open arms felt like the best reward ever after the whole thing was done, and being tucked back into the bike basket again felt like his favorite thing in the entire world.

Lorin stopped by a grocery store on the way and Kit followed him around to grab a few essentials for them both before takingthem back to their cabin. By the time they were back, Kit was half-asleep and ready to snuggle into their blanket on the couch.

Honestly, vets were the worst.

Wouldn’t recommend.

Chapter eight

Lorin

Magic room?

Or bedroom?

Magic room?

Bedroom?

Lorin stood at the bottom of the winding flight of stairs. The door to his parents’ room stood very close to him too. Calling him. Taunting him almost.

He didn’t really know which way would cause him less heartache and confusion. On one hand, his parents’ old bedroom surely held many memories of them, traces of them both would be scattered everywhere. On the other, the magic room was the core of a witch’s life. It would have the signature of his mother’s power. The very essence of her would be lingering in every corner of the room. It would surely pull Lorin in and unlock bits of his own currently unused powers.

Was he ready for that?

“What do you think?” He turned to look at Kit, who stood frozen about three feet from Lorin. He huffed a little and turned his head away.

Apparently Lorin still wasn’t completely forgiven for the whole vet visit. Kit had taken a melodramatic approach to letting Lorin know that once they were back in the cabin. He sprawled on the sofa on his back, huffing and whining. He walked as slowly as he could whenever Lorin would look his way, and as many times as Lorin caught him just being his regular self, the moment Kit realized he was being watched, he’d go back to his Victorian boy dying of influenza reenactment.

It was quite amusing, if completely unhelpful.

Realizing he wouldn’t be getting much input from his familiar, Lorin sighed and was trying to force himself to make a decision on his own when a flash of white brushed against him and disappeared up the stairs.

“Kit?” Lorin called after him, but got nothing in return except claws clicking on the wooden floor above Lorin’s head.

Magic room, it seemed.

He gripped the thin railing and climbed the first few steps, his legs feeling like lead as he dragged them up. The upper floor to the cabin had no door to truly separate it from the rest of the house, just a thin dark green curtain at the top of the stairs. It was still swaying from Kit’s barging in there, and Lorin caught it mid-movement when he reached the top.

He gripped the fabric, taking a few deep breaths before pulling it to the side and stepping into his mother’s magic room.

It felt like he could breathe the magic in. Like it was sticking to his skin. After all the years of being empty and unused, the room still thrummed with it. The slanted roof made the room look cramped but cozy, the narrowest spaces under it housing built-in cabinets and low shelves filled with books and boxes of things Lorin couldn’t even begin to imagine.

The middle of the room held a large desk, again stacked to the brim with books, scattered papers, and artifacts his mother had clearly used when accessing her magic. The glass of the cathedral-style window at the opposite end of the curtain where Lorin was standing was dusty and covered in grime accumulated over time. It let very little light in to allow Lorin to see much detail in the room.

Where his grandmother had clearly done things to make the bottom floor of the cabin suitable for him to live, the magic room just looked like his mother would return at any moment to fiddle with spells and use her things. It looked like she had just left to grab some missing ingredients before delving back into her work.