All Hallows' Hangover (3 page)

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 found someone special to share his life with.

What if Daniel took him to the pound?

Teddy couldn’t stop the whine that escaped his lips. He had to stop those kind of thoughts right now. He still didn’t have the urge to lift his leg on the furniture, so he wasn’t all dog yet, and he had a plan.

If only Daniel would get off him and open the door.

Teddy made himself lie still and let Daniel stroke the top of his head through the blanket.

“Much better, dude,” Daniel said, his hand still stroking Teddy’s head, which Teddy had to admit felt kind of good, in an interesting, awkward way. “See, we can get along, right? You got a tag or anything? Man, I didn’t even know someone brought a dog last night. How wasted was I, right? But we gotta get you back where you belong.”

Teddy fought to urge to tell Daniel he was where he belonged. The words would only come out as a growl again, and that wouldn’t do him any good.

“Danny?”

Teddy caught a whiff of the unique scent his nose told him was Lilibeth, Daniel’s half-elf girlfriend. She must have come out of the bedroom to see what all the ruckus was about. The woodsy scent she brought with her was part pine and part jasmine and buried beneath the pungent odor of weed and overlaid with the cool, moist odor of outdoors, which told Teddy both of them had been partying in Daniel’s bedroom with the window open.

The combined scents made Teddy want to run. Just take off at top speed down a forest path, maybe scare up a rabbit or two, and let the wind blow through his fur as his ears flapped back with the pure joy of the chase.

His legs actually twitched with the need to run.

That wasn’t good.

“What are you doing out here?” Lilibeth’s melodious voice had the slight slur of the happily but not thoroughly stoned. “And why are you on top of Teddy?”

What?

She could see through the spell?

“Yes!” Teddy said.

The exclamation came out as a short, happy bark.

“Huh?” Daniel lifted the corner of the blanket away from Teddy’s face. “Honey, unless I’m really wasted, this is a dog. Looks like a dog, feels like a dog. Barks like a dog.” He gestured at Teddy with one hand. “Dog.”

Teddy shook his head, and Daniel gave him a quizzical look.

Lilibeth giggled. “Teddy,” she said, making the same
ta-da!
gesture toward Teddy that Daniel had.

“Dude.” Daniel drew the word out. “Man, why didn’t you tell me? That’s messed up.”

He managed to get to his feet without tripping on the blanket. Teddy shook the blanket off, then just shook himself for good measure because it felt so good, right down to his spine.

Lilibeth came over to crouch in front of Teddy. Her eyes were the most beautiful shade of green, her hair the copper gold of the setting sun. Even half-stoned, she was the most graceful creature Teddy had ever seen. He’d always thought she was beautiful in a hands-off, she’s someone else’s girlfriend kind of way, but now he had the urge to lay down at her feet like she was royalty.

And that was another dog thought. Definitely not good.

He was going to have to fight to keep himself human. He made himself stay on his paws.

His feet, damn it. His feet.

Lilibeth held her hand out, palm not quite touching the fur on the top of his head. “This wasn’t your choice, was it?”

Teddy shook his head.

“Duuude,” Daniel said. “You’re talking to a dog.”

“Teddy,” Lilibeth said. “I’m talking to Teddy.” She frowned. “For now. You’re fading. You can feel it, can’t you?”

Teddy barked in agreement.

“The spell needs to be broken, and soon.” Lilibeth stroked his head and down his neck, her eyes never leaving his. When her hand reached his chest, her eyes darkened. “And it’s something I don’t have the power to do.”

“You can break spells?” Daniel asked. “Man, I did not know that about you. How cool is that?”

Teddy thought it would have been cooler if she could have broken this one.

“Spells cast by word,” Lilibeth said, “can be broken with the right word. My mother taught me many of them. Spells cast by potion?” She shook her head, her copper gold hair cascading over her shoulders.

Potion. He’d been turned into a dog by a potion.

The bubbling, steaming bottle of booze that had tasted so wonderful.

The empty bottle wasn’t on the coffee table where he remembered leaving it. Teddy trotted out to the kitchen and nosed through the trash. He couldn’t remember what the potion had smelled like, but he certainly remembered the scent of the woman who’d brought it.

There!

He pushed the bottle onto the floor with his nose. Not having hands was a pain, but at least he’d figured out how to move things around with his nose.

Lilibeth picked up the bottle with two fingers, like it was poison. Teddy supposed that in a way it was.

The bottle had a label pasted to the bottom, but Teddy couldn’t read it. The words seemed to blend and blur, and he had a horrible thought that he was losing the ability to read.

Teddy nudged the bottom of the bottle.

“Dude, I think he wants us to look at something,” Daniel said.

Teddy barked, feeling less like himself and more like Lassie trying to tell people Timmy was stuck in the bottom of the well.

Lilibeth tilted the bottle to look at the label. “Emporium Magique. I know this place.” She smiled down at Teddy. “Now we have a place to start.”

6

The little bell over the front door of Emporium Magique rang at exactly eleven fifteen, rousing Tabby from a sound sleep.

She’d just put her head down on the counter for a few minutes. She’d managed to inventory half of the store—without any help from her familiar, thank you very much—and she hadn’t been able to keep her eyes open any longer. But the bell certainly woke her up, especially since the front door had been locked.

Two people and a dog stood inside the store.

Tabby recognized the woman, a gorgeous half-elf named Lilibeth who purchased herbs from Tabby on a semi-regular basis. She didn’t know the man she was with. He looked like any number of regular guys on the street. Skinny in a wiry kind of way, brown hair a little long and messy, and just the slightest glaze of something mood altering in his blue eyes.

And thankfully not a hint of lovesickness when he looked at her.

He wasn’t the guy.

Tabby didn’t allow pets in her store—Terrique wasn’t a pet by any stretch of the imagination—and she was about to tell Lilibeth that when she got a good look at the dog.

Specifically, at his eyes.

The soulful brown eyes of the man in her fantasies.

Tabby felt the pull of those brown eyes as the dog looked back at her.

And growled.

Lilibeth pulled a bottle from the man’s backpack. “We need to break this spell,” she said.

The dog’s growl got louder.

“Soon would be good,” Lilibeth added.

Tabby agreed. Her familiar had turned this poor man into a dog. No wonder he was pissed.

“Coming right up,” Tabby said. She only hoped the brief nap she’d taken had recharged her batteries enough to cast the reversing spell.

She ducked into the storeroom and down a long aisle to where the transformation potions were kept. She would have never guessed in a million years that her familiar would have used a transformation potion, although it made a certain amount of sense now that she thought about it. Halloween was the time when Terrique transformed from her usual cat form to human.

But why a dog? Terrique hated dogs.

“Because he couldn’t keep his paws off me.”

Terrique was stretched out on top of the box that held all the ingredients Tabby needed to break the transformation spell. Her front paws were crossed in something Tabby thought of as her diva look. She had a snooty look on her face and tip of her tail was twitching.

“I was going to turn him into a cat,” Terrique said. “I know how you love cats.”

Not so much at this moment, Tabby thought.

“I heard that.” Terrique’s tail flipped over her back before it beat a rhythm on the box. “Anyway, I’m not sure who disappointed me the most. This man, because he’s such a hound dog, I believe the expression is. Or you, because you’ve allowed yourself to form a connection with him.”

The dog in her store was the man she’d been daydreaming about? The literal man of her dreams?

And he’d thrown himself at
Terrique?

Well, of course he had.

“You went out looking like me!” Tabby threw up her hands in exasperation. “And in that outfit. What did you expect? I wouldn’t even wear something like that.”

“That was the point.”

“Augh!”

Tabby didn’t have the time or the energy for this. “Off the box,” she said. “I need to break your spell before that poor man out there becomes a dog for real.”

The spell had lasted beyond sunrise, which meant Terrique must have given him a double dose. Or, heaven forbid, a triple dose. If that was the case, Tabby didn’t have much time and neither did her fantasy man.

Terrique took her sweet time stretching, but she eventually sauntered off the box. Tabby ripped open the top and sorted through ingredients as fast as she could.

Show tunes sung in her familiar’s off-key caterwauling started playing in her mind.

“I am going to cut you off catnip,” she said.

“Idle threats,” Terrique said before she resumed a truly horrible rendition of “Memory.”

Tabby threw the ingredients into a plastic bag, zipped it shut, and shook it. Then she took a piece of chalk from her pocket and drew a circle around herself on the storeroom’s concrete floor.

Out front, the dog started to bark.

The caterwauling got louder.

Tabby tried to shut it all out and concentrate on the ingredients in the plastic bag. She needed to infuse the ingredients with a bit of power from herself—more than a bit, considering the power of the spell he was under—but that power was just out of reach.

She wasn’t strong enough yet.

Terrique started in on “Rum Tum Tugger.”

Tabby heard Lilibeth shout, “Teddy, no!” and the man she was with cry, “Dude!”

The dog burst into the storeroom at a dead run, claws scraping on the concrete floor. His barks echoed inside Tabby’s skull as he made a beeline right for Terrique.

The caterwauling ended in a screech as Tabby’s familiar took off across the boxes, the dog in hot pursuit.

He must have recognized her by smell. Either that or he’d transformed all the way into a dog who hated all cats on sight.

How was she supposed to work like this? Dead on her feet, power drained to almost nothing, and a man’s life in her hands. Not to mention her familiar’s life. Terrique wouldn’t be afforded a new shape if the dog ripped her to shreds. She’d be doomed to live the rest of eternity as an unbound spirit, and Tabby would never see or hear from her again.

The mere thought of that nearly made her cry. As annoying as Terrique could be, Tabby couldn’t imagine life without her little Terri, a nickname her familiar thoroughly hated.

“Concentrate,” she muttered. She could do this. She’d created spells under far worse conditions, although at that moment she couldn’t think of when.

Emotions amped up her power, and right now Tabby was riding the crest of an emotional tidal wave. She reached deep within herself, grabbed that power with both hands, and threw it at the plastic bag.

She’d over-estimated herself. Power ripped into the bag and combined with the ingredients Tabby had mixed for the spell. The bag disintegrated in a shower of bits of plastic while the spell itself, now a living thing, roiled in the air, held inside the confines of the chalk circle.