Thoroughly Kissed (13 page)

“Listen,” Casper said. “I let Marley get a beer. We all know how that ended up.”

“I'm
thirsty
,” Michael snapped.

A tall glass of water appeared in his hand. “There, you whiner,” Casper said. “I have no idea what Emma sees in you.”

“She sees something in me?”

Casper rolled his eyes. “She asked you to go with her, didn't she?”

“Yes, but—”

“She showed you her magic, didn't she?”

“Yes, but—”

“She flirted with you, didn't she?”

“I think so, but—”

“You
think
so? The woman's terrified of being kissed, and still she flirts with you. You should be flattered by that.”

“Terrified of being kissed?”

“You didn't know?”

“How should I know that? Who's afraid of being kissed, anyway?”

“Sleeping Beauty,” Casper said.

“That's not how the fairy tale ends.”

“Do you believe everything you read?” Casper said.

“I distinctly remember a happily ever after in that fairy tale,” Michael said. “Happily ever after would include kissing.”

Casper raised his hands to the ceiling. “
I'm tired of dealing with mortals!
” he shouted, as if he expected someone else to be listening.

Michael looked up and saw nothing, only the flickering candlelight on the expensive wood ceiling planks. “You know, you and that cat aren't that different.”

“I don't lie,” Casper said.

“The cat lies?”

“All cats lie.”

Somehow Michael believed that.

“Look,” Casper said. “I've come as close as I can to breaking all the rules—and believe me, that's not something I ever want to do again, so you know I'm real serious about this.”

“About what?”

“Rethink saying no to Emma. She needs you.”

“She needs someone,” he said. “I'll help her find a traveling companion.”

“You really are a nincompoop.”

“Should the Ghost of Christmas Present talk that way?” Michael said.

“It's the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. If someone had told Scrooge that years earlier, maybe the man wouldn't have been such a stuffed shirt.”

“I'm not a stuffed shirt,” Michael said, but he was speaking to the air. Casper—and the candles—were gone. The only thing that remained was the glass of water.

Michael took a sip. The water was the crispest, cleanest, clearest water he had ever tasted. It was so good that it made him forget all about having a beer. It quenched his thirst almost immediately—

And then the glass vanished too.

“Hey,” Michael shouted at the ceiling, just as Casper had done a moment earlier. “I was enjoying that!”

But he got no answer. And, after a moment, he stretched out on his bed, to think about all he had seen. He closed his eyes, and within seconds, he fell asleep.

***

Michael woke up, his entire body tense. Something was wrong; he could feel it. His stomach twisted. It was happening again.

He opened his eyes to find sunlight across his bed. His body was tense because he had fallen asleep with his back on the bed and his feet on the floor. He wasn't wearing a nightshirt—and there was no flannel nightcap on the blanket beside him. His feet were bare. The robe was where he had left it when he went to bed, and his slippers were tucked near the bed on the clean hardwood floor.

A dream. It had all been a dream. A very realistic dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Still, he scooted up on the bed, moved a pile of books and picked up the phone's receiver. No more English thespians reciting Dickens. Instead, he heard the blessedly familiar sound of a dial tone. He never thought that noise would fill him with such joy.

He snatched his robe off the nearby chair, and then went to the window. It opened with no effort at all. It hadn't been glued shut—or painted shut—or magicked shut. It worked just like it always had.

A young boy zoomed by on his skateboard and Michael resisted the urge to call out to him.

Boy! What day is this!

Michael grinned. He wondered if the British accent he always picked up when he was in England would have returned this morning. But the boy rolled on by, and Michael missed his chance to test it.

He wasn't Scrooge, after all, and this wasn't Christmas morning, and he hadn't seen a large goose in the window of a shop down the street.

Fortunately. He would have to wonder about his sanity if he did.

He felt an odd, unfamiliar kind of euphoria. Emma was still alive—no death in the desert for her—and that talking cat (amazing how such things made sense in dreams!) was just a figment of his overwrought imagination. Everything was fine. He was in Madison, it was May, and he'd had the strangest nightmare of his life.

And it was over now. The nightmare, not his life. Odd how some dreams were so very vivid and others faded away the moment a man woke up.

He turned around, still feeling giddy, and froze in place, staring at his baseball bat. It wasn't in his closet. It was leaning against the wall, just behind the door, exactly where he had set it when the little man had entered his bedroom.

“Sleepwalking,” he murmured. That was the only explanation. Or at least, the only explanation he'd accept.

Because if he believed he had a nocturnal visitor, he'd have to believe that somehow Emma Lost would be—well, lost—without him. And he couldn't believe that. He wouldn't believe that. Any more than he would believe that Grumpy was really named Casper, and was the Ghost of Christmas Future masquerading as the Ghost of Christmas Present.

It was too ridiculous. And Michael Found wasn't a man who tolerated the ridiculous in any way.

For the fifth time, she held up her favorite shawl, and for the fifth time, she set it back on the bed. Emma stared at it, the white lace too ethereal for a chilly Oregon day, but perfect for a cool Midwestern evening. She had bought the shawl to wear in Madison, and she had done so. She couldn't imagine wearing it in Portland.

She sighed. If she needed it, she supposed, she could probably spell it to Portland. Or have Aethelstan do so. The rules didn't prevent him from bringing her stuff to him. Just her.

Darnell perched on the pillow, watching her through slit eyes. He was too disturbed to even pretend he was asleep. He had been through this before—the trip out to Madison had been a nightmare, and she had promised him he would never have to endure a long car trip again.

Now she was breaking that promise.

She picked up the lid of her largest cloth suitcase, and tried to close it over everything she had packed. It looked impossible. She glanced at Darnell, wondering if he would weigh it down for her, but he closed his eyes completely.

Whoever said that cats didn't have opinions had never really watched one.

She sat on top of the suitcase and worked the zipper closed. Then she tugged the suitcase off the bed, and let it thump onto the floor. Thank whatever technological god there was that someone had put wheels on suitcases. She had no idea how people would have survived without that particular invention.

Then she brushed off her hands and stared at her bedroom. It looked as if someone had raided it. Pictures were missing, and so was her jewelry case. A few drawers on her dresser still stood open, revealing only bits of thread and sachets inside. A hanger still swung back and forth in her empty closet, and an abandoned pair of shoes tumbled against each other like unwanted children.

She was leaving all her furniture here, and bundling the house up tight. She had given her key to one of her closer friends, and had received a promise that the friend would check the house once a week in good weather—and every day in stormy. That was the best she could do.

She wheeled the suitcase to the front door, next to the rest of the luggage set, Darnell's cat bed—which he hated and never used, but always insisted on having with him—several of her favorite blankets, her pillow, and a cooler full of food. Her cell phone sat on top of the pile, along with its cord and recharger. Her computer was back in its box, her disks in another box. Her research for her next book was in a third box, and the novels she had planned to read this summer—before the magic struck—were in yet another box.

Fortunately her car was pretty large. She had no idea how she would have gotten this stuff into something small.

She went into the kitchen and pulled out the cans of Darnell's food, along with his water dish and bowl. On impulse, she took her favorite coffee mug out of the cabinet. Then she stared out the kitchen window at her garden.

She wouldn't get to see how spring eased into summer. She had watched the other seasons turn, but she would miss this one, and it was the most important. She wouldn't see which of her strange Midwestern plants blossomed into flowers, and which had only green leaves. She wouldn't see how the yard looked in the height of its color.

She leaned her head against the glass. It felt cool against her skin—little comfort for what she was feeling. The pit of her stomach churned. The Fates had told her to bring someone with her, not to trust Darnell alone, and she was defying them. Not on purpose, but because she had no other choice.

Emma hoped they would forgive her.

From the counter, she grabbed a box of tuna-flavored cat treats. She was going to try her first intentional spell. Darnell had to speak, and he had to understand the countermanding words she was going to teach him.

She hoped this would work. Because if it didn't, she had no idea what she was going to do.

***

He couldn't help himself. Michael grabbed an apple for breakfast and left his house through the kitchen door. He was lying to himself, and he knew it. He swore he was walking toward Emma Lost's because it was a beautiful spring morning and he needed the exercise. But what he was really doing was reassuring himself that she was going to be all right.

The neighborhood was quiet. Most people were still inside, preparing for their day. He could hear the traffic on University Avenue a few blocks away, but no cars turned down their quiet street.

He had moved to this part of the city because the thick trees and twisty streets had appealed to him. The center of campus was more than two miles away, which he felt was perfect. He could walk there on warm days, and on cold or rainy days, drive without the least bit of guilt.

Guilt, which was what he was experiencing now. And he hadn't even done anything.

Emma Lost's house was the twin to his, a coincidence that had bothered him when he first figured it out. He had always imagined that a couple with no sense of history would buy that house. After all, the previous owners had gutted the interior in the 1960s, long after Frank Lloyd Wright had designed the place. They had removed the stone fireplace and put in a modern one. They had taken out the sloping patio wall, and the built-in furniture, and they had changed the kitchen. He had seen that house first, and felt like it was a masterpiece that had been defaced. He couldn't imagine living inside it.

Yet, Emma Lost had. That was enough to prove to him that she had no real respect for history, for all that people had lost throughout the years. She was young, impulsive, and difficult, and he couldn't imagine rearranging his life to take her to Oregon just because he had had a bad dream.

As he approached the house, he saw a car in her driveway. The car's trunk was open and suitcases filled it. The car was silver—the same silver he'd seen in the dream.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. Coincidence, he told himself. He had seen her car before. It had registered in his subconscious, but not his conscious, and he had brought it forth in that silly dream.

As he got closer, he realized that the car was a BMW—one of the larger, newer models. She had probably purchased it with the money from her bestselling book.

The thought made him pause.
Was
he jealous of her as she had insisted? He'd never had a bestselling book, and he'd put more work into his. His history was accurate. Hers was based on—well, magic at best, imagination at worst.

Imagination. She was certainly affecting his. The next thing he'd probably see would be a talking black house cat, sitting in the front seat, waiting for his mistress to drive him on his next adventure.

Michael reached the stone wall that divided Emma's property from her neighbor's. The car's trunk was nearly full, and the back was stuffed as well. He saw a catbed in its own place on the seat, with an untipable travel water dish and a small container of cat food in the window. A cat box was on the floor.

Goose bumps rose on his arms.

More coincidences. He knew she was leaving, he had seen the cat before, and it was logical that she'd take him with her.

He stepped around the car, peering in the side. Blankets, a cooler, and a pillow. That would help. The car seemed like it was in good shape—

The front door banged, and Michael whirled, feeling guilty for peering into Emma's car. But the guilt left immediately, replaced by a something that felt closer to terror.

A big, black lion bounded out the door, its golden eyes frantic. It saw Michael, growled, and ran across the street. Emma hurried to the door, yelling, “Darnell! Darnell, stop!”

But the lion continued, plowing through the neighbor's roses and roaring in pain.

Emma started across the street. Michael peeled himself off the side of the car, and blinked, wondering if he should call animal control.

Emma reached the roses and stopped. “Darnell!” she said, and there were tears in her voice. “I'm sorry, really. I didn't mean to do this. I was trying to—”

“I know what you were trying to do!” A deep, male voice rumbled from the lilacs beside the neighbor's house. “It didn't work!”

“I'm sorry—”

“Sorry isn't good enough,” the voice said. Michael was holding his breath. He knew that voice. He'd heard it in his dream the night before. It was the cat's voice.

The cat she had called Darnell.

Casper had called him Darnell, too.

That was one coincidence too many. Michael started across the street.

“Darnell, please. I can't leave you here, and if you stay like that, then something will happen to you. Remember that Katharine Hepburn movie we saw?
Bringing
Up
Baby
. The one with the lion?”

“It wasn't a lion. It was a leopard.” Darnell sounded as contrary in real life as he did in dreams.

“It doesn't matter,” Emma said. “They had some people come after the cat and tie it up and take it to a circus.”

“There aren't many circuses anymore,” Michael said as he stopped beside her.

Emma jumped so high that he wondered if she'd ever tried out for women's basketball. When she landed, she glanced up at him. He smiled, showing a calmness he didn't exactly feel.

“What she's trying to tell you, Darnell, is that if anyone sees a lion in this neighborhood, they're going to call animal control. If they discover that you're a black lion—which, I believe, has never occurred before in nature—they're going to study you and dissect you and—”

“I'll be famous. I've watched enough television. They'll make me a celebrity.” He actually sounded pleased by this.

Michael frowned. A cat was a cat was a cat. Wasn't that the point of the dream last night? That the cat had behaved according to its feline nature, not common sense?

“They'll force you to go on tour, parade you in front of people when you want a nap—”

“Pet me, worship me, feed me anything I want.”

“No,” Michael said. “That would be if you were still a house cat. But you're a lion. People are afraid of lions. They'll cage you, subdue you with a chair.”

“And a whip,” Emma said a little too eagerly.

“I thought you said there were no more circuses.” Darnell's voice held suspicion.

“I said there aren't that many. But that means there are a few. Why, just an hour from here, in Baraboo, is the Barnum and Bailey Circus Museum, a tribute to the most famous circus of all.”

“We saw that driving here last fall, Darnell, remember?” Emma said. “I pointed it out to you.”

The cat cursed. The words were filled with invective, and had something to do with mice butts, bird beaks, and teeny tiny brains. Then he came out of the bushes.

Lilac petals covered his large back, making him look as if he had gained purple and white spots. He padded forward on his big paws, looking very uncomfortable. The mane changed the look of his face, but the gold eyes were the same ones Michael had seen the night before.

Darnell walked up to Michael, then sat. “I don't like you, pal. You were going to leave me last night.”

“Last night?” Emma asked.

Michael sighed. The final confirmation, not that he needed it. Damn Casper. Damn Emma. Damn them all. This wasn't his business. “Casper told me to.”

“
Casper
is an idiot,” Darnell said.

“Casper?” Emma asked.

“Don't ask,” Michael said.

“Look,” Darnell said. “I can handle it from here. I got the message of the damn dream. I'll say the words on time and in the right order—”

“You didn't say them in the right order?” Michael asked.

“They don't make a lot of sense,” the lion said. “I'm fluent in English because I have to listen to it all the time, but I draw the line at Norse or whatever the hell that is.”

“What is?” Emma asked. “What's going on? Why are you talking to my cat?”

“Because he's talking to me,” Michael said.

“We don't need you,” Darnell said. “She and I will be just fine.”

“That's not what Casper said.”

“
Casper
lies,” Darnell said.

“That's what he says about you.”

The lion snorted. “Then why didn't he tell you his real name?”

“He didn't want to,” Michael said.

“What
is
this?” Emma asked.

“This idiot thinks he's your hero,” Darnell said.

“No.” The word came out of Michael's mouth quickly, although he wasn't sure if that was because he objected to being called a hero or being called an idiot by a lion who used to be a house cat.

“I don't understand,” Emma said.

“It doesn't matter,” Michael said.

“It does to me!” Darnell growled the words. “You left me to die.”

“I've never met you before.”

“Yes, you did. Last night.”

“And Casper told you that wasn't real.”

“Casper who?” Emma asked.

Michael ran a hand through his hair. This wasn't going at all like he had planned. “I thought you needed help getting to Oregon.”

Emma straightened her spine. “I have help.”

“Darnell? He won't fit in your car.”

“He will in a minute.”

“That's what she said fifteen minutes ago,” Darnell said. “I hate being this big. I don't fit into my bed.”

“You have never liked that bed,” Emma said.

“But it's mine,” Darnell said.

She shook her head. “I'll fix it.”

“That's what you've been saying—”

“Stop!” Michael raised his hands. How did one woman create so much chaos? Everything else in his life seemed orderly compared with her. “Do you have any human help?”

“Oh, so now he's a bigot,” Darnell said.

Michael felt his face grow warm. Maybe he would strangle that cat… when Emma got him back to the proper size.

“What business is it of yours?” Emma asked.