“I live here, and I think I do know what’s going on,” she said with some heat. In fact, she stood up behind the counter, her chair almost bouncing with the suddenness of her shift. Willeen took a step back.
The woman actually bridled. Now Fiji knew exactly what writers meant when they said that. “When are you going to do something about it?” Willeen demanded.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Fiji said, exasperated. “For all you know, I could have a cauldron of wizard lips and bunny tails simmering on the stove.”
Willeen looked very startled and actually made a move toward the hall door, but Fiji said, “That’s private, Willeen.”
“Are you really doing something?”
Fiji nodded.
“Are you facing the powers of evil?”
Willeen was incurably dramatic. She had rescripted her life to resemble a daytime drama.
“Yes,” Fiji said on impulse. “I am.”
Willeen gaped. “Really? Do you . . . need my help, at all?”
It was brave of Willeen to ask, really, but Fiji didn’t want to torment the woman. “It’s being taken care of,” she whispered with great significance.
Willeen was delighted and frightened, all at the same time. “Goddess be praised,” she breathed, though if Fiji was any judge Willeen didn’t have any conception of what goddess she meant.
Fiji rang up the tarot deck and the mystical greeting cards Willeen had picked out. At least Willeen always purchased something. But she just buys things so she can carry around her purchases in an Inquiring Mind gift bag, so someone will ask her what kind of shop it is, Fiji thought. She gave Willeen a courteous nod as she handed over the bag with the charge slip inside.
Willeen nodded back very seriously, as if they shared some great and portentous secret. She departed in a flutter of skirt and after a complete redraping of the shawl.
Fiji collapsed back into the rolling chair behind the counter. She wondered if it would be so very bad if she had two grilled cheese sandwiches with her soup at lunch. If I’m thinking about food, I must be getting over being a killer, she thought.
Mr. Snuggly gathered himself and jumped up onto the low work area below the counter. “I have been over to see the Rev,” the cat said. “He has prayed for that man’s soul. So don’t worry any more about him.”
It was just weird how the cat often divined her moods and the subject of her thoughts. Of course, he was supposed to be her familiar, but Mr. Snuggly seemed more familiar with his own wants than with how to help her do witchcraft.
“How did my aunt get you to actually do some work?” Fiji asked.
“That is a . . . tactless way to put it,” the cat said stiffly.
“I was just wondering. I know you were her familiar, but how did that relationship work? That’s a more accurate question, right? Now you’re mine, but I haven’t seen you do anything that was familiar-like.”
“Mildred picked me out as a kitten,” he said. “I was adorable, of course, and she knew I was special.”
“Did she?” Fiji was far more interested that she would have been under other circumstances. “Were there any other kittens in your litter that could have been, ah, special cats like you?”
“I had an excellent mother and five siblings,” Mr. Snuggly said rather stiffly. “They were very striking, of course.”
“Of course.”
“So when Mildred came to see us—we were born under the church, you know—”
“I did not know that.”
“We were! The Rev was most kind. He put food and water out for my mother so she wouldn’t have to leave us for long periods of time, and he found us homes.”
“Ahhhhhh . . . I don’t suppose any of your siblings could talk?”
The cat glared at Fiji. “Of course not. Though they were all delightful.”
“I’m sure they were. Could you always talk? From birth?”
“No,” Mr. Snuggly said, in a tone best described as “frosty.”
“I only discovered this ability when I was several months old and living here.”
“I wonder if you would have talked if you’d lived with someone other than Aunt Mildred?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He jumped down and walked away. She could hear his voice trailing away as he went down the hall, and she stood to look after him. “Come to give a little comfort, and she asks about my family. My family! As if they could help being good, honest, plain cats . . .”
Impulsively, Fiji called, “How come you were under the car?”
The cat looked at her over his shoulder. “I was there because you needed a focus point. You needed to give him the biggest dose of bad you could, and my proximity helped. And that is what a familiar does.”