Blonde With a Wand Read Online Free PDF Page A

inside my apartment.” With all this talk of neutering, she couldn’t afford to loosen her grip on the cat. She’d done this deed, and she had the responsibility for setting it right.
    “All right.” Edna opened the main door. “I can help you into your apartment, too, if you want.”
    “That would be great.” Anica and Edna climbed the stairs to the second floor. “My keys are in my purse.” Moments later, as Edna took her purse from her arm and started fishing around, Anica wondered if that had been such a bright plan.
    “This is a strange-looking thing.” Edna held up Anica’s wand. “Is it a pen? I don’t see any point.”
    Anica laughed. “Oh, that. Just a piece of driftwood I picked up and polished because I thought it was pretty. Then I saw something on TV about using a sturdy pointed object for self-defense, so I decided to carry it.” The more she had to lie, the less comfy she felt.
    “We wouldn’t need to defend ourselves if men were all neutered,” Edna said darkly. Eventually she located Anica’s keys and opened the door to her apartment. Orion was at the door, paws prancing in delight. Then he sniffed the air and backed up, growling. Obviously he’d smelled Jasper.
    “Don’t forget. First thing, get him fixed,” Edna said.
    “To be sure. Thanks for the help, Miss Shoumatoff.” Anica stepped into her apartment and shoved the door closed with her hip. Orion was gone, probably hiding in the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink.
    As she began to lower her bundle to the floor, Jasper gave a mighty heave and broke free, wiggling out of his confinement. Dropping globs of chocolate mousse on her beige carpet, he streaked toward the nearest open door, which happened to be her bedroom.
    She ran after him. “No! Don’t go under the . . .” A smear of chocolate mousse on her white Belgian lace bed skirt marked Jasper’s passage. She dropped to her knees beside the bed. She thought he might be black, although the mousse all over his coat made it hard to tell.
    She’d forgotten all about the mousse, but the take-out carton must have been under the pile of clothes. She’d scooped up cat and mousse together. Someday she might have the distance from this horrible experience to laugh about that. But this wasn’t that day.
    Lifting the bed skirt, she peered under the bed. “Jasper, please come out.”
    Jasper was nothing more than a dark shadow hunkered under the exact middle of the double bed.
    “We have to clean that mousse off.”
    He didn’t move.
    “I can’t work a spell to change you back to a man unless you come out.”
    No response.
    “Look, I can see why you wouldn’t trust me. You may not believe this, but I’ve never turned a person into an animal in my entire career as a witch. I’m not proud of losing my temper like that, but what’s done is done. Now I have to fix you.”
    Jasper growled.
    “Sorry, bad word choice. I have to transform you. I won’t let anyone near you with a scalpel, I promise. Now, come on out, like a—” She stopped herself before she called him a good kitty . Jasper was not a cat, no matter how much he might look like one at the moment.
    Or act like one. That maneuver of running under the bed was very catlike. While she was mostly horrified at what she’d done to another human being, she couldn’t help being curious about how this transformation had affected Jasper.
    Would he still think like a man or would he think like a cat? Would he develop a taste for cat food or would he crave a human diet? Would he hate the idea of a bath and prefer to lick the mousse off himself?
    Yikes. Chocolate was fine for people but potentially bad for cats. “Listen, Jasper, if you feel the urge to lick that mousse, don’t. Some cats have a severe reaction to chocolate. It makes them very sick.”
    She believed he understood human speech, so she decided to add a clincher to the warning. “If you ingest the chocolate, you could end up at the vet, and I’m sure my