Chapter 3 ITEM #9
He was enormous. Silver-grey, fluffy in a way that looked like he’d been electrocuted, with a tail as thick as her arm. His eyes were ice blue and currently full of deep, personal offense. He had a tiny black collar with a bent moon charm.
And he was staring at her like she was the discount
They looked at each other.
Virelle, with lavender in her hair and a cold cottage behind her: “...hi?”
The cat sneezed. A tiny, indignant pft.
And then he stood up, walked past her into her kitchen like he owned the deed, sniffed her failed hearthstone, and sat on it.
The cottage, for the first time all day, made a sound. Not a creak hello. A low, surprised hum.
The cat looked at Virelle, then at the cold stove, then back at Virelle, as if to say: "You call this a hearth?"
From outside, the wind picked up. The thirty-day clock in the kitchen — the one the Agency installed, that she’d never noticed before — tick
ed loudly.
The cat did not like her cottage.
Virelle knew this because he had been sitting on her cold hearthstone for ten full minutes, staring at the dead stove like it had personally insulted his mother.
He was even bigger up close. The wicker basket he came in was now in pieces, kicked into the corner. His silver-grey fur was long and thick, but matted on one side like he'd been sleeping in a box for a very long time — which, according to his delivery slip, he had.
The slip was stuck to his head.
Virelle peeled it off carefully. He allowed it, but his tail thumped once, hard, against her stove.
ITEM #9: CAT. LARGE. SILVER. MALE. 7 YEARS. TEMPORARILY NON-VERBAL.
NAME: ROWAN
NOTES: CURSED. GRUMPY. WILL NOT CUDDLE. WILL NOT COME WHEN CALLED. DOES NOT LIKE: WET FOOD, LOUD NOISES, BEING TOUCHED WITHOUT PERMISSION, INCOMPETENT WITCHES.
FEEDING: HE FEEDS HIMSELF. LEAVE HIM ALONE.
WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE COLLAR.
At the bottom, in tiny print that had been circled three times in red ink: _Delivery witch reports he stared at her for 20 minutes straight without blinking. 10/10 would not deliver again.
Virelle looked down at Rowan. Rowan looked up at Virelle.
"Hi," she whispered. "I'm Virelle. I guess I'm your... witch?"
Rowan sneezed.
It was a tiny, offended sound. Pft.
"Gesundheit?"
He stood up, stretched — his body was as long as her forearm — and jumped off the hearthstone. He landed on her kitchen table with a thud that shook her chipped yellow mug.
He sniffed the mug. He sniffed the pink FINAL NOTICE letter. He sniffed her hand. Then he looked profoundly disappointed by all three.
"Okay, rude," Virelle said.
She was still in Mrs. Albie's giant coat, still cold, still holding a cold hearthstone. And now she had a cat who was judging her interior design choices.
She tried what the library book said. Step 1 of Familiar Bonding: Make eye contact and offer your magic.
She knelt so she was eye level with him. His eyes were ice-blue, not cute cat blue, but winter-sky, human blue. It was unnerving.
"Okay, Rowan. I'm going to try to bond. Don't be scared."
She held out her hands, the way Head Witch Ilara had taught them. She thought about home. About soup. About belonging.
A tiny spark — the same spark from the hall — sputtered in her chest. It crawled to her fingertips.
Rowan watched it, unimpressed.
The spark died halfway.
Rowan yawned, showing teeth that were much too sharp and too white for a cat, and then deliberately knocked her yellow mug off the table.
It shattered.
Virelle stared at the pieces. That mug had been her grandmother's.
"Why would you—" Her voice cracked. It was all too much. The hall. The meh. The cold cottage. The final notice. The cat who hated her. She bent to pick up the pieces and dust from the herb jars she’d spilled earlier that morning went up her nose.
Pepper and lavender.
She sneezed. Hard.
ACHOO!
The cottage lights — which hadn’t worked all day — flickered violently.
Rowan the cat froze. His fur stood straight up. His blue eyes went wide.
And then, with a sound like someone pulling a sweater inside-out, he exploded.
The little moon charm on his collar began to glow. And then he started to change. Fur pulling, stretching—
But Virelle’s nose was still burning from the pepper.
Before she could even open her eyes from the first sneeze, a second one ripped out of her.
ACHOO!
This time it was bigger, louder, and it blew the broken mug pieces across the floor.
POOF!
A gust of warm air hit the kitchen. Her papers fluttered.
When Virelle wiped her eyes and looked up, Rowan was still a cat. Still sitting on the table. But his fur was completely puffed up, like he’d stuck his paw in a socket, and his collar was smoking faintly.
He was staring at her like she had just tried to murder him.
"Whoa," she said, sniffling. "Did you feel that? The hearth flashed!"
Rowan gave her a slow, very grumpy blink.
Virelle scrambled to her feet and touched the stove. It was warm. Not hot, but warm. For the first time in two days.
"Did I do that? Did you do that?" She looked at Rowan, excited despite herself. "The book says a familiar amplifies your hearth! Maybe you’re amplifying me even when you’re being rude!"
Rowan looked down at his own paws, then at the stove, then at her red, sneezy nose, with an expression that was pure panic.
Almost caught.
He quickly jumped down from the table and started shoving the broken mug pieces under the rug with his paw, like he was trying to hide the evidence.
Virelle laughed, watery. "You’re trying to clean? You do care!"
He stopped, looked horrified that she thought that, and then deliberately knocked the broom over.
"Okay, never mind."
She sat on the floor and started picking up the yellow pieces herself. Rowan watched, tail twitching. After a second, he came over — careful to avoid the sharp bits — and nudged her knee with his big head. His fur was warm.
For the first time all day, the cottage did its hello creak. A tiny one. Just for the cat.
Or for whatever was happening with her magic.
Virelle looked at the pink notice, then at the silver cat who was now sitting on her foot like he owned it.
"Twenty-nine days, Rowan," she whispered. "We have twenty-nine days to make this cottage love me again. And to make you... not hate me."
Rowan sneezed again, delicately, and turned his back on her, curling himself right on top of her cold hearthstone.
But the stove stayed warm.
The clock on the wall, which the Agency had installed, ticked louder.
29 DAYS, 23 HOURS.
From under the cat, the hearthstone gave a tiny, sleepy purr— not a meow, a purr from the stone itself.
Virelle hadn’t known stones could purr.
"What?", she whispered.
