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And that was when everything came rushing back—Luna, the potion, my part in it all.

“Merlin!” I cried and hugged him hard against my chest. “You’re okay!”

He struggled from my grip and then jumped out of reach, looking at me like I was crazy.“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be okay?” His fur twitched in odd spasms across his back, a sure sign I’d overstepped my bounds as a cat owner.

“Because I—” I began, but my words were abruptly cut off.

“Well, yester—” I tried again. “L—”

Each time I tried to speak, I found myself gagged mid-sentence.

“You’re being weird,” my cat said, his ears pressed back against his head.

And he was right; I was being weird. I also didn’t know how to stop. Maybe if I tried talking about something else…

“Want breakfast?” I asked casually, and sure enough, that I could get out without being magically silenced. Whatever Luna had worked into her spell, it seemed impossible for me to get around it.

Perhaps if I had more knowledge or guidance, I’d be able to find a way… but only Merlin could give me answers, and I wasn’t even able to ask him any of the right questions.

“Yes, I want breakfast. Do you even need to ask?” Merlin hopped off the bed and slipped through the doorway.

Worry gnawed at my brain as I followed.

In the kitchen, I found that his water dish had been licked dry. I wanted to ask how he was feeling after lapping up Luna’s potion, but couldn’t. So I simply shook my head and refilled his dish from the tap.

“Are you going into work today?” Merlin asked as I opened a can of wet food and plopped it in his bowl.

“Not today.”

“Good. We can continue your training.” His piece said, Merlin turned his attentions toward his breakfast.

Biding my time until Luna’s spell activated proved to be complete agony. I was glad that everything appeared normal thus far today, but waiting for the other shoe to drop made it hard to focus on anything else.

“Aren’t you going to make some coffee?” Merlin asked me some time later.

I glanced toward his bowl and saw he’d already polished off his breakfast. Wow, I must have been lost in space for the last few minutes.

“Yes, coffee,” I said, not unlike a zombie as I made my way to the Keurig to brew some liquid energy.

“Lesson number three,” Merlin announced from his spot on the linoleum kitchen floor. “In all things you do, you are a representative of me. If you do something good, I will receive the praise. If you do something bad, I will receive the punishment.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked nervously.

He stared at me unblinking, unmoving even.“So you don’t mess up.”

I gulped hard. I’d already messed up and messed up big, but I also had no way of telling him that. Shoot.

“You are not magical,” he continued, unaware of my raging internal conflict. “But you are a reservoir. Kind of like a living, breathing cauldron. Your presence amplifies my magic. The longer we spend in each other’s company, the more of my magic will bind to you. You can’t use it for yourself. Only contain it for my later use.”

Now this was a big revelation, far too big for me to understand pre-coffee.

Merlin hopped up on the counter and studied my face.“In fact, it seems you’ve already collected some,” he said.

“What?” I croaked, lifting my fingers to my face.

My cat smirked.“Your eyes.”

“What about my eyes?”

“Stop panicking and go have a look.”

I marched toward the bathroom and flicked on the light. Instead of my usual dark brown, my eyes now appeared a deep forest green.

“Green!” I shouted, unable to believe the image that floated right before me. “Why are my eyes green?”

“Well, that’s easy,” Merlin said, appearing in the hall outside the bathroom. “Eyes are the window to the soul. Green is the color of magic. Now you are magic, thus your soul is tinted green.”

“You said I wasn’t magical,” I argued hopelessly. It was really hard to trust everything he said when so much of it seemed contradictory.

Merlin yawned and stretched out in a yoga-like pose.“You’re notmagical. You are magic. It’s a subtle distinction, but you’ll get it eventually,” he assured me.

Either Merlin had faith in me or was too stubborn to admit he’d been wrong in choosing me as his familiar. And at that precise moment in time, I really didn’t care to know which.

Ugh. Why was this my life?

16

I still hoped to speak with Merlin about Luna, but my magic bindings shut me down every single time I even thought about it too hard.

To avoid wasting time completely, I decided to ask him about something much safer—the open murder investigation.

“Merlin?” I asked as my second cuppa brewed. “Can you use your magic to find out who killed Harold?”

He thought about this for a moment as he shifted to follow the sunbeam that had slowly begun to migrate across the living room.“Possibly. But I would need to see his corpse to do so.”

I shuddered.“Let’s make breaking into the morgue our backup plan,” I suggested, wrapping my arms around my torso to hug myself.