Familiar!

Cradling her in my arms, I knocked on the door to her new home. Nazaa held out her hands to take her from me without saying anything, her eyes downcast the whole time. Turning around, I went home and fixed a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. More zombies and commercials later I fell asleep on the sofa, dreaming about golden eyes which watched from the darkness.

When I woke up, I was face down on the couch. The TV still flickered with the sights and sounds of zombies shuffling around on the screen while warmth and dead weight told me there was a cat curled up on my butt. Carefully I rolled over, the cat shifting position to stay on top. Yellow eyes blinked in the gloom as Kathleen stretched and yawned, pricking my stomach slightly with her claws at the end of the stretch.

"Hi."

I smoothed the hair between her ears and ran my fingers down her back, being careful not to say anything which might upset her and make her run away again. I got a head butt against my hand demanding more pets. Which I obediently delivered as Kathleen spun in a small circle before flopping onto my gut.

Supine once more on my stomach, Kathleen squirmed and purred as I continued to pet and scratch under her jaw in between lightly running my fingers down her body. Eventually she stopped wiggling and draped her chin over a foreleg while closing her eyes. Shifting until I was comfortable, I went back to watching zombies shuffle along in pathetic attempts to catch a human and eat their brain.

Chapter 17

Mr. Espinoza started keeping his distance. Instead of coming over for coffee at least once a week like he normally did, he suddenly started having things to do and errands to run. It was at its most acute whenever I happened to be outside and saw him.

"I can't talk now Daniel. I have to run to the store." He waved me off once again as he quickly backed his car out of the garage.

Watching him leave I felt a little sad that he didn't believe I was still the same guy he'd watched grow up.

"You know he'll come around again, don't you?" Kathleen spoke from behind me making me spin around.

"Don't do that!"

I almost yelled at her. She was the only person I'd ever met who never caused the back of my neck to let me know she was there. At the hurt look on her face I apologized.

"Sorry. I shouldn't be taking it out on you. I'm just feeling . . ." I didn't have the words to express what I felt.

"I know." Her face loosened and she looked in the direction Mr. Espinoza had disappeared. "Whenever we had to move and I couldn't tell my friends that we were going, I always felt like I was abandoning them."

I nodded even though that wasn't exactly how I was feeling. Instead it was like I'd been the one left behind.

Kathleen slipped her arms around my waist. "It'll be okay."

All I could do was nod my head again.

"Come on, let's watch TV or something." Kathleen tugged my hand and led me back into the house.

A few days later that feeling on the back of my neck started acting up. I was in the house and no one was with me so I had no idea why it was happening. Looking out my back window there was only Kathleen and her sisters sunning themselves in their favorite spot on the roof of the garden shed. As I watched, both Kathleen and Katrina suddenly snapped their heads up in what looked like alarm. Katya's eyes cracked open and she rolled them to look at her sisters for a moment before closing them again and going back to sleep. Esmie's head popped up momentarily over the top of the fence boards from where she'd been hidden from view on the other side of the fence. She disappeared again too when she saw that nothing was happening.

Kathleen rose and stretched, first extending one hind leg out behind her, then the other, before dropping off the garden shed. Katrina followed her as they both trotted across the yard and hopped the fence on the far side of the house.

I was headed for the front door to see where they were going when my doorbell rang. Nazaa stood there with a cloth bundle in her arms. As I opened the door, Kathleen and Katrina appeared from around the corner of the garage and trotted over, both of them in human form with their eyes fixed on Nazaa.

"Nazaa? What the problem?" I opened the door wide.

"Mast . . ." She began but stopped as I crossed my arms and gave her a stern look. "Daniel," she changed what she was going to say at my look and held up her bundle.

Before I could ask again what the problem was, Kathleen and Katrina made it to Nazaa's side and began to poke and sniff at the bundle. Nazaa tried to keep it from them but they split to stand on either side and kept poking at it. In a flash a baby's cry came from the bundle. At that point Kathleen dug into the blankets with Katrina's hands right behind hers. Nazaa tried to ward them off but with four hands they outmaneuvered her. The baby cried louder.

"Stop." I told Kathleen and Katrina. They both ignored me and kept poking at the bundle.

"Kathleen, stop! Katrina, you too." I ordered both of them as the baby's face was revealed.

"They can't help it Mas . . . Daniel." Nazaa held up the bundle again, stepping forward to force me to take the baby from her arms. "Their instincts are making them do it."

Gently I took the baby, Kathleen's fingernails scratching my arm as she dug into the blankets again.

"Kathleen, stop or I will make you stop." I bumped her with my shoulder while shielding the baby from both her and her sister. Kathleen looked up at me and shook her head sharply but then immediately went back to trying to get to the baby in my arms again.

"I mean it." I warned her. "It's a baby, not a cat toy."

"She can't help it Master." Nazaa told me again.

"Why not?" I used my chin to gesture everyone inside.

"Because of what it is." Mrs. Black showed up on my doorstep behind everyone. Using her elbows she pushed the others out of her way to get to me.

"It's a baby. Nazaa's baby."

"It's not mine, Master." Nazaa shook her head.

"Then whose is it?"

She dropped her eyes and didn't answer.

"Nazaa, whose baby is it?"

Another head shake was all I got. I looked at Kathleen's mother in confusion as she reached toward me.

"It's a Kitty." Her expression went tender as she touched the baby's cheek carefully.

"So?"

"It's a boy Kitty." Mrs. Black's voice was very soft. As if just saying the words out loud meant something important and she didn't want to share.

"So?" I shifted to keep Kathleen and Katrina's questing fingers away.

"Male Kitties are extremely rare, Master." Nazaa again. "Witches find them nearly irresistible."

Mrs. Black took the baby from my arms and cooed at it, bouncing it gently before barely uttering her next words. "Isn't he just perfect?"

Kathleen worked her way past me to start digging at the bundle again. Her mother immediately hissed nastily at her. Kathleen responded by baring her teeth as Katrina's face went feral.

Okay, that was enough. Even I wasn't so dense I couldn't see the three of them were completely infatuated with the baby to the point they were willing to fight over it. Why they were, I had no idea, but if I didn't do something I'd never learn what the big deal was. I reached and took the baby back over three protests before heading down the hall toward my bedroom with all four of them rapidly following me.

They'd have caught me if the hall hadn't been so narrow they jammed it by trying to outdo each other and get to me first. Whatever it was the baby had for the power of female attraction, if it could be bottled and sold I would be a rich, rich man overnight. Very rich. And probably no later than the middle of the first afternoon.

Reaching my bedroom, I went through the doorway and made it disappear before they could follow me through it. Quickly armoring the walls against their Familiar space--warp magic, which would get them through the wall and into the bedroom despite there not being a doorway any longer, I carefully put the baby on the bed.

Loud yowls and a several thuds against the blank wall where there used to be a door announced that the three women outside my bedroom weren't happy at finding they couldn't get to me. Or, rather, that they couldn't get to the baby.

"Enough." I told them sternly. "Stop or go away."

"They can't help it, Master." Nazaa's voice came through the wall.

Thinking carefully I directed Nazaa to go into the nearby bathroom and close the door behind her, locking it so the others had to stay in the hall, then knock on the wall when she'd done that but only if she was alone. Two knocks told me she'd followed my instructions so I opened the wall with an archway between the bedroom and the bathroom and ushered Nazaa in. The bathroom door rattled and I immediately removed the passage and armored the wall again. Done, I turned to Nazaa.

"What's going on?"

"The baby, it's a boy Kitty."

"You said that already." I made a motion with my hand to get her to tell me more. Nazaa wasn't very expansive to begin with. Especially around me. Today she was being more reticent than usual.

"Witches can't help themselves, they will try to bind the baby to them. It's instinctual."

More thuds and yowls outside the bedroom made both of us look in that direction.

"They can't help themselves." Nazaa repeated herself. "They will even fight each other to be the one to bind the baby."

"Why aren't you affected?"

"I'm just a Kitty, not a Witch."

"Oh." I realized that was probably why Esmie and Katya had both gone back to sleep in the sun. Neither of them were Witches like Kathleen, Katrina, and their mother were. Whatever was affecting the three women outside my bedroom didn't affect them any more than it did Nazaa. Which was to say, it didn't.

"Whose baby it is?" I asked the question again.

"A friend's. She couldn't hide the baby any longer. She asked me to ask you for help."

"So why are you here and not the baby's mom?"

"Because I don't have any attachment to the baby." She shrugged indifferently as she explained.

"Oh." Apparently her not being the baby's mother meant she didn't have any emotional bond to him or the outcome of whatever I was supposed to make happen. If things didn't work out, she wouldn't be as affected as the baby's mother would be.

"What do you want me to do?" I looked at the blanket bundle on the bed.

Another shrug followed my question.

"Nazaa, I need information. Tell me what I need to know."

"Master. It's a boy Kitty. They're rare. So rare the ones that are born often don't survive."

"He's going to die?"

I looked at the tiny baby boy on the bed. He had gone quiet almost immediately once he'd been left alone. Nazaa shook her head at my question.

"They will kill him by fighting over him. They won't want to, but they will. They can't help themselves."

A shadow flickered past the window. While we were talking, one of the three women outside my bedroom door had apparently decided to see if she could get in by another route. As Katrina's face pressed against the glass, I shook my finger no at her. Once again she ignored me, her eyes searching the room until she spied the baby on the bed. Immediately she tried to smash the window to get in. I made the glass unbreakable as she hammered on it with her fist.

"Okay, so what's the baby's mother's name? No games, tell me."

"Desirakat." Nazaa almost drooped at my order, it was obvious she didn't want to tell me.

"And?" I pressed for more information.

"She's part of the magical underground."

"There's a magic underground? How come no one told me that?"

"It's for Kitties and Familiars." She looked up at me. "Many of us have to run and try to hide from Mages who will take us even if we have families. The underground helps us move and travel when we need to. Mages aren't supposed to know about it."

"Oh." I realized my being a Mage technically made me the enemy so Nazaa couldn't tell me anything. Kathleen and her mother wouldn't either for the same reason.

"I'm sorry Master. I couldn't tell you." Nazaa hung her head deeper.

"It's okay. I understand."

I did. I didn't like it, but I understood. Nazaa looked up at me and I gave her a grim smile and a small nod. She gave me a flicker of a tiny smile back. I knew she'd only said this much because of what I'd done for her. Had I not, she wouldn't have ever told me anything and the baby would have died from the crush of Witches fighting over him. Which, despite her instinctive indifference for the young of another Kitty, would have bothered her. Instincts or not, she was still a mother.

"So, what does your friend think I can do?"

"I don't know. We're both Kitties. We don't know magic."

"Hmm." Concentrating, I looked at the baby while shifting my vision until I could see his magical coding. There wasn't much and it was all jumbled together. I glanced at Nazaa for a second to see if her coding matched the baby's. It didn't even come close and I had no idea why not.

"Any thoughts on why Witches go crazy over boy Kitties?"

"It's said they can smell them. I don't know what they mean by it, he smells like a regular baby to me." She glanced at me then examined the baby on the bed, tenderly adjusting the blanket he was wrapped in. "He's cute, but Esmie was cuter."

"She was?" I couldn't picture Esmie as a baby. A tiny kitten yes, but not a human baby. Which made me wonder if she'd been born a kitten or developed the ability to change into one later. I'd have to ask someone sometime.

Nazaa answered my question with a nod before she inhaled deep through her nose. "All I smell is baby, a little diaper rash treated with scented skin lotion, and the blankets. Nothing else."

"What about your other nose?" I meant the more sensitive nose she had when she was in her cat form.

She gave me a drab look. "It's the same nose. Master."

"Oh. Sorry. No one told me."

A slightly huffy sniff was what I got in response and I had to hide a grin.

"So, if he looks like a regular baby, smells like a regular baby and sounds like a regular baby, what makes our little guy here the equivalent of magic catnip for Witches?"

"I don't know. He doesn't smell like catnip, he smells like a baby to me."

"Smells, smells. What could make him smell so desirable?" I mused to myself. "And, is it magic or an actual smell?"

If it was magic, I should have been able to see it. There was nothing in the jumble of code suggesting anything unusual or different magically about the little boy. So could it be an actual scent? If so, what? And why couldn't Nazaa smell it? Why couldn't I for that matter? What would be invisible to our noses but not to a Witch? Specifically, what could a female magic user smell that I couldn't?

There was something in that thought, I knew there was. Sitting on the edge of the bed, careful not to bounce the baby and make it cry, I concentrated. Something, there was something about smell. Carefully I prodded my brain, teasing it for information but not wanting to lose the slight thread of an idea I had. Something about special smells which only some people could understand. No, not understand, react to. A smell only some people could, or would, react to even involuntarily or subconsciously.

Abruptly I stood up. I had the answer. Pheromones. The baby probably gave off something like a magical pheromone which only Witches would respond to. Not being a Witch I wouldn't notice them. Neither would Nazaa. That had to be it, nothing else fit the pattern and made any sense.

A second shadow joined Katrina's at the window. Kathleen had followed her sister in trying to find a different way into the room where the baby was. Both of them had their faces plastered to the glass, their breath fogging the window while their eyes were locked on the baby on the bed.

I looked at the two of them and then the baby. How do I stop the baby from giving off whatever scent was driving the Witches crazy? Calling an orb I used a tiny bit of magic very carefully to try and freeze any scent the baby was giving off. Nothing happened. The two figures at the window kept their eyes glued to the bundle on the bed. I could hear scrabbling at the wall where the bedroom door used to be, the noise telling me my neighbor hadn't given up either. From the sound of it she was probably trying to dig her way through the wall.

I looked at the baby again with my vision shifted. Carefully I used some more magic to touch a piece of the coding trying to explore what it was supposed to do. Immediately the baby started crying and I released the touch I'd used, apparently that particular piece of code was sensitive.

"What are you doing Master?" Nazaa cooed at the baby, touching it gently on the chest and rocking it until it stopped crying.

"I have no idea. I'm playing it by ear and hoping for a good ending."

Touching another piece of code even more carefully I tried to isolate it while keeping an eye on the two faces plastered to the window. No response. Releasing the bit of code, I went on to the next. And the next. And the next.

It was in a tiny little fragment of code seemingly not connected to anything else where I struck pay dirt. As soon as I isolated it, the two at the window blinked and looked at each other in surprise. It was as if they had no idea how they'd gotten there or what they'd been doing. Experimenting, I released the isolation on the code fragment. Within seconds both faces were plastered to the glass again. I'd found it. Whatever it was, it was in that particular bit of biological code.

"I think it's a magical pheromone," I told Nazaa what I'd been doing. "He has a magical attractant designed just for Witches. In essence, he's a really powerful chick magnet for Witches. A real lady killer."

"Oh. So what are you going to do about it?"

"I have no idea." I looked at the twin faces in the window and isolated the bit of code again. Kathleen's eyes blinked.

<Hi Kitty.>

<Not your Kitty.> The response was immediate though hazy sounding.

<What can cancel a Witch's magic?>

Kathleen looked at me in confusion, her eyes barely focusing on me.

<I need to cancel a Witch's magic. What can do that?>

<Witchweed?> She didn't sound like she was very positive of what she was saying. Or that she was even aware of what she was saying.

I'd never heard of it so I looked at Nazaa.

"What's Witchweed?"

"It's a plant. Usually it's called Figwort. Why?"

"It cancels magic. I need some."

Nazaa just looked at me like I was crazy.

"Get it. Or find out who has some so I can get it."

Nazaa pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and half turned away before punching a few buttons.

"Desi, do you know anyone who has any Figwort?" Her words were curt sounding. "My Master needs it for the baby. He says he has an idea that might work."

Excited sounds came from the phone.

"Stop! Listen! I don't know if it will work or not. It's only an idea. He needs the Figwort to experiment with."

More excited sounds from the phone.

"Whatever you think you need to do, but I told you he isn't like that. Get the Figwort. We'll wait. Be here as soon as you can." Nazaa punched the end call button before looking up at me.

"She knows someone who has a distillation. She says she'll pick it up and bring it over."

Nazaa drooped as she realized her plan to keep me from discovering her Kitty friend had crumbled. Because of what she'd told me, I could now catch and bind her friend.

"It's fine Nazaa. You know I'm one of the good guys. I won't say anything."

She shook her head. "You can't help it either."

"I can." I told her. "I'm not interested in getting more power. I gave away the extra magic I did get to Katrina. Don't you remember Esmie telling you about that?"