Illusory

Several bookshelves lined the wall of Van's study across from his nearly empty desk — a desk that set my mind racing when it inevitably caught my eye. Why had he kissed me? Why had he been so eager after being so cold for so long? It was a nice change, don't get me wrong, but…I just couldn't trust it. How could anyone trust something like that without an explanation? The phrase "Too good to be true" existed for a reason.

But it was the bookshelves that were important here, and I mentally shook myself as I searched my way across them. A surprising number of the books were about law and business, I discovered, and I wondered if becoming a professional magician had been his first choice of career. There were books on nutrition, too, and on caring for plants. They surprised me only a tiny bit more than the ginormous series of texts on various types of bugs and animals that took up the entire top shelf. Why the hell did he need all of these? Had he wanted to be a friggin' zoologist or something? I didn't find any magic books until I reached the five-shelf bookcase clear to the right, and even those were mixed in with several of his historical novels, which already took up the entirety of two of the middle bookshelves.

"What the hell, Van?" I mumbled as I scanned the titles of the books. Most of them pointed to white magic, to the things that I was allowed to practice and that wouldn't entertain me nearly as much. I worked from the top down, discovering novel after novel of history and historical fiction and book after book of light magic. Finally, though, on the very bottom shelf, I found a few tomes with darker covers and more battered spines than the rest.

"Aha," I murmured with a wicked smile, pulling out a book with a particularly dark-sounding Latin title. It was made of leather, the front and back covers scuffed and torn in several places, and reddish-brown stains colored a few spots. Blood, perhaps? My smile only grew.

I turned to the first page, the very first spell. My Latin wasn't very good, but I could figure out that the title said something about small animals. "Nah," I mumbled, turning the page. The next spell mentioned pulling a person's teeth out from afar, and I was quick to turn the page, cringing. "Ew. No." The next two pages contained a pair of love spells, which were tempting, but I restrained myself and moved on to the next page. The illustration of the next spell had my interest piqued before I even knew what it was. It looked like a black-and-white depiction of some sort of feline creature, its teeth sharp and curved and bared menacingly, stepping out of a wall of flames. "Me like," I said with a nod of approval. The page opposite the pretty picture spoke of summoning a Hellcat. I read through the instructions with my broken Latin, nodding each time I managed to understand a step. "I can do this," I said, suddenly excited. "I can totally do this!"

I straightened from my crouch beside the bookshelf, my eyes glued to the spell even as I made my way out of the study and into the hall. I jogged down the stairs and turned right at the bottom, heading down a small hallway instead of into the living room as I usually would have. At the end of the hall, past a couple of shut doors that I knew belonged to storage rooms, was a nice sitting room that was about half the size of the living room. It, unlike the majority of the house, had an uncarpeted floor, the dark hardwood shining up at me in polished perfection, and an elegant stone fireplace was set into the wall beside the door. An antique piano was pushed against the wall opposite the fireplace, and a single black leather couch was situated perfectly in the center of the space with a mahogany end table to either side, but otherwise, the room was empty.

"Any kind of ashes, right?" I asked the spell book as I stepped into the room and shut the door behind myself. It didn't answer — thank God — but I assumed so. Kneeling before the hearth, I began step one of the summoning spell, pulling a handful of old gray ashes out and spreading them in a big, chalky circle on the floor beside me. Once that was finished, I dusted my hands off on my jeans and returned my attention to the book. "And then, I turn the lights off," I murmured, standing up and making my way to the switch beside the door. The room darkened drastically the moment I flipped it, the two large windows that took up almost the entirety of one wall covered by thick black curtains that allowed no exterior light to sneak in. "And then, I...set fire to the ashes with the kindling spell?" I cocked my head to one side, a bit confused. "Couldn't I just use a lighter? Ah, whatever." I turned my gaze to the circle of ash and said confidently, picturing in my mind flames that didn't touch the floor, "Accendo." The ashes sprang to life, burning with an impossibly bright blue-orange flame, and I continued quickly to the last part of the spell: the spell word, the Latin catalyst for the magic — the one thing that would start it all. "Accio, Feles Flamma!"

For a moment, nothing happened. There was only the sound of the ashes' flames, the soft, crackling hiss and murmur of fire, and I couldn't sense even a hint of magic in the air, no matter how hard I focused on the image of that cat leaping from the fire. Then, suddenly, a pain started in my head, a searing ache inside my skull, like my brain was melting away in a fire that I couldn't see. I screamed, clutching my head and pitching forward until my hair nearly touched the physical fire before me. The heat created a tingling trail along my skin, but it was nothing compared to the burning in my skull, and my grip tightened.

A roar erupted from amid the circle of flames before me, just as the pain subsided and my own shriek died away. I fell onto my side, my throat raw and dry as I gasped for air. The fire was extinguished out of nowhere, like a candle being blown out by a strong wind, and in its place stood a large cat, nearly six feet tall on all fours. Its body was an empty, lifeless black beneath a coat of dancing flames, its teeth long and curved like those of the long-extinct saber-toothed tiger. A growl rumbled through its chest, and I felt it thrumming through the wood against my cheek.

"Hello, kitty," I said softly, staring into its bright red eyes as they glared down at me. "Please, don't eat me." Slowly, cautiously, keeping a careful eye on the big cat looming over me, I pushed myself into a sitting position. Its growl grew in volume, but it didn't move from where it loomed over me, though its long tail continued to thrash through the air behind it, the flames that ran along it flickering violently but never dying. In that same careful way, I got to my feet, the cat's eyes following my every movement intently.

"Why would I eat you?" it questioned in a low, feminine voice, though its mouth didn't move around its giant fangs. I felt my jaw drop open. "You're nothing but skin and bones." Its eyes slid down my frame, and with a pleased grunt, it added, "Well, the bones might be nice to chew on. I'll let you know when I make my decision."

"You can talk?" I gasped, taken completely by surprise. I'd never expected a cat, even a cat summoned from the fiery depths of Hell, to speak to me, not in a million years!

"Of course I can talk," she spat as if I were the stupidest creature she had ever met in her life — and I probably really was. "You can talk, and your species is light years behind mine. Why wouldn't I be able to talk?"

"I just...you know...Cat's don't normally talk around here," I stammered, growing more flustered with each word. I'd always thought that humans were the most advanced species of them all. To have that proven wrong just…There was so much I didn't know. There was so much everyone didn't know!

"And I'm not from around here," she said in a calmer tone, taking a seat on the hardwood floor, and her tail thumped loudly against it as it flipped and flopped about. Oh, how I hoped that wood wasn't burning as we spoke... "Why would you expect me to have the limited capabilities of something that is?"

"Of course," I said, my cheeks growing warm beneath the cat's scathing glare. "My bad."

"Relax, tiny human," she murmured. "There's no need for red-face here." I nodded once, but wasn't sure what to say or how to make my blush go away. "Now, why did you summon me? You don't seem like someone who would be in need of my services." She stretched her front legs out and slid gracefully into a lying position on her belly on the floor. I took a quick step back, afraid of getting too close to that flaming fur. Though it didn't seem to be harming the wood or anything else that came near it…

"I...uh..." I didn't know how to say it without sounding horrible, so I just blurted, "I just wanted to see if I could do it."

Her brow knitted in another dark glare, and I shrank back. "You just wanted to see if you could do it? Do you know how many times I've had to suffer through that experiment before?" Her voice was a growl now, and I could feel it rumbling up through my stockinged feet.

"It was stupid, I know," I grumbled, my eyes on my toes. "I'm sorry."

"Well, I suppose you did a rather nice job, at least," she murmured, the growl no longer thrumming its way between my toes. "You didn't die, the house didn't catch on fire, and I'm here in one piece." Her eyes slid around the room, taking in the piano and the leather sofa and the ashy fireplace before landing on me once again, blinking slowly, ever so slowly… "You really should've done this outside, however. Summoning large creatures in a home — or summoning anything in a home, really — is twice as dangerous and just plain silly. It shows that you're a novice."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said with a nod, already kicking myself. Let's summon a giant fire kitty in the sitting room! What a good idea! Why don't we bring Grandma back from the dead next time and see if she can make us chocolate chip cookies in between bids for what little brain I have left? "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," she said, resting her chin on an outstretched paw. Her bright red eyes drifted shut. "You surely would have realized your mistake eventually. Now, would you mind sending me back? I'm getting tired, and this house smells awful. Too much human, not enough sulfur."

"I...um...How do I...do that, exactly?" I asked, and I could already feel my cheeks warming again.

Her eyes snapped open, already narrowed in a damning glare. "You don't know how to return a summoned creature to the place from whence it came?" She rose to all four paws, looming over me with another growl thundering through her broad chest. Her body barely fit between the couch and the fireplace. "You're possibly the most incompetent magician I've ever had the misfortune of laying my eyes upon."

"Well, see..." I dropped my gaze to the floor and prepared to have my bones torn out and gnawed on. "I'm not really a magician."

She hissed at me, lips parting to bare all of her sharp teeth. "You're not a magician?!" she roared, and the windows rattled violently in their panes.

I fell back a step, my wide eyes on her face now. "I-I'm learning," I stammered hurriedly. "I mean, a magician is teaching me how to be a magician, so I'm not completely clueless. I'm just not technically a full-on magician yet."

"I should bite your head off for such blatant ineptitude," she snarled. "Tear your flesh from your bones and set fire to this house!"

I took another step back, hands trembling. "Just tell me how to send you back, and I will."

Her growl died away, her glare fading as she resumed her lying position on the floor. "I don't know how to do it," she murmured, suddenly calm, and I wondered if she was ashamed. "I've never paid any mind to the spell. Isn't their a spell to reverse the summoning in that book?" she asked with a tip of her large head toward the book that lay forgotten at my feet.

Oh, Jesus, I thought as I stooped to pick it up with shaking fingers. How much more stupid can I get?

I turned to the page from which I'd gotten the spell, my eyes lingering on the black and white illustration for a moment before finally moving to the spell. Putting my broken Latin to good use once more, I skimmed the page for any mention of a reversal spell or an unsummoning spell.

Nothing.

I turned the page, thinking that their might be an entirely different spell to send the Hellcat back, but again, nothing. It was a spell for skinning animals, and I didn't think that would be doing me any good here.

"Oh, crap," I mumbled, flipping rapidly through the book, my eyes keenly flying across each and every page in search of the word "summoning" or "reversal" or anything even marginally similar. A spell to make a dead man your butler, a spell to make a rival's face swell to the size of a volleyball, a spell to tear the hairs from the head of your enemy one by one, but not a damn thing about summoning. "How could this book not have some kind of reversal spell?!" I cried, throwing it across the room. It collided with the old piano with a discordant clang of the keys, then fell to the floor, just as useless there as it had been in my painfully inept hands. "Oh, crap, crap, crap!" My fingers tangled in my hair and gave a short, painful tug, my eyes flitting about the room in search of something that would help, something that I knew wouldn't be there.

"Ember," I heard suddenly from the living room, accompanied by the creak of that evil antique door opening, "I heard shouting. Are you all right?"

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I hissed, and the cat just watched me, eyes half lidded and sleepy. "I need you to stay here," I said to the massive creature, crouching before her so that we were seeing eye to eye. "Please?" I begged. "Please stay here and be quiet until I can figure out how to send you back?"

"As long as you keep quiet enough to allow me to nap, I'm sure I'll be able to spend a great deal of time in here," she rumbled as her eyes fully shut. "If I can manage to sleep at all with this human stench all around me, of course."

"Thank you," I whispered, lurching to my feet. "Thank you, thank you!"

"Ember?" Van called again, just a hint of worry to his tone, and I slipped out the door of the small parlor and into the hall without making a sound. I carefully shut the door behind me, and I heard the Hellcat's sigh of relief through the wood. "Filthy human," she murmured, but without even a hint of negativity to her tone, and then she fell silent with one soft snore.

Is she asleep already? I wondered with a glance back at the door, though I forced myself down the hall on my tiptoes in spite of my curiosity. How could I even still be curious after all of that? Look what curiosity had gotten me this time around!

"Ember?" Van tried once more, his voice growing uncertain as more than a little bit of worry seeped into it. I emerged into the living room just as he peeked through the doorway into the kitchen.

"Uh, hi," I said with a sheepish laugh, and he spun to look at me.

"There you are," he said pleasantly, offering me a sweet, lopsided smile. "I was wondering where you'd gone. Why were you shouting?" His eyes found my hands, and his smile faded into a quizzical look, his brow furrowed. "And what's all over your hands?"

I looked down at them, and sure enough, they were covered in a thin layer of ashy dust from the fireplace. With another sheepish laugh, I turned my eyes back to the man's face, carefully tucking my hands away behind my back. "I was...uh...I was trying to clean up the mess from the knives by hand. It was silly, I know, but I thought I'd give it a try. I was just looking for the vacuum," I explained with a gesture over my shoulder and down the hall.

"I thought you knew where everything was here," he said as he strode past me, entering the first door on the left side of the hall. "Or have you forgotten already?" he teased as he emerged from the small storage closet with a vacuum rolling out after him.

"Well, you know how I am," was my laughed answer, and I took the vacuum cleaner from his hands.

"I suppose I do," he laughed in return, making his way into the kitchen. A plastic bag rustled, and I noticed that there were several grocery bags crowding the middle island counter.

"What did you go to the store for?" I asked, curious, as I unwound the cord and plugged it into the wall outlet beside the stairs. And why the hell are you so happy all of a sudden?

"You'll see," he said brightly, grinning at me from across the counter. I thought I saw him pull out a package of tall candles, but I couldn't really be sure from this distance. And why would he have bought those, anyway? He'd said himself that spells generally only used the things for show. "I think you'll like what I've gotten for you."

"For some reason," I grumbled as I started the vacuum, the loud sound covering my words, "that doesn't comfort me very much." My eyes flicked to the door down the hall one last time, then I went to work sweeping up the dusty remains of the knives.

God, I hope it doesn't wake up.