Off Leash (Freelance Familiars Book 1) by Daniel Potter Read Free Book Online

extended my head towards her and gave it a tentative sniff before my mind caught up with my body. Smoke and cinnamon clung to her and threaded through the musky smell she had in common with Sabrina, the human scent perhaps, and piled on with a recognizable tang of sweat. The scent was not of the unclean but one of toil. I liked it.
    "He will make some initiate very happy," Sabrina added.
    "Initially at least," Cornealius said, bouncing with haughtiness. "The poor soul will very quickly find that Thomas is obstinate, lazy and entitled." He climbed up onto Sabrina’s shoulders like a fuzzy snake and grinned down before my brain registered the insults. "He'll make an awful familiar."
    The anger kicked in, a bit belatedly to be of much use. It knotted up my back and peeled my lips away from my teeth a little, held in check by the twinkle in the weasel's black eyes.
    "See? No sense of humor either."
    "Of course not—he is a feline, after all." Sabrina smirked. I let myself relax a little and said nothing, my anger fading to annoyance. I wondered how often they "found" familiars.
    O'Meara sighed and stood, crossing her arms impatiently. "Are you done showing off and insulting your acquisition, Elder? We still have some business to discuss, like where you were last night. I also need to speak to Rudy, the double-crossing little rat. Just how much more did you promise him?"
    Sabrina smiled. "Rudy is a dear, but the rodent loves his electronics more than vague promises of future favors. Besides, Thomas will be safer here with Cornealius and me. Now let us retire upstairs. No sense dragging Thomas through your inane interrogations."

 

Chapter Seven
     
     
    I have never been good at waiting. Everyone had gone upstairs through that searing white light and left me downstairs with my sooty paw. Rudy had disappeared, leaving only the trace of his nutty scent hanging in the air. I explored the downstairs unsupervised, but it wasn't that interesting. Looking at the talking spell in my mouth proved to be a bust—the damn thing cast no reflection in the bathroom mirror. Why hadn't I been able to see Cornealius' or Rudy's? Did magic age so it couldn't be seen after a time? I paced about the sitting room for a couple minutes, trying to cross my eyes to get a better look at the purplish glow covering my muzzle. The roof of my mouth was tender to the touch, so I let it hang open a bit to avoid irritating it. I could see the threads of the spell, thin curls of purple light in the dark, but could not see by it. When I licked my nose, I saw that my tongue itself had a sheen of purple magic as well.
    The punctuations of a heated conversation between the two women upstairs drifted down to me, but nothing comprehensible filtered through the ceiling. I wondered why the two women seemed to detest each other so much. Or were all magi like territorial cats that fought over everything from food to boxes, and could I look forward to political tap-dancing for decades?
    Pushing off the bathroom sink with a huff of disgust, I began to pad around the house in a directionless manner. Every corner and cranny seemed to collect a bewildering variety of scents. I couldn't place most of them precisely, but by flehmming, opening my mouth to breathe them in through both my nose and mouth, I pulled the scents deeper into my brain. As a human, scents were a bit of a binary experience for me; I'd get one strong dominant scent. Now scents were different, layered and nuanced. I could mentally sift through them. By the door to the bathroom, Rudy's scent lay on the top of the pile. I followed it into a bathroom, a smaller half bath than the one where I had attempted to inspect the spell on my face.
    The scent of fresh grass filtered in once I got the door open, and a stream of warm summer air tickled my whiskers. Positioned above the ancient clawed tub, a small divided window stood, just four panes of smoked glass. The morning sunlight streamed through a two-inch wide