“Would you prefer I argue with you until we’re both blue in the face?”
“I’d prefer you to just stop speaking,” he snarled, but his hands were already rising. Muttering a long spell under his breath, the shadows in the alcove at the edge of the stairwell gathered together.
The tiny form of a cat appeared, her arms sinking to the ground in a big stretch before she trotted over to Jessamine.
She really refused to grow. Still no larger than a kitten, Nyx sat primly on the stairwell and waited to be petted. Her ears had grown huge, with long tufts of fur poking out of them. Her bright green eyes blinked up at Jessamine before glaring at Elric.
“Hello, little one,” she said, adding a few scratches at the back of her neck for good measure. “I know we’ve kept you locked up quite a bit, but we have a great need for you. Can you find us a way into that house?”
Nyx blinked at the glowing building, her pupils contracting before it seemed like the cat nodded and then trotted down the stairs. A few of the guards reacted, but they were no match for a cat who weaved through their legs and purred so loudly that Jessamine swore she could hear Nyx’s rumble from where they were hiding.
“It’s just a cat,” one of the guard said. “Must be a stray.”
“Haven’t you seen the cats in that shop? Little spies, from what I’ve heard. Don’t let it in.”
But the first guard bent down and gave Nyx a good few pats as she wove through his legs again. “They wouldn’t make a black cat for one ofthose. People think they’re bad luck, you know. This is just a cat. Look at it! Scruffy and everything. Not a designer pet, this one.”
She almost had half a mind to argue with the man, but Elric clapped his hand around her mouth and drew her against his chest. “Let the familiar work,” he muttered in her ear.
She would, but she’d remember their faces. Scruffy cat. Nyx was better than both of them combined.
And then, with one more twitch of her tail, Nyx slipped between the bars of the fence and disappeared behind the house.
Elric watched her familiar disappear into the shadows of the house. Nyx had learned much in her short lifespan already, but familiars were always tricky little things. He’d created them more times than he could count, but they chose their own forms, their own witches, and even then, they were difficult to control.
Familiars required respect from their witches, and if they didn’t get it, then they would find another. So the fact that Nyx was already willing to go to such lengths for Jessamine? It boded well for his little gravesinger.
They waited for a long while in the dark, neither of them saying a word. The guards changed shifts again. They seem to do that fairly regularly, almost at every hour. It seemed Leon wanted to make sure every single guard was always refreshed, and their eyes never missed a single detail. One of the guards even noticed a rat as it scurried across the street, and he was very quick to finish it before it could approach Fortuna’s home.
But then, a little shadow passed underneath the gate and headed straight for them. The darkness of Nyx’s form was little more than a blur, and not a single guard noticed as she darted across the street, over the stairs, and down onto the side where they hid.
“There you are,” Jessamine breathed as she ran her hands over Nyx’s sides. “What took you so long?”
There was a soft glare from her familiar before it reached out a paw and touched her cheek. Jessamine stilled, her eyes going glassy as magic passed between the two of them.
He’d only seen familiars do this on the rare occasion. The creatures were notoriously difficult to get to perform magic with their owners, being far more likely to hoard that power for themselves. Yet again, this familiar had surprised him.
Jessamine, returning to herself after communing with the little creature, said, “There appears to be a small servant’s door hidden in the wall of ivy in the back. It’s made to look like there’s nothing behind the wall, but we should be able to get inside with no issues. The only problem is that there are guards on that side as well. They won’t let us pass unless we look like one of the servants.”
“Did Nyx see any servants? If so, I could steal their faces.” It was a power he hadn’t used in a while, but he would very much enjoy doing it again. There was a little pain involved, but did that matter in the grand scheme of things?
“No,” she lamented before leaning away from Nyx’s touch. “Go home to Sybil now, sweet one. I don’t want you getting caught.”
All the fur on Nyx’s sides fluffed, and her tail doubled in size. Clearly, she was very unhappy with her owner for even suggesting such a thing. Familiars had their place, and that was with their witch.
Jessamine smiled and ran her hand down Nyx’s head, flattening her ears against her skull. “This is too dangerous for a black cat. I’ll make it home to you in no time, little one.”
Though the familiar still wasn’t happy with this option, the cat turned and disappeared back down the street. The cat would find its way home, without a doubt, but he had no idea what it would do when it found Sybil. Likely complain.
And perhaps vomit void dust into their shoes. It had taken him weeks to clean that curse out of them last time.
Sighing, he reached for Jessamine’s hand and clasped it in his own. “Think of shadows, gravesinger.”
“Why?”
“Because it is nighttime, and that is when I am most powerful. Think of shadows and how you are one. Together, we shall walk past these guards and they will never know that we were here.”
“You can do that?” She looked him up and down, sizing up the god before her as though she questioned his power.
