Mulberry Wands (18 page)

He set the gooey pelt on the counter. He
almost rubbed his nose with his hand, but caught himself just in
time. His hands were covered in blood and hair. “I can’t cut the
skin off the legs, so I’m just going to hack off the spines as best
I can.”

“Good enough. I’ll eat around the rest.”

He handed it to her, and she gulped it down
in three bites.

“And?”

“Delicious,” she said, licking blood off her
jowl. “Tastes like mouse.”

He turned back to the other dead garden fey.
This one went easier, since he knew what he was doing, but it was
still disgusting and messy. By the time he was done, the counter
was covered with blood, hair, and scraps of skin with spines
attached.

He handed her the second corpse. He didn’t
bother wrapping it in paper towel this time, as his hands were
covered in gore anyway.

She glanced at it, then back up at him. “No,
that one’s for you.”

“Me?”

“That’s why I caught two of them. One for me,
one for you. You want to shapeshift, don’t you?”

He looked at the bloody corpse in his hand.
It looked gruesome, like the skinned pet that a serial killer left
at his victim’s door as a warning. “You want me to eat this?”

“We can shapeshift together. It will be fun.
You know how, right? I mean, I’ve practiced a hundred times, I
figured you had too.”

“I’ve practiced, but it’s never worked.”

“Hence, the garden fey. Eat it, and we’ll
shapeshift together.”

Eat it? He looked at the bloody little
animal. He actually thought about it, bringing the corpse up closer
to his mouth, but as soon as he visualized taking a bite, his gorge
rose up and he nearly vomited. “I can’t eat this.”

“I’m pretty sure this is what we need to do,”
Fox said. Her ears were drooped a little, which meant he’d hurt her
feelings.

“Humans don’t eat these.”

“Neither do foxes,” she said. “Just close
your eyes and pretend it’s a mouse.”

“We don’t eat mice either.” He tried not to
look at it. It was making him feel ill.

“You don’t?” Her ears perked up again. “Not
eat mice? I’ve never heard anything so crazy. Mice are
delicious.”

“I can’t.” He handed it to her. “Thank you,
but I can’t.”

“Well, I’m not going to waste it.” She nipped
the garden fey out of his hand. There was a faint crunching sound
as she crushed the tiny bones, and then she swallowed it. She
licked the blood off her nose. “Let me out now. I’m gonna see how
it works.”

“Thanks for stopping by.” He opened the door
for her.

“See you around, senpai,” she said, flicking
her tail as she vanished into the night.

Paul got his second visitor of the night just
a half an hour later. Luckily, he had cleaned up the blood and gore
off the counters and out of the sink, because no landlord wants to
know that his tenants are dismembering things in the kitchen.

“You leave the door unlocked?” Carlos asked,
as soon as Paul let him in.

“Sure. Why not?”

“Nobody does that anymore.” Carlos used his
elbows to shut the door, because both hands held six-packs of beer.
“I brought you a housewarming gift. Sorry I haven’t been over
earlier. I’ve been pretty busy.”

Paul happily relieved him of one of the
six-packs. It was ice cold. He grinned. “You always did work too
hard.”

Carlos looked around. “Hey, you fixed the
drywall.”

“I said I would.”

“Yeah, you did.” He set the six pack on the
coffee table and pulled one of the cans off. With his free hand, he
pushed some of the clutter off the sofa and sat down. “People don’t
always keep their word though.”

“You know me, man.”

“I guess I do.” Carlos opened his can of beer
and raised it. “To your return to the world.”

Paul opened a can of beer and joined him in
the toast.

“What’s that on your face?” Carlos asked.
“You get hurt or something?”

Paul touched the scratches. He hadn’t been
able to shave while they were healing, and they itched terribly.
“Got in a fight with a girl.”

“Man, she must have had a hell of a
manicure,” he said. Carlos kept looking at the claw marks as he
took a long drink of beer, but he didn’t ask any more questions
about it, which is good, because Paul wouldn’t have answered. “How
do you like living here?”

“The apartment? It’s great.” He gestured at
the new furniture. “I found this coffee table in the alley.
Perfectly good, and someone just threw it out.”

The table was oak, with a glass top. The
glass was chipped in one corner, but the strip of brass holding it
onto the wood was still intact.

Carlos pushed down on the corner, and the
table wobbled, causing the beers to list like they were on the deck
of a ship. He let it go and the table righted itself. Carlos
chuckled. “Can’t imagine why someone would throw it out.”

“Hmm, magazine must have come loose.” Paul
kicked the magazine back under the table to right it. “See?
Perfectly fine. It’s a nice table. Very stylish.”

“Stylish.” Carlos laughed. “Yeah, in 1980 it
was. I’ll let you know next time Stephanie wants to remodel. Every
year or so she gets a bug up her butt and wants to change the whole
house around. Paints all the walls some crazy color and gives
everything to charity.”

“Everything?”

“I put my foot down the last time. Now I get
to keep the den. That’s it. Next time I’ll make her let you take
some of it.”

“Really? She gets rid of all the
furniture?”

“It’s crazy. There’s just no understanding
women.” Carlos shook his head.

Paul smiled. “A wife. I can’t believe you’re
married.”

“Twice.” Carlos drank the rest of his beer.
He was forty years older, and a good fifty pounds heavier, with a
job, responsibilities, a wife, and clothes you probably had to
dry-clean, but when he drank his beer and laughed, he could have
been twenty again. “I never thought I’d get married again, after
the shit Angela put me through, but Stephanie’s great. She’s good
to me. Perfect body too, though you can’t tell her that. She’s
always on a diet.”

“Women seem bigger now than they used to be,”
Paul said. “You ask me, that’s the best thing about coming back. I
love a well-filled pair of jeans.”

“You ought to tell Stephanie. She won’t
listen to me. I keep buying her favorite chocolates for her
birthday and Valentine’s day and any time we fight, because I don’t
want her to lose her figure. She always yells at me that she’s on a
diet, but lucky for me she still eats them.” Carlos shook his head
again, with that amused bafflement guys get when they’re talking
about the girls they’re crazy about. “Since when are women mad when
you give them chocolate? I don’t get why girls are always
dieting.”

Paul worried for a moment, wondering if Susan
was dieting too. He thought about their dinner at the steakhouse.
No, he assured himself. She ate like a real woman.

“How bout you? You seeing anyone?”

“Yeah, girl named Susan.” Paul smiled
thinking about her. The owls hadn’t gotten her, which meant she was
safe. He have to call her again. “She’s pretty, nice ass.”

“Yeah, I think that’s the girl who called me.
I talked you up,” Carlos said. “She’s nice?”

“Yeah. Little older than me, but she knows
about my history and she’s okay with it.”

Carlos smiled and opened another beer. “If I
knew you were okay with cougars, I could have set you up with some
of the women I know from work. All divorced and man-hungry, I tell
you. Skinny young guy like you, they’d eat you up. How old is
she?”

Paul didn’t know exactly what a cougar was,
but he wasn’t interested in anyone described as “man-hungry”. Owls
were bad enough. “She’s twenty-two or twenty-three, I think.”

“Twenty-three!” Carlos laughed. “Paul, you
dog, you’re over sixty.”

“Hang on,” Paul said. “The beer went through
me. I gotta use the can.”

While he was in the bathroom, there was a
knock at the door, a scratching pawing knock, like a dog asking to
be let in.

“You want I should get that?” Carlos asked
through the door.

“Sure,” Paul said. He didn’t know who would
come by so late. Management? If it was management, it was better to
have Carlos answer the door anyway.

He heard the door open and close while he was
shaking himself dry, but he didn’t hear anyone speaking. Maybe it
wasn’t someone from the apartment complex. But who else would come
by this late at night, especially on a weekend? Paul rinsed his
hands and zipped himself up.

Carlos was standing in front of the door,
head pulled back and turned away like he was embarrassed. Standing
in front of him was a tiny woman with brown skin and short blond
hair. She was almost as small as a child, though she had a woman’s
shape. She was completely naked, which is why Paul couldn’t help
checking out her narrow hips and high breasts before he looked at
her face (average-pretty with cupid-bow lips and a somewhat pointed
nose) and realized he had no idea who she was.

She knew him though. She looked right at him
and smiled. A smug smile, like she had a fabulous new pair of shoes
and she was waiting for him to comment on them.

“So, uh,” Carlos rubbed the back of his head.
He coughed. “I guess I’ll, uh, see you a little later. Give me a
call sometime. Mama still wants to have you over for dinner.”

“Um, right,” Paul said, still staring at the
naked woman in front of him.

Carlos let himself out.

The woman rocked on her heels and toes,
holding her hands behind her. She looked incredibly amused.

“Do I, um, know you?” he asked.

She let out an awkward, unrestrained guffaw,
like a deaf girl who had never heard herself laugh before. Then she
nodded.

“Fox!” he shouted. “Hot damn, it’s you!”

He was so excited that he picked her up and
swung her around, hugging her. Then his penis realized that he was
hugging a naked woman, and he had to put her down quickly.

“You’re gonna have to, uh, put some clothes
on. So you, uh, you know, pass for human.”

She nodded.

“Can you talk?”

She made strange expressions, trying to use
her ears and facial muscles to communicate, like she had when she
was in her normal shape. Then she shook her head.

“I can teach you,” he said. He looked her up
and down again. Her color was a little off. She’d kept the hair
color the same as her fur color. It was pretty, but he’d never seen
a blonde woman who looked that tan before. Not that she wasn’t hot.
She’d given herself six toes too, and he was going to point out
that wasn’t right either, but for a first try at shapeshifting it
was a fantastic job.

“You look great,” he said. “Better than an
owl.”

She grinned. Then she held out a dead
rumbler, and raised her eyebrows, as if asking if he wanted to give
it a try now.

“Hell yeah, I wanna try!”

Paul wanted to stuff the corpse in his mouth
right there, but he couldn’t swallow the bones whole like she
could. He took it to the kitchen and cut the spines off. Now what?
Chop it up finer? The knife wasn’t strong enough to cut through
bones. He opened the cupboards, looking for a utensil he had
missed. Then he spied the blender.

Fox went into his bedroom and started opening
drawers.

Paul hacked up the dead rumbler as best he
could, then put it in the blender with a little water. He pressed
puree and it actually worked, grinding for a moment then whirring
free in a flurry of crimson and fur. He used one of the plastic
spoons to get it free of the blades at the bottom, trying not to
look as the glop slid into the juice glass. Most of the solid bits
immediately settled to the bottom, with pinkish water floating on
the top.

His stomach roiled. He couldn’t do it. He
couldn’t eat this.

Fox came out of his room, wearing a gray army
t-shirt and some plaid flannel boxer shorts. She looked totally
human.

He held his nose and chugged it like a
milkshake. A protein shake, he thought, nearly gagging as the
blood, bones, and viscera slid down his throat. He had to take a
drink of water and a few deep breaths to keep it from coming back
up again.

He waited ten minutes, so that his body could
start to digest the rumbler. It didn’t sit well in his stomach. His
gut gurgled. It was doing something. After ten minutes or so, his
brain began to feel tipsy.

Twenty-two individual steps to
transformation.

He’d practiced all of them, memorizing their
order and the method. Fox had practiced them too, both of them
doing the spell over and over again, fruitlessly, sometimes as
practice, sometimes as meditation, and sometimes in the desperation
of a prayer they knew wouldn’t be answered.

Whatever magic-enhancing drug was in the
rumbler meat hit him hard, disconnecting his brain so fully from
reality that by the time he’d gotten to the nineteenth step, he
felt like he was two feet behind and above his shoulders. The last
three steps were sculpting steps. He made himself a barn owl, a big
one, with a pure white face and huge eyes. His talons were sharp,
and an anklet of feathers covered the top of his scaly legs. His
wings were wide and soft, silent.

He slipped into the owl-shape he had made.
The world exchanged color for light. Why’d he have so many lights
on?

Turn the light out! He tried to shout, but
his beak just clacked and hooted.

Fox smiled again, and clicked the light off.
Then she frowned and turned another one on. It was still too bright
for him, but he understood that human eyes couldn’t see in the dark
very well.

Fox dug in his junk drawer until she found a
pen and an envelope, and then practiced writing. She also played
with the spoons, picking them up and dropping them as though her
hands were the most marvelous toys she’d ever encountered. After
that, she turned the television on and off, playing with the remote
(and accidentally turning the volume up so high that both of their
ears hurt, until Paul hit the mute with his beak and saved
them.)