Page 3 of Strange Familiars
He looks at me. I look at him. I clench my fists, my palms sweaty, a pulse hammering in my inner wrists. The euthanasia potion bubbles, bright green, in the stoppered flask that I’ve already taken out of the usually locked safe.
I push up the sleeves of my robe, grab a needle and syringe, attach the two components, and uncap it. Slowly, and with shaking hands, I unstopper the flask of venenmort and draw up a measure of the poisonous fluorescence.
Percy seems to know that something important is happening. He sits up straight, on his haunches—an unusual position for a cat—and watches me.
I draw closer to him, biting back a sob. I’m expecting him to hiss, or swipe, or at least flatten his ears. He and I haven’t got off to the best start, and now, after only ten minutes of acquaintance, I’m expected to effectively dispatch him into his next life.
But he doesn’t hiss. He doesn’t swipe. He doesn’t even flatten his ears. All he does is half close his eyes and start purring…then he bumps his head against my hand.
My heart stutters and I reel, staggering backward, the green-glowing syringe clattering to the ground. “No,” I say to myself, beneath my breath. “No.” Rule or no rule, this is wrong. Killing an otherwise healthy animal for the sake of convenience iswrong.
Mrs.Mason-Price and her smarmy husband can threaten to get me kicked out of Seamere College of Magical Veterinary Sciences all they want. I’ll just have to outsmart them. I’m a resourceful person; I mean, I’ve survived this long on not much more than my wits and intellect, haven’t I? I’ll just have to do everything within my power to not get found out.
Scooping the still-full syringe off the floor, I toss it into the sharps bin. With a flick of my wrist, I harness the last of my day’s ration of magic and set the parchment on fire. It curls in on itself, like a spider dying, until it’s nothing more than a pile of ash.
Then I shrug out of my white robes, shove an outraged Percy beneath my shirt, and hurry out of the room.
2
Gwendolynne
It’s after closing time, which is lucky, because everyone’s already gone home. Technically, Jenna Rutherford should have hung around until I left, since she’s my supervisor and all. But only a few weeks into term, she had me pegged. She saw how responsible I was. And since we final-year students are considered close enough to being qualified to work with minimal supervision, soon after that she just…took it to the next level. She started leaving bang on closing time, waving to me cheerily as she got on her motorbike, her tattooed arms wrapped around her girlfriend’s waist.
“I trust you,” she’d say with a wink. And “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
I admire Jenna, I really do. The way she’s effortlessly cool, blasé without being reckless, enthusiastically willing to break rules. I admire all of it, especially the rule-breaking bit—something that doesn’t come naturally to me at all.
Not that anyone would know it right now. Percy’s a wriggling lump beneath my clothing, and by the time I reach my bike I swear he’s already gouged me with his claws upward of a dozen times. I’m sure he doesn’t much like being swaddled in my scratchy browncardigan, a vintage charity shop find that looks more expensive than it actually was. Neither do I, for that matter, but needs must.
My bike isn’t locked up; I don’t really need to secure it since it’s too shabby to steal. And now, after being subjected to Mrs.Mason-Price’s dramatic car park exit, it’s even muddier than before. Percy continues squirming, but I somehow manage to keep him contained with one hand while awkwardly steering my bike with the other.
I check my strap and sigh. It’s already after seven p.m. I still need to read up about magiphiliaandreplenish my magic stores. Without more magic, I can’t do my job, which is not only bad for the animals but also bad for me. I can’t risk losing more marks, especially since my instincts were right: Iwasdocked a mark for forgetting Mrs.Mason-Price’s name. I sigh again; after processing the payment, she must have picked the frowning face on her post-consultation survey.
Luckily I’m still top of the class, though only just. Harrisford Briggs trails me by only two points.
Twilight is falling as we walk along, the rhythmic clicking of my bike wheels chittering into the night. There’s sweetness in the air, which is suffused with mellow pink light, and the distant laughs of students playing Flaugball float by on the breeze. Eventually, Percy stops struggling and goes still, as though calmed by the soothing hum of magic and the soft sounds of dusk.
It should be calming me, too. Usually dusk is my favorite time of day. It’s when I can finally leave behind the stresses of Saint Gertrude’s, Seamere’s magical familiars hospital. When I can drag my weary feet toward my dorm room, eat a bowl of cereal for dinner, and scroll mindlessly on my strap for an hour before settling in for my nightly study.
But tonight I’m feeling jittery. I’ve flagrantly broken the rules—it’s possibly the first time in my twenty-four years of life that I’vedone so. And while I’m content in the knowledge that I did what I felt was right, I still have to deal with the ten pounds of scruffy fluff concealed beneath my clothes.
At least Percy’s fluctuating magiphilia seems to have eased a little. By the time we reach one of the campus vending machines, his magic is an almost-pleasant tingle against my skin, rather than outright incineration.
The machine is a shiny black monstrosity, emblazoned with the Magecorp logo. My lips flatten. Of course it had to bethismachine, didn’t it?
Magecorp, Mrs.Mason-Price’s husband’s company, is one of the two major suppliers of magic. The other supplier is Linksphere, but their vending machine is located across the paddocks at the opposite end of campus, and I really don’t have time for a detour.
Gripping Percy, I take a few deep breaths, trying to steady myself. My gut feels hollow, and not just because I missed out on eating lunch. Seeing the Magecorp logo is dredging up all of tonight’s memories. Everything that has happened is playing on a loop inside my mind.
Suddenly, I have the urge to call my parents and confess everything. About the cat I’ve rescued. About my run-in with his owner. I need to tellsomeone, or it feels like I might explode. And since my mum and dad live in Manchester, with zero connections to the vet world—apart from me—it should be safe to tell them my secret. Right?
Fishing around in my jeans pocket, I locate my magecredit card. At the same time, in an effort to multitask, I switch my strap to speaker mode and dial my parents’ number.
My mother answers after two rings. “Guiying?” she says, using my Chinese name. “Is everything all right?”
She’s clearly worried, since normally I video call my parents on Mondays, when they’re off work. And today is, in fact, a Wednesday.
“Yes, Ma. I…” I pause. My confession teeters right at the tip of my tongue.
