Chapter 3

The following characters appears here and in other parts of the story:

Fritz Herkimer

Ley Line Wizard, 6’-2’’ tall, 220 pounds, 38 years old, blond hair, blue eyes

The Guardian

Keeper of the Books, about 5’-6’’ tall, neither young or old, very long blond hair, deep blue eyes

“Stop here and turn left,” Al told me. He was sitting up in his cat seat and looking out the side window of the car. We were on our way back home from the bookstore and still had a good ways to go.

“You need clothes ... remember?” he asked.

“Yes, I need a lot of clothes. This new body configuration that the Ley Lines gave me is a lot fuller than my old body was,” I reminded him.

“That’s why you need to stop here,” he told me in return. By now the light had changed, and I turned left into another street.

“Turn right in just a bit,” Al told me, and I could see where several cars were waiting to exit the parking lot that Al wanted me to turn into.

“Drive most of the way up the parking lot and find a place to park,” he told me next. I recognized the area now, though I had usually seen it coming from the opposite direction.

“You want ME to shop at Goodwill?” I demanded in an upset voice just before spotting a parking spot close to the store.

“Why not? You need clothes ... a lot of clothes. They have clothes that aren’t too expensive,” Al answered, as I stopped the car.

“I want to ride in the shopping cart, where I can see everything,” Al told me when we entered the store. I picked him up after selecting a cart and sat him in the child seat.

“You’re getting fat, Al,” I told him on depositing him on the flip down plastic seat.

“I’m just right for a cat my size,” he answered, as he looked over everything in the store. I was sure that if he found something to interest him, that he would be out of the shopping cart in an instant. Manx cats are good jumpers.

As I moved around the store looking at the various racks of clothing, I was surprised by the variety of it, the colors, and the quality of some of it. While much on display was ordinary, everyday store quality, there were notable exceptions, and I saw a number of very fashionable and high quality items mixed in with the many ordinary ones. It didn’t appear that those running the store made a distinction. Apparently to them a blouse was a blouse, no matter who made it. The same seemed to apply to other items also.

I found a couple of very nice robes, some sleepwear, and a dressing gown, all of which would fit my new body. I also found several blouses, a couple of skirts, and two dresses. All were of good quality. A couple of chemises and a few camisoles followed. Last on my list was a couple of pairs of jeans. These were a bit more difficult to find in my size and in good condition, but I eventually found some that were acceptable in the men’s area. I even found a nice pair of low heel flats that I liked. They didn’t have bras or panties, but I could find them in other stores.

Al had abandoned the shopping cart when we neared the area where items other than clothes were. I eventually found him sitting in a metal bowl.

“I need a new food dish,” he told me.

“Certainly not that one. Even you couldn’t eat that much,” I told him, as it was huge.

“No, the one inside this one,” he said, as he rose from the bowl to reveal a smaller one inside of it.

“All right, that’s better,” I agreed and picked up the smaller bowl. Al jumped up into the shopping cart while I did this, and he was sitting on my lingerie when I placed the bowl in the cart.

“Careful Al,” I warned him before moving a piece of nearby cardboard for him to sit on. “I don’t need those ripped up before I even buy them,” I added before continuing to shop.

“We still need to stop and pick up a few other things, but I can get them at a regular store,” I told Al, as I loaded everything into the trunk of my car after paying for the items and leaving the Goodwill store. We headed for the town near where I lived, as it was convenient to shop there since they had almost every kind of store ... now that the town had grown during the last ten years or so.

Arriving at the shopping center where I usually shopped, I pulled the car into a parking space near the cart return at the big box store which was where I often parked. It was some distance from the store, but it was usually easy to find a parking space there unlike closer areas. I was just exiting the car, when the two Ley Line Wizards appeared in front of me. One of them was David De Tocqueville, but I didn’t recognize the other man. He was tall and heavily built with blond hair and blue eyes. He looked at me, and I could feel his Magic senses examining me. On finishing, he frowned before turning to De Tocqueville.

“What’s so unusual about her?” he asked.

“It’s how she became a Ley Line user,” David said, but the other man wasn’t impressed with this explanation.

“Bah, she isn’t anything special. I can hardly detect the Line in her,” he said before I felt his Magic reach out and swat me like a fly, and I fell to the ground in a daze.

“She’s nothing but a broken Witch,” the large man said as he turned to leave.

“It wasn’t a good idea to attack her, Fritz,” David told him before they both disappeared. I lay there on the asphalt for a few more seconds before pulling myself up and eventually standing. I was shaking with anger and embarrassment.

“Broken Witch am I?” I asked. “We’ll see about that,” I continued before checking my clothes to be sure that they weren’t dirty or torn, since they were a bit of a tight fit, and I hadn’t changed into the clothes I had bought today yet. I could feel that my skirt was muddy and wet where I had fallen on my butt, and a cleaning spell instantly appeared in my mind when I realized this.

“Where the hell was my Magic when that big bastard was swatting me?” I wondered out loud, as I turned back to the car after using the cleaning spell on my skirt.

“I could feel it shrink to just a small corner of your mind when you got out of the car. I don’t think it wanted that guy to know what you can do now,” Al told me from where he was sitting on the driver’s seat.

“Come on Al, I want to finish shopping and get home, so I can start hitting those books to handle this new Magic that I have. I don’t intend to get swatted again by any of those Ley Line Wizards,” I told my Familiar. Al followed me into the store.

Fortunately the store had a good selection of bras large enough to fit my new figure. They also had a good selection of panties in my size. Both came in a number of colors. After picking out some bras and panties in addition to looking at some blouses, I went to find Al who was in the pet section of the store. He was looking up at some cat toys, and I got him the one that he wanted plus some cat food. We also stopped in the food section of the store and picked up some groceries.

It wasn’t until I got home and started unloading what I had purchased that I realized that the bag of Ley Line books was missing. I had put them on the floor of the front passenger’s seat below Al’s traveling seat. I checked the rest of the car but couldn’t find them. They were gone without a trace!

“Could someone have broken into my car?” I wondered in frustration, sick at heart.

“There is no indication of someone else being in the car,” Al told me. “I would have smelled them.”

“And if they had used Magic to remove them?” I asked but received no answer.

“What could have happened to them then?” I asked following that but had no answers until something occurred to me.

“Could those two Wizards have stolen them?” I asked in an upset voice.

“I didn’t feel them doing anything like that,” Al told me. I was so frustrated that I slammed all of the doors on my way into the house and to the kitchen. Fortunately, the front door still opened as I approached it, since my arms were full of grocery bags. The clothing was still in the car.

Therefore, you can imagine my shock on entering the kitchen to discover the bag of books sitting on my kitchen table! I stopped dead in my tracks on seeing them there, and the bags of groceries slipped from my hands as I stared in shock at the book store bag and its contents.

“How in the world!?” I exclaimed in shock and just stopped. Al was on the floor and couldn’t see the bag of books, which was set back from the edge of the table.

“What’s wrong now?” he demanded.

“The books... !” I said, still not believing they were here.

“What about the books?” he asked in a peeved voice.

“They’re on the kitchen table!” I said in surprise.

“WHAT?” Al asked and jumped up on the table. He walked across it and sniffed the bag of books.

“Yes, these are the books from the book store. How did they get here?” he asked, as he sat down and started cleaning his face and whiskers.

“Off the table, AL,” I told him, as I picked up the bags of groceries and placed them on the table before answering.

“How could the books be here? They were in the car at the Goodwill, I’m sure,” I told Al who was sitting on one of the chairs around the table now.

“How did you come back from the dead?” he asked, and that made me stop and think.

“I don’t think they were in the car when we stopped to get my underwear and the groceries. Those two Wizards would have surely detected the use of Ley Line Magic when they moved. So when did the books leave the car?” I finished.

“You’re asking me? I was asleep while you were driving,” Al said, being of little help at all.

“I have absolutely no idea how they could have gotten from my car to the table here in the kitchen. Certainly not without someone using some strong Magic,” I told Al.

“No one has used any strong Magic, except that Wizard when he swatted you. The other one didn’t use any Magic except when they disappeared. I would have detected it if they had, as they both ignored me and concentrated on you,” Al told me.

“I still need to get the clothes out of the car. Stay off the table,” I told Al before leaving to collect the bags of clothes in the car. There was no use trying to figure out how the books moved to the kitchen table, at this point, as I had no idea how it could have been done.

Up in my room, I was hanging up the clothes from the Goodwill store, and eventually came to the last item that I had gotten on a whim. It was a jacket with a zip up front. After putting it on a hanger, I checked the pockets to be sure that the previous owner hadn’t left any used Kleenex or paper in the pockets. On checking the left hand pocket, I was surprised to find something there, but it didn’t feel like Kleenex or toilet paper. On removing it from the pocket, I found that it was green ... money green! Further examination revealed that it was hundred dollar bills ... four of them! Who would be stupid enough to leave that kind of money in a jacket pocket and then donate it to Goodwill or any place else? I had no idea, and was sure that it would be impossible to determine who the original owner of the jacket was, as I didn’t believe that they kept records of who donated what, or where they lived. I put the money in my pocket and would keep it. Who would know ... no one, I decided.