Chapter 5

I awoke in the morning feeling well rested and went down to have breakfast, after dressing and taking care of my morning preparations. I had more to do now with this new body to make sure I looked my best. I would need to have a serious talk with Al this morning, I remembered.

Breakfast today was eggs over easy with fried ham and toast. There was also orange juice and a banana. I gave Al a half can of cat food while the eggs were frying. Later while sitting at the kitchen table eating, Al came over to sit by my chair and asked me about last night.

“What were you dreaming about last night?” he asked.

“How do you know that I was dreaming?” I asked.

“You were moving around in the bed and making noises. It woke me up,” he told me. He had already finished his breakfast, and was hoping to mooch some of my ham.

“I dreamed about seeing the Guardian again,” I told him.

“And?”

I paused for a time trying to decide if I should tell him about the dream. I finally decided that it would be all right to tell him.

“I saw her in the field of flowers, and she drew me to her again. She had a question, a rather personal question for me,” I told him. Al looked at me for a number of seconds before I decided to go further with the explanation.

“What did you think of him?” she asked me with a smile.

“Think of who?” I asked.

“The Ley Line user, of course,” she answered.

“Oh, you mean... !” and I stopped there unable to remember his name for a short time. “Kennith, you mean,” I finally said.

“Yes, you know perfectly well who I mean, Kennith Sweeney,” she replied.

“He seemed rather nice, but why was he dealing with demons?” I demanded.

“He was dealing with ‘A’ demon, because he was purposely given bad information in the hopes that he would contact the wrong demon and be eliminated. He isn’t popular, or well liked, by some of the other Ley Line users,” she told me.

“Will he be able to find a familiar?” I asked.

“You will help him find a familiar, but later. I will tell you how before you need to do that, but not now. What did you think of him as a mate?” she finished.

“I blushed big time on hearing that,” I told Al.

“Well?” he asked.

“I hadn’t given it much consideration at the time, but thinking about the idea now, he is a rather handsome man. Just because he isn’t liked by some of the Ley Line users, doesn’t mean that he is a good guy. There could be a number of reasons why they don’t like him. On the other hand, they could be jealous of him, or not like him for some other reason,” I told him. “Perhaps when I know him better, I’ll be able to decide,” I added.

I had finished my ham and eggs by now. Al was disappointed that I hadn’t offered him any. He was miffed and went over to take a nap. That was when I remembered that I wanted to know more about how ‘he’ became a familiar.

“Al, just how did you become a Familiar, when did it happen, and who did it?” I asked before he could get comfortable and go to sleep.

“I took a nap one morning when I was about a year old. I was just a normal male cat then. When I woke up later, I found that I could talk, knew quite a bit about Magic, and could even sense it. I was laying on a pillow on a table. Your Mother was sitting there beside me.

“You will be my Daughter’s Familiar,” she told me, and I understood her words, much to my shock. She would never tell me why I was chosen over all of the other cats in the city, or who performed the Magic that turned me into a Familiar.

“At first, I didn’t like it, but after a time, I figured out that it was better than being just a cat, as I got fed regularly and got to go places with you. I didn’t need to sleep outside, and other cats didn’t bother me or try to take my food. It hasn’t been a bad gig,” he finished.

“Do you have any idea now of who could have done it? It would have required someone with much more powerful Magic than my Mother, who was a decent Earth Witch, but not powerful enough to have changed you into a familiar,” I asked him.

“I haven’t met or talked to anyone who knew how it was done. Everyone I asked told me about the same things that you just mentioned,” he told me before yawning and going to sleep, leaving me no wiser than I had been.

There was still a lot of studying to do, as I was only starting on Book 3, so I sat there at the table and started on that book after doing the dishes. Later that morning, Al pushed an empty cat food can over to me, and sat there looking up at me expectantly for a time before I noticed him.

“You have to wait until tonight for more canned cat food. I’ll give you some of the dried food for now,” I told him, seeing the empty can.

“If we don’t go shopping now, there won’t be anything to eat tomorrow,” he told me.

“Are we nearly out of food again?” I asked in surprise, as it didn’t seem that long ago that we had been grocery shopping.

“Yes,” was all that he said. Looking over at the calendar and then my mechanical watch, I finally figured out what day it was and realized that I could go to the bank, as money from the Trust Fund that my Parents had set up for me before they died would now be there. I get a monthly deposit from the fund until I get married, when I will receive what is left in a lump sum, if I desire to. My Father had a similar arrangement from his Parents.

Normally I don’t have a cash flow problem, as I make extra money with my Earth Witch skills, which tided me over until money from the Trust Fund came in each month. This month, I had been doing a lot of studying since the attack and not any work as an Earth Witch. Come to think about it, I hadn’t received any calls for work since returning home from the hospital, which seemed strange. I usually got a couple of calls a week for amulets and charms, plus occasional calls for other things. I hadn’t been paid for the amulets that I had prepared for that last job where I was turned into a crispy critter. This was another reason why I needed to get even with that demon and whoever sent him.

“I need to change clothes and get my checkbook, Al, and then we’ll go shopping,” I told my Familiar, as I headed upstairs.

The drive to the bank was uneventful. It wasn’t until I was inside that things went wrong. The teller who was on duty was new, as I had never seen him there before. After he took my check, the questions started.

“I need you to run your debit card through the reader,” he told me.

“I don’t have a debit card. I’ve never had one,” I replied.

“Then I need to see your driver’s license,” he said, and I dug it out of my purse and handed it to him. He looked at it for a long time.

“This isn’t you. The picture doesn’t match,” he tells me.

“No, it doesn’t. I was in an accident, but I’m still me,” I told him.

“Sorry, but I can’t cash this check without proper identification,” he tells me pushing the check and my driver’s license back to me. Just then, one of the regular tellers returned, and I approached her.

“Gale, I need to cash this check, and your other teller won’t take it,” I told her. She looked at me for a number of seconds before looking down at Al beside me.

“Maddy!” she gasped in surprise. “You look so ... so different! What happened to you?” she gasped.

“I had a serious accident and was healed by Magic. It made a few changes,” I told her.

“Boy, I’ll say so. You look really sexy now, but I recognized Al, and he wouldn’t be with anyone else,” she told me with a smile before accepting my check and cashing it. The other teller had witnessed all of this and now spoke to Gale.

“Her identification doesn’t match. You shouldn’t cash that check,” he told her in a disapproving voice.

“I’ve known Maddy for years. She comes in every month to get cash from her Trust Fund,” Gale told him before turning back to me.

“You will need to get your driver’s license picture changed, Maddy,” she told me.

I had been holding the license in my left hand and glanced down at it now. Even as I was looking at it, a spell surfaced in my mind, and I repeated it quietly while tracing a sign on my dress with the fingers of my right hand. When I looked down again, the picture on the license was of the new me, and I was willing to bet that the fingerprint on the back of the license matched whatever finger prints I now had. Who in the world would ever look at their own fingers to see what their finger prints looked like, I wondered?

“I don’t know what you mean,” I told the new teller and showed him my driver’s license. He appeared quite shocked on seeing it.

“But it didn’t match before!” he stammered in surprise.

“I’ve been holding it in my hand in plain sight the entire time since you returned it. So how could it be different now?” I asked him.

“She has been holding it in her hand since I came in,” Gale told him. “Maybe you were mistaken,” she added, handing me my money. He didn’t say anything.

“I’ll see you next month,” I told Gale, as Al and I made our way out of the bank and to my car.

Once in the car with my wards around it, I counted the money and broke it down into the amounts to pay my bills and the weekly amounts for food and other things for the month. It wasn’t a lot, but it would have to last.

Lowering the ward around the car, I drove over to the big box store where I usually shop and parked where I normally do. After getting out of the car, I pulled the ward back up around it and expanded it, so there was room around my car. Some of the people who shopped here were less than careful how they parked or where. I had been blocked in or unable to get into my car in the past by thoughtless drivers, but now I could do something about that.

Once in the store, I grabbed one of the small shopping carts and proceeded into the grocery section of the store. Al was very insistent that we get cat food first, so we went to the pet food isle, and I got him two weeks of canned cat food being careful to get a good assortment of the various different meals available.

Back in the people food area, I got a lot of different kinds of soup because they are inexpensive and filling. Bread and rolls were also inexpensive in the store brand as were biscuits. Frozen vegetables and canned beans were next with just a bit of meat, as it was expensive. Some cheap frozen dinners rounded out our shopping spree, but I relented at the last minute and got a dozen eggs also. I would just drink water, as I was already paying for it as well as the gas and electric. This reminded me that I would also need gas for the car. I could see now that it was going to be a rather lean month. Fortunately, the house had long since been paid for. There were still taxes on it and the land though.

I would have loved to get some additional clothing, but it just wasn’t in the budget this month, and I didn’t really have any place to wear them to presently.

On checking out, the total was more than I was happy with, but we needed to eat. Leaving the store, we were proceeding toward the car, when I noticed that there were four men following me. I had a bad feeling then and yelled, “Run Al!”

He took off as fast as a cat can go, which is pretty fast, and I was right behind him. I’m neither a cat, nor a runner, and those guys were soon closing in on me. I had been studying a transfer spell this morning and decided that now might be a good time to try it out. I cast it as I ran and transferred the last thirty feet to my car with those guys right behind me.

The small shopping cart, that I was pushing, and I slammed into the side of my car, as the spell doesn’t change or cancel your speed when cast, it just moves you, but I was inside the ward around my car now. The four guys slammed into the ward at full tilt right after that and were knocked down. Now though, it was my turn to be the aggressor, and I cast a ward around them after moving them five feet from my car. They soon recovered, but were surprised when they scrambled up to get away and found that they couldn’t move more than three feet or so inside the ward.

I, on the other hand, was congratulating myself for having the foresight to expand the ward around my car when I parked it. My joy changed to a frown when I looked at the shopping cart and my car. The shopping cart was bent some in the front, and the carton of eggs had fallen out of it and onto the pavement where it was leaking. My car had a dent from the shopping cart and a scratch in the paint where it had impacted it.