A Witchy Inheritance

Chapter 8

She felt the tears prick at her eyes at the note written for her from her aunt. But at the same time the note explained almost nothing, all it mentioned was magic and that Cicero was there to help her. She lowered the letter into her lap and saw the man still standing in front of her.

"How exactly are you supposed to help me with this, a gift I'm pretty sure I don't necessarily have?" It wasn't exactly a lie because she wasn't sure that she had a gift but it wasn’t exactly the truth either since she had been having weird dreams recently.

Cicero raised an eyebrow at her again, she wasn't sure whether this was a gesture he did on purpose or whether it was an automatic movement he didn't realize he was making. "I'm going to ignore the fact that you and I both know that you have probably inherited this gift. And say that I know of two of the most gifted seers in the area, both of which your aunt and I contacted before her death to let them know that they should probably be prepared for your coming."

My eyes narrowed as a new thought occurred to me, "why wait two weeks to tell me this?"

He gave a heavy sigh and his shoulders slumped, "honestly no. I had planned to contact one of the instructors after my boxes showed up and let them know that one of them needed to come visit you and have them break the news that way it wouldn't be such a shock, that was the idea anyway. I had not expected you home quite yet so I figured it was safe for me to grab a box and some clothing because I have been stuck in my cat form for weeks now and I was going a little stir crazy. But then you came home early with what I can only assume is food you meant to feed me and here we are."

I felt my frown deepen, "the letter says your cursed." I wasn't quite sure what to say beyond that it seemed almost rude to ask about it but if this man who could magically turn into a cat had something wrong with him and he was going to be living under my roof I felt I had a right to know.

Finally he pushed off the wall and moved to sit on the end of the couch opposite from where I sat in the recliner. "Familiars get assigned a witch in their mid-20s and our job is to help that witch with whatever it is she needs help with whether that be training to keeping track of younger witches or just being the only companion some witches have or the only companion that knows they are a witch. We also amplify a witch’s power so not all witches get a familiar. I was assigned to an older witch whose familiar died several years earlier, unbeknownst to the group in charge of assigning familiars she had killed that familiar and made it look like he died of old age she had also gone completely off her rocker. She managed to hold it together and look relatively sane for about 2 to 2 1/2 years before I started to notice little idiosyncrasies that didn't seem right to me. At first I wasn't sure if there was a problem because I had no experience to compare it to. Like I said most of us don't hop from witch to witch so it wasn't until I made her angry by foiling us spell she meant to do to curse a man who had rejected her that she truly turned on me. I wasn't about to let her do dark magic to curse this man so I knocked over the bowl with all the ingredients and hid several of them so she couldn't replicate it. She then used all the magic she stored for that spell to curse me so that every full moon I am in cat form and will not be able to change. It wouldn't matter what happened I would be stuck like that for five days, one day before and one day after the full moon. Once I was cursed I ran away, which is unheard of for a familiar and I reported what my witch was doing to the ruling body. It took me several months to try and figure out who to talk to without setting her off but finally it got to the right people and not only was I removed from her but she was cursed to a kind of witch prison and her magic was stripped away. I was then reassigned to your aunt who is in good standing and had to deal with a much longer vetting process than my first witch. So that is what she means by cursed, at least the long version anyway."