Kiss Me Deadly: Tales of a Paranormal Romance

I frowned at the sound of the pained male voice. Who said that?

“Now you can go.” Mrs. Timmons wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and gave me a weary look. “Give my regards to your mother.”

“Yeah, I’ll do that.”

I was out of there before she changed her mind and turned me into a toad, or something. Mission accomplished. I hoped this would be enough to get Mom off my back for a while longer. I mean, the cat had to grow up before it could be any real use to me. How long did I have? A few months, maybe?

I’d take what I could get.

“Now I have a kitten,” I mumbled, holding the shoebox close to my chest as I walked home in the dusky light of early evening. It was only a half-mile to my house from the store. “At least you’re cute enough. Kind of antisocial, but cute. Sort of like me, without the cute part.”

“I think you’re cute.”

I stopped walking and looked over my shoulder. No one was there. I continued on walking, figuring it was just my imagination. My positive affirmations bubbling to the surface. Mom always told me not to put myself down. Maybe I was starting to get it.

“I have no idea what to call you,” I said. “Mrs. Timmons said just to concentrate and it would come to me.”

“The name’s Owen.”

“I don’t like that name at all,” I told my imagination. “I want something way cooler than Owen.”

My imagination swore under its breath. “Wait a minute, you can read my thoughts? How the hell can you do that?”

I was about to answer my imagination when I noticed that someone was standing in my way. Two men, actually, both well over six feet tall with broad chests and shoulders like football players, blocking what little light there was on the horizon. I stopped walking and looked at them nervously.

“We need that,” one of them said.

“I don’t have any money,” I stammered. “Like, maybe five bucks total.”

“Keep your money, we just want what’s in the box.”

I looked down at the box holding the kitten. The kitten itself eyed me curiously for a moment before the box was pulled completely out of my hands. The kitten jumped out, and one of the men grabbed for it.

“ Hands off,” my imagination—which I was now thinking wasn’t my imagination at all—snarled.

The kitten arched its back and hissed, swiping a tiny paw in the man’s direction.

“Aw, isn’t that adorable?” one of the men said sarcastically to the other. “Little Owen’s showing his big, scary claws. Kids. Pain in the ass, if you ask me.”

Before I could say anything, do anything, something crazy happened. And, growing up in a house with a magic-using witch as a mother, that was saying something.

The kitten grew before my very eyes.

Instead of a tiny striped kitten standing between me and the men, there was now a huge tiger who had to be five hundred pounds or more.

It growled, baring long sharp teeth and flicked a glance at me.

“Stay back. Werewolves are dangerous even in human form.”

Werewolves? I staggered back a step, almost falling over.

“Come on,” one of the men said, although he was backing up a step at a time. “We don’t want a fight, Owen. Not here, not now. Just give us what we’re after, and nobody has to get hurt.”

What they got was another fierce growl as the huge tiger moved toward them. Without another word, they turned and ran, the tiger stalking after them.

Had they called the tiger Owen?

I looked with shock down at the discarded shoebox that had contained a tiny kitten only minutes ago. Next to it was the sparkling collar the kitten had been wearing around its neck— rhinestone, Mrs. Timmons had said. I reached down and picked it up, looking at it closer. I didn’t know jewelry, but it didn’t really look like cheap knock-off rhinestone jewelry to me. And it didn’t look like a collar for a pet. It looked like a bracelet with a broken clasp. A diamond bracelet.

Another growl from the huge wildcat now loose in the city made me instinctively turn around and start running for my house. I didn’t think I’d ever moved so fast in my life. Keeping the bracelet on me made me nervous so I decided to quickly hide it under a Dumpster in an alleyway I passed on my way home. I’d come back for it in the daylight when every shadow didn’t seem as if it was ready to pounce.

“Hey honey,” Mom said, distracted since she was on the phone when I blew through the front door. “How did it go at Hocus Pocus? Did you find a familiar?”

“I don’t know,” I said when I’d found my voice. It came out really shaky. “I’ll have to go back tomorrow. I have homework. Talk to you later.”

I ran upstairs and shut my bedroom door, trying to put what had happened out of my mind forever.

* * *

There was a small striped kitten sitting on my chest, looking at me, when I woke up the next morning. It cocked its head to the side.

“You’re finally awake. I’ve been waiting forever. Where’s the bracelet, Brenda?”

I heard the voice in my head, the same voice from last night. I pushed the kitten away from me and scrambled out of the bed and got tangled up in the sheets and my baggy pajamas. My legs felt shaky.

“Wh-what do you want from me?”

The kitten watched me carefully. “The bracelet. Like I just said.”

“How come I can hear you?”

“Good question. I figure it’s because that old witch did her abracadabra thing last night. I’m your familiar now, remember? Who knew that would actually mean something? But at least it helped me find you again. You’re like a homing beacon for me now.” He didn’t sound terribly happy about that.

The familiar/witch bonding spell.

“You turned into a tiger last night.” My mouth felt very dry.

“And you’re lucky I did. You have no idea how dangerous those werewolves were.”

“Werewolves? Wh-what did they want?”

“See? We’ve come back to the subject of the bracelet again. It’s what they want. It’s what I want. So why don’t you hand it over so I can go on my merry way and leave you to your normal life?”

“Brenda!” Mom called from the hallway outside my closed door. “You up?”

I tensed. “Yeah.”

“Breakfast is almost ready. I made blueberry pancakes.”

I gulped. “Super. Just a moment.”

“I’ll bring you up some orange juice to start.”

“No, that’s not really—” But I heard the footsteps on the stairs, indicating she’d already headed back down to the kitchen. Great. Today of all days my mother decides she wants to hand-deliver me some vitamin C.

I blew out a long breath. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if I was hiding anything other than a little kitten in my—

I turned around and nearly screamed, stopping myself only by clamping my hands over my mouth.

The kitten was gone. In its place was not a tiger this time, but a boy with tawny-colored hair and dark blue eyes. He was bare-chested and had my sheets pulled up to his waist. I had the sinking feeling that was all he was wearing.

“Comfortable,” he said, pressing on the mattress. “I could get used to this. Haven’t had a bed for a while. Being on the run has a tendency to mess up your sleeping patterns.”

He said it flippantly, but there was a strange slide of emotion through his eyes. Something like envy and a little sadness.