SonofaWitch! Read online

  He woofed, dropped to the floor and rolled onto his back, exposing a paler underbelly. Rowan sighed and rubbed his belly. She ran her fingers through the silky coat and realized he needed brushing, hadn’t had a bath in way too long. “You smelly old goon.”

  He whined when she stopped, but then, Rex would lie still for belly rubs for hours. When she ordered him back to his bed, however, the dog obeyed, though he walked with his head low and paused to give her the sad-eyed-double-check twice on the way out.

  By the time she got the barrier back in place and sat down again, Rowan had run out of time. She re-lit the candle, sneezed, and began reading her list.

  “His eyes are soft and deep. His love is deeper. He is loyal, devoted, honest, and affectionate.” Rowan opened the square of red cloth that she’d embroidered with runes in silver thread. She took a pinch of each herb and placed it in the center. “He expresses his emotions. He’s fun and playful, but stable, too.”

  She continued to rattle off the traits she considered ideal in a man, the man she’d visualized in her daily meditations throughout the full moon cycle, taking great care not to accidentally envision a real person. She’d done her homework. She’d followed the rules. Now she would summon her perfect mate.

  She raised her energy and thrust the corner of her list into the candle flames. As it burned, Rowan chanted. “Heart of fire, burning free. Soul’s desire, fly to me.” The tingles of magic built beneath her skin, racing up and down her arms, arching her spine and drilling her focus into a laser of intent.

  Just before the fire reached her fingertips, she dropped the paper into her tabletop cauldron. She sprinkled more herbs on top, wrapped up her fabric bundle and added it to the mix. When the clock above her stove flipped to midnight, Rowan sat back and inhaled the fumes. She closed her eyes and released the power in a shudder of fortified will.

  In the living room, Rex lifted his head and woofed softly.

  The following morning, Rowan awoke, still giddy from the magic and lost in a dream that had felt too real to release easily. The covers were warm, so she snuggled deeper into them and tried to re-ignite the images from the dream without success. It had been lovely, but the light of reality drifted in through her bedroom curtains, and the man sleeping next to her rolled over, tugging the coverlet and letting a chill breeze in.

  The man. In her bed.

  Rowan launched from the mattress and landed on her feet, staring back at the bed, eyes still half caked with dream dust. The stranger sighed. He curled into the spot she’d vacated, a long drink of rippling muscles and completely naked flesh sleeping beside her as if he belonged there.

  Most spells didn’t manifest immediately. They tended to happen naturally, and with far less obvious results. Rowan frowned and squinted at her strange bedfellow. How had he gotten in? Her magic had never summoned anything from thin air before, and even if it had, a whole grown man seemed like a big leap.

  His long legs stretched out, feet hanging off the end of her bed, and he lay on his side with one chiseled hip in view above the rumpled comforter. She kept her eyes moving up to an equally well-sculpted chest and a pair of lovely arms arranged around his blond head. Silky hair, thicker on top. Now what?

  She cleared her throat. “Um.”

  His eyes flicked open and he let out a low moan, mumbling into the pillow. “Rowan?”

  “How do you know my name?”

  He reached one hand up and scratched the back of his head, still speaking through a filter of linens. “Rowan is good. I love Rowan.”

  “Oh. That’s very… You’re just putting that right out there, huh?” Then again, she’d specified that he express his emotions freely. She’d done a spell for him, there he was. In her bed. Confessing he loved her. But she still couldn’t work out how he’d gotten in. How he’d gotten past…

  “Come back to bed,” he said. “It’s warm and soft and smells just like you.”

  “Rex!” Rowan called for the dog, and the man sat up. The retriever would bark at the slightest movement in the yard. There was no way this guy had slipped past him unless he’d done something horrible to her dog. “Rex, here boy!”

  The stranger bounced, sitting on his knees and leaving nothing at all to her imagination. Rowan tried not to look, but the flutter of a long golden tail was hard to ignore in that situation, and when her eyes did their best not to notice it, they drifted up to his face, his big brown eyes, and the floppy, yellow ears she’d mistaken for hair.

  “Oh no.”

  “Here, here,” he chanted. “I love you, Rowan.”

  “Rex?”

  “Rowan!” He fell back, laying belly up this time and forcing her eyes toward the unbelievable ears. “Rub my belly?”

  “Oh gods.” She turned her back to the bed and pressed both fists over her eyes. Didn’t need to have seen that. Nope. Time to consider prescription medication.

  Something tugged at her pajama sleeve. She closed her eyes tight. Not happening. I didn’t accidentally… couldn’t have messed up that bad. It wasn’t possible. Except a man’s hand tugged at her sleeve again, and a man’s voice spoke while a not-quite-human head rubbed against her arm.

  “Rowan, I love you.”

  Rowan risked another peek. He had ears and a tail, and her dog was missing. She still couldn’t just swallow it on a theory. Rex could be in the backyard, enjoying a nice slow sniff around the perimeter. Except she knew darn well he wasn’t.

  Her affectionate bedfellow rubbed against her again then sat back and cocked his head to the side. His ears perked, and the expression on his face was far too familiar. I bet it was all that dog hair.

  “How did you get here?” She focused on his ears. “What happened to you?”

  “Rex was sleeping on the foot of the bed, hoping for many belly rubs and dreaming of the evil squirrel.”

  “Gods help me.”

  “Rex will help. Rex is a good boy!”

  Rowan’s knees gave up trying to be brave and folded. She sank to the floor and ended up sitting with them pulled in to her chest, her back against the bed and her ex-dog’s new head hanging over her shoulder.

  “Is it breakfast time?”

  “No. Nope.” She had no idea how to handle the mess she’d just made. She’d screwed up the spell, okay. There had been dog hair in her components and, if she were really honest about it, her list of perfect attributes did bear a strong resemblance to a faithful pet.

  But this was ridiculous.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” She howled it to the ceiling, but Rex bounced up and answered with a chant.

  “Rub my belly, rub, rub, rub.”

  “Nope.” Rowan shook her head. Something had gone horribly wrong, and now she had to figure out how to fix it. She’d need help, but first, she needed to get some clothes on her dog… fast.

  “It smells like you, too.” He buried his face in the t-shirt and inhaled.

  “That’s the biggest one I have. And the sweats were my brother’s. They should fit.” They’d likely be a little loose, in fact, but that should help with the tail problem. She set them on the bed without really looking at him and tried to ignore the tail thumping against her sheets. “Go ahead and put them on. Or… maybe you want a bath first?”

  He leaped straight up and Rowan scrambled away. She faced the wall, folded her arms and listened to the complaints coming from her bedsprings. When they stilled, she peeked and found no sign of him at all.

  “Rex?” Maybe he’d vanished. Maybe, he’d turned back into a dog.

  “No bath!” It came from the far side of the bed, from near enough to the floor to give her a flicker of hope. “Why is the bed so close to the floor?”

  “What?” Rowan took one step around the end of the bed and shrieked, slapping her hands over her eyes again.

  “I can’t get under.”

  “You’re too big to fit under the bed!” She fished with one arm for her fleece blanket, snatched the comforter instead and threw it in the directio
n of his upended bottom. “Could you maybe cover up with that?”

  “Okay.”

  “All covered?”

  “Yes.” His tail played a steady rhythm against the floor. “Is this good?”

  Rowan looked, let out a breath, and nodded. He’d sat back up and had draped the blanket over the top of his head, but it covered enough, and the position was far favorable to him trying to squeeze head first under her bed. “Yes. That’s great. Now put your arm up and we’ll get you dressed.”

  “Like Rowan?”

  “Sure.” She found the t-shirt balled up on the floor. “Put your arms up.”

  His hands shot into the air, and the blanket pooled around his hips. Rowan focused on getting the shirt over his arms and then wrestled the neck over his ears and head. He got the idea after that, and pulled the shirt down on his own while she retrieved the sweat pants from in front of her closet door.

  “Okay, pants.” Maybe he could do this part on his own. She held them out. “One leg goes in each hole, see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you can do this by yourself?”

  “Yes.” He frowned and his ears lowered.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “If I put those on…” He’d been scratching behind his right ear, and halfway through the thought, his eyes rolled up and he leaned into it.

  “Rex?”

  “Rowan?”

  “What’s wrong with the pants?”

  “Nothing.” His hand lowered and his head dropped forward. He looked up at her with shame-filled eyes. The exact expression he’d worn as a dog when she’d found his poop in her new flip flops.

  “You take them off when you have to go.”

  He nodded but didn’t perk back up.

  “I’m going to wait outside.”

  “Okay.”

  “Stay.”

  She left him sitting waist deep in the blankets staring at the pants as if they were made of No. He’d just have to work it out. Rowan needed to call her coven members and discuss what to do next. She needed to turn her dog back into a dog, immediately. I could use a drink, too. Considering the hour, she opted for starting a pot of strong coffee. Before it began to bubble her doorbell rang.

  “Great.”

  There were still chairs between the kitchen and living room, and she had to push them aside and lean the posters against the wall to get through. The door rang again, and Rowan stumbled to it, in her pajamas, praying to her favorite deities that there was a fairy godmother on the other side come to tell her someone upstairs had made a colossal error.

  And then fix it.

  When she opened the door, any hope of magical rescue snuffed out in the plain, floral dress the woman on her front stair wore. It had a lace collar that hadn’t been in fashion for half a dozen decades and was buttoned so high that the pointed face above it had paled as if low on oxygen. She had a pamphlet in her hands.

  “Good morning.” The greeting came in the thin, cheerful voice usually reserved for Stepford Wives.

  “Morning,” Rowan said.

  She’d intended to close the door on the woman, but her walkway led to a narrow, suburban street, and the man who lived across the way had taken to jogging in the mornings. He was stretching, holding each foot in turn and lengthening his tanned, muscular thighs. Rowan’s eyes skipped right over the missionary and watched him. When he waved before starting off, her heartbeat did a crazy little dance.

  It had been difficult not to imagine someone specific during the spell. In particular, because she’d seen her neighbor without his shirt on, since he’d come home every morning with sweat glistening over his tan skin.

  “Do you have time to talk about…”

  “I don’t.” She shook off the view and focused on her immediate dilemma. “And not even for the usual reasons.”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to, and you wouldn’t believe me anyway. It’s just kind of crazy and…” She trailed off when the woman’s eyes widened. They fixed on a spot behind Rowan, and when the poor over-buttoned throat began to make a sickly choking noise, she realized why. “Rex?”

  She turned too slowly and wished even then that she hadn’t. The missionary made a sound like a balloon with a pinhole, a slow leaking breath that only began to touch on the horror in Rowan’s living room. He’d had some trouble with the pants. Or else he’d gotten distracted and forgot to put them on. The t-shirt reached nearly to Rowan’s ass, but on a man-dog Rex’s size, it wasn’t anywhere near long enough.

  He stood in the center of her living room, and when Rowan turned, he perked his ears, bounced in place, and maybe just for the missionary’s benefit asked, “Can we play now?”

  Rex had never quite mastered stay.

  Also, it was possible the gods hated her.

  The missionary gave a dainty scream and spun around, bolting down the steps and across the yard before Rowan could react. Rex yelped and rushed back to the bedroom. Judging from the thud, he tried to squeeze under the bed again.

  Rowan sighed, shut her front door, and practiced her deep breathing all the way down the hall. By the time she reached her room, Rex had given up hiding. He curled up beside the bed with the blanket back over his head and only his face peeking out. “I told you to put them on!” She waved the pants at him. “What am I supposed to tell the neighbors?”

  “Mr. Milligan?” He cocked his head.

  “No.” She sighed and tried to remember he’d only been a man for a few hours, that somewhere under all that doofiness was her pet. It didn’t make her any more comfortable, but it did take the edge out of her voice. “It’s okay. Do you need help with the pants?”

  “They hurt my tail.”

  “Oh. I was hoping it would fit.”

  He sniffled and thumped his tail in a slow, sad rhythm. “I was bad to come out?”

  “No.” Hellfire, she never could stay mad at him when he stretched his big brown eyes that wide. “It’s okay. Let’s try cutting a hole in them.”

  Rowan kept the scissors in the kitchen, and when he followed her, she didn’t have the heart to correct him again. Instead, she kept her eyes forward and hurried past the open curtains in the living room as fast as she could. The scissors were dull, but she managed to poke the blade through near the seam. Between cutting and tearing she got a decent sized hole close to where she hoped his tail would end up.

  “There.” It looked less pretty when she held it up, but Rex smiled and wagged his tail anyway. “Think you can try again?”

  “Yes. I love you, Rowan.”

  “Okay, then. I’m going into the living room to make a call.”

  “Okay.”

  She left him with the pants and closed the drapes in the other room just in case. Then, she flopped onto her sofa, scowled at the explosion of dog hair she caused, and dialed JoAnna’s number.

  “Hello?” Jo had a deep alto and a no-nonsense tone.

  “I need your help, Jo.”

  “Uh oh.” On the other end of the line, the sound of Jo’s dogs painted an ironic backdrop to the conversation. “The spell didn’t take?”

  “It did, actually.” Rowan eyed the floating strands of dog hair and tried to think of ways not to sound like a lunatic. “Just not the way I expected.”

  “It backfired and now you’re madly in love with cranky old Mr. Milligan?”

  “Not possible.”

  “It exploded?”

  “No. Jo, listen.”

  “I’m trying to, but you’re not saying much of anything.”

  Rowan sighed. There was no way to say I turned my dog into a man on the phone and not sound batshit crazy. “I’m in trouble, Jo. I got dog hair in the components and then it went all kinds of sideways.”

  “Dog hair?” Jo’s own hounds barked over her.

  “Rowan?” Rex appeared in the kitchen opening. He had the pants on, and he turned around and showed her where he’d poked his tail through. Perfect. “Is
this right?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  “Is someone there?” JoAnna’s voice dropped into conspiratorial levels of intrigue. “Oh my god, Rowan. He’s there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?” Rex asked.

  “Yes it’s good.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Jo asked.

  “It’s very complicated.” Rowan closed her eyes and cursed silently.

  “Yes, it was,” Rex agreed. “But I did good?”

  “You did.”

  “Are you talking to him? What’s he like? Is he someone you know?”

  “I’m a good boy?” Rex wiggled and wagged his tail like a crazy golden flag.

  “You are.”

  “What?” Jo asked.

  “I have to pee now.” Rex froze. His tail lowered and he whined softly.

  “Go ahead and go.” Rowan waved him toward the hallway. “But take your pants down first.”

  “Oh my god, Rowan!”

  “No. Jo. It’s not what you think.” Shit. She’d pretty much proved she was nuts without even saying anything. Her head dropped into her hands and she tried to regroup. “It’s not funny. It’s bad. Really bad, and I need help.”

  “With his pants down?”

  “Jo! Wait. Did he go down the hallway?”

  “How should I know?” There was no hiding the snicker in Jo’s tone now, but a cold chill still settled in Rowan’s stomach when the kitchen door banged.

  “He’s in the yard. Shit.”

  “With his pants up or down?”

  “I don’t know!” Rowan already bounded toward the kitchen. “Just get over here, please!”

  She dropped her phone on the kitchen counter and skidded to the door just in time to spot Rex, standing in the center of the lawn with her brother’s sweats around his knees. From the look of it, he was too far into his business to be disturbed.

  He looked like one of those fountains in fancy ponds. Cherubic hair, perfect face, waterfall of urine cascading to her lawn. In the background, old Mr. Milligan’s wrinkled face glowed beet red, an angry sun above their fences.

  She probably should have rushed out to stop Rex. She might have said something helpful, explained to Milligan that her cousin had broken free from his assisted living situation and would be returning promptly. She certainly should have done something.