“Then what-?”
“I’m gonna grab some sleep because I want to be fresh tonight in case we have to do a little looking. It won’t be easy, since there’ll be open season on Kauris, but I’ve got some experience in this. You’ll stick close here because he might come back. If he’s not back by tomorrow morning, then we start panicking.”
“I—very well. But what should I do?”
“You can serve your master best today by convincing everybody that he’s still here, and, perhaps, is a bit under the weather. You’ve got a sick master up here, but not too sick. Just a bug, no big deal. That’ll keep people out and questions down to a minimum. Fetch meals as if for him—the kind of stuff he’d order, remember. You get the idea?”
She nodded. “I understand and will do as you say. For one day and night, anyway.”
“Good girl. Do it right. I just hope nobody notices.”
“Notices what?”
“We forgot in all the worry to slip on your bracelets and anklets, and you sure aren’t gonna get them on now. Just hope nobody up here believes in were anythings any more than most folks do. Don’t worry—I doubt if they will. Me, I’m gonna get some real sleep.”
Mia felt momentary panic. The bracelets and anklets! Still there on the floor. The small earrings were still there, too, but she had those with a clasp to allow for full moon times. She moved to put them back in, then thought better of it. No, nothing but the collar and the nose ring. She looked at herself in the mirror. God! So very plain, sexless. But she would leave them off. If anybody asked, it would be that they were cut off by her master’s orders, which she could not question.
Somehow, she knew, they would have to find a way to get a collar with a clasp, against the rules or not. Otherwise, what happened if she changed into something sometime with either too large a neck or, perhaps, an animal like a horse? She wouldn’t strangle, but the collar would then fall through the reforming flesh and it wouldn’t fit back on, either.
As ready as she could be, she took a deep breath, tried to stay calm, then opened the door and went down to see about keeping up the lie, wishing all the time that it was true.
It was a harrowing day for Mia, who was almost a nervous wreck by the time Marge awakened. She had tried getting some sleep, but what little came was fitful, and every noise woke her back up.
There was no problem taking some of the money they had and getting fake meals. Money was money, although most of the meals were dumped in the chamber pot and the mess, mixed with the usual contents of the chamber pot that she could hardly avoid adding, already attracting flies.
That worried her a bit. It would be just like the way things were going suddenly for a fly to land on her just at moonrise. Everything worried her, all of a sudden.
Only the cafe lady had noticed her lack of jewelry, and she’d lied and said it looked just fine. Coming back with the dinner had, in fact, caused her only problem; some of the troops were in town, and apparently word of her dance and extraperformance activities had gotten around fast. She was filled with requests, and feared she would be delayed too long and moonrise would occur right then and there, with her in the middle of the street surrounded by soldiers. She also knew that they’d come after her and maybe up to the room if she said she’d ask permission, but then she-got the bright idea to note that her master was sick. Real sick. Some kind of flu. She didn’t know if it was catching… Kerchoo! She had a clear field.
Marge sat there, nervously waiting for her. “About time!” “I had to get through a horde of lustful soldiers, my lady,” she apologized. “I was not sure I would be here in time.”
“Yeah, well, I kinda figured something like that. You still got a few minutes yet, and I’m still only mildly worried about Joe. After all, he’d be naked and on foot, with those patrols about, and it’s a long way. I—”
There was a sudden figure at the window, that of a Kauri. Joe climbed in, and Mia and Marge both frowned, then Mia looked down at her unchanged self and Marge at Mia’s normality.
“I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with this crazy curse!” he grumbled. “This never happened before. Never.”
Quickly he filled them in on what had happened—up to a point.
Marge, of course, caught it immediately. “Uh, Joe… You look awfully good and awfully fit and strong by Kauri standards for somebody who got drained by a spell that strong.”
His eyes rolled heavenward, then to Mia, then back to her. “The curse must have restored it as I slept,” he responded at last. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t change back.”
Until that moment, Marge had never thought a Kauri could look embarrassed. She knew that there was only one way he could have gotten that kind of energy recharge, but she resisted the urgings of her Texas fairy soul to bring it up and rub it in. If he was as drained as he said, and then still made it that far, when he woke up it wouldn’t have been an option but a compulsion.
“So what do we do now?” Marge asked instead. “The only way I know to go when you have a bent curse is to visit a witch doctor, but somehow I don’t think we want a Kauri walking into any witch doctor in these parts and saying she’s really a were and couldn’t switch back because of a sorcerous jolt!”
“Perhaps it will repair itself now, Master,” Mia said hopefully. “The moon will be up any moment.”
“Jeez! That’s a point!” Marge commented. “Maybe we should get into some kind of position…”
But it was too late. He saw Mia’s form blur and twist, actually saw her very brief change into Kauri form. He, too, felt it, but he suddenly realized that he was out of position.
“Well, we’ve got two of us, anyway,” Marge noted, looking at her twin where Mia had stood moments before. Joe, however, had been slightly closer not to Marge, but to Mia.
“I never realized that before,” the Kauri went on, staring at the new Joe. “It even duplicated the nose ring! Holy smoke, Joe! You own yourself!”
Joe let out a long, exasperated sigh.
CHAPTER 9
FIFTY WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR LOVER
Black shall be the color of the forces of evil; gold or silver trim is optional. Good shall have use of any other appropriate color combinations. One of the few tangible benefits of good is that they shall be able to use the better clothing designers.
Joe stood there, feeling pretty stupid. He’d been so convinced, considering the day, that there would be no change at moonrise, that he’d been very sloppy.
“I have seen the objects transferred before, my lady,” he responded, the title coming unbidden. Just as he’d inherited an entire duplicate set of Kauri powers and instincts, and, yes, compulsions, so, too, had the damned curse duplicated not only Mia, but the full deck of Rules governing her as well. “As weres are supposed to exactly duplicate what they are nearest, it can happen.”
“This is madness!” Mia protested. “How can he own himself?”
“Because the ring’s a fake, really part of him,” Marge answered. “He’s not really a slave, he’s just duplicating, imitating one exactly.” She sighed. “So now what do we do?”
“He surely cannot go out like that,” Mia pointed out.
“And I can’t stay in,” Marge said. “After last night I need a recharge and a hotshot in spades, and, Mia, since you duplicated me exactly, so do you.”