Free Blonde With a Wand by Vicki Lewis Thompson

head off as she watched a cat in command of a computer. But this wasn’t a trumped-up video, and a cat with the mind of a man—an enraged man at that—was a scary thing.
    No telling how long he’d been at this exercise. If he’d managed to use the mouse, then he could have already been surfing the Net. He could have sent a bunch of destructive e-mails while she was asleep.
    She’d never imagined he’d turn on the computer, but why not? It was a perfectly logical move given his limited choices. She had to give him points for ingenuity, even if she was worried sick about the consequences to her.
    She walked toward him. “Good morning, Jasper. I see you’ve decided to use the computer.”
    He turned his head and gazed at her with wary eyes.
    In a moment of blinding insight, she realized he was as afraid of her as she was of him. While he was a cat, she had the power of life and death over him. He couldn’t know that she wouldn’t use that power, although she was seriously thinking she’d restrict his computer access for the time being.
    His gaze flicked to her right hand.
    She’d been so intent on the computer problem that she’d forgotten that she was carrying her bedside table lamp. He could very well think she meant to brain him with it.
    “I couldn’t imagine who was out here typing,” she said. “I brought this to defend myself.” She lifted the lamp slightly. “Lame, I know, but I’ve never bothered to keep anything around for protection. I always could count on my wand, plus the protective spells I’d placed around the apartment. Now I have nothing but a hand-painted lamp.”
    Setting it on the floor by the desk, she picked up Jasper and sat at the desk with him in her lap. The message on the screen was obviously to her and amazingly didn’t contain any swear words. Considering how he struggled to type, he might not think it was worth it to waste time cussing her out.
    Besides, as she’d recently realized, he might be afraid of how she’d react. He needed her in order to revert back, or rather he needed the combination of her and Lily. He couldn’t afford to tick her off.
    The words were constructed the way she’d expect from someone with only one paw at his disposal. He’d used his texting skills to cut down on the typing, and he’d turned on the capitalization function, so everything appeared in caps.
     
    CALL WRK NMBR BSNSS CRD IN WALET SAY IM SCK WAKE LILY UP CHNGE M
     
    She could guess that had he finished, the last letter would be an E. His demands were reasonable. She couldn’t imagine why she’d agreed not to call Lily until noon just because no one ever called Lily before noon. This was an emergency.
    “I’ll call your work number at nine a.m.,” Anica said.
    “And I’ll call Lily this morning, but not right this minute. If I call her at five twenty, even if I get her over here, she’ll be of no use to us. An incompetent witch is worse than no witch at all.”
    Jasper put his left paw on the desk and started poking at keys again. WHT TME
    “Eight o’clock. I’ll call her at eight.”
    NO
    “Okay, I’ll call her at seven thirty.”
    NOW
    Anica sighed. He was right. She’d fire up the espresso machine and pour a couple of cups down her sister. They had to get back to work on this.
    “Okay, Jasper. I’ll call her.”
    He repositioned himself in her lap so he could reach the mouse. He dragged the cursor to the bottom of the screen.
    “Omigod.” She’d been so focused on the message he’d typed in Word that she’d missed the Internet tab sitting at the bottom. He’d been online after all. If he’d been e-mailing . . . but no, that would have taken an enormous effort, considering how tough it was for him to type text.
    She reached for the mouse and brought up the Internet screen—a Google listing of sites dealing with magic. He hadn’t been e-mailing anyone. While she’d been sleeping, he’d been trying to help himself in the only way he could manage. He’d