Free All Hallows' Hangover by Annie Reed Page B

what she told herself to make up for the fact that she always spent Halloween working all night.
    Emporium Magique sold all things magical, from ready-made spells and potions to the supplies and ingredients practitioners needed to make their own. The store did bang up business on Halloween, even better than the traditional holiday shopping season or Valentine’s Day, when love potions sold like hot cakes. On Halloween someone always needed something at the last minute, even when the last minute was at four in the morning.
    Which used to be the shop’s closing time, until Tabby started letting her familiar have the night off. Now Tabby stayed at work waiting for her familiar to drag herself back through the door so she could go home.
    “Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?” Tabby asked.
    Tabby’s familiar, still spelled with the human form she wore for her night on the town, gave Tabby a long, lazy smile while she stretched her back in a way Tabby could only envy. “You’re using the royal ‘we.’”
    Tabby locked the front door behind her familiar and flipped the sign in the display window to “closed.”
    Their regular customers knew the store would be closed on November 1st. Tabby and her employees always took the Day of the Dead off. They needed the day to recharge their batteries from all the spell work they’d done the night before. If anyone else needed something magical on the first day of November, they’d be out of luck.
    Tabby and her employees not only sold magical spells and potions, they also cast them for customers who were willing to pay extra for the service. All that spell work in one night flat wore a person out. Tabby couldn’t wait to get home and take a long soak in her tub, and then sleep for about a million years.
    And maybe have a nice dream or two about the handsome, brown-eyed man she’d never met but had been fantasizing about for months now.
    “Long night,” was all she said.
    “You know…” Her familiar’s smile turned just the slightest bit wicked. “You could always let me wear this form for one more day.”
    Tabby was already shaking her head “no” as she started flipping the light switches off.
    Tabby’s familiar had been with her a long time. She’d started giving the playful spirit the night off as a way to keep her out from underfoot on the busiest night of the year.
    Unfortunately, it took more power than Tabby could afford to use on Halloween to cast a spell that would allow her familiar to retain her human form during the day.
    “Dawn breaks the spell,” she said.
    A rumbly purr—an entirely self-satisfied purr—rose up in her familiar’s throat. “Not all spells break at dawn, wizard.”
    Tabby froze, a sinking feeling taking hold in her chest. Something about her familiar’s tone. A spirit who spent most of her time as a cat had an entirely different idea of playful than most people did.
    “Did you do something I should know about?” Tabby asked.
    Instead of answering, her familiar curled the fingers of one hand and studied the nails intently. “How do you manage with these things?” She poked at one fingernail with the index finger of her other hand. “Claws that don’t retract.”
    “You’re changing the subject.”
    “I’ve always wanted to ask. I’ve never understood why you bother to paint your nails when you don’t file them into sharp little points. Useless. Although I do like the legs.” She turned her head to survey the backs of her legs, running one hand down the smooth black costume. “Nice and long. And shapely.”
    Tabby sighed. This year her familiar had taken Tabby’s own human form for her night on the town, which made having this conversation beyond weird. It was like looking at a mirror image of herself when the mirror wasn’t quite right. Her face, but not really. Her legs, but not really. And did she really have that much in the cleavage department?
    Last year her familiar had chosen Angelina Jolie for her human