Chapter Text
Riz is somewhat used to waking up with someone else in his office.
Sometimes the sound of Fig’s combat boots, heavy with her confident stride, wake him as she steps inside, there to tug him along on some wayward errand. Or the smell of a rich home-cooked meal, courtesy of Cathilda, set on his desk as Fabian slouches on the loveseat to ramble about his day. Or the touch of his mother’s hand running through his hair, coaxing him to come home and sleep in a real bed, please.
But this isn't what he's used to waking up to.
“Mrow.”
Something is pushing at this head, softly but insistently. His nose twitches, and he catches a trace scent of something familiar. Riz instinctively grumbles deep in his throat and reaches out to push whatever it is away. His hand connects with a mass of soft fur and there's an indignant yowl as something is pushed onto the floor.
That wakes him up. He shoots up in his seat, and surveys the office to see no one there, just the incoming twilight of the late summer, coloring the sky blue and purple, through the window.
On the other side of the desk, there's that same mrow, and as he turns, something jumps fluidly onto the desk.
Riz sees that face in his nightmares sometimes - her eyes filled with malice, her smile twisted in cruelty, before she kicks him and he falls through open air.
He knows what happened after that - he'd blacked out, and woken up warm with Fabian’s arms around him after a miraculous catch - but in the dream, he keeps falling and he's awake for it, with her face hovering just within view, for long enough that it lingers in his mind’s eyes for long after he finally wakes up.
(His sleeping habits haven't gotten much better since Spring Break.)
A cat has gotten into the office, and it looks terribly familiar.
Riz lurches back from the desk so quickly that the swivel chair fully falls backward, slamming into the floor with a crash! He scrambles backward, ignoring the pain lancing through his limbs as he grasps for his gun.
All the while, the cat stays on his desk, making itself comfortable.
His hand finds his arquebus and he swings it over his head to cock and aim at the cat, which has sat down on the file he had been sleeping on, tail twitching casually in the air. It eyes him with no small amount of mirth in its keen eyes.
How did it get in here? The doors are locked, and the window is still sealed shut. His mom has a spare key, and his friends know where Riz has them hidden outside of the office, but none of them would do something like this, even as a prank.
Riz’s heart hammers away in his chest. He does a quick reality check to confirm he’s not dreaming - digs his claws into his free hand and feels the sharp pain, listens for the sound of the building, the pipes and footsteps and the ticking of his clock, sniffs and smells that same familiar scent - where does he know it from?
Magic is like food, Riz has come to realize after a couple of years surrounded by magic users. His friends are all chefs, with their own styles and preferences, and that carries over into the effects of their magic as well.
Fig’s magic smells of clove and faint sulfur, and leave him feeling like he’s been hit with a soundwave; Adaine’s magic is cold like spring water, and sharp and precise as ice; Gorgug’s magic reminds him of a mechanics, with the relief that comes from a successful inspection; Fabian’s magic fills him with heat and excitement, and smells of ember.
For a long time, Kristen’s magic had smelled faintly of popcorn, buttery and warm and comforting - even after leaving Helio behind in freshman year, the feeling had lingered. Riz knows why now, but since the Nightmare Forest, since fully breaking away from Helio and Sol, her magic has reminded of something cooler and more natural, of foxglove and lilac and evening air.
That’s what it smells like here. Like Kristen. Like Cassandra.
Riz narrows his gaze at the cat, and it mirrors him, its own nose twitching, as it makes a sound - mrrrp! It almost sounds like it's laughing. It’s still wearing her face. But at least it’s not trying to kill him, or talk to him, and she was usually doing one of those two things in the time he had known her.
Riz drags himself up against the filing cabinet, keeping his arquebus resting on his knee. “What are you?” he asks, and he hates that he can hear the faint tremor in his voice.
The cat rolls its eyes, but its strange smile doesn’t leave as it looks around the room. He can’t tell if it can’t talk, or if it’s choosing not to talk to him. But it can understand him, that much he knows.
“Are you just, what, back now?” he demands. “I shot you. Aelwyn dispelled you, how are you here?”
It’s the closest he’s come to acknowledging his fear, that the creature that had ruined his life is back now, fucking smiling at him from his desk. The cat gives him a familiar look, one that he inadvertently associates with, c’mon kiddo.
She always said that when she wanted him to think, or to make fun of his investigation skills. But Riz thinks, thinks back to the transubstantiations - the coin had become a spellbook again, the tree had become a broom again, the curse had become a cottage again.
So, logically, the plague would have become a familiar again. But even still, what is she doing here? And is she still Kalina, or did his bullet and Aelwyn’s spell give her the full factory reset?
“Well, what do you want with me, huh?” he asks tiredly. “Haven’t you done enough?” There’s a bite in his voice now, as he remembers every machination of hers that he knows of, and thinks of the ones he doesn’t know of.
The cat blinks, and then she turns away from him, rising up onto her haunches to spring from the desk. Riz flinches away, but she bounds past him and springs onto the windowsill, stretching out against the silhouette of the darkening sky before settling down, putting her head on her paws.
Well, he probably doesn’t need to shoot her again. But that doesn’t mean he wants her hanging around. So Riz pulls himself up on shaking legs and forces himself to walk towards the window. The cat blinks at him, but makes no move as he reaches past her to open the window. The cool night breeze rushes inside, giving him a little clarity.
Before he can think about it too much, he pushes her out the window and onto the fire escape. There’s another yowl as she hits the metal, and he reaches up to snap the window shut before she can jump back in. Through the glass, the cat stares balefully at him, and he can faintly hear her meowing indignantly.
He shrugs. “Take care,” and he closes the curtain for good measure.
Riz spends more hours poring over his files, looking for something in this case of missing arcanotech, the one clue that’ll tie it all together that he’s somehow missed, and he passes out somewhere around three in the morning.
This time, when he wakes up, there’s a weight, heavy and warm, on his back, and something is purring.
He shoots up ungracefully, yelling, and the cat tumbles to the chair. “Get away from me!” he shouts, but the cat just shakes itself off and moves to hide under the desk.
Okay, so. She can teleport, still, somehow. Riz feels a sudden itch under his skin - he’s not the only one that can see her, right?
He takes a deep breath, counts to ten, pressing alternating claws gently into his palms with each number. The cat slinks out from under the desk, and gives him a look of irritation. The initial wave of panic passes - he needs to confirm it, he decides, before a panic attack is warranted.
He rubs the sleep from his eyes and stares the cat down, thinking. Maybe he can kill two birds with one stone.
Riz gathers his stuff and opens the door to the office, wincing at the sudden brightness of the late morning sun. He turns back to the cat. “You coming?” he asks reluctantly.
The cat walks past him into the hall with her tail held high, and Riz sighs before locking the door.
He has a bike chained up outside. It’s an eyesore, at least according to Fabian, who had moaned and groaned about how lame it was, the Ball, why does he need a bike when Fabian himself has a devilish motorbike - never mind the fact that said motorbike hates Riz, and Fabian has plenty of his own things to do. But the bike still does its job well - Gorgug had tuned it up at the beginning of summer - which is to get him from place to place quickly without having to wait on or inconvenience anybody.
Riz isn’t sure how the cat knows it’s his, but she’s sitting in the basket he keeps up front where he normally stashes his arquebus. Cats don’t have eyebrows, but she looks like she’s raising one of hers, as if to say, I’m waiting on you.
“C’mon, move it,” he says as he shoves his gun into the basket, and she meows in annoyance at the intrusion.
She stays seated patiently through the entire ride, unfazed by the rushing wind as Riz pedals. He ends up on Cherry Street, and pulls up in front of the local animal shelter. He locks the bike and looks at the cat, who’s staring at him with a mix of exasperation and amusement, like she knows what he’s thinking.
Well, Kalina had never known exactly what he was thinking, so this…whatever this is, can’t either. Probably.
He sighs, and holds his arms out. “C’mon then, let’s go.”
The cat doesn’t hesitate to climb into his arms; she feels like a normal cat, or at least, what Riz thinks a normal cat would feel like - bigger than usual, or he’s just still smaller than everyone else. He shoulders his way into the shelter.
There’s an orcish woman behind the counter when he walks in. “Oh, hello!” she says cheerfully. “My, that’s a beautiful cat you have there.”
“...sure,” Riz says through the overwhelming wave of relief, and he feels a pinch as the cat fucking pokes him with her claw. “I need you guys to take her.”
“Oh, really?” the woman asks, reaching out slowly to pet the cat. The cat flattens her ears in response, but doesn’t make a move to bite or hiss at her - Riz decides to call it a success.
“Yeah, she’s just… too much for me to handle, really,” and he reaches out and pushes the cat into the woman’s arms before turning away. “Be careful, she’s really slippery!”
The woman’s voice is cut off by the closing door, and Riz is already on his bike, pedaling away. Hopefully she gets the message.
He decides to go home, and stops by the Thistlespring Tree when he sees Gorgug working on something in the front yard. He rolls across the grass and Gorgug raises his hand in greeting. “Did you run it into another car?” he asks, only half-joking.
“Ha ha,” Riz says flatly, because he had been in a high speed chase when that had happened, of course he’d let the bike go when he had the chance to jump! But that doesn’t matter. He flops onto the grass. “No, it’s fine, I just… it’s been a weird,” and he waves his hand, “night?”
“It’s almost noon,” Gorgug says plainly.
“Let’s go with hours then,” Riz says, raising his head. “What are you working on?”
He lets Gorgug walk him through his latest project, and deliberately pushes his attention toward it, building up questions and commentary and trying to hide the dread that threatens to walk up his spine. Gorgug is happy to do it, and even catches a couple of errors as he explains it all to Riz.
“But you see, it’s all about the cones,” Gorgug is saying passionately, when there’s an ominous thud from within the contraption. Gorgug reaches out into the dark space, and Riz feels his ears flatten against his head.
The cat pokes her head up from the darkened space, blinking at them.
Gorgug shouts in surprise. Riz shouts, “Goddamnit!” The cat just looks smug.
Riz turns to Gorgug. “I need a box,” he says, breathing heavily.
“Wait, doesn’t that kinda looks like-”
“A box, I need a box, man!” Riz reaches out and shakes Gorgug. “Please, seriously, just the most, locked up shit you have!”
“Uh, okay,” and Gorgug gets to his feet and begins wandering around the yard in his investigation check.
Riz turns back to the cat, who has hopped out of the space and onto Gorgug’s project. “What are you still doing here?” he hisses, and the cat wrinkles her nose at him, as it’s his fault that she’s following him.
Gorgug stumbles back to him, with a metal box in his arms. “How’s this?” he asks, clearly unsure. “It’s got three different locks, and-”
“Perfect.” Riz grabs the cat, and plops her into the box. She meows as he closes the lid, and begins to lock it.
“Is it gonna be able to breathe in there?” Gorgug asks, clearly worried.
“She’s magic, she’ll be fine,” Riz grumbles. “Can I have this?”
He’s back on his bike with the box as soon as Gorgug says yes, and pedals away from his friend’s obvious concern. The post office is a farther ride than the shelter, but he’s pedaling harder and faster then he ever has before. In the box, he can faintly hear the cat’s disgruntled meowing.
When he gets to the post office, he gets on the SpyreMaps app and narrows in on some random town in Highcourt - he hopes that the village of Millwatch enjoys their new cat. Hopefully there's a limit to how far she can teleport.
After slapping a dozen stamps onto it, and scrawling an address in a madman's handwriting, he pushes the box into the package drop-off, and listens to the cat yowl as it slides down the chute, the sound disappearing into the void. Then he books it to the bike and pedals again, harder and faster.
It’s still light out when he gets home, but the sun is starting to set. The apartment is empty - its date night with Gorthalax, Riz remembers. He’s a little relieved that his mom isn’t here to investigate his state of derangement, but after the weirdness of today, he’d prefer some company.
He’s just made himself a fresh cup of coffee and sat down at the counter to think about which manor he would prefer to show up at when there’s an insistent scratching at the apartment door.
He freezes in his chair, hand clutched around the too-hot mug, ignoring the burn. Maybe if he just ignores it, it’ll go away on its own.
The scratching continues for another minute before it stops, and Riz breathes out carefully.
There’s a sudden clatter in the cupboard below the counter, and the coffee splashes over Riz. He yelps at the burn and watches as the cat spills out from the cupboard, bringing all of the pots and pans out onto the grimy tile with it. When she turns and spots him, she jumps up onto the counter, to eye his coffee-covered clothes with disdain.
The fact that she’s in his home, in his mother’s home, in what was his father’s home, is too much. “That’s it!” and he grabs her off of the counter
Even still, she doesn’t fight him when he stumbles out of the apartment and shoves her into the basket of the bike, riding due west past the train station and Oakshield Middle School. He’s sure he looks like a maniac - he doesn’t even have his gun or his briefcase or his hat, just his coffee-stained clothes.
The blue of the sky is bleeding into orange as he crosses the road and pedals out onto the bridge. In the basket, the cat has turned to look at him with amused pity. Fuck that.
Third time’s the charm, right? He brings the bike to a sudden halt, grabs the cat, tosses her over the bridge, and bikes away before he can hear a splash.
He manages to get across the bridge before the cat stalks out of the bushes in front of him, dripping wet and meowing sullenly. Riz stops the bike, and watches helplessly as she shakes herself, water flying in droplets off of her, and jumps up into the basket.
There’s a pause where all he can hear are the crickets in the growing darkness, and then she reaches out and swipes at him with an irritated hiss.
He jerks back. “No, fuck you!” he shouts, but the cat just yowls back at him. “I don’t even know what you - what do you want with me? Can’t you just leave me alone?”
The cat stares at him, matching his anger with her balefulness, and doesn’t move.
Riz sighs, and hangs his head. It’s time to step back. Clearly trying to get rid of her isn’t going to work. What’s the next best option?
Riz swallows, and starts pedaling again, towards Haversham Hill. The cat settles down into the basket and works on lapping the rest of the water off of her fur.