Charlaine Harris: Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

Phil, now.

Okay, it was a crazy idea, but I decided to take Phil as my guinea pig. I’d use a nonlethal dose of the various toxins, so if the spell didn’t work, the powder would give him only a few stomach cramps, and I could tell Tom I told you so.

And if it did work, it wouldn’t be Tom hauled in by Animal Control and maybe waking up in a cage.

Sunday afternoon I gathered my ingredients. Most of them I had to get from a pair of ex-students who’d dropped out during the sixties and now ran a highly unconventional herb farm out in the mountains twenty miles from town.

Sunday evening I mixed the powder and baked it into some brownies—one of Phil’s favorites as well as Tom’s. Mixed up a few other useful-sounding concoctions from the grimoire while I was at it. If the werewolf spell worked, I’d give some of them a try.

Once the brownies had cooled, I wrapped them up in some paper with jolly Santa Clauses all over it and attached a gift tag that said, “Merry Christmas, Professor Phil!” I made the dots over the i ’s into hearts. He’d probably think some lovestruck coed had left them on his porch in the middle of the night.

When I got back from my late-night delivery, I cleaned up all my herbs and tools and hid them in Mrs. Grogan’s garage. In her late husband’s fishing box, which hadn’t been opened in a decade.

I kept the radio on nonstop for the next few days, so I’d hear right away if the campus station reported a popular young medieval history professor succumbing to food poisoning. But all I heard was the usual endless carol marathon.

Christmas Day arrived, and with it the full moon. Though moonrise wasn’t until 4:52 P.M. I’d checked. The hours crawled by.

At least I had some distraction. I’d invited Tom for dinner. I fixed the traditional spread—turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, the works. I was hoping Tom would be too focused on the food to nag me about whether I’d made progress on his spell. But if not, I’d tell him what I’d done. Maybe enlist him to go over with me to Phil’s neighborhood later, to see if the spell worked.

But Tom was strangely distracted. Twitchy. He kept shifting in his chair and scratching his arms and legs. He wasn’t even eating much.

“What’s wrong with you anyway?” I finally asked.

He shrugged.

“Don’t feel so great,” he said.

“Do you want a beer?” I asked. “Or a Coke?”

“Maybe some water?”

If Tom turned down both hops and cola, he really must be ill. I went out to the kitchen and filled a glass with ice and water.

When I came back, Tom was writhing on the floor.

And howling. The pieces fell into place.

“You’ve been visiting Phil, haven’t you?” I said. “You went over there and ate some of the brownies.”

He must have felt really awful. He didn’t try to lie—just nodded, and clutched his stomach.

“It serves you right,” I said. “I was going to test your stupid spell on Phil, to see if it worked before letting you try it.”

Even through his pain, I could see his face brighten.

“Is that what this is?” he gasped. “I’m turning into a wolf?”

“Not exactly.”

He convulsed one more time, then screamed as his body contracted and flowed in strange ways. I winced and closed my eyes for a second.

When I opened them again, I saw a rather bedraggled Lhasa Apso quivering on the floor, with Tom’s abandoned clothes scattered around him.

“I couldn’t really scare up wolf hair on such short notice,” I said. “I figured dog hair would work for the test.”

Tom opened one eye to glare at me. Then he curled his lip and growled feebly. Even in dog form, he was pretty easy to read.

“Don’t give me that,” I said. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed away from Phil.”

He whimpered. He got up, a little shaky on his feet, and turned around in a half circle as if trying to get a better look at his tail. Then he looked up at me and whined.

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I can fix it.”

He wagged his tail slightly, and cocked his head to one side as if asking how.

“I found a recipe for a potion that makes whatever state you’re in permanent. So all we have to do is wait till the moon sets. About seven tomorrow morning. You’ll be human again, you can drink the potion, and you won’t have to worry about changing into a furball next month.”

He wagged his tail with enthusiasm.

“So you stay here for a while,” I said. “Finish your dinner and get some sleep.”

I threw a couple of pillows on the floor, and put a plate of turkey beside them.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I added.

He yelped slightly, and tried to grab the leg of my jeans.

“Sorry,” I said, pushing him away as gently as I could. “You’ll be fine here. Just don’t bark, or Mrs. Grogan will call Animal Control. Keep quiet, lie low, and we’ll fix you up tomorrow morning.”

He whined and cocked his head to the side again.

“Me?” I said. “I’m going over to Phil’s house. He’ll be getting his dose of the permanence potion a little earlier than you will.”

On my way out, I stepped into the garage and snagged an old dog lead. Mrs. Grogan was going to love her Christmas present.

Simon R. Green has just hit middle age, and is feeling very bitter about it. He has published over thirty novels, all of them different. His series include the Forest Kingdom books, the Deathstalker books, the Nightside books, and his new series, the Secret Histories, featuring Shaman Bond, the very secret agent. He has lived most of his life in a small country town, Bradford-on-Avon. This was the last Celtic town to fall to the invading Saxons in A.D. 504. He has also worked as a shop assistant, bicycle-repair mechanic, journalist, actor, eccentric dancer, and mail-order bride. He has never worked for MI5. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. He is, however, secretly Superman.

You never forget your first; and mine was Lucy.

It was Christmas Eve in the Nightside, and I was drinking wormwood brandy in Strangefellows, the oldest bar in the world. The place was crowded, the air was thick with good cheer, the ceiling trailed long streamers of the cheapest paper decorations money could buy; and as midnight approached, the revellers grew so festive they could barely stand up. Even so, everyone was careful to give me plenty of room as I sat on my stool at the bar, nursing my drink. I’m Leo Morn, and that’s a name you can scare people with. Of course, my Lucy was never scared of me, even though everyone told her I was a bad boy, and would come to a bad end. Lucy sat on the stool beside me at the bar, smiling and listening while I talked. She didn’t have a drink. She never does.

The music system was playing “Jingle Bells” by the Sex Pistols, a sure sign the bar’s owner was feeling nostalgic. Farther down the long (and only occasionally polished) wooden bar, sat Tommy Oblivion, the existential private eye. He was currently doing his best to convince a pressing creditor that his bill might or might not be valid in this particular reality. Not that far away, Ms. Fate, the Nightside’s very own leather-costumed transvestite superheroine, was dancing on a tabletop with demon girl reporter, Bettie Divine. Bettie’s cute little curved horns peeped out from between the bangs of her long dark hair.

The Prince of Darkness was sulking into his drink over the cancellation of his TV reality show; the Mistress of the Dark was trying to tempt Saint Nicholas with a sprig of plastic mistletoe; and a reindeer with a very red nose was lying slumped and extremely drunk in a corner, muttering something about unionization. Brightly glowing wee-winged fairies swept round and round the huge Christmas tree, darting in and out of the heavy branches at fantastic speed in some endless game of tag. Every now and again one of the fairies would detonate like a flashbulb, from sheer overpowering joie de vivre, before re-forming and rejoining the chase.