“Mother, I’m perfectly fine. I’m twenty-seven years old.”

“Yes, you are. Your sink smells funny, your refrigerator is empty, and your trash is overflowing. And!” My mother pulled two dirty wineglasses out of the cabinet.

How did she even know? It was like she had radar.

“What is this? Have you been drinking?”

Help me.

“Drinking alone? That is not healthy for you. Look, you couldn’t even bother to wash the glass. You just got another one and then stuck the dirty one in there. That’s what alcoholics do.”

“I’m a shapeshifter, Mom. I can’t get drunk even if I tried.” Technically I could. If I drank an entire bottle of whiskey, I would be buzzed for about twenty minutes or so, and then my body would metabolize the last of the alcohol and I would be sober as a baby.

“Drinking, not eating, messing with stray cats.” My mother shook her head. “You know what you need? You need to meet a nice man. You need to get married and have lots of healthy children . . .”

I put my hands over my face.

Something thudded above us again.

“That’s it.” My mother marched to the stairs. “I’m going to see this cat.”

“You’ll scare him!” I chased her up the stairs. “Mother!”

My mother opened the door to my bedroom. It stood empty.

“Puss, puss . . .” My mother bent down and glanced under the bed. “Puss, puss . . . Does your cat speak Indonesian?”

Actually he does. He learned it just for me.

“I told you, he’s hiding.” Maybe he went out the window.

The door to the closet stood open. The tomato red lingerie I had left on the carpet was missing.

“Kitty, kitty, puss, puss . . .”

Jim was still here. I could smell him. I edged into the closet and raised my head. Jim stood above the door, legs propped up on the top shelves of the closet, his back pressed against the wall. The stupid lingerie hung from his fingers.

I wished I could fall through the floor.

Jim shook the lingerie at me and raised his dark eyebrows.

My mother turned around. “Why are you blushing?”

I had to get her out of my bedroom. “I really have to go and look for Eyang Ida,” I said. “I’m going to get dressed now.”

My mother looked at me.

“May I have some privacy?”

“Fine.” She shook her head and went out of the room. I heard her walk down the stairs, locked the bedroom door, sagged against it, and let out my breath.

Jim stalked out of the closet, moving completely soundlessly across the carpet and leaned against the door next to me.

“How much did that thing cost?” he whispered.

“Never mind,” I whispered back at him. “You did that on purpose.”

“Did what?”

“Dropped things. Are you a jaguar or an elephant?”

“I’m a stray cat, apparently. And your mother wants to neuter me.”

“She wouldn’t want to neuter you if you stayed quiet.” Neutering was the last thing he had to worry about. If she found him, she’d be overjoyed and run out of the house so we could get busy making grandchildren.

He grabbed me and picked me up. His eyes sparked with an amused light.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “I’m mad at—”

His mouth closed on mine. His lips brushed me, teasing, coaxing, and I melted, opening my mouth. He brushed a single sensual lick across my tongue and I shivered. His scent swirled around me, amber and musk, and tangy sweet citrus, carrying me away to a secret place, where there was only Jim, my hot, crazy Jim, with his strong arms locked around me. His kiss grew intense, passionate, then possessive. Every stroke of his tongue said, “I want you.” I wrapped my legs about his hips and let him kiss me. Our tongues mingled, as we shared the same breath. He had no idea how beautiful he made me feel when he kissed me like this.

“Dali! What’s taking so long?”

I broke away from him.

He shook his head, his arms wrapped around me. “No.”

“I have to go.”

“No, you don’t.”

I wiggled and felt him. He was hard and ready for action.

“Jim, let me go. We can’t make out now.”

He nodded. “Yes, we can.”

“My mother is downstairs.”

He didn’t seem impressed.

“It’s that red thing, isn’t it?” I whispered.

“No, actually it was your little tank top and panties as you jumped out of bed this morning. Or specifically what was in them.”

“Dali?” my mother called.

I slumped onto him. “She isn’t going to let it go.”

“Which car are you taking?” he asked.

“Pooki.”

He set me down on the carpet. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Before I could say anything, Jim opened the window and jumped out of it. I sighed, yelled, “Coming, Mom!” and went to get dressed.

• • •

POOKI was my Plymouth Prowler. When you’re barely one hundred pounds and other shapeshifters make fun of you behind your back because you’re the only tiger who eats grass in the entire state, you have to do something to prove that you’re not a wimp. My thing was cars. I raced them. Unfortunately being half-blind meant I crashed a lot, but being a shapeshifter meant I walked away from most of it, so the risk balanced itself out. Jim kept forbidding me to race, as the alpha of Clan Cat. I kept disobeying him. Some things just had to be done. When I raced, I felt powerful and strong. I felt awesome. I couldn’t give that up no matter how many times I had mangled my cars.

Normally Pooki occupied a treasured spot in my garage, but a friend asked me to take care of his Corvette. He didn’t live in the best neighborhood and he was paranoid about his baby being stolen while he was out of town. So right now the Corvette chilled in the garage next to Rambo, my ’93 Mustang, and Pooki had to suffer the indignity of being parked in the driveway. I looked around. No sign of Jim. Hmm.

I unlocked Pooki, got in, and began to chant under my breath. The magic was in full swing and it took fifteen minutes to get the water engine running. Pooki had two engines, a gasoline one and the enchanted water one. Internal combustion engines refused to combust during magic, which made no scientific sense, because gasoline fumes still burned in open air. But trying to measure magic by Newtonian laws of physics and Gibbs’s thermodynamics was pointless. It didn’t just disobey those laws. Magic had no idea they existed.