Page 2 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

While her body still felt like her own, it did not in the slightest resemble the form of a young woman. Instead of hands pressedto the tiles before her were enormous paws. Instead of smooth brown skin she had creamy, golden fur. And instead of a musical human voice bursting from her mouth, she had a crackling growl.

For a second, she didn’t move at all. Maybe the entire evening had been a particularly vivid dream.

Carefully, she tried to move her fingers. Those great cream-coloured, black-freckled paws twitched in response. Shifting forward, she took stock of her body, moving her toes and shaking her head. Everythingfeltreal. She was sitting back on her haunches, her legs tucked under her in a crouch with all her weight in her shoulders, pressing through her hands. Or rather, her paws. When a whine tried to escape her, it came out as a huff, her vocal cords no longer built to express anxiety. A frustrated growl, at least, was within her wheelhouse, and her tail lashed nervously from one side of the bathroom to the other.

Hertail.

Very carefully, she got to her feet — all four of them — and, finding her balance as she went, got her front paws on the countertop to stretch up and take a look in the mirror.

A sleek Indian leopard looked back at her from rounded, pale green-gold eyes.

With a squeak, Deepa dropped back to the floor and wrapped herself up in a ball, panting from distress.

It didn’t feel like she was dreaming. She rarely remembered her dreams, and she had certainly never been aware of them while she was in them. This was either a full-bodied break from reality, or Phillip’s curse had come to bear.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs from the club and the door to the flat swung open. Deepa’s ears swivelled towards the sound before she turned her head to stare at the thin door separating the loo from the rest of the flat, her muscles bunched tight and her heart thumping madly.

“Hey, Deepa,” Cherie called from within the flat. “You home, love?”

Deepa was almost never home so early, but the lights were on. Her instinct was to hide, but she could hardly go unnoticed by locking herself in the toilet. If she didn’t answer, Cherie might worry that she’d passed out in the bath and try to break the door down. Everything in the flat was flimsy enough that it wouldn’t be much of a challenge. She couldn't call out to answer, though, and she couldn’t turn the door handle to let herself out, either. The window latch was likewise impossible to open without human fingers and thumbs. Growling, Deepa paced the tiny room from one end to the other, her paws silent against the tiles, though her tail thumped the side of the tub every time she lashed it, which she couldn't seem to help. Her stockings, which had been shredded during the change, fluttered away from her hindquarters in gauzy tatters as she moved.

Cherie knocked on the door. “Alright, love? You in there?”

Deepa tried to say no, and it came out as a rumbling meow.

Cherie’s confusion was palpable through the closed door. As Deepa had been home alone, she hadn't turned the lock, so when Cherie tried the handle, Deepa stood up and put her front paws against it, trying to hold it closed. She’d retained the mass of her human body in leopard form, amounting to an even ten stone, which wasn't enough to prevent Cherie from shouldering the door open. Deepa fell back, Cherie fell forward, and there was a split second when they were both standing in the loo together, staring at each other.

With a splitting scream, Cherie scrambled back, trying to find the open doorway behind her. Deepa yowled in response and stood up on her hind legs again, reaching for Cherie to cover her mouth and stop her screaming before it could draw anyone else from the club. Cherie’s blind panic made her clumsy, as Deepa’s unfamiliarity with her new form did the same to her, and theircombined discoordination sent Deepa toppling into the other girl, both of them crashing to the floor on the outside of the loo door.

Covering Cherie’s mouth with one paw, Deepa desperately tried to communicate her identity and her situation. Unfortunately, it seemed leopards had a much shorter range of facial expressions than humans, their languages were incompatible, and Cherie was regrettably unable to read her thoughts. The girl was hyperventilating under her, so, in a last-ditch attempt to communicate her lack of a threat, Deepa licked a broad stripe up one side of Cherie’s face, then sat back and stared at her hopefully.

Cherie flipped herself onto her hands and knees to make a mad dash for the front door, and when Deepa managed to block her path, she course-corrected in an impressive display of athleticism, throwing herself into her bedroom and slamming the door shut in Deepa’s face. Colliding with it, Deepa instinctively scrabbled at the gap under the door, trying to shove her paw underneath to reach Cherie before realising she was shredding the cheap wood with her claws. With a despondent warble, Deepa sat down heavily on her haunches, her tail swishing back and forth in obvious agitation.

“Go away!” Cherie panicked from within the bedroom. “I don’t want any tigers in my flat!”

Unfortunately, while it was a fair sentiment, Deepa couldn't exactly leave. And, as the fire escape wasn't reachable from Cherie's bedroom window, the other girl couldn't leave either. They were at an impasse, and until Deepa figured out how to broach their communication barrier, there was nothing to do but sit and wait for something to happen.

Also, she wasn’t a tiger.

At some point, Cherie would tire herself out and calm down, and Deepa would find a way to prove her identity. In a worst-case scenario, someone would visit the flat to check on them, and then Deepa would have even more people fearful that she was a bloodthirsty man-eater. Or — she wasn't sure if this was better or even worse — her mother would arrive for her usual weekend visit and she would be the one to find her.

Deepa didn’t like the thought of that at all. If her mother failed to recognise her as a leopard, Deepa didn't know how she would go on.

By the time the night had rolled past three, Deepa had mostly got a handle on her new body, and found her movements came more easily when she wasn’t overthinking them. Her senses, on the other hand, would take some getting used to.

Her eyesight was incredibly sharp, and keen even in the dimmest lighting. Her hearing was likewise improved, the sounds from the club downstairs as clear as if she were standing on The Songbird’s stage. Smells were terribly distracting, though thankfully the smoke from downstairs and the spilled drinks and human messiness of the alley behind the building were overpowered by the spices in her kitchen. Deepa wasn't much of a cook, but her mother made sure to keep her stocked up on good, traditional Gujarati home-cooking, and the curry, cumin, and cardamom overpowered the less savoury scents of the London neighbourhood.

Deepa suspected that her mother’s cooking wouldn't long sustain her current form. What on earth was she supposed to do if this curse proved long-lasting? She could hardly hide in her flat forever, and London was ill-suited for a great cat. She needed to find a way to point Cherie towards Phillip so he could be made to reverse this debacle. Deepa’s claws were wickedly sharp and her teeth were as long as daggers, and she wanted to sink every weapon at her disposal into that wretch of a man until he put her back the way she was supposed to be.

From behind the door, Cherie made a noise like that of a worried dove, and Deepa realised she'd been rumbling out a thundering growl. Disgruntled, she lay down lengthways in front of the closed door to make sure Cherie couldn't sneak out and cause trouble, and then resolved to wait for daybreak, which must surely bring with it some solution to her problems.

CHAPTER TWO

AN EVENING AT CLUB ARTEMIS

At dawn, Deepa woke in the process of turning back into a human. Reversing the process was less disorienting than the initial transformation, perhaps because she’d already done it once before, or perhaps because her human form was a known element.

Standing up on her two human feet, Deepa relearned her sense of balance as she wobbled over to fetch a blanket from the loveseat in the living room, wrapping it around herself before knocking on Cherie's bedroom door.

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