Page 8 of Of Socialites and Prizefights

“No, but I have no idea as to his proficiency as a spellcaster. Maybe he's as inept with curses as he is with women.”

“Here’s hoping!” Aaliyah said brightly. “Can we watch you turn, though?”

“No!” Deepa and Jasmine exclaimed in unison.

“For heaven’s sake,” Jasmine added, “give the girl her privacy.” Taking her wife by the arm, she firmly steered Aaliyah into the kitchen, leaving Deepa to shut herself in her bedroom.

For a second, Deepa stared at the closed door, thinking on her friends’ certainty that the curse was still in effect. Then, shaking off her inaction, she tied the end of the leash around the door handle, tightly enough that it couldn’t slip free by accident. Someone would have to come in and deliberately untie that knot if she wanted out of it. Or, she supposed, she could chew through the leather. She rather hoped things wouldn’t come to that, but it was always good to have a backup plan.

With the leash secure and under three minutes to go, she divested herself of her jewellery, placing each piece in the ceramic bowl on her nightstand. The familiar routine calmed her jittery nerves, though it wasn't enough to dispel them entirely. With her jewellery set aside, she stepped out of her heels and, balancing with one hand on the wall, peeled off her stockings and then her sari. As she attempted to remove her choli, she realised that, while she could get the bodice over her head, she couldn’t actually get it off the leash without unclipping the end from her collar. With her time counting down, she ran it along the length of the leash to hang it from the door handle, aggravated with herself for not thinking the process through beforehand.

She was standing there, one hand on the bundle of beaded cotton as she debated whether to untie the leash, free the bodice, and hang it up properly, when her transformation began.

CHAPTER FOUR

IN WHICH RESEARCH ATTEMPTS ARE THWARTED

Without the physical panic and the fear that she was losing her mind, she was able to pay more attention to her body this time around. The lack of control was still frightening, but the fact that she knew what was happening helped. Rather than deal with the kaleidoscope of colours and sensations, she shut her eyes and turned her focus inward, counting her breaths as flesh and bone reshaped itself.

As the curse didn’t seem inclined to fizzle out on its own, Deepa resolved to get what she could out of it. Lowering her head, she stretched her forelegs out in front of her, claws extended, and lengthened her spine all the way to the tip of her tail. Elbows on the floor, nose tipped up, she stretched as far as she could, and it felt spectacular. There was something luxurious about stretching as a cat that couldn't be replicated in human form. Perhaps this nightly experience needn’t be altogether horrible.

A gentle tapping sounded from the other side of the door. “Deepa?” Jasmine’s voice was pitched low, deliberately soothing in the way one spoke to unknown animals. “How are things?”

Deepa made her best approximation of a meow.

“Well, that answers that,” came Aaliyah’s voice. “Tap the door three times if we can come in. Growl, I guess, if you want us to stay out.”

Deepa no longer had knuckles adept at knocking, but she made three soft thumps with her right paw before backing up to wait expectantly. The door handle turned with an air of caution and Aaliyah poked a broom through the crack before she and Jasmine peered into the room. Deepa couldn’t decide whether to be amused or insulted, like she was a stray that might need to be shooed off.

“Hello,” said Aaliyah, wide-eyed but admirably steady as she inched through the doorway. “You certainly are a leopard, aren't you? Are you feeling at all bloodthirsty or murderous?”

Deepa shook her head definitively, but otherwise didn’t move. She was by the bed, as far back from the door as the leash would allow, and was beginning to get annoyed with the restriction, not to mention the indignity. Hooking one heavy paw over the taut leash, she looked at her friends meaningfully, then to the knot of leather around the door handle.

“I’m going to give that a minute, if you don't mind,” Aaliyah said, still holding the broom.

With a huff, Deepa sat back more heavily on her haunches.

“We might as well untie her,” Jasmine said, watching from over Aaliyah’s shoulder. “We’re in the wrong place for that leash to do us any good. It won’t stop her from approaching us at all.”

To prove the point, Deepa got back to her feet and strolled across the scant distance between them. Her friends both skittered back through the doorway, broom held at the ready, for all the good it would do. When Aaliyah and Jasmine hadbeen pushed into the kitchen, Deepa stopped in the bedroom doorway, swishing her tail back and forth and trying to look more playful than menacing.

“Speak?” Aaliyah asked hopefully.

Deepa obliged with a scratchy yowl.

“Shake a paw?”

Humouring her, Deepa offered up a front paw, though Aaliyah didn’t come close enough to take it.

“Stand on your hind legs?”

“She's not a circus animal,” Jasmine chided. “Clearly, she understands you.”

“Fine, fine.” Handing the defensive broomstick to her wife, Aaliyah inched closer. “I’ll untie you. Just watch where you point those claws, if you don't mind.”

Deepa kept a respectable distance as Aaliyah worked the knot loose, catching her discarded choli before it fell. Though she didn’t comment, the amusement in her expression suggested that she knew exactly how Deepa had tried and failed to undress. Embarrassed, Deepa grumbled under her breath. Perhaps she could distract — or intimidate — Aaliyah into forgetting about it.

“I don’t suppose we could take you anywhere like this to have the curse removed,” Aaliyah mused, tossing the bodice onto Deepa’s bed before returning to Jasmine’s side. “I wonder whether anyone with experience in curses would find it easier to undo the thing while it's fully manifested like this.”

---