He spent the next two days pacing. Evershaw put Deirdre in the comfortable chair in his living room, wrapped up in blankets, and watched her for any sign of improvement. Any sign of change. 

She ate when fed and drank when presented with a cup. She didn’t resist when someone took her hand to pull her to her feet or ushered her to a chair or bed to rest. It made his nerves twitch to see her like that, knowing what the sick son of a bitch had done to her, but he couldn’t fix it. He couldn’t kill the prick a second time. He couldn’t do anything to save her. 

Even that miserable cat didn’t stir Deirdre. Cricket hopped up on her lap once, eyed his mama, and hissed before heaving himself to the ground and stalking off. Evershaw scowled at the unhelpful beast and went back to his pacing. No one else had so far been able to do anything useful. 

Smith’s research went nowhere. Calling Deirdre’s aunt led to a bunch of strangers walking through his living room and pack house, examining her, and muttering under their breath about solutions and potions and the moon only knew what else. Her aunt, at least, looked aggrieved to see the crimes her disciple committed. But none of the witches knew how to fix her. Instead they muttered about needing the exact original spell in order to reverse it, and since the witch who cast it was dead and the book he’d used turned to ash, there was apparently nothing they could do to help. 

One offered the rather unhelpful suggestion that Deirdre could have herself figured out a way to reverse the effects. Evershaw’s growl motivated them to depart with some degree of haste, with Mercy herding them out before his wolf took control and further destroyed the relationship between the witches and the shifters. 

Every day brought worse news. Each hope that was raised was eventually dashed and brought him that much lower. Evershaw spent his days staring at her, talking to her, hoping she would focus her eyes on him and actually see him. 

He couldn’t survive without her. The pack knew it. No one bothered him, instead retreating to the fringes of the building so they wouldn’t make noise or otherwise disturb Evershaw and his mate. Todd took over all the business decisions, Henry handled security, and Mercy made sure he ate and slept occasionally. 

Evershaw pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes as he sat across from Deirdre, watching her sit there. Just existing. Breathing and maybe listening. Maybe she heard him through whatever spell it was that stole her will. 

So he talked. He propped his feet up on the ottoman next to hers, making sure his skin touched hers, and started talking. He told her everything—every triumph and disaster, every love and loss, every bad decision and gamble he’d ever taken. 

It took days. He talked until his voice went hoarse and his vision blurred with exhaustion and grief, and through it all, he looked for a sign. Nothing. 

It was the end of a very long week that he sat in silence again, unable to move and unable to generate more ideas. What the fuck was he going to do? Would he keep her like that, like a piece of fucking furniture, forever? Was there an expiration date when it would be acceptable to find her an assisted living home? Did witches have such a thing? 

He ran his hands through his hair and stared at her blankly, wishing with all of his strength and mental energy that she would just get better. Just sit up and smile at him. His love should have healed her. His love should have been enough. 

And if it wasn’t... then he wasn’t good for much at all. 

Evershaw covered his face and held back the grief that ripped through him. He couldn’t fight an invisible spell and the dead witch who’d cursed her. 

A weight landed in his lap and for a blinding moment, he thought that maybe she’d woken up and crawled into his lap to hug him. Instead, he found the mountain lion she called a house cat sitting on his thighs, staring at him. 

Evershaw waved at the cat, trying to shoo him away. “Go. I’m not in the mood to be a scratching post.” 

The cat’s tail lashed against his legs, and the beast’s expression darkened with irritation. Which made Evershaw’s lungs squeeze until he could hardly draw breath. The cat kneaded its paws in Evershaw’s thigh, driving his claws deep, until Evershaw focused all of his attention on the gray and brown fur ball. “What do you want?” 

The cat meowed and looked back over its shoulder at Deirdre, and something in the air grew sad. Evershaw must have lost his fucking mind. The cat was just a cat. It didn’t have feelings that it could convey to him. Evershaw sure as fuck wasn’t going to be mentally attached to a cat. Cricket blinked owlishly a few times, then lifted one massive paw to daintily groom his leg. 

Evershaw gripped the arms of the chair where he sat and stared at the beast as the sense of connection grew. The cat wanted to fucking talk to him. It felt just a touch like when he spoke to his pack, when they communicated mind-to-mind as wolves and across forms. They used sentences and actual conversations between shifters, but the cat was more like... pictures. Brief flashes of an impression, strung together to give an overall sense of meaning. A foreign fucking language for sure. 

And part of him still didn’t fucking believe it. It had to be a dream. Deirdre’s cat couldn’t actually be that smart, or a trapped shifter, or whatever the fuck kind of beast that could communicate mind-to-mind with a human or shifter. 

Cricket’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Evershaw, so clearly unimpressed with his train of thought that Evershaw’s wolf took notice and offense at the same time. 

He fought for control, then took a deep breath and figured it wouldn’t hurt to indulge the hallucination. Maybe it would be a little helpful, at least, or get rid of some of the tension. “Fine. What do you want? Mercy already fed you, and you’re getting too fat as it is. Deirdre will kill me when she comes back and finds you too fucking heavy to do more than drag your belly across the ground.” 

The beast’s eyes slitted and his tail lashed faster, thumping against Evershaw’s knees. A few more pictures drifted from the cat to him and made his breath catch once more. Deirdre, smiling and laughing, happy and talking. Her lounging on a couch reading a book on a rainy afternoon, the cat curled up on her chest, and daydreaming in a hammock. Beautiful memories, and ones that Evershaw wanted for his own. Without the cat in them, preferably. 

Which just earned him a rumbling growl from the little beast. 

Evershaw pinched the bridge of his nose to cut off the burn of grief that he might not ever have the chance to make those memories, with or without the cat. “I know. I miss her too. I don’t know how to bring her back.” 

He’d never not known what to do. He always had a few choices or a plan or something. His head tilted back so he could stare at the ceiling. Every time he caught a glimpse of Deirdre in the corner of his eye, he thought for a brief flash that she was back and normal and he’d gotten everything he wanted in life. Then all his hopes crashed back to earth and killed a little more of him, one piece at a time. 

The weight in his lap shifted as the cat moved, then two massive paws landed on his chest, along with what felt like twenty tiny little ice picks of pain. The cat dug in and gave Evershaw the fiercest look he’d ever seen from another living creature, and his heart cracked just a little. Of course the beast loved Deirdre. How could it not? 

“What do you want from me?” Evershaw asked. His voice cracked but he didn’t bother pushing the cat away or dropping it off the sofa. He didn’t question why the fuck he was talking to a house pet. “I don’t know how to fix her.” 

Cricket purred, those bright green eyes suddenly eerily similar to Deirdre’s, and more flashes of insight drifted across Evershaw’s thoughts. The creaky old house where Deirdre lived, filled with sunlight and quiet and familiar things. The green and overgrown garden with the scary-ass poisonous plants and the many other beautiful ones. A workroom upstairs and downstairs, a room full of books, her bedroom with the quilt and no other personal mementos. 

Maybe there was something about her house... 

Evershaw looked at the cat. “She’ll get better if I take her home?” 

The cat blinked. 

He covered his eyes. He had to be fucking kidding himself. He couldn’t take the advice of a cat. A non-magical, non-shifter cat who was a witch’s pet. 

He cracked one eye open and studied the silent beast. A witch’s pet. He’d heard that witches’ pets could be magical. A familiar, wasn’t it called? Evershaw carefully lifted Cricket and set him on a nearby cushion, so he could stand up and check on Deirdre, though he spoke to the beast. “Are you her familiar, then? Some kind of magic going on with you? Does she know about it?” 

Cricket blinked, long and slow, and the tip of his tail curled and dropped, curled and dropped. But no more images came to him. Just the relative certainty that help would be found at Deirdre’s house. 

Evershaw stood there in his living room debating for far longer than he wanted to admit. He’d do anything to save her. That wasn’t a question. He just had to figure out how the fuck to explain to his pack that he was taking orders from the mangy beast that had tormented Mercy and everyone else for weeks.