This is an excerpt from At the Corner of the Garden Wall, a story included in the anthology Athena's Daughters 2 from Silence in the Library. Athena's Daughters 2 is an anthology of women in Science Fiction and Fantasy.
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The cat was pink. Brilliantly and undeniably pink. Not that Claire thought pink was a bad thing. In fact, the cat looked quite nice and seemed very calm in light of its recent transformation. Unfortunately, Emilia was probably not going to agree with Claire. Or be nearly as nice about this tiny little accident as the cat was currently being.
A floorboard squeaked outside of her bedroom door. Claire grabbed the cat around the middle and tossed him unceremoniously into her closet. The cat answered with a half-hearted growl as she shut the door.
There was the nightly tap from the hall.
“Come in!” Claire leapt onto the bed and opened her computer.
Emilia’s head peeked around the door. “Night, Claire.”
“Yep,” Claire said, not daring to meet Emilia’s eyes.
“You all right?” Emilia tucked her long black hair behind her ear and walked over to sit on Claire's bed.
Why did sixteen-year-olds have to be so concerned about twelve-year-olds' business?
“Just wiped out.” Claire crossed her toes and hoped that the cat would stay quiet.
Emilia wrinkled her forehead.
“Seriously.” Claire got off the bed, took Emilia’s hand, and dragged her to the door. “I’ll be fine after I get some nice, uninterrupted shut-eye.”
Claire had the door closed before Emilia could answer. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes, and tried to think.
Pink cats were cool. The cat deserved to be cool. Emilia was cool. Emilia would be furious. Emilia angry was very not cool.She needed to change the cat back to boring as quickly as possible. But that was just the problem with accidently turning things pink all the time. Claire hadn’t meant to do a spell, so there was no easy counter spell. She couldn’t just say “unpinkify” and have the cat go back to ginger.
Claire pressed her ear to the door. The only sound she could hear was a faint hissing coming from the closet. She could sneak downstairs to the library and search for a cat-fixing spell. But then she caught sight of her pink computer.
Maybe she could save herself the trouble of sneaking anywhere, hack into Wiznet, and do a quick little search. Sure, she wasn’t supposed to be on Wiznet. Only Clan Elders were allowed access to Magickind's only remote access data system. But just because she shouldn’t be on Wiznet didn’t mean she couldn’t.
Claire crawled back on her bed and flipped open her computer. It took her less than a minute to get onto the Wiznet home page.
