morning. The blankets had gotten tangled around his feet, too, and it had taken us almost a full minute to get them off, find my phone, and turn off the jangling bell alarm tone.
At least Gideon hadn’t laughed at us.
Well, not out loud.
As foxy turned to glare at me again, I stuck my tongue out at him. “This is for you, you know. I wouldn’t have chosen to get up before dawn, but if I don’t get you licensed, they could take you away.”
He dropped his head and pushed against my leg, vaguely apologetic, and we all kept trudging toward the familiar registration office. Well, it was the county building, the registration office was just a part of it. It was the government’s way of making sure they got their cut of a mage’s very existence.
“You gonna put ‘Foxy’ on his registration?” Gideon asked, quirking that irritating brow at me. Of course he had to be the one to point out that issue.
I scowled at him. “I can’t just name him. What if I do it wrong?”
He shrugged and didn’t break stride. “Parents do it all the time. I think you can handle it.”
“Parents have nine months to decide, not two days,” I pointed out, perfectly logically. I was not being petulant. You’re petulant.
“Parents don’t get to meet the kid before naming them. You know him pretty well. Smart and kind of an asshole.”
I gasped and dropped to my knees, hugging foxy to my chest as though scandalized. “You take that back. He’s perfection incarnate. He’s the luckiest thing that has ever happened to me.”
Gideon, to his credit, didn’t say that was pathetic. Foxy leaned up and licked my cheek. A passing woman looked at me like she thought maybe she should call the authorities.
“It’s not luck. It’s not an accident he found you,” Gideon finally said, after the woman got in her car and left.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Stop saying that. He’s not my familiar.”
He stopped again, right in front of the building door, and looked at me. “I didn’t say it. What I think doesn’t change anything. But eventually, you’ve got to see that him coming into your life isn’t an accident.”
This time I glanced around for onlookers before responding. “So what, it’s part of some grand design, and not just a fluke?”
He frowned at that and shook his head. “I don’t think the universe has a plan. I’m just saying he’s here because he belongs with you. What’s a fluke?”
“Huh?” It took me a moment to comprehend the question. “Fluke? It’s, like, something good that happens by accident.” I looked at him and stressed, “Accident. See?”
He sighed, turned, and walked through the glass door. I opened it and followed, holding it for foxy behind me.
When we found the registration office, it was like a nightmare I sometimes had.
It was full of children.
Their parents were with them, as well as a whole menagerie worth of exotic familiars, but that was when I really got it. The woman on the phone had thought I was a little kid, not because of my voice, but because only little kids came newly into familiars. I was two decades late to be registering a familiar.
I’d known it, but somehow, my mind hadn’t connected that knowledge to what we’d find at the office.
It was too late to rethink, and even if it hadn’t been, what else was I going to do? Leave him unregistered and either have him taken away or pay a massive fine?
I went to the counter, where a perky woman with purple hair wearing a cherry-print dress smiled brightly at me. “How can we help you today?”
I leaned on the counter and lowered my voice. I didn’t want to come off as some creepy dude offering her unsolicited dick pics, but I also didn’t want everyone in the room to know I was some sad, stunted thirty-year-old registering a familiar for myself. “I, uh, have to register an exotic familiar.” I motioned to foxy, who, in an impressive display of agility and control, popped up onto his back legs, putting his front ones on the counter and giving the lady his best innocent melting chocolate eyes.
It worked on her as well as it always worked on me. “Aww, well aren’t you just the sweetest?” She asked him, leaning forward and holding her hand out for him to sniff. She didn’t look around for a kid, just pulled out a clipboard with her free hand and gave it to