After what Vin and Leah told me after their show, I spent a lot of time on several genealogy websites looking up any other reference to the Fontaine family.  Of course, I knew that not every Fontaine in America was probably related to me, but nonetheless, I couldn’t find evidence of any of them having been professional magicians.  Still, what Vin and Leah told me had got me thinking.  What if there was something about me that made me more able to do things like this?  Was there anything else I was capable of?
     My musings on this topic were interrupted one afternoon when Felicity, Marcus’s sister, walked into the shop.  
     “Hi, Brian.”
     “Hi, Felicity.  What can I do for you?”
     “I’d like to get some work done.  I’m feeling a little left out over there.”
     “Sure thing.  What would you like?”
     “Well, it’s a little more than I think you’ve done before.”
     “Sounds like fun.  What did you have in mind?”
     “I’d like you to make me a cat.”
     “You mean like those little electronic pets from Sony?”
     “No, I mean I want you to make me into a cat.”  She saw my really confused look.  “Well, not exactly a cat.  I mean I want you to give me the fur, the tail, the ears, and so on.”
     “Ah.  That’s a little easier to do.  You aren’t getting into a one-upmanship contest with Marcus, are you?”
     “No, I just wanted to get into the game over there.  Good old-fashioned conformity.”
     “Because I wouldn’t want to encourage any kind of body modification obsession, as good as it might be for business on my end.”
     “It’s okay, Brian!  I can’t imagine what I could do on top of this.”
     “Okay.  Well, come on in back and we’ll get you scanned in.”  She followed me into the back room, and I scanned her measurements into the computer.  “Now, you want a full coat of fur, a tail prosthetic, and prosthetic ears.  What else would you like?  How about whiskers?”
     “Yep.”
     “Eyes?”
     “I have cat’s-eye contacts.”
     “Well, I can give you prosthetic eyes that can let you see in low light like a cat.”
     “Cool!  Yes, throw those in there.”
     “Claws?”
     “Yeah, but only on my hands.”
     “Okay, so we have prosthetic eyes, ears, tail, and hands, and…”
     “Prosthetic hands?  Oh, are those for the claws?”
     “Yeah, it’d be easier to do the whole hand than to do each finger individually.  And finishing with the full-body fur prosthetic.  Now, I’d assume you want this to resemble actual fur and not a simple body suit, so there’d be holes for the anus, vagina, and nipples, correct?”
     “Well, yeah.  I want this to be all the way on me.  I don’t want to be putting it on every morning.”
     “And what length would you like, tabby or Persian?”
     “Oh, I don’t want anything too long.  I don’t want to look like a throw rug.  I want the fur to be fairly short, like about an inch or two at most, and fading to really short fuzz in places like my face and such.”
     “How about your own hair?  You want to keep that as is?”
     “Oh, yeah.  I want to hang on to that.”  She stroked her ponytail a little.  
     “And what color were you looking for?  Something to match your natural blonde?”
     “No, I was thinking of something in the ginger area.”
     I pulled up a color wheel on my computer and dialed in a sort of light reddish-brown.  “Something like this?”
     “A little lighter.”  I added a bit more white to the mix.  “Yeah, right there.”
     “So you’re looking for kind of a Garfield look.”
     “Yeah, I guess so.”
     “Would you like the stripes to go with it?”
     “Actually, yeah.”
     I pulled up her image on the computer and overlaid it with a roughly striped texture in the color she picked.  “Something like this, then?”
     “Yeah, that’s it, exactly.”
     “All right.  Anything else you can think of?”
     “Not at the moment, no.”
     “Well, let me know if there’s anything else you can think to throw in.  So, with this order, I can probably have it done in about ten days.  You got about half an hour a week and a half from now?”
     “I should be able to get Marcus to let me off for a bit, especially for this.”
     “All right, I’ll see you then.”
     “See you around, Brian.”  She headed back to Freaks and Geeks, and I got started creating some prosthetics.  The fur prosthetics were an extra challenge to get such tiny hairs in certain areas, but I figured it out.  Fortunately, for non-skeletal skin prosthetics like this, I could just turn to Hollywood.  They’ve been doing this sort of thing for decades.
     A week and a half later, Felicity came back over for her appointment.  She was wearing a halter top, cut-off Daisy Duke shorts, and short socks under her sneakers.  I guess she was so confident in my handiwork that she had planned on exhibiting her new look afterwards.  “All right, Felicity, come on back and we’ll get your new hairstyle taken care of.”  She followed me back to the room with the old chair.  “Now, what we’re going to do it start with the ears and eyes, then apply the fur prosthetics, and we’ll add the tail and hands last.  The reason for that is because the tail and hands have to line up with the fur in a specific way, whereas the ears are going in among your existing hair and the eyes are getting fur over them.  Following me so far?”
     “With you all the way.”  She sat in the chair with an excited fidget.  “Ready when you are, Dr. Frankenstein.”
     “All right.  We’ll start with the eyes, since they’re the most subtle.  Close your eyes, and try to keep your head still.”  She laid back and closed her eyes, and I took out my sword.  I removed the section of her face containing her eyes in the same way I did for her brother, placing her own eyes in the storage room and replacing them with the prosthetics I had prepared.  “All right, finished.  Open up.”  She opened her eyes, and I held up a hand mirror.  She was a little startled to see her new eyes, which were about the same color as her own eyes, but the pupils were more oval.  I handed her the mirror, and I turned off the lights in the back room.
     “Ooh, now that’s cool.”  I could see her eyes glowing a little bit as they reflected the light of the computer screen.
     “How’s that working for you?  Are you still able to see?”
     “Yeah, I can see fine.  They’re cool when they glow.”
     “Okay, I’m going to turn the lights back on now.  You might want to shield your eyes.”  I turned the lights back on and pulled the next prosthesis out of my drawer.  They were already coated with a fine layer of hair; I didn’t see a need to add a step to the process.  “All right, next we have the ears.  Now, I’m going to try to fit these into your existing hairstyle as best I can, but I think I’m going to have to shave off some of your hair to make room for the ears.  Is that all right with you?”
     “Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.”
     “All right, here we go.”  I parted her hair to make as much room for the ears as I could, and then I took out an electric trimmer and cut off as little of the hair as I could to clear the room I needed.  The ears didn’t have a very big base area, but there was a wide-ish spike on the bottom that was hollow to give the idea that the ears had some kind of canal behind then.  The artificial canal needed some space on the head, and I trimmed off hair until I could just squeeze them in.  I then inserted the spikes into the tops of her head and pressed the ears into position.  After they were set, I removed Felicity’s own ears and carried them into storage.  “Okay, Felicity, can you still hear me?”
     “Sure.”
     “All right, take a look in the mirror.  Can you wiggle your ears at all?  Can you do that cat-ears-pivoting-backwards thing?”
     She flexed the ears from straight up to pointed backwards.  “Yeah, they move great.”
     “All right, the next step is the fur.  I’ll start with the face, and if you like the way that looks, I’ll proceed with the rest of your body.”  
     “All right.”
     I took a small jar from my desk.  “Now, what I’m going to do is first apply a layer of this cream to your skin,” I said as I started to apply it over her face.  “It allows the prosthesis to blend with your skin so you can still feel through it, and so it won’t peel off like spirit gum will.  Also, it allows things like sweat and heat to pass through more easily, so you won’t pass out on a hot day, at least any more than usual.”  After I had spread a layer of the cream over her face, I took the first fur prosthetic from my desk and pressed it against her face.  As I applied pressure, the fur prosthetic sunk slowly into the skin of her face.  When I was done, her face was coated with fine hairs that might as well have grown there, from very short fuzz on her nose and forehead to slightly longer hair on her cheeks and where her ears had been.  She looked in the mirror and made several facial expressions to see how the fur reacted.  From the front and from the neck up, she looked for all the world like a human cat.
     “Well, Felicity, now you know how those of us feel who need to shave every day.  Of course, this hair isn’t real, so it won’t need to be cut.”
     “Oh, wait.  What happens if something happens to the hair, like it starts falling out in patches or something?”
     “In that event, you can come in and I’ll repair the damage.  I do guarantee my products 100%.  So, what do you think?”
     “I love it!  I can’t wait for the rest to happen.”
     “Well, let’s get started.  Which part would you like to do next?”
     “Well, I figure we should start from the middle and work outwards, so…”  She took off her halter top, revealing that she had not worn a bra today.  “So let’s start here.”
     I swear, I was really trying hard to watch her eyes.  “All – all right, then.”  I took the jar of cream and moved to her back, rubbing it into her skin.  I had hoped that being behind her would make it a little easier.  No dice.  
     I rubbed the cream in over her back, neck, shoulders, midriff, and chest, and I did my best to look like I wasn’t trying to fondle her breasts, which were ample.  When I was done, I took the upper body fur prosthetic, which was basically a tank top turtleneck with fur.  I slipped it down over her head and pressed it into her skin.  Again, it was a challenge to not make it look like I was fondling her, but there really wasn’t any way around that since I was pressing my hands against her entire torso.  When I was done, she had fur from her waistline to her shoulders.
     “Okay, that’s it for the torso.  Here you are.”  I handed her top back to her, and she put it back on, allowing me to stop worrying about looking where I shouldn’t.  I then applied the arm prosthetics, which extended the fur to her wrists.  “All right, ready for the claws?”
     “Sure am, Brian.”
     “Okay, hold out your arms.”  I brought up my sword and cut off her hands just where the fur ended, and I took them into storage.  When I came back out, I took the prosthetic hands from my desk.  They were a match for her own hands, but they already had the fur on them.  Plus, they had retractable claws in them, of course.  I pressed the joint discs into her wrist stumps and attached the hands.  She flexed them to try them out.
     “All right, now.  In your fingertips, you now have plastic retractable claws,” I said.  “Once you learn how to flex your fingers the right way, you’ll be able to extend and retract them without any trouble.”  She tensed up her finger, and the claw popped out.  She relaxed it, and the claw went back into her finger.  It didn’t take her long to figure the claws out at all.  Maybe I had been overestimating how difficult this actually was for people.
     “All right, Brian,” she said.  “Time to finish your work.  I look like some kind of lab experiment over here.”  I took a look at her, and since she was normal below the waist and cat-woman-y above the waist, I chuckled a little.
     “All right, Felicity, all right.  Which part do you want next?”  I gave her a choice so I didn’t appear too eager for her to take her shorts off.  Actually, I was nervous as hell about it.  
     She took off her shoes and socks, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief.  Then she took off her shorts and thong panties, and I took my sigh back.  She sat back down on the chair.  “Let’s proceed with the naughty bits, Dr. Frankenstein.”
     I grabbed the jar of bonding cream and tried to keep my hands from shaking.  This was kind of a first for me.  Hell, I had never done anything even comparable to this before.  I had a young, attractive, half-naked woman sitting my chair waiting for me to rub lotion all over her body.  And I was getting paid for this.  
     I reclined the chair all the way, and since she was now lying on her back, I started with her front side.  I rubbed the cream into her skin from her waist where the existing prosthetic ended down to her mid-thigh.  I avoided getting near her labia, since the prosthetic didn’t cover there, and this was intimate enough already.  The fact that her pubic area was freshly shaven wasn’t helping my concentration.  Fortunately, I got done quickly, and she rolled over in the reclined chair so I could get her backside.  Now that more of her bits were concealed from view, it was a lot easier to concentrate.  
     When I was done, she hopped up from the chair so I could apply the prosthetic.  The hip section was basically like a pair of tight shorts with the fur on them, with a hole at the base of the spine for the tail.  I helped her slip them on.  When it was in position, I pressed the fur into her skin, and again, it got to be hard to focus as I laid my hands over her privates for a second time.  When it was fully bonded, she put her panties back on, and she was about to put her shorts back on when I stopped her.  
     “Wait, Felicity.  Aren’t you forgetting something?”
     “What do you mean?”
     “You’ve got a tail coming, remember?”
     “Oh, yeah!  I almost forgot!”  She hopped back up on the reclined chair and laid on her stomach.  I fetched the tail prosthetic from my desk and brought it over to where she lay.  It was about three feet long, and it a small spike at its base like the wings I had given Marcus, James, and Christina.  I pressed the spike into the base of her spine, and it filled the hole in the fur prosthetic.
     “Now, it’ll be a little hard to wear your shorts with the tail here, so you’ll need a hole for the tail to come out.  Do you mind if I just rip a little hole right now?”
     “Go right ahead.  That’s an old pair of shorts.  I can modify my other clothes when I get home.”
     I split the seam of her shorts a little with my sword and gave them back to her to put back on.  It took a few tries, but she finally got her new tail to fit through the hole.  I then started rubbing the rest of the cream into her legs, and then I applied the last of the fur prosthetics.  When I was done, Felicity was covered in light red-brown fur with the ears, eyes, claws, and tail of a cat.  She spent a few minutes in front of the floor-length mirror admiring her reflection.  
     “Okay, Felicity, follow me to the front and we’ll settle the bill, unless there’s anything else you need.”
     “Yeah, there is one more thing,” she said.  
     “What’s that?”
     “I need you to tell me what happened between you and Letitia at the Halloween party.”
     Damn it.  I had all but put it out of my mind.  I should have known.  It’s like when someone tells you not to think of an elephant.  It’s impossible.
     “Look, Felicity, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
     “Tish already told me her side of it.  Do you want me to hear the entire story, or just what she had to say?”
     I just stood there, thinking.  What exactly might Tish have told her?
     “Don’t worry.  She didn’t tell anyone but me.”
     “I don’t – Felicity, I had a lot of alcohol at the party.  I don’t even remember most of it.”
     “Then tell me what you do remember, and we’ll start there.”  She sat me down in my desk chair, and then she pulled up a chair next to me and laid a furry hand on my shoulder.  Her tail curled around and rubbed against my upper arm.  I guess it’s a lot easier to learn to use the prosthetics than I had thought.  
     “Well, I showed up at the party, and I was the first one there.  I had a drink with Marcus and Minerva.  Then James and Christina showed up, and I had a couple of drinks with them.  I was starting to feel a buzz when you and Tish showed up.  Then, Tish took me into the living room, and we sat down on the couch.  We started talking about things, and she asked me about what I do.  I told her, and she started asking me all sorts of questions.  She asked me how I do it, and I didn’t want to tell her, but I guess I was pretty drunk because she got me talking pretty quick.  I told her that it was magic, and then she told me to do some magic on her.  I didn’t want to, and then she told me that if I showed her one, she would show me one.”
     “She what?”
     “Well, she told me she was a dancer.  Her trick was to bend her legs up backwards behind her shoulders and over her head.”
     “Yeah, she was always pretty flexible.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “We were on the same dance team for a long time.  That’s why we’re roommates now.”
     “Oh.  Well, she rolled herself up into a ball, and in return, I – I sliced her arm off at the shoulder.”
     “You did?”
     “She said she wanted me to show her something.  Well, she put her arm back on and told me that wasn’t good enough, so I divided her in half at the waist, like I did with Minerva, but with my bare hands.”
     “Without your sword?  You can do that?”
     “Yeah.  The sword just makes it easier, so I don’t have to put so much effort into it.  After that, I think she moved her upper half into my lap and her lower half behind me, and things just kind of moved forward from there.  I swear, I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did.  I know it’s terrible of me to say it, but I think she wanted it more than I did.”
     She moved her chair in front of me and took my hands in hers.  “Brian, look at me.  I’ve spent some time with you over this last month or so, with the game at Marcus’s.  I know a lot about you, what makes you tick.  I know you would never do anything like what you think you did.”
     “That’s what’s been eating at me since the party.  I don’t know if I did or not.”  I could feel my voice beginning to crack.
     “You hate not knowing, don’t you?”
     “I always have.  I like certainty.  That’s why I wanted to be an engineer in the first place.”
     “You know, Brian, I thought I knew about you, but I’ve learned more about you today then I have since I met you.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “I could tell how you tensed up when I took my shirt off.  You did it again when I took off my underwear.  You’re definitely one of the more chivalrous people I’ve met.  I don’t think you’re even capable of taking unfair advantage of anyone, least of all a woman.  So stop tearing yourself up about this, Brian.  There’s no way you did anything wrong.”  She got up to leave, but I held onto her hand a little longer.
     “Felicity?”
     “Yes, Brian?”
     “What did Tish tell you about that night?”  I looked up at her, hoping she could give me a respite from the last several weeks of hell.
     “You’ll have to ask her yourself.  Come on, Brian.  I’ve got a bill to pay.”  I followed her to the front room.