Warlock 4 - Preview Chapter

Warlock 4 – Preview Chapter

© 2025 Daniel Kensington

Chapter

I still do not ken why we cannot simply spend time together and converse at home.

Felicity was on my shoulder, tail curled around my neck, as I thanked Mihai for the ride and closed the car door. The girls had been talking about getting my shirts fitted with shoulder pads to give her a better seat, but every attempt made me look stupid.

“It’s nice to get out once in a while and I want to spend some time with you alone,” I said. “We used to talk all the time — well, I talked and you listened, but now I know you can talk … but we don’t anymore. It’s always all the girls, never just you and me.”

It is possible to be alone at home — Melaina may be ancient, but even in her time they possessed the innovation of doors.

I chuckled. “Yeah, but locking myself in a room with you seems weird.”

I must point out that you seem to have no concerns about locking yourself in a room with Samantha. Quite often. And no objection to doing so with Cassandra or Rachel. To a lesser extent Priscilla and Morgan.

I cleared my throat, suddenly a little uncomfortable.

Yeah, I had regular alone-time with both Priscilla and Morgan, despite them not being in my coven yet.

It’s nice to cuddle.

“That’s a little different,” I said.

Indeed? So this is not a “date?”

I stumbled, raising a hand to help Felicity balance, though she didn’t really need any help to stay steady.

Warning!

Yeah, yeah, I told the lizard. I see it.

Felicity might not be an initiata for my coven, and she might have spent the last three hundred years as a cat, but she was still a girl, and I was pretty sure “nah, this isn’t a date” wouldn’t work for a friend either.

And it was date night.

But I didn’t want Felicity to think I was viewing this as a date date.

Stepping into anything that resembled aunt-territory was something I wanted to avoid, too, since her claws were currently gripping my clavicle only a few inches from my throat — so I needed to phrase it carefully.

“This is … two old —”

Fuck!

“— in the sense of how long they’ve known each other, old — friends … very, very close friends … more than friends, you could say, but … close … going out and having a little fun together. Alone.”

This was rapidly becoming a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.

Felicity’s tail twitched.

Samantha says it is a date.

I sighed.

“Fine, it’s a date — but a friends-date, right? I don’t want you to think —”

I will think what I will think, Noah. Moreover, I will know the things I know. If you insist on us leaving home for this time together, I would rather it be called a date.

“Okay,” I said quickly — one thing I’d learned living at Mel’s with seven women? It’s better for something to be over than for me to be right.

I resumed walking.

Then stumbled again.

“Um, is this … ah, your first date?”

It is.

Fuck.

Yep. The three-hundred year old cat-witch’s first date.

Now I really hoped I wouldn’t fuck this up.

I look forward to learning our score.

“What? No! Oh, come on!”

On one of my dates with Priscilla, she’d told me the girls were all comparing notes on our dates and assigning scores for both difficulty and execution. At the time, she said I was at a seven-something overall — I refused to ask again.

Except once in a while …

Okay, I had Priscilla keeping me updated after every scoring session.

I was still in the fucking sevens, because Sam wouldn’t go any higher if there were no orgasms.

You should speak to me in your mind, else those around us think you touched.

They’d think I was talking to myself, not the cat since Felicity had her typical glamour on, making her invisible to the mundanes around us.

“This is how I’ve always talked to you — it feels weird not to do it out loud.” I reached into my pocket. “I did think of that, though.”

I pulled out the bluetooth ear piece I’d picked up and hooked it over my ear.

“Now everybody will just think I’m an asshole.”

Felicity chuckled.

It was sort of the first half of the sound you’d expect to come seconds before the splat of a hairball. I think she chose it as her chuckle because she found it amusing to sneak into people’s bedrooms and make the noise in the middle of the night.

Something about that sound will wake you right the fuck up.

So Felicity could call this a date if she wanted to — I had more serious things to worry about.

Primarily, whether my plan for our date was a truly horrible idea.

I didn’t want to push Felicity into anything, but it had been over six months since that disastrous day when she’d shown me her catgirl form and I’d run out of house.

At least she was talking to me in my head now, but that day she’d both talked out loud and shown me more of herself than she’d shown anyone else for centuries. I wanted to fix what had broken that day and get us back to where Felicity felt comfortable enough to show me that again … at least with clothes on.

Yeah, I was going to have to be sure she understood that part.

Asshole.

Shut up, Marvin, I told my dick.

It was weird to be worried I’d screw something up and not have the opportunity to tell a pretty girl to put clothes on — and something of that must have been noticeable to Felicity.

What worries you, Noah?

Fuck.

Everybody told me the mind-to-mind communication could let through more than your surface thoughts if you didn’t concentrate. I wondered which of my worries Felicity might be picking up on.

“What? Worried? I’m not worried?”

The surface of your thoughts rustle as though a forest of dried leaves.

“I — really?”

What worries you?

“I — maybe I’m worried because now this is a date?”

I turned to enter the hotel through its gold-trimmed revolving door.

Once through, I dodged a blue and purple fox heading for the door next to me and looked around for the conference center.

Noah?

“Huh?” I said, seeing the sign for the conference center and heading that way.

A black and grey wolf stopped in midstride to tap at his cell phone and I had to dodge around him.

Noah? Where are you taking me?

I grinned — nervous or not, I was going with good-idea until the claws came out.

“You’ll see.”

*

Felicity didn’t have to wait as long after asking as some of the girls had to see.

The event currently happening in the hotel became more and more obvious as we neared the conference center.

Waving tails, swinging wings, and giant heads with articulated eyes filled the hallways, streaming in and out of the various conference rooms hosting sessions on material selection, sewing, and even robotics.

“So I thought —”

I paused, waiting, but Felicity must have been too surprised, or maybe shocked, to take a dig at me. I think that was a first for any of the girls — was Felicity one of the girls? She gave me as much shit as any of them and I loved her. Yeah — she was one of my girls and I couldn’t imagine life without her.

“Anyway.” I pulled out my phone and brought up a website, holding it up for Felicity to see. “This con showed up in my feed and then I saw this site — I know you chat online with these guys and I’ve seen you looking at video from events like this …”

I trailed off as Felicity went stiller and stiller on my shoulder, until only the very tip of her tail brushed against my neck.

I took a deep breath.

“I wanted to spend time with you — just you — away from the house and everybody else and I wanted it to be somewhere you’d like to go. Someplace you could maybe relax and be yourself.”

I am not relaxed.

She wasn’t. She could obviously see where this was going, and needle-sharp claws were slowly extending into my skin then retreating.

“Felicity, I only got a short look when you … showed me before — but I saw this company’s suits and —”

I paused, choosing my words carefully — I was pretty sure you shouldn’t tell a pretty catgirl she looked like a costume.

“You don’t have to,” I assured her. “We can just stay like this if you want and you can ride my shoulder to all the panels and stuff, but I thought if you used just a little glamour you could make everybody think you were wearing one of these without it being too different from that form.”

I bit my lip and swallowed.

“The thing is, I kind of thought a big part of your reluctance to show me that again might be because Sam and Mel were there last time and … well, saw my fuckup — and now there’re even more people in the house all the time. But suggesting it when we were really alone didn’t seem right either — too much pressure, maybe focus, with just the two of us?”

I looked around.

“Here, I’d be the only one to know. And maybe it will be a little easier here — to show me that again — without the pressure of everybody else who’s around all the time now at home. Everybody here will just think it’s a costume.” I bit my lip. I was talking a lot and Felicity was just sitting on my shoulder. I needed to wrap this shit up. “You don’t have to, but I’d like it. I thought this might be someplace you could … be yourself. With me. You don’t have to.”

I decided I was saying “you don’t have to” a lot more than I wanted to and shut the fuck up.

But you would like it if I did.

I nodded, staying still in the hotel conference center corridor, surrounded by dozens of people in different costumes, while Felicity stayed silent and unmoving.

I have observed you use this method of pitting one’s reluctance against the desire to please you on Rachel.

“Oh.”

It wasn’t like it was a plan or anything, I was just being honest. What should I say? Hey — I asked you to do this thing, but I don’t really care if you do?

It is an effective tactic.

“Ah.”

Scroll the site so I may view more images?

I did, pausing now and again.

Glamour or no, I will not be doing that.

I’d been kind of distracted at the realization Felicity was actually considering the idea and I hadn’t fucked it up — the last picture I’d paused on showed a girl in a catsuit doing … the guy did some interesting work and his model was certainly limber.

“You sure?” I asked, grinning.

Sharp fangs nipped my ear, then Felicity’s weight left my shoulder followed by a soft thump.

The cat-witch strolled into the restroom, tail high and showing me her butthole.

*

Sweet Maiden’s dripping pearl …

Morgan had been helping me with witch-swearing — she’d picked that up faster than shielding and it was definitely one aspect of witch society she leaned into with enthusiasm.

The catgirl who came out of the restroom was sexier than if she’d been naked.

What wasn’t covered — and a lot wasn’t covered — by the image of a skintight, strapless leather dress was Felicity’s own sleek, shiny black fur. The dress — the glamour of a dress — was colored to exactly match that black, except where it had white spots that matched Felicity’s own.

The leather ended high on her thighs revealing more fur that I knew was real, not glamour, and I had a barely repressed urge to see if her fur was as soft in this form as when she was fully a cat.

Felicity stopped, hands clasped in front of her.

Maybe paws, because she hadn’t glamoured those much and they ended a joint early, the last joints being her retracted claws. If you really thought about it, you’d realize they couldn’t be gloves, but with the outfit … nobody was going to be looking at her hands.

Is … is it okay?

What was it with beautiful girls dressed to knock bystanders unconscious and asking if it was “okay?”

I raised my eyes to her face, noting the seams and bulges she was glamouring to look more like a costume and makeup. I could tell what was real and it was gorgeous. Exotic and dangerous, but somehow delicate and vulnerable.

You are beautiful, I thought at her, hoping that whole “sometimes more than the thoughts slip through” thing was true, because I was pushing every bit of how amazing I thought she was along with it.

Felicity lowered her chin — and her ears, which was even more adorable.

I caught the hint of white fangs as the corners of her lips turned up.

She looked up again, but her eyes, and pupils, widened as she took in the crowd.

You’ll be okay, I projected.

Felicity nodded quickly, stepping close to me.

She wasn’t a stranger to crowds — she’d spent decades running all over the city, through the most crowded events … as a cat. Usually one glamoured so that the mundanes didn’t even see her.

Now they could see her — see her in a form no one else had seen for a very long time, if ever, and no matter if they would all think it was a costume, it was still a huge step for her.

I edged in front of her to distract her from the crowd for a second.

“You know these guys, Felicity — nobody’s going to judge how you look. You are beautiful.”

What I really wanted was for her to show me her true, human form, because I knew that was beautiful too, but this was a step.

Another quick nod and Felicity took my arm.

Her palm and fingertips had soft pads and I covered her hands with one of mine as the claws came out to poke me slightly.

“Just be yourself,” I whispered — kind of hoping I didn’t need to hope she knew I meant without injuring anyone. “We’re just two people at a huge con — no one will even —”

“Oh! Em! Gee! Is that a dellaKinki? It is! Oh, magod, it is! Susan! Susan! Sssuuuusaaannn!! This girl has a dellaKinki and she is gorgeous!”