"Oh god, I'm hallucinating," I choked out as I nearly tripped into the lobelia. I reached out to stabilize myself, grabbing a handful of thorns from the rose bush to my left. "Ow!"

  The voice in my head sounded again. "Hallucinating? Don't tell me you ate the mushrooms behind the oak tree. As a small child, you put everything in your mouth without regard to safety, but you're grown now. Surely, you've got more sense."

  I looked around to see who could be playing this prank on me. There was only the cat.

  The cat gave me a pointed look. "So, about the wet food," the voice said. "I don't have opposable thumbs, so I can't open the can myself."

  "Tansy?" I asked. "Are you speaking to me?"

  "You don't see anyone else, do you? Yes, I'm speaking to you. Your grandmother ordered a case of salmon-flavored Science Diet two weeks before she died, and yet I've been subsisting on mice for the last week. And then there's the state of my litterbox."

  "You can talk?" I asked.

  "Technically, no. I lack human vocal cords. I meow. This is telepathy."

  I decided to sit down before the shock made me fall over. Making my way over to the porch swing, I said, "Tansy, I will feed you soon - and deal with your litterbox - but I need a moment. Until roughly 30 seconds ago, I did not know telepathy was possible, let alone that a cat was capable of doing it. Can you help me understand what is going on, and then I will feed you?"

  Tansy hopped up on my lap and then nonchalantly started licking herself. "Sure," she said. "If you pet me while I answer your questions. Nobody's petted me in a week either."

  "Fair enough," I replied, moving a hand to scratch behind her ears. As Tansy revved up her purr motor, I began, "How... why..." Then I stopped. "I'm not even sure what I need to ask. Is telepathy... magic? How is that possible?"

  The purrs stopped abruptly and I felt a wave of what I can only describe as shock. Was that coming from the cat?

  "Of course it's magic," she said. "Of course magic is possible. How is that a surprise to you? How... with grandparents like yours, and your mother... Does your mother not use her magic? Did she hide your family's magical tradition from you?"

  Now I felt horror, and it wasn't my own. I could feel the cat's feelings? This couldn't be any stranger if I had eaten those mushrooms.

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  I set aside the surprise that I could viscerally feel a sapient, magical cat's feelings and focused on her words. "Wait, what? My family's what?"

  The conversation went roughly like that for a while, and after about 30 minutes I took pity on the patient cat and served up her wet food. The litterbox could wait until after I processed the fact that a) magic exists b) my whole family can do magic and c) my mother hid this from me... and, it would seem, deprived me of a relationship with my grandparents in order to do so.

  When the full picture emerged, I learned that both animals and humans can practice magic. Not all of them. Magic evolved early in vertebrates, but only some individuals of each species inherited the ability. Each magic user has one or more affinities. Tansy, for example, has an affinity for mind magic, so there is no chance of her shooting firebolts out of her claws or shapeshifting into a tiger. My family is known for nature magic, a magical affinity for living things in the natural world.

  Well, that explains a lot about my life. How I intuitively know what plants and animals need, seem to sense them around me, why living things in my care thrive... In fact, the only thing it doesn't explain is why my mom was a CPA whose relationship to nature is "don't track dirt into the house," "wash your hands," and "if he drools on the carpet, he will need to stay outside." She had me at 21, around the time she met Jo. Jo says she's never liked nature. Did my mom have a past that Jo and I don't know about?

  This was big. BIG. I realized I was in shock, and I was going to have a much messier reaction once the shock wore off. My mother deprived me of my magical heritage and a relationship with my grandparents and abandoned her own. I was a nature mage planning to go to college for horticulture and veterinary science. Does one need to practice mundane veterinary medicine if they could heal animals with the flick of a magic wand? (Do mages use magic wands? I asked Tansy. She said no.)

  "So... animals with mind magic can communicate with people?" I interrogated Tansy, scratching under her chin as I did so.

  "Um... ish..." she replied, communicating emotions of hesitancy. "I can't communicate with non-magical people at all, and I have a more limited ability to communicate with most magical people. With your family's gifts for nature magic, I am much more able to communicate with your family. Especially with you. With most magical people I can just send snippets of ideas and emotions."

  I searched through the herbs left in my grandmother's kitchen, choosing the ones that would help with the grief and anger I was about to feel. Lemon balm, St. John's wort, lavender, chamomile... that would have to do for now. Since my grandmother was never going to use her things again, I scooped up her tea ball and my favorite mug from when I was small (one with playful otters on it) and prepared to head for the car. That's when I realized there was still some unfinished business.

  "Tansy," I said, "Where will you go now that Grandma Juniper is gone? Would you like to live with me?"

  She answered in the affirmative. With her help locating what she needed, we gathered up supplies for a night - food, her water bowl, her litterbox, litter - and then I drove the car toward Sherman Ave on Madison's north side.

  If I went home and confronted my mom right now, I was in danger of saying something that might permanently ruin our relationship. Granted, given the level of her betrayal, our relationship still might be permanently ruined - but I wanted to do what I could to prevent that outcome if possible. "Sleepover at Crystal's" I texted her. That would buy me some time.