All stories are love stories if you love stories.

And I do love stories. As a Book Witch, you kind of have to love them. It’s on our recruitment posters, after all.

My name is Rainy March, and yes, it’s a bad pun and also a weather forecast, and no, sorry, I can’t change it now. It’s already embroidered into my underwear and printed on my bookplates.

This love story starts with a phone call, one of those pivotal moments you don’t realize will change your life until much, much later. It was two years ago on September 1st, back when I was a young and mostly innocent Book Witch of twenty-­five. I don’t even have to look at my case notes to remember the exact date. After all, you never forget the day you fall in love with a fictional character.

Of course, having a crush on a fictional character is nothing new. Sherlock Holmes used to get more fan mail than his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Women would write 221B Baker Street proposing marriage to the fictional consulting detective, or simply offering their services as housekeepers to get close to him.

What I really mean is…you never forget the day a fictional character falls in love with you back.

Admittedly, I also remember the day in question was the first of the month because Koshka, my feline familiar, gets his flea and tick preventative applied on the first. Right before the phone rang, I had the boy wrapped in a towel and wedged between my knees on the bathroom floor. I can’t say who was enjoying it less, me or my cat.

“Big baby,” I said as he wiggled under me, slippery as a hot-­buttered eel. “It’ll take two seconds. Do you want to get a tapeworm? No. No, you don’t.”

From inside his bath-­towel burrito, he let out a piteous whine.

“All this fussing from a familiar.” The familiars of Book Witches are like normal pets except they can read. They certainly don’t handle taking medication any better than normal pets. “It’ll be over in a second, buddy.” With one hand, I parted the thick silvery gray fur on the back of his neck while I popped the medicine cap with the other. “Be strong, comrade! You are Russian. Act like it!”