The daughter of a witch, twelve-year-old Desi is frustrated by her own lack of magical training. Her mother seems determined that Desi remain ignorant of all but the most basic magic. Then her mother disappears in an effort to keep a dark magician—Desi’s own father—from tracking Desi down. Before she left, Desi’s mother transformed her familiar, the family’s cat, into a teenage girl to act as Desi’s guardian and protector. Devil, now renamed Cat, is completely puzzled by her human body and human behavior, and completely puzzling to the teenage boy living next door who’d like to get to know her. Meanwhile, Desi is determined to use magic to find out where her mother is, not realizing that every time she tries a spell, she is drawing danger closer and closer. But the threat turns out not to be as clear-cut as Desi’s mother thought in R. C. Alexander’s debut novel, an enjoyable fantasy grounded in the real world and featuring a cast of memorable characters whose relationships and interactions are sometimes complex, sometimes hilarious (especially those involving teenage Cat, who still thinks like a cat), and always satisfying. (Ages 10–13)