The freshly minted tigress padded up the stage toward Lupo. Joy was right to see her like this, she realized. She was so weak she'd not only fallen into the magician's clutches, but allowed her sister to end up here as well. Lucky for her that Julie bore the brunt of the fear and humiliation. Julie was more than ready to give some of that back to the person who dealt it. She reached with her mind to the new muscles on the tips of her fingers and ten claws sprang out from slits in the fur.
Lupo backed up toward the edge of the stage. He slowly reached into his coat. "Err... thank you all for coming today, folks! I hope you enjoyed the show! You can h-hold your applause, please, and head for the nearest exit. Quick as you can!" Most of the crowd shot to their feet and scrambled outside. Three or four were either frozen in terror, or moving to the back of the bleachers to watch the ensuing carnage from a safer distance.
"You'd better not be holding anything when you take your hand out of your coat," Julie snarled. Her voice was guttural. Raw.
"We magicians can do much with our bare hands," Lupo warned. The quiver in his voice told Julie nothing his scent already had.
"Real magicians, probably," the tigress spat. "But if you were one, you wouldn't be using my sister and the rest of the crowd to force changes on me. You'd do it with your wand, or something else." She wasn't sure why she hadn't put that together until now. Barbelo was transformed in a beam of light, fast and simple. Lupo had done nothing like that with Julie. It was all sideshow trickery and hypnotism. Whatever bond he had with Barbelo, he didn't share with her or Joy.
"Fuck him up, Julie!" Joy cheered.
Julie glanced back at Joy with an assuring smirk.
Mistake. Lupo's hand was out in a flash. His wand shot a beam of red light at the looming tigress.