Description: The word "familiars" immediately evokes images of witches and black cats, but fantasy writers have too much imagination to allow themselves to be confined to such a stereotype. Here in fifteen original tales by some of the top writers in the field, not only cats but dogs, humans, and even insects can become key assistants in the raising and working of arcane powers. With stories by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jody Lynn Nye, Andre Norton, Gary Braunbeck, Josepha Sherman, and Michelle West.