The Accidental Familiar (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 14) (12 page)

More to herself than to Rick, she muttered, “Huh. So you’re not booting people out on their ears while they cling to their Hummel collections.” Because Mrs. Marshall had a Hummel collection spanning an entire wall, and if push came to shove, she’d sit on a wrecking ball in protest while the building came down around her.

Rick looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d never do something like that. I care about these people, Poppy. I treat them in the same way I’d want to be treated in my senior years. Why do you think I get invited over for kielbasa and sauerkraut?”

She knew she was harping, but she had to try to understand why no one had told him Lennox Griffith wasn’t the occupant of 7E. Had no one in the entire apartment building stood up for her? Mentioned she was out of town?

Even though she owed back rent, had she been gone just another week, she would have come home to a leveled lot of dirt and no one would have said a word.

“So no one said anything about this…Lennox?”

“We didn’t ask about Lennox. It’s not the job of the residents to keep track of the people in the building or the paperwork that goes with them, but we also assured them we’d contact everyone. And that’s what I’m doing right now, making one last attempt to find Lennox.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket.

“You have keys to her apartment?”

“I do. So if we could get on with this—”

“Wait!” Poppy yelped, throwing a hand up in front of his face to prevent him from entering. She wanted to at least explain what he was stepping into.

Like the life-sized picture of her in her Daisy Dukes sprawled on the hood of an old Ford Granada, courtesy of Hank and Red. Her only defense being, it was her one claim to fame and when she realized she’d never be on a marquee or billboard in Times Square, she’d hung it up on the wall directly across from her doorway.

And just as she was about to do that, incident number two of Here, Have Some Uncontrollable Magic, occurred.

There was a rumble of thunder, low and distant, the floor beneath her feet quivered a smidge, and then—wham.

Rick turned to stone.

* * * *

“Ahahahahahahaha!” Nina cackled as she eyeballed Rick’s form, etched in stone, as perfect as it had been in life. Each line in his face, each fissure had Poppy’s heart crashing against her ribs for fear he’d crack in half.

Nina reached out to ping his cheek by flicking her finger, but Poppy caught her. “No! What if he cracks?”

As she’d prayed all her neighbors were napping or out, Poppy had texted Nina and crew to come help, with trembling fingers and a pulse beating so hard, she thought it might break her eardrums.

From Nina’s shoulder, Calamity yawned wide, assessing. “Whelp, this is some shit, huh?”

“Some shit?” Poppy almost screeched, rubbing the spot on her wrist where her familiar brand had creepily gone red and itchy. “
Some shit?
Are you kidding me? This is
the
shit, Calamity. The shittiest shit. How do we fix this? We have to fix this!”

Calamity scurried down along Nina’s body until she was at Rick’s feet, circling and sniffing. “Good question. But be very, very careful. If you break him, well, let’s just say, Rick won’t ever be the same. Wink-wink.”

Break him? Oh, sweet and sour, that was really a thing?

Wanda reached for her just as Poppy sucked in a whoosh of air, steadying her, as she had from the very start. “Everyone just relax,” she said so complacently, it only ratcheted up Poppy’s fear.

“Relax? Are you kidding me? He’s a statue! Like, an honest-to-God garden ornament! That’s not something you see every day, Wanda!” Poppy knew her hysteria was mounting by the second, but holy cats. Rick was a statue!

“Actually,” Wanda said, smoothing a hand over Poppy’s arm, “we rather
do
see stuff like this every day, honey. As a for instance, just last year we saw all sorts of reincarnated Greek gods who tried to kill us. There was a Cyclops, too, wasn’t there, Marty?”

Marty rolled her eyes, the memory obviously still fresh as she bobbed her sunshine-colored head. “I think so. I don’t remember. It’s all sort of a mixed bag with Brenda the Good Witch and those whacked Russian mobster bears. Ugh—those bears with their, “We vill kill you! And your leetle dog, too!” she cried, complete with Russian accent.

Nina grinned as she, too, took a stroll down Memory Lane. “Let’s not fucking forget the vampire supremacist. Jesus and fuck, he was cracked, right?”

Everyone nodded their heads in agreement as though they were recalling an old high school cafeteria incident, not someone she’d just turned to stone.

It was too much information. Too much crazy to wrap her head around. Bears and gods and vampires. This was as close to cracking as she’d come, and as her hysteria bubbled to the surface, she looked to Calamity. “Do something!”

The feline stretched, lazy and slow. “Yeah. Not exactly sure what to do here.”

Poppy swallowed hard, her hands going clammy. “You don’t know how to fix this? You’re the one who hangs around witches all the time! How could you not know how to fix this? Use a spell! Whip up some tsetse fly wings and spider venom—
do something
!”

Oh my God. There had to be something!

“Shhh,” Marty reprimanded, holding a finger to her mouth and hitching her jaw in the direction of Arnie Banks, who was making his way down the length of her hallway, probably on his way to a rousing game of chess with Mrs. Bernbaum.

In one fluid motion, Wanda grabbed the key from the floor and jammed it into the keyhole, pushing the door open as Nina steamrolled Rick, grabbing his stone form around the waist with a grunt and running like a quarterback to the goal line while Marty stretched her arms wide to block the door before she slammed it shut with the high heel of her boot.

“Hey, there, Poppy-girl!” Mr. Banks called out, lifting a gnarled hand. “I thought that was you. Cain’t see a damn thing anymore. Where ya been, good-lookin’?”

Breathe, Poppy. Breathe.

Pasting a warm smile on her face, she held out a hand to him and squeezed his fingers in hers. “On the road with a show. Don’t you remember? I told you all about it before I left. You promised to keep my seat warm down in the garden while I was away.” Pausing, she gave his wrinkled cheek a kiss. “It’s so nice to see you, Arnie.”

He scratched his snowy-white head, still thick with plenty of hair to go around, the confusion in his twinkling hazel eyes very clear. “Don’t recollect it. But did ya hear?”

Now was her chance to find out if it was just Leona who was dazzled by Rick and his good looks and charm, or if everyone really did want to leave Littleton. “Hear what?” she asked, leaning into him, his Old Spice cologne thick in her nose.

Straightening his ice-blue sports coat from the seventies, one of the many things she adored about him, Arnie grinned, his white dentures extra white against his spray-tanned skin. “We’re movin’!”

“Aw, I’m sad to see you go. Where ya goin’, Arnie?” she asked, continuing to play dumb.

His smile grew, the skin of his cheeks stretching, making his tanned skin shiny. “Great Neck—got a cute little place that includes cable. Can’t wait!”

There was a rumble from behind her door, and someone yelled, maybe Nina. “Jesus Christ and a bag of cement! Be careful!”

Poppy blanched, redirecting Arnie’s attention as it strayed to her door. “But
why
are you leaving, Arnie? I thought you loved it here. It’s right near the senior center where that cute Miss Leslie goes to bingo, and then there’s your favorite dry cleaners—you know, the one that always presses the crease in your pants just the way you like. And let’s not forget about the best corned beef and pastrami sandwiches at Giuseppe’s on Avondale. Why would you leave all that for Great Neck? What’s in Great Neck anyway?”

He paused a moment, as though he had to think about his reasoning, and then he said, “Because it’s what I want to do. I can do what I want to do. I’m plenty old enough to make my own decisions.”

His words almost sounded agitated to Poppy’s ears, defensive even, which was completely unlike Arnie. She wanted nothing less than to agitate him, so she smiled again in reassurance and nodded.

“Of course you are, Arnie. If you’re happy, I’m happy. You are happy,
right
? You’re okay with this whole relocation thing? Uprooting your entire life and so on to move to Great Neck?”

He rocked back on the heels of his white loafers. “Happier than when Ford made the Thunderbird.”

Arnie’s response sounded almost canned, but his smile was the same smile that had soothed her when she’d broken up with that self-absorbed jerk Keith Tidsdale after he discovered she wasn’t connected enough to get him a gig in the chorus of
South Pacific
.

Poppy sighed in frustration. Why was everyone so damn happy? There wasn’t a disgruntled senior in the lot? No one was spearheading a campaign against Corporate America?

Arnie nudged her and winked. “So where
you
goin’, Cookie? What’s your plan, Fran?” he teased.

Yeah. If only she had one of those. “You know, I’m not sure just now, Arnie, but I’m sure gonna miss you guys—”

“Hey, McGuillicuddy! Get your tuchus in here pronto!” Calamity yelped from inside her apartment.

Damn. Rick. She’d forgotten about Rick. What were they going to do about Rick?

But Arnie clearly saw her distracted distress. “You go on and be with your friend, kiddo. I got stuff to do anyways. Make sure you drop by before D-Day, huh? So we can say goodbye.” He cupped her cheek with his weathered hand and grinned, patting her face with affection.

Poppy gripped his wrist and cocked her head. “D-Day?”

“Demo day, honey. We’re all gonna camp out at the diner and make it a thing so we can watch ’er fall!” he declared, his voice chock full of excitement as he waved goodbye to her and sashayed down the hall with a little soft shoe.

They were going to demolish this building and Arnie and gang were going to make a party of it?

All right, enough was enough. She had to get to the bottom of this, but not before she did something about Rick As Captured in Stone. Pushing the door open, she didn’t even give herself the chance to enjoy returning to her apartment, no matter how fleeting the return might be.

Her entire life was in this place—all her Playbills, her memorabilia from each show she’d ever had a part in. Her wigs and false eyelashes, her eclectic and completely worthless collection of boas, her dime store-ish bobbleheads.

But she couldn’t see any of that.

All she could see was Nina the vampire, standing just beneath the poster of her for Red’s Rides and in front of Rick, still encapsulated in stone. More of that panic gripped her intestines.

Nina pointed at the blown-up picture of her on the Ford Granada and grinned a devilish grin. “Niiice shorts. But I’m super fucking keen on the red gingham shirt tied at your belly button,
y’all,
” she teased, making Calamity, who’d taken residence on the battered armchair in her tiny living room, snort.

“Ladies!” Wanda admonished, clapping her hands. “Now isn’t the time! If we were in crisis before, it was nothing compared to what just happened. The man’s a stone, for heaven’s sake. Knock it off with the jokes. Besides, Poppy looks perfectly lovely in gingham. Totally in her color wheel.”

Again, a shot of panic sliced through her veins, making her heart pound in her ears as she gazed upon Rick in stone form. If nothing else, he sure was quieter, and oddly as handsome in still life as he was animated.

Gripping the back of her chair, she held on for dear life before she asked, “Now what?”

“We got trouble. Right here in River City. With a capital T, that rhymes with Rick and stands for holy shtick!” Calamity sang out.

Poppy shook her head, her knuckles white from clinging to the chair back. “Ha and ha. While I appreciate the
Music Man
reference, just spit it out, Calamity. What happened?”

Marty popped out from behind Nina, her face distorted with worry. “Well, here’s the thing. As I was trying to keep our cover from being blown, I lost my footing. I’m usually as graceful as a cat, despite the fact that I’m a werewolf,
but
…”

Poppy wanted to scream. Instead, she fought the rising tide of a headache and could only manage to whisper, “But what?”

Marty’s beautiful face scrunched up into a wince as she bit her lip and pulled something from behind her back, holding it out to show Poppy.

No.

Nonono.

That wasn’t his…

Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what that is, Poppy.

Nina grabbed at Marty’s hand, latching on to it and raising it up in the air.

Then, to Poppy’s horror, the vampire puffed her cheeks out and deepened her voice. “Hi, my name is Rick The Dick. Got an itch?”

Calamity began to giggle, the sound rising from her throat and swirling about the room as she rolled to her back and almost fell from the chair laughing.

Then Nina turned Marty’s hand toward the werewolf’s face and rubbed the spot under her chin. Mimicking her friend, she batted her eyelashes in a flirty manner, waving Marty’s wrist in the air once more. “Hey, Rick The Dick! I’m Marty the werewolf, and I don’t think this is in your color wheel,
mijo
!”

Her words made Calamity squeal with more laughter, higher-pitched and bordering hysteria.

If Poppy were the fainting type, she’d welcome such an event right now. It would block out the horror of the scene before her.

Nina, holding Marty’s fingers—fingers that were wrapped around Rick’s hand.

His carved-in-stone hand.

The concrete hand that had broken right off at his wrist in, if she did say so herself, a pretty clean line.

“Waitwaitwait!” Nina yelled to Marty, holding up her cell phone. “Selfie!”

Jesus. Did she have any Band-Aids?

“
S
o, are you mad?”

“You mean that I have packing tape wrapped around my wrist to keep it in place?”

Poppy winced, shoving the tips of her fingers between her lips. “Does it hurt?”

Rick held up his arm, the light from her window glinting on the crude packing tape they’d used to patch him back together. “Why would my wrist virtually cracking off my arm hurt, Poppy McGuillicuddy?”