The Accidental Familiar (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 14) (2 page)

“Well speak, for catnip’s sake!” the persistent feline urged, nudging her elbow with its peculiarly round head. “We don’t have all stinkin’ night. We need to get this shit straightened out before Familiar Central sends someone in. It won’t look good if we dawdle. You don’t want to look bad in front of your new superiors, do you, Spin Doctor?”

“Poppy!” she blurted out her name, because for some reason it seemed important she be known as something more than the DJ. “My name is Poppy. DJ-ing is just something I do on the side for a little extra cash,” she stated with as much clarity as one could muster when having a conversation with a house pet.

“It’ll be Shit On A Stick if you don’t get crackin’.” The cat’s tail swished in an agitated semi-circle over the surface of the bricks again. “Now talk!” it hissed.

“Hellooo? You’ve got twenty GD seconds before I use my internal GPS and hunt your ass down for crank calling me,” the woman named Nina groused. “I’m gonna start counting now. One…”

Poppy closed her eyes and took a shaky, deep breath of the cold night air, trying to sort through the bits and pieces about familiars and superiors and focus on the fact that this person on the other end of the line was supposed to help her.

With a trembling hand, Poppy finally held the phone up to her ear. “Um, hello?” she whispered into the phone, attempting a calm tone.

No one was going to retell this horror story someday and call Poppy McGuillicuddy a chicken-shit. Not on your life. When witnesses retold this harrowing tale, it would always be prefaced by how brave she’d been.

“I
said,
how the eff can I help you?” the voice belonging to Nina, the OOPS operator, growled.

Okay, so forget valor. Shit, shit, shit. This was a mistake. A big mistake.

But the cat, the damn
talking
cat, nudged Poppy again and shouted over the screech of Run DMC still blaring from inside her best friend’s house, “Tell that crabby-AF, pale-faced beast of the female persuasion it’s her friggin’ reluctant-as-hell familiar calling!”

She looked down at the tiny cat with the round head and eyes the color and shape of green marbles and bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming
.

In and out, Poppy. Breathe in and out
.
Don’t panic
.

“Yo?” Nina prodded, still growling and quite clearly annoyed.

Finally composed, she waded into the conversation pool carefully, because the person on the other end of the phone sounded like everything would be much less explosive if you spoke delicately.

“Your talking cat said I should call you at this number. Did I mention your cat talks? Like, it actually talks. Can I ask you something before we shift into high gear and get to the root of my phone call to you?”

There was a long sigh and then the cantankerous woman said, “You get one question. After that, I get annoyed as all hell, and if you don’t like me now—which, based on my past history with first impressions, I’m guessin’ you’re not a fucking fan yet—then you sure as shit won’t like me when I’m aggravated.”

Poppy swallowed, smoothing the leggings she wore as part of her Paul Stanley costume over her knees. “Just
one
question? That’s all I get? That seems wholly unfair. This is a crisis hotline, isn’t it?”

“Is that how you want to spend your one question—in negotiations?”

She blinked and came to her senses almost instantly. “No! Sorry. Okay. My one question. Why does your cat talk, lady? Why am I sitting here, outside what was supposed to be a fun, easy DJ-ing gig for some extra vacation money at my best friend’s Halloween Party turned waking nightmare, with a talking cat?”

“Put the GD
talking
cat on the phone, Cupcake,” Nina’s husky voice demanded.

Poppy paused with a frown and considered how exactly to do that. “Like, hold the phone to its ear? Are you serious?”

“Is the cat talking to you, Princess?” Nina snarled.

Poppy squirmed on the uncomfortable garden wall of bricks she’d perched herself on after this series of unfortunate events had all gone down. “Well, yeah…”

“Then is it a stretch it would talk to me, too, Kumquat?
Now put the cat on the GD phone
!”

Poppy pulled her cell from her ear and held it up to the cat, putting the phone on speaker. “She wants to talk to you. As in you, the cat. The
talking
cat.”

There was just no way around this. This was really happening. Or it
felt
like it was really happening. Maybe someone had dropped acid in her drink? A roofie? No. She’d be passed out if she’d been roofied. Right?

Besides, she was always careful about where she set her water. Even at a party hosted by a friend, she took precautions, because that’s just how Poppy McGuillicuddy rolled. Cautiously.

The cat blinked its overly large, utterly mesmerizing eyes and cocked its head, leaning closer to the phone. “That you, Pale One?”

“That you, Catastrophe?”

“It’s Calamity, you ridiculously, unfairly gorgeous waste of a great ass. We got some shit. Some deep, dark, murky shit going on here.”

“Like?”

Poppy heard the tension in this woman Nina’s voice. She sounded really mad. It almost sounded as if she were the parent and the talking cat was her toddler.

“Calamity? Answer the flippin’ question!” the woman roared in such a forceful way, even the leaves on the trees shook.

The cat, possibly named Calamity—Poppy couldn’t be sure because the woman on the other end of the phone had used two adjectives when addressing said cat—rasped a sigh of full-on exasperation.

“Don’t get your fangs twisted, Blood Lover Lite. Just get here and bring the ditzy blonde with all that lip gloss and hair bleach. Oh, and the nice one who sneaks me the real tuna, not that crap in the can packed in water.”

“Wanda. That’s Wanda, and if she’s sneaking you tuna, I’m going to kick her perfectly mannered ass. What have I told you about tuna, Calamity?
What
?”

Calamity The Talking Cat lifted her chin. “Oh, blah, blah, blah. Tuna is too rich for my touchy tummy. Blah, blah, blah. Makes me puke all over the carpet in the castle. Blah, blah, blah. You hate cleaning up the chunky effin’ puke. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Exactly. Now, tell me what’s going on, C, or I’m gonna make you wear those stupid sweaters with the glitter on them from the Martha Stewart Collection at PetSmart every day for a GD week.”

Calamity rocked back on her hind paws and gasped in outraged horror. “You wouldn’t! Fuck, those are ugly, you monster.”

“Sooo would,” the husky voice crooned with a tone screaming devilish glee. “I’d damn well grin from ear to ear while I did that shit, too. Now what’s going on? Spit it the fuck out
now
.”

Calamity rolled to her back, inching along the bricks to scratch her spine, her response rather cavalier, considering the magnitude of the alleged incident. “So there was an accident at a party I’m at, and as a byproduct of this accident, something happened. Not a big deal, really. Nothing I can’t handle.”

“
What accident
, Calamity? And why the fuck are you crashing parties? What did I tell you about that shit?”

“As I recall,” Calamity drawled. “You said no
wedding
crashing. There was nothing about party crashing in general.”

“Don’t you mince motherfluffin’ words with me, Calamity! Now knock it the shit off and—”

There was a muffled sound, as though someone was trying to wrestle the phone from Nina, and then a much sweeter, far more affable voice came on the line. “Calamity, honey? It’s Marty. You know the one. The blonde with all the lipstick and hair bleach? Talk to Auntie Marty, Precious, and tell me what happened so we can help. Maybe it’s not such an emergency after all.”

“That’s Marty. Super nice, fashionista, not very brainy. A werewolf, by the way,” Calamity whispered as though no one but Poppy could hear. Clearing her throat, the cat continued. “So here’s the prob in a nutshell. I think. Nothing for certain here, mind you, but I think I turned the party DJ into one of my own.”

“A cat?”

“No, Marty—a familiar. I think I turned the DJ into a familiar.”

“
You think?
” Auntie Marty repeated, her tone still almost as sweet with only a hint of an angry tremor.

There was more rustling and another muffled, “Give me the damn phone, Ass Sniffer,” before the mean one named Nina was back on the line. “Location!” she bellowed, making Poppy wince. “Now, Calamity!”

As Calamity The Talking Cat rattled off the location, Poppy looked at the inside of her wrist and ran a finger over the raised picture now on her flesh, growing more dazed and confused by the second.

Sure, there was a half-moon tattoo-ish looking thing with a sprinkle of stars across the center of it in a place she had no recollection of ever getting a tattoo. In fact, she didn’t have any tattoos at all. Her mother would kill her if she got a tattoo, but this was what had convinced the cat, er, Calamity, that she was now a familiar.

Whatever one of those was. She vaguely remembered watching
Charmed
as a teenager and the mention of familiars, but that had been a long time ago, and the definition of one and their place in the witch world were both very vague.

Holding her wrist up, she inspected the mark in question under the light of the streetlamps. Maybe it was one of those temporary tattoos, and this was all a joke? Licking her finger, Poppy scrubbed it over her skin, but the half-moon remained clear as day.

All right. So this wasn’t some kind of joke.

“What in the fresh hell are you doing?” Calamity asked, dancing over the garden wall, swatting at dust particles.

“Trying to figure out if this is all some elaborate prank played on me by my BFF.”

“You mean the skinny one dressed up like Kanye West, guzzling that cheap bottle of Boones Farm like it was her last night on earth while she rocked back and forth pressed up to the guy dressed like Kim Kardashian, who was at least ten years younger than her and stoned half out of his gourd?”

Poppy smiled briefly. Her pal Mel had never graduated college-level drinking. Even at thirty-four, she was still boozing it up like she was twenty. In fact, she was still dating like she was twenty.

She sighed in resignation. “Yeah, that’s her.”

Calamity snorted indignantly, the small puff of air turning to a cloud of condensation. “She couldn’t even make decent appetizers—Triscuits and Vienna sausages in a can do not a party make. Even a heathen troglodyte would turn their nose up at that crap. That in mind, do you really think someone dressed as Kanye West is capable of pulling off some shit like this?”

Poppy put her arm back at her side and looked directly into the cat’s mesmerizing eyes, trying to rationalize—or maybe the better word was minimize—what was currently happening.

“What exactly is
this shit
? I just have a tattoo I don’t remember getting. So what? Lot’s of people have tattoos they don’t remember getting. In fact, half my night-school college class has tattoos they don’t remember getting. Big deal.”

Calamity cocked her head as though assessing her. “Well, sure. That’s true. You could sweep this shit under the carpet with some implausible, farfetched explanation.
But
you’re also talking to a cat like Dr. Doolittle’s spirit took possession of your body. So there’s that. What more proof do you need?”

Poppy winced. “Like you said, maybe I’ve been drugged?”

Calamity made a clicking noise in the back of her throat. “You won’t be able to use that excuse when you wake up tomorrow, and you’re in the same boat. Because you’ll still be a familiar, and I’ll still be talking.”

Pulling off the Paul Stanley Afro wig, Poppy ran her hands through her hair and sighed again. “Okay, so if I’m not drugged, and this isn’t some version of Punk’d complete with sound effects and live animation, what is
this shit
?”

“This shit is bullshit. That’s what this shit is,” a familiar voice from the shadows groused.

As if out of nowhere, three women appeared, their hair billowing about their shoulders in the frigid winds of Staten Island, their strides confident, their eyes focused and glimmering in the night. Like some new millennium Charlie’s Angels, they strode toward her with confidence, all long legs, beautiful clothing, expensive perfume and glittery jewelry.

Well, except for the dark one. She had long legs and the billowy hair for sure, but she wasn’t dressed like she was going to the same party the other two women were. She wore work boots, a thick black hoodie, low-slung black jeans and a big ol’ scowl on her utterly perfect, scarily pale face.

“You Poppy?” she demand-asked, coming to stand in front of her, arms crossed over her hoodie-covered chest.

She gulped, looking up into this woman’s flashing coal-black eyes. “Will a brutal beating follow if I say yes?”

The blonde woman with loads of swirly hair and clacking jewelry nudged the dark-haired woman in the ribs with a frown. “I’m sorry for how abrupt Nina is. You’ll adjust as we move forward. Forget her and focus on me. I’m Marty Flaherty, this ogre is Nina Statleon, and this,” she pointed just over her shoulder to the tall chestnut-haired lady with mahogany highlights, “is Wanda Jefferson. We’re OOPS, and we’re here to help.” Then she smiled, dazzlingly white and perfect.

As though the wind had re-inflated her sails, Poppy jumped up, putting a defensive hand in front of her. “Help with
what
? This is all crazy. Look, I don’t know what the cat told you or why it even insisted I call you. Forget about the fact that it can speak and has the ability to use a phone. We’ll get to that later. Now, I looked at your website online, and it says you help people in paranormal crisis. I don’t know if that means you host drug interventions for ghosts—do ghosts become addicts or were they addicts before they died and need ongoing afterlife care? For that matter, what does ‘paranormal crisis’ even mean and why am I supposedly having one?”

The woman named Nina reached for Poppy’s wrist so fast, so freakishly fast, Poppy gasped. “I’m gonna ask you to chill the fuck out, okay? Stop gettin’ all jenky with your hands because you don’t want to get defensive with the likes o’ me. Now breathe, Petunia.”