The Accidental Familiar (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 14) (4 page)

She hated leaving her apartment and all the incredible people who’d been her neighbors for almost five years now, but she’d come to the realization her choices were growing slimmer by the day.

She’d even considered going back to her parents in Cincinnati. While she loved them, she didn’t necessarily want to live with them and their paneled walls and meals with a
Wheel of Fortune
/
Jeopardy!
double whammy anymore.

So this was a possible answer to all her financial problems.

Besides, she’d done crazier things for cash.

Finally, she said, “Well, yeah, I mean in money. I have to eat.”

“Not in money, no. But it does include room and board. Er, mostly…”

Calamity’s vague answer went by the wayside, almost unheard after the words “room and board.” Looking down at the cat, Poppy nodded with total calm. “I’m ready.”

For the first time since she’d met her, Nina grinned as she scanned Poppy’s face, her glimmering eyes searching. “Holy fuck. You’re serious?”

She was. She didn’t know why she was, but she was. “I am. Let’s go.”

Nina gazed down at Calamity and pointed a long finger at her. “Then let’s get it on before she comes down off her high o’ crazy and changes her mind.”

“Did you bring your wand?” she asked Nina, stretching a paw forward.

Nina made a face, the hard lines of her jaw tightening. “No, I didn’t bring my fucking wand. That shit is like holding a hand grenade. I never know whether I’m going to blow crap up or turn it into a friggin’ animated ice sculpture. I’m not good enough at it yet to carry it around full time. Christ, it was much easier just being a vampire. All I had to do was flash my fangs and shit got done.”

Calamity clucked her tongue. “What have I told you about your wand, you beast? Ya gotta keep it with you at all damn times. It’s like leaving an organ behind.”

“I don’t have any organs.”

“Okay, it’s like leaving your sunscreen behind. Crucially important. I’ve only told you that a bafrillion times, Nina. You do know you just made this shit much harder?”

Poppy blinked. Nina had a wand? “Why does that make shit harder?” she asked.

Calamity snorted. “Hold one minute, and I’ll show you…”

“
I
think I’m broke,” Poppy moaned as she hoisted herself up from the hard-tiled floor they’d been dumped on, looking down in disgust at her leggings, which now had a jagged tear in them. A stray cotton ball from the chest hair she’d made for her costume fell to the ground in a sad plop, and her wig was a tangled mess on the floor.

Shit. Hal’s House of Howl was never going to take this costume back now.

But that was okay because a place to sleep was in the offing. Room and board, baby.

Calamity hopped around in front of her with a scoff. “You can thank the vampire for that. It’s a bumpy enough ride to the realm even
with
the wand. But using the wand’s like flying first class. When we just use straight-up magic, you’re in the cheap seats.”

“I said I forgot, okay? Jesus, get off my jock, would you?” Nina groused as she rose on her long limbs from the pristine white floor and rolled her head on her neck.

Now Calamity did a little dance and taunted, “Is that how you’re supposed to use your words, Vampire? Doc Malone would be ashamed.”

Poppy worked her way up the wall using her palms as she took in the long, sterile hallway leading to a wide white door. Bending at the waist, she scooped up her fallen wig. “Who’s Doc Malone?”

“Our witch therapist. She’s helping me to cope with this damn boil on my ass,” Nina snarled, flashing her teeth.

Calamity hissed right back at Nina. “Oh, shut your pie hole. It’s the other way around. If not for Doc Malone, I’d have zapped your supermodel butt to Mars by now.”

Wanda had somehow managed to remain infuriatingly upright during their journey, wherein one minute they’d been standing in her friend’s driveway, then the next, squeezed like sausages from a casing into this hallway. “Come to Auntie Wanda, Calamity,” she cooed, patting her knee.

Nina’s beautiful face scrunched up in confusion. “Wanda? What the shit? Stop babying her while she laps this attention up like milk.”

And then Wanda made a face at Nina, rolling her eyes as she smoothed stray strands of her hair back in place and her posture took on the look of royalty. “Hush, you animal! How many times have I told you, you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Why must you always be so hard on her? She’s just a little thing who’s been thrust into our world without consent. She needs love and attention, not berating.”

Nina narrowed her eyes at Wanda. “Fuck your vinegar, and yeah, she’s so little and lost she managed to turn someone into a familiar. She might be little on the outside, but her inside is big on trouble. Quit coddling the out-of-control cat or I’m gonna whip up a spell and turn you into a damn mannequin in the girdle aisle at Macy’s.”

Calamity swirled in and out of Wanda’s ankles, clearly pleased she had such a devout ally. “Don’t worry, Wanda. She can’t even turn water into a Capri Sun. No way she can turn you into a mannequin. I’ll protect you.”

Wanda giggled, reaching down and stroking Calamity’s back.

Nina’s outraged expression as she circled the pair made Poppy press herself to the hallway wall, clinging to her wig.

“I said knock it the fuck off, Wanda, or—”

The clack of Marty’s heeled boots as she finally rose jarred Poppy, and made both Nina and Wanda turn their heads in her direction. “I can’t even believe it’s me saying this, but if the two of you don’t quit with the arguing over Calamity like she’s some kind of ribeye in the height of a zombie apocalypse, I’ll put you both through a wall. Got me? Wanda, I don’t know what’s happening with you these days, but you’re doing everything you possibly can to provoke Nina, and I’ve about had it right up to the tip of my bleached-blonde roots! Since when am I the one who has to mediate? Does anyone see the absurdity in this?”

When no one answered Marty with anything other than pursed lips and angry eyes, she continued, her gaze fixed on Wanda. “Last I checked, it was
your
job, sister, but lately, you’ve been all wrapped up in devilishly poking Nina, using Calamity as your stick.”

And still, they all remained freakishly quiet.

But Marty wasn’t done. Then she strolled toward Nina, her hair swishing about her shoulders, her index finger in motion. “And you, Wicked Half-Witch of The East—cut it the hell out! You’d better find some kind of common ground with Calamity and find it soon because she’s here forever, or I’m going to put
you
in the ground. Clear?”

Neither woman said anything, but they didn’t have to. Their flashing eyes and tense body language said it all. Something was happening between them all. And it wasn’t just a spat. It was more like a shift in dynamic, a change in the terrain of their friendship. Poppy was sure of it.

Now Marty squatted down beside Calamity and cupped her jaw, her blue eyes intense. “Pussycat? You’re enjoying playing both ends against the middle. Under normal circumstances, because it makes me giggle my ass off to see Nina so riled, I’d enjoy this almost as much as I enjoy an eyeshadow that doesn’t crease. But this becomes a real thorn in my side when we have a client who needs our help. So cut it out, since, as I recall, big bad werewolves love to chase little kitties cuz little kitties are mmm-mmm-good—especially ones full up like fat sausages with magic.
Capisce
?”

Calamity blinked, shifting from paw to paw, her tone subdued now. “Got it.”

Marty stood and brushed her thighs off then smiled. “Now that we’re clear, tell us where we go from here, Calamity. Poppy is waiting.”

And she
was
waiting. Watching and waiting as these women argued, trying to understand the dynamic between them all, yet instinctively knowing they each had a deep, abiding loyalty to one another.

And that was freaking her out. How could she possibly know how deep their roots went?

Yet, she did. She’d gamble her life on it.

“Okay, so let me just give you a couple of helpful tips before we get inside,” Calamity said, forcing her to focus on the task at hand.

Reaching into her jacket, Poppy pulled out an elastic band, scrunching her hair into one hand and wrapping the band around it with the other. This felt like a hair up problem.

Tightening her ponytail, she plopped her wig back on her skull and squared her shoulders. “Okay. Tips. Hit me. I’m ready.”

Calamity began to walk the long hallway to a door at the end of the white walls, her tail swishing back and forth. “Never leave the line. For the love of Jesus and all that’s good,
never
leave the line. I don’t care if you’re on fire and your head’s about to pop off your tiny shoulders. Do
not
leave the line.”

Poppy trudged behind the cat, wishing she’d changed back into her street clothes before doing something as important as being inducted into the Familiar Hall of Fame. Surely that called for something more appropriate than a Paul Stanley costume.

“Why can’t I leave the line?”

“Because one wrong move and you could end up like me. With someone like her.”

“
Shut up, Calamity
,” Nina warned with tight words, the clomp of her feet heavy against the tile.

But Poppy scoffed. “You don’t really feel that way about Nina, and you know it.”

Aw, hell. Had that just popped out of her mouth? Why would she say something like that at such a tentative time in their newly minted relationship? Furthermore, how could she even know a personal detail like that?

She didn’t know these people from a hole in the wall, and suddenly she was the authority on their deepest feelings? The guru of deep-seated emotions?

Calamity stopped in her tracks and swiveled her head. “What do you know from shit about how I feel?”

Poppy stopped, too, nervously twisting a curl in her wig between her fingers, worried she’d offended Calamity. “I…I don’t know. I just
know
…I mean guessed. I’m a good guesser.” But that wasn’t entirely true. This wasn’t some guess. She knew. Like bone-deep knew Calamity loved yanking Nina’s chain.

They clashed because she and the vampire were so alike. Yet, she also respected her, and coming to terms with that was part of Calamity’s trouble. Calamity didn’t want to care—or maybe
invest
was a better word—in a relationship with another witch after losing the last one. It hurt.

But Calamity was having none of it. “Oh, fuck that noise. Forget I asked.”

“Fine. Forgotten. Now, what else do I need to know?” Poppy asked as they came to a halt outside a heavy rectangular door.

But Calamity didn’t have time to answer before the door swung open and chaos ensued.

* * * *

Poppy yawned as she waited in the line titled First Time Familiars with Calamity and the women of OOPS. The moment the door in that hallway had popped open, and the masses of people and all varieties of the animal kingdom milling about had filled her vision, she’d somehow taken it all in stride.

She’d eyed the long lines with black signs above them and white lettering that read Familiar Renewal and Change of Familiar Address as though they were perfectly normal. It didn’t seem like such a big deal that the armadillo two spots back and one line over was shooting the breeze with the zebra in the next row.

She’d viewed the never-ending chain of glass windows with peepholes and the most colorful people animatedly working behind them like they were a row of those protected windows in a bodega, and she was just here to grab a bag of chips on the way to her next shitty job.

Here she was in a strange
realm
, as Calamity had called it, with even stranger people, waiting to find out who she’d end up spending forever with as their magical guide without an inkling about what a familiar was or what their place in this weird society was, and she was feeling completely unaffected.

Not numb, per se, just unaffected. And since she’d gotten past the talking cat thing, the vampire/werewolf with these women thing made sense.

Though in a moment of complete honesty, she had to admit, she’d run the words
room and board
in a continual loop inside her head in order to assure herself this wasn’t as crazy as she was supposed to think it was.

“This is worse than any DMV I’ve ever been to.” Running a hand over her temple, she massaged it with her fingertips. “What’s the dang hold up?”

“It’s a Friday night.”

She looked down at Calamity, who sat on her haunches, her wide eyes only occasionally blinking. “A popular night for turning unsuspecting victims into familiars, I gather?”

“I apologized, didn’t I?”

Poppy cocked an eyebrow. “No. I don’t think you did.”

“Fine. Sorry. Hashtag regrets.”

“Accepted. So talk to me about room and board. Is it the kind of room and board you get when you live in the basement of your employer’s house? Or the carriage-house kind? Do I get time off? Sick days? Health insurance? Are snacks included?”

Nina nudged her shoulder, looking down at her with those intense coal-black eyes. “Okay. What’s the rub? Why aren’t you crying and carrying on? Why the hell aren’t you freaked the eff out after everything we told you about us? After what we showed you? I’m a vampire, for Christ’s sake. You know—bloodsucking, night-loving, fang-flashing
vampire
?”

Poppy shrugged, fanning herself. God, it was hot in Familiar Central. As they waited in this line as long as a checkout at Walmart with only one register open, Nina, Marty and, intermittently, Wanda, had explained how they’d come to be OOPS, what their paranormal standings were, and even some of the cases they’d been involved with.

She knew she should be frightened. She knew she should refute the very idea one iota of this was real. She knew these events should leave her questioning her sanity for even considering what they’d told her was true. She knew her calm acceptance of was likely frightening to an outsider looking in.

But she couldn’t. Like, literally couldn’t deny the validity of their tales. Not even when Nina went the extra mile and flashed her fangs or earlier when Marty shifted in the Ladies’ Room for Familiars.