Calamity bumped her calves with a swish of her hip. “Shit. That’s us. Now remember what I said, P. Shut up and let me do the talking. You do not want to end up with one of those ratchety-ass, last-century mothereffers who still think Salem’s Lot is a documentary.”
Okay, so if she wasn’t feeling terribly freaked out before now—not even about discovering vampires and werewolves were real—her frame of mind had definitely changed. She was on the precipice of being assigned her witch, someone she had to help. It wasn’t the paranormal part that had her freaked out, or the immortality Calamity spoke of either.
It was the part about guiding someone using her advice as their narrative. It was bananapants.
How could Poppy McGuillicuddy, the girl secretly voted least likely to succeed, possibly guide anyone anywhere?
Her life had already been a flippin’ mess before she’d left for the road. She lived in a tiny studio apartment—one she barely held on to each month doing odd jobs, like DJ-ing parties for instance. And if not for the people in her building, people she loved, and their kindness, she’d have likely starved to death by now.
She’d failed miserably at becoming the next Broadway sensation a long time ago and now only got gigs in the chorus if she was lucky, because, by industry standards, she was an old hag—even if she could still do a split at the ripe old age of thirty-four.
She had twelve dollars in her checking account. Two in her pocket. And she’d had to ask for more from her buddy as part of her DJ-ing fee in order to catch public transportation home after the party.
She had no career, no purpose, no solid plan for the future beyond next week when she had to figure out a way to cough up her rent. So the question was, did familiars collect paychecks? Have 401ks? Bennies? She couldn’t live on air. She barely did now.
But the biggest question of all? How was she expected to help someone else when she had enough trouble helping herself? It wasn’t like she was decision maker extraordinaire. She was considering doing this familiar thing for room and board after a vampire/witch, a werewolf, a talking cat and a half-vampire, half-werewolf had told her it would all be okay.
That struck more fear in her heart than any vampire could.
Room and board, Poppy…
Marty tapped Poppy on the back with a warm smile, startling her from her mantra and pointed forward with a perfectly painted crimson nail to where there was a gap in the line. “Poppy, honey? I hate to nag, but let’s move this along. I have a mani/pedi tomorrow at ten sharp, and I don’t want to wake with ugly bags under my eyes.”
Jarring her from her downward spiral, and with a refusal to give in to all this whining Nina complained about, she blindly moved forward, stepping around a small crowd of people who’d begun to bleed into their line.
Someone from behind gave her a sharp nudge to her shoulder blade. “Go, already, would ya!”
Reaching forward to prevent crashing into the person who’d somehow magically appeared in front of her, she instead smashed right into her, smacking her head against the reed-thin woman’s back as she pitched forward.
The beautiful redhead righted herself and hissed her displeasure, her hazel eyes flashing an angry message at Poppy. “Watch where you’re going, you imbecile!”
“Oh, pipe down, for Christ’s sake!” Nina growled in the woman’s face, flashing her fangs. “It was an accident. Now move along before I give you something to really get hot about.”
Without another word, the vampire grabbed Poppy’s hand in her steely grip and pulled her around the much taller woman, planting her at the window of First Time Familiars. “Now. Go get your witch and make it snappy.”
As Poppy stood before the glass window and a stout woman with cat eyeglasses and hair resembling one of those poofy, spouting fountains at the Bellagio, she took a deep breath, the wheezy tremble of it making her wince.
She didn’t pay attention to the commotion behind her or the sound of Wanda snapping, “Behave like a lady, for heaven’s sake!” to someone.
Instead, Poppy looked straight ahead through the peephole into the glass and directly into her future’s fate.
Chapter 3
“I told you not to leave the line, didn’t I?” Calamity asked, nudging her platform boot.
Straightening her wig, Poppy scowled down at Calamity. “I didn’t leave the line. I tripped and moved up because Nina threatened the redhead with violence. There’s a difference. One is a willful act, the other is an accident. You know about those, right?”
“And now look,” the cat said, deadpan.
Okay, so her new assignment wasn’t the ideal of ideal.
The woman behind the glass tapped it, recapturing her attention. “Paul Stanley, right? Rock and roll kootchie koo!”
“Yeah.” Poppy rolled her eyes and made the universal sign for rock and roll, still reeling from her new assignment. “KISS forever,” she offered woodenly, the grease paint on her face beginning to smother her skin.
Gladys, according to her nametag, and the woman in charge of assigning familiars to their charges nodded her approval from behind the window. “Well done on the chest hair. Very creative.”