Bad Case of Loving You

by Dakota Cassidy

  * * * *

  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.

  She’d watched it all with as much unflinching disinterest as she was watching what was unfolding in front of her right now. As if it were every day you saw someone’s flesh and bones virtually morph in a public bathroom.

  In fact, the only thing she’d added to that scene straight out of American Horror Story was her distress that some poor soul was going to have to sweep up all the hair Marty had shed.

  “Poppy? What gives?” Nina prodded, tapping the toe of her work boot as though she almost hoped she’d collapse and tremble at her feet in fear.

  But she just shrugged and sighed. “Yeah. I get what it means. I heard every word. I heard about Carl and Darnell. I get the comparisons to Sean of The Dead, Teen Wolf, and so on. I’ve watched them. I already told you I get it. How many ways can I say that before you believe me?”

  In fact, the longer they stood in line, the more rooted this certainty became. Yeah, so you’re a vampire. Whoopee.

  Nina shook her head, her gloriously silky dark hair shifting over her shoulders. “So you get that your life’s now changed forever, right? You get that you can’t go back to doing whateverthehell you did for a living, that you can’t tell your family and friends about this? That you’re a walking, talking episode of Supernatural?”

  Why was Nina so determined to drill this point home? They’d each taken a turn at reminding her how different her life was now, moving forward.

  Finally, Poppy asked, “Is crying what you want to see? Because you know you don’t like tears, Nina.”

  Nina popped her lips, cracking her knuckles. “How the eff do you know what I do or don’t like?”

  Poppy blinked, astonished she’d said those words out loud. Yeah. How the eff did she know?

  Licking her lips, she winced when she answered, “I don’t know. I just do. Tears make you uncomfortable. Compliments more so.” Eek, had she said that, too?

  Nina frowned, glaring down at her.

  She’d definitely said that. Bad, Poppy.

  Nina poked her, jabbing a finger between the muscles connecting her collarbone and shoulder. “What are you, fucking psychic, Madam McGuillicuddy?”

  “Next!” an authoritative voice behind the glass windows yelled.

  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.”

  “Thanks, now where were we?”

  “Your warlock,” Gladys ever so kindly reminded while she all but tapped her toe.

  Again, Poppy attempted to hide her surprise, because no one but her seemed to think a male assignment was out of the ordinary. “He comes with room and board, right?”

  “They all do, honey. Some roomier and board-ier than others.”

  “But a warlock? That’s a guy witch.” Guy witches had familiars? Was that common? This was nothing like Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.

  Her warlock’s name was Ricardo—or Rick, as he preferred to be called—Delassantos, and he lived just outside of NYC in a fully refurbished warehouse—which, according to Calamity, was a sweet start to a familiar/warlock relationship—even if he was a man. Digs were very important, as outlined by Calamity and her stories about some of her more quirky living quarters as a familiar.

  Rick, along with his partner, was a property developer/entrepreneur, self-made and worth millions, which was also good if you listened to Calamity and again, despite the fact that he was a man. A rich warlock meant no scrounging for cash to buy your supper by performing cheap magic tricks in the subway.

  All that aside, she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that she was supposed to advise a man. Oh, this poor soul Ricardo/Rick was in for some good times.

  Gladys tapped the sill of the window in front of her and pointed, using her festively painted orange-and-black fingernail. “You got a problem with a warlock? Because you can always go over to the line to your left and ask for a refund. The Wish I Were Anywhere But Here line. See it?”

  She did, and it was pretty dang short. Which spoke volumes on behalf of familiar customer service.

  “Aw, hell no you won’t!” Calamity whisper-yelled as she paced the ledge of the window. “You don’t wanna know what happens to complainers in the realm. You get a reputation for being difficult. Why do you think I haven’t asked for a refund for the blood-lover here? Because if nothing else, at least she mentally resides in this century. Like I told you before, no way was I gonna end up with one of those old-ass mothereffers who live in a drafty castle with no Wi-Fi or even electricity while I snuggle up to a herd of sheep on a moor in No Mans Land.”

  Marty snaked her head around Poppy’s shoulder and clucked her tongue. “Gosh, I’m hungry. I feel like a snack, Calamity. How do you feel about being my snack?” she asked, her words dripping with menacing sarcasm. “Last chance to shut that yap of yours before I pick your flesh from my teeth with your tiny bones.”

  Calamity’s fur rippled, but her tone was instantly contrite. “Okay, fine. Sorry. I’m just saying, bad shit happens when you complain. Now take your lumps and like it, newb.”

  Gladys blinked, her blue-frosted eyes wide, her lips pursed into a thin line as she waited for an answer. “So?”

  Poppy gulped, shifting her stance. “Nope, Gladys. Not a one. I’m here to do whatever I’m supposed to do. You’ll never hear Poppy McGuillicuddy complain.”

  Gladys thrust some paper through the small peephole and pursed her thin lips. “Then sign there and initial here and then I’ll need a blood sample.”

  Twisting the length of her ponytail, she grew more agitated. “Sign? What am I signing?”

  “Your life away, of course.” Gladys gave her a “duh, stupid” look, as though she were the one who was half-baked for thinking she was doing anything else but.

  Her eyes flew open wide, her legs growing limp. “My life?”

  Gladys sighed, her plump shoulders, encased in a sweatshirt with a shiny bedazzled purple pumpkin, rose and fell in clear disgust. “This says you’ll serve your warlock until one of you goes to the great beyond. It’s all very standard. Didn’t the familiar who inducted you tell you that?”

  Poppy looked to Calamity, who nodded. “Oh, yeah. I forgot to tell you. This is a lifetime gig. When you sign on, you sign on for life.”

  All that certainty she’d been lobbing around like so much confetti evaporated into thin air and panic began to set in. “Life?” she squeaked. That was crazy. How could she promise a lifetime to someone she didn’t even know? Didn’t you only do that when you got married?

  But Gladys was having none of it, as indicated by her scowl. “Look, Ms. McGuillicuddy, if you have a problem, there’s a line for it, but you’re holding up this one, and I won’t have my efficiency rating slip because of you. Now either sign or move the heck along.”

  Wow. Harsh. “What happens if I don’t sign?” She had to ask. She wasn’t just going to sign her life away without at least some details.

  “You go to the Bad Place,” Calamity whispered, her tone bespeaking unknown horrors.

  “The Bad Place? You mean to tell me your people punish me for not agreeing to lifelong servitude with a man I don’t even know because I won’t sign my life away? What kinda third-world country are you running in this realm?”

  There was a collective gasp just before the enormous room, milling with people, went silent. Everyone stopped and stared at the newb with the big mouth and the fake hair on her chest.

  But the biggest gasp of all came from Calamity, who she’d obviously offended. The feline let out a low growl
, hunching her back. “I’ve never been so insulted in my damn life! We’re not servants, you uneducated, ill-informed human! We’re respected, and in some cultures revered! There are statues made of us. Days set aside in some cultures to celebrate us! We’re advisors. Life coaches. Magical guides, and we keep the balance of the realm so the temptation to use magic isn’t used for evil, Ignoramus!”

  Oh.

  Suddenly, it all became clear. It wasn’t just Calamity’s rant or the ugly stares of her fellow newbs, it was that certainty returning, full on, deep in her gut. She had to do this. She was meant to do this.

  Grabbing the pen without another thought, she scribbled her name with flourish.

  And just like that, it was done.

  * * * *

  The impact of their fall was buffered only by the fact that they hit a pile of garbage, the stench clinging to her nose as the whoosh of air they created when they landed rose upward.

  Poppy lay there for a moment, staring up at the multitude of stars in the inky black of night, trying to catch her breath as she rubbed her arm in the spot Gladys had taken her blood sample.

  She held it up and examined the crook of her elbow under the half moon. “Wow. Gladys is a harsh opponent when it comes to a needle.”

  Marty sat up, jackknifing to a sitting position, a piece of stray paper stuck to one of the swirly curls of her hair. “Where the heck are we?” she groaned, hopping upward and holding a hand of assistance out to Poppy, who took it with a matching groan.

  “At Poppy’s new gig,” Calamity offered, circling the group as they each began to rise to their feet.

  “Already?” Poppy squeaked, looking around to assess her surroundings. They’d landed in front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse on an all but deserted street, the tall gray and red brick structure with window after tall, dirty window looming upward in the cold night. The very air of the building was gloomy and dark, making her shiver. “So they just dump you here in a pile of trash? No directions? No getting-to-know-your-warlock pre-introductions? Just tag, you’re it—go be a familiar, Grasshopper?”