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“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