Accidentally Catty (2 page)

Katie nodded with a distracted smile, her mind sorting through her shock to search for a solution. “We definitely don’t want to attract
the bad
. You wait here—”

“Oh, hell to the no!” Ingrid shouted, the echo of her response resonating throughout the woods surrounding the veterinary clinic. “I am
not
staying here with—with . . .
that
. Nuh-uh.” Her multicolored black, green, and pink head shook a very definitive “not on your life” when she backed away.

“Calm down, Ingrid. I’ll tell you what,” Katie said, crouching on the steps. “You go get Kaih. I think he’s still inside with Mrs. Krupkowski’s Chi, getting her settled. We need some brawn. I’ll wait . . . here.” She pointed to the cement steps.

Ingrid was up the stairs in a shot, fueled by her fear and a couple of buttery nipples.

Katie eyed the steps, yawning with a shiver after a long day at the clinic.

She was getting too old for these kinds of hours.

She was definitely getting too old for these kinds of surprises.

Maybe she should just turn right around and head back down the hill to Ed’s and have a buttery nipple—or five.

 

 

‟THANK
you for calling OOPS. This is Wanda Schwartz Jefferson, here to service all your paranormal needs. How may I help you?”

There was a pause—a long one—before Wanda gasped, then slammed down the phone with a huff, narrowing her eyes.

Casey and Marty exchanged wincing glances.

Marty bit her lip, sliding her pen back into its holder with care so as not to jar Wanda, who was very clearly on edge.

Casey fiddled with her stack of Post-it pads. Very pink. Very blank.

Nina, on the other hand, rose from her office chair and snorted. “Another crank that needs an ass kickin’, pal?” she asked Wanda. “Do that frickin’ caller ID thing and I’ll call the shit stain back. He’ll wish he’d thought twice before picking up the phone and smack talking us after I wrap his dick around his neck.”

Wanda’s lips trembled to a thin line when she pointed at Nina with the familiarly universal gesture for her to still her mouth. “That isn’t the way we want to introduce ourselves to society at large, Nina. It’s unseemly. We all knew crank calls would be a part of the deal when we decided to do this. You don’t think the Ghost Hunters didn’t take a potshot or two before they got their own show, do you? But they’re not out there threatening to pull people’s diaphragms through their belly buttons because much of society doesn’t believe in ghosts, now, are they?”

She paused, flicking the ballpoint pen Heath had given her to celebrate the beginning of this venture. “There are people who need our help. That’s our focus, not the nincompoops who call to ask if you can use your superhuman strength to kick their science teacher’s ass for giving them a D-minus on their class project.”

Casey leaned back in her chair, propping her ballet-slippered feet up on the edge of her desk. “Yeah.You know, I’ve been giving some thought to the nonbelievers. Maybe we should put an ad in the newspaper and invite those punks to a central location, then offer them Giants tickets as incentive to show up. Like a paranormal sting or something.” She cocked her dark head with a sly smile. “Then I’ll fry their asses while you guys hiss and shed. Whaddya think?”

Marty rolled her eyes, scooping Muffin up to set her in her lap. She twisted her poodle’s lavender rhinestone-studded collar to straighten it. “I think you ain’t seen nuthin’ till you’ve seen scared humans en masse with wooden stakes and a rope of garlic. We may be bigger in numbers than most of the human population thinks, but this isn’t ‘We Are the World,’ Casey. The humans will always outnumber us, unfortunately. While it would be LOL funny to see the expressions on their faces when we shift or Nina gives them the best display evah of a vampire behaving badly, that’s sort of not the goal here.”

Nina made a face at Marty, tucking her arms under her breasts and leaning back in her chair. “Remind me again just what the fuck the goal
is
here, Marty? Why am I spending three nights a week, volunteering time I could be spending with my man, answering bullshit calls from whacks who actually believe
we’re
the nuts?”

“It was your idea, Nina,” Wanda offered dryly, gnawing on the tip of her pen.

“This”—she spread her arms wide to encompass the small space they’d rented for their venture—“was my idea how, Wanda?”

“Oh, please. To quote you loosely, I distinctly remember it was you who said at Naomi’s sweet sixteen party, ‘There must be some other poor chicks whose boyfriends have, I dunno, iguanas maybe, that have accidentally bitten them and turned them into, like, Puff, the Magic Dragon. If it happened to us, and we all know each other, then there could be others like us.’ Loose quote, unquote. Remember that, Elvira?” Wanda asked on a neck roll.

Nina flicked her lean fingers in Wanda’s direction. “Yeah, I said it. But I didn’t mean we should don our paranormal capes and save the world Superman style. This is bullshit, Wanda. Nobody is taking this seriously. We should have never taken out that ad in that kooky alternative magazine or opened Twitter and Facebook accounts. You should see the shit people say. They’re all flakes.”

Wanda heaved a sigh, letting her head fall to her arms. “Maybe you’re right, Nina.” Her words held resignation.

Nina sat upright, her lean spine ramrod straight beneath her loose-fitting sweatshirt. “What? Did you say I’m
right
? Casey, Marty, prepare to meet your maker.”

“I just mean that maybe this really was a stupid idea. Maybe we really are the only people in the world who’ve been accidentally bitten. I thought we could help people in supernatural distress. If I hadn’t had you and Marty to guide me about what was happening to my body, I don’t know what I would’ve done when I was turned. The more I thought about what you said, Nina, the more I thought we had valid reason to start up OOPS. But it’s been three months and nothing but cranks and oh, surprise!—
more cranks
.”

Marty stroked Muffin with a light hand. “I did say maybe the whole Out in the Open Paranormal Support wasn’t the right name for us. Maybe it’s just too weird and it freaked people out.”

“No, it just freaked our husbands out,” Casey reminded her. “Do you remember the look on Clay’s face when we all told our Neanderthal mates that we were going to go live with this OOPS thing? I think if Clay could still die of a heart attack, he’d have done it right there in front of everyone. They weren’t in love with this idea from the get-go. All that nonsense they spewed about living peacefully with humans and not making waves or drawing attention to ourselves when those men know perfectly well, if we all hadn’t known each other, Nina would have ended up staked through that cold, black heart of hers within twenty-four hours of turning. Ditching it all would just prove them right. I don’t know about all of you, but I don’t much like being wrong. Besides, I like to tweet with the people who ask me stupid things like where my pitchfork is.”

Nina’s chair scraped against the cement floor, her arms rigid when she latched onto the edge of her desk. “My cold, black heart? You do know I can kill you, right?” she asked Casey.

Casey’s eyebrow lifted in a scornful arch, unperturbed. “You do know I’ll set your skinny ass on fire first, don’t you?”

Wanda whacked a rolled-up issue of the very kooky paranormal magazine Nina spoke of against her desk, making everyone still. “This!
This
is exactly why I bought into doing this in the first place. Because I just couldn’t bear the thought that someone might be suffering the effects of a Nina-like person who’s cranky enough already without the supernatural ability to take on the entire NFL single-handedly. Or someone like you, Casey!” Wanda pointed to her sister with a pink fingernail. “Someone who still needs to get not only her anger and levitation under control but her wise cracking mouth. But really, what was I thinking? How could we possibly hope to help someone if they called anyway? The way you two behave, it’d be like the blind leading the blind.” She threw the magazine on her desk with a disgusted grunt for emphasis.

Nina stood with a satisfied smile. “So does that mean this is a wrap?”

Marty jumped up from her chair, shoving Muffin under her arm. The jingle of her bracelets clanked together with a tinkle. “Jesus, Nina! You’re so damned insensitive. Sit down and shut it. Please.” The sigh she let go was colored with her aggravation. “Look, Wanda, maybe we should just have the calls rerouted to our cell phones or something? This way, if someone does call who needs our help, we can still aid and abet, we just won’t have to sit around staring at four empty, very drab walls, I might add, while we do it.”

“I hung up a poster to brighten the place up,” Casey muttered. “Isn’t it in your color wheel,
Marty
?”

“Dude, it’s a poster for Just Say No to Drugs. Not so colorful. Just fucking stupid,” Nina remarked with her trademark dry sarcasm.

“It was the only thing I could find from my teaching days, you wretched wench. I don’t recall you offering to decorate and brighten things up,” Casey shot back.

“What dungeon do you know of that needs decorating?” Nina waved a hand around the dark space they’d rented—the space with one grimy window and no heat.

They each fell silent again.

Wanda was the first to rise, smoothing her pencil-slim skirt and straightening the bow on the collar of her prim mango-hued silk shirt. “You’re right, Marty. I think that’s exactly what we should do. I have a book to write. Casey’s got classes to attend and a teenager. You have little Hollis and Bobbie-Sue, and Nina . . . well, Nina has innocent people to brutalize. So let’s scram,” she said, defeat clear in her tone.

Chairs scraped against the cement flooring as they all rose in unison to file out.

The phone rang with a shrill cry. Each woman stopped short at the door where Wanda’s hand rested on the door handle.

Wanda let go of the rusted handle with a purse of her lips. She looked over her shoulder at her sister and friends with a question in her gaze.

“Oh, c’mon, Wanda,” Nina crowed. “It’s probably just another ass-a-holic crank call. I wanna go the hell home and watch reruns of
Matlock
with my man.”

Marty’s eyes grew wary. “But what if it isn’t and we leave, and someone’s breathing fire as we speak but doesn’t know why? Alone and terrified. Remember that feeling, Nina? Oh, wait. No, you don’t because you weren’t alone! Wouldn’t you feel like the mean shit you are if that happened to some innocent?”

Casey let her shoulders flop with a tired sigh. “I hate to ever admit Nina’s right about anything, but seriously, do we want to beat our heads against the wall just one more time for old time’s sake? Not me, people. I’m tired of having questionably sane people call to ask me if I’ll light their stupid barbeques.”

Wanda’s low ponytail shook. “But what if . . .”

Nina threw up her hands. “Fine, for Christ’s sake—I’ll get it, and I’m warning you, Wanda. If it’s another stupid ass who wants to watch me drink blood and flap my bat wings, I’m gonna hunt his ass down and knock him from here to next year. Deal?”

Wanda’s head hung low, letting her chin drop to her chest. She waved a hand at Nina. “Fine. You answer.”

Nina groaned while she made her way to the desk and snatched up the receiver to the matching phones they’d all bought as an OOPS team at Costco. “This is Nina Statleon and you’ve reached OOPS. Which I thought was a totally stupid name for this crazy venture, too, but I was voted down by my pansy-ass waffler of a friend, Marty. I’m a goddamned vampire. If you called to razz me about that shit—c’mon over and I’ll show you my fangs while I beat your head against this stupid, cheap, piece-of-shit desk I was talked into buying at Wal-Mart as part of my show of good faith. Really, it just means I was bamboozled into doing something I didn’t want to do in the first place, but my friend Wanda the Werewolf used pretty words and stupid friendship euphemisms to steamroll me into this. So name your paranormal emergency and it better be good. I live in a castle. That takes a buttload of time to clean. Now spew, and make it fast.” She finished with a smug smile in Wanda’s aghast direction.

The voice on the other end of the line stuttered momentarily, then blurted out, “I think I—we—us, uh, we have a paranormal emergency . . . I mean, I
know
we do. Please. We need help. Fast! Yes, we need fast help. Like, super fast!”

 

 

INGRID
eyed her boss from across the room while she tried to explain what had happened to the grumpy beast who’d answered the phone at the number she’d gotten from her favorite magazine
Vive La Paranormal
. “Yes. No. Oh, geez, I dunno. I just know we’re in a serious pickle here. No. It’s not me. It’s my boss. No, I can’t explain the symptoms. It’s not me who has them. It’s my boss!” she cried, pressure situations never having been her strong suit.

She paced the floor in front of the examining table, scrunching her eyes shut, running a trembling, ring-covered hand over her forehead. “You want to talk to her? I don’t know if she can talk-talk. You know? She’s had a serious incident here. I mean, she has—has . . .” Ingrid stumbled over her words, clearly unable to express what her boss “had.”

Skirting the metal examining table, Ingrid scurried past it as though she’d never seen anything in her life like what was lying on the table.

Katie had to wonder, though the wondering was vague and distorted by vision so clear it made everything almost magnified, if her trusty receptionist had ever been to the zoo.

Ingrid approached her with obvious caution, holding the phone at arm’s length. “The lady”—she held her hand over the earpiece—“and I use that term a bit loosely because she swears like a Navy SEAL—”

“Sailor,” Katie corrected, surprised she still had the capability to think with any remote precision.