The Accidental Familiar (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 14) (11 page)

There was nothing cheesy about cash when you didn’t have any. Except until you had to reveal to some rich guy what you’d done for a little cash.

But Rick’s face was blank. “Can’t say I’ve heard of it. Doesn’t mean a thing though. I don’t watch much TV. I don’t have a lot of extra time.”

Poppy shrugged with a self-conscious smile. “Me neither. Mostly because I can’t afford a cable bill, but I probably would have hit the fast-forward on my remote even if I did. I was awful. Plus, I wore Daisy Dukes. Anyone with chicken legs like mine should never wear Daisy Dukes.”

As the words spilled out of her mouth, she reflected upon how pathetic they made her sound. No. In her almost-mid-thirties, she even didn’t own a television. She’d hocked it in order to pay her dry cleaning bill. Sometimes she didn’t even have electricity, but she did have heart, and she could still fit into the Daisy Dukes.

Rick’s posture loosened a bit as his eyes scanned her legs, still in her Paul Stanley costume, before returning to her face, one eyebrow raised. “Daisy Dukes, huh?”

“Probably one of my more embarrassing moments. So anyway, enough about me and my sad television commercial career. As the warlock, you’re the important person in this relationship. This is all about you. So, explain the title developer and why you’re at this particular place today. But before you do, what do the initials ARMD on the side of your van mean?”

“First, it’s not all about me. In fact, my old—” He shook his head, as though he were clearing cobwebs. “This isn’t just about me, Poppy. That makes it sound like I’m some kind of entitled royalty. Which is hardly the case. I was poor once, too, and a familiar-warlock relationship is a team effort. Anyway, the initials are a combination of my name and Avis Mackland. Avis is my partner. You know the story. Old college buddies with a dream.”

Her stomach turned just a little. She didn’t know a lot about developers, other than they usually bought up properties and turned them into high rises. Which didn’t bode well for her little apartment building—a building that had somehow escaped the typical ruin you saw in a place so affordable.

She’d lucked out when an old friend from acting class had nabbed a big part on a soap opera and moved to L.A., offering her lease to Poppy. Back in the day, while she hadn’t been rolling in dough, she’d at least managed to make decent enough money to keep the place.

When the friend’s lease was up five years ago, her landlord had agreed to rent to Poppy, and it had been a struggle ever since. Still, she’d managed until these last three months.

Trying to calm her fears, Poppy rationalized. Maybe Rick did something different than steal from the working class to make a quick buck. Maybe he was just here to see what he could see. There was no harm in checking out new prospects, right? That’s what made the rich richer.

Not that old man Rush would ever sell anyway. This apartment building had been in his family since his father was alive and old man Rush was seventy-two. He loved this place, and so did the residents.

She’d loved it, too. It was one of the cheapest places to live in the city, with a bodega right down at the end of the block that connected to some of the best Chinese food in New York; a park across the street, and her favorite diner right next door to the playground.

Maybe he was just testing the water. “So why are you here today? At this apartment building? Testing the water to see if the guy’ll sell?”

“Nope,” he responded, but added nothing helpful in the way of information.

Poppy cocked her head though inside she was flooded with relief. “Got a friend here? Girlfriend, maybe?”

Now he smiled, and when he did, it was as though the heavens had opened and rained down their special magic perfectness upon his gorgeous head. “No, again.”

God, this was like pulling teeth. “No, you don’t have a friend who lives here? Or no, you don’t have a girlfriend who lives here—or both?”

As she asked the question, she found she rather wanted to know if he had a girlfriend. How did that work if he was part of a couple? How did she stay out of his personal affairs if she was supposed to advise on his personal affairs?

And something else Poppy discovered. She didn’t want him to have a girlfriend

The wrought iron gate separating the sidewalk from the front entry of her building opened just then, and Mr. and Mrs. Paxton and their toothless Chinese Crested dog, Titan, strolled out, arm-in-arm.

They were going for their mid-morning walk together, something they did without fail every day but Sunday, when Mrs. Paxton made a pot roast and Mr. Paxton watched The History Channel.

She quickly turned her back to them, pulling Rick farther under the oak tree. As their bodies briefly brushed together when she stumbled over a tree stump, her heart began to throb. When he righted her, his hand at the small of her back elicited a small gasp of a confused thrill.

Taking a step back to clear her head, Poppy looked up at him. “Okay, enough subterfuge. Why are you here at this specific location today?”

“To check on everyone and make sure they’ve all received their relocation packages. Despite the fact that you and your friends have dubbed me The Asshole, I’m actually quite good with people.”

“Relocation packages?” she repeated woodenly. She hadn’t received any relocation package. Of course, she probably wouldn’t because she was three months behind in her rent. No one was going to relocate her unless it was to renter’s jail. Also, she hadn’t opened her mail in at least two months because there was never any good news contained within. Just bills.

“Yep. We offer relocations packages to everyone when we purchase a building. I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

Poppy thumbed over her shoulder. “You bought this building? This one right behind me with the cute wrought iron fence, awesome spiral thingamajig on the rooftop, and continuing theme of spiral bonsai trees in that little garden to the left?” She’d helped plant those trees…

Now Rick cocked his head, running a hand through his chin-length hair. “Am I speaking another language, Poppy McGuillicuddy? Yes,
this
building.”

Alarm bells went off in her head. “And what are you doing with all the people in the building?”

If he wasn’t annoyed before, he sure was now. On a grating sigh, his chest heaving with an exaggerated rise and fall of impatience, Rick nodded. “I just told you. Relocating them. Well, except for one. We can’t seem to find her. A Lennox Griffith has apparently left this plane, because I sure can’t locate her. Unless she’s the soap opera star I found on Google, which is ridiculous.”

Hah! Not so ridiculous.

Shit. Lennox, who’s real name was Ethel Leeman, was the friend she’d rented the apartment from. Mr. Rush had probably never changed the name on the apartment because she’d never signed anything official. He’d taken her on her word when she’d said she’d pay her rent.

Shitshitshit!

But wait. How had he gotten the Paxtons to agree to relocate? They’d been here as far back as the fifties, when they’d married. Not even their son, Jeremy, with talk of sunshine, palm trees, and oceanfront retirement homes, had been able to convince them to leave their beloved home.

And Mrs. Bernbaum? No way Mrs. Bernbaum and her latest sixty-five-year-old boy-toy, Rockland—the youngest boy-toy she’d ever had, and at the ripe old age of seventy-four—were agreeing to relocate without a fight.

Rockland had tried to talk Mitzi Bernbaum into looking at something on the Upper East Side, and she’d staunchly refused to budge. This was her home. It was where she’d birthed her children. It was where her beloved Abraham had lived and died.

This was insanity.

Squeezing her temples, she asked one more time, “Are you sure this is the place you’re buying? Like a million percent sure?”

“I’m a million and two percent sure. This building is scheduled for demolition on the thirty-first of October.”

W
hoa, whoa and whoa. This wasn’t happening.

As she followed Rick into her beloved building, trying to not only decide when the best time was to tell him she lived here, but to ask him what God he’d sacrificed an organ to in order to get her neighbors to agree to relocate, she inhaled with shallow breaths. The checkered black and white floor in the entryway threatened to swallow her up as he crossed it in swift strides and she tried to reorient herself.

There were fifteen units in this apartment building, and he’d managed to talk every single one of them into relocating? Who was he? The reincarnation of Gandhi?

As they proceeded to the elevators, Leona Machowski headed straight for them, a wide smile on her gracefully aging face. “There you are, you handsome Latin devil!” she called, waving a hand to Rick. “
Hola, mi amigo
!”

Poppy, who it appeared had become completely invisible, seeing as Golden Boy Rick had entered the building, slid behind the fake potted palm tree in the lobby, ducking behind it just in time to see Leona virtually beam at Rick, who smiled right back.

In her usual neon-green and black jogging suit, her sneakers whiter than freshly fallen snow, Leona zipped up to Rick and winked flirtatiously, swatting at his shoulder with playfulness.

“
Hola
, Leona.
Como estas
?” he asked, making it clear they’d had prior interaction.

“
Muy bien!
” she shot back, outwardly gushing at her clever use of Spanish.

“Well done, Leona! Your Spanish is really coming along. I’m continually impressed.”

“Well, you did inspire me to move to Mexico. The pictures are beautiful, and I love my Spanish teacher at the Y. She’s everything you said she’d be and more.”

Her move to Mexico? Leona was moving to Mexico? What the fresh hell was going on?

“I just want to check a couple of things with you about my relocation, Rick. Have a minute before you go?”

Rick smiled back just as warmly, his charisma oozing from his pores and dripping all over Leona. “For you, Leona,
mi amiga
? I have decades. Can I swing by when I’m done at Mr. Rush’s? That work?”

She giggled, delirious and girlish—giggled like a giddy teenage girl, nodding her freshly dyed ash-blonde head. “I’ll be sure and keep the sauerkraut warm. I made kielbasa just for you!”

“You’re the best, Leona,” Rick offered in return, gravelly and low, before she took off toward the door, almost skipping along the way.

Poppy looked around aghast, her mouth wide open. What the hell was going on? Mr. Rush had gotten offers before—decent, solid, some might say incredibly generous offers—for this building, and he’d turned every single one of them down, and the residents of 54 Littleton Park Square had all nodded their heads in agreement and appreciation for his steadfast loyalty to them. He didn’t have to keep the building.

He’d kept it because he loved it—it was his legacy.

Now Mr. Rush and everyone in the building was handing over their beloved homes as though they were giving them to Jesus himself? What kind of relocation package was ARMD offering—a ticket to Utopia?

When the elevator bell dinged, and the coast was clear, Poppy scooted in alongside Rick, fighting the urge to scream her frustration as the musty air of the boxy car settled in her nose.

She was going to have to tell him she lived here eventually—like probably within the next five minutes. But until then, she’d silently rage.

How had he talked them all into this? It couldn’t be anything other than some kind of crazy, fast talking persuasion. Had he used his magic to do this?

When the rickety old elevator signaled their arrival—to her floor, no less—their silence had become deafening. As the doors opened with a rumble, he swept his hand in front of him in a gallant gesture. “After you.”

Poppy poked her head around the corner and scanned the hallway with its patched but cleanly painted walls. Around this time of day, most everyone was either on their first nap or headed off to run errands. Thankfully, the hallway was deserted.

Stepping out, she stood off to the side and waited for Rick to take the lead. And lead he did, right to her apartment door—number 7E.

Now her throat was threatening to close up and her eyes grew grainy and blurry with her fear. But Rick turned to her and offered a short yet succinct explanation. “Lennox Griffith lives here.”

Oh, no she did not either. Hadn’t Mr. Rush told him Lennox no longer lived here?

“Didn’t the landlord have a way to contact her? Didn’t any of the residents know how to find her?”

Poppy, Poppy, Poppy. You’re a bad person. What kind of familiar looks right in their warlock’s eye and doesn’t tell him the truth?
But that aside, how was this happening? Everyone knew her in the building. Hadn’t he asked any of them who actually lived in 7E?

Hadn’t he asked the Paxton’s, who, without fail, always brought her a plate of pot roast on Sunday evening so the starving artist wouldn’t starve?

Rick smiled, the grin coming off as rather indulgent and sweet, as though the memory of Mr. Rush and his experience with him was a good one.

“Old Mr. Rush isn’t exactly the best at keeping records. From what I understand, he mostly hires out the work done on the place, so he doesn’t personally check in very often. But just after he agreed to sell, and we had everything in place, papers signed and such, he had a stroke. He’s in a nursing home now, but unable to speak. However, he’ll be in terrific hands for the rest of his life. I made sure of it…in case you were going to tack on more proof I’m a complete asshole.”

But she couldn’t decipher most of what was coming out of Rick’s beautiful mouth. Instead, Poppy had to lean against the wall to keep from literally falling over. She’d only been gone four months, but it was as though she’d stepped into an alternate dimension.

“And everyone just said yippee skippee to relocating?” she squeaked in disbelief.

Rick leaned into the doorframe, his shoulder pressing against the cracked wood. “Well, not instantly, no. We invited everyone to a meeting at our offices, chatted with them, offered them the relocation package. It took a couple of months, but they eventually got pretty excited, once we tweaked and refined what they wanted. We have a lot of perks with this package.”