“We were quite surprised to see X sitting in your kitchen drinking a cup of coffee—”
“—with a definitely ‘slept in’ couch and blanket set up over in the corner.”
Poppy waggled her eyebrows. “Why’d you send him down to the couch without you? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to cuddle you in the morning? At least on a first date.”
“We didn’t do anything!” I said. “It wasn’t a date.”
Poppy and Zin shared a look, rolling their eyes at one another.
“What are the kids calling it these days?” Poppy asked. “Hanky-panky? Tickle the pickle? Hide the—”
“Tickle the pickle?” Zin said with a snort. “If that’s the best you can do, you really have to start dating. Nobody says that anymore.”
“Okay, you should talk, Miss Wannabe Ranger.”
“There wasn’t any date,” I said, mostly to break up the argument. I felt a tiny bit of guilt not admitting the full story. Though we’d been desperately referring to what we had as a non-date, everything about the kiss we’d shared had felt real.
“I see how it is,” Poppy said. “I make one date with Hettie, and I miss all the fun.”
“Why did you sneak through my window this morning?” I grumbled. “That’s a bigger problem.”
“No way, José,” Poppy said. “We’re your cousins and your best girlfriends. We do things like that for each other.”
“I’m not hanging around climbing through your bedroom windows.”
“That’s because we don’t have men sleeping over downstairs. Men that we’re keeping a secret from our best girlfriends,” she said pointedly.
“That’s not the only reason we stopped over,” Zin said, casting a glance over to Poppy. “There’s one more thing. We need some help.”
“With what?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s nothing,” Poppy said dismissively. “And Lily knows about the problem anyway. Just deal with it and stop complaining, Zin.”
“Deal with what?” I looked between the two. “Someone tell me what’s going on here.”
“Poppy is hiccupping like crazy,” Zin said, wrinkling her nose. “It’s loud, and it smells like a rotten fish slept with a chicken and they had rotten fish eggs. It goes on, and on, and on, and she can’t stop!”
“It’s not that bad,” Poppy said, waving a hand in front of her face and stifling an untimely hiccup. “Really, it’s minor.”
Zin shook her head, and then looked to me with a desperate expression on her face. “Can you please fix her?”
“Is this a side effect of the Vamp Vites running low?” I asked.
“Maybe.” Poppy looked sheepish. “I’ve never had anything like it before. I can’t seem to stop.”
She hiccupped again, as if emphasizing her point. The smell was so noxious I had to dip my nose into my nightgown and breathe into the freshly laundered fabric to block the scent.
Zin rapidly fanned her face, her eyebrows knitting in disgust. “Do you see what I mean?”
“Wow,” I said. “That is definitely a problem.”
“Now we know why Poppy doesn’t have men sleeping over,” Zin said. “She can’t even share a house with us. Hettie threatened to kick her out this morning if she couldn’t stop hiccupping.”
“I’ve never had this before.” Poppy covered her mouth with her hand. “This is weird. Make it stop, Lily.”
“Have you ever had low levels of your Vamp Vites before?” I asked. “Are you only taking half of your dosage?”
“I’m down to a quarter dose per day,” she said softly. “I don’t want to rush you, but I’m starting to get scared. What happens if you can’t find the ingredient you need? Are you sure Gus has no idea where the last Mixologist secured it from?”
“No, I asked him twice. He has no clue.” I waited a beat. “But there is one person who may know a solution. I’m going to talk to him this morning, but before I do, it’s my turn to tell you guys a story.”
“You’ve been holding out on us!” Zin said too loudly. “You and Ranger X are a thing.”
“We’re not a thing, but we did have dinner together last night. As friends. Except, we had an interesting walk home.”
“You kissed!”
I halfheartedly denied it, but the blush on my cheeks gave me away.
Poppy pointed at me. “I knew it!”
Dodging the question, I filled the girls in on everything from seeing Gus conversing with his former classmates, to learning that Gus was a Black Ribbon wizard, to finding a man’s body washed up on shore. I left out the kiss, only because the girls already looked shell-shocked at everything that had happened, and I didn’t want to add another iron to the fire.