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times”—she smiled shyly—“but lately I’ve been going by Harriet. It was my mom’s name.”
    “It’s lovely,” I told her. She was fragile for such a big gal. She was by far the largest of the women. Not fat, just big boned and strong. Harriet was easy to remember. It didn’t really fit her either, but it was better than all the floral names I had running around in my head. “May I call you Harriet?”
    “Yes, you may,” she paused, “but would you mind terribly calling me Poppy Harriet?”
    “I think that could be arranged.” I smiled. God, I felt like I’d known these women forever. What was that about? “So, back to the matter at hand,” I rallied my newfound troops. “If she’s going to buy a time-traveling vampire warlock with a permanent hard-on who likes to have intercourse with recently separated conjoined twins that he had to magic up some body parts for, what else do you think I can get away with?”
    My posse of gals grinned evilly, and we started to plan.

Chapter 3
    A fter the meeting, Shoshanna walked me to my car, letting me know what to expect Monday morning. Thank God she did. Damn thing was totally dead.
    “Son of a bitch,” I groaned, banging my head on the steering wheel.
    “Don’t worry about it, Rena, I’ll drive you home,” LeHump offered.
    I glanced up at Shoshanna. There she stood, bundled up in a lime-green down coat with a Minnesota Vikings matching hat, glove, and scarf set. Her snow boots were blue with hot pink polka dots. Never had I seen an ensemble so hideous and so lovely at the same time. First impressions aren’t often wrong, but they can be. I had definitely been wrong about LeHump. She might write porno and have a bad haircut, but she also had a huge heart and I don’t think she had been hitting on me. I think she was just weird.
    “Where do you live?” I asked.
    “New Hope. Where do you live?”
    “Saint Paul,” I sighed. I was going to be cabbing it, or possibly even worse . . . bussing it. Shit. New Hope was thirty minutes in the opposite direction from my house, and I lived a half an hour from where we were. There was no way I could let her drive me home.
    “That would add an hour onto your trip. I can’t let you do that.” I smiled and squeezed her purple and gold clad hand.
    “It’s no fucking biggie. My sister lives in Saint Paul. She’ll be thrilled if I stop by. She owes me money. Plus I need to get you a little more up to speed about the slag.”
    “Shoshanna, it’s really too far.”
    “Bullshit. Just hang on a second. I need to move my computer and baseball bat out of the front seat.”
    Shoshanna was not taking no for an answer, which was very sweet . . . I thought. The baseball bat concerned me, but I figured if she was going to kill me she would have already done so in the parking garage. There was no one in sight and no security cameras anywhere.
    I grabbed my tote and my purse and hustled over to Shoshanna’s sky blue minivan. I could have called AAA, but I didn’t have enough body fat to sit in subzero temperatures for three hours and wait for them. As it was, my snot was freezing as I walked the thirty feet to Shoshanna’s soccer-mom-ish mode of transport. I needed to move to a warmer climate.
    “Get in. It takes a while for the heat to work in this piece of shit, but when it kicks in, you’ll sweat like a fat whore at confession.”
    “Do you eat with that mouth?” I grinned, shaking my head and searching for the seat belt. The car was a pigsty.
    Shoshanna cackled with glee, “You bet I do! Are you going to remember all the new stuff you came up with?”
    “It would be very difficult to forget the part about the three-way between Pirate Dave, Leif Erickson, and Christopher Columbus,” I choked out, still searching for the seat belt.
    “That’s some good stuff there, Rena. I don’t think I could have come up with that one myself. You have the scariest imagination I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness.”
    “Um