New Preacher
Beatrix gets tuned up by by Sergeant Wooten, then Reese and Beatrix compare notes.
[This is part of the Good Witch universe. If you need to catch up, check out the Table of Contents.]
Beatrix, remember, was sitting beside the ice locker under the awning outside Majik Mart 139. She’d walked all day, but I don’t come on shift until 10 p.m., so she had a few hours of pleasant afternoon and dusk ahead of her. This was nothing to Bea — I call her Bea, always have — because, catlike, she can nap any place, any time.
Now I meant to come to work early and help Natalie on second shift stock the beer coolers, but I had to take my sister to the Sav-A-Lot and then once the sun got low I had to cut my granny’s grass so that didn’t exactly happen.
I rolled in around 9:55 p.m., a little sunsick and generally feeling like a piece of dogshit that’s been lying on the sidewalk for a week or so. Vampires are not built to mow grass, even at eight in the evening. Contrary to popular belief, we’re frail little fuckers.
And what did I see? I see Sergeant Wooten tuning up my cousin Beatrix.
I mean, tuning up has a wide range of senses. Sergeant wasn’t exactly bashing her head into the concrete, but he had her turning this way and that like a big hog in a small run — hands behind your head, hands behind your back, your head, on your knees, get up, get down — and I could tell right away he’d confused her to the point sooner or later she was going to make a mistake and act out some way and he’d thump her good.
Now I disapprove of vampires using their powers on principle and also in just about every specific instance I can imagine, which is perhaps how I maintain my emaciated figure, rancid demeanor and generally feeble approach to life. But this time I was out of my truck and there behind him before I realized I could actually get there that fast, and then I was breathing my ice-cold breath of this-little-fucker-is-actually-a-dead-man down his neck and he stopped what he was doing and turned around.
No one there but scrawny little Reese, saying “Hey, Sergeant, what’s my cousin been doing to you tonight?”
He stepped back, feeling a little sick and dizzy and not sure what had happened, and again before he could do a thing I was on my knees checking Beatrix out — between him and my girl Bea, you understand.
“You okay, there, cuz?”
She nodded. Yelling disorients her, always has, and she wasn’t too far from losing her head and starting to fight. And I’ve never seen Bea lose a fight, but, as I can tell you from sad experience, winning a fight with a cop is perhaps the only thing worse than losing one.
I said to Sergeant Wooten: “She’s mentally disabled, I know how to take care of her.”
“Then you do that.”
Bea started to struggle to her feet, but I wasn’t having that. She’s as tall as Sergeant Wooten and madder than a wet hen and I’ve seen this before — she kind of looms into your space and then shit goes down. I put my hand on her knee and she wasn’t going anywhere.
That’s the last bit of mojo I got tonight, I thought, and I ain’t even clocked in yet. Third shift better be a fuckin tea party after this.
Third shift is never a tea party, though I’ve never seen any fucking go down. Except once. That’s why I keep the men’s room locked at night.
Anyhow, Bea stayed put and Sergeant Wooten grumbled and rumbled away down the road and I got myself inside and settled Beatrix down on the stepstool, which is all we have that passes for a seat outside Mrs. Glenda’s chair in the manager’s cubby.
“Natalie,” I asked the second shift girl as she left, “did you ask Sergeant to trespass my cousin Bea here?”
“Nooo, I had a crowd and when they cleared out I could see him going to town on someone. I thought you was a man,” she apologized to Beatrix. “We’ve had a scary guy hanging out here lately.”
He’s not supposed to trespass someone unless the business employees ask him to, I know that. My mood did not improve.
“You walked all the way out here?” I asked Bea. She nodded. She had traveled about 30 miles. “You know I can’t take you home. Sun will be up by six this time of year, or as good as. I might get you to Chattanooga, but I won’t be able to get back out here. If you don’t wanna ride shank’s mare back to town in the morning you’re gonna have to spend the day at my house.”
Bea nodded again. She isn’t one for talking much. I set her up with some coffee and a wholesome meal — taquito from off the hot dog rollers, bag of Bugles and a peanut butter cookie. After she ate and I did my stocking and cleaning and whatnot I leaned my elbows on the counter and looked down at her.
“So to what do I owe the honor of having to rescue your ass from Sergeant Wooten?”
She started collecting her thoughts. I poured my own cup of coffee.
“And why in the world am I rescuing you anyway? You’re older and bigger and more powerful. You should be rescuing me, if anything. You’re off your game. I sense a strange disturbance in the Force — ”
I took a drink. Coffee, I can manage. There’s no non-living caloric content to make me ill, and the caffeine still works fine.
I mean, I get a little sick, but it’s coffee. COFFEE. You wouldn’t give up coffee just because it gave you the runs, now, would you?
Sure you wouldn’t.
I watched Bea’s heavy black brows draw down. Her eyes flashed up at me. “I’ve come to consult you in a professional capacity,” she said. She can talk fine when she gets revved up — did I mention she can read like seven languages? — it just takes her a while to get started.
“Oh have you.” She sure didn’t mean my profession as third-shift clerk at Majik Mart 139.
Then Bea explained to me about the strange lassitude that hit the houseful of little old ladies she tends on, and how it was the same lassitude that hit some girl on the way back from the Masquerade 30-odd years ago. Same odd details. A good-sounding voice. A touch of some kind — kiss, holding a hand. A little prick, no more than a mosquito bite. And that description — feeling “like heaven.” And — here’s where Bea’s own professional knowledge comes in — a spirit sliding, sliding, willingly away from a body. If she said it, if she’d felt it, I believed her.
Sadly, I had nothing for her. It sure didn’t sound like any vampires I’d ever heard of, and I told her so. “Sorry you walked all this way for a dead end. You could, you know, use a phone next time.”
Bea had no intention of ever using anything but an honest-to-god landline, and there was only one pay phone left in Chattanooga, so she ignored this. “There was a new preacher,” she said. “He’d been to their house that very morning. A new preacher with a handsome voice.”
“A new preacher?” I swigged the rest of the coffee, burning my mouth. “Bea, there’s been a new preacher round here lately.”
I mean, it’s not a lot to go on. This neck of the woods is lousy with preachers, new, old and everything in between. But the new preacher who came by Majik Mart 139 had the most mellifluent voice.