Page 47 of Cognac Secrets

“Sure,” I said rising to my feet.

“I’m good,” Bennie said, lounging back, and Collier got up.

“Allow me to introduce you, to my Jessie-Lou Who,” he said with a wink and started off across the big bay toward the tent in the back corner.

“Jessie-Lou!” he called over the whine of whatever machinery she was using to do whatever it was that she did. I hadn’t heard it initially over the blues playing from a Bluetooth speaker over by the boil going on.

“Mask up or fuck off!” she cried from under some plastic gas mask looking monstrosity she wore over her face.

Collier handed me one of those duck billed surgical mask things and put another one on over his own nose and mouth.

“You don’t wanna breathe that bone dust,” he said as he looped the mask behind his ears.

I followed suit, looping the mask over my nose and mouth before he batted aside the plastic enshrouding the woman’s workspace.

She turned around and looked up at me and said, “Well, hi. Who’re you?” her voice muffled by the mask over her nose and mouth.

“Hi, I’m Sandy,” I said with a bit of a laugh from behind my lesser particle mask. “I was curious, what are you doing?”

She set down her Dremel on the work bench off to the side in front of her and lifted a heavy skull out of her lap and onto the surface.

“Carving out this big bitch right here,” she said matter-of-factly. It was a huge steer’s skull and she had been meticulously carving out windows of loops and whorls in the forehead of the big skull.

“When she’s done, I’ll put this right here.” She took down a big round cabochon of some kind of iridescent stone and used her purple, latex gloved hand, to dust it off before holding it up under the skull into the slot she’d already carved out for it.

“Ooo, that’s beautiful. Is it just an art piece, or does it have a mystical meaning behind it, too?” I asked.

She eyed me from behind her bone dust coated safety goggles.

“You some kind of a witch?” she asked.

“No,” I said with a laugh. “I just work for one down at the Mystic’s Dream.”

She eyed me and asked bluntly, “What’d you want to go and get into that line of work for?” she asked.

I shrugged, “It was a steady paycheck and my family is superstitious and cult Christian enough that it’d keep ‘em away from me.”

She laughed and twinkle in her eye and nodded, “Me an’ the other ol’ ladies are opening up a shop in The Quarter at some point. Swamp Witch Designs… an eclectic place. A lot of art, home made paints, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, wow! That sounds really cool.”

“Seems you might know a thing or two about running a place like that. You should talk to Alina and Cor about it.”

“I mean, if you guys need it I’d be happy to help out with any knowledge that I have.”

“Well, alright then,” she gave a nod and looked back at her man. “Tell Bennie she might just be a keeper.”

I laughed and shook my head and said, “It isn’t like that. We’re just friends.”

She eyed me and said, “Fuckin’ idiot. Him, not you.”

I felt myself blush and said, “Thanks?”

She nodded and I had the impression she was smiling from behind her mask, but I couldn’t be sure.

Collier jerked his head and we left the enclosed space to the whine and grind of her Dremel starting up again.

I took off the mask as he did, monkey see, monkey do and he reached for it and hung them both on the hook they’d come from.

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