Page 63 of Cognac Secrets

I didn’t know when, or where, or how it’d happened, but I’d tripped and fallen backward. For that split second, I thought that I’d been falling into more pain, but then she’d somehow been there, had somehow caught me with her safety net made of the white hot light that was her spirit and I had zero problem somehow with falling into her. Into love with her.

I’d never thought I would love again… and yet here I was. I could face that now. I just found it odd, because this love with Sandrine was nothing like the love I’d shared with Mia, had had with Mia.

Sandy’s was purer somehow. Shinier. Less tainted by sorrow.

Like I’d been through something and come out the other side and this time I was changed. Fundamentally. Like a caterpillar unfurling wings that it’d never had before.

Yeah. That was it. Something about Sandy was giving me wings. A whole new appendage that I’d never had before… and it was awkward, but I was learning how to use them. You know?

When I pulled up to the club, I could smell the pit going around back. I pulled around and parked my bike in back since there was a cage inside the front gate where the bikes usually parked. We hadn’t been, though. Not since that shit at JP and Jessie-Lou’s had gone down. We’d been on lockdown and we would be keeping it that way until either the Bayou Buttfuckers made their next move or until we had a move to make.

“Not that shit again!” I heard Chainsaw crow as I shut off the bike.

“Dude, I’m telling you, I saw what I saw and it was a fucking Loup Garou!” Louie was saying as the girls laughed in their seats around the burn barrel that was licking flame.

It was dark, so the fire was more for light than it was for heat – didn’t much need heat this deep in the south.

“Just like True saw herself a vampire in The Quarter, and Sandy saw her memaw’s ghost.”

“Do what now?” I asked and Sandrine turned around at the sound of my voice.

“Hey!” she cried, but it was the expression on her face, and the light in her eyes that did it for me.

It was like taking a punch to the solar plexus that released a burst of fucking butterflies in my stomach.

“Hey, yourself,” I said leaning down to kiss her.

She kissed me back, with enthusiasm, making a sound of protest when I made to keep it short and stealing another one before I could straighten.

“Beer?” Louie asked me and I nodded, “Fuck yeah,” I replied and with a grin he got up and went toward the barroom to get me a cold one from the cooler up there. I looked around and realized we didn’t have any back here, which was odd.

“What’s with the lack of available brews back here, man? Somebody slacking?”

“Ice machine busted at our usual go-to stop,” Chainsaw said taking a drink from his bottle. “Nobody could be fucked to go get any ice.”

I huffed a laugh. I couldn’t blame anybody on that one. The rest of these guys were all blue collar and worked like a motherfucker at manual labor jobs. They earned their rest at the end of a long fuckin’ day.

“Someone fuckin’ called or texted me, I would have brought some in,” I said.

“Nah, not worth it,” Chainsaw declared. “LaCroix got a line on a working ice machine from a bar closing down in The Quarter. Our days of convenience store runs are almost fuckin’ over.”

“Nice,” I declared. “Suppose we got Alina to thank for that?”

“You do,” Alina said raising her bottle from where she was perched in LaCroix’s lap.

“Good on yah, sugar,” I declared and gave her a chin lift.

She smiled and took a drink and I looked back at the way of the doorway leading to the front of the clubhouse as Louie emerged with three brews. He brought me one, handed the other to Chainsaw who was belching and almost done with what looked to be his first and then kept the third for himself.

True and my girl each had red solo cups in hand, and I wondered what was in them.

“Dipping into the shine again?” I asked Sandrine and she rolled her eyes as she sipped from her plastic cup.

“Fuck no,” she said. “Worst hangover of mylife.”

I laughed, “Starting your period certainly didn’t help with that,” True remarked blandly and I watched Sandy’s face change and go a little grave. It was a fleeting expression, but enough to tell me she still harbored some misplaced guilt over that night – which she shouldn’t. I nudged the toe of her boot with the toe of mine and she looked up from her introspective reverie and smiled at me, genuinely.

I smiled back and asked, “So what’s this about your memaw’s ghost?”

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