Page 70 of Stronger Than Blood
The evil prick, as I was now thinking of him, only occasionally made himself known and no longer just to me. He’d pinchedRory once while he was sitting next to Kalinda watching TV. Kalinda had done some spell that’d hit him so hard, Rory said he’d actually heard the jackass react. That thought made me more than a little happy.
I would occasionally feel him watching, but since the night I’d released his victims, he’d mostly left me alone. I knew he wouldn’t forever, but damn, it felt good for him to fear me for a change.
As the Christmas holiday rolled in, we filled the home with our family, just as we had all the years I’d grown up here. Hors d'oeuvres were put out early in the day, and cousins came and went, mostly to spend time with Granny, before they were off to be with their own families.
As Granny entertained her guests, Kalinda and I put together our holiday dinner. Around five, the last of our cousins left, and when we got a knock at the door, I winked at Rory, hoping our surprise for Kalinda had worked out.
“Kalinda, do you mind getting that? Sorry, I’ve got my hands covered in frosting.”
When she didn’t respond, I knew we’d probably been found out. It’s virtually impossible to surprise a psychic, after all.
I came out of the kitchen just as Kalinda opened the door and almost lost her footing as her niece embraced her in a hug. “Madame Baptiste, it’s an honor to have you in our home,” I said as I winked at Kalinda, who appeared genuinely surprised.
“Honey, you can call me Dupris,” she said, then looked at her aunt, who was frowning. “Don’t get that look, auntie. I have the respect I need in New Orleans. Here with friends, I don’t need the honorific.”
Kalinda hugged her niece again. “I guess I really have passed the baton because I had no idea you were coming.”
Rory came back to the kitchen with me while Dupris, Kalinda, and Granny Ida talked in the living room. Luckily, Granny Idahad improved significantly since she’d come home. I watched throughout the day to see if she was tiring, but she’d slept late and seemed to be in good spirits even now.
I was about to go upstairs to make up a bed for Dupris when I saw her staring at the corner of the living room. A cold chill danced up my spine as I realized who she was looking at. When she glanced my way, she had a concerned expression on her face, which she quickly schooled.
I sighed but smiled. I hadn’t even thought of his evil in months. Things were just happy, but of course, I knew he was still there.
All I had to do was make up the bed for her visit. I was finishing up when Dupris came into the room carrying her luggage. “Hi! Sorry, I meant to bring that up for you,” I said, gesturing toward her suitcase.
Dupris laughed. “There’s no need to wait on me, Mick. We’re all but family now.”
I loved that and smiled. “Thanks. So, can I call you cuz, or Madam cuz, or something?”
“Something,” she said and went to put the suitcase on the cedar chest under the window. “Mick, Auntie Kalinda told me a bit about what you’re dealing with and even your ritual that calmed things down, but I didn’t expect to see him here… not so plainly.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we haven’t been able to get rid of him. He lingers, but at least he isn’t able to hurt me…us… like he used to.”
“I… well, I did some research. I think I might be able to help.”
I turned toward her and gave her my full attention. “Really? How?”
Dupris reached into her pocket and pulled out a feather. “I found this just as I was about to get into the taxi to take me to the airport in New Orleans. Both my aunt and I, now that I’m here,feel things are coming to a head. When the time comes, you will need to let things go. I think this feather represents what that might look like. I can’t see everything, not when or even what it will look like when it’s time for that horrible man to leave, but when itistime, you should imagine lifting your hand and letting a feather drop. Letting things go and happen like they should.”
I immediately knew she must mean letting Granny Ida go, but I didn’t say that. It was Christmas, a time for us to make good memories, not dwell on what we were about to lose.
I went over and hugged her, thanking her for her insight, then took the feather. I went into my room, and placed the feather on my dresser. A reminder that when it was time, I would have to let go, like it or not.
That night, we ate, sang, watched old Christmas movies, exchanged gifts, ate too much dessert, ’cause I made way too many of them for the holiday, and enjoyed an amazing night together.
The next day, Joann came to sit with Granny while Kalinda, Rory, and I showed Dupris the new distillery. We were still waiting for the final inspection and approval to open from the state, but Kalinda said her guides had shown her that would happen around February. So, we'd decided we could use the time to experiment with different types of spirits we could make.
In honor of Uncle Eddie, we made moonshine our main focus. We weren’t very clever in the naming, just calling it Uncle Eddie’s Shine, which Kalinda said he was ecstatic about. I wasn’t surprised considering he’d pushed so hard for his name to be the one we chose for the business itself.
We also had a few other high-quality spirits, which were aging in wine barrels in the basement. According to Bev, we’d need that for when we were entertaining our bigwigs in the safe.
Thank all that was good, for Bev. She understood the business much better than she’d presented when we’d first met her. Sheknew what we needed to make and what people would want to purchase from our microdistillery, but she’d also arranged for us to sell spirits all over the Southeast, all from small microdistilleries similar to ours.
“Support one another. That’s how you succeed in a world when the big guys own most of the market,” she’d told us. Of course, we all agreed, and we loved the idea of not only selling our spirits in other markets but also offering products from other small business owners.
Bev had also suggested that since we weren’t trying to be a big distributor, we turn the store into a tourist attraction. We had already stocked our shelves with items people could use to cook with our shine, pretty shot glasses, and even T-shirts and “fun merch,” as she’d called it, with our name, Eddie’s Spirits, printed on them.
Even though we couldn’t sell our moonshine yet, we were able to open the doors, and to my surprise, we’d already sold a lot of those things. I was so happy Bev was handling all that because it was not my specialty.
