VenCo(54)

“Days,” Meena said.

“Nine months is like forever, guys.”

Stella leaned over and put a hand on Lucky’s shoulder. For once, she was doing the reeling in. “No, no, Lucky. She said days.”

“Nine days?” Freya dropped her head onto her forearms on the table.

“We have nine days left now to find the seventh spoon, that is correct.” Meena said it more to herself than to the group. It was the first time she’d properly acknowledged how fucked they were at this point. Hearing it from the Crone was one thing. Saying it to the group was entirely another.

“But we don’t know where the next one is!” Even Morticia was animated now. “I mean, it could be anywhere—Alaska. Regina, even.”

Meena held her hands up, palms out, and motioned for them to quiet down. “Lucille?”

The Tender paused in her work of separating the empty glasses by some distinction known only to her into two pyramids. “Yup?”

“I think it’s time for another round.”

“Coming.”

Meena waited until the drinks were in front of them before continuing. “Yes, we only have nine days. But we are all together, and safe. Lucille is getting us to the next step. And I feel something I haven’t felt before.”

“What’s that?” Freya was slurring a bit.

Meena lifted her glass, and the others mimicked the motion. She took a deep breath and lied. She had to lie, because right now what they needed was to be inspired. “I feel hopeful. Because of you, all of you. With this group of crafty-ass witches, we’re sure to succeed. To hope!”

They raised their glasses to one another. “To hope!” And then tipped the clear liquid down their throats.

Lucille plugged the jukebox back in and started bringing around large glasses of clear liquid with ice chips and greasy lemon wedges.

“What’s this, more gin?” Stella asked.

“Water. Ritual’s done, the work is over. Now we celebrate.” Lucille smiled at the older woman indulgently, flashing her gold teeth, which Stella loved. “Lucky,” she hollered, “next time we’re at the dentist, I need to get my dentures souped-up.” And she drank deep. They all did.



On the weaving walk to the Sailor’s Inn, Freya and Stella hung on to each other, while Wendy was trying to skip, which just looked like she was almost falling, over and over. Meena caught up to Lucky.

“Hey, I have a question for you. What’s up with your dreams?”

Lucky screwed up her face. “What do you mean? Like, what I want to do with my life?”

Meena found that exceptionally funny, and it took her a moment to compose herself. “No, no, no. I mean your actual dreams. They’re all slow. They are . . .” She searched for the words. “They’re set with booby traps.”

“How do you know about my dreams?”

“I visited you, before you came. Don’t you remember?” Lucky shook her head. “Well, we’ll work on your recall later, as you grow into your power. So how do you do it? The traps? Stopping people from moving?”

“Oh, that’s an Arnya special. My mom taught me how to protect myself when I slept. I used to get bad nightmares and she wasn’t always home to deal with them, so she showed me how to make sure the boogeyman or whatever-the-fuck couldn’t get me.”

Lucky stopped for a moment, narrowing her eyes, deepening her voice, and pointing at Meena in an approximation of her mother, uneven sway and all. “Make it impossible for the monsters to move. Just like real life, you can’t get caught if the fuckers can’t catch up.”

Meena nodded. “Damn, she had some power. Not sure she’d ever get hired to teach kindergarten, but still.”

“Yeah, she was powerful, alright,” Lucky answered. Then she remembered: “Hey, Freya said I need to watch out for some Bennys or something? Who the hell is that?”

Meena looked up the road, all curved and eerily empty. Ahead of them was a tourist information centre, a corner store, the required fish-and-chips stand, and the inn. The other women were staggering along at their own pace, no one within earshot.

“It’s the Benandanti. They’re an old group. The name is Italian and translates to ‘Good Walkers.’ They’re men who said they were born with a caul on their pointy little heads, so they could see visions and leave their bodies at night and other stuff that was totally not witchy at all,” Meena said, her words dripping with sarcasm. “So stupid. They really thought their penises and a story about being godly would keep the Inquisition off their asses.”

Wendy had come up behind them while Meena was talking. “Sorghum,” she blurted loudly, her volume control thrown off by the vodka. She hiccupped.

“What?” Lucky asked.

“They used sorghum, grain grass, to fight. Pretty shitty weapon, if you ask me, unless those old witches had bad allergies.” Then she broke out in a peal of laughter.

“I have to get this lady to bed,” Meena said, hauling Wendy back from where she’d veered into the centre of the road.

“So why do we have to watch out for them now? If they’re from back then? If they were Inquisited, or whatever?”

Meena let Lucky’s question hang for a minute, the quiet punctuated by their footsteps on the gravel shoulder and Wendy’s boozy hiccups.