Chapter 18: The Coven of Bitches

Kirby loaded wine glasses into the overhead racks. Butch was doing the same at the other end of the bar. “Hey,” he said to get her attention. “It occurs to me that I don’t have one of those license things that says I took the course to teach me how to serve liquor in Oklahoma. Isn’t that a thing here?”

“Puh-lease,” drawled Butch. “You don’t think that ABLE inspects this place, do you? Or that the cops have ever been here—at least since Miss Adelaide’s owned the place?

“I hadn’t actually thought about it. So, I’m guessing they don’t.”

“It’s one of the nice things about working for a sorceress,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. Miss Adelaide pays her taxes and doesn’t allow anything dark to happen in her place. But the little things, like regulations and bullshit, just don’t bother us here. Anything else you need to know?”

Kirby put the wine glasses in his hands down on the bar and faced her. “Can I ask you something kind of personal? If I’m somehow out of line, you can just tell me to shut up. It’s cool.”

She turned to him and grinned that classically handsome, movie-star grin. “Right there. On the bar, right in front of where you’re standin’,” she said with a wink. “And it was fantastic, absolutely toe-curlin’. That man can really work me over. He—” It may have been the open-mouthed stare on his face that brought her up short. “Uh, okay. So, you weren’t asking about that. That’s alright. As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m not shy. Ask away. What’s on your mind?” She watched him ponder his next statement, then spoke again, right when he opened his mouth to speak. “What’s the matter, having trouble gettin’ the picture out of your mind? Me ‘n’ Don, right there on the bar, gyratin’ in ecstasy?” She grinned.

Kirby, finding the will to speak only in the fear that she would deliver an even more graphic description of her afternoon delights, said, “Yeah, thanks for that. I’m more of a ‘words’ guy and I hadn’t actually had that mental picture until you suggested it. That’ll give me something to entertain myself with in the long, lonely hours of my life.”

She grinned even more broadly, until it seemed like the corners of her mouth might just reach her ears. “You know it will!”

“Anyway, if I may continue, my question is about you. I mean, this is a lesbian bar and you’re... you’re a... uh… What I mean is how do you identify?”

She gave him what looked like the sardonic version of her smile. “So, I work in a lesbian bar, and you want to know how I identify. Well, usually I just look at their driver’s license and, if they’re over 21 and have the little box that says ‘likes pussy’ checked, I let ‘em in.”

“Yeah. Ha ha. You really are a riot, Butch,” he deadpanned. “You know what I mean. Tell me to shut the fuck up if you want to, but I just don’t want to use the wrong label or pronoun or whatever. I believe in being respectful.”

“Look, workin’ here involves havin’ people makin’ all kinds of assumptions. The assumptions sometimes suck, but I deal with it. Customer service, y’know? The questions I get are usually better than the assumptions, but I get tired of the questions too, sometimes.” Kirby started to apologize but she shook her head and waved him off. “I get asked if I’m trans—both if I’m a trans-man and if I’m a trans-woman. I get asked if I’m queer, or genderqueer, and lots of other things. The thing that bugs me is when total strangers think I owe them sort of explanation regarding things I might regard as personal, like their idle curiosity gives them a pass to just ask whatever the fuck they want about my private life. They just—”

“I’m really sorry if I—”

“Not you, man. Adelaide says you’re good people. Hell, you already know more about my sex life than almost any customer who ever came through here. I’m glad you got the chance to meet Don.”

“Thanks.”

“Look, I get that the way I present gives people questions. I’m used to that by now. I was just trying to say that your question came from a decent place and wasn’t the ‘idle curiosity,’ bullshit-type question. As for pronouns, I prefer ‘she’. I identify as a straight woman. I like the pork sword, man. I know that I fit the definition of non-binary, or genderqueer, and I don’t take offense at that label at all. Honestly, though, I have always thought of myself as a woman and Don makes me feel like one, which is how I knew he was the one for me. Sure, maybe this,” and she indicated herself with a gesture that encompassed her chiseled good looks, broad shoulders, significant breasts, and well-muscled frame, “isn’t what your typical Oklahoman pictures when they think of a woman, but fuck ‘em. I’ll be whatever damn kind of woman I want to be and, if they can’t handle it, they can jump right up their own assholes and disappear.”

“Alright,” he said, glad to have let her guide him through that conversational minefield.

“Oh, and when it comes to the customers, I call everyone—everyone whose preferred pronouns I don’t know—who is unmistakably dressed like a woman ‘ma’am’ and everybody else ‘friend’ or ‘pal’. I don’t make assumptions about anyone’s genetics or identity; I just look at how they’re dressed. It’s the best way I’ve found to avoid rufflin’ feathers. And with the pronouns it’s the same. Dressed like a woman, call her ‘she’. Everybody else, call them ‘they’. I’m sure somebody out there has a better, more correct, way to handle it, but we’re in bass-ackwards Oklahoma, so I’m just doing the best I can.”

“Sounds like good advice. What else should I know?”

“Well, let’s get the last of these glasses in the racks and I’ll show you how to turn on the sign.” They returned to the task at hand.

The switch for the sign was located on the ground floor in an electrical closet. After they flipped it, Butch took him outside through the back door to see the neon sign. From the small parking lot in the back, they looked up at the illuminated letters spelling out “CoB” vertically, one above the other. The larger ‘C’ and ‘B’ were designed in an elegant, emerald-green cursive and the smaller, more nondescript ‘o’ shone in a shade of yellow between lemon and gold. Kirby nodded and began to turn away, then stopped and looked back at the sign. Something else was spelled out up there. It was—and yet it was not—part of the sign. He found himself squinting and turning his head to catch a better glimpse.

“Can you see it?”

“Almost,” he grunted, still squinting and tilting his head, trying to not-see the sorcery.

“Try this.” She handed him a ring of dull metal about two inches in diameter. “Just look through it.”

He held it up to his eye and looked up at the sign. The sun was far from the horizon, but he could see the sign glowing brightly through the ring. “Coven of Bitches,” its sorcerous neon brilliance read.

“Yeah, okay, now I get what Don said earlier about you working at the Coven of Bitches. I thought he was just making some kind of joke,” he said. “So, nobody but the mumbo-jumbo crowd can see anything but ‘CoB’, huh?”

“That’s about it, man. Miss Adelaide had one of her apprentices make me that ring about ten years ago as some sort of project for their lessons. Before I developed my second sight, it let me see the weird shit when I needed to. It also comes in handy for seeing things hidden or disguised with magic. If I get a whiff of the spooky stuff, I can whip this out to see what I’m missing.”

“So, who comes here? If that sign is only fully visible to the magical people, are all of the customers sorceresses?”

“Nah. Maybe half on any given night are part of the spooky crowd, and most of the magic types who come in are associated with the Guild of Obligation. The rest wound up here for other reasons and just liked the place.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“The what? Is that what Adelaide’s guild is called?”

“That’s it,” she said.

“Are you a member? Or do you have to be an actual sorceress to join?”

“I’m... I’m like a member of the auxiliary,” she explained. “I’ve sworn the oath and I follow the rules, but I don’t get a vote. Mainly, I just work for Miss Adelaide, and I represent her when she sends me on errands.”

“Like this morning?”

“Yeah, like this morning,”

“You know what was weird about this morning?”

Butch gave him a look. “Damned near everything.”

He clarified. “What was weird for me this morning was that I wasn’t afraid of the Chumley. That fucking Abyssal wolf terrified me so badly that I wanted to piss myself, curl into a ball, and die. But the thing this morning—although it freaked me out a bit when it came up out of the ground like that—didn’t really scare me. That’s weird, right?”

“Maybe, but different creepies have different effects on you. I think it has to do with what the creatures represent. I’m not the expert, but Miss Adelaide says the wolf you fought was a piece of the Abyss on legs. An absolutely black, bottomless void sounds like enough to scare anybody. Compared to that, whatever that terrananti thing this morning represented has got to be pretty tame.”

He nodded and handed back the metal ring, which she threaded onto a chain around her neck and tucked into her shirt. Without the ring, he could still see most of the sorcerous neon sign, although not as clearly as he had been able to with it. On an impulse, he made a circle of his stained thumb and forefinger and held it up to his eye.

“Well I’ll be damned!” he almost shouted with the discovery. “Would you look at that!”

“What? Are you seeing it seeing it?”

“Yeah!. I can really see this stuff now! This is cool. Here, look through my fingers.”

“I’m sure it’s pretty cool, man.” She took a quick peek through the circle of his fingers. “But I’ve seen it so much that I can mostly see it without any help. Right now, though, we need bags in the trash cans, more high ball glasses, and we’ve still gotta count the registers before we open.” She led him down the neon-lit stairs, through the club’s main door, and to the tasks that awaited.

ͽʘͼ

Kirby’s first night behind the bar at the Coven of Bitches began in awkwardness and boredom. The small early crowd were regulars, women who appeared to be in their early-to-mid-forties. They looked askance at him and seated themselves at Butch’s end of the bar. Kirby polished the already-shiny rail and wiped down the fixtures he had already cleaned and polished. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed several gestures made and heads nodded in his direction. Quiet questions were voiced. Butch, who did not appear to be a fan of quiet, answered loudly, “Oh, him? That’s Kirby. He’s a good egg. Miss Adelaide absolutely loves him—and y’all know I need some help in here when it gets crowded!”

One of the women said something he could not quite hear, but he heard Butch’s response. “He’s got this thing with his hand, scars or somethin’, and he’s self-conscious about it. It’s not that bad to look at, really, but he’s really sensitive about it and doesn’t wanna freak anybody out or anythin’.”

There were some nods and a few more covert glances in his direction. Kirby had to fight himself to keep from adjusting the Velcro strap on the replacement glove that Katherine, Adelaide’s secretary, had brought down just before opening. He felt very visible, like a turtle in a terrarium. More of the forty-something bunch arrived and the first group welcomed them boisterously. The whole bunch moved to the area with the tables, pushed several together, and settled down to socialize.

Before they had opened the doors to the public, Butch had taken him into the DJ booth and shown him how to turn on the sound system. A dozen or so USB drives were velcroed to a small board on the side of the booth, some labeled, some not. She had plugged one of the unlabeled ones into the equipment and pressed PLAY on one of the touchscreen monitors. Music began pumping through speakers around the club. “Don’t worry, it’ll get good and loud whenever the DJ shows up.”

Over the course of the next couple of hours, Kirby poured a handful of glasses of wine, mixed two rum-and-cokes, and spent the rest of the time backing the bar for Butch, fetching ice, renewing supplies, and hauling away empty glasses. He knew the customers—most of them, anyway—were not trying to give him the cold shoulder, but he felt a rejected, nonetheless. Sure, it was easy to understand that Butch was their longtime bartender, their friendly and familiar mixologist, and they wanted to stick with what was familiar, with their friend. He understood that it would take them time to warm up to him. But he was, currently, the only burly, bearded Y-chromosome bearer in a club that catered almost exclusively to lesbians. They might never warm up to him.

As the club grew more crowded, the stools on his end of the bar eventually filled. He put on his warmest smile, poured the drinks, took the money, and tried to give the customers as much of his dubious conversational charm as he thought they were in the mood for.

Kirby liked this sort of professional friendliness. It was so much easier to be warm, somewhat interesting, and humorous when the conversations were limited in scope and had no real consequences beyond the size of his putative tip. How easy it was to talk to women when your opening line was always, “Good evening, what can I get you?” There was no pressure to meet that special someone, or even to get a phone number. Even if he had been inclined to begin an onslaught of romantic flirtation designed to identify the next love of his life, the setting rendered his odds of success extremely remote.

At nine the DJ arrived, a slender Hispanic woman wearing a red track suit, white T-shirt, and baseball cap. She looked at Kirby and did a bit of a double-take, then greeted Butch. Butch introduced her to Kirby as DJ La Fuega, and they shook hands. She crossed to the DJ booth and began her set. People had been dancing before the arrival of the DJ, but cheers went up as the house lights went down. Arrays of colored lights above the dancefloor fired up, and the disco ball started spinning. The music grew louder.

For the first time in his life, the smoke did not bother Kirby. Several customers sitting on his side of the bar had requested ashtrays and lit cigarettes, but the smoke seemed to rise straight up and vanish. A large vacuum hood might have produced the same effect, but there was none in sight. He shrugged and chalked it up to magic.

During a brief lull in the demand for a bartender’s attention, he made a circle of his gloved thumb and forefinger and held it up to his eye. What he saw was a mystery to him. Something about the lights around the dance floor glowed, and he saw the telltale “stuff” he had come to recognize as enchantments. The speakers through which the dance music pumped seemed to be magicked-up as well. A glance at the entrance revealed a great, glowing archway to his second sight and he saw a smaller archway over the emergency exit. Protective magic, maybe? To keep out bad stuff?

How many of these women are sorceresses? What could they do with their magic? How powerful were they? Could the asshole who had set a trap to kill me be in the club right now? Have I already served my would-be killer a white wine spritzer? Amy had told him already that no sane person would dare start trouble at the club, but it also sounded like making an attempt on Adelaide’s life was something no sane person would undertake. Someone crazy or desperate enough to try one might try the other.

It was nearly eleven before Amy showed up, and when she did Kirby almost failed to notice her. His eyes were drawn to the woman to whose hand Amy clung possessively. The woman was tall, very tall. She towered almost impossibly over Amy, Kirby, and everyone else in the bar. She looked to be seven feet tall, but he knew his mind likely exaggerated this. She did, however, stand at least a foot taller than Amy. He had to look up to meet her eyes, her large, sapphire-blue eyes. Her skin was pale and smooth, and she wore her dark hair long. Had she been a normal height, he would have called her svelte or, perhaps, waif-like, but he was incapable of judging someone built to her scale. She was beautiful, though. He felt his heart catch in his throat.

“Kirbeeee!” shouted Amy over the music. She bounced up to the bar and leaned past the hand he had extended for a shake and pinched his cheek, like an affectionate aunt. “How’s my favorite beard-o?” The looseness of her expression, her enunciation, told him she was already more than slightly tipsy.

He looked at her and smiled, but it was hard not to look at her companion. “So far, so good. You seem to be having fun.”

“Best time ever!” She took the tall woman’s hand again. “Kirby, this is Mutt, my special someone.”

“Nice to see you again, Mr. Kirby,” the very tall, very gorgeous woman said, and extended her hand.

Entirely failing to keep the look of utter puzzlement from his face, he shook her hand over the bar and noted the soft, smooth skin.

Amy, both confused and tipsy, looked back and forth between their faces. “Wait! You two know each other?”

Kirby studied the tall woman, no less confused.

Amy’s ‘special someone’ explained. “We taught together at Trimpe Middle School, maybe four years ago. Matilda Ditka. I was over in the Science Building.”

Kirby had vague memories of a tall, blonde woman in a sweat suit. “You were a coach?” he asked.

“Yeah—although not anymore. I’m a newly minted assistant principal. Amy took me out to celebrate.”

“Congratulations!” To be safe, he added two thumbs up, just in case his congratulations were not enough.

The very tall woman’s brilliant smile sent a thrill through him, then she added her own thumbs up. “Thanks!”

“I wanna dance,” said Amy with that friendly petulance into which the inebriated often lapse. “Let’s go dance!”

He gestured to the dance floor. “Don’t let me stop you, ladies. It’s a dance club, after all.”

“Byeeee, Kirbeeee!” Amy shouted over her shoulder as she dragged her date to the dance floor.

“Bye,” he said, mostly to himself, unable to take his eyes from the taller woman until a customer caught his attention and ordered a drink.