Club Dead

open after noon on Saturdays.” The young woman, whose hands were decorated with an impressive set of diamond rings, kept riffling through a copy of Southern Living while Janice worked on her head.
    “Does this sound good?” she asked Janice. “Ginger meatballs?” One glowing fingernail pointed to the recipe.
    “Kind of oriental?” Janice asked.
    “Um, sort of.” She read the recipe intently. “No one else would be serving them,” she muttered. “You could stick toothpicks in ’em.”
    “Sookie, what are you doing today?” Janice asked, when she was sure her customer was thinking about ground beef.
    “Just hanging out,” I said. I shrugged. “Your brother’s out running errands, his note said.”
    “He left you a note to tell you what he was doing? Girl, you should be proud. That man hasn’t set pen to paper since high school.” She gave me a sideways look and grinned. “You all have a good time last night?”
    I thought it over. “Ah, it was okay,” I said hesitantly. The dancing had been fun, anyway.
    Janice burst out laughing. “If you have to think about it that hard, it must not have been a perfect evening.”
    “Well, no,” I admitted. “There was like a little fight in the bar, and a man had to be evicted. And then, Debbie was there.”
    “How did her engagement party go?”
    “There was quite a crowd at her table,” I said. “But she came over after a while and asked a lot of questions.” I smiled reminiscently. “She sure didn’t like seeing Alcide with someone else!”
    Janice laughed again.
    “Who got engaged?” asked her customer, having decided against the recipe.
    “Oh, Debbie Pelt? Used to go with my brother?” Janice said.
    “I know her,” said the black-haired woman, pleasure in her voice. “She used to date your brother, Alcide? And now she’s marrying someone else?”
    “Marrying Charles Clausen,” Janice said, nodding gravely. “You know him?”
    “Sure I do! We went to high school together. He’s marrying Debbie Pelt? Well, better him than your brother,” Black Hair said confidentially.
    “I’d already figured that out,” Janice said. “You know something I don’t know, though?”
    “That Debbie, she’s into some weird stuff,” Black Hair said, raising her eyebrows to mark deep significance.
    “Like what?” I asked, hardly breathing as I waited to hear what would come out. Could it be that this woman actually knew about shape-shifting, about werewolves? My eyes met Janice’s and I saw the same apprehension in them.
    Janice knew about her brother. She knew about his world.
    And she knew I did, too.
    “Devil worship, they say,” Black Hair said. “Witchcraft.”
    We both gaped at her reflection in the mirror. She had gotten the reaction she’d been looking for. She gave a satisfied nod. Devil worship and witchcraft weren’t synonymous, but I wasn’t going to argue with this woman; this was the wrong time and place.
    “Yes, ma’am, that’s what I hear. At every full moon, she and some friends of hers go out in the woods and do stuff. No one seems to know exactly what,” she admitted.
    Janice and I exhaled simultaneously.
    “Oh, my goodness,” I said weakly.
    “Then my brother’s well out of a relationship with her. We don’t hold with such doings,” Janice said righteously.
    “Of course not,” I agreed.
    We didn’t meet each other’s eyes.
    After that little passage, I made motions about leaving, but Janice asked me what I was wearing that night.
    “Oh, it’s kind of a champagne color,” I said. “Kind of a shiny beige.”
    “Then the red nails won’t do,” Janice said. “Corinne!”
    Despite all my protests, I left the shop with bronze finger- and toenails, and Jarvis worked on my hair again. I tried to pay Janice, but the most she would let me do was tip her employees.
    “I’ve never been pampered so much in my life,” I told her.
    “What do you do, Sookie?” Somehow that hadn’t come up the day before.
    “I’m a barmaid,” I said.
    “That is a change from Debbie,” Janice said. She looked thoughtful.
    “Oh, yeah? What does Debbie do?”
    “She’s a legal assistant.”
    Debbie definitely had an educational edge. I’d never been able to manage college; financially, it would have been rough, though I could’ve found a way, I guess. But my disability had made it hard enough to get out of high school. A telepathic teenager has an extremely hard time of it, let me tell you. And I had so little