Just Wanna Testify (22 page)

When Peachy told her that Blue was going to add five Morehouse seniors in tuxes to her staff for the night to help with the overflow crowd, she was delighted. “They can be our official greeters,” she said, making a note in a tiny spiral pad hanging around her neck on a silver chain. “Nothing makes people feel special like being greeted by a man in a nice tuxedo. Tell Blue I owe him one.”

“How about me?” Peachy said in mock reproach. “I’m the one who’s going to have to find them some formal clothes at the last minute.”

“Stop complaining, Peachy Nolan,” she said. “You got enough white dinner jackets in your own closet to outfit half the men in West End without ever darkening the doorsteps at Genghis Formal Rentals.”

“They ain’t ready for my look yet,” Peachy said. “First they gotta master the basics.”

The basics were about all they could expect only two days out, Peachy said when he got the request, but Blue said it was important to keep the vamps as tranquil as possible. If they arrived and didn’t see the guys right away, they might suspect something was up. This way, with all five boys in plain sight, the vamps would relax and whatever went down would be a lot easier to handle. That made sense to Peachy and he called around to a few places and got things lined up for a fitting that evening and a rush job on the alternations so he could pick everything up on Saturday morning.

Once he got that straightened out, he stopped by the lumberyard
and picked up six hardwood stakes, all sharpened to a point at both ends. At just under two feet, the length Blue had requested, they fit perfectly into a bright red souvenir golf bag somebody had given Peachy after a Savannah golf tournament that concluded with a banquet on the island. He had tossed it in the trunk of his car intending to pass it on to one of his friends who actually played the game. Now he realized, he might have a use for it after all. He dropped the stakes carefully into the bag. He didn’t want to think about what they were going to have to do with those sharpened sticks and he sure didn’t want Abbie thinking about it. He stashed the bag in the back of a closet at Abbie’s house, safely out of sight, until he got further instructions from Blue.

“Why’d you put them in a golf bag?” Henry wanted to know as Peachy gave Blue the update on his to-do list. “You don’t even play golf.”

“Where do you expect me to put them, man?” Peachy said, sounding a little annoyed. He didn’t really think Henry had the right to ask questions yet. He hadn’t been around long enough. “It ain’t like I can stick it in the case with my guitar.”

“Henry will come by and pick up the bag later,” Blue said, cutting off their exchange. “You got it from there?”

Henry nodded.

Blue looked at his watch. “The guys will be here in a few minutes. Any questions?”

Henry spoke up again. “Were you able to find out anything about the bleeding?”

Blue shook his head. “Nothing definitive, so be prepared to clean up afterward.”

Peachy shook his head. “Damn!”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’d just like to kick those boys’ young asses for getting us caught up in this crazy shit.”

Blue shrugged. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. Once the vamps showed up in that rap video, it was just a matter of time.”

“So you think this is going to happen again?” Peachy said.

“I don’t know.” Blue looked at his friend, wishing he could give a different answer. “But if they do, we’ll be ready.”

Henry and Peachy looked at each other and back at Blue.

“Oh, yeah, we’ll be ready,” Peachy said.

“Good.” Blue turned to Henry. “Why don’t you go bring these guys around so we can get this over with? I don’t want to spend any more time with them than I have to.”

Henry closed the door behind him and headed toward the café, where Jake had been told to keep an eye on the boys until they were called.

“You sound like you’re as tired of these fools as I am,” Peachy said.

“I just have to keep reminding myself that I’m not doing it for them,” Blue said. “I’m doing it for us.”

Peachy frowned. “How you figure that?”

Blue stood and took his empty espresso cup over to the bar. When he turned back to Peachy he sounded weary. “You know, I stood here yesterday for an hour and listened to five different women tell me about the men in their lives and not one of those women had a good-man story. Not one.”

Peachy wasn’t as surprised as he wanted to be. “Puts a lot more weight than we need on those of us who’ve still got some sense, I guess.”

“But that means something,” Blue said. “It means something I hadn’t let myself really think about before.”

“What’s that?” Peachy didn’t like to hear that tone in Blue’s voice. Blue was about solutions, not regrets.

“I’ve been focused on the really bad guys, the ones who are the most dangerous,” Blue said. “The ones who are already so damaged that nothing I can say or do can change the way they cut a path through the world. Those are the ones I know how to handle, and if I’m ever called upon to answer for what I’ve done to get them out of West End, I have nothing to hide.”

Peachy turned in his chair and looked at his friend. “Twelve years ago when they let that fiend walk free after he killed my baby sister, and who even knows to this day how many other black women,
you stepped up
. When nobody did a damn thing, you took responsibility, and you made the men around here act like men.”

“I guess I should have remembered to spread the word a little more.”

Peachy shook his head. “It ain’t like these boys ain’t been told, Blue. They just didn’t choose to listen.”

Outside in the hallway, they could hear Henry and the students approaching. Blue stood up and buttoned his jacket, his eyes clearing along with his thoughts. Peachy could see him considering the options and making his decision.

“So what are you going to do with them?” Peachy said.

“There’s only one thing to do,” Blue said. “I’m going to teach them how to listen.”

Iona Williams knew that if anybody had six silver candelabra lying around the house, it would be Abbie. Anyone who had taken any of Abbie’s classes or gone on her retreats knew that candles played a big part in setting the mood that Abbie was so good at creating. Her admirers all over the country often sent her beautiful candles and all manner of lovely holders for them, so she had an eclectic collection that grew with each new group that passed through the ocean room and wanted to say thank you by leaving something beautiful behind.

The idea of collecting things did not appeal to Abbie, no matter how beautiful those things were, but the lovingly chosen, carefully packed gifts from women whose lives she had touched moved her and strengthened her resolve. She would send them handwritten thank-you notes and welcome the new addition. When Iona asked if she could borrow some of Abbie’s silver to make sure the overflow ballroom was as beautiful and festive as the club downstairs, she
agreed immediately and promised to polish up the showpieces and bring them over later that afternoon.

“That would be great,” Iona said. “I want you to take a look at everything anyway and tell me what you think. This is the biggest crowd we’ve ever had.”

“I told Peachy if they keep this up, he’ll have to move the whole thing upstairs,” Abbie said, wishing she could tell Iona what was really on her mind.

“Good luck with that,” Iona said, laughing. “These guys are superstitious. They think it’s the Club Zebra magic that makes it work. Every time I bring up the idea of a bigger space, Peachy just rolls his eyes and says, ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.’ ”

Just the word
superstitious
made a vampire thought pop into Abbie’s mind. If Club Zebra did have some kind of magical effect on this benefit, she hoped those powers would be in full force on Saturday night.

“Abbie?” Iona said, sounding concerned.

Her mind had wandered. “Yes, I’m here.”

“You okay?”

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Well, once this is all over, you need to go on back to that island for a while and let your mind roll on,” Iona said. “The sisterhood can spare you for a little of that rest and reflection you’re always urging on the rest of us.”

That made Abbie smile. After she had finally coaxed Iona into trying meditation, her friend had become a real devotee and she never missed a sunrise. It made sense to her that you could train your mind to be at peace the same way you could train your fingers to play Mozart.

“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Abbie said, assuming things went smoothly on Saturday night. “Thanks for reminding me.”

“Physician, heal thyself,” Iona said. “See you later!”

Abbie wasn’t sure about her supply of silver polish, but she knew exactly where the silver candelabra were. She always stored them in
the back of the closet on the top shelf, lovingly wrapped in soft, white baby blankets to keep down tarnishing while they waited to be rotated out to take their turn in the ocean room. Last year, one of the women who had attended a Tybee retreat had gone to Mexico for a spiritual gathering soon afterward and shipped Abbie two real beauties that held ten candles each and stood almost four feet tall when the tapers were inserted. What better time to break them in?

As she headed down the hall to the back bedroom, Abbie was glad to have a task to occupy her mind. Ever since she and Peachy left Blue and Regina’s house, she had been feeling alternating waves of sorrow, fear, and helplessness, none of which were particularly empowering emotions, and certainly ones that could do major damage if you let them hang around too long.

If Abbie had ever doubted it, the dismal outcome of the meeting with the reluctant character witnesses yesterday was proof that the gulf between the sexes was even wider than she thought. Much wider. She was just sorry the consequences of that distance were going to involve some men she loved in an act of community defense that was necessary, but which brought tears to Abbie’s eyes. She wondered if this was how women always felt sending men off to do battle against the invaders, and hoped that the things these men were required to do and see and be didn’t so damage their humanity that they were lost to their families forever.

Abbie loved the sweet heart of Peachy Nolan and she didn’t want to see it damaged by the need to engage in mortal combat with the undead, which was probably an oxymoron anyway. She was glad Regina was going to meet her at Club Zebra later so they could try and figure out what to do to head off a confrontation between humans and vamps from which no good could come. There had to be another way. There had to be something in these female creatures to which she and Regina could appeal, but what could it be?

Abbie flipped on the back bedroom light and opened the closet door. The first thing she saw was the big red golf bag leaning against the closet’s back wall like she had put it there herself. Abbie
frowned. Nobody had been in the house except her and Peachy and neither one of them had ever played golf. She was as surprised as if she had found a litter of newborn kittens mewling on the closet floor, looking for their mother. She leaned over to peek inside the bag, unsure that something wasn’t going to jump or crawl or fly out. With vampires in town, she supposed anything was possible. She didn’t see any golf clubs sticking up, so maybe it was empty. But maybe it wasn’t, she thought. This was no time to be careless. She leaned over a little farther and saw only what looked like a bunch of poles or sticks of some kind. What was Peachy up to now? Curious, she reached down and pulled out one of the sticks. It was solid and seemed to be made of some kind of highly polished hardwood. Not until she pulled it all the way out of the bag did she notice that it was sharpened at both ends.

“Sit down,” Blue said when the boys assembled in front of him as if they were waiting for inspection. They dropped immediately into the five chairs Henry had set up behind them. Blue remained standing.

“I ought to let them take all five of you,” he said, and the boys drew in their breath in a collective gasp. “The truth is, I spent a lot of time last night trying to talk myself into doing just that, but I can’t. It sets a bad precedent for a man in my position to allow anyone or anything to come into my backyard and take anybody anywhere against their will.”