Going Nowhere

Chapter 10 - Beetroot sherry

"How many times did you have to shower to get the mucus out?" Joel asked as he parked the car in the small parking lot next to the boat ramp.

"Three," I mumbled and let my gaze slide around Cathedral Park, not entirely sure what I was looking for.

The stupid purse wouldn't just come running out of the rhododendron bushes shouting my name. Or, it might, since it apparently had magical powers, but I hoped it wouldn't because that would seriously freak me out.

"He was so sad," Elsa said, and I saw her pale blue eyes glitter with friggin' tears.

I rolled my eyes and tried my best to say nothing at all about her misplaced sympathies because really? She was my friend, and I had been sat on by a troll again.

The troll had admittedly sobbed uncontrollably, but I got toll-goop in my hair, and most of the bar laughed at me, so she should really feel sorrier for me than the short-armed blubbering dude who only had himself to blame for his misery.

"He was," she insisted. "He really loves that woman, Kitty. We have to help him."

Uh, no.

"Where does the old lady live?" I asked Joel instead of getting into an argument with Elsa.

"Up there," Joel said and pointed up the hill. "Decateur Street."

I was out of breath when we rang the doorbell. Joel was panting too. Elsa smiled sweetly at us and whinnied softly. And smugly.

"Yes?" a small, old woman asked suspiciously.

Aha, I thought. A crony. Since cronies were regulars who were under the protection of wizards, it made sense that no one had been able to make her tell them what she'd seen. It also posed a wee problem for us since we wouldn't be able to either.

"Hello," I said. "I'm Kitty, and we're –"

"Company!" she squealed and disappeared into the house.

I blinked and turned to my friends who were blinking too. They looked stupid, which meant I probably did, so I nudged Joel, and we followed the woman into her home.

"Sit down," she said amicably, and we did.

"I'm Kitty, and –"

My second attempt at interacting with her was foiled by another squeal.

"Sherry!"

She reached into a cupboard to the side and brought out a crystal decanter and glasses. The content of the carafe was dark red.

It looked like blood.

"Uh," I wheezed, but then the smell hit my nostrils.

What the hell was that?

"Beetroot sherry," she explained happily. "I make it myself."

Oh, God.

***

Getting up to Mrs. Decateur – yes same name as the street she was living on – had been hard. Getting back down proved to be harder, and it did this because we were so highly inebriated we could not be described as anything other than shit-faced.

Or, "Shee-it-fashed," as Joel giggled when we stumbled along the side of the road.

A six feet six widget, giggling like a five-year-old girl as he tried to adjust his red mohawk which was partially coming out of its rubber band wasn't attractive. It was funny, but not attractive.

"Sherry-sherry lady, going through emotion," Elsa sang.

Mrs. Decateur had made us listen to old hits from the eighties, and she was apparently a huge fan of a German band called Modern Talking. There was not one modern thing about them, but I had to admit that after five glasses of beetroot sherry, their songs had been catchy.