He shrugged me off with an impatient flap of his wings. “Wait! Just one more sec—what’s that? Zoltar? What in all the bloomin’ afterlife is a Zoltar?” Belfry paused and, I’d bet, held his breath while he waited for an answer—and then he let out a long, exasperated squeal of frustration before his tiny body went limp.
Which panicked me. Belfry was prone to drama-ish tendencies at the best of times, but the effort he was putting into being my conduit of sorts had been taking a toll. He was all I had, my last connection to anything supernatural. I couldn’t bear losing him.
So I yanked him to my chest and tucked him into my soaking-wet sweater as I made a break for the hotel we were a week from being evicted right out of.
“Belfry!” I clung to his tiny body, rubbing my thumbs over the backs of his wings.
Belfry is a cotton ball bat. He’s two inches from wing to wing of pure white bigmouth and minute yellow ears and snout, with origins stemming from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, where it’s warm and humid.
Since we’d moved here to Seattle from the blazing-hot sun of Paris, Texas, he’d struggled with the cooler weather.
I was always finding ways to keep him warm, and now that he’d taxed himself by staying too long in the crappy weather we were having, plus using all his familiar energy to figure out who was trying to contact me, his wee self had gone into overload.
I reached for the credit card key to our hotel room in my skirt pocket and swiped it, my hands shaking. Slamming the door shut with the heel of my foot, I ran to the bathroom, flipped on the lights and set Belfry on a fresh white towel. His tiny body curled inward, leaving his wings tucked under him as pinhead-sized drops of water dripped on the towel.
Grabbing the blow dryer on the wall, I turned the setting to low and began swishing it over him from a safe distance so as not to knock him off the vanity top. “Belfry! Don’t you poop on me now, buddy. I need you!” Using my index and my thumb, I rubbed along his rounded back, willing warmth into him.
“To the right,” he ordered.
My fingers stiffened as my eyes narrowed, but I kept rubbing just in case.
He groaned. “Ahh, yeah. Riiight there.”
“Belfry?”
“Yes, Wicked One?”
“Not the time to test my devotion.”
“Are you fragile?”
“I wouldn’t use the word fragile. But I would use mildly agitated and maybe even raw. If you’re just joking around, knock it off. I’ve had all I can take in the way of shocks and upset this month.”
He used his wings to push upward to stare at me with his melty chocolate eyes. “I wasn’t testing your devotion. I was just depleted. Whoever this guy is, trying to get you on the line, he’s determined. How did you manage to keep your fresh, dewy appearance with all that squawking in your ears all the time?”
I shrugged my shoulders and avoided my reflection in the mirror over the vanity. I didn’t look so fresh and dewy anymore, and I knew it. I looked tired and devoid of interest in most everything around me. The bags under my eyes announced it to the world.
“We need to find a job, Belfry. We have exactly a week before my savings account is on E.”
“So no lavish spending. Does that mean I’m stuck with the very average Granny Smith for dinner versus, say, a yummy pomegranate?”
I chuckled because I couldn’t help it. I knew my laughter egged him on, but he was the reason I still got up every morning. Not that I’d ever tell him as much.
I reached for another towel and dried my hair, hoping it wouldn’t frizz. “You get whatever is on the discount rack, buddy. Which should be incentive enough for you to help me find a job, lest you forgot how ripe those discounted bananas from the whole foods store really were.”
“Bleh. Okay. Job. Onward ho. Got any leads?”
“The pharmacy in the center of town is looking for a cashier. It won’t get us a cute house at the end of a cul-de-sac, but it’ll pay for a decent enough studio. Do you want to come with or stay here and rest your weary wings?”
“Where you go, I go. I’m the tuna to your mayo.”
“You have to stay in my purse, Belfry,” I warned, scooping him up with two fingers to bring him to the closet with me to help me choose an outfit. “You can’t wander out like you did at the farmers’ market. I thought that jelly vendor was going to faint. This isn’t Paris anymore. No one knows I’m a witch—” I sighed. “Was a witch, and no one especially knows you’re a talking bat. Seattle is eclectic and all about the freedom to be you, but they haven’t graduated to letting ex-witches leash their chatty bats outside of restaurants just yet.”
“I got carried away. I heard ‘mango chutney’ and lost my teensy mind. I promise to stay in the dark hovel you call a purse—even if the British guy contacts me again.”
“Forget the British guy and help me decide. Red Anne Klein skirt and matching jacket, or the less formal Blue Fly jeans and Gucci silk shirt in teal.”