Wolf Town

by Bridget Essex

  I took the steps up to the apartment, and the door opened readily, even without the key.

  There were antiques everywhere (including an antique carousel horse, of all things, as tall as me and situated against the dining room wall). The entire apartment was purple-walled and rich with possibility. There were vaulted ceilings here, too, like in the café below, and pretty archways leading into the rooms. The graceful curves and lines made me smile. There was exposed brick in the kitchen, and I ran my hand over its rough surface before I returned to the living room and laid down on the plush purple carpeting to stare up at the ceiling—which, of course, had stars painted on it.

  I felt…weird. It was good, this weirdness, like I was in a sort of universal flow. What else did I expect to happen? What else did I expect to go right? Is this how the world worked for other witches, stuff turns out awesomely if you just leap and trust?

  It was my first day in Wolf Town, and though, admittedly, I had no idea what I’d signed up for (or if that woman had even really been my aunt), I hadn’t ever been more excited in my life.

  Suddenly, there was a sound. Like a cough.

  So I sat up.

  Across from me, in the corner, a woman sat on the floor. She wore a long, wispy white skirt and an old, tattered blouse, and her eyes were kind of intense. And burning. Her hair was floating around her shoulders in curling white waves, even though she looked like she couldn’t have been older than thirty.

  She was also see-through.

  A ghost.

  I breathed out, and slowly (very slowly) raised my hands, invoking my own energy and spiraling it around myself as I surrounded my body with a circle of light.

  The ghost laughed. It wasn't a creepy laugh, but kind of an “oh, darlin', you have no clue” sort of laugh.

  Miffed, I narrowed my brows and frowned.

  “I promise, you don't have to protect yourself around me.” Her voice, inexplicably, came from behind me, but I didn't turn around to look. We were the only beings in the room, and I should have been alert to her long before now. I'd just been too darn happy, I guess. But I should have steeled myself: old houses always have ghosts. It's like some sort of cosmic law, right up there with “never get out of your car if it breaks down in the middle of a night on a deserted country road because bad things will happen.”

  “I won't hurt you. I'm not evil,” she said, and sort of floated upright, to a standing position…five inches off the ground. “At least, I don't think I'm evil. I don't do anything evil. I mostly just sit in the corner and read the classics. Like Little Women.” She shrugged and gave me a bright but very see-through smile.

  “Hi,” I said, voice shaking just a little. “I'm Amethyst… Amy… Sorry.” I sighed. “It’s just… I’ve never seen such a distinct apparition before.” I couldn’t help it: I stared at her with my mouth open, fists clenching and unclenching at my sides.

  “Oh,” she said, and sort of sat back down. She folded up like a wobbly jello mold. “Did I scare you?”

  “No.” Mostly the truth.

  “It's been awhile since I had anyone to talk to. It gets lonely, being a ghost. Though I bet that's what they all say.”

  “They…don't usually talk to me,” I said, thinking back to the times I'd dealt with apparitions in the past. They'd all been of the spookity-spook variety, the ones that needed to be ushered to the light, posthaste—before they, you know, ate your soul.

  I'd honestly never met a nice ghost before. But my intuition was telling me that this one might qualify. Still, I wasn’t ready to fully let down my guard.

  “I'm Winifred,” she said, extending her hand toward me. I didn't take it—mostly because I wouldn’t have been able to touch her, since her hand wasn’t corporeal. “But you can call me Winnie, if you think that might be easier to remember. I know most of you folk don't use long names anymore.” She smiled, and it eased her burning eyes a bit. “Are you going to be living here?” she asked with interest. “What happened to Bette?”

  “I’m taking care of the café for Bette for about a month.”

  “Oh, that will be lovely. Bette really did need a vacation.” Winnie clapped her hands and folded upright. “You know, I used to own the café. Well, when I owned it, it wasn’t a café… It was a shop. I think that was, oh, one hundred years ago…or so. Time is a little fuzzy when you're dead.” She shrugged. “My shop was a general store, in fact. Oh, I was so proud of it. I didn't have a husband, you see, and I ran it all by myself. I'm a good roommate,” she added randomly, holding her hands open. “I won't spook you. I won't watch you while you use the lavatory. I occasionally have a few other ghosties over for a sort of get-together—a luncheon, we call it—but we keep it down and don't rattle chains or slam doors or stomp about.” She sighed and rolled her eyes heavenward. “We've had to work very hard against that negative stigma!”

  I laughed a little and smiled at her. I couldn’t believe I was actually having this conversation, but I figured I might as well embrace it. “Yeah, I can empathize,” I told her sincerely. “Honestly, I have to work against negative stigmas occasionally myself. I'm a witch. And…I'm gay.”

  “I wondered why you could see me, my darling!” she said, and then she came over, floating around me in a big circle as she gazed at my little pentacle pendant, at the holes in the elbows of my sweater, at my sparkling ballet flats. “Most witches can see ghosts, you know. Hmm, I'm not sure if most gay folks can see ghosts. But, oh, we'll be the best of friends! It's lovely you came!”

  So. I was going to share Aunt Bette’s apartment with a ghost. A unexpectedly sweet and amusing ghost.

  Sure. I could live with that.

  Chapter 3: The Wolf

  The most important thing about tea is that it must be made with intention.

  You begin with tea leaves. Freshly dried, they crumble beneath your fingers with crispness. You can taste them on the back of your tongue, if your fingers touch them long enough, like sweet salt. Then you add herbs, pretty dried flowers that will hang suspended in the water, mint leaves that have curled as they've dried, looking like little boats. Against the silver strainer in the teapot, they resemble bits of hay before you pour the water over them.

  But you don't pour the water. Not yet. You add lavender for love and peace, a few of the buds that fall from your fingers, and top it off with rosehips, for sweetness in life. You hold your hands over the herbs and leaves—so small, but so filled with possibility. And then the magic begins.

  It comes up through the ground, through your feet, like water through roots, spreading through you and filling you until you can't contain it. Once you've drawn it up, once it's thrumming like a heartbeat, you let it go, in your hands and your fingers, into the tea, into the pot.

  And you pour the water over the tea, and the spell is bound.

  I made tea for myself the first night I began to finish my aunt’s paint job in the cafe. There was a small stack of paint cans along the wall; the color she’d chosen was called “Iris Passions.” It was the most beautiful purple I'd ever seen. I finished painting her half-finished wall, and there was probably more paint on me than on the actual wall, but I considered it a good afternoon's work. I made the tea on an electric skillet I'd dragged with me from home and poured it out into my traveling mug (that read “The Witch's Brew!” around its rim in a Halloween-y font. Since I was a witch, it was less cliché and more truth, but still pretty cheese-tastic). I curled my fingers around the warm mug and inhaled the heady aromas of herb and leaf and spell. And then I drank it down, thanking the Goddess as its warmth filled me.

  Leaning against a non-wet wall, paint-covered toes curling in happiness, I felt…content.

  A knock came at the door. It was too dark outside to really see, and the floodlamps in here were too bright. I stood and made my way to the glass-fronted door and paused about three feet away from it.

  That incredibly gorgeous woman from the coffeeshop was standing outside.

  Morgan.

&
nbsp; She waved at me a little, crooked smile stretching across her face. She pointed to the door handle with her head to the side, and suddenly I snapped out of it. “It” being the apparent spell of bewitchment and speechlessness that seemed to come over me every single time I saw her. I crossed to the door and drew it open.

  “Hello!” I said, and then the chill of the air assaulted me, and I realized how cold it was outside. “Please come in. You must be freezing,” I told her, backing out of the way.

  “Hi—and thanks,” she told me, stepping into the cafe. The cold air crept in behind her as I shut the door, and she unbuttoned the top button of her coat.

  “Hi,” I said, and then remembered I’d already given a greeting, so I fumbled trying to find new, non-hello-related words. “Um. What brings you around here?”

  She chuckled warmly as she unbuttoned the rest of her coat. Her fingernails wore bright red polish, a crimson as red as blood. “I saw you painting on the way to my shift this afternoon,” she said, stepping forward, her head angled to the side a little as she took my paint-splattered hands into her own cool ones, rubbing her thumb across my skin as my heart started to beat about a trillion thumps per minute. “And you're still at it now,” she growled softly, “so I told myself: self, if she's still at it when I get off work, I am so going to help her with that. So here I am! I mean, if you don't mind?”

  I opened my mouth to say something, and then I didn't quite know what to say, because she was still rubbing her thumb softly across the back of my hand, and I appeared to be under some sort of trance. I cleared my throat and eventually managed to reply, “Sure!” And then, after a moment, I added, “Thank you.”

  “Well…” She laughed—a deep, throaty chuckle—and stepped back, shrugging out of her coat in one smooth motion. She folded it over her arm, glanced around and set the coat on one of the café tables. She turned to me with her hands on her hips as she raised a single brow, and—again—her gaze raked over my body. “My offer isn’t entirely without ulterior motives.”

  I stared at her, my mouth agape. She was flirting with such industrial-strength skills that I knew I was entirely out of my league. I swallowed as I struggled to keep up. “Ulterior motives?” I murmured.

  “Well, of course! I'm curious about you,” she said, rolling the sleeves of her plaid button-up shirt and snatching one of the brushes. “See, you’re fresh meat around here. We rarely get visitors.” She eyed one of the half-painted walls and slathered purple onto the edge of her brush from the open paint can. Then she attacked the wall with a broad stroke. “So tell me all about yourself. Are you really Bette’s niece? Did you really like my latte?”

  “Um…” I laughed at the latte question; then I took a deep breath. Should I be honest? Should I tell her… Oh, why the hell not? She seemed open-minded enough. “Um, I don’t know if I’m really related to Bette.” Morgan glanced at me with her brows raised, and I kept going. “Look, I think I should get something out of the way. I'm a witch, and it seems like Bette lived pretty out of the broom closet, so you probably knew she was one, too. So I might not be related so much as my mom is just really close to her and so calls her her sister...” I was mucking this up. What I didn’t really say but wanted to say desperately was and, oh, gods, you’re really nice, so I hope you don’t think I’m a total weirdo.

  She stopped moving to stare at me.

  Great. She definitely thought I was a weirdo. Well, sometimes it works out that way. Not everyone reacts to the “w” word with smiles and toasts and inquiries about the best brands of broomsticks.

  “A…witch?” And, like Winnie had earlier, Morgan began to circle me. But unlike Winnie, the way she stepped (and she did step, not float around like the ghost) was a bit more deliberate, almost…hunting. Like I was prey, or an incredibly interesting sight. I tried not to swallow (or look at her butt in those jeans) as she stared at me with unblinking green eyes, pinning me in place with the force and power of her gaze.

  This wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

  “Yeah. I'm from East Lionsville.” I licked my lips; my mouth was suddenly dry. “My mother is Katherine Linden. I don't know if you know of her, but she's kind of a famous witch…” I stalled out. My mom was famous in New Age circles, and for a few psychic television appearances. Most people—non-witch people—hadn't heard of her.

  “You're a Linden,” said Morgan, and I blinked at the tone of her voice. She’d paused behind me, and when I turned to look at her, her face was unreadable, but she was observing me with an odd expression.

  “Yeah,” I said, brows furrowed. “You've heard of us?”

  “Yes,” she said; she licked her lips as she glanced away. “Huh.”

  Huh?

  “What's the matter?” I sighed. “Do you…dislike witchcraft? Tell me you're not a right-wing Bible thumper who thinks I'm going to burn in hell… Gods, I thought this was all going so well,” I muttered, clutching at my forehead and suddenly feeling very tired.

  She laughed then, a bright, friendly laugh.

  I stilled, and the tension in my shoulders disappeared like smoke.

  “No, no burning in hell,” she said. Her smile deepened as she glanced my way with flashing eyes. “I just… What did you say your name was?”

  “My name’s Amethyst,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “Call me Amy.”

  She entwined her fingers with mine. Now that she had been indoors for a little while, Morgan’s skin felt so warm, so soft, and there was such a quiet grace and strength to her: when our fingers met, there was this weird jolt. Like I'd been here, seen this, done this before. De ja vu flooded through me, not unpleasantly.

  “I wasn't laughing at you,” she said then, stepping forward a bit, not letting go of my hand. “I just found the circumstances…amusing.” When she smiled again, I noted that her teeth were just as long and sharp as I had thought they were at the coffeeshop. They didn't look exactly normal in a human mouth, poking out beneath her full lips. She tilted her head toward me, a wave of red hair falling sexily in front of one eye. “It’s kind of funny, actually. You're a witch,” she said breathlessly, her voice a low, throaty growl. “And I'm a werewolf.”

  “You’re…” I stared at her.

  “Yeah.” She touched the tip of one of her sharp incisors with her tongue. “Definitely a werewolf.”

  “Okay. Right,” I whispered, after a long beat. I smiled up at her as I chuckled awkwardly. She was a full head taller than I was.

  A werewolf…

  Granted, the teeth were odd, but was she… She couldn't possibly be serious.

  Was she serious?

  “Do you mean you’re a werewolf in, like, a New Age sort of way?” I asked, backpedaling as my brain began to work as quickly as it could, trying to make sense of her announcement. “So, you, uh, shapeshift on the astral plane and have visions about being a wolf…or something?”

  She shook her head slightly as she continued to stare.

  Whoa.

  Shit.

  She was serious.

  “You haven't been in Wolf Town long,” Morgan growled softly, and her smile was genuine—albeit a bit pointy. “You don't know how, uh, strange this place is yet. None of us are ‘normal’ folk here. In fact, everyone in Wolf Town...we're all a bit…different.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I bit my lip and blinked a lot.

  “Do you believe me?” she asked curiously.

  I was a witch. I had experienced many things in my life that a random stranger on the street would never believe had really happened. I'd sent dark spirits on to the light; I'd used a love spell to get a girl to kiss me once (definitely not recommended, and also really stupid); I'd used magic to change streetlights from red to green and find awesome parking spaces and make myself absolutely shiny for that stupid food service interview at a you'll-never-get-me-to-name-it fast food joint. I saw ghosts on a regular basis, had visions that showed me bits of my future, and I believed—absolutely, staunchly, immovably—that the G
oddess loved me and helped me out on a daily basis.

  Morgan stared at me, waiting. Expectant.

  Her teeth were really, really pointy. And I had heard stories. Rumors. And…hadn't Nancy once told me she'd dated a vampire?

  Belief: it's relative.

  “I…guess I do,” I said carefully, voice low and neutral.

  She sighed, an amused smile still slanting over her lips, as she shook her head. “All right, fine, I’ll show you. Five seconds… I'm always so stiff after a shift. I have to get better shoes. Better back support.” She stepped out of her high heels, and then she began to take her shirt off.

  I stared at her with wide eyes, and she paused in breasts-almost-bared territory.

  “I hate ruining my clothes,” she explained patiently.

  My blood was racing through me, hammering in my head. The sexiest of ladies was undressing in front of me. In my “aunt’s” café. With the floodlights on. In front of the really big double windows that showed out easily onto the street.

  “Um…” I said articulately, pointing to the out-of-doors. But Morgan shimmied out of her jeans, turned and took off her bra as I stared at her, utterly unable to tear my eyes away.

  And then there was a tearing sound, and I couldn’t quite tell you exactly what happened, because the air sort of shimmered for a moment.

  When it stopped shimmering, Morgan was gone.

  In the middle of the floor sat a gigantic dog.

  I stared, my jaw practically on the ground. No—actually, what was in front of me wasn’t a dog. The massive wolf licked its lips and yawned hugely, and then it panted, grinning at me. It was black, with a white-tipped coat, and its eyes were so green that they looked bizarre, impossible.

  And then, as I watched, the furry snout pushed in, the legs elongated and arms and fingers grew…and then Morgan was sitting exactly where the wolf had been, one arm draped over her breasts and one hand poised in front of her hips, just like that picture of Eve in the garden. Unlike Eve, though, she was grinning like a cat who had just eaten about a dozen canaries. It was a crooked smile that looked utterly sexy and more than a little I-told-you-so.