by Anna Roberts
When Joe pulled away his smile was gone, and he ran his tongue over his lower lip. Grayson knew exactly why.
“Eventually we’re going to have to talk about what happened,” said Grayson.
“What’s to talk about? You changed. Your body couldn’t take it any more so you changed to protect yourself. Happens all the time.”
“Not at my age. Those kind of shenanigans should have seen me in a bloody, twitching heap straight out of the remake of The Fly, not with all my toes still on and my kneecap back in one piece.”
“You got lucky.”
“I got protein. From somewhere. Crusty old werewolves like me don’t get that kind of lucky on cold pizza and dollar cheeseburgers.”
Joe shook his head. “We didn’t start this, Luke. They broke into your house. They kidnapped you.”
“I know that, but...”
“...but what? We’re monsters.”
“We’re werewolves,” said Grayson, disturbed by such bleak finality from Joe, of all people. “It’s an affliction, not a license.”
“It is what it is,” said Joe. “Are you going to call that number or not?”
Oh, there were many more words to be had, he could feel it, but Grayson did as he was told. The phone rang several times and then a woman’s voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Hello?”
“Grayson?”
“Yes? Hello?”
“It’s me. Blue.”
“Blue. Right. Of course.”
Joe sat up. “Blue. Oh my God.”
“What?”
“Give me the phone,” he said, and took it. “Jesus, Blue. Thank God. Is everyone okay down there?”
*
Gabe held his fingers curled under, his palm flat, the shape of his hand so pawlike that it was impossible to tell if he was in there yet. He lay in a fetal crouch on a grubby mattress, and it was the hardest thing in the world not to open the cage and let him out, never mind what he’d told her. For once Blue did as she was told; she’d broken her promise and walked out of the hospital, and while her brain hadn’t yet leaked out of her head she felt sure he wouldn’t be very happy about her actions.
She set the bag of food just outside the bars of the cage. It was trash – cheap cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets and breaded lumps of something purporting to be mozzarella – but it was enough to set Gabe’s nose twitching in his sleep. It was something for him to put in his stomach, just enough to tide him over until they could get some real food.
His fingers uncurled and he half opened one eye. She pushed the bag closer, and his hand snaked out, grabbed without thinking. The first bite he took out of the cheeseburger still had the paper on, but as he picked it out of his mouth he seemed to focus, the blur of not-quite wolf solidifying into something human shaped.
He sipped at the soda, then – frowning like an infant trying to figure out a four piece puzzle – pulled away the straw, lid and all, and gulped in down in noisy swallows. He burped and that seemed to startle him back to himself; slowly he rose from the floor and took the key from the high shelf.
“Are you okay?” said Blue, getting to her feet.
“Yeah,” he said, jabbing at the lock a couple of times. His eyes were still swimming in their sockets but he was speaking. That was a start, although poor Joe had spoken easily enough, at first.
“Take a shower,” she said. “And then we have to go.”
He frowned again, then reached out a hand to touch the side of her head. “Your hair,” he said.
“I’m okay,” she said, although she had no idea if she was. Marcy, Stacy’s partner, had floated the idea of changing the dressing, but Blue wasn’t ready to look underneath it yet. During the few times she had managed to sleep (always on her left side now) she’d had unsettling dreams where the whole top of her skull was missing, the vulnerable, complicated mush of her brain exposed to the air. Eventually it would dry out, leaving her a drooling mess with a wrinkled, dried-apricot thing rattling around in her skull.
When he came out of the shower he looked hurt, like he couldn’t understand why she hadn’t joined him. Time for some good news – long overdue.
“Gloria’s back,” she said.
He scrambled into his pants like it was complicated. And maybe it was. “What?” he said, still looking dazed.
“She’s back. She turned back. She’s at Stacy’s. We have to go.”
Gabe blinked for a second, then he broke into a wide, wonderful smile. “Oh my God,” he said, stepping forward, like he’d suddenly remembered all the good parts of being human. His hands were on her cheeks, his mouth on hers. “This is amazing. Oh my God. Is she okay?”
“Yeah. I think so. We have to go, Gabe.”
She handed him the bag she’d packed and he didn’t stop smiling. “Okay,” he said, and followed her meekly in a way she knew meant he wasn’t quite there yet. On the way there he asked her twice what had happened to her head, but when they pulled up outside Stacy’s place he put his hand on hers, and the look on his face was all him, full of so much worry and skepticism that Blue almost missed the happy fool right away.
“This isn’t all good, is it?” he said.
“I don’t know what this is,” she said, raising his hand to her mouth and kissing it. “But no, I don’t think so.”
He gave her a long look, the midday sun turning his eyes the color of darkest amber. He held her gaze for a moment, but then he looked – the way everyone did these days – at the shaved side of her head and the thick pad of dressing. “It was Yael.”
“Yeah,” she said, simultaneously glad he’d grasped it and miserable that there was anything to grasp. “And he’s out of the house.”
“Shit. Where is he?”
“I don’t know. According to Gloria he’s walking around in that Ruby chick. Go figure.”
She opened the car door and stepped out. Stacy’s two younger boys, Corey and Caleb, were playing on the balding lawn, the littlest one trying to master a hula hoop while his older brother stood there saying “Give it here, you’re doing it wrong,” over and over in a murderous whine.
“Play nice, guys,” said Blue, but it was lip-service. Ever since Stacy had floated the idea of Marcy taking the boys to her mother in Oregon, the children had ricocheted wildly between excitement and anxiety. There would be no playing nice for a while.
Gloria was in the house, measuring lengths of white sewing thread. She looked tiny and old and crazy, but when she saw Gabe she got up with a purposefulness divorced from her strange activity.
“It’s really you,” he said, and started to cry.
Gloria put her arms around him. He was almost two heads taller than her, but in that moment she managed to make him look like a child. “Shh,” she said, her paper-skinned fingers in his still-damp hair. “It’s all right now. Everything’s going to be all right now, I promise.”
He sniffed hard and wiped his face with both hands. “Oh my God. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I’m talking to you again. Is this real?”
“It’s real, honey. I just took a little vacation is all. A change is as good as a rest, and now I’m back, and it’s all going to be fine. You can go on back to your boat and do your tours. Make your living.” She smoothed his cheeks. “You still got your boat, don’t you?”
Blue watched from the dining room doorway, not understanding this happy picture that Gloria was painting.
“Yeah, but the mooring fees...”
“...at the marina? Don’t you worry about that. I can handle Hank. You’re still mooring there, ain’t you?”
“Yeah.”
Was she lying to him? Stacy came up behind Blue. “What’s going on?”
“She’s confused,” said Blue. “I think she’s forgotten we’re leaving. And what’s with the thread?”
“Fucked if I know. She won’t explain it to me.” Stacy had a phone in her hand. “Axl hasn’t texted me yet. Do you think he’s okay?”
“He’s fine
. You know how they take a while to come back round.”
“It’s gone lunchtime. I should go see if he’s okay.”
Outside on the lawn someone screamed like they’d been set on fire. Stacy visibly winced and Gabe saw it. “You want me to get that?” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. Gloria picked up her threads again and started singing quietly to herself – in a cavern, in a canyon, excavating for a mine...
“See what I mean?” said Stacy, as wails and fragments of grievances drifted through the screen door. “Assholes. One gets attention, the others want it, too.” She glanced at the phone again. “It’s not like him not to text.”
“I’ll go,” said Blue. “You finish packing the boys’ things.”
“Should you even be driving?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But my brain hasn’t fallen out of my head yet, so I guess that’s something.”
Caleb came in, his face a crumpled red knot of snot and tears. “Momma he won’t let me...” And the rest of the sentence was lost to wailing.
“Corey!”
Gabe followed, along with the middle kid, clutching the hula hoop. “He was doing it wrong. I was just trying to show him.”
“Sure you were.”
“I was! He was pulling it and bending it.”
“You was pulling! You pulled! Mommy!”
Caleb clung to Stacy’s legs. She peeled his hands away, but he reattached himself almost immediately. “Mommy has to go see your brother. Please don’t make my life difficult right now, Cale. Please.”
Gabe pulled a despairing face and went into the kitchen. A moment later he came back and Blue realized that in the fuss and the bother she had forgotten that the singing had stopped. The threads were laid out on the kitchen table, and the back door stood open.
Gloria had gone.
21
Blue grabbed her keys and was out the door before anyone could follow. Like every other time she had pulled one of her disappearing acts, Gloria had just seemed to vanish into the ether, and it was only during those long hours of watching wolf-Gloria pace back and forth that Blue had begun to entertain the crazy possibility that maybe the old wolf witch could do exactly that.
First Blue drove by Charlotte’s, the diner where she had first met Gloria, a loopy old lady who had whispered about cold salt and asked seriously if she was making fun when Blue revealed her name. The bell jangled as she opened the door and Darla – the late Charlotte’s daughter – turned her brassy red head to look.
“Have you seen Gloria?”
“Gloria? Why? She back from Arizona?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Blue, struggling to keep track of her own lies. “She got back the other day. But she’s wandering...”
“Again?” Darla sighed. “I could have told you that. How much did she spend on all those sweat lodges and chanting?”
“I know, it’s –”
“ – snake oil. They fleece the tourists and spend all the money on drink. That’s the southwest all over for you. Meanwhile she coulda gotten on a drug trial –”
Blue’s phone rang and she was glad of an excuse to escape. When she saw the screen her mouth almost fell open.
“Sorry, I have to take this.” She stepped back out into the tiny parking lot. “Hello?”
“Hello?” Holy shit. At last.
“Grayson?” she said.
“Yes? Hello?”
“It’s me,” she said. “Blue.”
“Blue. Right. Of course.”
She heard someone else’s voice beside him, and then the phone must have been snatched away, because the new voice on the line was American. “Jesus, Blue. Thank God. Is everyone okay down there?”
Her heart gave a strange, joyful thump. “Joe?” she said, barely daring to believe it. “Joe, is that you?”
“Yeah.” It came out ‘ya’, in that wintry accent that had no place in their steambox climate. It was really him.
“Oh my God, what happened to you?” she said. “Where have you been?”
“Long story,” he said. “Is Charlie there?”
“No. I haven’t seen him. I guess he’s probably still in Tavernier, sleeping off the full moon.”
“Is the kid there with him?” asked Joe, with a weird urgency.
“The kid?”
“Axl. And Eli. Are they with him?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
“Blue, get that kid away from Charlie,” he said. “Right now.”
“What’s wrong?”
“He killed Reese,” said Joe. “Charlie killed Reese.”
So much for good news. He sounded serious. “I don’t understand –”
“ – I’ll explain later. All I know is that Charlie poisoned him. Colloidal silver. That’s what I was trying to tell you –”
Oh God. Somewhere deep in her bones she knew he had it in him. Hadn’t he only refused to kill his uncle out of sheer spite?
“ – I don’t know why he did it,” Joe said.
“No,” she said, with a new chill in her marrow. Sins of the father. “But I do. I’ll call you back.”
“Get Axl.”
“I’m going.”
As she drove to Tavernier she saw it clearly. She and Charlie were too alike for it to be coincidence. They had both spent their lives on the edges of the world, and they had both pretended to make their peace with it, but she knew in her heart that there was no way he didn’t feel the resentment she sometimes pushed down while cleaning the toilet of some mediocre white man with half her wits and five times her opportunities. There was no way Charlie – clever, funny fuck-up Charlie – didn’t resent a bland, half-bright pretty boy like Eli. And there was no way any amount of coke money and connections were ever going to let Charlie forgive what Lyle Raines did to him and to his father. Not once Yael or whatever it was had reached out through Gloria’s curse and shown him the way.
At once she understood why he’d fed Lyle’s rotten heart to Reese. Some hungry, fatherless part of her might have done the same, not to curry favor with swamp wolves, but because they deserved it.
She pulled up outside the bar, her head clearer than it had felt since Yael did a number on her brain. It had never been explicitly said, but it came to her suddenly that if she was right about her hunch then her father had been a werewolf. Her half-brother was a werewolf. And her grandmother was the wolf witch.
And Gabe had said she could walk away. As if.
The bar was closed. She walked around to a side door. Somehow she knew it was the right one; when she breathed in through her mouth she caught the fleshy taste of raw marrow and rearranged muscle, and there was something else, too, like a ripple in the air, a disturbance in the fabric of reality. The men could talk all they liked about protein and DNA, but when you got right down to it, this was her turf; it had to be magic, because human beings turning into wolves was straight up impossible.
Charlie opened the door, letting out the smell of werewolf all in a blast. He was wearing nothing but a pair of old sweatpants and his sharp hip bones looked like the only things holding them up. His cheekbones were like knives.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“Where’s Axl?”
“What? He’s upstairs in the apartment. Sleeping.”
She turned to go, but he shot out a hand and grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
Blue leapt back so fast that she was sure he knew why. It was hanging in the air between them and he had to guess, smart as he was. That she knew.
But the words were stuck in her throat – you killed Reese – and instead all she managed to say was ‘what’?
“It’s Eli,” he said, and she saw that he was scared, or at least putting on an Oscar winning performance of fear. “He’s come back wrong.”
She’d been playing it out in her head all the way to Tavernier. At first it had made no sense, but then she remembered that people had turned themselves blue with colloidal silver, and weren’t all heavy metals toxic in high enou
gh doses? Perhaps Charlie had been chipping away at Reese’s already poor health, knowing that the next moon would be Reese’s last.
Perhaps he had been doing the exact same thing to Eli.
“Where is he?” she said.
As she stepped through the door she wondered what the hell she was thinking, following a murderer into a basement, but a little piece of her didn’t want to believe it.
Like Abel never believed it of Cain, muttered a Yaelish voice in the back of her mind. Right up to the point where the rock came smashing down on his head.
Charlie led her downstairs into a cellar that looked – at first glance – like any other bar cellar. But then she saw that the door at the end was the kind of solid steel, peephole flap door she’d always associated with bad neighborhoods and drug dealers. A trail of red-brown-clear fluids snaked between the fat, silver kegs, like someone had dragged himself across the room, leaking things he should never have been leaking.
No. Charlie was telling the truth, at least about one thing.
A low moaning came from behind the drug-dealer door. “He’s in the men’s room,” said Charlie. “He’s all fucked up. He’d been sick before –”
“ – and whose fault was that?” The words were in full rebellion now. Either they didn’t want to come out at all or they popped out at the worst possible time. Like now.
He stared at her like he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he did. He had to. She was still trying to put it together in her head, but some part of her understood him far too well. In that short, spinning forever before she said it, she realized they had the same chin. Her father’s chin, Regina had always said.
“Reese,” she said. “I know what you did.”
Charlie’s mouth hung open for a moment, but even he wasn’t that good an actor. “What?”
“Joe called me,” she said. “He’s alive.” That was the part she hadn’t figured out; why Charlie had come out to bat for Joe when Eli had been all for putting Joe down, but maybe it had just been Charlie covering his tracks. Look like the good guy and let the others finish off the one who knew the truth. Oh, he was smart.