The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1)

by Anna Roberts

  She nodded and snapped the suitcase closed. “I think so,” she said, and grinned. “We’d better sneak. Your hair’s wet; everyone will know you used my shower.”

  So they snuck, tiptoeing like children, down the hall and down the stairs. She left him in the car while she dropped off her key and he sat there for a while, alone, still in a kind of daze about what had just happened. If it hadn’t been for the smell of her hair lingering behind her he might have imagined it was some kind of vivid sex dream, one of those ones where the sensations were so real and delicious and the desire to come was so intense that sometimes you woke up in the throes of it, all sticky and shuddering.

  She came back across the parking lot and jumped in beside him. “Done,” she said. “And nobody even looked at me funny. I think we got away with it.”

  Her cageyness made him laugh. “Were you a spy back in New Orleans or something?” he said, starting the car.

  Blue shook her head as she clipped her seatbelt. “Nope,” she said. “Just a teenage girl. Expert keeper of secrets.”

  She sat back, pressing her lips together in that half-guilty, half-amused way that he already found so sexy.

  “What kind of secrets?” he asked, wondering if this could be an icebreaker. Let’s talk secrets. You’ll never guess mine.

  Her smile faded. “Not as dirty as you were probably hoping,” she said.

  He paused at a stop sign, the engine thrumming away. He knew so little about her. “Your mom?” he asked. Just a gentle prod, but it was as good a place as any to start.

  “How’d you figure that?”

  Gabe shrugged. “Your old man wasn’t around, like mine. And moms are good at keeping secrets. Also you said that you were used to dealing with...troubled people.”

  Blue arched an eyebrow, but then she sighed, softened. “She drank,” she said. “A lot. Self-medicating, mostly.”

  “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I should talk about it at some point. Just to give you a heads up, in case I start going...well...”

  “Going what?”

  Blue cleared her throat. “Bipolar runs in families. I’m well past the age when it usually first manifests, but...” She sighed. “I still worry. You know how it is.”

  “That must have been rough for you, growing up.”

  She let out a humorless little laugh. “You know, it was funny. When I was very, very little I used to think I had the best mother in the whole world. She was so much fun. Sure, she’d get so sad sometimes that she wouldn’t get out of bed and I had to live on peanut butter and jelly, but she made up for it when she was happy. We’d go to the amusement park and the zoo and build blanket forts. And those pictures she painted were like real art to me when I was that young. One time she took me to the hardware store in the middle of the night and we bought all this stuff so we could paint that picture on the living room wall. Like a mural. It was like paradise for me, before I was old enough to realize that there was something really wrong. One time she said I never needed to go to school again, because I knew enough. I think I was about eight at the time. She said ‘You know enough to be happy, and that’s all you ever need to know, so I’m taking you out of school.’”

  “And did she?”

  “No,” said Blue. “It never happened. We were going to take a trip. A big adventure. She’d packed our bags and bought the bus tickets, but when the day came it was like someone had just...cut her strings. She couldn’t move or speak or do anything much besides cry, and even that wasn’t like real crying. It was more like leaking, I guess. This steady stream of salt water running out of her eyes. I think it was the first time I understood that she was actually sick.”

  He reached over and briefly touched her hand. “Jesus, Blue. Do you want to stop?”

  “No. Keep driving,” she said, misunderstanding him. “It’s okay. I expect I should talk about it more often. There were trauma specialists and counselors and stuff in Houston, but all they ever wanted to talk about was Katrina. Like none of us had been damaged before the storm, you know? People didn’t want to admit to that. Even some of the people with the best intentions in their hearts bought into this story - that Katrina had destroyed our lives. That is, assuming our lives weren’t already wreckage in the first place.”

  She sighed. “Nothing as dramatic as a hurricane. Just the usual slow wreckage. Lousy schools, no healthcare, no shot at college, peanut butter and jelly for dinner again. In a way I think some of us were ready for it, when the storm blew into town. Not ready, maybe - but used to it. We’d been cut adrift our whole lives, so what was one more ride in a leaky lifeboat?”

  He turned the corner. He fumbled for something to say. “The system sucks.”

  “I know,” she said. “They were always the enemy to me. Mom told me; if they knew how bad she was then they’d put her an institution. And I’d go into foster care.”

  “So you hid it,” said Gabe, as they neared the house. There were a couple of unfamiliar women milling near Gloria’s mailbox. “And tried to handle it yourself.”

  Blue frowned. “Yes. How did you know?”

  “Because,” he said. “You didn’t force me to take Gloria to the hospital.”

  The women at the mailbox turned to look at him as he pulled up. They were both getting on in years, one thin and spindly and the other short and round. They both wore in their hair in the same silver-blonde bobs. “Excuse me?” said the short one. “Do you know Gloria?”

  “Yes?” said Gabe. “Why?”

  “We heard it was a miracle,” said the short woman. “She’s been cured of the Alzheimer’s. Is it true?”

  Blue narrowed her lips. “Where did you hear that?” she said, in a tone that said she had almost expected something like this to happen.

  “The Lord opens our eyes in strange ways,” said the short woman.

  The thin woman offered Gabe a leaflet. The word RAPTURE was written in big blocky letters; the T had been rendered as a shining crucifix. “Yeah,” said Gabe, thinking of Gloria’s pentagram necklaces and her collection of old Black Sabbath vinyls. “Good luck with that.”

  11

  Mike ‘The Bike’ Hallett was a big man, some three hundred pounds with a small head on top, like the cherry on top of an angry werewolf sundae. Charlie smothered a grin at the thought; he’d had sundaes on the brain lately. He’d thought Reese had been comfort eating during his old man’s final illness, but if Reese’s current binge was any indication then the kid had just been getting started. Every day brought new, heart-stopping Paula Deen horrors. Donuts dipped in coffee concoctions that were more sweetened milk than coffee, burgers wrapped in bacon and folded between glazed, sugared donuts. Pancakes drowning in syrup and cream dredged French toast fried in foaming golden butter. So much sugar that Charlie said one day he was going to look under the bed and find Reese’s pancreas hiding under there like Saddam Hussein, all skinny and blinking with a big ass hobo beard. Please don’t tell him where I am. I can’t take any more fucking Wendy’s.

  Right now the Crown Prince of Velveeta was glancing between the bar menu and a bag of sweet and sour pork rinds, which was of no goddamn use to Mike the Bike. Or anyone, for that matter.

  “It’s on my land,” Mike was saying, over the crunch of dead pig. “That’s always been my land and they know it.”

  “...do you think I can get an order of bleu cheese with the onion rings?”

  “Sure,” said Charlie, attempting find Reese’s ribs with his elbow. “Why not? Reese, pay attention, willya?”

  Reese gave him one of those pissy, princely looks that were getting way too frequent lately. That was the trouble with telling some people they were in charge; they were actually dumb enough to believe you.

  “They’re testing,” said Charlie, ignoring the scowl. “Change of management, you’re always going to get a couple of douchebags who want to see how far they can push the new boss.”

  “S’right,” said Mike
. “Those fucking hillbillies wouldn’t have been bellyaching about boundaries if your old man was still here, Reese. You gotta show them you’re not going to take their shit.”

  “Can I get bleu cheese and garlic mayo?”

  So much for ‘meet the new boss, same as the old’. Lyle would have simply shrugged and sent a couple of his biggest, meanest boot-boys around to kick some sense into Mike’s charming neighbors, but Reese couldn’t so much as tear his eyes from the menu. Mike looked like a volcano about to erupt, and Charlie quickly drew him away.

  “Excuse us a moment,” he said, but Reese went on crunching up pork rinds.

  “Are you kidding?” said Mike, just out of earshot.

  “He’s young, I know.”

  Mike arched a grizzled eyebrow.

  “Let me talk to him,” said Charlie. “The eating – it’s a process with him. He’s working through a lot of stuff. He was close to his dad.”

  “Right. And in the meantime what? I don’t get to build on my own goddamn land and Barb goes to bed every night with my old thirty-eight snub under her pillow?”

  Ah, sweet Barb Hallett. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d taken something interesting to bed with her. Charlie still had fond memories of happily suffocating between her tan, nutcracker thighs. “I know,” he said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s natural. He’s young. He’s grieving. It just turns out he’s...kind of an emotional eater.”

  Mike propped an elbow on the bar, glanced down at Reese, and then back to Charlie. “You know,” he said, in a conspiratorial tone that meant nothing good. “I had my doubts about you, Charlie.”

  “Really?”

  “Come on. Don’t act dumb. A lot of people thought you might want to snag the top spot for yourself.”

  Charlie blinked up at him. “And where would that leave Reese, exactly?”

  “You tell me. I know you had some bad blood, you and Lyle Raines.”

  “Ancient history. I was nothing but loyal to him after that. Nothing.”

  “Okay,” said Mike, backing off. He’d said too much and he knew it.

  “I’m hurt, Bikerman.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Seriously,” said Charlie. “I know you haven’t always had the highest opinion of me, but I never thought you had me pegged as stupid.”

  “When did I ever call you stupid?”

  “You implied it,” said Charlie. Over Mike’s shoulder he spotted Grayson, who had just come in and pulled up a seat next to Fatty Arbuckle. “Step in? Me? Alpha? Of this clusterfuck? I’d have to be straight-up mouthbreathing fuckin’ retarded to even think about wanting it. We all knew shit was going to fall apart when Lyle croaked - ”

  “ - yeah, I noticed. It’s currently falling apart all over my fucking backyard.”

  “Leave it with me, Mike. I’ll talk to the kid.”

  “You do that.”

  Charlie do this, Charlie do that. Second verse, same as the first. He’d wasted his youth being Lyle’s bitch and now was he really about to do the same for Lyle’s stupid, rotten spawn?

  “I don’t know,” Reese was saying to Grayson. “He called up yelling about drool or something.”

  “Drool?” said Grayson.

  “Yeah. Spit. Spittle. I looked it up on the internet. It’s drool.”

  “Oh. Spittal,” said Grayson. “S-P-I-T-T-A-L. It’s different. It’s what they used to call a safehouse, back in Scotland.”

  “Whatever. He wanted to build one on his property, but the swampers are acting up and claiming all kinds of bullshit with the boundary lines.” Reese glared at Charlie. “You said this wouldn’t happen. If I...you know...if I did what I did.”

  “No, I hoped,” said Charlie.

  “You never told me that at the time,” said Reese, dragging a dish of nuts across the bar towards him.

  “Would it have helped?”

  Reese stuffed a mouthful of peanuts into his mouth and chewed angrily. “Yeah, it would have helped. It would have meant I didn’t have to do that. Because it was fucking pointless, obviously. You said this wouldn’t happen. You said the swamp wolves would fall in line, but they fucking haven’t, Charlie.”

  “Say it, don’t spray it,” said Charlie. “Maybe stop eating for five seconds - ”

  “ - no,” said Reese, his eyes beginning to water. “It’s the only way I can get the fucking taste out of my mouth.”

  He grabbed another fistful of peanuts and kept chewing as he talked. Kid was clearly on a roll. “And since when do you care so much about boundary disputes? You couldn’t give a shit when Dad was alive.” Reese’s jaws slowed for a minute, and he broke into a stupid, childish grin, red peanut skins sticking between his teeth. “Or maybe you wanna get in good with Mike’s wife. Dad always said you were itchy to fuck that dried up old sk - ”

  “ - keep your voice down,” said Grayson, but Reese had stopped short in the middle of a word. His breath stopped in a rasping wheeze and Charlie felt the world slow around him, in one of those strange, suspended moments that came whenever you felt your car slide into an irretrievable skid or looked down to see that the hard thing you’d felt beneath your kitchen knife was actually the tip of your finger.

  Reese clutched at his throat, his eyes brimming over. “You okay?” said Charlie, pushing Reese’s drink towards him.

  But Reese shook his head frantically. No, this wasn’t just a fragment of something gone down the wrong way. The kid was already turning purple.

  Grayson slapped Reese’s back, but nothing came up. Charlie could feel the faint ripple of fear running through the bar as people began to realize the emergency. “Heimlich,” said Grayson. “Do you know how do it?”

  Charlie got behind Reese and wound his arms around the kid’s ribs, but it was ridiculous. He couldn’t even feel a rib cage, never mind where it ended. Reese’s midsection felt like a goddamn moonbounce and he was starting to sag towards the floor, fighting for air.

  “Under the ribs,” Grayson kept saying. “Under the ribs.”

  “I can’t find his fucking ribs...”

  People were shouting all kinds of helpful advice, but Charlie could see Reese’s ear, once a happy, fat-guy shade of pink, turning an awful livid blue right before his eyes. Time was running out so goddamn fast that Charlie’s mind decided to catch up and sped him past the bar, past Reese’s death, forward to a time where Charlie was alone and handling the very prize he’d told Mike Hallett he would never want, could never want, not without getting some vital part of his brain removed.

  Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard. Lyle had handled it, after all, and he was barely half as bright as Charlie.

  Reese hit the floor. Charlie stood there for a moment, so absorbed in feeling out the weight of his new burden that he hardly noticed the huge figure elbowing past him. A large hand flew past his face and landed between Reese’s shoulder blades, once, twice, then Reese gave a whooping, wheezing breath and everyone who had been holding their own breaths in sympathy let them out in a great collective gust of beer and rye.

  “Okay, now. I got you. It’s okay.” Charlie recognized the voice before anything else, that Nordic sing-song that sounded so exotic this far south. Big Joe Lutesinger was kneeling on the floor beside Reese, who was now coughing hard enough to pop his eyes loose from his sockets.

  “Oh my God,” said Grayson, in a breathy outrush that Charlie couldn’t tell was relief or disappointment. For an instant there he’d been standing on the precipice of power and his own head was still spinning. No more bullshit, no more prodding the kid to step up to the plate. Just cut straight through it, if he was prepared to take what he’d never really wanted. Sure, it was a piss poor prize compared to Islamorada, and he’d have to fight for his life just to keep it, but what was life without the fight?

  Grayson held the glass of water for Reese; the boy’s hands were shaking too much to hold it and when his blurred, wet eyes met Charlie’s Charlie knew that Reese knew exactly how close he’d come. And maybe – just maybe – he
had an inkling of how easily the world would keep on turning without him.

  Charlie turned back to Joe Lutesinger, another source of bad blood. Some nights he still saw that pale wolf, lying there in a stillness that made it seem smaller, deflated, a bloodstained fur stole. Too far. Too much. Just like Lyle to take a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

  A big nut, all the same. Lutesinger was easily six foot six and Charlie had to look up to speak to him.

  “Hey there, Fargo. How you holding up?”

  “Okay,” said Joe, and the chill in his frost-blue eyes made that long O sound a whole lot less folksy-cute all of a sudden. He had to know Lyle was dead; he wouldn’t be here otherwise.

  “You’re a hero.”

  “I guess.” Jesus, old Joe the Plumber wasn’t making this easy. Or maybe he hadn’t gone back quite right. After the beating he’d taken it was a wonder he wasn’t lying drooling in a hospital bed. Or a dog pound.

  “It’s good to see you,” said Charlie. “In one piece.”

  Joe hardly blinked, but Charlie touched his arm, gently steered him around to turn his back to the still-sputtering Reese. “Listen,” Charlie said. “I just want you to know – I think his old man went too far, okay? And I’m sorry I couldn’t do more to stop it.”

  “It’s okay. You do what you could. It was something.”

  “I know, man. But it wasn’t enough.”

  “It is what it is,” said Joe, and glanced over at Reese, sizing him up, like he was trying to figure out what the new regime meant. Him and everyone else, it seemed.

  “And Gloria?” said Charlie. “How’s she doin? How’s my old ma?”

  *

  “Your shower leaks,” said Joe. As soon as he said it he knew it was the wrong thing to say. Rude. If someone let you into their home and let you use their bathroom and spare bed you weren’t supposed to comment on the shortcomings of the same.

  Grayson looked up from the couch, where he was sitting in front of a laptop. “I’ll take that under advisement,” he said, reaching up briefly to push a hank of now silver hair back from his forehead. The last time Joe had seen him his hair had still held the very last traces of salt and pepper, and that had only been maybe five months ago.