The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1)

by Anna Roberts

  “He’s dead,” said Joe.

  “Oh God.”

  “Have you seen Gloria?” asked Grayson.

  Blue nodded. “She’s downstairs.”

  “Is she okay?”

  She bit her lip. “Uh...it’s hard to explain. I think you’d better come and see.”

  Gabe went down the stairs on shaky knees, his stomach in that cold, leaden state that comes when you’re bracing yourself for news so bad it might make you throw up. It was only when Blue led him to the basement door that he realized Gloria was all the way downstairs, and that gave him a strange flicker of hope. Maybe she’d locked herself in the cage for safety, the way Charlie had when his mother got killed.

  Only there was a wolf in the cage.

  Charlie was squatting by the bars, the Ouija board between his feet. On the other side was a skinny old she-wolf, her hip-bones sticking up and the knobs of her spine visible through the grayed fur of her back. Gabe’s senses were still in enough of a riot for him to catch a familiar whiff of patchouli and denture fixative, and when Joe spoke Gabe knew that his friend’s sharper nose had sniffed out the identifying odors right away.

  “Gloria?” said Joe.

  Charlie straightened up. “So,” he said. “Did any of you guys know she could do this?”

  Gabe shook his head, still trying to make sense of what he saw. He had always thought she was a cunning old broad who knew how to exploit superstition and other people’s delusions to her advantage, but the more he looked the more he knew it had to be true. It was her. Somehow it was her; the sharp bones, the gray fur, the wobbly edge of her toothless lip.

  “No,” said Joe. “No idea.”

  Grayson cleared his throat. “That is some serious mojo.”

  “But it’s not even the full moon.”

  “She obviously changed to protect herself from Reese,” said Grayson, but that made no sense either. While some could turn at will in a last-resort situation, that kind of thing was the preserve of the young and relatively strong.

  “Who even knew she was a werewolf?” said Charlie.

  “She ran back here,” said Blue. “She was the second wolf I saw, with Axl. I thought it was Reese, but it was her. She just...corralled him. Chased him back to the house, walked into the cage...”

  “...and sat there like a good doggy while we locked her up,” said Charlie. He stared back at Gloria and shook his head. “She spelled her fuckin’ name with the Ouija board. It’s definitely her.” He glanced up at Joe. “You can smell it, right?”

  “I can smell a lot of things,” said Joe. “But yeah. It does smell like her.”

  “What exactly happened here, Charlie?” asked Grayson, and there was a pointed quality to the question, like the tone of Joe’s voice.

  Charlie raked his fingers through his hair. “Shit, I hardly know myself, man. All I know was Reese got a whiff of the kid wolfing out and it spread – how it sometimes does with these youngsters. Where is Reese, by the way?”

  “Upstairs,” said Grayson. “He’s dead.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  There was a short silence while they all waited for Charlie to detonate in some way, but he just stood there looking stunned. Finally it was Blue who spoke.

  “What do we do?” she said. “Call the police? The ambulance?” She seemed almost reluctant already, like she was learning to stay off the grid. And it hurt to see how fast she learned. She’d been normal, before she met any of them.

  “No,” said Gabe. “We’ll take care of it.”

  When she looked at him he could tell she was trying to hold herself together, trying not to think about what that meant. But he couldn’t offer any kind of comfort; it was exactly what she was thinking. They would cut Reese up and toss the bits to the sharks and the caimons and anything else that wanted to eat them.

  “Stay with Gloria,” Gabe said. “I’ll let you know when...” When I’m done carrying Reese out of the house in garbage bags.

  As he went up the stairs he realized this was the only life he could offer her. No matter how many precautions he took, how secure the basement or watertight the excuses, there was always the possibility that it could end this way, with blood and hacksaws and muffled splashes in the dead of night. Or worse. Much worse.

  They took Reese into the bathroom. It took four of them to lift him and something went crack in Grayson’s spine and his face turned white as the moon, so then there were three. Eli had escaped this duty; he was busy having that long overdue talk with his son downstairs.

  Charlie took the head off first, slicing into the neck with the big knife that Gabe had used to prepare lobsters just hours ago. Joe stood at a distance, his hand over his nose; Reese’s bowels and bladder had emptied, and the room was rank with doggish tang of marrow and meat and rearranged flesh. A werewolf smell.

  For once Charlie was silent. When the head was off he cracked the ribs with bolt cutters. The chest was full of blood and when Gabe breathed in he could taste it on his tongue, making the floor sway under his feet. No, he couldn’t keep her away from this, and he’d been an idiot to even imagine it; you never forgot the taste of raw flesh and blood, even if you drank off a whole bottle of mouthwash like a backsliding dry drunk. Even if you brushed your teeth until your gums were sore.

  His hip hit the edge of the sink before Joe could even reach out and steady him. He took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate on the job. Charlie had Reese’s heart in his hands now. It looked huge and pasty, a sad, swollen bluish thing all caked and clotted with yellow fat.

  “He ate like shit,” said Charlie, shaking his head.

  “You gonna eat that?” said Joe, in a jabby, nasty tone that was so unlike him that Gabe was startled.

  But Charlie just screwed up his nose and tossed the heart onto the garbage bag on the floor. It landed with a wet fleshy thud and that was all it took to set Gabe off. The first heave was out of his throat and through his fingers before he could even turn towards the toilet. As he dropped to his knees over the bowl he nudged the heart with his bare toes and that set off a tsunami in his guts, wine and salad and lobster all coming up in a splattering roar.

  Gabe flushed twice and hung there, his head over the toilet. It was one thing to butcher a deer but another to do this. And Reese was all wrong; nothing was where it was supposed to be or even the right shape. On top of the smell of death and the beginnings of rot was a foul, metallic edge that he figured had to be iron in the blood. Or some kind of disease. He knew what that smelled like.

  God, how had he thought he could bring her into this world without ruining her life?

  *

  It was clear as a poison bell now, now that Reese was in pieces and the bits were in trash bags. Joe wondered how he hadn’t identified it before, cold and shimmery gray. Silver.

  He held his breath, a bag still swinging between his fingers, his mind running ahead trying to think of a way to keep at least enough of Reese to find some way to test it. There had to be things you could do. Chemicals that would show up silver in the blood or living tissue.

  But as he stood there, listening to the boat engine roar into life, Charlie swung past him on the dock and took the bag – “Lemme get that for ya, big guy,” – and the next thing he knew the last lump of Reese was being loaded onto Gabe’s boat.

  He saw Gabe’s face briefly, pale in the light of the fattening moon, then Charlie stepped in front and the boat was off, the little fiberglass shell skimming over the dark waves.

  “Shit,” said Joe.

  He turned back to the shore, where Grayson was leaning heavily on a piling, a cigarette between his fingers and his jaw clenched tight with pain.

  “I lost it,” Joe said. “Charlie took it.”

  Grayson exhaled. He straightened up, the notch between his eyebrows deepening as he did so. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he said.

  Joe stared at him. “What? We can’t just let him get away with it. He killed Reese.”

  Gra
yson ground out the cigarette in the sand. “I know that,” he said, in a deliberate way that made Joe sure he wasn’t going to like what came next. “But - ”

  “ - but nothing! You saw it. I smelled it. What else smells like silver and turns a werewolf blue? He poisoned Reese with silver - ”

  “ – I know that,” said Grayson. “And for all I know he did the same to Lyle. But how do you intend to prove it?”

  Joe shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. “You’re shitting me. After everything we’ve been through you’re just going to let him walk away?”

  The older man sighed. “I don’t think we have much choice.”

  “Choice? Luke, this is bullshit. Reese is dead.”

  “I know that.”

  “Stop saying you know. We know enough to do something about it.”

  “Do what?” said Grayson, and it was out there. Cold, hard and ugly. “What are we going to do about it, Joe? Realistically? What can we do? Appeal to Eli? Or Gloria? Because she’s not really in any shape for arbitration right now, is she?”

  “Arbitration? We’re talking about cold-blooded murder.”

  Grayson shrugged. “We can’t very well go to the police. Look at it this way; if Charlie wanted North Florida, he’s got it. And some might say he deserves it. Let him deal with the swamp wolves.”

  Joe stood there, aware that his mouth was hanging open but unable to close it. “No,” he said, after struggling to martial his thoughts into something coherent. “No, it can’t end like that.”

  “It can. And it probably will. What do you think he’s going to do to us if he finds out that we know?”

  “So you’re just going to let him get away with it?”

  Grayson gave a long sigh. “I’m nearly forty-three, Joe,” he said. “And you know most of us don’t see fifty. I have a very short time left on this earth, and I am buggered if I’m going to spend it looking over my shoulder or testing my every mouthful of food for poison. That house is about the only sanctuary I have, and I don’t know how long that will last “

  The sky above was turning lighter now, but Joe couldn’t see its color. He breathed hard with anger and tasted salt stronger than flesh. Soon Reese would be nothing more than a distant smell, and Grayson didn’t give a shit.

  “Please don’t look at me like that,” Grayson said. “One day - ”

  “ – no,” said Joe, with a fresh flash of anger. “I won’t. Don’t you dare tell me that one day I’ll understand, because I won’t. And I hope I never do.”

  *

  There was a magnet on Gloria’s fridge that Blue had noticed before. It was a souvenir, the kind of tacky little thing you bought from somewhere else, only it was from here. From home. It showed a sunset beach fringed with palms, and above – in faded pink typeface in an Eighties-looking font – were the words ISLAMORADA: WHERE LIFE’S A BEACH!

  The scene reminded Blue of the pictures her mother had used to paint, but as she opened the fridge she had never felt quite so far from New Orleans as she did now. She dumped several scoops of ground turkey into a large dog bowl and wondered vaguely if she’d sidestepped the family curse of bipolar only to collide with psychosis. Nothing seemed real.

  Gabe was in the basement, watching Gloria. Blue pushed the turkey through a tiny hatch and retrieved Gloria’s water dish with an old boat hook that had come in handy. The more she looked around, the more Blue realized that a lot of the apparent trash under the stairs was actually useful. She wondered where this was where it started; when you stopped throwing things out and started smearing things on the doorposts like a crazy old lady. And where did crazy old lady end and witch begin? Weren’t most of those women they burned and hung and tortured back in the day just dotty old women who talked out of turn?

  Blue refreshed the water dish and pushed it back into the cage. The concrete walls echoed with the loud, sloppy, smacking sound of Gloria enjoying her dinner. Good. That was one thing to feel relieved about; maybe she’d put on some weight.

  A sick wolf is usually a dead wolf, Gabe had said. That was what had finished Reese; he’d got so fat that it was already killing him before he reached twenty. If you got too fat or too thin or out of shape or your heart got weak and your blood pressure too high then you were pretty much toast by the next full moon. It took a punishing toll on the body.

  She didn’t want to ask Gabe again – she knew it hurt him to answer – but she needed to get things straight in her head. “So,” she said. “What do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “When she’ll change back.”

  Gabe sighed and got up from the plastic beer crate where he was sitting. There were patches of darker skin under his eyes and when he pushed his hair back from his forehead she saw the pale streak she had taken for bleach when she first met him. “Maybe the moon,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sorry I have to keep asking.”

  “No, it’s okay. This is all new to you.”

  “Did you have any idea?”

  He shook his head. “Not a clue,” he said. “Nobody did. Or how she kept it a secret all these years. Not that any of us would know if she wasn’t around on the full moon – we have our own shit going on – but someone would notice if she disappeared for three days out of every month.”

  “Stacy says she’s been around on full moons before. I don’t think she’s been doing this regularly.”

  “You’re not kidding,” said Gabe, staring down at the old wolf in the cage. “If she’d been doing this regularly she’d be dead by now. You get about one lady werewolf for every twelve males, but they don’t live much longer than we do. They don’t get to be past seventy. Just doesn’t happen.”

  “Is there any way she could have stopped herself from turning?”

  “No,” said Gabe. “No way. When it’s in you it has to come out. It’s just so...big. And powerful. Like if you tried to hold it in it would burst your chest wide open and turn your brain to pudding. You can’t resist something like that, not without serious damage. It comes on you like a juggernaught.”

  He stopped, as if he’d caught himself telling her too much. June was nearly over, and the full moon was just a week away.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He squeezed her hand. “I’ll have to be,” he said, and kissed her stiffly on the side of the mouth. “Listen, I gotta go. Sunset cruise. Can’t lose my job on top of everything else.”

  “Sure. I’ll stay here. See if there’s anything she needs.”

  Gabe gave her a thin smile. “Thanks,” he said, but she could feel him pulling away again and it made her both anxious and angry. If he was going to tell her she couldn’t be part of this then she knew she was going to get mad, really mad. She was part of this already; she’d had Yael in her head, and for all it had only been maybe five minutes it was still five minutes too long.

  Blue listened to his feet going up the stairs. When he was gone she turned back to the cubbyhole beneath the treads, and the boxes stacked beneath. Somewhere, with the same hoarder instinct that she was sure was turning her into a lunatic, she felt sure there was something down here that could help.

  She went back to a box of photographs she had been looking through before. Lots of boys – Gloria’s boys. There was a teenage Gabe before his shoulders had filled out; he was all eyes and knees. Beside him was a dark-skinned man whose hair and eyebrows had gone salt and pepper in a way that only served to make him more handsome, and she guessed that this was his grandfather.

  There were others – some she recognized. That sunburned stringbean with the pointed profile had to be Joe Lutesinger, and the beautiful dark-haired young man was clearly a younger Eli Keane, perhaps at the age when Stacy had fallen so hard for him. Eli was almost absurdly good looking, his thick black brows and eyelashes shading his dark blue eyes to a tint close to Elizabeth Taylor’s gorgeous violet. He was looking right up at the camera with the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth, a cardboard
Pilgrim hat askew on his head.

  And then there was Charlie, in a photograph presumably taken at the same Thanksgiving.

  The difference between then and now was frightening. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen in the photo but for all it was obviously Charlie it only served to demonstrate just how nasty, brutish and short life could be when you were forced to turn into a wolf every month. Young Charlie had been a rival for Eli in looks, only his beauty had been the golden, blue-eyed kind, the sun to Eli’s moon. He was smiling and the lines that were now deep creases just added to the expressiveness of his face. His teeth were white and his thick hair was a deep, rich gold, and his lean, tan arm was wrapped around the neck of a younger Gloria.

  She still had blonde in her hair back then, and for all she must have been in her sixties she looked at least ten years younger. She was holding a glass of red wine in one hand, dangerously tilted in a way that made Blue sure it had been all over the tablecloth the moment after the photo was taken. Gloria was laughing, pressing her wine-stained lips to Charlie’s cheek in a kiss that looked both loud and wet.

  The sloppy sound of Gloria drinking from her water dish jerked Blue back to the present. The pictures suddenly seemed unfathomably sad and Blue stuffed them back into their Kodak envelope, only for one to fall out from between the others.

  It was older than the rest – black and white. The Gloria in that picture didn’t look that much older than Blue was now. Her hair was a thick sheaf of cornsilk blonde, right down to the middle of her back, and she hadn’t been kidding when she’d said her legs had stopped traffic back in the day. She wore a tiny skirt and in her arms was a small, dark-haired toddler.

  If it had been anyone but Gloria Blue would have suspected the child was hers, but it seemed as though Gloria had been doing this her whole life, acting as den mother to wolf children.

  Blue turned the picture over, looking for more information, but all it said on the back – in ink almost faded to yellow – was ‘West 1967’.