The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (18 page)

“You look well,” said Grayson.

“You look gray.”

“That’s because I am.”

“No, I mean
all
gray. I don’t see color anymore. Since...you know.” He couldn’t forget the gray, swirling smellscape he had woken to, unable to make his tongue form words or his brain string them together. And yet he’d known somehow – wordlessly – just how bad it was. The worst of all possible scenarios. You turn back into a human but your brain stays wolf. If you died straight away you were lucky.

“I’m so sorry.”

Joe shrugged. “I was colorblind before anyway. You know how it goes together sometimes.” He tapped his nose, determined that nobody was going to pity him. “And I got superpowers, like you say. I can sniff out a leaking pipe without even taking the floor up. Business is good.”

“We all have our quirks, I suppose. You know Lyle used to be able to turn at will?”

Joe sat still, determined not to reveal just how interesting he found this tidbit. “No. I didn’t know that.”

“Maybe it was one of the reasons he never felt the need for a wolf witch,” said Grayson. “Well, that and the heartfelt misogyny, of course. But he could turn just by wanting to. Didn’t need to be a full moon for him to do it. He always had a weird control over the wolf in him. Not to the point where he could keep from changing when the moon was full; you know how
that
goes.”

“Yeah.” First you felt the spaces between your bones gape, tendons started to ache and tingle, and then it was coming whether you liked it or not. Couldn’t fight the moon. No one could. “But he could turn at any other time he liked?”

Grayson drained his glass and nodded. “Yep. And he was himself, Joe. That was the other thing. He wasn’t just an animal when he turned. He was still Lyle, but with teeth. And claws.”

Gabe had been right all along; Lyle had killed that girl. “Jesus,” Joe said, trying to remember anything from the last time he turned, but there was nothing. Just the usual black space in his brain and the cold, aching aftermath, curled in a heap on the floor with every bone in his body groaning in pain.

“There you have it,” said Grayson. “Now you know why we were all so fucking scared of him.”

12

There was another Christian at the gate today. A woman, this time.

Yesterday it had been a man – a boy, really – with a patchy pubey mustache and a squirrelly look. He had been short, and when Blue stood up to speak to him he had stared directly between her sweating breasts for a moment before cutting his eyes away and afterwards addressing himself to a spot in the air maybe two inches beyond her left ear.

If she had answered his questions to his satisfaction – which she hoped she hadn’t, since they were none of his business – then he had been too busy avoiding the sightly temptations of the flesh to remember the answers. Which was probably why the woman was here now.

She was small and artificially bright, with curly hair dyed a butter-blonde. Her pink t-shirt had glitter on it, but Blue couldn’t make out the picture; it was creased between her folded arms. There were rhinestones on the corners of her glasses.

“Well,” she said. “Don’t you look busy?”

Blue untangled another skein of ivy from her gardening gloves and gave her a strained smile. Everyone was your friend when you were doing yard work. Every third person who came by paused to tell her what a good job she was doing or jokingly asked if she’d like to come by and do theirs later. “I’m getting there,” she said.

The woman smoothed down her sparkly t-shirt; there was a smiling cat on it, a child’s rendering, with sticks for whiskers and upturned triangles for ears. Blue caught her looking and laughed.

“Isn’t it cute?” she said. “My granddaughter designed it just for me and I took it to one of those t-shirt printed places. Then she jazzed it up with some sparkles.”

“It’s nice.”

“She’s very artistic. All her teachers say so.” There was another smile, a catch in the conversation. The woman glanced at the house and Blue pictured her gaze bouncing back off the mirror beside the door; maybe that was why it was there. She made a mental note to ask Gloria.

There was a shadow under the porch, a patch of darker earth where something smelly had spilled out of the deer and stained the soil. It was fading now, but it was all Blue saw in that moment, while the woman went on talking and shuffling some papers she’d pulled out of her bag.

“...you’ll forgive me for asking, but is this Miz Baldwin’s place?”

Blue turned back to her, jarred back to reality by the knowledge that she’d been living here for almost a full week and yet had no idea what Gloria’s last name was.

“Uh...I think so.”

“I’d very much like to speak with her.” There was a leaflet in the woman’s hand now. It was printed on shiny paper and was every bit as infantile as the sparkly cat on the woman’s sweatshirt. A snow-white, blue-eyed Jesus beamed an Ivory Soap smile over a gaggle of doe-eyed children, some of them rendered so aggressively cute by the artist that they’d looped right round to grotesque. Candy colored goblins grinning up at their God.

“She’s resting right now,” said Blue, taking the leaflet out of politeness.

The woman nodded, but there was a glint in her eye that told Blue that a lot of her fizzy, busy glitter was just there to hide her real shine. Hard as a diamond. “Perhaps you could help me, then?” she said. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” asked Blue, whose idea of what was true had been tested a lot lately. That the light fitting swung every time she went near the cellar door – that was true, but she had no idea what it meant. Or Gabe. Every time there was a little voice in her head telling her that this couldn’t be real, forcing her senses to scramble to take it all in; the touch and taste and smell of him.

“Why, the miracle, of course,” said the woman, with an evangelical smile.

Briefly Blue considered lying, telling her that Gloria’s recovery was down to some new drug, but that would only bring a whole new variety of pilgrims to her door, some of whom had television cameras and demands to see scientific proof.

“Are you from Renee’s church?” she said.

“Yes, dear. Do you know her?”

“I work with her.”

“Poor Renee. She’s been through so much in the last couple of years.”

“Yes, I know.”

The woman sighed. “Well, the Lord sends these things to try us.”

“He does?” said Blue.

“Of course. He tests those he loves dearest.”

Blue let out a snort of laughter before she could rein it in. “Sorry,” she said, in response to the woman’s diamond glare. “I don’t like to think of what he’d do to those he hates.”

“He
forsakes
them,” said the woman.

“Yeah,” said Blue. “I’m okay with that.”

The woman sparkled and sweetened again, but it was ineffective now that Blue had seen her real edge. “Well,” she said. “Perhaps you’d be kind enough to hand on that leaflet to Miz Baldwin and I’ll come back another day.”

Another day when I’m not the dragon guarding the gate, thought Blue, watching her walk to her car. When the woman had gone she took another swipe at the ivy on the fence, but picking up the shears again made her forearms ache and it was time to start thinking about dinner.

There was salt on the doormat again. Gloria dropped it all over the house like dandruff and no sooner had Blue swept it up then she sprinkled some more. Walking barefoot in Gloria’s house was a gritty sort of experience, like tracking the beach in after yourself no matter how well you had thought you’d dusted the sand off your toes.

In the kitchen, Gloria was busy pricking out seedlings. To Blue’s relief she had at least spread a newspaper on the table before, which she hadn’t done when she was making her ‘witch balls’ - mason jars full of broken glass, rusty nails and other things Blue preferred not to think too much about.

The seedlings were less than a week old, tiny twin leaves on gossamer thin stems. Gloria lifted each fragile little plant from the seed tray, exposing its wisp of root, then pricked out the soil with a pencil before placing the plant in an individual pot. The pots were regular sized and the whole exercise seemed absurdly optimistic. Like the comically tiny seedlings would never and could never get big enough to fill them.

Then again, Blue supposed that ivy out there once started as a seed and a pair of new green leaves. And it had defeated her for yet another day.

“What are you planting now?” she asked.

“Basil,” said Gloria, not looking up. “King of herbs. Repels evil, assures fidelity and makes red sauce worth eating.” She tapped the side of another pot with the pencil. “Marzanos. Maybe the goddamn blight won’t get them this year. My second husband had a knack with tomatoes, but then he was an Italian.”

“You were married?”

Gloria grinned, her lip folding toothless over the gums. With a sinking sense of inevitability, Blue glanced over at the dish drainer. Yup, there they were. Gloria’s dentures, bared right next to the dish soap.

“Three times,” said Gloria. “I was a hot little number; I guess I can say that now. Here, hand me those paper towels.”

“Is there anything in particular you’d like for dinner?”

“Nah. Surprise me. Old drybones here don’t need much anyways. Not like you - you’re still in the game of life, as it were.” She eyed Blue thoughtfully, and not for the first time Blue wondered if Gloria had that old lady thing going on, some kind of second sight that kicked in around the menopause. “You bleeding yet?” she asked.

“No,” said Blue, once again counting the days in her head. She’d had nature’s clock ticking away inside her for so many years that it seemed impossible that it could be stopped by something so small; a sigh, a shudder, a muffled melting spike of pleasure. She should have been more sorry, or more worried, but every time she thought of him between her legs all she ever felt was lust.

“Let me know when you do,” said Gloria. “I could do with some of that on the doorframes.”

“I’m sorry?

Gloria sighed and took off her glasses. “Squeamish,” she said. “It won’t do you any good, Shiny-New. I don’t suppose you noticed, hanging out with Gabe, but this place is haunted as all hell.”

“I think you have a loose floorboard somewhere,” said Blue. “Or a draft. That’s what’s making the light fitting swing.”

Gloria actually cackled. “Oh, he’s got inside your head already, hasn’t it? That boy’s a skeptic through and through – never believed in a thing he couldn’t see or touch.”

“Even if you’re right, I don’t see what my...menses is going to do to help.”

“You read the Bible?”

“Sure. Once.” Before God stretched her faith to breaking point. There were only so many mysterious ways a human being could handle; at one point even poor old Job had thrown up his hands and said ‘Enough’.

“Old ass juju,” said Gloria. “Paint the door with blood, so the Angel of Death will pass over. Of course, they used lamb’s blood because those Hebrews knew way back that there was way too much power in human blood. Especially the womb blood of women. Somewhere the wires got crossed and the boys got their dicks in the mix and it became a dirty thing, but it’s not dirty. It’s power.” She nodded directly at Blue’s waistband. “That blood in your body is your insurance policy, girl. Iron and salt. They can get inside your head for a little while, but you’re too
juicy
for spirits to burrow right down in your bones and your belly.”

“Spirits?” said Blue, picking the one part of this monologue that she nearly understood.

Gloria picked up a small dustpan and started to sweep the soil from the table. “They like old bones, thin blood,” she said. “That’s why dried up old broads like me make the best witches; we can’t keep them out. Don’t have the strength. But we see things, feel things, fly through the air with the greatest of ease.” She grinned again. “And in return, some bugaboo gets to ride us around like a busted truck.”

“Okay,” said Blue. “Does this have something to do with why you want me to pee in your mason jars?”

“Yup. You’re potent. Strong. My watery old piss isn’t gonna repel a thing.”

Blue shook her head. “Gloria, you’re nuts.”

“So I’ve been told,” said Gloria, scooping up the Jesus leaflet from the side. “But keep your underpants on at night all the same.” She put her glasses back on and squinted at the print. “Holy crap. Another fuckin’ Rapture. How many do they have to have before these idiots catch on that it ain’t happening?”

Blue went into the bathroom to wash her hands. There were mason jars lined up on the wall next to the toilet, looking seedy as hell with their contents of broken glass and rusting nails. She stifled a laugh, thinking of all those white girls who mixed their cocktails in mason jars as a fashion statement, then set them on artfully distressed tables to Instagram them. Gabe had laughed when she told him - “I’ve heard of a rusty nail, but that’s ridiculous,” - and then slyly, still giggling, asked her if she was going to do it.

She had said no with the right measure of amused disgust, although there had been a filthy glitter in his eye that tweaked some deviant nerve she didn’t even know she had. Like most boys he was curious and absorbed in everything that went on between her legs, nudging her knees to opposite sides of his narrow bed so that he could look and touch and lick, his nimble tongue bringing her hips off the mattress with every orgasm.

It was all so new. Her mind kept straying back to him and every recollection came with sense memories so sharp and sweet and strong she thought they’d knock her over; the slight, lovely curve of his ass under her heel, the hard brown silk of his belly as he shifted his angle (Breathless - “Is that okay?”) inside of her. Some silly, crap-fed part of her brain kept muttering that this couldn’t be anything but lust, because every time she thought of him her mind kept returning not to his eyes or his smile but to his cock. Her hands and mouth were still full of the heft of it, the taste of it, the defenseless delicacy of the skin and how his whole body reared and roared towards her with need when she touched him in a certain way.