The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“Gabriel!”

The figure straightened up and Blue saw it was a young man, his shoulders stiffened by Charmaine’s yell. He was wearing a wetsuit skinned down to his waist, and his skin was brown and smooth, his muscles clearly visible. He walked back up the jetty with a hangdog air, a mask dangling limply from his hand. Charmaine stood waiting, her hands on her hips.

“You better tell that Joe Lutesinger to get his ass back here,” she said.

Gabriel screwed up his face and cupped a hand to his ear. “What?”

“You heard me. Tell Joe to get back here and do whatever he didn’t do in those restaurant bathrooms. The toilets aren’t flushing right and it smells like something died.”

“Okay,” he yelled back. “Will do.”

And with that he kept on walking towards the boatshed, the mask swinging now in time with the fresh bounce in his stride.

Blue watched him for a moment then realized she was staring like an idiot. She picked up her feet and hurried across the lawn.

“Hey, do you wanna go get something to eat?” asked Stacy, when they were back in the laundry.

“Sure. I’m starving.”

Blue was shaking every time she stood still enough to notice, and she had no desire to hang around Renee in particular; she had a weird, self-conscious fear that somehow the older woman
knew
how close she had come to inappropriate laughter.

Stacy drove a pickup truck that looked like it dated back from when the Beatles were still together. Not only did it still have a cassette player, but the thing was still in use. Beneath gaped a compartment filled with a bargain bin jumble of ancient tapes – Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Baby Genius Sing-A-Long.

“You have children?” asked Blue, as they pulled up outside a dusty diner.

“Three,” said Stacy, pulling a face. “All boys. I was hoping number three would be a girl, but nope. I’m doomed to spend my life surrounded by crusty socks and porn. You?”

Blue shook her head. “No.”

“Smart girl,” said Stacy. She pushed open the diner door and led the way to the counter. “Don’t have any until you’re at least thirty. I had my eldest when I was just seventeen. I mean, I love the little fucker and all, but they eat your goddamn life and spit out the pieces. I should have been out getting high and screwing around but for like eighteen months I was some kind of milk-zombie with this child thing just hanging on my hip, you know? And the colic. Jesus,
nothing
prepares you for a baby with colic. That’s some Guantanamo-level shit right there.”

A red-headed waitress came over with two cups of coffee.

“Hey Darla,” said Stacy. “Can I get the croque monsieur and a fried egg?”

“Sure thing.”

Darla glanced at Blue, who hadn’t even had a chance to look at the menu. “I’ll have the same, thanks,” said Blue. When she reached for the cup she was conscious of her hands shaking from low blood sugar.

“Coming right up,” said Darla.

“Good choice,” said Stacy. “Fuck that low carb shit, I say. Low carb is for rich broads who don’t burn their calories scrubbing crappers. How’d you find it, by the way?”

“Oh, it was everything I expected,” said Blue.

Stacy laughed. “And more.” She raised her coffee cup in a toast. “Living the dream, huh?”

Blue laughed along with her and dumped a good dose of sugar in her coffee. “It sounds silly,” she said. “But I kind of am.”

“Really? Because you should probably raise your expectations.”

“No, I don’t mean the toilet cleaning thing,” she said.

“I should hope not.”

Blue took a careful sip of hot, sugary coffee and set down her cup. “It’s dumb,” she said. “But I figured if I was going to spend my life making hotel beds I may as well do it somewhere...extraordinary. And I always thought the Keys looked like paradise.”

Stacy nodded. “They do look great, it’s true.”

“Some of it might have had something to do with seeing Orlando Bloom in
Pirates of the Caribbean
at too young an age...”

Stacy laughed again. “Oh, I hear you. Still gives me the tingles, even though I switched teams.”

“Oh. Are you...?”

“Taken. Relax. You’re too young for me, anyway.”

Darla brought their meals, but she didn’t look them in the eye. She stared straight over their heads at something behind. “Oh boy,” she said. “Hurricane Gloria at one o’clock.”

The glass door swung open and in walked an old white lady. She was barely skin and bones. Her lint pale hair straggled around a tiny face sunken by the lack of dentures.

“I want some oatmeal, Charlotte,” she said, hauling herself up onto one of the red plastic seats alongside Blue. Her voice was clear and surprisingly loud. “Forty grams. No more. Made with skim milk, if you’d be so kind. I got to get these last few pounds off or I’ll be busting out of my dress.”

She turned to Blue and laughed. “Here comes the bride, all fat and wide,” she sang. There were a few teeth left in her bottom jaw, but her upper was all gums, giving her the featureless dark smile of a Greek comedy mask.

“Gloria, honey,” said Darla, in a slow, loud, patient voice. “Did you come out on your own again?”

Gloria shook her head like a dog with a fly in its ear. “I ain’t
childish
, Charlotte,” she said. “So don’t talk to me like I am. Now, can you get me some blueberries with my oatmeal? For the antioxidants.”

Stacy and Darla exchanged a look. “I’ll call Gabe,” said Stacy, taking out her phone.

Gloria turned to Blue and peered at her. Her eyes were cloudy blue but somehow they retained a kind of changeling brightness. Her small, bony hands reached out and caught hold of Blue’s, and her grip was surprisingly strong.

“Now,” she said, with another comedy-mask smile. “Who’s this shiny new thing?” She gave Blue’s hands an emphatic shake. “My name is Gloria. G – L – O – R – I – A. It’s easy to remember – a big round name. A golden name. Shines like the moon, don’t it?”

Blue nodded.

“I can see the colors in names,” said Gloria. “Taste them too. Smell them. Charlotte here smells like pie. Apple and cinnamon.” She jerked her head at the space behind Blue’s shoulder, where she couldn’t see. “Poor Stacy there – she’s as bland as cardboard to taste, but she makes up for it by being such a
pretty
shade of green. Like a Granny Smith apple.” She gave Blue’s hands another shake. “And what about you, shiny-new? What do they call you?”

“Blue.”

Gloria frowned. Her eyebrows were thin, as if they’d been overplucked sometime in the Seventies. When she’d been young, maybe even beautiful. “Are you making fun of me?” she said, with a sudden, fierce seriousness.

“No,” said Blue. She could hear Stacy talking quietly but urgently on the phone behind her. “That’s my name. Blue Beaufort.”

Gloria’s frown smoothed out a little. “Huh,” she said. “A stormy name.” She sniffed. “Smells like that wind before the hurricane comes. A whisper of cold salt. Pierces your senses in the warm.” She squeezed Blue’s hands, her thumbs moving over the pulse points. “Trouble coming,” she said. “Are you trouble, Miss Shiny-new?”

Blue swallowed hard, her head spinning and her stomach rumbling. All she really wanted was food and it was right there in front of her – a big grilled cheese and ham sandwich with an egg on top – but she was too polite to turn away and stuff her face the way she wanted to.

And Gloria had a hold of her. There was no way to end the conversation without some kind of physical withdrawal.

Then just like that Gloria drifted off somewhere else. Or else her mind had snapped back to attention. “Oatmeal, Charlotte,” she said, and marched off in the direction of the jukebox.

“Is she okay?” asked Blue, although she knew it was a stupid question.

“Nope,” said Darla. “Charlotte was my mother. She’s been dead ten years.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

Darla sighed and set down the coffee pot. "Poor old thing," she said, looking over at Gloria. "She just keeps on getting worse."

2

The truck was parked askew in the drive. There was a tire track across the parched lawn, leading directly to the bathtub shrine, where St. Benedict usually stood upright.

Today the old man, together with his crook and his book, was leaning at a boozy angle, the peeling paint on his plaster eyeballs giving him the remote, fishy look of an incorrigible souse.

Gabe slammed the car door harder than necessary. “Awesome,” he said. How the hell was he supposed to keep up the fiction that he was a bad-but-superstitious Catholic when he couldn’t even keep poor old San Benito from getting dinged by Lutherans?

He went into the house. The tiny kitchenette opened onto an empty living area. The coffee table was covered in folded laundry, which took the edge off his temper and almost made him feel bad about the things he was about to say. Almost. The socks were balled together all wrong; green and tan, gray and purple.

“Joe?”

“Yeah, I’m down here.”

Gabe followed the sound of his voice and sighed. So the shower saga was not over. Yay.

The hurricane hatch was open. Gabe wasn’t a tall man – barely five foot eight in his bare feet – but he had to duck to keep from beaning himself on the floorboards above as he descended the steep wooden stairs. Joe, who was over six and a half feet tall, had smacked himself on the head so often that it was a wonder he could still see straight.

Or maybe he couldn’t. Hence the tire tracks.

Joe was kneeling in the corner of the basement, the floor strewn with silicone sealant pumps, tubs of grout and bits of old pipe. Ever since he’d smelled damp he’d been obsessed, no matter how many times that Gabe reminded him they were living on a goddamn archipelago that hung off the bottom of a
swamp
. Damp was kind of par for the course.

“So. We’re still on this?”

“Yep,” said Joe, not looking up. “It’s still not waterproof. I’m going to have to take the floor up.”

“
No-oo
. That’s not a thing that’s going to happen.”

He swiveled round on his knees and looked up. He had grout in his blond hair so that it stuck up in fierce spikes at the front, like the styles sported by those big crazy Celts who had used to stiffen their hair with lime, the better to scare the crap out of the Romans. “You want to lose your house in a sinkhole?” he said.

“No,” said Gabe. “But you said yourself that this leakage has been going on for a while. And so far the house has not fallen into a sinkhole.”

Joe frowned. “What kind of reasoning is that? Can’t you
smell
it?”

“No,” said Gabe. “I can’t. And speaking of smells, there’s a problem with the hotel restrooms. Charmaine is planning to kill you.”

“Shit.” Joe rose carefully from the floor. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her to get in line.”

Joe sighed. “If this is about your statue - ”

“ - oh, you
wish
that was the worst thing you’ve done today. When were you going to check on Gloria?”

Joe bit his lip. “Oh.”

“Oh? Are you kidding me? Is that all you have to say for yourself? Luckily she only wandered into Charlotte’s this time; Stacy called me, I tried to call you to go get her and you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry,” Joe said. “I left my phone upstairs. I was down here and I got caught up - ”

“ - caught up? You’re obsessed.”

“Can’t you smell it though? The damp?”

“This is Florida. It’s like ninety-eight per cent humidity
all the time
. You’re gonna have to get used to it.”

“We just won’t use the basement shower until I can get to the bottom of it, okay?”

Gabe gave a long sigh and went back up the stairs before he said something really stupid. It wasn’t Joe’s fault; if anything it was his, which only made it worse. He flung open the fridge and helped himself to a much-needed beer.

He told himself he was going to be reasonable, but then Joe came up and said he was sorry all over again and it all came spilling out.

“Enough,” Gabe said. “Please. Don’t apologize. Just
do better
. Do I need to explain to you what could happen to her? She weighs eighty pounds wet and doesn’t even know what planet she’s on half the time. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of people sick enough to take advantage of a crazy little old lady - ”

“ - she’s not any crazy little old lady,” said Joe. “Come on. She may look like one, but she’s still...you know...Gloria.”

“No,” said Gabe, slamming his beer down too hard on the counter. The foam came up and sloshed over his fist. “That’s just it, Joe. I don’t think even she knows who she is or what she is any more.”

For once even Joe was smart enough to know not to say anything.

Gabe took a long drink. On the fridge was a rectangular magnet depicting a botanical drawing. Aconite. A gift from Gloria. The edges were beginning to rust a little. He kept his eyes on it and spoke once more.

“She asked me five times if I was taking her to the bus stop. I counted.”

“That’s rough.”

“It’s bullshit is what it is. I know she was always nuttier than squirrel shit, but this is...this is different. Wrong. It shouldn’t happen to her. Everything she’s done, everything she’s been, and it all gets taken away from her by some boring-ass illness that could happen to anyone.”

“I know. It sucks.”

Gabe crumpled the beer can in his fist. “It more than sucks, Joe. And I need you. I need you to help me with her.”

Joe pressed his lips together. “I know. I get that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t say it. Mean it.”

“I do. I will. And listen, about your statue...”

Gabe shook his head, too tired to return to his previous state of indignation. “Oh God, don’t worry about it. Like St. Benedict has ever done dick for me anyway.”

“I couldn’t see it,” said Joe, flopping down on the futon. “The shrine, I mean. It was just another shade of gray against the lawn.”

Gabe sat down beside him, his gaze drawn back to the mismatched socks. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Meh. You don’t miss what you never had, I guess.”

“You could see
some
colors before.”