The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (36 page)

“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’.

“I don’t know what that means,” said Blue, and it was only when Gloria stopped drinking and looked at her that she realized she’d spoken aloud.

Blue got up from the floor and sighed. “Actually,” she said. “I don’t know what any of this means.”

She was surprised how fast she had taken to talking to a wolf, although she supposed it was no different to the way that new mothers started talking to their babies. You knew you weren’t going to get a direct response any time soon, but you got
something
, even if it was just spit-up or another pile of wolf poop.

“I feel like I’m dreaming half the time,” Blue said. “But I’m not, am I? Because this has to be real. Unless I’m having dreams about cleaning bathrooms, in which case I seriously need to up my dream game.”

Gloria twitched an ear.

“They didn’t clean that bathroom properly when they were done, you know,” said Blue, back in the familiar territory of complaining about men. They’d scrubbed the place after they moved Reese’s body, but like most men they’d scrubbed only what they could see. “In a way I think it helped. Does that sound weird? I got down on my hands and knees and saw it in terms of stains that had to be shifted. Not blood and guts and gore. Not a person.”

Blue shivered at her own words. “No, that
does
sound weird, doesn’t it? Weird and cold. Like something a psychopath would say.”

She sat down on the beer crate. “You know, in a way I’m kind of relieved that you don’t talk back. Assuming you’re really in there.” It was ridiculous, and in other circumstances she might have laughed. “You are, aren’t you? You’re really a wolf. And I don’t have the first clue about what to do about it. And that’s the worst part. I feel like I
could
, you know? Like I’m on the edge of something and I could learn, I could grasp it. If only someone could point me in the direction of the first step I need to take.”

Gloria moved closer. Even caged and with half her teeth missing she was still intimidating. There was no way anyone could ever have mistaken her for a large dog, even a stray. With her long legs and massive jaws she had the unmistakable shape of a thing that lived on the bleeding edge of nature, a place where you died if you weren’t smart or strong or lucky. And yet she was still Gloria, somehow. Still recognizable. Strange how she managed to be both wholly wolf and wholly witch all at once.

“This is big, isn’t it?” said Blue, thinking of Yael. “Serious mojo. You’ve never done this before, but why now? What’s going on?”

She looked up at the ceiling, but the bare bulb hung motionless. Grayson was wrong; Yael wasn’t sulking. Yael was just gone. Perhaps he’d hitched a ride with one of the evangelists and was out there somewhere, swaying to the sound of hymns in a stolen body, watching through stolen eyes as some hellfire preacher moved through the crowd, demon-punishing palms all itchy with the desire for money.

What if someone tried to drive him out again?

Gloria nosed through the bars, pointing to the Ouija board just beyond Blue’s right foot. Blue quickly pushed it over, eager for words. Any words. Even if they made no sense.

S-T-O-R-M

Whisper of salt on the wind. Yeah, this was a word that set the hair prickling on the nape of her neck.

S-C-O-M

“No, I don’t understand,” said Blue, but Gloria kept on going - I-N-G – and then she got it, clear as the swirling shape on the weather map, wheeling towards home.

Storm’s coming.

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Also available

S-T-O-R-M-S-C-O-M-I-N-G

That was the message on the Ouija board, but Blue is a long way from understanding, and as July’s brutal blue moon looms she is forced to face the reality of the weird new world in which she now lives. Gloria, being more wolf than witch these days, is not much help, and Gabe keeps pushing Blue away in a desperate attempt to protect her from the horrors of the full moon.
But Blue’s stared horror in the face too many times already, and keeps right on walking into the realm of the spirit workers, the all-but-extinct wolf witches who once derived their power from pack spirits like the murderous Yael, who’s been a little too quiet for comfort lately.
Also there are power struggles looming when exiled alpha Charlie returns to the Keys in the wake of the cannibal swamp-wolf murders near St. Augustine. And things aren’t going so well for the Okefenokee packs either, at least according to swamp-wolf Ruby, who’s come down south trailing a captive spirit tamer and softer than Yael, but no less potentially dangerous.
When July’s first full moon brings disaster for Joe Lutesinger, Blue finds herself thrown headlong into the role of wolf witch. There’s trouble at home and abroad, no instruction manual beyond an elderly cook book and Gloria’s increasingly in no position to offer help. Gabe can push as hard as he likes, but the more Blue learns the more she realises that even if she wanted to walk away, she’s in this thing far deeper than anyone – least of all herself - ever knew.
Isle of Spirits is the second book in the Keys Trilogy.

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Yael is loose. 
Cast adrift on the ocean, there’s only one way he can get back to shore, and Ruby is just desperate enough to try it. 
Reeling from recent events and sent into exile on Gloria’s command, the Keys pack struggle to regroup, facing a supernatural threat bigger than anything the full moon could even dream of throwing at them. The only thing standing between them and Yael is young, untested wolf witch Blue, but the recent revelations about her family history have set her off balance, and Yael is more ravenous than ever in his quest to become fully human. 
When Blue heads south to face Yael she is sucked down into a deadly duel that threatens to take her life or drive her mad, and skeptical Gabe faces his greatest test of faith in her and her witchcraft when he takes his life in his hands to save her. 
Witches, swamp kings, spirits, serial killers and an ever present full moon; it’s like Pandora’s Box flew open all over again, and this time the horrors are personally tailored to Blue’s worst nightmares. 
And sometimes there’s no greater horror than the truth. 
Full Fathom Five is the third and final book in the Keys Trilogy.