by Anna Roberts
“– yeah, I get the picture,” said Blue. “But did anything happen? After they killed her? The familiar spirit – did it do anything?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a story that Gloria used to tell us. Said the spirit cursed the house of Stuart or whatever. And maybe it did, I don’t know. They were a pretty goddamn unlucky bunch. The king’s eldest son died and then the dipshit spare stepped in and got his head cut off in a civil war. And then when his son regained the throne he knocked up every woman but his legal wife and ended up handing the throne to his brother, yet another dipshit spare. And that’s not even counting the plague and the fire and all the rest.”
“And this Meg McBride was supposed to have done all this?”
“No. Not Meg. The spirit. The thing that was released when they killed her.” He grinned. “Or the Stuarts were just a pack of right royal morons with a knack for attracting trouble. I mean, James’s own ma ended with her head on the block and his old man got blown sky high in something out of World’s Dumbest Political Assassinations. I guess you could make an argument for them having the tools and the talent to fuck up their own shit long before Meg McBride was even a twinkle in a roving werewolf’s eye.”
Blue took too big a mouthful and shivered as the ice headache lanced into her brain. “But it could,” she said. “Right? If it wanted to. I’ve seen what Yael can do and that was more than enough.”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You knew Lyle Raines, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “I did.”
“Do you know what happened there? I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of anyone about what Gloria was supposed to have done to him to make him give Gabe and Joe back.”
“Oh, that,” said Charlie, lowering his head to light a cigarette in the breeze. He blew out a plume of smoke. “Yeah. By the time she was done with Lyle that house was like something from a fucking Stephen King novel. Flies everywhere, smelled like rotting meat. The electricity kept fizzing in and out so there was no way to keep the refrigerator going without getting a scorching case of food poisoning from everything that kept partially thawing and freezing again. And Lyle woke up every single day with some fun new ailment –”
“– like blisters on his tongue?” said Blue. The thing with the electricity had unsettled her more than she meant to let on. You could be forgiven for thinking that Yael’s favorite thing in the whole wide world was screwing around with the lights.
Charlie frowned. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
“I saw it,” she said. “In a dream. Or maybe it wasn’t a dream. It’s hard to explain, but it’s almost like Yael is...leaking.”
“Leaking?”
“Maybe not the best word for it,” she said. “But I know what it feels like to have him inside my head and it’s like a...I don’t know...like a diluted version of that. Like he’s dripping into my dreams. Only it’s getting stronger, like he’s filling up the whole house and soon it’ll just flood into all of us.”
“I’ve got to get in there,” said Charlie.
Blue shook her head. “No. Not if Gloria doesn’t want you there. I have to respect her wishes. Even if she is a...well...you know.”
“Bitch?”
It was a bad taste joke and she didn’t laugh, but it was something to reproach him with. “She said you did something bad,” Blue said.
Charlie stubbed out his cigarette and exhaled long and hard. “I’ve done a lot of bad things,” he said. “Hasn’t everyone?”
“Most people try not to.”
“Most people get more choice in the matter than we do.”
She thought of Gabe and decided not to push any further. At least, not now. “You’re going to have to be patient,” she said. “I can’t let you in the house while she’s there. We’re trying to move her; Gabe’s gone to get some big dog cage so we can move her to his place. Get her away from Yael. I’m scared he’s going to try and hurt her.”
Charlie nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I can live with that.”
“Thank you. I appreciate you not making life any more difficult for me.”
“De nada.” He slurped up the last of his bright blue drink. His eyes were the same shade as the eyes in her dream and as he pressed his lips together in a tight smile she had a sudden, fleeting sense of deja vu.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Sure.”
“Why did you stand up for me before? When we were...talking about Joe?”
He gave her a long look. “You know what the weird thing is?” he said. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just going on instinct.”
“Okay. And what do your instincts tell you?”
“That you have Gloria’s best interests at heart,” Charlie said. He propped his chin on his fist. “I’m kind of sensitive like that. When I get a vibe from someone, I can usually figure them out soon enough. Actually you kind of remind me of her.”
Guess it runs in the family, Yael had said. But that was reaching. Maybe Yael was just yanking her chain, trying to tempt her into thinking she was more witch than she really was. She remembered the picture of Gloria with the toddler in her arms, but shoved the thought out of sight and tried not to act like Charlie’s remark had disturbed her.
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing physical. Just the same vibe. Hard. Not cold, but hard. Like the look she used to get in her eyes when she was sharpening the ax to go kill a chicken. Like she didn’t have to like it, but it was just the way things were.”
*
The picture was right where she’d left it, tucked between the pages of an old photograph album. A palmy beach, a young woman – Gloria in a skirt so short that she could stand up to her knees in the ocean without worrying that the hem would get splashed. Her hair was long, and as blonde as the toddler on her hip was dark. She held him with one arm, his fat little legs riding her tiny waist, her other arm stretched towards the horizon, pointing to something. A dolphin, a boat – something of interest to the kid.
Blue flipped the photo again, her heart beating strangely as she read the cryptic note on the back. West 1967. The ink was almost yellow with age and she had always assumed that there was a missing word somewhere – Key – smudged under a long ago fingerprint. It could have been the beach at Key West, but then it could have just as easily have been Islamorada, or Big Pine. If you’d seen one palm beach you’d seen them all.
No. This had all the hallmarks of a Yael goose-chase.
She heard the front door open and stuffed the picture in her pocket. It was Gabe, carrying the tranquilizer gun, a sight that did nothing to help her rising anxiety.
“Oh God,” she said. “Are we really going to do this?”
He set the gun down and gestured to the porch. There was a cage outside, the sturdy kind built for dogs of unusual size and uncertain temper.
“I guess that’s a yes. Are you sure you have the dose right?”
“Will you quit asking me that?” he said. “It’s not helping, Blue.”
“Sorry.”
They brought in the cage and wrangled it to the top of the basement stairs. Then they went down to move the boxes out of way, so they’d have a clear path when they carried Gloria upstairs. All the while Gloria sat with her nose on her front paws, watching the proceedings with wary interest.
“I’ll get the gun,” said Gabe, and Gloria leapt to her feet and started pacing wildly back and forth, her ears flat and the edges of her lips quivering in a way that Blue now knew meant that outright snarling was just a hair away.
“Don’t freak out,” Blue said. “Just trust us. We know what we’re doing.”
Gloria began to growl. It figured; noses sensitive enough to smell cancer could probably catch out the tiny traces of sweat that went along with lies. Gloria was practically a canine polygraph.
“Okay, fine,” said Blue. “We’re well-intentioned idiots. Happy?”
There was a loud crack and
Gloria’s growl cut off with a whimper. She circled frantically for a minute, snapping at her own ass; as she slowed and stumbled Blue saw the bright red feather of the tranquilizer dart sticking out of her right haunch. “What, no warning?” she said, glaring at Gabe.
He set down the gun and came over to the bars. Gloria’s back legs went first, so that for a moment her front legs kept moving and she looked almost comically confused that she wasn’t getting anywhere. Then she swayed on her front feet and went down, her eyes rolling and her tongue lolling as she fell on her side and lay still.
It would have been uncomfortable enough to watch if she had only been a wolf, but knowing she was really a little old lady added a layer of unpleasantness thick enough to make Blue’s skin crawl.
“Oh God,” she said, watching Gloria’s side rise and fall. So far so good, but if she stopped breathing, what then? What if her death let Yael loose on the world, like a poison or a curse that echoed down through generations?
And what the hell were they going to do if Candi ever came back?
“Let’s go,” said Gabe, and opened the cage. He laid a piece of tarp down on the floor next to Gloria; they’d talked about this. Pull her onto the tarp and lift her up in it like a sling.
She made an old, gummy, drooling wolf, but her few teeth were still large enough to be intimidating. She snorted and one eye rolled half open in drugged sleep, making Blue nearly leap out of her skin.
“Will you relax?” said Gabe. His voice held the same barely restrained panic she recognized as skittering around in her own head; just get this over with. Get it done.
“Sorry. I’m trying.”
Nobody had prepared her for just how awkward a wolf was to move. There were legs and bones and deceptive puffs of fur everywhere. When Blue had tried to take hold of Gloria’s legs she’d been shocked at how delicate they felt, and how they moved in their sockets in a way she felt sure was going to hurt Gloria. And then when she’d tried to get her hands underneath Gloria – heart in mouth in case she wasn’t really all the way out – she’d been amazed at the deadweight of such a skinny old wolf.
Somehow they got her up the stairs and into to the dog cage. Neither of them spoke any more during the whole operation, as if Gabe knew he’d given too much of himself a way during that one tense moment. He only seemed to exhale when he locked the Gloria in. “Why, grandma, what big teeth you have,” he said, and gave Blue a sickly grin.
Blue forced her own lips to move in a smile.
“That was the hard part,” said Gabe. “We’ve done it.”
No, the hard part is making sure she wakes up again.
She didn’t say it; it wouldn’t have helped. They draped the cage with more tarps and carefully loaded it into the back of Joe’s truck. Blue had fully expected something to happen when they took Gloria out of the house - light fittings swinging, nails flying out of the doorframes – but there was nothing. If anything it was eerily quiet. Like someone was watching, waiting. Even the cicadas seemed to be holding their breaths.
“Are we doing the right thing?” asked Blue.
Gabe sighed. “Yes. Unless you want to spend another night in that house with a homicidal poltergeist?”
“No. I guess not.”
He checked the bungee cords around the cage one last time. “You guess?” he said. “Come on. You said it yourself – the house is keeping that thing in. We can’t leave her in there with it. It might hurt her.”
“It hasn’t yet.”
“Well, who knows what it’s thinking,” said Gabe, opening the door. “I’m more than happy to leave it to mull things over all on its own.” He raised a middle finger to the house as he half turned to clip his seatbelt. “Enjoy your soledad, motherfucker. May you have a hundred years of it and more.”
She didn’t tell him that she had talked with Charlie while he was in Marathon. Every speed bump on the five minute drive made her worry about Gloria back there. Could she get blood clots by being jarred around while her circulation was sluggish?
Gloria was groggy when they put her in Gabe’s basement, a growl rumbling like distant thunder in her throat and drool pooling beneath her open mouth, but to Blue’s intense relief she seemed to be coming round from the tranq dart.
This is my life now, Blue thought. I lock old ladies in basements and chat up werewolves and angry spirits.
She pictured the house they’d left behind them, the rooms empty. How come Yael had been so quiet when they took Gloria away, and what was he doing now? Blue imagined chairs scraping across the kitchen floor, pulled by unseen hands. Lights flicking on and off, bulbs blowing and the microwave oven turning itself on in an empty kitchen. Maybe he’d set fire to the place just to make a point, but she was too tired to bring herself to care.
Gabe had been right. This felt better, lighter. When she went upstairs she could almost believe the world was normal. Gabe was busy defrosting chilli con carne and the TV was on – something utterly, wonderfully mindless about brides and weddings. A large woman was complaining that the dress she’d picked out had somehow gotten six inches smaller between fittings.
“...it’s water weight. It’s my time of the month. I don’t see why I should have to pay for a larger size.”
“Yeah, six inches of water weight,” said Gabe, poking in the pan with a wooden spoon. “That’ll totally happen in four weeks.”
“I’m guessing donuts were involved,” said Blue, wandering into the kitchen.
“Can that even happen? Four dress sizes in four weeks? She must have been hooked up to a ranch IV.”
Blue laughed and was astonished to find herself doing so. This was a normal conversation. And they might even have a normal night’s sleep after a normal dinner. “Can I do anything?” she said.
“Uh...taco shells? They’re in the cupboard. Somewhere behind Joe’s collection of hot sauces.”
And just like that the brief illusion of normal was shattered. Joe wasn’t coming back, Gloria was a wolf and Yael had probably set the house on fire for shits and giggles.
Blue switched off the TV. Gabe’s back stiffened as he stirred, but he didn’t protest.
She reached into the cupboard and found the tacos. “I keep expecting him to walk in,” she said, thinking of the bathtub St. Benedict still standing at the angle where Joe had knocked it.
“I know.”
It was hanging right out there and she had to ask. “You cared about him a lot, didn’t you?”
Gabe sighed. “Yeah. We shared a lot of things. You do that, when you keep waking up naked with someone –”
No, maybe not. Maybe it was time to stop pressing and turn the TV back on. “– you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to. It’s really none of my business.”
He blew his hair out of his eyes and looked up from the chilli. “Does it bother you?”
“No,” she said, and kissed his shoulder. “It just makes me sad. That you lost someone you loved.”
12
Like most things, removing handcuffs was a lot harder than it looked in the movies. Screen heroes just picked up a piece of metal or a hairpin, jiggled it around in the lock for a bit and then snicked off the offending cuffs with the kind of effortless flourish that probably left Harry Houdini spinning in his grave.
One cuff was around Grayson’s ankle. The other was secured to the metal newel post at the foot of the stairs. He had bought the house partly because he’d liked those Spanish style stair rails; he wasn’t sure he liked them that much any more. They had an annoying tendency not to break when you tried to get loose from them.
The movies had not prepared him for how much the inactivity would make his foot swell. His toes poked out at the end of a lump that looked like bread dough, and his heel had the stretched, shiny look of something infected. There was a ring of raw skin around his ankle; the cuff was too small and no matter how much he tried to keep still there was always chafing.
And there was Ro to deal with.
Grayson had de
alt with some cranky editors in his career, but even the worst ‘We like it, but can you change the entire contents?’ shitheads couldn’t hold a candle to a shotgun wielding swamp wolf who was apparently channeling Annie Wilkes. Ever since Ro had discovered Grayson was among Ruby’s favorite romance writers, he’d had the bizarre idea of making Grayson write out his revenge fantasies.
“This is bullshit,” Ro said, frowning at the notebook. “What is this? A goddamn spelling bee. Enough with the long-tailed words.”
“Noted,” said Grayson.
“I don’t even know what that shit means. That ain’t a word. In-sowch...”
“Insouciant. It means careless, playful.”
Ro tossed the notebook back into Grayson’s lap. “So write that, dummy,” he said. “And this broad. This Vanessa character who falls in love with me. She needs to be hotter. Like, stacked. At least a D-cup, else how’s Ruby gonna be jealous of her when she reads this?”
“Got it,” said Grayson. “Hot and stacked. Always a good jumping off point for a character.”
“And change her name.”
“To what?” Misery Chastain sprang to mind. Jesus, how had he ever got into this situation? This would never have happened when Lyle was alive. He almost missed him. Lyle had been a mean, violent, vindictive piece of garbage, but he’d at least had that mad dictator’s talent for ruling his turf through fear.
“How the fuck should I know?” said Ro. “Something sexy. You pick it out. You’re the goddamn writer.”
After a brief flirtation with Tits McGee, Grayson considered Chesty Morgan and then eventually settled on Voluptua O’Plenty. Not that he was particularly interested in churning out whatever deathless prose Ro thought would most annoy his errant wife. He was more interested in escaping from his own home.
Ro stomped off into a huddle near the picture window. Jared, the little weasley one with teeth like the late Queen Mother, was talking a dull, whiny, repetitive way that told Grayson that something was up. Something important.
