The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1)

by Anna Roberts

Reese yawned. The inside of his mouth looked too dark and his tongue was a strange shade of gray. When he moved he released the smell of sour sweat from his folds.

  “A most ancient and fishlike smell,” Charlie said.

  Grayson leaned forward. “Hmm?”

  “Nothing. Just a brainfart.” Something Gloria had used to read to him. “You guys want to stop for coffee or anything?”

  “No,” said Joe, his voice uncharacteristically hard. “Let’s keep moving.”

  19

  The bar was on the edge of a marina, with a terrace fringed with cute little green railings. The building itself was a pale pink stucco, the entrance to the apartment up a winding flight of steps at the rear. At first glance, it looked like what it was – the property of a man who had spent his whole life falling on his feet – but then Charlie realized the terrace was empty. It was the middle of the afternoon and the surrounding restaurants were heaving with late lunchtime customers, but there was nobody at Eli’s.

  The sign on the door was turned to CLOSED.

  “Wait there,” Charlie told Reese, but Reese shook his head.

  “No way. I’m coming up with you.”

  “Reese, this is personal.”

  “I don’t give a shit. You’re not leaving me alone to get turned into barbeque. Dad said so.”

  It would have been unkind to point out that Dad was a fucking doornail, but that wasn’t why Charlie held off on doing so; he simply couldn’t be bothered to get into it right now. His brain was already firing on all cylinders trying to figure out what to say to Eli after all these years, and while Lutesinger seemed to have forgiven him, Charlie knew he couldn’t be assured of even a veneer of civility from the likes of Gabe Arnot.

  “Fine,” he said, and hopped up the steps to the door. He knocked and waited, his heart speeding up as he heard footsteps approach.

  Eli opened the door. He looked shorter than Charlie remembered, but somehow fleshier, the sun slanting across the front of his hair and lighting up a couple of silver ones among the black, along with one of those asshole white eyebrow hairs, the ones that seemed to delight in growing longer and thicker than all the others, the better to proclaim your impending geezerdom to the whole wide world.

  “Well, holy fucking shit,” said Eli slowly.

  “Hey, bro.”

  “Are you kidding me? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “We got a little situation,” said Charlie, gesturing to Reese, who was still catching his breath on the landing below. “Up north. I guess you heard Lyle bit the big one, huh?”

  Eli blinked down the steps at the other alpha. White eyebrow hairs aside, his eyes were the same shade of panty-remover blue that Charlie remembered. And those lady-killer eyelashes. Jesus, he should have been up to his ears in pussy, but here he was with a CLOSED sign up while the girls sipped their mojitos on other people’s terraces.

  “Reese, right?” Eli said, as Reese heaved himself up the few remaining steps. The kid really didn’t look well, but that was to be expected.

  “Hey,” said Reese. Eli stepped aside to let them in. A narrow hall opened out into an open plan living area, with a kitchen diner and big windows overlooking the marina. It was as far from a werewolf’s lair as it was possible to imagine, a bland, IKEAish space fringed with indoor plants and modish blinds. Charlie took a passing glimpse at a bookshelf and spotted Dale Carnegie, some bullshit about effective habits and a handful of pristine-spined paperbacks – American Psycho, Hunter S. Thompson and (this had to be evidence of a chick somewhere) motherfucking Eat, Pray, Love.

  Poor asshole. It was lucky for him that he was pretty.

  “Nice place,” said Charlie. “You’ll have to excuse Reese. I told him to wait in the car but he won’t even go to the bathroom on his own anymore.”

  “I’m right here,” said Reese.

  “Yeah, I noticed. Could you give us a moment? I did say this was personal.”

  Eli looked wary, but he led Charlie out onto the balcony and slid the glass door across, stepping away from Reese’s line of sight. “Charlie, what’s going on? He’s your alpha, isn’t he?”

  “He’s a moron,” said Charlie. “Maybe as much of a moron as his old man, only minus the muscle and the screaming psychosis. It’s been a hell of a ride since Lyle croaked, let me tell you.”

  Eli looked him up and down a couple of times, shook his head as if to clear it. “Holy shit,” he said, starting to laugh. “It’s really you.”

  “Large as life and twice as ugly,” said Charlie, holding out his arms. “Come here, you prick.”

  After a short hug, Eli stepped back, his hand still on Charlie’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re really here. After all this time. What are you even doing here?”

  Charlie leaned on the balcony railing and fished in his pocket for a cigarette. “Well, here’s the thing,” he said. “I want to see Gloria.”

  Eli looked stricken, as Charlie knew he would, but the reply was the last thing he expected. “No.”

  “No?”

  “No,” said Eli.

  “Just like that? Don’t you think I have the right?”

  Eli sighed and dropped into a plastic chair. “Charlie, it’s not that simple.”

  “Really? Because ‘no’ sounds pretty fucking simple to me. Where do you get off?”

  Eli pressed his lips together and shot a quick glance indoors, where Reese was still lurking. “Look,” he said. “If I tell you this, you’d better understand that I’m telling you as your family, as someone who loves you, as someone she loves, okay? This goes nowhere else.”

  Charlie felt his stomach take one of those deep, dark swoops that meant nothing good. “What, Eli? What’s happened? Is Gloria okay?”

  “She’s sick,” said Eli.

  He didn’t want to say it, but he had to know. The word stuck to the roof of his mouth like a film. “Cancer?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  Eli sighed again. “They think it’s Alzheimer’s,” he said. “Dementia. And that she’s pretty far gone.”

  “And that’s why I can’t see her? What the fuck, Eli?”

  “It’s not like that,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’m not doing this out of malice, Charlie. It’s just that she kind of cycles. Sometimes she’s like her old self and other times she’s not. And right now she’s...not. She’s really confused; she calls every third person Charlie as it is. I don’t know that it would...help.”

  “So you’d keep me from her?” asked Charlie, almost unable to believe what he was hearing. “Seriously? This is the kind of asshole you’ve been turning into all these years?”

  Eli stood there with a dumb look of apology on his face, and Charlie realized right then that Eli hadn’t turned into anything he wasn’t already. Eli was easy. Whichever way was likely to cause him the least amount of trouble was always the way he’d take, because he’d never learned the hard way. “I have a lot going on right now,” he said, and Charlie could have joyfully tipped him over the balcony in that second.

  “I take it back,” Charlie said. “You always were self-centered.” He had to see Gloria now, even if she was too nuts to remember his name. He had to ask her what the hell she’d been thinking when she put this dumb puppet king in charge instead of him.

  “You have no idea what’s going on with me right now,” said Eli. “And you have no idea how hard it is for me.”

  “What, this?” Charlie waved a hand out at the marina, where the tipsy laughter of tourists mingled with music and the sound of the breeze ruffling the palms. “Serving beer, chasing pussy? Yeah, your life has always been such a bitch.”

  “Gloria is crazy, Charlie,” said Eli, too loud. He quickly lowered his voice on account of Reese, but his tone was no less heated. “Not regular Gloria-crazy, but actual crazy-crazy. I got arrested for murder, did you know that? That poor girl up in Miami? Even if I could open nobody would be drinking in my bar right now because that kind of shit sticks
, even if they didn’t actually charge you. But it’s fine because I can’t open, because I have to go back to Islamorada and deal with my son. Yeah, that’s right. Turns out I have a kid. A fucking teenager, and wouldn’t you know it – the poor little bastard got the bad gene. So no, my life isn’t all roses right now, Charlie. How’s yours?”

  “Awesome,” said Charlie, lighting another cigarette. “I spent last night running for my life in the woods behind Barbara Hallett’s place. You remember Mike and Barb, don’t you? Well, last night we found Mike strung up like a side of beef. Good times.”

  Eli finally had the decency to look slightly chastened. “What?” he said, like someone had knocked the wind out of him. “Dead?”

  “Very. Decapitated, gutted. Field dressed, you might say.” Charlie blew smoke into the blue sky. “It’s all falling the fuck apart up there, Eli. You think that little tub of guts in there in has what it takes to keep North Florida together? If we’d stayed another day we’d probably have found ourselves strung up, salted and drying out for jerky.”

  Eli grabbed the balcony railing. “Oh my God. Joe. Joe went up there.”

  “It’s cool. He’s here. He went down to Islamorada with Luke Grayson. I said I’d stay in Tavernier and talk to you about Gloria. Instead of just barging in, like I could have done. But I wanted to talk to you first, Eli. Because this is your turf, and I still respect that, whatever you might think.”

  “Whatever,” said Eli. “What happened up there, Charlie?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Nothing that hadn’t been coming for a long time,” he said. “That whole thing with Gabe and Joe was when it started to get really nuts with Lyle. He went way over the line with that. And I told him so, or at least I tried to, but by then...well...we were all so fucking scared of him.”

  Lyle reared up in his memory, bloody knuckles on a smoked glass tabletop, scar-snicked eyebrow and a sarcastic, one-sided smile. Son, you never said shit to me and you know it.

  “I never understood it,” said Eli. “Why you even stayed with him in the first place.”

  Charlie sighed. “Because he controlled things, Eli. He kept things together. You could do more than just survive when Lyle was in charge. You could live. You could earn. God knows our lives are short and tough enough without going hungry.”

  “He was a monster.”

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “I know that now, but I was a kid. Come on. You were the alpha and that was that. Leaving here, leaving the Keys – it was like being tossed out of heaven. Paradise lost.”

  “It wasn’t personal, Charlie,” said Eli. “It was just - ”

  “ - nature. Yeah. I know. But I can’t lie to you. The truth is there were times when I cursed Gloria for choosing you. Which was fucking stupid, since you may as well yell at a lion for biting off your leg, right? I was eighteen, I was pissed, and Lyle was...well. He made me feel useful. Wanted. And you know me. I’m a cliché – a werewolf with daddy issues. At first it was straight up pathetic how much I wanted to please him.”

  Charlie could feel Eli’s disapproval radiating off him. So nice to have the luxury of turning your nose up from the safety of your own turf, even if you were still dumb enough to believe it was yours and not Gloria’s. No wonder Eli was stonewalling; even with Gloria headed to the nuthouse it was still the only way he could feel like he was the real boss of the Keys.

  “You want to know the truth?” said Charlie. “I could have done more to get Gabe and Joe out of that mess. I could have, but I didn’t, and I still don’t rightly know why. And I’m sorry. I was sorry when I saw what they’d done to them.”

  Eli gave him a chilly look. “Coulda, shoulda, woulda.”

  “Yeah. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. What Gabe did was an accident, but Lyle was looking for something to take personally. Then when Gloria got involved...well, that was when Lyle went looking for another way to lash out at you. And that, I didn’t know about until afterwards. I swear to God, on my mother’s grave...”

  “About what?” said Eli, but Charlie could tell he’d already guessed.

  “That girl. The one in Miami.”

  “That was Lyle?”

  Charlie nodded. “I swear, Eli. I did not know he was gonna do that. Nobody thought he’d go that far. A pregnant woman, I mean that was beyond the fucking pale, even for Lyle.”

  Eli stared out over the railings. Clouds scurried past in the blue sky. Tackle clinked against the masts of the yachts. He didn’t look back at Charlie when he spoke. “And I suppose you didn’t say much about that, either?”

  “No,” said Charlie, and it all hung on this, the closest he’d ever come to the truth. “I didn’t say a thing. That was when I decided to kill him.”

  Eli turned and shot a frantic look through the balcony door. “Jesus, Charlie – what are you saying?”

  “I was gonna do it,” said Charlie. “I got a gun with no serial number. I knew his habits. I knew where he was going to be at every single minute of every single day, right down to the timing of his bowels. I was trying to figure out how to do it, and maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, because Lyle dying was bad news for everyone. I mean, he was a mad dog, but he was our mad dog.”

  “What the hell? Why are you telling me this?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Coulda shoulda woulda. Because I didn’t do it. Because I should have done it, but I waited too long and he just...he just fucking died anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t, because I owed you that, for what he did to your girl.”

  Eli shook his head. “No, Charlie. I never want you to owe me like that. Never. That’s not you. I know you. Gloria didn’t raise us that way.”

  “I know that,” said Charlie. “But it had to end somehow. And that was when I remembered who I was. One of Gloria’s boys. I admit, I’ve done some stuff I’m not proud of, but I’m still one of her kids. Not even Lyle Raines could take that away.”

  There was a short pause. Eli sighed and rubbed the skin above his eyebrows. “I’ll see what I can do, okay? If she’s doing better than she was this morning...”

  “...thanks, man. That’s all I want. All I ever wanted was to see her again.”

  Eli jerked his head towards the balcony door. “And what about him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlie. “We came here looking for sanctuary, but I’ve been thinking. If he goes back to his daddy’s old turf he’s not gonna last five minutes. Maybe it would be better if he stayed here.”

  “Three alphas in the Keys?” said Eli. “Oh yeah. That will end well.”

  “Quit your fretting. The boy doesn’t have an alpha bone in his body. It’s a classic case of nature trumping nurture.”

  “Yeah, well. That still leaves you.”

  Charlie gave him a shit-eating grin. “True. You still have to worry about me, but why break the habit of a lifetime?”

  *

  Gloria picked up the nails in small, shaky hands, and dropped as many in the same instant.

  “Go and sit down,” Blue told her, for the hundredth time. “Please. I can do this.”

  Gloria shook her head, her white hair swaying either side of her face. “Boys,” she muttered. “They make such a mess. If only I’d had a girl.”

  “I’m here now. I’ll clean up. Now please – go in. You’re going to step on one.”

  Slowly, Gloria straightened up. When her eyes met Blue’s they were hard, with maybe a vestige of their old gleam. “You asked once,” she said. “And it was just the one. Fuckin’ freckled whelp.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Blue, already predicting Gloria’s death from a nasty case of lockjaw. “At least put on your slippers, Gloria.”

  There was a shadow in the doorway and Blue turned to look. A stranger stood there. He was tall but stooped, and while he might once have been handsome he looked haggard somehow, as if some great strain had leeched the color from his hair and the squareness from his shoulders too early.

  “Charlie?” said Gloria.

  The str
anger smiled. “No, Gloria,” he said, in a throaty but surprisingly beautiful voice. “It’s me. It’s Grayson. Do you remember?”

  Gloria made him hold out his hands and dropped several nails into his palm. “Charlie is my darling,” she said, and shuffled – thankfully – away from the nails. She was humming as she went.

  “What does that mean?” said Blue.

  “It’s a folk song,” said Grayson. “Something to do with the Jacobite rebellion, if memory serves correctly.” He smiled and looked for somewhere to set down the nails so that he could shake her hand. “And you must be Blue?”

  “Yeah,” she said, holding out an old peanut butter jar. “Are you a...w...” The word stuck on her lips and stayed there. It was as far as she could get at that moment; everything was so strange.

  “A werewolf?” he said. “Yes.” He dropped the nails in the jar. “I can see this is all very new to you.”

  She nodded, knowing that anything she said would be an understatement of just how overwhelmed she really felt.

  He glanced at the doorframe and as he turned she caught a whiff of tobacco. As he ran his hand down the crack she saw a faint yellowish mark between his index and middle fingers, like woodstain. “Well,” he said, apparently talking to himself. “How about that?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “Yew,” he said again, knocking on the wood, so that she understood this time. “Look at this streak in the middle.” He beckoned her closer and she looked. His long, knuckly finger traced a line of paler wood inside the door frame. When she looked closer she saw that the paler line held two distinct shades, neatly bisected down the middle.

  “Heartwood turned inwards,” said Luke Grayson. “Makes sense.”

  “I...don’t understand.”

  He straightened up and smiled down at her. “This is yew,” he said. “English yew. Sacred to Hecate, goddess of witches.”

  Blue could have kissed him. She hadn’t realized up until now just how desperate she was for answers. Everyone treated the iron and the salt and the pee jars like the harmless eccentricities of an old lady, but it had gone so far beyond that that Blue felt as though she were drowning.