by Anna Roberts
“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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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.
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Three misfits, three smoke breaks and one series of extraordinary events.
An angel appears on Brighton beach, a hospital patient bursts into flames in Plymouth and a goth spontaneously combusts in a churchyard in Sidmouth; it’s all in a day’s work for stage magician and freelance paranormal investigator Francis Eliot. For pathologist Camilla O’Hare it’s nothing short of lunacy, particularly when one of the victims’ bodies disappears from the morgue in the length of time it takes her to answer the phone.
When the two of them join forces to figure out what’s really going on behind the sudden rash of spontaneous human combustions taking the West Country by storm, neither can predict just how weird things are about to get. A missing cat, a dog-eared copy of Dracula, a guitar case full of garlic and a priest so turbulent that even Henry II’s drunken knights would think twice – all add up to a hypothesis so extravagantly nuts that nobody wants to come out and say the V-word.
Except at some point you’re going to have to admit the obvious. Especially when the obvious keeps trying to eat you.
This fast-paced British urban fantasy is the first in a brand new series that will delight fans of Bram Stoker, Jonathan Creek and anyone who was ever sceptical about the idea of sparkling vampires.
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