“What’s his name?” asked Jim, curling the other arm around me again.
“Who d’you mean?” I said, knowing exactly who he meant. Because my mobile phone had been buzzing louder and more often than Courtney Love’s vibrator. There’d be hell to pay this time. And no amount of careful lying would get me out of it.
“You don’t have to tell him about this.” A half smile to make it all better.
“Everyone from here to Bantry already knows. People saw us leave together. Are you joking or wha’?”
He grinned and touched the inside of my thigh. “Then don’t tell him everything.”
“I never do,” I said, not stopping his hand as it continued higher.
HE WAS PUTTING his jeans on when the sun told me I was already late for class.
I sat on a kitchen chair, pretending to leaf through assignments. But I was thinking of the fairy tale Jim hadn’t finished yet. “So what happens to the werewolf?” I asked, just noticing his tattoo before the T-shirt covered up the inside of his left arm. It had looked like a symbol, with lettering underneath. I had been too busy admiring other parts of him to pay attention to it before. Something told me it wasn’t just MOM FOREVER in his case.
“Euan is not a werewolf,” Jim said, suddenly serious. “He doesn’t change back to human every time the full moon vanishes. That’s comic books you’re talking about. Silver bullets and the bullshit mythology. No, this one’s a wolf like all the other animals. Roaming the earth as fugitive prey and predator at the same time. For as long as it takes for him to find someone to love.”
“Will he do that ever?” I wanted desperately for the wolf to be changed back, I can’t tell you why. Perhaps because of the loneliness of the forest, the way Jim had described it.
“How should I know?”
I felt a twinge of disappointment. He had acted last night as if the whole story was planned out, like a saga or something. I found his ciggie pack, which was empty. “So you just make it up as you go, like?”
He smiled in a way I couldn’t interpret. “The other way around, love,” he said. “The story’s in charge, not me. I just say the words as they happen in my head. And like my trusty old Tomo said, when we get to Adrigole tomorrow night, we’ll all know a little bit more. Until then, even I couldn’t tell ya.” He was lacing his boots, which looked like he had walked in them to the ends of the world and beyond. They had steel-toed caps.
“Where’d you find the Chinaman, anyway? Yer man looked unimpressed with you last night.”
“He’s Japanese, actually, not that he cares. He managed a rock band I was in years ago. The rest of the lads got a fat record contract and threw the two of us out first. Been together like peaches and cream ever since. His name means companion in his language, I think.”
“So if you’re the sheriff and he’s yer trusty Injun friend, where’s his iron horse?”
“He gets seasick on motorcycles. Never could figure it. He drives a van with mikes and such.”
“He was pissed off at you, but?”
He looked at me without trying to flirt. “No, just jealous when he saw me with you.”
I twirled the buttons on my sleeve without looking at him. “That happens a lot, I imagine.” I hadn’t phrased it like a question, because I knew I wouldn’t care for the answer.
“Less than you think.”
I looked out the window and saw the sun-drenched red bike in all its glory. Jim’s Vincent Comet had traffic slowing down to gawk just as it had yesterday. He got up, put on his leather jacket, and opened his arms to hug me. I moved toward him, angry that I didn’t have the guts to ask him if we’d see each other again.
“Don’t be breaking yer neck on that thing, now,” I said, trying for brave.
“Never have,” he answered, touching the small of my back just once below the panty elastic, the fucker. “Take care until we meet again.”
And with that he was out the door, giving me a two-finger wave that I wanted to hate but couldn’t. I closed the door instead of lingering like the lovelorn girlfriend. Moments later, my windows rattled as he gunned the chromed animal and started up the street. I stood by the door, listening for the sound until it was gone.
Then I heard my mobile buzzing again.
Finbar, I thought, dreading that conversation. I already had a wobbly excuse on deck when I saw it was my demon sister calling.
“Will you ever kick yer poet out of bed and answer the shagging phone?” she bellowed, when I picked it up. “Have you heard what happened to Sarah McDonnell?”
“What, did she finally bribe one of yer Norwegians to bone her?”
Róisín sighed at my ignorance. “She’s dead as Aunt Moira’s saints. Heard it on the radio. Bronagh is already up by the Glebe Graveyard with all the other mice in blue.”
BRONAGH’S FACE WAS beet red as she draped Garda tape around a small mess of trees inside the low stone wall, which was invisible from the main road. She’d been crying and was clearly sick of answering questions, even if nobody had begun asking them yet.
“Can’t talk about it,” she said flatly, when she saw me puffing up the hill on my bike. “Shagging press is already on its way, from as far away as Cork.”
“Sure, Bronagh,” I said, patting her shoulder.
Her face cracked, and she clenched her teeth to make it stop. A senior garda who was pushing two photographers away sent her a stare that said, Keep it together or leave. “Never seen anything like it, you know?” she said, in a hushed whisper.
Sarah hadn’t been covered completely by the temporary plastic cloth. She lay halfway down the twisty path where the cemetery is too overgrown for new customers. The wind took hold of a corner and exposed her legs. One of her shoes was missing, but the remaining one twinkled gold as the sun hit it. Another rattle of the cheap shroud and Bronagh ran to refasten it as best she could.
But not before I saw that one of Sarah’s earrings was missing.
Her face? I can’t talk about that. Any description I could give you would be a cliché. But use your imagination and try to picture a face that’s no longer there.
I pulled Bronagh aside as two new patrol cars arrived in the dirt road, distracting her superior. “What happened?”
“Sergeant Murphy says a drug crazy did it, because her face is so done in.” She chewed a nail and stole another glance at Castletownbere’s former reigning sex queen.
“But you don’t think so?” I asked.
“Garda, a moment?” Another stern look from Bronagh’s top cop from Main Street, and she turned on her spit-shined boots and ran over to him without another word. As she bowed her head to receive what I’m guessing was a dressing-down, I had my answer.
And for the life of me, I couldn’t help thinking of that lone widow over in Drimoleague, who they said died from no foul play at all.
RóISíN’S FARAWAY VOICES were already whispering about all kinds of colorful death long before me and Aoife came by for dinner.
She sat hunched over her blinking contraption and didn’t even hear us coming through the front door. It had always been like that. Only tonight, Rosie’s facial expression had taken on more color than usual, enough to bore right through that powdery punk makeup.
“. . . a rumor that another girl was found as far over as Kenmare five days ago,” said an excited female voice on the massive loudspeakers Rosie had hung from hooks in the black ceiling. “Cops aren’t talking, of course. Because that one had the same things done to her, and you know what I’m talking about, Nightwing; over.”
Nightwing. That would be my darling sister’s shortwave handle. Not a stretch, exactly.
“Tell me anyway, Master Blaster, come on back; over,” said Róisín, finally noticing and waving us inside with a smile.
“Panties down to her ankles, same as with Sarah,” continued the voice. “And her head beat in like a lorry hit her. Trophies were taken. My source says she had at least four earrings, including one from her fiancé. They’re gone. Ove
r.”
“Same as with Mrs. Holland, over,” repeated Róisín, making furious scribbles on her notepad, which she always kept handy, as if issues of world importance were about to break any moment. But that last comment made me stop and listen hard. Because Master Blaster was talking about someone who had suffered exactly like the dead woman from Drimoleague.
“Arh, give it a rest, will ya,” said Aoife, and put down the shopping bags on the kitchen table. She always got cranky if she didn’t eat, and had most of the uncooked food on the counter before I shushed her. I can’t explain, even today, what made me feel adamant that what was happening around our area wasn’t accidental. You see, this wasn’t anything like the previous year, when a Romanian gang had been knocking over banks and killing the tellers for good measure. This was closer to home. There was a demonstrative rattling of pots and pans as Rosie and I leaned over the shortwave.
“That’s affirmative, Nightwing, only her face was intact. Otherwise, same idea, right down to the missing earrings. No fingerprints, says my Garda spy; over.”
There was a wash of static, and Master Blaster was drowned out by a laconic male voice that sounded like its owner was still in elementary school.
“I’m hearing the woman over in Drimoleague wasn’t alone that night; over,” he said, satisfied at having trumped the scandal-seeking adults listening in on the airwaves.
“Medium or well done, my media darlings?” yelled Aoife, as the smell of steaks filled the tiny apartment, where filled ashtrays competed for space with Róisín’s bad paintings of Oscar Wilde wearing nothing but leather pants in postures not sanctioned by the Kerry Archdiocese. We both waved her off, and she shook her head.
“Who was she with then, young man; over?” asked a very terse Master Blaster.
“That’s Overlord, to you, madam, and I have it on good authority that Mrs. Holland was seen wi—”
Zzzzt!
A spike of electricity buzzed out the rest of the message. Rosie turned the knobs on her machine this way and that, but the kid never came back.
“I’ll take that to mean just a bit pink in the center, then,” called Aoife, setting the table and fixing us with a determined look only our sainted mother could have replicated.
“Until next time, Master Blaster, Nightwing out,” Rosie said with resignation, and keyed her hand mike twice.
“Same to you, watch yer back, girlie, and out,” wished the voice, and there was another double click. Then the band went dead.
“Madame and madame are served,” intoned Aoife. “And I won’t hear another word about that shagging murder until after we eat.” That was fine with me. I hadn’t much of a mind to talk about it at all.
We hadn’t even taken the first bite when Rosie looked me up and down and grinned. “You have the glow of the recently shagged all over ya. Do tell.”
“Not a word,” I answered, unable to be really mad at her.
“On a scale from one to ten?” said Aoife, piling on as only the twins could.
Rosie wrinkled her nose. “Wait, that all depends. Do you mean the hot-guy scale or the Finbar scale?”
“Get out with that,” I said, sawing a piece of meat off with what was supposed to be anger. Truth is, I was flattered. Finbar had never given me such good press in my own family. “All right, he was all that, okay?”
“How many times?” Róisín wanted to know.
“Only God and fortune know,” I said, in a fake-serious voice, twirling my plate.
“Leave Him out of it,” said Aoife.
I put down my knife and fork and looked out the window. It was still light enough to see the trees against the sky. I wondered who Jim was serenading tonight.
“I need your Mercer tomorrow night, will that be all right?” I asked, smiling at Aoife. “It’s Sunday, besides. I’ll pay you the two lousy fares you would have got.”
“No worries,” said Aoife, running her green-lacquered nails through her commando hair.
“That good?” asked Rosie, and tried to catch my eye.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, trying to get the sudden vision of Sarah McDonnell’s missing face out of my mind and prevent the steak from coming back up all by itself.
THERE WAS ALREADY a queue outside the Auld Swords in Adrigole when I pulled up in my sister’s battered Idi Amin staff car.
Word had clearly spread from two nights before, because I saw more makeup than stubble on the eager faces sorting through their change. Bronagh was there, too, in civvies and trying not to be noticed, and I recognized at least three others from home. The muttering ahead of me as I stood in the back and waited for my turn became clearer by the minute and rose in excitement as it got closer to the appointed hour, despite an Old Testament downpour. I heard snippets of “sexy” and “just deadly,” and knew they weren’t whispering about the barmaids inside.
All heads turned as a throaty growl rose up the street.
Jim was even Quicker than Friday night. He zoomed right up to the line, winked at nobody and everybody at the same time, and parked that glorious machine as women who had to have been grandmothers several times over just stood there and swooned.
“How are you going, ladies?”
“Come for that second chapter, sonny,” said a red-cheeked stocky mother of two, whose barely teenage daughters fixed the seanchaí with a glare that was more adult than the cheap blue glitter on their eyelids.
“We’ll be taking care of that in a moment now,” he said, ducking inside to set up. He’d picked a new T-shirt for the occasion, which fit even tighter around his waist than the black one I’d already got used to touching.
I hid behind the shoulder of a tall woman in a rain slicker as I saw Tomo follow him through the doorway. The truculent assistant did his best to charm the ladies, but none of the main event’s appeal rubbed off on his surly face, and the halfhearted smile soon became a scowl as they both vanished from sight. When they let in the guests a few minutes later, there was a sound like someone uncorking a bottle filled with shaken-up soda.
I can’t tell you exactly why, but I had picked a spot far in the back of the room, next to a busted cigarette machine and three girlies with eyes wider than if they’d ingested uncut cocaine. The low tin ceiling did nothing to dampen anyone’s spirits as I heard Tomo doing a microphone check that made the sound system whine and squeal. I could only see women’s shoulders and necks and done-up hair from my bar stool, and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t just get up, elbow my way past all the others, and let Jim see me. It was silly, of course, so I finally stood and made my way forward.
Which is when I saw my Aunt Moira.
She sat at a table quite near the stage, wearing the teardrop-shaped earrings she had inherited from Mother, and she clearly still remembered how to apply lipstick, for she looked like a horny Madame Butterfly in her short-hemmed summer dress and heels. I retreated to the back wall and ducked my head. There was something about her pose that had me frightened. I just wanted to see Jim, without dragging my family into it. I’d seen her dolled up before, when she was trying to impress Harold, but tonight there was something rigid about her face that went beyond determination.
Right before Jim tapped on the mike as a way of confirming his ritual power over the room, Aunt Moira half rose and turned her head. I hadn’t been fast enough. Those eyes that sometimes still reminded me of Mother’s trained themselves on mine. She didn’t smile, but assessed me like a prizefighter might do before the big bout. You or me? No quarter asked, and none given.
I swear to Christ but the woman stared like she wanted me dead and buried.
“How is everybody doing tonight?” crooned a voice I knew well enough to make my stomach do jumps I still didn’t understand.
“Grand!” a chorus yelled back.
I couldn’t see Jim, but it didn’t matter. Aunt Moira broke the stare and returned her attention to the figure onstage, who was probably sending the ladies all the way over by the door his most winning s
mile. I heard the sound of a bar stool scraping the stage. Jim coughed once, and the silence that ensued was both instant and deafening.
“Did you ever wonder why you can never trust a wolf?” he asked.
The animal who was once Prince Euan had just tasted human blood for the first time.
He hadn’t meant to, because the last two winter equinoxes had told him how quickly the creatures that walked on two legs could defend themselves. Just one new moon ago, as the wolf was tearing asunder its kill of a small deer, that throat sound the humans made startled him. He had turned and seen three figures wearing leather jerkins and carrying sharp steel in their hands. There was a crunching of feet on the dry autumn leaves. He could hear the beating of each man’s heart and considered, for a moment, to charge them, but saw the net that a fourth man, just ahead of him, was holding. The largest human made a louder throat noise, and Euan the wolf feinted left, then right, before fleeing right between his legs.
As he fled past a small coastal village in the middle of nowhere that the human in him would have called Allihies if he still remembered having ever walked upright, he had seen more evidence of what the humans could do. Men in black leather skins had assembled in front of a gibbet by the side of a road. The landscape was so desolate near the edge of the cliffs that only yellow moss grew on giant rocks poking through the earth’s surface like giants’ thumbs. Each hunter had with him a still-writhing gray wolf in each hand, and they took their time hanging them from their hind legs and slowly beating them to death. Euan’s fellow creatures had cried like the cat he had killed himself for sport the other day. No. Worse. They had shrieked like human babies.
He had stayed hidden, unable to stand the sound but with no place to run.
And he felt an even deeper sense of terror than the old wolf from the forest had promised.
He stayed low to the rocks and hid behind the sparse tufts of grass as the men mounted their horses and rode back up into the pass from whence they’d come. Anger stung in his eyes, and his legs shook, the closer he dared to creep. Finally, he stood quite near the hanging wolves, whose maws were open wide, their lives dripping out of them. The sharp-edged faces were swollen and the eyes he knew had to be there were hidden behind black welts. He took one last look and ran so fast his heart drowned out the thoughts of revenge in his head.
Darling Jim Page 9
