CHAPTER EIGHT
Walt
Walt woke up floating on a sea of sweet vanilla. He was completely wrapped in the scent of mine and home. He blinked his eyes open, puzzled but contented.
Everything came rushing back at the sight of Annette’s heavy earth-toned drapes. He sighed, lifting his head from the cushion. It must have picked up some of Elysian’s perfume during their conversation—argument—the night before.
He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been, thinking it was some kind of miracle, some flash of serendipity, that had brought him to Elysian’s door in his hour of need. Why wasn’t it his first thought that she had been involved? Wasn’t witchcraft all about trickery and ensnaring the innocent? Maybe making him credulous and quick to trust her had been part of the spell.
You’re angry at her, the wolf said. Its voice sounded sleepy and barely awake, like it had been curled up asleep in his mind while he was asleep on the couch.
Damn right I am, he shot back. You think I shouldn’t be?
Of course you should be. I’m just saying... you’re angry at her.
Oh. Walt sat up slowly, considering that. If he was angry at her for casting the spell, then clearly the spell wasn’t in complete control of his moods or his thoughts. He still felt raw at her for doing something so foolhardy, but the realization was a relief.
He followed the sound of a spoon tapping against a cup into the kitchen, expecting to find Elysian making a morning cup of tea. Instead it was Annette at the counter, carefully measuring sugar into the cup.
It was far more than could actually dissolve in that much liquid, he noticed. He bet she ended up with a layer of sugar pasted to the bottom of the cup every time. He couldn’t help but wonder how she drank tea at all, but suspected it was rude to ask.
She looked up at him and nodded a greeting. “Elysian stepped out to get groceries. Cup of tea?”
“I’m not much of a tea drinker,” he said, running a hand over his jaw. His stubble had developed into the early stages of a beard. “I don’t suppose you have coffee?”
“Of course.” She opened a cupboard under the counter and pulled out a device that looked like a modern-art vase, round at the bottom, narrow at the top and then flaring out again like it had a built in funnel. There was a paper coffee filter already tucked into the funnel. She filled the top with coffee grounds from a cream-colored canister and then poured water from the kettle on top. “It takes a minute,” she said, watching the coffee fall through the filter into the bulb below drip by drip.
“I bet hipsters would love those,” he said.
“There’s a Chemex in the Museum of Modern Art as an example of perfect design,” she said shortly. “Any coffee makers designed after this one are just new for the sake of new. They’re not improvements.”
“I see.” He stopped himself from filling the awkward silence that fell, so they just watched the coffee drip.
“I died in 1967,” she said after a moment. “A blood clotting disorder. No, it doesn’t hurt. I don’t have any messages from your dead relatives. If I concentrate I can interact with objects, and I can eat and drink because those are just different ways of touching things. If you ask me how the food gets out again I’ll ask you the same question. That’s the answers to all the classic nosy questions, anything else you need to know?”
“I...no... that was very thorough.” Walt hadn’t even had his coffee yet. He stared balefully at the Chemex as it drip drip dripped.
He heard the front door open, and his heart leapt. Maybe it was just because he was grateful to have a graceful way to exit the brittle conversation with Annette, but he was pleased that Elysian was home. He was happy to see her. And thanks to his wolf, he knew that it wasn’t because the spell was forcing him to feel that way.
He stepped into the living room to find her struggling with three overflowing plastic grocery bags in each hand. He crossed the room in three long strides and scooped them up.
“Thanks,” she said, her voice a little awkward. Evidently their fight was as present in her mind as it was in his. “There are more in my car, I’ll go get them.”
“No, leave them,” he said. “Sit down, I’ll carry the bags.”
“Um.” She gestured to the silk robe that he was still wearing. “This is a pretty relaxed neighborhood, but I still don’t recommend going outside in that. But! Oh!”
She grabbed at one of the bags, digging inside. She leaned in to him for balance, warm and soft and smelling of the same vanilla he’d been wrapped in when he woke up. “Ta da!”
“Don’t you mean abracadabra?”
She shot him a Look. “You get one more witch joke. Use it wisely.”
She pulled out a bundle of fabric and shook it so it unfurled into a soft-looking red flannel button-down. “I couldn’t get much, because money, but at least you’ll be able to take off my robe. There’s a pack of boxers and a pair of jeans and a couple of different shirts.”
“Thank you,” he said sincerely, lowering the bags to the ground so he could take the offered clothes.
“I’ll start unpacking these,” she said, jerking her head toward the kitchen. The implication that she was giving him some privacy to change was clear, although there was little point given how much of him she’d already seen, and how little it concerned him.
He laid out the boxers on the back of the couch, smoothing the fabric down with his hands to get a proper look. They were the kind that clung close to the body—the ones that shirtless models wore on billboards, to show off every dip and curve of the wearer’s rear. He couldn’t help but think, as he slipped them on, that if these were the ones Elysian felt moved to throw in her cart, that was probably what she liked.
The thought persisted, as he sauntered into the kitchen. Elysian looked up from the fridge and gave him an approving smile, the slightest hint of red flushing her cheeks. They may have been hidden beneath a pair of dark jeans, but she knew what underwear he had on. And he knew that she liked it.
“You said there’s more in the car?” he asked, staring at the cornucopia of food she’d laid out on the counter. “How many people are coming?”
“Four, but we don’t want the omen to be us running short of food.” Elysian blew a stray lock of hair out of her face. “It’s safest to over-cater.”
“The omen?”
“Oh.” She smiled, looking a little embarrassed. “It’s an old superstition. The idea that whatever you’re doing at midnight on New Year’s sets the tone for the year to come.”
“It’s New Year’s?” Walt repeated, his heart dropping.
“Yes. Is that important?” Elysian asked, freezing with a jar of sauce in each hand. “Did you remember something?”
“Maybe? I feel like that’s important but I can’t remember why.” It was a frustrating feeling—weren’t they all, lately. “It’s probably just that I’m a wolf, right? I must have a pack. Maybe New Year’s is a big deal for us.”
“I’ll get you back to them,” Elysian said. She gazed up at him through her eyelashes, her lips pursed together in a determined line. An image flashed through his mind of her looking up at him like that, her palms on his hips, her fingertips digging into…
“So New Years,” he said, trying to drag his mind to safer subjects. He’d spoken too quickly to pull off innocent, judging by the way Annette quirked an eyebrow at him. Either that or she was reading his mind, which wouldn’t be any weirder than anything else that had happened to him recently. “Is that a big holiday for witches? I would have thought you guys mostly celebrated Halloween and solstices and … I don’t know, harvest moons?”
“All holidays are important for witches,” Elysian explained. “There’s an energy to them, you know? People gathered together, acting out old rituals, often without knowing why they do them. There’s power there you can tap into if you know how.”
“How do you tap in? Will you be dancing skyclad?” he joked.
“Uh-huh,” she said, not even pausing in transferring cans of Coke into the fridge. “Not until midnight though.”
Walt instantly took back anything he’d said or thought about being totally relaxed about nudity. Elysian seeing him naked was no big deal—that was just a thing that happened when people shifted, whatever. But him seeing Elysian naked was a whole other ballgame.
He got a flash of the girl stripped bare in the moonlight, a glass of wine in her hand that splashed red drips over olive skin as her hips swayed to an insistent drum beat.
“You said there were more in your car?” he said, grabbing the excuse to get out of the room while he processed that.
You’re sure that’s not the spell? he asked the wolf as he strode across the lawn.
All I did was observe your anger, the wolf said. Don’t try to make me some expert.
You’re no help, he said.
If you want help, try this. If there was no spell. If she was just a girl you met in a bar, or came across in a field, or any of the ways humans seek out mates. Would you find her attractive? Would you feel this craving for her?
That was the question, wasn’t it?
Just outside of the gate something caught his eye—a rumpled pile of clothing, what looked like the remains of a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt. His clothes, he realized, snatching them up. They were slashed to ribbons—probably ripped apart when he shifted into the wolf. He rifled through them, hungry for anything they could tell him. A wallet and phone would be ideal, but he would settle for a pair of initials Sharpied onto the tag.
The only thing he found was a set of car keys, a little black fob attached to a pewter key chain in the shape of a wolf.
He hadn’t looked closely at the truck the night before, when he’d been more preoccupied with moving forward to the house than with where he’d come from. It was a damn fine piece of machinery, broad enough to hold a powerful engine and haul a deep tray, but also sleekly engineered, with deep black paint that still gleamed like it was freshly applied. It lit up as he approached, glowing from within like a lantern. He paused in surprise, thinking some of her magic had leaked out across the lawn and ensnared it, until he realized that it was reacting to the key fob. A proximity lock, which meant that the truck couldn’t be more than a few years old. Judging by the way it looked, he doubted it was more than a few months.
That didn’t sit right. The face that looked back at him from the tinted window was smooth and unblemished—well past the spots and embarrassments of a teenager, but still not lined with the cares of an adult who had worked hard enough for a truck this magnificent.
Another option nudged at him. The truck could be stolen. When the compulsion to come to Elysian hit, had it been so strong he’d taken off with someone’s truck?
Is this really mine? he asked the wolf.
You drove it here, the wolf answered, which was unhelpful to the question of whether he had stolen it.
Yes, but is it mine? Legally?
The wolf’s response was puzzled. He sent an image of Walt behind the wheel, pulling up in front of Elysian’s house.
Walt sighed. Clearly there was no point quizzing the wolf about paperwork like loans and titles. Walt had both the keys and the truck, and the wolf couldn’t understand having more concerns than that, any more than he would debate who owned a rabbit when his teeth were in its side.
He opened the cab door. He hoped he would find some luggage, ideally luggage tagged with his full name and home address, but the cab was almost empty. There was a discarded fast food bag balled up on the floor and a bright purple lanyard attached to a plastic ID holder, with no card inside. The cup holder held two twenties, a five and enough loose coins to fill one fist.
He opened up the glove box and found the truck’s registration papers, made out in the name James Parke at what looked like a business address in a town called Jardin, Montana.
Is that my name, he wondered, running his thumb over the word ‘Parke’. Is that my father? Am I Walter Parke of Jardin, Montana?
Maybe James Parke was the person after him. He cursed the shitty memory that had come back when he drank the tea—it left him with just enough knowledge to worry him, not enough to know what to do next.
The driver’s seat was adjusted precisely to accommodate his long legs, and the back window was perfectly square in the rear view mirror. He tried not to drive himself crazy analyzing every movement for evidence that it was an old habit, but couldn’t help it. The deck lit up, and a CD whirred inside the stereo. Heavy bass poured out, a frantic guitar urging him to slam his foot on the accelerator and tear away. He resisted the urge, conscious of the kids playing on lawns and friendly neighbors sweeping their front walks, but he could tell the truck was capable of leaping off the starting block like a rocket.
The GPS was the last to boot up, showing his truck as a little blue circle on the Salem street. In one corner it offered a list of recently visited destinations. He clicked it open and found two choices—a hotel in Seattle, and a frequent destination labeled ‘home’. He tapped ‘home’.
Estimated journey time ten hours, fifty-three minutes, to Jardin, Montana. It wasn’t the same address that the truck was registered to, but it was nearby, an address just outside the town.
He could just go. There was nothing forcing him to stay in this crazy place. He could be in Jardin by nightfall, and find out what was waiting for him there. A girlfriend? Family? Friends?
Or a very angry truck owner. He had no reason to believe this truck was his, no reason to think the address marked home was his home. And even if it was home, what threat lurked there that he couldn’t be prepared for, with all of his memories gone.
In the rear view mirror he saw Elysian open the door of her car and pull out the groceries he had promised to get for her. She looked up and their eyes met in the mirror, and he saw that she knew he was thinking of leaving. Sadness made her eyes look an even deeper green, but she gave him a small smile. She understood.
He turned the engine off. She had cast that spell because she desperately needed something, and for whatever reason the universe had decided that something was Walt. He wanted to know why. He wanted to see this thing through.