Why a Wolf Cries - Julie Steimle (read a book .TXT) 📗

out that Silvia and he grew up in the same town and went to the same schools—well mostly. He did spend a short time in a New York private school.”

They nodded, eagerly listening.

“Well, anyway, Rick decided to—”

“Rick?” Maris queried, confused.

“Oh!” Audry blushed. “He, uh, goes by his middle name. He likes to be called Rick. Well, anyway—”

“But why?” Skyler asked. “What does the ‘H’ stand for?”

“Aunt Audry likes men with names that start with H,” Maris declared, with her chin lifted.

Audry blushed more. Technically, that was only accurate for two of her past boyfriends. Harlin and Hogan. Her other exes were not H names. “The H stands for Howard. And his old friends used to all him Howie. But he doesn’t like it anymore, and he stopped using it after his mother divorced his dad.”

“Oh.” They both stared.

After a short pause, Audry said, “Anyway, Rick Deacon decided to support Silvia’s choice to leave her coven by providing her an apartment off the books. And I decided to help her.”

“Oh…” They both nodded.

“The thing is,” Audry said in a hush, “Rick warned me against moving in with her. He thought it was a bad idea. He warned me that professed witches were dangerous.

“Well, despite what he said, things were fine with her and me for a good while. Silvia learned vegan cooking, and I ignored most of her silly witch stuff. It was mostly herbal remedies and silly superstitious stuff anyway.” Audry chuckled. “Later, I went to Africa for some more work toward my PhD, and when I got back, Silvia was doing great with her work at the hair salon—totally non-witchy. And all would have been well, if only…” Audry sighed, shaking her head. “One day, she just started to leave notes for me, leaving the apartment early, coming home late. And I soon found out that she actually had not been home at all, but was sending messages through friends from her work. And then… I saw them.”

“Them?” Skyler asked. “Them what? Them who?”

Nodding slowly, Audry said, “The witches from her coven who had come to New York City to hunt her down.”

Both Maris and Skyler drew in breaths.

“We’re here!” called from the group ahead—probably her brother Doug. Audry could not tell for sure. His voice was so much like their father’s.

She paused her story, gesturing for her niece and nephew to hurry up to the camp as undoubtedly the others would want help unpacking the tents and setting up the hanging food cache.

“You’ll finish the story later?” Skyler begged, jogging backwards on the path.

Audry waved, nodding. “Sure thing.”

It was just her immediate family hiking together on their annual summer campout, not a large group. Every year they picked a different place in the world for a camping trip, and this was their first in Yellowstone. They would have gone earlier, but they wanted both Maris and Skyler to be a little older and more responsible as it was bear country, and they did not need any ridiculously thoughtless behavior going on while in such dangerous territory. Of course they were also counting on Audry to make sure of their safety. Both kids would sleep in her tent, along with her ‘animal rescue’ gear. They did not trust bear mace to be enough of a deterrent when two little children were romping around.

When Audry reached the camp, after dumping off the tent and her pack with Skyler, she helped her older brother Doug to collect firewood. Skyler had been charged to pitch their tent by himself for his scouting badge, so Audry had to make do with being helpful in another way. Jean, Doug’s wife, was assembling their mess kitchen next to the fire pit. Audry passed along the packed veggies and fruit she had been carrying, but Jean was taking out the pre-chopped meat. Jean was a former vegan, much to Audry’s dismay.

Her sister-in-law (who was a nurse) was mostly vegetarian still, but she had reintroduced fish and eggs into her family’s diet three months ago, having decided her family was getting deficient in necessary natural ‘good’ fats, especially for growing children. She was currently praising the good of bone-broth from free-range grass-fed animals, something Audry thought abhorrent. Luckily, Jean was politely respectful in that she had arranged two types of meals—vegan for Audry, and for the others the more carnivorous fare. Admittedly, Audry was still struggling with being total vegan, as she too enjoyed dairy from time to time, and eggs. But the departure of her brother’s family from the kinder way of eating was disappointing.

When she had collected enough firewood, and they had gone to the creek to fill up their depleted canteens and water bladders with the fresh stuff, Skyler and Maris were back on her heels, demanding for the rest of the story.

“Where did I leave off?” Audry asked, sitting down next to where her father was constructing the start of a cook fire.

“The witches found her!” Maris declared.

Skyler nodded. “In New York City.”

“Ok.” Audry rubbed her hands together, thinking of where to go from there. “This was when I just came back from Africa with my latest and last boyfriend—”

“The dirty louse, Hogan Orwell!” Maris declared, arm up and pointing to the sky.

Maris’s mother, Jean, smothered a chuckle with a cough.

Audry shot her a dirty look. “We are going to have to have a talk about the gossip in our family.

“But anyway, I was back in New York to finish off that part of my PhD and planning for the rest of it. It was just after a huge beach cleanup. And Silvia was making herself scarce—though I did not know why at the time.” Audry nodded to herself. “I saw the first one spying on me near my apartment. But she did not look like a witch—or what I thought a witch was supposed to look like.”

“What does a witch look like?” Skyler asked.

Shrugging, Audry said, “I thought they would all look like Silvia. You know, gothic, spooky, loose.”

Maris looked confused. “Loose?”

Her mother cleared her throat, shooting Audry a furtive warning look.

Audry rolled her eyes. “The kind of girl your mom does not want you to be.”

Jean smothered a grin with a tiny nod.

Maris shrugged, peeking to her mom who had been taking out all the plastic snap-lid containers for the assemble-your-self kebabs they planned to have to begin the assembly line. She also had tin foil, chocolate, marshmallows and bananas for something else.

“So what did this witch look like?”

“Well…” Audry contemplated it. “She was loose. Your mom is going to hate me for saying this but, the best description of this woman is ‘hooker Barbie’.”

Skyler choked on a laugh, hoping his mother did not see or hear him. But his father halted in stacking the firewood next to the pit where his grandfather had also stopped in construction of his mini wood teepee.

“She wore lots of pink leather,” Audry explained, “A miniskirt to all miniskirts, and these plastic, high heel pink clogs. And her fingernails were these fancy manicured things. Oh, and like, superstar makeup.”

“How did you know she was a witch?” Maris asked, tilting her head to one side.

Audry nodded to her. “At first, I didn’t know.”

“There’s no such things as witches,” Jean interjected, heaving an irritated breath.

Nodding to her, Audry replied, “With all due respect, these women were self-proclaimed witches. I’m not saying they’re like Harry Potter magic wand waving, or even all that stuff from TV. But they believed in this stuff that they called witchcraft.”

“Why are you telling them this story?” Jean then asked, hands to hips.

Skyler moaned. So did Maris, seeing their mother was going to put an end to it.

Unapologetically, and frankly, Audry said with a shrug, “They wanted a scary story that wasn’t about bears—or any animal. And they requested this one.”

“Come on, Mom. Please!” Skyler clapped his hands together, begging. “Let her finish the story. It is just a story.”

Sighing, Jean shot Audry a look that said it all. She was not to terrify her kids. Keep it friendly.

Audry shrugged. It wasn’t like the kids were going to all of a sudden believe in witches after this. But she looked to her brother and said, “I’m just telling about why I left New York—one of the reasons at least.”

“It has to do with witches?” Doug came up and sat next to Skyler, pulling Maris onto his lap for her comfort, though Maris wasn’t scared yet.

Audry nodded. “Partially. You know the other reason.”

And he did. She had nearly been raped by her ex-fiancé, Hogan. Yet even then, the plan to leave had already been in effect. Audry had left New York City mostly to get away from that crowd. Not the witches. But those friends and acquaintances of hers connected to Silvia and Rick. It had simply been too much. The witches had merely been the tip of the iceberg, as well as the straw to the camel’s back. The witches were comprehendible. The others were not.

“Tell the rest of the story,” Doug begged. “I want to hear it.”

“Yay!” Maris said, fists in the air, while her mother rolled her eyes and gave up.

“Ok.” Audry smiled at him. Then she went back into her head for the tale. “So, I met the one witch. At first, she was just following me to find Silvia. But I didn’t even know where Silvia was. Later, I saw that Barbie lady had two friends with her. One looked as normal and ordinary as any girl I knew. And the other one… Have either of you seen the movie Hanna?”

“I have,” Skyler declared.

Maris shook her head.

“It was too scary for you,” her father said, hugging her.

“Ok, well, the other girl looked at lot like Hanna from the movie, really pale with flyaway hair but with wild, crazy eyes.” Audry shuddered, thinking about the last time she had seen that girl too, right before Audry identified her in a prison lineup. “The thing is, I had no clue who they were until Silvia’s brother Daniel showed up, looking for his sister. Silvia sent him an email calling for help, as she knew the witches were after her.”

“Why were these witches after her?” Jean asked, unable to restrain herself, though it was with a degree of disdain.

“She was trying to leave the coven,” Audry explained.

Skyler and Maris nodded.

“And no one is allowed to leave the coven,” Skyler added.

His mother’s eyes widened on him. She then looked to Audry with a degree of panic.

“So,” Audry said, continuing on. “Daniel arranged for her to meet us at the police station and—”

“How did the witches find her?” her brother Doug asked.

“Uh…” Audry frowned on this. She never really liked the explanation they had given her. “Well, according to Silvia, witches know how to… scry for someone. That is, it is a kind of magic spell where they use a map, something personal from the person they want to find, and a hanging crystal or pentagram.”

“Then how come they did not find her earlier?” her brother asked, seeking the obvious holes in this logic.

Shrugging, Audry replied, “Uh, Silvia claimed to have enacted a kind of counter-spell, called shadowing. It works best with a willing extra-person called a shadow, and a safe location. And she claimed she had made me her shadow—only I wasn’t a willing participant, so it was a weak shadow. Our apartment was the safe location.”

Her brother raised his eyebrows.

“Look,” Audry said, levelling with him, “I’m not saying I believe in any of this. Only…” she stared in to space. The second time she was a shadow for Silvia, it had worked—but that was when she had suspended disbelief and had agreed to be it. To this day, Audry could not explain how it worked—as even the witches truly could not see her except when she presented herself to them.

“The point is,” Audry shook that thought out of her head, “Daniel and I ended up making arrangements with the police and… well, Rick Deacon who was there—to move Silvia and I to