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

a safe house.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Doug lifted up his hands. “Hold on! Wait! You are saying that your last apartment was set up by H. Richard Deacon the Third?”

“Daaaad!” Maris moaned “You’re spoiling the story.”

“Just a minute, sweetie,” he said to Maris. Looking to Audry, he waited for the answer.

Rolling her eyes, Audry’s shoulders slumped. “Technically, my last two apartments in New York were set up by Rick Deacon. Same reason.”

Doug pulled back, staring at his kid sister.

She averted her eyes. “Anyway, all of this was going on while I was also dealing with finding out that Hogan was scumbag philanderer while also being engaged to him.”

“Oh. Then,” Grandpa Bruchenhaus said. He had halted in his fire building, also listening intently.

Audry sighed. This was inevitable. “So, as I was saying, I was being stalked by witches who wanted to find Silvia. In fact, we were being stalked—Hogan, me, and Great-Grandma Bruchenhaus—by the pink Barbie one. Her name was Danna, by the way. And by that time Silvia was helping out with our friend and her new baby, so Silvia wasn’t even with me anymore.”

“Which friend?” her father asked, curious.

“Jessica.” Audry sighed. “Jessica Cartwright, once Mason. You never met her. But… and this is kind of funny, she was the cop who arrested Harlin Nichols when he was stalking me.”

“Oh…” Doug nodded in approval. “She was your roommate for a while to, wasn’t she?”

Shaking her head, Audry grinned. “No. We just spent so much time together that it just seemed like that.”

“I spoke to her on the phone a couple times.”

“Yeah, well, she married Rick Deacon’s best friend.” Audry then laughed, amazed how much she had gotten entangled in that man’s associations. “And they now have a kid. Her daughter should be a year old now. They even gave her my middle name.”

“What’s her name?” Maris asked.

“Ivy Chandra Cartwright.” Audry smiled at her.

“Boring!” Skyler hung his shoulders. “Where’s the scary part? You said this was going to be a scary story.”

Looking to him, Audry nodded, thinking the entire thing had been pretty scary. But she had to finish this tale. “You’re right. Where was I?”

“You were being stalked by that pink witch,” Skyler supplied, sounding annoyed.

“Right.” Audry nodded again. “Ok, so I called the cops.”

“Oh, and did they come in time?” her father asked.

Skyler nodded, wanting to know also.

“Here’s the thing,” Audry said, “I actually know a few policemen in New York who gave me a direct line. And the reason why, which I did not tell you, was that they were trying to catch some murders who had killed two women and a cat already.”

“And a cat?” Doug smirked, raising his eyebrows.

Ignoring him, Audry said, “And they suspected the murderers were these witches.”

Jean drew in a breath. So had her brother.

“Basically, I was bait for them,” Audry explained. Skyler’s eyes went wide. “They did not tell me I was. Except one of them, Officer Matthew Calamori said I would not like their methods. They had already impounded my car, saying those witches bugged it—and later they sold it at an auction without my permission. So I lost my car—”

“That’s why the new one,” her father murmured, nodding. “I never thought you’d give up your limping hatchback.”

“Well, why would I?” Audry protested. “I loved that car! Besides, I took it to a shop and it ran great afterwards. All fixed. And at a fair price too.”

“That sounds more mythic than witches,” her mother muttered, joining Jean in food preparation. She started to assemble the fruit and veggie kabobs, leaving the meat ones for Jean to do.

Shrugging, Audry continued with the story. “All the same… But anyway, the point is, I was used as bait without my knowledge. And as that pink Barbie stalked us, the cops got their evidence for harassment so they could take that witch in. So, two down. –Oh! I forgot. They caught the normal one at the university first. She was asking questions about me on campus, stalking me there, and I called it in. They picked her up in no time for trespassing. It was the third one who we did not know where she was. And she was the crazy one.”

“Aren’t they all crazy?” Jean murmured. “They think they are witches.”

Audry decided not to argue. “The last girl, we had no clue where she was. And it turned out, she was the one who had gone nuts and killed those two ladies. Silvia herself said that neither Danna nor that other girl were that nuts. But the one that was loose…?” Audry shook her head.

“But anyway, around this time I found out what a scumbag Hogan was, and I broke off the engagement.” Audry nodded to her parents who nodded back. She had to set the timeline at least. “Then I went to Tanzania, while Vincent tried to clear out my stuff from the apartment—but didn’t get it all. But while I was in Tanzania, I realized I really needed to come back stateside and go into my Western US wildlife research instead. So I came back early.”

She regarded Skyler and Maris again who seemed a little bored, especially as the adults had commandeered most of the conversation. “When I got back, I convinced Vincent to help me get the rest of my stuff from that apartment. I still had the key.

“Well, Silvia was there with her new boyfriend, who is now husband, Randon Spade.”

“Randon Spade?” Jean repeated, marveling at the sound of the name. “What is he? A detective?”

Audry laughed, shaking her head. “No. A veterinarian. And he’s really nice.”

Jean nodded in approval.

“But he is also a friend of a friend… but anyway we—”

“What do you mean?” Doug asked, curious.

Sighing, Audry looked to him. “He also went to Gulinger Private Academy with Rick Deacon.”

“Small world,” her father muttered, going back to building the fire. Her mother had nudged him, waving the kebabs for his face.

“Wow.” Doug did not have much more to say than that, really.

“But anyway, when Vincent and I saw them there, also packing up stuff, Randon and Vincent went upstairs to deal with furniture while Silvia and I were dividing and packing our dishes and kitchenware.”

“Boring!” Skyler slumped.

“And it was raining,” Audry added.

He just shrugged more.

“In fact, the power was cutting off and coming on again during the storm,” Audry added. “Making it dark half the time.”

Skyler sighed, waiting for more.

“That’s when I realized I had left my tranquilizer gun and all my other stuff in the ottoman. So I went to get it out.” Audry paused. “I also went to get a flashlight, just in case the power went out.”

But her nephew was unimpressed.

Sighing, Audry decided to just finish the tale. “But anyway, after a lot of cleaning and talking about what she and I were going to do next, the power did that whole flicker on and off thing—and the next thing you know, in the doorway where no one was standing just a second before, suddenly was the third witch, now standing there. She was drenched, and she had a wicked knife in her hand.”

They all drew in breaths.

“She came at Silvia with it, screaming at her, calling her a traitor,” Audry said. “But…” she patted her tranquilizer pistol at her hip, “I had this already on the counter. I grabbed it and shot her twice. And the witch fell before she could get to either of us with that knife.”

Skyler let out a breath. So did others.

“We called our police friends, and they came quickly and took her away.” Audry shrugged. “I stayed at a friend’s house that night. Two days later I moved from New York City, hopefully to never get entangled with people like that again.”

“That’s not a very scary story,” Skyler said, huffing.

Leaning in close to her nephew, Audry whispered, “The really scary part I’m just going to tell you. No one else. You see, that Hanna girl—she was actually a twin. Her crazy sister is still out there somewhere. And that witch coven… they will never give up looking for my old friend Silvia to punish her for leaving the coven.”

He shuddered.

“Is that scary enough?”

He nodded.

“Good.” Audry sat up and smiled at her brother who had heard the entire thing, but had covered Maris’s ears so she could not.

Audry got up to help with dinner. When she saw it the kebabs were practically all assembled and there was nothing for her to do, Audry went to see the tent Skyler should have set up.

It was a decent sized dome tent, fit for five, but they used it for three. Their sleeping bags were rolled out, and their bags were in the correct places. All food was out of their packs and crammed into the hanging food cache. When she returned back to the fire ring, she saw her father finally got the fire started.

On the air, she heard a wolf cry, and she shuddered.

Not that she disliked wolves. Quite the reverse. She loved them. But in the recent years her life seemed to tangle up into controversy whenever wolves came up. Wolves, these days, linked her back with that crowd. And she wanted to avoid that crowd at all costs.

That crowd was Rick’s crowd of friends and associates. That crowd was attached to the supernatural. To psychics. To witches. To people wearing red crystals and suits of armor. To the inklings of magic possibly being real. And being among them was like being Alice, unknowingly stepping onto the edge of Wonderland.

Audry didn’t want it. She wanted reality.

“Can you tell us another scary story?” Maris tugged on her arm. “A different one?”

Sighing, Audry let her niece pull her back to campfire. “How about one about wolves?”

Maris shook her head. “No animals!”

Shrugging, an idea came to her. “Ok… How about one about a man from New Orleans who was under what is called the ‘Rubber and Glue curse’?”

Her niece nodded vigorously.

“A friend of mine told me this story, and he says it’s true, but I don’t believe it.” She sat next to her father who was now admiring the fire as it blazed up, admiring even more his wife who had set a wire grill over it with the kebabs, and was currently tucking in tinfoil-wrapped banana treats she had just assembled. “See, I don’t know how long ago this was, but down in New Orleans there were lots of gangs, and one really annoyed witchdoctor.”

“Witchdoctor?” Doug laughed, raising his eyebrows. “You don’t know this witchdoctor do you? Another ex?”

Shooting him a dirty look, Audry said, “No. This is a story a friend from that group told me.”

“That group?” Doug angled his head, not quite knowing what she meant.

Realizing she had said it out loud, Audry amended, “Another graduate from Gulinger.”

He raised his eyebrows again. Sitting down next to her, he said, “Those folk from that New York school sound like a bunch of weirdoes.”

Nodding, Audry agreed. “Which was one of the many reasons I had to get out of New York.”

“Tell us the story, Aunt Audry!” Maris demanded.

With permission, checking with a nod to her brother and his wife, Audry began: “Once there was a boy who grew up in New Orleans. He was a skinny black boy whose brother was in a gang and was part of a lot of gang warfare that really upset a local voodoo witch doctor….”

Another wolf cry let out.

They looked to the sky, listening.

“Hey!” Skyler pointed at it. “Full moon.”

“That,” his grandfather said, rising to gaze at it, “Is a waxing gibbous. Tomorrows will be the full moon.”

“…And the witchdoctor was so fed up with them that he decided the most heinous punishment against them….”

“What is a waxing gibbous?” Skyler asked him.

“That means the moon is fat and getting bigger,” Grandpa Bruchenhaus said.

“…So he grabbed this boy and cursed him so that whatever bad stuff people do to him, will bounce off, and hurt them instead.”

“Oh!” Maris exclaimed. “Like: I am rubber. You are glue. Everything you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”

“Exactly, only in