5: JOSHUA
Joshua had been running in nightmare slow motion through the elementary school playground with the entire high school football team in pursuit. When they were in first grade, Frank Cahall couldn’t run without falling down. The high school quarterback had no such limitations as they wove through the monkey bars and swings. Frank wore the torn, bloody jersey that he’d been killed in. In the shadows, Frank shifted into the wooden centaurlike huntsman.
Then the dream changed in time and space.
Joshua had gotten to the barn to find out that he was going to be the star pitcher in the Deep Game. The barren cornfield was standing in as a baseball diamond, complete with massive digital scoreboard. The PA system blasted his theme song: “Wild Thing.” A werewolf cartoon flashed on the board, dressed in a baseball uniform. Joshua stood nervously on the threshold of the barn door, Clark Kent glasses on, wondering how everyone knew he was a werewolf. It was supposed to be a big secret, the whole reason he was wearing the glasses and looking even more nerdy than normal. He didn’t want to go out onto the playing field, once he was out there, the killing would start.
He couldn’t see the stands or bleachers or the crowds that they held. He could, however, hear the audience. They shouted along with the song. “Wild thing! You make my heart sing!”
He wavered on the threshold, not wanting to go out into the bleak cornfield and let the killing start.
“There you are.” Daphne appeared beside him, slinky black witch’s costume on. He really didn’t see why all the guys were acting like idiots over her. Yes, she was striking with long red hair and vivid green eyes. When she was posed for the audience, she was lovely, but all the other times she stomped about, all knees and elbows. She was so tall, thin and awkward that at times she seemed like a basketball player in drag. She obviously had never gotten into sports or dance or anything that made her comfortable with her own body. With another personality, the awkwardness would be endearing, but as she was, it puzzled the hell out of him why the entire male population had lost their minds over her.
Daphne had been in the barn with the jocks, forcing them through more and more embarrassing feats. Why was she even paying attention to him? He had his disguise on. No one should even be paying attention to him.
“Have you been dodging me, dogface?” She scowled at him, not bothering to make herself pretty.
He felt to see if he was still wearing his disguise. Was his nose bigger? Were his ears showing? What about his tail? “No, of course not.”
He had been dodging her ever-growing entourage. She’d started with the football team, all of whom had hated him since first grade. He wasn’t sure what he’d done in kindergarten to inspire such collective hate; one would think he’d remember.
“Bark like a dog,” Daphne commanded.
He didn’t understand how she was getting away with it, but he’d seen her pull this stunt again and again all week. Anyone that hesitated got more of her attention and like a flock of angry birds, her entourage followed her focus. He could take them one by one, but not all nine at the same time. He barked and kept barking, which was what the people she ignored normally did. It was what Superman would do.
“Hell,” Daphne breathed. “Bases are loaded. You need to strike out the next batter, Dogface, or everyone loses.”
At least, that was what she’d said in the dream. Part of his mind detached from the action and remembered that they had this conversation in the barn, not out in the privacy of the cornfield. She had said something else, something he hadn’t completely caught because the football team been laughing too loudly at Joshua barking like a dog. He lost it now under the howl of the unseen audience, up in the bleachers, viewing the Deep Game from safety.
“Wild thing!” The fans cheered for him.
He’d walked out to the pitcher’s mound. A clown car started to circle the playing field as the crowd continued to sing. “You make everything groovy, Wild Thing!”
Daphne was on her phone, swearing softly. “Are you sure he’s the one? You’ve always told me that younglings are resistant. Every time I’ve pushed him, he rolls.” She gave a little growl of annoyance. “Yes, everything is ready. Is Garland going to come back me up for this? What was that?”
Joshua didn’t want to walk onto the playing field, but staying close to Daphne had its own dangers. No one else seemed to notice the toy vehicle wheeling closer. If he stayed at the barn door, he’d be trapped with all the others. He walked purposely out toward the pitcher’s mound. As he walked, the night darkened, the stadium lights dimming and the stars brightening. The ground roughened to the recently shorn cornfield. The night grew still and biting cold. A hint of snow scented the air.
“Wild Thing!” the crowd shouted somewhere in the darkness, the “wild” nearly a wordless roar.
The clown car looped closer.
“What do I do?” Daphne fearfully asked the person on her phone. She hadn’t noticed that he’d walked away. “Should I bring him there? Hey, Dogface, we’re…Two?”
“We’re two?” Joshua’s attention was wholly on the car. The monster was in the car.
“Oh, no! What do I do?” Daphne cried from far away.
“Run?” Joshua whispered, fearful to draw attention to himself. Running usually worked well for him. They were a mile from anything, though, and the sun had already set.
The clown car stopped. A huge beast unfolding himself out of the driver’s seat. The creature wore a human mask; Joshua thought it might be Samuel Jackson.
Joshua stood frozen on the pitcher’s mound, downwind of the beast. The barn door was a golden square in the distance.
“Dogface!” Daphne shouted. “You’re up!”
Samuel Jackson started to growl. He took off his mask, revealing the beast. He dropped down onto all fours and stalked toward the barn.
Joshua stood transfixed. He had seen the impossible. He wanted to bolt, run from the Deep Game, but it was his time to take stage center. From the darkness, the now invisible crowd roared for him to show his true self.
“Wild Thing! Wild Thing! Wild Thing!”
“No,” Joshua whispered. “I don’t want to play.”
But the screaming had started in the barn. The game had begun…
* * *
Joshua jerked awake. Outside seagulls screamed in thin shrieks. He stared at the ceiling wondering where he was. It was a high white ceiling with crown molding and an old bare light fixture. The walls were dirty white. The room was oddly shaped, like someone collided a circle onto a long rectangle. Sunlight streamed in from a half circle of windows, cooking him slowly with UV.
Where was he? Not his bedroom. Not the hospital.
Then he remembered. Decker’s incredibly messy house.
I’m living with a hipster vampire who has a serious hoarding problem.
The seagull screams grew closer as the birds flew past the house. Echoes of the dream washed over him.
I’m a werewolf.
He’d woken up in the hospital like this. Disoriented. Echoes of screams. The smell of blood. The feel of fur. The sense of something else inside of him. Not him. Not human. The police arrived before any of his memories returned. His parents hadn’t had the courage to tell him what had happened. The police had photos that explained it all too clearly.
“I don’t even remember getting to the barn,” Joshua told the police. “D.J.—Dennis Kean—was supposed to pick me up for school. I had a bunch of stuff for the haunted house that I couldn’t take on the bus. I remember sitting on my front porch waiting.” The smell of fresh carved jack-o-lantern beside him, leering as if it knew what was in store. Despite the sunshine, the day had been chilly enough make his ears cold. Of course, he hadn’t been able to find any of the winter hats except for one of his dad’s. It was a dorky thing like what Sherlock Holmes wore. He kept taking it off and turning it in his hands. Should he leave it behind and freeze his ears off or just buckle down and wear the stupid thing, knowing that the universe liked to make him the butt of all jokes?
Normally he wouldn’t worry. After years of fighting, he’d gotten to the point where he could kick the butt of any kid in school and everyone knew that. At football games and such, the bullies of the school were normally in school uniform and had a host of similarly dressed idiots to beat the snot out of, so he was safe there. Tonight, there would be no other team to distract them.
Wear the hat or leave it? Which did he decide? He couldn’t remember. “Was I wearing a hat?”
“Is that important?” the policeman asked.
When he was sitting on the porch, waiting, the hat had been important. It certainly wasn’t now but it seemed as if the presence or absence of the hat might start him down the right path to remembering what happened. “D.J. was supposed to pick me up.” Joshua was the only senior without a driver’s license. “He was late. I remember waiting for him. I don’t remember anything else.”
He realized then that D.J. was the very dead body he’d seen in the photos. For the first time, the wolf filled him and overflowed. It started with soft whimpers of distress. At first he wasn’t even aware that he was making them. He glanced around the room, looking for the hurt puppy, before he realized the noise was coming from him. Awareness only made it worse as he tried to control the whimpers and couldn’t. He hunched over, not wanting these strangers to see him losing it like a little kid. He pulled the sheets over his head as the whimpers became high-pitched keening.
It was only after the police left and his mother coaxed him out from under the sheets with jelly donuts, that he remembered being at the barn. It was like a gif image, a handful of seconds of standing in the cornfield, his breath misting in the bitter cold, as he stood listening to distant screams.
It was another four hours before he remembered the werewolf. By then he’d left a trail of broken hospital equipment behind him and had a vision of a wolf telling him to go to the Prince of Boston.
In thirty-six hours, his life disintegrated into nothing.
No parents. No money. No future. No idea what in hell he was doing.
He wasn’t even sure if his vision had been “real.” Certainly there’d been no wolf at the hospital talking to him—he was positive of that. He had a dozen witnesses that verified that he’d been alone when he thought he saw the talking wolf. Unless the wolf could also teleport.
The huntsman had definitely been very real.
Decker was most likely asleep until sunset if he was anything like the vampires in the movies. Elise was going to go looking for the Wickers and didn’t want Joshua underfoot. He didn’t want to piss her off—not after she threatened to stab Decker with the same arrows she’d just jerked out of the vampire. He didn’t want to wander around lost looking for a person that might be a figment of his imagination.
“Hi, I’m looking for a prince. He may or may not be a werewolf. Yes, a talking, teleporting wolf told me to find him. Would you know where to find the Prince of Boston?”
“No, not doing that,” he muttered, and sighed. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
The seagulls shrieked outside. He shuddered as it made him remember the screams of his classmates. The forensic photographs of kids he’d known all his life, torn open, torn apart.
He flailed for something sane and logical and doable.
“Clean house. Yeah, that’s what I should do.”
* * *
It was slightly ironic that his mother had a mild obsession with reality TV shows based on hoarding. She seemed to think that without periodic shocks to her system, she’d slide into such behavior. She’d watch an entire season on Friday nights and wake Saturday morning, gird her loins, and launch into frantic deep cleanings. Joshua had learned to maintain his room neat and orderly to keep the cleaning tornado at bay.
Years of exposure to the TV shows had ingrained the process into him. Last night, they’d broken the OHIO rule of Only Handle It Once. All they’d done was simply shift the mess around; they hadn’t actually done anything lasting with it. If he were going to tackle the entire house, he’d first need lots and lots of garbage bags.
And a dumpster.
His stomach growled loudly.
And some food.
* * *
His parents had a strict rule: always leave a note on the refrigerator saying where you’re going. Decker had a great deal of paper—swimming with it actually—but no workable pens, pencils, markers, crayons, or lipstick (Joshua was getting desperate for a writing tool). Joshua resorted to a lump of charcoal from the fireplace. Then he discovered that Decker had no refrigerator.
Joshua stood staring at the large empty hole in the kitchen.
On Hoarders, there was always a refrigerator. Scary-ass refrigerators filled with repulsive mystery food.
Where the hell should he put the note if there was no refrigerator?
If he had tape, he’d stick it to the back of the front door. He considered attempting to close it in the door, so Decker would see it sticking out. He abandoned this idea when he realized how many of the interior doors had scraps of paper caught between the door and the frame.
Well, if he weren’t back before Decker woke up (but he should be) then the vampire would probably check his room. It was very odd to think of the big empty room as “his” bedroom but Joshua had already slept there once and the vampire definitely gave it to him.
That line of thinking veered Joshua too close to making him wonder about the actual sanity of staying with Decker. Really, he knew nothing about the man—vampire—person. But if Joshua left, where would he go? Where would he be safe from whoever sent the huntsman after him without endangering innocent people? The full moon was just days away…
Right—deep clean the hoarder’s house—a simple easy mind-numbing task. He was starting to understand his mother’s obsession.
* * *
The only clear spot in Decker’s house was the foyer table. (It was also one of three pieces of furniture in the entire house. Seriously? Eleven big rooms and the man only had one chair and two tables?) The night before, Decker had carefully put his phone in its charger by the front door. There was a post-it note on it stating: LET IT DIE AGAIN AND I WILL CUT YOU!
“Note to self,” Joshua muttered. “Don’t piss off Elise.”
Luckily Decker’s phone wasn’t password protected. Elise must have turned that feature off so not to confuse Decker. According to Google Maps, there were several supermarkets within a few blocks of his current location. Wherever that was. He zoomed out on the map. Cambridge. Harvard was just down the street! He sighed at dreams lost. He’d busted his butt for a year to score amazingly high on his SAT and ACT tests. Combined with his honor roll grades and the fact that he’d competed at state-level in Judo, his guidance counselor had said he’d probably qualify for a scholarship at any university. It was the only way he could have gone to college; his parents couldn’t afford to pay for it.
Harvard had been a dream; he could have only attended if he’d gotten a full scholarship. He doubted that he’d get one but he was going to give it his best shot. He also planned to apply to schools where the cost of living was lower. He wanted out of Sauquoit; away from the people that made growing up there hell. He wanted more than the hand-to-mouth existence of a minimum wage job. He wanted to be something that was guaranteed to make money. Accountant. Banker. Lawyer. Anything. Except a werewolf.
Well, those dreams were all toast.
Deep breathing always worked for dealing with the idiots that bullied him in school. It wasn’t coping as well with a life going down in flames.
He scrambled to think of the positives.
He had no plans when he left home. He spent the entire train trip sure that he’d be sleeping on the street. He’d worried about wolfing out if someone tried to rob him or molest him, or arrest him. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He thought that he might freeze to death if the weather suddenly turned colder.
Positive: he had a roof over his head. A massive bedroom with a tower. It could not get cooler. Well—a bed would be a plus—but Decker made it sound like he was welcome to stay as long as he wanted. The vampire had talked about painting the room any color Joshua liked.
Vampire.
He was living with a vampire.
That still freaked him out.
Deep breath.
Positive: Decker seemed like a good person. A bit eccentric but that probably was a result of living for a long time. Decker had called the record player “a gramophone” at one point, which apparently had been the forerunner of the one they were using. He explained that gramophones had been hand-cranked since most houses didn’t have electricity yet. It was amazing Decker understood the cell phone at all, considering that he was probably born before telephones were even invented. Before electricity was invented.
Positive: Decker was fun to be around. He didn’t seem ancient to Joshua. Decker didn’t even seem as old as Joshua’s parents; maybe because he looked only a few years older than Joshua. Hanging out with Decker was how Joshua hoped college life would be like. It turned out that Decker had actually read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. (Most “fans” Joshua’s age hadn’t.) Decker had also read Dune and all of Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury, and books that Joshua had never heard of but sounded interesting. They’d talked about the architecture of the house. Decker said it was a shingle-style which had been common in Cambridge and that it mimicked many of the details found in Queen Anne style. He knew what a gable was (the attic had two) and called the garage a carriage house.
Joshua’s stomach growled, reminding him that there was a reason he was looking up supermarkets on Decker’s phone.
Decker had dropped his house keys on to the table along with his wallet. The man had no ID, no credit cards, only a thick wad of fifties. Last night Decker had broken a fifty to cover Joshua’s dinner. Somehow the vampire had burned through all of the change because there wasn’t anything smaller in the wallet. It felt wrong to take a large bill without asking first. If there had been a couple of one-dollar bills, Joshua might have been able to take them without feeling guilty. He couldn’t bring himself to take a fifty; it felt too much like stealing.
He noticed that there were several ten-gallon milk cans on the floor, each filled to the brim with coins. One can was only half full. Decker had unloaded his spare change into a metal flower vase sitting on the table. It was approximately one-tenth the size of the big cans on the floor. Apparently when the vase hit full, Decker poured the coins into one of the milk cans.
Joshua grinned. These were clearly hoarded coins. Something had to be done with them. He might as well start the process.
* * *
It rained the whole way to Star Market.
Navigating via phone, Joshua ended up in the back alley behind the store. The block-long wall had been painted with a huge mural that depicted all the little shops that must have been torn down to build the massive grocery store. Very real windows were surrounded by fake old-fashioned buildings, painted people and flat 2-D animals. The area had once been very rural with cows and horses. Or at least, that’s what the painting showed. Joshua stood in the rain and stared at the seemingly unending mural, feeling oddly removed from reality.
Odder yet was the sudden realization that this painting of rural Cambridge depicted a time after Decker was born.
Joshua wondered what had happened to his life. How did he fall so far from the sane and normal? What happened to his ordinary world? Becoming a werewolf was one thing—where were all these other weird things coming from? Vampires. Witches. Monsters. Why were they still just myths when they were real? He felt as unreal as the people painted onto the wall. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he was really in a coma back in Utica and all this was some kind of drug-induced nightmare.
He stalked around the corner to find the loading dock to Star Market. Down the block, and around the next corner he finally reached the front door, sopping wet.
The coin machine was just beyond the carts. He stood dripping and sniffing as he poured the coins out of the metal vase. The place smelled amazing with hot roasted chicken, fresh baked bread, and donuts. He growled softly as the machine slowly clicked through counting the quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. He was so hungry, his stomach felt like it was twisting into knots.
The vase was nearly empty when he realized that the security guard was watching him intently.
Did the guard think he’d stolen the money? Technically, he had, but he was fairly sure that Decker wouldn’t mind. It wasn’t like he’d stolen a large amount of cash.
The coins stopped falling. He glanced at the total.
Two hundred and forty dollars.
Holy crap.
“Is that a funeral urn?” the guard said.
It took Joshua a moment to realize that the guard was talking to him. Only the words didn’t make sense. Funeral urn? “W-w-what?”
The guard pointed at the metal vase in Joshua’s hands. “That’s a funeral urn—isn’t it? It looks like the one that my girlfriend’s father is in.”
Of course Decker had a funeral urn sitting in his foyer. What else would a vampire keep coins in? A coffin would be too big.
The guard was standing there, waiting for an answer.
“I-I-I don’t know. I just found it—sitting around—in the garage.” Garages were full of weird stuff. They were almost as bad as attics and basements. “I thought it was a metal flower vase.”
“It’s probably worth a couple hundred dollars,” the guard said. “I saw on ‘Antiques Roadshow’ once a guy brought in a copper urn. There’s a surprisingly large market for old funeral urns. Doesn’t that beat all? I really don’t understand it. I always thought it was a little creepy to have a dead family member sitting on the mantle. Especially when you’re making out. I hide my girl’s father in the closet; first thing I do when I get there. Last thing I do before I leave is put him back on the mantle.”
Joshua stared at the urn in horror. Was it a used urn? Had someone been dead inside it? His skin started to crawl with the need to wash his hands.
The guard pointed at the coin machine. “You need to hit accept and get a receipt. You can either cash it out at the service desk or take it to one of the cashiers.”
Joshua stabbed the screen to get the receipt. Luckily there were sanitary wipes next to the cart rack and he could disinfect his hands immediately.
From there he went straight to the Bath & Body aisle and found hand soap. His family always used unscented Dove because his older sister was allergic to everything. She’d moved out but they continued to buy it. He tossed shampoo, a comb, a toothbrush and toothpaste into his cart. What else did he need? Toilet paper was a must before last night’s Chinese hit bottom.
Cleaning supplies were next to the toilet paper. He grabbed the giant economy roll of garbage bags. He eyed the prices of brooms and mops with dismay. Those were going to have to wait for another coin run—and next time, no creepy urn.
What else did he need? Stationery was beside the cleaning supplies, so he picked up a notebook and a pack of ballpoint pens.
His stomach growled impatiently. It wanted food! A lot of it!
There was a little cooking stand set up by the refrigerated section run by a young woman with dark purple hair. She was heating chunks of sausage links and setting them out on a plate with toothpicks in them. He’d eaten half before he could stop.
The woman backed away from him, big brown doe eyes going wide. Her nametag read: Winnie. Her lipstick was as purple as her hair.
Joshua blushed as he licked his greasy fingers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get breakfast.”
Her doe eyes went wider and she shook her head. “No, no, no, it’s okay. You can have all of them. A hungry wolf is a dangerous wolf.”
“What?”
Winnie’s white cable sweater was too big for her and the sleeves covered half her hands. Her fingernails were the same bright purple as her lips as she caught herself just short of chewing on them. “Everyone knows it! It’s like one of those Snickers commercials. You know ‘when you’re hungry you’re not yourself?’ Just eat them all. It will be safer for everyone if you do.”
He was still trying to process “Everyone knows” when he realized that he’d wolfed down the rest. “Who…” He nearly swallowed one of the toothpicks. He fished about in his mouth and discovered there were three total. He felt like he was doing the magic trick where the magician pulled endless bright colored scarfs out of his mouth—only with toothpicks. “Who is everyone?” He didn’t know! How did everyone find out? Was there some secret meeting that he’d missed, like the one in school on puberty? He’d been sick that day and came back to find everyone looking bewildered but unable to explain. (Really, the human species was how old and that’s the best that public schools could do?)
“Everyone that knows about werewolves.” She edged away from him. “See a wolf, feed a wolf. The safest way to go, to keep your fingers and toes; feed a hungry wolf Ho Hos.”
“You’re kidding.” He wondered which aisle Ho Hos were in. Back home they were with the baked goods in one store but with cookies in another.
The squeak she made might have been “No.”
He tried another tack. “How do you know about werewolves?”
“I’m a medium; I channel spirits. It’s not as fun as it sounds. But anyone with a gift knows about the Prince of Boston and his family…or to be more exact, his lack thereof.”
“Huh?” Channeling spirits didn’t sound fun to him. It sounded creepy. Did Decker say anything about the prince? They’d talked about a lot of things last night but very little had to do with werewolves. He’d mentioned his vision but had forgotten to explain exactly what the black wolf had said to him.
“They’re all dead,” Winnie clarified. “That’s why there’s no wolves in Boston. Except you. Whoever you are. Who are you?”
“I’m not sure any more.” Joshua didn’t want to tell Winnie his name; his parents probably had an Amber alert out on him or something.
“Hm?” Winnie tilted her head, squinting slightly, as if listening intently. “Fred says you’re one of the black wolves of Boston and that I shouldn’t be afraid of you.”
“Fred?”
She pointed upward. “Spirit guide.”
He glanced up. Something loomed over them. Tall and willowy, bending to fit under the high warehouse ceiling. It was dark yet insubstantial, less like a shadow and more like the absence of light. He leapt backwards, snarling.
“It’s just Fred!” Winnie cried. “He’s my spirit guide! He won’t hurt you. Here. Have more sausage.” She chopped off big slices of the sausage, stabbed toothpicks into them and shoved them uncooked toward him. “Sorry. Most people can’t see him. Wolves can. I forgot.”
Joshua couldn’t resist the allure of the meat. Still growling, he darted forward and stuffed the offered slices into his mouth. Fred smelled of fresh dirt and earthworms. The scent reminded Joshua of an open grave and it raised the hair on the back of his neck.
He’d eaten three big slices of uncooked sausage before he thought to ask if they were safe to eat raw.
Winnie held up the package and pointed to the label. “They’re organic fully cooked sweet apple chicken sausage. They contain only hand trimmed, fully cooked, uncured premium organic cuts and organic spices. These sweet apple sausages add the subtle flavor of apple and spices to your favorite meal.”
“Is that your sales pitch?”
She squeaked, dropped the package. “Yes.”
He felt guilty for scaring her and a little mind-boggled too. Him? Scary? All five foot two and a hundred twenty pounds? One of the reasons he always got bullied—despite the fact that he could beat the snot out of most guys—was the fact he couldn’t look intimidating even when he tried. It was like he had a giant neon sign over his head that read: HARMLESS DORK PLEASE KICK ME.
Even spirit guides could read the sign. “Fred said I was harmless.”
“No, no, he didn’t say you were harmless.” She waved her hands as if to ward off an attack. “He said I shouldn’t be afraid of you. That’s not the same. You have to be careful with spirit guides. They mean exactly what they mean and nothing else.”
“So he might actually be warning you that I might wolf out on you if you’re afraid?”
“Yes!” She smiled brightly. The smile wavered as she parsed the statement more. “Have more sausage!”
He ate the offered slices, growing aware that he’d gobbled down two full packages. He was in the process of cleaning her out of samples. “Won’t you get in trouble if you let one person eat them all?”
Winnie opened another package. “I’m not liking this job as much as I thought. It seemed so simple. Cook yummy chicken sausages and get people to try it so they’ll want to buy it. It’s kind of a captive audience. People are here to buy food! Most of them are hungry. But it’s really strange and boring.”
“Strange?” Werewolf strange?
“Everyone keeps saying the same thing! ‘Where’s the pancakes?’ Seriously. Even the people who are vegans say it. I’m starting to think there’s some evil spirits involved. Like all those chickens aren’t happy with me. But that’s probably the lithium.”
If it wasn’t for the looming shadow, he’d think she was just a little crazy. Maybe a lot crazy. Considering his life lately, though, she was par for the course.
“I take it to inhibit my powers,” Winnie said. “Lithium that is. Fred hates it. I don’t like it. Makes me drink like a horse and that means I have to go pee constantly. Wait. It’s eat like a horse. Drink like a fish.” She wrinkled her nose. “That makes me sound like a drunk. I’m not sure why you only mean ‘booze’ when you say that. Fish are in water.”
“You’re taking it so you won’t hear Fred?” Joshua wondered if Fred would stay with her if Winnie couldn’t hear him. Would Joshua still be a werewolf if he never turned into a wolf?
When would he turn into a wolf? Decker said it wouldn’t be during the full moon.
“No. Fred is fine. He’s been my best friend since I was three. We had marvelous tea parties. Of course—through high school—he was just about my only friend. Teenagers are so judgmental. It’s that when you’re open—you’re open—and that’s bad. Just about anything could walk in and set up shop. The lithium is barring the door against such things. But it screws up my normal gig. People hire me to talk to their relatives and such. Freshly dead are really still too freaked out about the whole ‘dead’ thing to contact unless you’re barn door kind of open even with Fred herding them in my direction. Marie Antoinette? Easy peasy lemon squeezy to talk to. A real challenge to my high school French. I have no idea what she’s doing in Boston of all places. But she’s been dead long enough to know all the ins and outs. I’ll be trying to get hold of someone’s Aunt Gertrude and in pops Marie wanting to have tea and cake and talk about the latest dress fashions. One summer I put on twenty pounds because she kept taking me out to the Royal Pastry Shop on Cambridge Street. She’s addicted to their cannoli and Italian rum cake.”
Channeling spirits was starting to sound extremely creepy to Joshua. “She just takes you over and makes you eat pastry?”
“Yeah. Hard on the hips and hard on the wallet but basically harmless.” Her lip quivered slightly. “Seeing a Marie Claire magazine nearly makes me cry thinking how lonely she must be. Everyone has closed up shop or moved out of Boston for the duration.”
“Duration of what?”
She cut up more sausages. “Until the prince returns, Boston isn’t safe for me to keep the doors wide open. There are dark things that can take me and hold me tight and I wouldn’t be able to break free.”
“Who is the prince?”
She paused and gave him an odd look. “You’re a werewolf.”
“Yes. At least, I’m pretty sure I am. I haven’t actually changed into a wolf yet. I’m just going on the assumption that since I was bitten by a werewolf that I’m one. I am—aren’t I? At least, everyone keeps telling me that I am. I have gotten freaky strong and I keep growling. The first few times I did, I scared myself. I thought there was a wolf standing behind me.”
Winnie stared at him with big doe eyes. “Geez Louise! I thought I had it rough.” She pulled a strand of purple hair to her mouth and nibbled at it for a minute, clearly thinking hard. She squinted, tilting her head, listening.
The hair on Joshua’s neck rose as he heard—murmuring under the Muzak playing “Witchy Woman”—the whisper of wind through leaves and the scrape of bone against wood. “Is-Is-Is that Fred?”
“What? You can hear him? Jack could never hear him. Which was good since… Oh! Shoot!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, it always turns out that when I suddenly think about someone for the first time in ages—especially if I clearly remember exactly what they looked like—it usually means that something horrible happened to them.” She sighed deeply. “Jack was always polite to me. Fred freaked him out so he rarely got close enough to be anything else. Oh my god, he was so good looking, even though he never seemed to know it. There was a secret cult among the girls that didn’t know he was a werewolf. The rest of us knew it was pointless.”
“Because he was a monster?”
“Oh no. Werewolves are kind of like good Jewish boys, only more so.”
“What does that mean? I’m from a small town. I don’t know any Jewish people.”
“Werewolves only marry werewolves. Oh, I really hope he didn’t die. That would suck. He really took the guardian shtick seriously. He didn’t like Fred but he always made sure no one teased me. A total white knight in shining armor complete with steed; a Harley Iron 883. Oh God, he was so hot on it. I used to go to school early so I’d see him ride in.” She closed her eyes and shivered. “The pulse of that big engine against my skin; it really tripped my trigger. I would have put out for him in a heartbeat.”
Joshua felt a blush burn its way up his face, all the way to his ears. He didn’t have much experience interacting with women. There were the girls in his Judo classes and his sister; both of which were usually trying to hurt him. He really didn’t know how to reply to that.
Fred spoke again with a rustle of wind through invisible leaves and scratch of finger bones.
“Oh! Jack told you to go to the prince? What are you doing here?”
“I-I-I have not a clue. Shopping?”
She stared at Joshua, wide eyed. The great shadow-that-was-not-a-shadow folded so it peered over her shoulder at him. There were notably darker points that seemed to be eyes.
He found it very unnerving. “Yes, shopping. Getting toilet paper and such.” He fished out the rolls as proof. “I should let you go back to work.”
“You really don’t have a clue—do you?” she said.
No? Yes? Which would get him into more trouble?
“Maybe?”
“Okay. That’s it. I quit.” She took out her phone and started to text someone.
“Quit? Quit what? Quit your job? Don’t do that!”
She waved one hand to silence him. “This job bores me silly and you obviously need help. I’m letting them know I’ve got a family emergency and need to leave.”
“I’m shopping!” He waved the toilet paper roll violently.
“Yes, I see. You can pay for that before we leave.”
“You can’t just quit. You need money.”
“Oh! You’re right.” Winnie turned to face Fred. “I need money.”
The shadow darted away.
“What’s Fred going to do? Mug someone?”
Winnie laughed. “No, no, he’s just going to find—I don’t know—whatever he finds. Let’s go! It’s almost noon already and I want to be home before dark.” She lowered her voice. “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”
* * *
She stayed with him long enough to dump a dozen packages of Ho Hos into his cart and then disappeared. The smell of chocolate cake and crème made it impossible to take them back out. He picked up bread, peanut butter, packets of tuna fish, and some bananas as food that didn’t need to be cooked.
He was amazed at how expensive the few items in his cart were. He handed over the receipt from the coin machine and got six twenties as change back.
Winnie suddenly appeared beside him to snatch one of the twenties from his hand. “I need to borrow this for a minute. Fred found something.”
“Hey!” He picked up his bags. “If Fred has money why do you need that? That’s all the cash I have and it’s not really mine.”
“This will just take a minute.” She walked to a blue vending machine. The state of Massachusetts was outlined on the side with the words “The Lottery” written inside the lines. In a starburst above it was the word “Instant.” As she fed the twenty into the bill acceptor, Joshua realized it dispensed scratch off lottery tickets.
“Wait! No! What are you doing?”
“Getting money. Fred says that one of the tickets is a winner. Go on, hit a button.”
“What? Me? I don’t know which one is the winner; Fred does!”
“No, that’s not how it works. For me, it’s a random chance, one in a hundred million to win, or something like that. For you, it’s not. You’re governed by fate.”
“What if it’s not my fate to win?”
“There’s a dozen places you could have gone to buy food, but you came to this store while I was working here. A mere four-hour window. You were fated to meet me: someone who knows Jack. If you hadn’t met me here, you would have met me someplace else. I might have run you over in the street or something. So you’re obviously fated to meet me. I can only help you if I can leave work, which requires me to have money. You need to win money for me so I can help you.”
He stared at her, dismayed and bewildered by her logic. Surely this was not how the universe worked.
She pointed at the machine with both hands. “Push a button!”
He turned to eye the machine. Why was it harder to believe in fate than believing in werewolves, vampires and spirit guides? The tickets were all expensive; some were twenty dollars apiece.
Was it fate that he’d met Winnie or pure coincidence?
Only really one way to find out. He stabbed the button for a Mega Fortune ticket that cost twenty dollars.
“I’ll cash this in and I’ll give your money back.” Winnie fished around in the vending slot and pulled the ticket out. “How do you play this one? Okay you scratch these and these and… Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.”
She started to bounce up and down.
That looked like they’d won. He glanced back to the machine to see what the ticket paid. The top prize was ten million dollars.
“No frigging way,” Joshua whispered.
Winnie started to squeak as she bounced like a giant squeaky toy. Suddenly she gripped him tightly by both shoulders. “This means fate put us together! With super glue! It’s like we’re star crossed. It must be super-duper important that I help you!”