Wolf Town Read online

  “You know,” said Mom quietly, seriously, “if I wasn't a witch, I don't think I could do this. I just know you're going to be okay. I had a dream about you last night…” She adjusted my headband, carefully avoiding my eyes. Her own eyes were watery. “I had a dream that you met a real nice girl.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, alarmed at how my voice cracked. I absolutely, positively couldn't cry.

  “Do you know the stories about Wolf Town?” she asked then, looking me in the eyes this time. She rubbed at face with her shirtsleeve. I shook my head.

  “Good,” she said, and kissed me on my brow.

  Okay… That didn't sound ominous at all.

  “Mom?” I asked, as she began to walk up the path, toward the front door.

  “Good luck, brightest blessings, may the Goddess watch over you until we meet again, my darling!” She blew me a kiss, and I knew she was crying, then, could see the tears gliding over her cheeks. “ I love you!”

  “I love you, too…”

  I drove to Wolf Town in silence. I cried twice. After the second time, I felt better, lighter almost, as if I'd spent my tears. I was thirty years old. It was well past time to leave the nest, and even beyond that, it was well past time to leave the bigger nest of that tiny town. It was time to follow my heart. It was time for a billion other clichés, because I was driving up the coast in my little Subaru, burdened with a few boxes of belongings and the absolute, distinct hint of awesome in the air.

  I was driving to a town I'd only heard of, never seen, to begin and make a new life for myself.

  I was a heroine! The mistress of my own destiny! Invincible!

  Had there been a little less singing along to rock anthems and a little more paying attention to my surroundings, I might have noticed the sign when I entered Wolf Town. As it was, I didn't. But I'd know it, soon enough.

  Wolf Town's sign reads like this:

  Welcome to Wolf Town.

  But it doesn't actually read “Wolf Town,” because someone sprayed an “x” through the words, and wrote next to it, in big, sharp-looking letters, “the strangest place on earth.”

  Chapter 2: The Ghost

  It was only about noon when I pulled into Wolf Town. It hadn’t been nearly as far up the coast as I’d thought; it was pretty close to the shore. My scribbled directions told me my aunt’s cafe was on the main drag of town. The town itself looked appropriately New England-y, with flat store and house fronts, each building painted dark blue or brown, with occasional lengths of brick interrupting the crumbling sidewalks. There was a sub shop, and a seafood joint, and a wine store, and a bookstore (thank the ever-living gods), and a coffee shop.

  Coffee…

  My stomach was rumbling something fierce, and my coffee had dried up about an hour ago. I needed sustenance in the form of an extremely sugary, caffeinated beverage.

  The coffee shop was called The Ninth Order, and when I ducked inside, I had to pause for a moment. I'd never seen a coffeehouse so large. It boasted extraordinarily vaulted, churchy ceilings, and went back so far that I'd probably have to shout if I wanted to tell the barista something, since the bar was positioned in the distant corner. Comfortable, beaten-up couches lined the walls, and there were overstuffed chairs in every color of the rainbow that looked so inviting, I was suddenly struck by a desperate longing to crumple up in one.

  It was noon on a Monday, but almost all of the seats were filled with people wearing…weird stuff. I think I recognized a costume from Star Wars, and I certainly spotted the uniform for Star Trek once or twice. And a guy in a moonwalking suit.

  “Alien convention,” said the woman behind me.

  I turned and, totally suave, stared at her with my mouth hanging open.

  She had bright red hair that draped down to her thighs, the most adorable turned-up nose I'd ever seen in my life, and eyes so green that they must have been contact lenses. I’ll abstain from regaling you with a description of the precise span of her bosom, but it had been a really long time since I'd gotten laid. We're talking six months.

  So I tried—and failed—not to stare.

  She was smiling at me with a soft curve to her lips. I noticed that her biceps were a little muscular, and she stood with her feet hip-width apart, as if she owned her space.

  I blinked, and my insides turned to literal mush. I was so utterly attracted to her that I didn’t know what to do.

  Get a grip, Amy. She's probably not gay.

  That throught brought me back to reality with a hard, unwelcome jolt.

  “Welcome to the Ninth Order!” she said, with a huge grin. I finally registered that she was wearing an apron with the name of the coffeeshop embroidered onto it, next to an arcane-looking star. “Shall I get something started for you?” she offered, after a long moment in which I continued to be speechless.

  I never thought I'd had a type. I mean, I’d only known three lesbians in my entire life, so I couldn’t really afford to have a type.

  But I guess Irish-or-possibly-Scottish-warrior-queen was my type, after all.

  “I’d like a latte,” I said, cursing myself for my wavery voice. “Um. Do you have any fall flavors?”

  “Do you like pumpkins?” she asked, leaning closer to me and raising one eyebrow, as if we were sharing a secret.

  Pumpkins. Pumpkin-flavored things. Yes, I liked pumpkin flavored things, but judging by the non-responsiveness of my tongue, I was apparently absolutely incapable of giving an intelligent response to the question.

  “Morgan, good heavens! Stop flirting with every poor, unsuspecting girl who walks in here!” someone shouted from the coffee bar. “You'd think this was a den of wolves!”

  The redheaded woman, Morgan, glanced up with a crooked, decidedly wolfish smile. I opened and shut my own mouth. Her canines were a little bit more pointed than any I’d ever seen before. No… They were a lot more pointed.

  That was…odd.

  “Come,” she said, and took my hand, threading it through her arm so naturally, as if it were normal to walk arm in arm with a stranger across a coffeeshop floor. This close, she smelled of coffee and vanilla and some intoxicating spice underneath all of that that made my face turn toward hers the entire time that we touched. We walked across the vast expanse of the coffeeshop and up to the bar, where an extremely pale man leaned on the counter. His eyes were very dark, his hair was jet black and spiked, and when he smiled, he, too, had very pointy teeth.

  “Hello,” he said, and straightened, clapping his hands. “What can I make you? You're new here, aren't you? Are you here for the alien convention? You don’t look like you’re here for the alien convention…” He trailed off and raised a black brow.

  Morgan slid around the counter and into the bar area. I tore my eyes from her—forcibly—because I needed to stop acting totally creepy. “Um. Alien convention? No, I'm not here for an alien convention. I’m, um, taking over my aunt’s café while she goes on vacation...” I smile nervously. “The Witch Way Café?”

  “You’re Bette’s niece? You’ll be staying here for awhile?” asked Morgan, leaning on the counter. She stared at me intently, eyes narrowing as they slowly, purposefully, raked over my length. I felt myself begin to turn very, very warm as her full lips hitched up at the corners and she smiled deeply. “That's…nice…” she practically purred.

  Um. Wow. That was…definitely flirting.

  The guy behind the counter was wearing a nametag that read “Victor!!” The two exclamation marks were transformed into a smiley face. He placed his palms on the counter and leaned next to Morgan.

  “Your lesbianness is showing,” he said to her brightly. She rolled her eyes and pushed off toward the espresso machine with a chuckle.

  “Wait, what?” Had I died and gone to the Summerlands? Had I died and been reborn in a perfect world? Had I…died? This was too much. My gaydar was admittedly atrocious, but the hottest woman I had ever seen in my entire life, who attracted me like sugar water attracts hummingbirds, was actually
a lesbian?

  She turned and winked at me.

  I thought I was going to faint.

  “So! The Witch Way Café!” said “Victor!!” smoothly, mouth opening into a wide grin. “That's wonderful! Bette’s needed a vacation for ages.” He placed his chin in his hands, head to the side. “Funny, though—I never knew Bette had any other family.”

  Yeah, I never even knew Bette existed, I thought to myself, as I dug around in my purse for my wallet, which always delighted in hiding itself from me.

  “Yeah,” I said with an overenthusiastic shrug. I didn’t want to immediately launch into the fact that Bette probably wasn’t my real aunt, or that my mother was a witch and had a very large, extended witch family. For just two minutes, I wanted to be normal in Wolf Town. “It’ll be good to see her,” I told him sincerely. Which was true. I was excited about meeting her, about seeing the café where I’d be spending the next month. I was excited about seeing more of Wolf Town.

  But, really, right now I was perfectly content to simply see more of Morgan. The woman had her back to me, frothing the milk in the machine. She glanced over her shoulder at me, one brow raised, smiling invitingly.

  She was so beautiful.

  I took a deep, trembling breath.

  “Fabulous!” said Victor loudly. “Well, we're glad you're here. We hope you'll frequent the Ninth Order.” Again, that grin with the pointy teeth. I nodded and found my wallet and paid five dollars for something I couldn't even remember ordering. And then I found a seat and sat down. I wanted to put my head in my hands to keep the world from spinning, but instead I leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling for a long moment.

  Obviously, I'd known there were other lesbians in the world. But finding one—in East Lionsville, anyway—had been like finding a unicorn.

  Finding one that I was incredibly attracted to felt like seeing a unicorn riding a motorcycle.

  But when Morgan came to my table and handed me my expensive, fancy drink, I stared at her left hand with deep sadness and gray regret. Because the ring finger on her left hand had a ring on it.

  Unicorns riding motorcycles don't stay on the road for very long.

  “I hope you like it,” she said, crouching smoothly down next to me, staring into my eyes intently. She was so close, and she was acting overly familiar in the most delicious way, placing her hand on my arm... I forgot to breathe. When I remembered to breathe a few moments later, I inhaled her scent: that intoxicating mixture of coffee, vanilla and spice. I thought I smelled sandalwood and amber as an undertone, too, and though I'd never been a fan of the combination before, it seemed sweeter on her, warmer somehow. Lovely.

  When she stood and left, my heart was still skipping.

  This was ridiculous. I’d never felt so instantly smitten… I took a sip of my latte and was grateful that the milk was scalding; it burned me all the way down. It brought me—painfully—back to reality.

  Including the reality that, according to my watch, I’d better get going. My mother had told me that Aunt Bette wanted to get an early start on her vacation, so she planned to just whisk me around and show me how things at the café worked quickly before she left today.

  I stood and sighed, casting a glance at all of the happy Trekkies and… Hmm. What do you call a Star Wars fan? A Warrie? Well, they seemed happy, too, and the moonwalking guy had his helmet on the table and was eating a chocolate chip cookie that was almost as big as his helmet. As I walked past him and out of the coffeeshop, I kind of did a double-take: there were two tiny nubs sprouting up and out of his hair. Kind of like those things on cartoon alien heads, I guess. Antennae. Neat costume.

  Morgan watched me leave the coffeeshop. I could feel her eyes on me—acutely, intensely—until I turned the corner.

  The latte was the best one I'd ever had.

  ---

  The Witch Way Cafe (according to my directions) was just down the street from the coffeeshop, so I walked. The air smelled of wet leaves and an impending storm, mixed with the pumpkin scent of my latte. It was the most perfect, autumnal aroma in the world. The clouds had been threatening rain all morning, and as I made my way over the sidewalk, two fat drops fell down to show starkly against my worn, black sweater.

  I felt a chill just then, like the trail of a cold finger along the back of my neck. Not fear, but something bright and pointed, asking me to wake up and pay attention. I looked up, shivers racing over my skin, and I moved my eyes to the right.

  There was an older woman standing precariously on one of the tallest rungs of a very old ladder. She was wearing a bright purple sweater, with a skirt in a slightly different purple shade, along with purple-and-black stockings and toe-curled black witch shoes. She was industriously leaning out much farther than she should to maintain the balance of the ladder, and she was applying a fresh coat of (you guessed it) purple paint to the “e” in “Witch Way Café.”

  I stared up at her with wide eyes. This was the shop I'd seen in my vision, right down to the bright purple door. The woman’s hair was piled in a bright white bun on top of her head, and her tongue stuck out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. Until she caught me staring.

  “Why, hello!” she exclaimed, glancing down at me from up high. “Can I help you?”

  “No, it's all right!” I called out to her, but she had already started climbing down the ladder, which wobbled and rattled beneath her. She was wearing a very wide smile when she finally leapt down fron the last rung. She tucked a stray wisp of white hair behind her ear as she looked me up and down, finally placing her hands on her hips.

  “You’re a Linden; I can tell,” she said, and then she stepped forward and embraced me tightly. She was an entire head shorter than me, but her hug was sincere, and her arms were surprisingly strong. I smiled over her shoulder, hugging her back.

  “Aunt Bette?” I asked, and then she nodded, took a step away from me and patted her blouse pocket, from which she removed a thin pair of glasses. These she settled on the bridge of her nose, and she examined me up and down again as her smile grew wider.

  “You look just like your mother,” she told me proudly, taking my hand and patting it. Then her eyes began to sparkle. “But enough of this mushy crap. I have a plane to catch, and the traffic around Bangor is unsightly during rush hour. Come on, come on—I have so many things to show you!” She turned on her heel and marched purposefully toward the bright purple front door of the store.

  I chuckled and followed after her. She didn’t look like any of my family members, but she sure as heck acted like them.

  “So, the Witch Way Café doesn’t get many customers in a day. Just a few regulars,” she told me, taking a small key out of her pocket and handing it to me as she opened the door. “I’ve been in the middle of a remodel, too, which is just…” She sighed, shrugged. “It’s been ghastly. If you get bored, please feel free to pick up a paint roller, but you certainly don’t have to. Heck, read romance novels. It’s just nice of you to be doing this for me.”

  “I’m not really a romance novel reader,” I told her, stepping into the café behind her and blinking curiously. She flicked on all of the lights one by one, and I was greeted by the sight of a strange, in-between kind of space. One of the walls had been half-painted purple, but the rest were bright, stark white. Glancing at my purple-clad aunt, I couldn’t imagine how she had survived this long without painting every wall her favorite color. There were several small tables leading up to a counter at the back of the room, and there was black-and-white checkered tile beneath our feet. The place looked a little bit like a ‘fifties diner.

  “Don’t like romance novels?” she said, turning on her heel, hands on her hips.

  I shrugged, bit my lip. What had my mother told her about me? “Well,” I said carefully, eyebrows up, “not straight ones.”

  “But don’t they publish lesbian romance novels, too?” she asked, without missing a single beat.

  I smiled in spite of myself. “Yeah, really g
ood ones.”

  “Great. So read those between customers,” she said, nodding as she waved her arm to indicate the café. “Know how to cook?”

  “Um, a little,” I muttered.

  She shoved a menu into my hands and grabbed a wheeled suitcase from behind one of the tables.

  “You’ll learn, dear,” she said with conviction; then she stood up on her toes and brushed her warm lips over my cheek. “The most important thing is to have fun!” she shouted brightly.

  And just like that, she was wheeling her suitcase out of the café.

  “Wait, what?” I managed, eyes wide. A moment later, I stumbled after her, my head a tangle of confusion. “Where am I going to sleep?”

  “In my apartment above the café.” She gestured toward the building behind her and glanced down at her watch. “You can go right in and look it over, if you fancy. I’m sorry, but the normal door is being repaired. It’s down the alley there. You’ll have to go through the café to get up to the apartment for right now, all right?”

  “Um…sure,” I murmured, taking a step forward. My skin pricked, and as the wind whipped up, drawing the September clouds closer, a little dust devil swept up leaves and danced by the front door. I could practically feel the magic in the air as I glanced over my shoulder at the café now.

  “Ciao, darling!” said my aunt, and bustled her way across the street toward a tiny bright red SMART car.

  I was kind of shocked that her car wasn’t purple.

  “Bye?” I waved half-heartedly as I watched her bounce behind the wheel and motor down the road.

  Then, a little dazed, I turned around and walked back into the café, staring at the half-painted wall, the old, well-scrubbed tables and vintage chairs, the stack of hand-lettered menus.

  And, inexplicably, a surge of happiness flooded my heart.

  Well... I’d wanted a fresh start. And, almost immediately, my aunt had left me in charge. That was an auspicious sign, right?