The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) by Anna Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

girl-drink.”
    “It’s good. Try it.”
    “In general I try to avoid drinking things that look like Windex,” said Gabe, but he took a sip anyway. It was sweet and cold – the kind of drink that slipped down one after the other and then left you wondering why your legs no longer worked when you got up to go to the bathroom.
    “Okay,” he said. “You win. It’s pretty good.”
    “You see? Trust me, little cuz. When have I ever steered you wrong?” Eli gave a shiteating grin and leaned back in his chair, stretching his big shoulders. His beer bottle swung from between his fingers, drawing the eye to the snake tattoo around his wrist. Gabe still remembered when it was fresh, watching Eli carefully lift the dressing to show him the raw new ink. How he had sucked in his breath at Eli’s daring, and in anticipation of all the ways in which Gloria was going to kill Eli when she found out.
    Did it hurt?
    Like hell. It was right on the bone nearly all the way around.
    “Oh, I can think of at least half a dozen times,” said Gabe.
    Eli laughed. “Yeah. There were a few.”
    “More than a few.”
    “It’s funny,” he said. “Just the other day I was thinking about how we used to leap off the railings at high tide. You remember?”
    “Think a happy thought -”
    “ - and fly!” Eli shook his head and laughed again. “You know we had no idea how high or low the water was when we did it? I looked at the same spot at low tide and wondered how we didn’t break our goddamn necks. We just jumped like lemmings. And you trying to impress that skinny little nutcase – what was her name now? – with the dyed black hair and the green glitter nail polish. You remember.”
    “Oh, her. Tori. Yeah, I remember.”
    “She kept busting out singing songs from Cabaret . Like some kind of theater kid.” He took another pull of his beer and chuckled. “I gotta say it; I have no idea what you saw in that girl.”
    Figured. Eli had never really had any idea of his own power; it was part of his charm. Sun King, Gloria had used to call him; everyone whirled in his big, bright, oblivious orbit. There were the smallest pinpricks of gray in his beard scruff now, but they only seemed to lend a new gloss of long-ago nostalgia to those vivid sense memories of long ago summers; sugar and heat and sand between the toes, short thunder of ecstasy, gone too soon.
    “So,” said Eli, taking Gabe’s silence for interest. He waved a hand around the bar. “What do you think?”
    “Place looks great. You taken up interior design or something?”
    “Me? No. It was this girl. She has really good taste. She’s like a teacher or something but she could have made a fortune doing interiors for yuppies. The green railings were her idea – said they’d stand out more than the usual white.”
    “She’s right; they do.” Gabe took another careful sip of the sickly blue drink and decided to just ask. “So. What happened to her?”
    Eli sighed and scraped his fingers through his dark curls. “You know. The usual. I can’t help it, man. It’s just how I’m built.”
    “What? It’s biological now?”
    “Sure,” said Eli. “It’s fucking science. I’m not supposed to be monogamous. I’m supposed to spread my seed.”
    “Gross.”
    “What’s gross? It’s nature. Besides, we could do with...replenishing the stocks. We’re a little thin on the ground these days.”
    Gabe shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
    “What’s not to get? I’m not gonna sit on my ass like a panda, eating bland vegetables and waiting to become extinct. Not when I’m surrounded by red meat and pussy.”
    Gabe folded his arms and leaned back. “You know what I mean, Eli. Replenishing. You sound like you’re expecting trouble.”
    Eli shook his head. “Relax. Lyle knows I’d put his white trash ass in the ground if he steps so much as a pinkie toe south of Miami. I am King of this hill and you ,” - he tipped his beer bottle - “are under my