Page 4 of The Wolfing Hour

Summer in the desert meant triple digit heat and high triple digit power bills. Thankfully, Mom had installed solar at the trailer. It helped a lot.

“You’re probably wondering why we don’t have solar.” Violeta pushed open the door to her darkened bedroom. “Everyone always asks.”

“It’s expensive,” I said.

“Yeah.” Her shoulders fell. “We’d planned to put it in before Dad left. Now we have to be more careful with money. Tía Maria helps us a lot. She offered to pay for the installation, but Mom doesn’t want to take too much from her. She says we need to find ways to do it on our own. We can’t depend on other people to pay for us.”

I sighed in remembrance. I’d had several tough talks about money with my single mother when I was a kid. And that was before she bought the Siete Saguaros. Money was even tighter after that.

“How’d you learn about Bloody Mary?” I asked.

Violeta’s shoulders bowed.

I hated making the kid feel bad, but I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t need to know.

“A girl at school. She didn’t think it was real, but she didn’t believe in witches or shapeshifters, so she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was.” She sniffed. “Anyway, she gave me the ideathen I found more information online. They all thought it was a story, too.”

“It’s for the best. Humans would freak out if they found out she was real.”

“Yeah.” The girl nodded solemnly. “I know I did. The first time she showed up was scary.”

“Why did you keep calling her?” I didn’t know she had, but it was a reasonable suspicion. Mary was demonic, and demons usually had to be invited.

“I don’t know. I guess because her kind of scary was less scary than the being alone kind.”

Damn.

“You know, until she started asking for my soul, and it wasn’t anymore.”

Violeta’s room was small and clean. A twin bed with a black quilt was tucked into one corner. A black beanbag chair slouched next to a particle board desk and dining room chair on the other side of the room. An ancient desktop computer plastered with band stickers sat on the desk. Posters of popular rock bands hung at irregular angles on the walls, and I was a little embarrassed that I didn’t recognize any of them.

Ida strolled into the room and looked around. “So, you like Ghost?”

The girl perked up. “Yes. They’re my favorite group. No one else around here knows about them, though.”

“I do. My favorite papa is Papa Nihil, being that he was the ‘original,’” Ida said, using finger quotations around the word for some reason.

Whatever she’d meant, Violeta appeared to understand. “Mine, too! Oh my gosh, I just got this last week.” Violeta pointed at a poster with a skeletal creature dressed in a white chasuble. “Tío Renato’s taking me to a concert soon. I can’t wait.”

“That sounds fun. I’m more of a K-pop gal myself, but I like to rock out once in a while,” Ida said, and I instantly felt two hundred years old.

I glanced from the disturbing posters to the neatly made bed to the closet doors. “Uh, where’s the mirror?”

Violeta looked at me. “Mirror?”

“You said you summoned Bloody Mary. Where’s the mirror?”

“I don’t have one in here.” Violeta pointed to the clunky, old monitor. It looked like something out of an early 2000s movie. “I used that.”

“Mary’s never been known to use technology,” Ida said.

“No, she hasn’t,” I said. “Places, everyone.”

Fennel perched on Violeta’s chair, Cecil sank into the bean bag, Ida guarded the closed door, and I stood behind the monitor. I’d gone over the script with Violeta in the kitchen and felt certain she could handle it. This wasn’t without risk, but if everyone stuck to the plan, we’d be fine.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Bloody Mary,” the girl chanted, repeating the name as she turned three times before dropping into her chair. Fennel hopped onto her lap.