by Tanya Huff
“There’s no way of knowing what she’ll do. That’s the fucking problem! You say black, and they’re likely to say white just to be contrary. Controlling harpies, the whole lot of them!” Nostrils flaring, he took a deep breath, then another, and finally growled, “We need to know if she’s here because of me. If Catherine Gale got suspicious before she disappeared and passed those suspicions on.”
“This Alysha Gale could be here merely to take over the store. Or because of them.You told me that the Gale women were not known for their subtle reactions. That if Catherine Gale knew you were here, we’d know.”
“I know what I told you!”
He held up a hand in apology as the vein in the older man’s forehead throbbed.
“I need to know what Alysha Gale knows.”
“About you?”
“About everything! The last thing I need is to have them stumble on the situation and destroy me all unknowing with their incessant need to meddle. Wouldn’t those controlling harpies love that. Find out what she knows!” A beefy finger jabbed the command toward him.
“And what happens then?” He rested his hand on his weapons case.
“That depends on what you find out. I’ll reevaluate when I have more information.”
THREE
It took her a moment to realize the sound dragging her up out of sleep was her phone and a moment after that to find it in the bed.
“Alysha Catherine.”
Only the aunties ever used both names. Half asleep, it was impossible to narrow it down any further. “Auntie…?”
“Bea, Alysha Catherine. It’s Auntie Bea.”
Auntie Bea was one of the David is too powerful to be trusted group. Allie felt her lip curl.
“Don’t curl your lip at me, young lady. Why are you still in bed?”
She took the phone away from her ear and peered at the time. “It’s twenty after five.”
“It’s twenty after seven.”
“ Calgary,” she sighed. “Time difference.”
“That’s no reason to be lying about.”
Allie considered it a very good reason to be lying about and thought about mentioning that had she still been working in Toronto, her alarm wouldn’t have gone off for another ten minutes and so she’d still be in bed and Auntie Bea could just fuck off and die, but two time zones weren’t distance enough for something that stupid. She sighed. “What’s the problem, Auntie Bea?”
“Have you figured out what your grandmother is up to?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I just got here yesterday evening.”
“And you’re still in bed?”
“Twenty after five,” Allie repeated, yawning. “Good-bye, Auntie Bea.”
There may have been a protest, but Allie barely heard it as she closed the phone. No one should have to deal with an auntie at five twenty in the morning.
Or at five twenty-three.
Or five thirty.
Her body, still on Ontario time, insisted it was time to get up…
Five forty-five.
… and refused to be convinced otherwise no matter that the room was dark and the bed, although empty, was comfortable.
“Fine.”
Auntie Vera called as she got into the shower. Auntie Meredith called during her not entirely successful attempt to make coffee with the space age coffeemaker she found in one of the kitchen cupboards. Allie wasn’t willing to agree with her father that the aunties were frightened, but this level of annoying meant they were definitely worried.
Dmitri’s youngest sister, Ashley-one of the pre-ritual mass of cousins-called just as she pulled her jeans out from under the bed and discovered that a lemon meringue pie didn’t exactly fit in the watch pocket.
“It’s just Kristen’s being all like totally annoying, and I could come out as soon as school’s over so that you won’t be alone.”
“If I’m still here,” Allie pointed out, using the legs of her jeans to wipe up the mess.
“Why wouldn’t you be? I heard Auntie Catherine left you a junk store.”
“How do you know about the store?”
“I heard my mom and Auntie Carol talking. Your mom told Aunt Ruth and Aunt Ruth told Auntie Vera and Auntie Vera told Auntie Carol and Auntie Carol…”
“I know how it works.” She dumped the pie still clinging to her jeans in the toilet and caught the charmed penny as it fell. As long as the penny was not currently holding a pie, anyone in first or second circle could provide baked goods. Dead or alive, Gran wouldn’t appreciate her plumbing clogged with pastry. “If I’m still here, Charlie’ll be here.”
“Charlie never stays.”
Ouch. But true enough. Allie rinsed the penny off in the kitchen sink and carried it to the fridge. Charmed change kept most Gales alive through college and university. “We’ll see.”
But they both knew it meant yes.
“You’re my absolutely favorite cousin ever! Gotta go. First bell. Bye!”
And it was all of six thirty-two.
She looked at the penny lying in solitary state on the second shelf, set the phone down beside it, and closed the refrigerator door. Charlie liked to send hers on taxi rides, but Allie preferred to keep hers closer to hand, just in case.
She toasted and ate a bagel-Gran had left a bag in the freezer-drank a bad cup of coffee, stared out the window at the traffic passing below, and reminded herself that she’d made the decision to come west so she could just cope with how weird it felt and get to…
Coffee slopped over the side of the mug as she jerked back from the glass.
Shadow.
Big shadow.
Big fast-moving shadow.
Too big. Too fast.
Heart pounding, Allie leaned forward. The street ran essentially east/ west and the long shadows thrown by the early morning sun ran parallel, so it could have been nothing more than a small plane flying north/south. A traffic plane. Up there to report on the traffic. Unfortunately, a traffic plane didn’t explain the pigeons she could see crammed under a newspaper box across the street.
Or the way the trailing end of the shadow seemed to be lashing.
Her fingers were not trembling as she retrieved her phone. The spilled coffee had been hot, that was all. There were six missed calls and a text message from Katie.
Spnt nght cxng A Ruby off H2O twr. Come home.
Tempting.
Allie took a deep breath as she snapped the phone closed.
But no.
She didn’t know if it was smart or stupid or just bloody-minded to step outside the store, to cross the sidewalk to the curb, and to look up. At some point between the time she’d left the window and arrived at the curb, the pigeons had come out from under the newspaper box and flown to perch along the low stone parapet of her building like nine small, feathered gargoyles. Eight of them were staring at whatever it was pigeons stared at. One of them watched the sky.
Allie tipped her head back, following its line of sight. As far as she could see, the sky held nothing but a bit of cloud the heat would burn off before too long and the distant, familiar silhouette of a bird of prey. She’d seen more kestrels in Toronto than out at the farm; they nested in most major cities in Canada, adapting to cliffs of concrete and steel, feeding well off the fat-and-oblivious birds who’d dulled their survival instincts with French fries and cigarette butts.
Squinting, one hand raised to block the sun, Allie tried to get a better look at the hawk, only certain it was a hawk by the way it moved. Predators were unmistakable in the air. Unfortunately, it was just too damned high for her to pick out details.
“Hey, Blondie! Nice ass!”
She turned just in time to see a muscular young man leering out the window of a passing pickup before he was swept away on the tide of morning traffic. Too far away and moving too fast to toss a charm after him. And besides, it was a nice ass and a little moderately skeevy appreciation never hurt.
It took her a
moment’s search to find the kestrel again, a tapered black cross rising still higher against the blue.
How high would that passing shadow have had to have climbed in order to look like a small hawk from below?
Wondering where that thought had come from, and really wishing it had stayed there, Allie moved closer to the building until she found herself standing with one hand on the door. According to the sign taped to the bottom of the nearest window, the store was open 10 AM to 6 PM Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. 10 AM to midnight Friday. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
It was Thursday at seven forty.
Two hours and twenty minutes to search for clues…
“Oh, dear God, I am turning into Nancy Drew.”
… before she was expected to open and become a crucial part of the local community.
The store didn’t look significantly better than it had yesterday although, in all fairness, it didn’t look any worse. It was a bright, sunny morning, but the light spilling through the windows seemed unwilling to move very far away from the glass.
“All right, then.” She took a deep breath and flicked on the overhead flu orescents, banishing some but not all of the more interesting shadows. Piled high on tables, spilling off of shelves, in boxes opened for rummaging-the amount of crap gathered together in this one place was overwhelming. What were the odds of finding a clue to her grandmother’s disappearance in that amount of crap?
“I am so screwed.”
If she’d dragged half a dozen cousins to Calgary with her, they might have a chance to bring something resembling order out of chaos.
Actually…
She flipped open her phone.
And closed it, frowning, half an hour later wondering what the odds were that every single cousin she’d called was busy and expected to remain busy for the immediate future. Betsy, after a winter of almost no teaching gigs, had been called in to finish out the school year in Odessa. Uncle Don had fallen out of the mow and broken his leg, leaving Carol and Theresa to deal with the fieldwork. Sandi, ready to give up acting and become an accountant like her mother, had actually gotten a part as Chava’s understudy in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Bonny was giving serious thought to bringing a member of the county road crew home to meet the aunties.
“If they approve him, they’ll get plowed out first all winter.”
“They already get plowed out first,” Allie reminded her.
“But this way, they won’t have to put any effort into it.”
Allie had her doubts that the aunties put any effort into it, relying instead on reputation, but she wished Bonny luck and snapped the phone closed.Until the younger kids finished school, it looked like she was the only member of the family unemployed and/or emotionally uncommitted.
“Well, don’t I feel special.”
On her own, the store would take her months to catalog and, unless she stumbled over her grandmother’s diary, months longer to start piecing together any relevant information even if she used the cataloging software she’d acquired at her last job.
And that was ignoring the time she’d have to put into running a business to pay the bills.
Not to mention ignoring whatever had flown over the store at dawn.
Actually, ignoring whatever had flown over the store at dawn seemed like a great idea. Any weirdness going on in the airspace over the city of Calgary was not her concern.
“Here’s a thought,” she said to the obligatory velvet Elvis fronting a box of bad art. “Why don’t I assume Gran knows what she’s doing and, if she’s not dead, she’ll fill us in when she’s good and ready?”
Velvet Elvis offered no opinion.
All things considered, Allie was actually pretty happy about that.
Instead of a cash register, Gran had a heavily charmed cashbox containing four hundred and seventeen dollars and twenty-seven cents on a shelf under the counter. Next to it, three ledgers that looked liked they’d been picked up at a yard sale given by a Victorian mortgage broker. In mint condition, they’d be worth serious money to a collector although Store, Extras, and Yoyos scrawled in black marker on the oxblood leather had likely devalued them a bit.
On the wall behind the counter was a seven-by-three grid of cubbyholes numbered from one to twenty-one. Some of them held…
“Mail?” Allie stared down at the envelope she’d pulled from cubby number one. The name looked vaguely Eastern European and the address was definitely the store’s. Gran seemed to have been allowing the homeless to use the store as a mail drop. Surprisingly community minded, Allie allowed, putting the envelope back in the cubby where she’d found it.
Next to the cubbyholes, a locked cabinet.
Turning to pick up the keys from the counter, she screamed.
The translucent young man, face and hands plastered to the glass as he peered into the store, jumped back, mouth open, eyes wide.
Heart pounding, Allie took a deep breath and then another, and reminded herself that most of the lingering dead were harmless. Granted, some of them had issues they took out on the living, but this redheaded twenty-something she could see traffic through seemed more the former sort. He’d been at least as startled by her as she was by him.
She could almost hear the aunties telling her to ignore him.
Although, if peering into the store was part of his regular morning routine, then it made more sense to pump him for information. He might have seen something, or heard something, or-depending on how long he’d been dead-actually been part of something to do with Gran’s disappearance.
When she got to the door, he was still standing where he’d landed, leaning forward slightly, gaze tracking her movements. That was good. The revenants with a little lingering self-determination were easier to talk to.
When she opened the door, the young man solidified.
Allie stared at him. Frowned. And closed the door.
Definitely translucent.
Open, opaque.
Closed, translucent.
Open…
“What the hell are you doing?” He looked ready to bolt.
She touched his shoulder and felt substance, although it gave a little under her finger. “You’re not dead.”
“I’m not what?” he demanded, jerking away from her touch.
“Dead.”
“Why would you be thinking I’m dead?”
“Give me a minute.” Closing the door again, she searched it for charms and found a clear-sight drawn on the painted steel frame that held the glass. So what she saw through the glass was the young man’s true appearance. But he wasn’t dead. Interesting.
This time when she opened the door, he rattled out, “Are you Alysha Catherine Gale?” before she could speak. “Your grandmother said I could trust you.”
“And you are?”
“Joe O’Hallan.”
The other signature on the will. That could mean she was supposed to trust him in return. It could mean nothing more than Gran had found him conveniently available at the time. It was hard to say.
“I’ve come for my drink.” Indicating his own body with a grubby hand nearly hidden in a gray sweater at least two sizes too big, he added, “I’m a bit beyond due, but you weren’t here yesterday.”
Allie ducked her head back and took another look at him through the glass door. Red hair, gray sweater, brown cords with cord worn off in places, work boots with the steel cap showing through the torn leather on one toe. Bit of ginger stubble along a narrow jaw. Purple/gray half circles under worried eyes. Still translucent. “You’d better come inside.” Whatever Gran was up to, explanations out on the sidewalk were a bad idea.
Joe appeared solid inside the store and, once over the threshold, a lot less skittish. Given the possible claw marks gouged into the outside of the door, maybe that wasn’t so surprising. “Your grandmother said you’d be taking over her stuff.”
Allie spent a moment not thinking about the toys in the bedside table. “That’s right.”
Thin shoulders rose and fell. “I need my drink, then.”
That was the second time he’d mentioned a drink. It wasn’t completely out of the question that Gran had been running some kind of weird after-hours club. Where weird meant translucent clientele. And after-hours meant eight in the morning.
“Let’s pretend that Gran left me no information about her stuff. Which should be easy because it’s true.” Reaching past him, she relocked the door. “You’re going to have to tell me everything.”
Ginger brows drew in. “Everything?”
“Everything. Let’s start with who you are, what this drink is, and, when it comes to it, where I can find it.”
“It’s in…”
She raised a hand and cut him off like he was one of her younger cousins. “It hasn’t come to it. First, tell me who you are.”
“You know my name.”
Allie sighed. As names went, Joe O’Hallan wasn’t very descriptive. “You want to expand on that a bit?”
Joe stared at her for a long moment and then he sighed. “Look, you don’t…”
“Yes, I do.”
“Fine.” His chin rose.“I’m a leprechaun.”
“A leprechaun?” She hadn’t expected that; given how many Newfoundlanders were working the Alberta oilfields, she’d assumed his accent was east coast. “Aren’t you a little tall for a leprechaun?” He wasn’t that much shorter than she was. Five-six. Five-five maybe. And scowling.
“Am I? Faith and begorrah, sure, and no one’s ever pointed that out before!”
Allie blinked at him. “Bitter much?”
“You started it with the cultural stereotypes.” His hands disappeared inside his ragged cuffs as he folded his arms over his chest. “I’m a changeling, okay? I was raised as human, but the babe I got changed for has died.”
“Of what?”
