by Tanya Huff
His right index finger squeezed the memory of a trigger. It was always harder when they looked Human.
The pie was rhubarb-not terribly surprising given the season. Joe devoured a second piece in spite of the two sandwiches and the large bowl of soup that came before it. They ate in the store, sitting on a pair of stools behind the counter, Allie flipping through her gran’s recipe book, wiping grease off her fingers to mark the entries that referred to the bottles in the cabinet.
All the Gale girls dabbled-there’d never been a school dance where one of them hadn’t spiked the punch-but this was on another scale entirely. Allie had a feeling it might be smartest to trade Gran’s recipes to one of the aunties for services rendered rather than risk the kind of disaster that had made her junior prom an object lesson in winging it.
“Joe, when do you start fading again?”
“Four weeks last Monday. Who wants to know?”
She tapped the page in front of her. “The person who’ll keep it from happening.”
“You?”
“What? You thought Gran was coming back from the grave to mix drinks? Metaphorically speaking, since there isn’t a grave or a body to put in one.”
He sighed and slid off the stool onto his feet. “Look, I did some stuff for her, but she didn’t even like me much, okay? So if you’re being nice to me because you think she was my friend, I should just go.”
“You should just sit.”
Looking a little surprised, he sat. The food as much as the potion had firmed up his edges. Remembering how he’d looked through the door, Allie came to a decision.
“Do you want a job?”
“What?”
“I need to find out what my grandmother is up to. That’s why I came here. If there’s a clue in the store, I’m going to have to weed through everything to try and find it. I can’t do that and deal with customers.”
“Customers?”
“We must have them,” Allie told him dryly. “Someone has to be buying all the yoyos.”
“Why don’t you just close the store while you search?”
“Because Gran left it to me to run.”
“But if it’s yours…”
“Is it?”
His gaze skittered past the shadows again.
Allie nodded. “Exactly. Minimum wage, flexible hours, one full meal a day provided. And I’ll pay you cash at the end of every shift.”
“You don’t even know me,” he sighed, and she could almost see him refusing to hope. “I could be a danger to you.”
“I trust you.”
“Because your grandmother said you could.”
“Not likely; I don’t trust her.” She nodded at his empty plate. “But you had a second piece of pie, and Aunt Ruth isn’t too happy about my being so far from home. She’s worried about me, and she’s worried I’ll give some of her girls ideas.” Allie’d been able to taste the charm with every bite. She wondered what she’d flushed with her mother’s pie.
He shifted as far from the sticky residue on the plate as the circumference of the stool would allow. “What if I had been a danger to you?”
“We wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Okay, then.” He looked like he was ready to bolt. “What if I don’t want to work for you?”
“Then don’t.”
“As simple as that, then?”
“Yes.”
“Can I think about it?”
“No.” When his eyes widened far enough to show whites all around, she sighed. “That was a joke.”
Returning to the store after taking the dishes upstairs, she paused by the back door and peered out into the courtyard, frowning slightly at the path beaten into the scruffy grass. “Joe, what’s on the other side of the courtyard?”
“Garage.”
“Gran had a car?”
“How would I know?”
Given that Gran had a garage, Allie figured it only made sense to see what she had in it. Or if she’d been left in it, tucked under a bench of half-empty paint cans and covered in an oily tarp.
All alone in Calgary, Gran hadn’t used the open earth for even basic ritual. Yet, given that the only windows overlooking the courtyard were from her own apartment, Allie didn’t see why she couldn’t. Except that she was also alone in Calgary. She poked at trio of scraggly bushes as she passed, wondering if Gran had used them to access the Wood. Even if she hadn’t, Charlie could and would probably appreciate having an entrance right outside their back door.
“You sound like you’re thinking of staying,” she muttered, searching the ring for the key to the padlock on the garage door. “Get a grip.”
Up on the roof, a trio of pigeons made noises that sounded like agreement.
Gran’s body had not been left under the bench of half-empty paint cans.
And she very definitely had a car.
A 1976, lime-green, convertible Super Beetle, restored to mint condition. It was a car that blended into traffic with all the subtlety Allie had come to expect of her grandmother. The registration and insurance were in the glove box and the name on the ownership remained Catherine Amanda Gale.
“Translation,” Allie told the silence as she carefully closed the door and went around to the front of the car. “It’s not mine. There’s a key so I can drive it, but I’m not to be surprised if she shows up to reclaim it.”
Even given the half dozen charms she could see without actually searching, it didn’t seem like a particularly practical car for a Calgary winter-or occasionally a Calgary July, Allie amended, if the stories she’d heard were true.
That put a check in the Gran’s just buggered off column.
Unless she’d been ripped to pieces and stuffed into the trunk when she came out to change the ownership.
Allie paused, fingers around the high, chromed trunk handle, thumb on the release.
Unlikely. But possible.
The chrome warmed under her grip. It was the potential for pieces that stopped her cold, exposing a previously unsuspected squeamishness.
“On three.” Deep breath. “One, two… three.”
The trunk contained a leather glove, a collapsible shovel, and a bag of kitty litter.
Against one end wall of the garage, a flight of stairs rose up to a small landing and an unlocked door that led into a second-floor loft. Bales of insulation, some two by fours, and a stack of drywall had been left in the middle of the floor and, at the far end, plumbing had been roughed in for a small bathroom and a kitchen sink. Someone had clearly started to turn the space into a studio apartment. Given the housing crunch in the province, that wasn’t a bad idea. Gran as a landlord, however, slid significantly past bad idea into moving to Vancouver so as not to freeze to death while sleeping under a bridge is a much better idea territory.
Heading back to the store, Allie paused in front of the mirror to make sure she’d got all the cobwebs out of her hair and found herself actually looking at her reflection.
Fully clothed.
Standing in the back hall.
Weird.
Joe was putting one of the ledgers away when she reached the counter. He glanced up at her and grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “I sold a yoyo while you were gone. One of the glow-in-the-dark ones.”
The sidewalk outside the store was empty although traffic had begun to pick up as evening rush hour approached.
Joe turned to see what she was looking at and shrugged. “They’re gone now.”
“They?”
“Yeah, couple of kids.” He grinned. “Customers.”
“I knew we had to have them.”
Pale cheeks flushed at being included. “I thought about what you said. About a job.”
“And?” He needed it. She needed him. But he wasn’t family, and besides, she didn’t think she could force the issue on one of the Fey no matter how Human he wanted to be.
“And okay, I’ll work here. Flexible hours, though.” He might have thought he sounded tough, but
the fine veneer of bravado barely covered an emotion too complex to be merely called relief. “I’ll come in first thing tomorrow, but I have to go now. I have to get…” He couldn’t say home. It was the next word, Allie could almost hear it, but he couldn’t say it. “You should maybe think about closing early,” he added as she pulled three twenties out of the cashbox and handed them over. “There’s a storm coming.”
Allie took another look out the window. What little she could see of the sky was clear.
“This is Calgary,” Joe snorted. “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.” He paused at the door. “You know you’re… we’re open until midnight tomorrow, right?”
“I know.”
“It’s just that after dark…”
“I know.”
Ginger brows drew in. “Because you’re her granddaughter?”
Allie rolled her eyes. “Because you’re a leprechaun. Also there’s a signed picture of a minotaur over the counter, plus another seven potions in the cabinet, and I suspect the name on the first mailbox isn’t in a Human language. Not that hard to connect the dots, Joe. The only thing that’s confusing me-about this specifically,” she amended, “is why Calgary?”
He shrugged, much like he had the last time she’d brought it up, and said, “Things are happening here. I’ll see you tomorrow, Alysha Catherine Gale.”
Put like that, it was a binding promise.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Joe O’Hallan.”
He’d barely moved out of sight, heading west at a slow run after a quick look up at the sky, when her phone rang.
“Well?” Auntie Jane demanded.
Until Allie found out what her grandmother was up to, there would be only one question. “I’ve hired someone who can watch the store while I look into things.”
“For pity’s sake, Alysha, ignore the store.”
Allie picked a yoyo out of the box and turned it between her fingers. “No,” she said, and hung up.
The crack of thunder that sounded as she closed her phone was probably a coincidence given the three-thousand-odd kilometers and all.
It hadn’t taken quite the ten minutes Joe said the weather required before dark clouds filled the sky. The first scud of rain, barely enough to dampen the sidewalk, seemed to be a test run. Then thunder cracked, lightning flashed, and Allie could suddenly no longer see the road through the sheets of falling water.
Closing early might not be a bad idea. It was nearly five, and there wouldn’t be any…
The umbrella entered the door first, followed by a dark trench coat and a lot of water. A tanned, long-fingered hand wrestled the umbrella closed, and Allie got her first look at a pair of extraordinarily blue eyes. Not the more common bluish gray but a bright, cerulean blue. A Maxfield Parrish sky-blue.
“Sorry about dripping all over the floor.”
“That’s very blue.”
“Pardon?” His voice was rough. A whiskey voice, Auntie Ruby would call it. Actually, Auntie Ruby was losing it, so she could easily call it a carpet voice, but that was beside the point. It stroked against Allie’s skin like a cat’s tongue, lifting all the hair on the back of her neck.
“All right. I meant, that’s all right. About dripping on the floor.” The remarkably blue eyes were in a pleasant enough face with a straight nose-a bit on the short side-over a longish upper lip and distinctly long chin. Not Brian Mulroney or Jay Leno long, but long. The eyes were tucked under nicely shaped brows on a high forehead tucked in turn under medium brown hair that could use a trim although, to be fair, the storm had destroyed whatever style he might have started the day with. He wasn’t very tall, had maybe two inches on her tops, but then he smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and Allie forgot all about his height.
She was suddenly entirely aware of the bit of pie filling smudged on the front of her sweater. If she’d known he was coming, she’d have changed. Hell, if she’d known he was coming, she’d have baked a cake.
“I’m looking for Alysha Gale.”
“I’m Alysha Gale.”
“You’re Alysha Gale?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not…” He frowned, clearly trying to marshal his thoughts and having a hard time doing it. “… old.”
That was just strange enough, Allie wrestled cognitive thought back on-line. “Excuse me?”
“God, that had to have sounded inane. I promise you, I don’t usually sound inane.” He reached in past the lapels of his dripping trench coat into the inner pocket of a distinctly cheap suit. Although the tie was nice. The narrow stripe across the gray was the same color as his eyes.
“Ms. Gale?”
Cognitive thought hadn’t lasted long. She stared down at the white rectangle of paper. Oh. A business card. “Graham Buchanan?”
“That’s right.”
“And The Western Star?”
“It’s a newspaper. I’m a reporter. For the newspaper. Hang on.” He reached into the inner pocket on his trench coat and pulled out a folded newspaper and passed it over. “It’s last week’s, we’re a weekly and okay, it’s a tabloid, but…” His eyes crinkled again. “It’s a job. That’s uh, me.” One finger tapped the page. He kept his nails very short. “My byline. There.”
“Hauntings on the LRT?”
“Some people saw things in the glass.”
“Actual things?”
“Probably not.”
She liked that he said probably. That he was open to the possibility. That could come in handy later.
“Anyway, I was talking to Catherine Gale last week, about her business, this business, about how it’s mostly made up of odds and ends of people’s lives, trying to convince her there’s a terrific human interest story here…”
Graham Buchanan was a very good liar. If Allie hadn’t been watching his eyes so closely, she’d never have realized it. If he thought there was a story here-and he did-it wasn’t a story about other people’s lives. She had no idea what her grandmother had done to make him suspicious, but-in less than a minute-his willingness to see beyond the expected had gone from being a good thing to a potential problem.
And he worked for a tabloid.
Those idiots would print anything.
This sort of thing never came up at home, and the wild ones, while they sometimes made headlines, they just laughed and moved on, but here and now Allie had neither the safety of home nor the luxury to leave.
“… but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then she told me she’d be leaving, but one of her relatives would be taking it over and I should talk to her. All she gave me was your name. I don’t know why I thought you’d be old.” He shrugged, the movement surprisingly graceful under all his damp layers. “I mean, it was just a name. You’re…”
“Her granddaughter.”
“Of course.”
Thunder.
Lightning.
The lights went out.
When the lights came back on a moment later, he’d moved closer. Not a lot, but the puddle he’d been in the middle of was mostly behind him and Allie doubted the puddle had shifted. If he’d hoped to throw her off by his sudden proximity, then she could definitely count on at least one thing he didn’t know about the Gale girls.
This close, he smelled amazing.
When she smiled, he blinked and shuffled back a step. “I, uh, I dropped in to set up a time we could talk. If you were willing to talk to me, that is. Just because Ms. Gale, your grandmother, thought you would be, doesn’t mean you’d be. Willing. To talk.” He seemed confused by his reaction. This was not a man, Allie concluded, in the habit of losing control.
This close, she could see the faint shadow of stubble along his upper lip and jaw. “We could talk now. I doubt anyone’s going to brave the storm for a mismatched set of silver spoons and a yoyo.”
“A yoyo?”
A nod toward the box on the counter. “They’re our best sellers.”
“Of course.” Ceru
lean eyes crinkled at the corners, and even though his smile had become a little masklike, it was still a very, very nice smile.
She was going to enjoy finding out what he thought he knew.
As soon as her friends had yelled one final good-bye out the car window and driven safely out of sight, Charlie pulled her guitar from the gig bag, stuffed the gig bag into the duffel bag, and settled the latter on her back. Given that Halifax Stanfield International Airport was thirty-five kilometers from downtown Halifax, and they knew how broke she was, she couldn’t really refuse the ride. Fortunately, airport improvements meant airport construction meant a near total lack of parking so they’d merely dropped her off and kept going. It was why she’d chosen to “fly.” They’d have hung around the train station or bus station, keeping her company until she boarded.
Three quick steps up and over the curb and she was sinking into loose dirt as she slipped between skinny trees newly planted and into the Wood.
Allie’s song was one Charlie’d been following most of her life. She’d followed it out her first time in when she’d very nearly become just another cautionary tale the aunties told about the family oddities.
“Oh, traveling sounds like fun,” they’d say. “But it’s a lot less fun if you’re lost in the Wood and can’t find your way home.”
No argument from her. Lost was definitely a whole fuck of a lot less fun and had involved near panic resolved by projectile vomiting when she’d finally stumbled into Aunt Mary’s kitchen. Allie, home alone finishing a history essay, had cleaned her up, tucked her into bed, and kept the gathering aunties out of the room until Charlie’s parents could come to claim her.
Charlie’d asked later how she’d done it, and Allie, just turned thirteen and all knees and elbows, had spit the end of her braid out of her mouth and shrugged, saying, “I stood in front of the door,” like it was no big deal to hold off a whole flock of the circling buzzards.
Even for Gale girls, the two years between fifteen and thirteen were a bit of a gap, but that had bridged it.
So following Allie’s song should not require the kind of attention she was having to give it to stay on course.
