by Tanya Huff
His face blank, he lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling-further processing, deciding on a reaction. After a long moment, he turned his head toward her, blue eyes narrowed, and said, “I snore?”
“Well, it’s more of a snuffle, actually.”
“How long…”
“As long as I was listening.”
“Allie.”
“Only since I saw the hex marks on your chest.” She ran a finger down each line. “He should have warned you they’d give away the game.”
“This…” He waved a hand between them, his gaze locked on hers, wanting her to believe him. “This wasn’t his idea.”
Allie rolled her eyes. “Duh. But he did send you to find out what I knew.”
“Yes.”
“You really are a reporter.” If she’d only seen the issue of the newspaper he’d shown her, she might have doubted that, but she’d pulled one from a box at the airport and flipped through it waiting for Charlie. He’d had an article in it about a man from Ponoka who swore he could whistle down the Northern Lights. But seriously, who couldn’t?
“I really am a reporter.”
“Why?”
“Thought I’d use that journalism degree.”
“Not what I meant.” She flicked his shoulder with her finger. “Why work at an actual job?Your sorcerer could support you.”
His left eyelid twitched. “He’s not my sorcerer.”
“Semantics.” Rubbing her knee up the outside of his thigh, she murmured, “Why is he bringing the dragons through?”
“He isn’t.” His eyes narrowed, and he shied away from her touch. “But you knew that.”
“Not until you confirmed it. The gate originated on the other side, but he could have been calling them.”
After a long moment, he said, “Originated?”
“I closed it.”
“You closed it?”
“Slammed it shut with extreme prejudice and hung up a sign that said, ‘If you can’t control the security on your gates, we’ll control it for you’.” When he made a noise he’d probably be embarrassed to admit to later, she laughed. “Not really. I just shut it.”
“Just?”
“It’s not hard.” Allie lifted herself up far enough she could see Graham’s face. “Openings between the MidRealm and the UnderRealm aren’t natural. Because there’s supposed to be a barrier, the gate would rather be closed.”
“The gate has an actual opinion. Ow.” He grabbed for her hand and missed. “What will they do?” A muscle jumped in his jaw. “The ones who opened the gate?”
Allie shrugged, enjoying the way her skin moved against his. “Probably open another one somewhere else.”
“They won’t retaliate?”
“They never have. It’s not their world,” she explained when he frowned. “We have the final say here. They have it there.” Using the tip of a finger, she traced the white line of scar that ran along his ribs and wondered how he’d gotten it. If he’d been a Gale boy, she’d have known. Finally, she sighed. “I need to talk to your boss.”
The curve of his mouth wasn’t quite a smile. “He won’t talk to you.”
“Yes, he will.”
It seemed he didn’t believe her. “I can ask him, Allie, but he doesn’t trust your family.”
He should be heading for the hills. No sorcerer in his right mind would linger anywhere near a Gale. Allie couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that Graham didn’t know that. “Just do what you can. When do you have to be at work?”
“Nine. Why?”
Rising up a little higher, she peered past him at the clock. Five thirty-four. She smiled and slid her hand under the sheet.
“Allie!”
“Whatever’s happening in Calgary, that doesn’t change what’s happening between you and me.”
Blue eyes gleamed. “And what’s happening between you and me?”
“Why don’t you let go of my wrist and we’ll find out?”
He dropped her at the store at eight forty-three, fingers drumming on the steering wheel as she unbuckled her seat belt.
“What’s wrong?”
“You and I, we can’t…”
“We already are, Graham.” Leaning forward, Allie kissed him lightly. “Or are you planning on dumping me now you’ve had your wicked way. Multiple times.”
He smiled against her mouth, one hand rising to tangle in her hair. “My wicked way?”
“My ways aren’t wicked.” She flicked her tongue against his lower lip, then backed up. “You have my cell number, call me after you’ve talked to him.” This time the truck door opened easily. Out on the sidewalk, she turned, and leaned back into the cab. “One more thing.” This needed to be said, but she carefully maintained a neutral tone; he’d recognize the warning. “If you need to talk to Joe again, come to the store.”
She closed the door before he could lie to her. The thing between them was still new; no harm in granting it a little wiggle room. Unfortunately, Graham didn’t seem to have gotten the memo and leaned over to roll down the window.
Lifting her arm, she showed him her watch. “You’ll be late.”
“Allie…”
He sighed as a guy leaned out of a passing truck and yelled, “Get a room!”
“… we need to talk some more.”
“Okay.”
“With our clothes on.”
“Sure.”
“I’m serious.”
“You know where I am.”
He stared at her for a long moment, shook his head, and settled back behind the wheel. She waited on the sidewalk until he drove away, then went into the store and pulled out her phone.
Then put it away again.
Even without the presence of the sorcerer, there was enough going on to bring at least one or two aunties west on what they’d euphemistically call a fact-finding mission. Add the sorcerer to the mix and all euphemisms would be chucked out the window. She’d have a dozen aunties on her doorstop loaded for bear and pretty much unstoppable in a little better than a heartbeat. Might be smarter to get as much information out of the sorcerer as she could before she called in the heavy artillery and they took him apart.
They wouldn’t want her to go near him.
That, she had to admit as she unlocked the door, was part of the attraction.
Funny how being so far away from home had suddenly become a good thing. It seemed the constant ache had even eased a bit.
Charlie had sprawled out on the bed leaving Michael little more room than could be filled with the width of his shoulders-which was, admittedly, a considerable width. Allie flicked on the lights, picked a pair of cushions off the floor and heaved them at the bed.
“Up and at ’em, boys and girls. There’s a sorcerer in town, and I’m making French toast.”
As Charlie dragged a pillow over her head, Michael blinked blearily up at her. “You’re making French toast for a sorcerer?”
Allie grinned. “He’s welcome to breakfast if he calls before we’re done.”
Graham could feel his boss’ attention on him from the moment he passed under the wards guarding the entrance to the building. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there, silent sentinels keeping the older man safe.
“You’ve seen what hunts me, boy.You know better than most the danger I’m in.”
Except for the style of salutation, things hadn’t changed much in the thirteen years Stanley Kalynchuk had been his mentor. He knew the danger because he killed those foul creatures drawn to the sorcerer’s power.
Catherine Gale had not been foul, he admitted, climbing the stairs to the second-floor offices of The Western Star. She’d been stubborn, untruthful, terrifyingly grabby and, considering which way the wind was blowing with her granddaughter, he wasn’t exactly upset when she disappeared by some other hand than his.
Alysha Gale, on the other hand…
“I don’t believe it!”
Jerked out of his thoughts,
Graham stopped just inside the door of the outer office, his way blocked by his employer who actually looked… disheveled. Above yesterday’s shirt-still untucked-dark brows were not only drawn in but seemed thicker than usual, his cheeks were beginning to purple, and his nostrils had flared to the point where it actually looked painful.
“You slept with her!”
“Not really any of your business,” Graham told him, a little surprised by how much effort it took to keep his voice level.
“Oh, you sleep with a Gale while you’re working for me, the Gale I sent you out to do reconnaissance on, and it’s most certainly my business. I wouldn’t have cared if you’d fucked her five ways to Sunday…”
Graham felt his fingers curl into fists. Didn’t remember consciously making the decision but couldn’t deny it had happened.
“… I have never cared about your dalliances, but you actually fell asleep beside her.”
“I was tired.” He almost smiled remembering why. “I’m fine.”
“You’re an idiot! Did you listen to nothing I told you about the women of this family.” Kalynchuk reached out and smacked Graham on the forehead hard enough he took a step back and his fists rose. “She’s marked you. Right between the eyes.”
“Marked me?”
“Drawn a charm. On your forehead. The wards screamed the news when you walked through them.” His lip curled. “Strip. I need to see what else she’s written.”
Regaining control of his hands, Graham stopped himself from touching his forehead-he’d seen nothing when he shaved and didn’t expect to feel anything now-and stripped efficiently down to his boxers right where he stood. He felt stupid. And betrayed. Stupidly betrayed. She’d been playing him all along.
Except…
He’d have sworn it was real. Even only having known her for four days. Even not knowing what it was.
“She didn’t mess with your protections. That’s something.”
Glancing up from the hex marks, Kalynchuk jabbed a thick finger toward Graham’s underwear. “Those, too.”
“I don’t…”
“I do. Get them off.”
Forcing himself to breathe evenly through his nose, Graham let them fall to his ankles. Detached himself from himself-the way he did when he had a target in his sights-as his boss walked slowly around him, examining his skin for more marks of betrayal. The air in the office wasn’t particularly cold, but he felt himself shrinking. The metaphor made physical.
“Get dressed,” the older man grunted at last. “There’s just the one. Right out in the open,” he added walking away as Graham began to obey. “Didn’t bother to hide it. But then, no reason for her to, is there? It’s not like she knows I exist, or I’d already be ass-deep in crazy old women.”
Dragging his trousers up over his hips, Graham spent a moment considering a lie. “She saw the protections, Boss.”
Kalynchuk froze. Slowly turned. “She what?”
“She saw the protections.”
“That’s impossible, they’re designed not to be seen.”
“Yeah, well, she saw them. She has a fairly good idea of what’s going on, and she wants to talk to you.”
“Talk?”
“She seemed to think you’d be willing. I expect the charm is there to get your attention,” he added as he shrugged into his shirt.
“Well, it worked! And do you know why it worked?” His cheeks began to purple again. “It worked because Gale women do not talk to men of power. They swarm in like a flock of crows, pecking away a bit here and a bit there until you’re blind and helpless, and then they move in for the kill.”
“The kill?” Graham’s fingers froze, button shoved half through a button hole. “Metaphorically?”
“Actually.” His lip curled. “Gale women have a fatal hate on for sorcerers.”
“But if Catherine Gale was that much of a danger to you…”
“Why didn’t I have you take care of her? Two reasons. First of all, you take one out and a dozen more flap in to find out what happened. Second, and more importantly, by the time I knew she was here,” he turned and glared at the map of the city, “she’d been here for months. We’d been here together for months. And that could only mean she didn’t know I was here. Safest thing to do would have been to leave, slink away with my tail between my legs and start up fresh somewhere else, but why should I?” He slammed his fist against the map, the impact jumping half a dozen pushpins out to clatter against the floor. “Why the fuck should I? Goddamned Gale women! But before you could acquire any useful information from her, all of a sudden, my world went to shit. The emergence…” He flicked up a thick finger. “… they started arriving…” Another finger. “… the old bitch disappeared…” One more finger. “… and the young one arrived.” Fingers curled back into a fist. “Now I can’t leave, and this fucking Gale girl is fucking you!”
Graham shook his head, trying to arrange this new information into some sort of order. “You should have run from Catherine Gale?”
“From what she represented, yes.”
“But you’re…”
“Yes, I am. I could turn this city into a sheet of glass and send every soul in it to perdition with a word-all right, fine,” he amended, although Graham hadn’t spoken, “seven words. But they…” He sighed and sat heavily on a corner of one of the unused desks. “They don’t fight fair. There has never been a sorcerer who survived a confrontation with them. Never. Might as well try to hold a handful of water as take them on.”
“Freeze water, and you can hold it,” Graham pointed out as the phone on his desk began to ring.
“Trite, but true,” Kalynchuk acknowledged, silencing the phone with a wave. “But while you might have been able to take out Catherine Gale, could you shoot your girlfriend’s grandmother?”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Although he could almost touch the might have beens, the way he felt before he’d been told of her betrayal.
Kalynchuk snorted. “So you say. I say they’re tricky.”
“The charm; what will it make me do?”
“It won’t make you do anything.”
“So it’s completely benign?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what does it say?”
“It says you should call her and set up a meeting in the probably futile hope that there’s a way out of this mess before we’re overrun with crazy old women.”
“Boss…”
“You really want to know, you should ask her.”
“You’ve never lied to me.”
“Has she?” It wasn’t a tone Graham recognized. Took him a moment to identify it as melancholy. “Because they don’t usually. It’s just one of the things that makes them so dangerous. They can eat right through your defenses with the truth, boy. Don’t ever doubt it.”
He touched his forehead then. Didn’t know he was doing it until he felt the contact. “I need to know before I see her again.”
“Forewarned is forearmed. I suppose.” Kalynchuk took a deep breath and shook himself, almost as though he were surfacing from deep water. “It says, essentially and for all intents and purposes, mine.”
Graham blinked, hands stilled on his final button. “Yours?”
“No, you young idiot. Hers.”
“A sorcerer?” Charlie stared down at the plate of French toast and then gratefully up at Allie as her fingers closed automatically around the offered mug of coffee. “No fucking way. The family hasn’t butted heads with a sorcerer in… well, forever.”
“The seventies.”
“So last millennium.”
“Hex marks don’t lie, Charlie.”
“Yeah, but here? In Calgary?” She took a long swallow as Allie set a second full plate down in front of Michael and sat herself. “I’m sure it’s a nice enough place, but there’s buggerall power here for sorcerers to be drawn to.”
Allie picked up her fork. “Maybe he’s just ahead of the curve. Power’s shifting this way. Thin
gs are happening in Calgary.”
“Please stop saying that,” Charlie muttered, reaching for the syrup.
“You guys don’t mean…” Michael waggled a hand as he chewed and swallowed. “… power, do you? I mean, like the oil fields and stuff?”
“Sorcerers accumulate power.” Allie mirrored Michael’s wave. “Then they start using it to control things, to give themselves the other kind of power.”
“You’re kidding me? They want to rule the world?”
“Eventually that’s what it comes to. Power corrupts. Corruption leads to abuse. Abuse has to be stopped. Or better still, prevented.”
“Yeah, but what about the whole ‘family doesn’t interfere’ thing?”
Allie shrugged. “You rule the world, you’re trying to rule the family.”
“So the aunties go out hunting sorcerers before it comes to that?”
“No! Well, sort of, except like Charlie said, sorcerers are rare.”
“And the smart ones keep their heads down,” Charlie interjected, folding the top, golden-brown slice of egg-soaked bread over a line of syrup and picking it up with her fingers.
“So it’s not like something the aunties get up to every weekend,” Allie finished, ignoring her. “It’s just something they take care of when it comes up, when they find one. Maybe once in a lifetime. They don’t talk about it though. It’s an…” She sketched air quotes. “… auntie thing.”
Michael frowned at the syrup bottle. “And that’s what they think is going to happen to David? He’s going to get corrupted by power until he wants to rule the world and they’ll have to take him out?”
