Enchantment Emporium

by Tanya Huff

  “Ignore the short, blue-eyed dude with the big gun…” Charlie’s gesture bordered on obscene.“… who just happens to work for the sorcerer? That would be a big no.”

  “I bet his gun’s not that big,” Michael muttered.

  “… and seven hours is how long it’ll take a dozen aunties to get here.”

  “You said a maximum of seven hours.”

  “That’s if they take a conventional airline. They’ll be angry, so they’ll be less likely to be conventional.”

  Kalynchuk leaned back, silk shirt pulling tight over his chest and considered her for a long moment. “It might be worth it,” he said at last. “If only because your old women would not be able to deal with my enemy. There’s a trick to it, you see, that only I know, and my life for twelve of theirs, that’s tempting. Pity about Alberta, but it might be worth the sacrifice.”

  “I don’t think so.” Allie met his gaze. He was, after all, only a man. “You don’t look like the sacrificial type.”

  “And what does the sacrificial type look like?”

  “Well, for one thing, it wears a cheaper suit.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Aren’t you clever.”

  “Thank you.” He was sarcastic, she was sarcastic. “You can’t get rid of me, not safely, so the only real question is, do I believe you when you say that the aunties couldn’t deal with your enemy after they’ve dealt with you.”

  “Dealt with.” He snorted. “A child’s euphemism.”

  Allie ignored him. Stanley Kalynchuk believed the aunties couldn’t deal with his enemy, but that was opinion, not necessarily an absolute truth. Except… Gran had left him alone. He’d been in hiding for about a month, yet according to the account books, she’d been in the city for almost a year. She had to have known he was there. And she had to have seen why it was a good idea to keep him alive-not even Gran would keep a sorcerer secret just to piss off the rest of the aunties. Probably not, Allie amended silently, given that it was Gran. But because she’d ignored him, Kalynchuk thought she didn’t know because he couldn’t know what she’d seen. Twisty. Very like Gran.

  Pivoting on one bootheel, she faced Graham. “Do you believe him?”

  Graham blinked.

  “Answer her,” Kalynchuk growled.

  “I do.”

  “Well, okay.” Allie turned back to the sorcerer. “You’re going to stop your enemy because you don’t want to be destroyed. I don’t want the city destroyed, so I’m not going to do anything to keep you from stopping your enemy. Including calling the aunties. It seems to me that best thing for us to do is to ignore each other for a while longer.”

  “And then?”

  “We reevaluate.”

  “Do we?” He shook his head. “Given your family’s opinion of my profession, it strikes me that an evaluation is not likely to go in my favor.”

  “My family doesn’t actually have strong opinions on tabloid publishers.” Kalynchuk stared at her long enough that she heard the rustle of cloth as Graham shifted his weight behind her. Okay. No sense of humor. Something to remember. “I’m here and they’re not.”

  “I see.” He sighed and sat back. “The way I see it, I can’t prevent you from interfering as anything I might do to stop you will bring your relatives down on me.You, in turn, don’t want your relatives to destroy my associate when they destroy me.” She thought she’d hidden her reaction, but from the way he snickered, maybe she hadn’t. “Oh, yes, it’s easy enough for me to see your actual reasoning.”

  Allie’s chin rose. “I can protect him.”

  “He’s not yours to protect.”

  “He is right here,” Graham muttered.

  “Stalemate, Ms. Gale.” Looking pleased with himself, he held out his hand.

  Frowning, she took it. His palm had no calluses, but his grip was strong. Her thumb itched to try a charm. Just a small one. “You know how to contact me if you need me.”

  “I can’t imagine why I would. Remember, only I can save the city. Tread carefully.”

  She pulled her fingers free. “Remember, I know where you’re hiding.” Turning on a heel, she stepped past the chair and kissed a flummoxed looking Graham on the cheek. “I can see myself out. Call me.”

  He waited by the door, watching his boss carefully, assessing his mood.

  “You may not be as outstanding between the sheets as I assumed.”

  “Boss?” A thoughtful non sequitur? Not what he’d expected.

  “Your sexual prowess had been my explanation for young Ms. Gale’s delay in calling in reinforcements. I’d assumed your presence by my side was my guarantee of safety; now I’m not so sure that’s the only reason.” Standing, he slid his jacket off his shoulders. “I’m here, they’re not-that’s what she said. She has reasons of her own she’s not sharing. Makes sense actually, those fucking Gale women are as self-centered as they come.” He hung his jacket carefully over the back of his chair and began unbuttoning his cuffs.

  “That last threat,” Graham began. He didn’t want to bring it up, but he took care of threats.

  To his surprise, his employer nearly smiled. “Posturing. She wanted me to think she’d give my position away to the hunters, but that’s not the way her family works. They don’t use others to do their dirty work. That would make them too much like me.”

  “So she’s no danger to you?”

  “Not on her own.” The first cuff folded up, he started on the second. “And as she seems to want to be on her own…”

  “There’s a cousin with her and another one coming,” Graham reminded him.

  “Wrong generation. Catherine Gale may have been a danger, but we’ll never know now.”

  “You still believe they…” A glance toward the ceiling since he couldn’t look up at the sky. “… took her out?”

  “Her family doesn’t know what happened to her, so it’s the logical explanation. And what’s more, I prefer to believe she poked at them when she couldn’t find me…”

  The edge on the words cut deep. Graham gritted his teeth and managed not to flinch. Although Allie’s grandmother would have also gotten him out of his clothes had he given her any encouragement, he didn’t expect his self-control in that instance to be acknowledged.

  “… than believe there’s yet another player on the field we haven’t been able to identify.” Sleeves rolled up, he sat back down at the desk and turned on the computer. “I want you to keep seeing her. The damage has been done. Until we know what else is fizzing in that freaky Gale head of hers, we need to maintain her interest.”

  Graham could almost feel the weight of the charm on his forehead. “You want this relationship to be a part of my job.”

  “Your job is to protect me, so… yes. But remember, this isn’t a relationship. If it comes to a choice between what you want and what the family wants, a Gale will always choose family. You will, of course, choose me. Now…” Eyes on the monitor, he moved the shell to one side and pulled a stack of paper toward him. “… we have a newspaper to get out.”

  “… so we now know what’s going on, at least in the vaguest possible terms.” Still buzzing with adrenaline, barely believing she’d managed to pull it off, Allie sat down with her bowl. Charlie’s barely existent cooking skills extended to heating up soup although, given that the kitchen was still in one piece, she suspected Michael’d done it.

  “I can’t believe the mighty sorcerer is publishing a crap tabloid,” Michael said around a mouthful of sandwich.

  “Explains why it’s still in business,” Allie snorted. “And besides, newspapers are a traditional way to gain secular power.” She lifted the top slice of bread, checking that the tuna hadn’t been mixed with chutney or jam or something equally noxious. “Look at Conrad Black.”

  “Look at what happened to Conrad Black. He didn’t get to rule the world.”

  “My point exactly.”

  Michael’s eyes widened. “The aunties didn’t…?”

  “They’re not saying.”


  “But there was cackling,” Charlie added.

  “There’s always cackling,” Allie sighed. “This guy, though, he gave me the creeps, but I’d bet he’s pretty much what you see is what you get. He’s accumulating power, sure, but he’s new at it. I doubt he’s been doing it longer than the thirteen years Graham’s known him. He doesn’t seem corrupt; he’s just arrogant.”

  “David’s arrogant,” Michael said thoughtfully.

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Sorry.” His face flushed darker than Allie thought the comment called for, but Charlie didn’t give her a chance to ask why.

  “He’s been at it long enough to acquire an enemy in the UnderRealm.”

  “That doesn’t really have anything to do with accumulating power here, though. We’ve all heard how the Courts react to anything that could be used to build a power base being taken away.”

  Michael waved his spoon. “I haven’t.”

  “Remember how my mother reacted when she caught us with that cigarette out behind the barn? Times a hundred,” she added when his cheeks blanched. “And…” She turned back to Charlie. “… if he’d been at it longer, he’d have known better than to make an enemy in the UnderRealm.”

  “But you believe he can stop this enemy.”

  “I believe him when he says he knows a trick that’ll work.” Allie poked at a floating noodle. “But there’s definitely something he didn’t tell me.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie mocked, “like who the enemy is. Why they’re enemies. What the trick is. And how come he didn’t fry his minion’s ass when Graham’s inability to answer no when you said do you wanna gave him up to someone who should’ve called down the wrath of… of…” She paused. Frowned. “Okay, I got nothing that doesn’t sound lame, but you know what I mean.You should’ve called home.”

  “Graham’s safe as long as his boss thinks he’s safe because I don’t want Graham to get caught in the cleanup.”

  Charlie and Michael exchanged a nearly identical look.

  “Just shut up and tell me what happened here while I was gone.” Looking across the table at her cousin and her best friend, Allie noticed a sudden tension. “Okay, what?”

  Charlie rolled her eyes and Michael dropped his gaze, drywall dust falling off his hair to lightly season his lunch as he said, “Roland called.”

  Allie couldn’t see why Michael would look guilty about that. She’d left her phone at the apartment rather than risk auntie-created technology that close to a sorcerer. “Tell any aunties who call that I’m still working on what happened to Gran.”

  “And?” she prodded.

  “And he’ll be here tomorrow. I said one of us would go and get him.”

  “And?”

  “Joe chased a guy making balloon animals away from the front of the store.”

  Joe had waved off her hurried explanation of what was going on with an eye roll and a terse, “Not my business.” She owed him big time.

  “And?”

  “I’m nearly finished sanding. I’ll get the painting started this afternoon. Flooring tomorrow. Fixtures the day after.” Tradesmen made themselves available when Gales wanted them. It was just the way the world worked.

  “And?”

  “The stairs to the loft need replacing, but I’ll wait until after we’re done hauling crap up and down them.You going to furnish it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “And?”

  “And David called. What?” Charlie demanded when Michael smacked her arm. “You were taking too damned long.” She lifted her bowl and drank the last of the soup out of it. “Michael answered,” she noted after licking the orange mustache off her upper lip.

  Allie waited, suddenly not hungry.

  “He asked me where you were,” Michael said at last. Given the way he was working the puppy eyes, silently begging for forgiveness, that could only mean one thing.

  “You told him where I was.”

  “It was David, Allie. I can’t lie to David, you know that.”

  “Dude, you can’t lie to anyone.” Charlie reached over and ruffled his hair. “Tell her the rest.”

  Given the deep breath, it couldn’t be good. Allie braced herself.

  “He’ll be here Thursday.”

  “Oh, great. He’s going to… wait.” She frowned. If the aunties could be here in seven hours, David could be here in six. “Thursday?”

  “After he stopped yelling, I convinced him you weren’t in any danger, so he shouldn’t just charge out here guns blazing.You know how the aunties watch him. They see that…”

  Allie nodded. “And they’re on the next plane.”

  “And he’s one step closer to taking over from Uncle Edward,” Charlie added solemnly.

  Michael sighed again. “Yeah, well, he thinks it’s because the last thing you need right now is attention from the aunties.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Duh,” Charlie snorted. “You’re hiding a sorcerer.”

  “So are you.”

  “Your decision, sweetie.”

  “I didn’t tell him about your plan to use this situation to make the aunties rethink the whole sorcery thing,” Michael broke in, “because that would have implied or, you know, suggested that…” He pushed his hair back off his face. “I don’t think he’s going darkside any more than you do.”

  Picking up her spoon, Allie forced herself to eat one, two, three mouthfuls of soup.

  “Allie?”

  “It’s okay, Michael.” She put down her spoon. “But we’re going to need to clean out that second bedroom and buy…”

  A ringing phone cut her off. Allie looked at hers, still lying by the butter dish, and then over at Charlie.

  “Came in today’s mail.” Charlie rummaged it out of the pocket of her hoodie. “Auntie Jane’s already called me twice and my mother seems to think that, now I’m not able to bounce about through the Wood, I should settle down.” A glance at the call display and she left the table. “It’s Dave in Winnipeg; probably about a job.”

  “Is Charlie leaving?” Michael asked quietly as she disappeared into the bedroom.

  “You know she never stays around for long.”

  “But without access to the Wood…”

  “There’s these things called planes now.”

  They sat quietly for a moment, unable to make out what Charlie was saying, then Michael pushed his empty bowl aside. “Allie, I’m sorry for involving David.”

  David was not going to understand what she was trying to do. “The important thing is that you kept him from alerting the aunties.” She tapped a fingernail against the tabletop as she considered things. “And you know, since we’re not bringing the aunties in, it’s not a bad idea to have some backup handy in case Graham’s boss is wrong about being able to win this thing.”

  Michael frowned in turn. “Is that likely?”

  “I don’t know. But if I’m right, and he hasn’t been at this very long…”

  “So you want David around to back up a sorcerer?”

  Allie grimaced because that was exactly what she wanted. “Think that’ll be a little hard to explain?”

  “I think it’s going to rank right up there with the day I told the family I’m gay.”

  “ ’Cause it’s all about you.” Allie poked his knee under the table with her foot, grateful for a chance to change the subject. “Brian knows you’re here.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “No, I mean he called me. And I told him you were here. He sounded wrecked.”

  Michael’s mouth twisted. “Good.”

  “Got an audition for a band.” Charlie came out of the bedroom carrying her gig bag, glanced between the two of them and said, “Whoa, soap opera faces. Looks like I’m hauling ass just in time.”

  “Is it safe for you to travel?”

  “You almost strained something turning that into a question, didn’t you?” She bent and kissed the top of Allie’s head. �
�Relax. It’s here in Calgary. Derek, the friend I was in studio with in Halifax, told his buddy Tom in Toronto that I was heading west and Tom told his ex-bandmate Dave in Winnipeg and Dave got a call from a friend whose guitarist slash backup singer just went on maternity leave and he called me.”

  “Great.” Charlie was staying. Allie didn’t bother parsing the reason. “Do you need the car?”

  “Thanks.” She shrugged into her jean jacket and held out a hand for the keys. “They’ve got rehearsal space way the hell south, on McKenzie Drive, and I’d rather not cab it.”

  “You just got here, so how do you even know where McKenzie Drive is?” Michael wondered.

  “Well, I could point out that I have these fucking awesome powers that allow me to travel through time and space, so urban planning isn’t much of a challenge, but…” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of one of the pockets on the bag. “… Allie’s laptop is in the bedroom and there’s a really strong unsecured wireless signal just waiting to be taken advantage of, so I looked it up. It’s a bit of a drive, but I’ll snag a country station and pick up an audition song on the way. Be good, kids; I won’t be back for supper.”

  “Country?” Michael asked as the door closed.

  “Not your momma’s country,” Allie guessed.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll dye it plaid. It’ll look like I have a flannel shirt on my head. See you guys on Thursday!” Charlie waved the rest of the band off in their trio of pickups and, because the night was chilly bordering on really fucking cold, walked quickly west on McKenzie Drive to where she’d parked the car. Her hair had been deemed un-country, but she was ready to change it anyway. It wasn’t like she was married to the blue, and the whole point of hair was that it was easy to change. Okay, maybe not the whole point, but she was half tempted to actually go plaid just to see what the rest of the band would say.

  Dun Good was a Calgary bar band and the other four musicians were both enthusiastic about making music and realistic about making a living at it. Their day jobs would leave Charlie plenty of time to deal with the shit about to hit the fan when the aunties found out what Allie’d done.

  Not to mention that David would definitely have a few words to say on the subject.