Enchantment Emporium

by Tanya Huff

  “Who is he?” David demanded. His nostrils flared, and Allie wondered if he could smell Graham on the upholstery.

  “He isn’t,” Allie told him, managing to include both Roland and Michael in the silent instruction to shut up. “He chose to leave.”

  “Did he understand…”

  “Yes!”

  David’s eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. He got angry, and then he…”

  “Allie.”

  She paced over to the window, stared down at the street, and prayed for dragons to come roaring out of the setting sun and rescue her.

  No dragons appeared.

  Stupid dragons.

  “I’m not ready to cross.”

  David snorted. “Apparently, you are. And I need to know…”

  “Wait.” Hands shoved in her pockets, fingers folded around her phone, she turned to face her brother, her cousin, and Michael. The total lack of other women in the room was just… wrong. “If I’m crossing, then why haven’t the aunties been on me about it? Auntie Ruby called this morning and she never mentioned it.”

  “Auntie Ruby’s senile.”

  “True, but…” Her protest trailed off as she realized the aunties hadn’t been phoning. Not for the last couple of days. No questions about Gran. No wondering when she was sending Roland home. No third degree about Graham. Allie pulled out her phone and stared at it. Flipped it open. Hit the third number in her speed dial. It rang once. Almost once.

  Her mother skipped the salutations and got right to trying to run her life. “This is a special time, Allie.You’re going to need family around you, so if you can’t come home, I should fly out there.”

  “Can we talk about this later, Mom? Busy. Love you. ’Bye.” She closed the phone. “They know.”

  “It’s your journey,” Roland explained. “If they’re going to travel it with you, you have to invite them along.”

  “You got here yesterday,” Allie pointed out. “You could have said something.”

  “In my own defense, there’s a lot more happening here than my reaction to you.”

  Allie shuddered. Between her mother and her cousin the whole thing sounded too repulsively like those You’re a Woman Now booklets they had to read in grade four health class. Allie had been appalled that kind of thing happened to Gales as well and had dragged Katie and Michael off after school to wait outside Charlie’s grade six classroom. Charlie’d not only corroborated the information but pointed out that when it stopped happening, a Gale girl became an auntie.

  “What happens to the boys?” Allie had asked suspiciously.

  Charlie’d shrugged.“Us.”

  “Hang on,” Michael raised a hand, claiming the pause. “Graham’s not-wasn’t-family. How could he tip Allie over before the aunties approved him?”

  “No idea. Haven’t met him.” David’s tone suggested that would change ASAP. Allie tried to honor Graham’s choice and not dwell on how a visit from her brother would serve him right.

  “Roland?”

  Roland frowned, winced, and patted at the edges of the swelling as the movement pulled at the injury on his forehead. “He has power, but it barely registers. I thought it was residue from the hexes.”

  “That would be the hexes from the sorcerer that Allie’s hiding from the aunties.”

  “And from the Dragon Lords as well.”

  “Dragon Lords?” David looked even less happy. “Michael told me there were dragons.”

  “Dragon Lords,” Roland repeated, heading for the freezer. “All twelve of them. It’s a Dragon Lord family reunion right here in Calgary.”

  “They’re interested in the sorcerer’s enemy,” Allie said hurriedly before David’s expression translated into an actual response. “The enemy that’s coming through soon from the UnderRealm. Also, they are the sorcerer’s enemy. And they don’t want us involved any more than the sorcerer does. Can’t think why.”

  “Maybe they’ve met Auntie Jane,” Michael snickered.

  “Possible,” she admitted, “but too easy. I think we’re missing something.”

  “You’re missing a basic sense of self-preservation,” Roland muttered, pulling out a bag of frozen peas and pressing it against his forehead. “When the aunties find out…”

  “I’ll take full responsibility.”

  “And at least this explains why you and Charlie went along with such a dumbass idea,” David pointed out to his cousin. “Crossing to second circle moves Allie into the dominant position.”

  “What about me?”

  “Michael, you’ve said no to Allie once in your entire life, and I won’t have sex with you because I’m gay is more a biological imperative than a bid for independence.”

  “I also tried to stop that thing with pumpkins at the Halloween football game in senior year.”

  “Fine. Twice.” David sat down and stretched an arm along the top of the sofa. “Now, enough stalling; let’s hear it, Allie. All of it. From the top. The sorcerer. The Dragon Lords. The Fey gate. Graham.”

  “Actually, it starts with Graham…”

  “How symmetrical.”

  She had no idea how he made that sound like a threat.

  Somehow, so one of the reasons I’m hiding a sorcerer is so we can change the aunties’ opinion of sorcery just in case you go darkside even though I don’t think you are but they do sounded scarily stupid when saying it out loud to David.

  By the time she finished, the lights were on, Joe had come up from the store and been told to stay, and Michael had started frying sausages for supper.

  “… and then Charlie went to get her hair colored, and Joe and I started to put the paw away, and you showed up. That’s all of it.”

  “If the paw bothered you so much, why did you wait so long to get rid of it?”

  Allie sighed and emptied her mug. David’s questions had turned a relatively simple story into the extended dance version of metaphysical Calgary. “I guess because I kept thinking Gran was going to show up and demand to know what I was doing with her store.”

  “And now you don’t believe she’ll be back?”

  “And now, I don’t care. She had to have seen this coming. Some of it anyway.” Crossing to the kitchen, Allie put her mug in the sink and got three sweet potatoes and three Yukon Golds out of the bin. “She left it to me to deal with. I’m dealing with it. Michael, pour the grease off into the other frying pan and we’ll use it for the potatoes.”

  “Allie.”

  Peeler in one hand, she turned just far enough to see David take a deep breath. “Allie, we destroy sorcerers. We leave visitors from the UnderRealm alone because most of them are either dangerous, or crazy, or both. No offense,” he added to Joe.

  Joe shrugged, the motion pushing him even farther down into the armchair. “None taken.”

  “Now, as you’re no longer protecting Graham,” David continued, rising to his feet, “and this sorcerer could save the world from an impending apocalypse and only convince the aunties he’d done it to gain more power for himself-which, by the way, would probably be the truth-you need to call them.”

  “David…”

  “Don’t worry about their reaction. I’m here to help you deal with the fallout.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Allie picked up the cleaver and halved the first potato. “We know whatever’s coming is dangerous. We know the sorcerer wants to destroy it. We know the Dragon Lords seldom agree, so we don’t know they all want to destroy it. If we leave whatever’s coming to the Dragon Lords by calling the aunties in and allowing them to destroy the sorcerer, then the Dragon Lords, no longer focused on a common enemy, could just as easily start fighting among themselves and not stop the sorcerer’s enemy.”

  “The aunties will be here to stop the sorcerer’s enemy.”

  “No.” The cleaver went through the potato and into the cutting board with a crack. “We leave visitors from the UnderRealm alone, unless they threaten th
e family directly. The aunties will just haul us all home.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m not leaving until I find out what happened to Gran.”

  “Allie…”

  “And even if I cross fully over into second circle, which won’t happen until someone chooses, I couldn’t stop them if they tried to make me. So I’m not calling them. And neither are you. Either of you.”

  “Allie…”

  “And stop saying my name like I’m five years old and I don’t know what I’m talking about!” She threw a double handful of diced potatoes into the frying pan and whirled around to face her brother. “You should have chosen, David. You may have too much juice for ritual, but technically, you’re still third circle. And I’m not!”

  The crack of thunder was probably outside the apartment although the sudden smell of ozone suggested otherwise. The fairy lights around the pillar flared and went out, and the glasses in the cupboard chimed softly.

  David snorted and tossed his head. Plaster dust drifted down from two lines gouged in the ceiling.

  Allie folded her arms, glowered, and fought the urge to say, Don’t make me come over there.

  “What’s going on?” Joe whispered leaning closer to Roland.

  “Metaphysical head butting,” Roland muttered, fingers white where he gripped the sofa cushion.

  All the hair on her body had lifted-which was, Allie realized in the corner of mind still considering such things, a very creepy feeling-and every instinct urged her to give in. Gale boys got what they wanted. And maybe that was why some of them went bad. Maybe all David needed to stay on the straight and narrow was not to get his way all the damned time!

  Brows drawn in, she held his gaze and gave some serious thought to smacking him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

  From his reaction, that may have shown on her face.

  He blinked. Took a step back, shook himself, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly. “All right, fine.”

  The air between them nearly twanged with the sudden release of tension. As she wondered if punching the air might be a bit over the top, David sighed. “You’ve made your point, Allie, but that sorcerer needs to be dealt with. Lest we forget, all power corrupts.”

  “Even yours?”

  “If I make the same decisions, yes.” This was the brother who’d explained the world to her as she grew up, carefully and objectively. “If he isn’t abusing his power yet, he will be.”

  “So we make a preemptive strike before he’s done anything?” She turned back to the stove and took the spatula from Michael’s hand. “That hardly seems fair,” she pointed out, stirring the potatoes.

  She could hear David rolling his eyes. “Protecting innocents…”

  “From something he might do? And what happens to those innocents when his enemy comes through and he’s not there to stop it and it goes nuts on the city? Huh? What happens then?” She turned down the burner, slid a lid on the pan, and faced her brother, using the spatula for emphasis. “First we make sure it’s stopped, then we reassess.”

  “We reassess?” Now the power struggle was over, it seemed he could poke at her again.

  “Don’t make fun of me,” she sighed, returning part of her attention to the potatoes as Michael slid the sausages in the oven to keep warm. “I didn’t exactly have a good day.”

  His hands closed over her shoulders and she felt the press of his mouth against the top of her head. “I’ll deal with Graham Buchanan tomorrow, Allie-cat.”

  She could have said, no. She could have told him to let it go and he would have. But she didn’t.

  “It’s different for everyone,” Roland explained, setting down his fork. “It can happen almost instantly-one day you’re third circle, the next day you’ve met someone and you’re second-or it can take months to fully cross. Given Graham’s choice, Allie’s likely to take a while.”

  Allie sighed and chased a pea across her plate without much interest in catching it. “Can we not talk about me.”

  Michael squeezed her knee under the table and turned to Roland. “How did you cross?”

  “It’s different for men. It’s always fast and it’s usually tied to choosing.”

  “But you haven’t chosen.”

  “He procreated,” David pointed out dryly.

  “So Rayne and Lucy sort of chose you?”

  “Well…” Roland’s entire face turned pink. “Rayne essentially threw me into a bedroom at her parent’s anniversary party and said make baby now.”

  “Make baby now?” Michael snickered and snagged Allie’s last sausage. “What did you say?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Yeah, sure?”

  The pink darkened. “Why not? She was on my list, but I knew she’d hooked up with Lucy, and I was ready, but there wasn’t anyone I wanted to choose, so we did, and I crossed, and Lyla’s wonderful. And there’s the added benefit,” he added pointedly to David, “that it got the aunties off my back.”

  “Allie’s got their attention currently,” David pointed out. “All they know is that she’s met a man who isn’t family, and that tipped her over-the missing details have to be driving them crazy.”

  If the day had an upside, that was it. The aunties had driven Allie crazy for as long as she could remember; she was all in favor of getting some of her own back. It didn’t even begin to make up for losing Graham-she pushed her plate away-but it helped. In some ways, she’d never felt closer to her grandmother.

  “Unusual for it to happen before she presented him for approval, though. Could the sorcerer have set it in motion? He has to like the idea of one of his tied to one of ours.”

  “It’s possible,” Roland admitted. “I wasn’t here at their first meeting, he may have had an artifact with him.”

  “Hello!” Allie waved a hand between her brother and her cousin. “I was there, and there was no artifact. We just connected. Okay?” Apparently she’d connected a little more strongly than Graham had but Stanley Kalynchuk had nothing to do with any of it.

  “I think it had more to do with the cumulative effect of the power gathering in the city,” Roland continued after a moment-during which Allie just knew they’d all been waiting for her to cry. Or throw things. Well, not Joe, he was mostly trying not to attract attention to himself, and not Michael because he knew better, but David and Roland. “There is, in a relatively small area, a sorcerer, twelve Dragon Lords, and an active Fey gate until Allie closed it down. Not to mention Joe’s presence in the store plus the other Fey wandering in and out to collect mail.”

  “Mail?”

  “Gran set it up so the Fey with more complex lifestyles use the store as their mailing address,” Allie explained.

  David turned a raised eyebrow toward Joe. “Complex lifestyles?”

  “Uh, well, there’s a loireag and a pair of corbae-sisters.” He started to look a little panicked as he ticked them off on his fingers, coming up short for the number of boxes. “Some brownies who work in Lower Mount Royal and, you know, Boris.”

  “Boris?”

  Allie refused to look at Michael, refused to think about them speculating on Gran’s relationship. “Minotaur.”

  “Minotaur?” David repeated. “There’s a minotaur roaming around cattle country?”

  “It sounds so dirty when you say it like that,” Michael snickered. Allie punched his arm.

  “Only the loireag’s been in, though, and she got here before the rest of you. It’s like I told Allie…” When Joe glanced her way, she nodded. “… they don’t like change and three Gales-four now-that’s going to make them right cautious.”

  “But they will be back?” Roland asked.

  “Oh, sure. Eventually.”

  “Good. From the paperwork I’ve managed to sort, the mailboxes are one of the more consistent income streams.” Roland stood and began gathering the plates. “I, personally, am more concerned with why a sorcerer is interfering in the family matters of Dragon Lords.”


  David shrugged. “Because he’s a sorcerer and power blinds them to their own egos.”

  “I was hoping for something a little more specific.”

  “Maybe I should go talk to him.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t,” Allie muttered, heading for the fridge and the rhubarb pie Katie had sent through as soon as Auntie Jane’s attempt to control the situation with blueberries had been ditched.

  “Does David have to do everything you say now?” Michael wondered, proving he hadn’t lost little brother timing by leaning away just as David aimed a swat at the back of his head.

  “No. And why shouldn’t I go talk to him?”

  “Sort of,” Allie amended, sticking her tongue out at her brother because sometimes five year olds have the right idea. “And since he’s basically an ass, you’ll lose your temper and either you’ll cream him, which puts us back at we have nothing to stop the Dragon Lords’ little bad…”

  “Except me.”

  “You don’t even know what it is, so he’s still the better chance. Or you’ll lose your temper and go to take him out and he’ll cream you because he’s been living in the office for a while now and probably has all sorts of nasty stuff stored there, or you’ll go to take him out and then Graham will try and take you out and you’ll flatten him and I don’t want you to do that.”

  “I thought he chose…”

  “He did, but…”

  “You don’t stop loving someone just because they choose differently.”

  They all turned to look at Michael, who was pulling ice cream out of the freezer. “What?” he asked, closing the freezer door. “I was just thinking that sometimes it sucks to be a Gale girl.You know, with the whole choice thing and all.”

  Allie reached over and brushed his hair back off his face, but before she could call him on it, her phone rang. Thinking it was weird his hadn’t arrived yet, she pulled it out of her pocket, checked the screen, said, “Charlie.” And answered it.

  “Hey, babe!” Charlie wasn’t quite shouting over the background noise. “I’ve got the perfect thing to take your mind off your woes. The band’s playing tonight at The Paddock.”