by Tanya Huff
Auntie Muriel shoved her knitting away. “With this many people, this late in the day, it had better be chili and cornbread.”
“Three bean salad on the side?”
“None for me, dear. It repeats on me.”
“Wait!” Allie held up a hand and the sudden, purposeful bustling paused. “What just happened?”
“You just agreed to be responsible for young Jack here until he turns fifteen.”
“I what?”
“I don’t need a babysitter!” Jack protested surging up onto his feet.
Auntie Jane placed her hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back down onto the sofa. “How fortunate that Alysha has always wanted a younger brother. Perfect timing,” she added as the apartment door opened, “here’s the girls with the groceries. Chop, chop, supper isn’t going to make itself!”
“How did the women buying the groceries know what to get?” Graham asked, the question brushing warm against her ear. “They only just decided to make chili.”
She turned just far enough to raise an eyebrow at him. “Do I really need to answer that?”
She could feel him thinking about it. “Actually, no.”
Watching nine aunties maneuver around a kitchen was a little like watching ballet had the corps all considered themselves principal dancers. And been armed.
No. Eight aunties.
Allie frowned and moved away from Graham’s touch to where Auntie Gwen was standing, staring into the middle distance. She’d only just changed over and sometimes the color of her eyes still took Allie by surprise. Tucking herself up by the older woman’s shoulder, Allie followed her line of sight but as far as she could tell, there was nothing there.
“You’ve been awfully quiet,” she said.
“I was just wondering…” Auntie Gwen’s dark eyes gleamed. “… what your leprechaun’s name is.”
As soon as full dark fell, the Dragon Lords began flying over again, although only Allie and the aunties could feel them.
“Testing the wards,” Auntie Jane sniffed. “I’ll say this much for my sister, if she wanted you to stay out, you stayed out.”
“Are they trying to get in at Jack, or are they making sure his father can’t?” Allie twisted up a fistful of curtain and stared up at what the lights of the city allowed of the stars.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Who’s going to Charlotte’s concert and who’s up for euchre?”
That was enough to turn Allie away from the window. “Charlie’s playing in a bar, Auntie Jane.”
“We’ve been in bars before, Alysha.” Auntie Jane sat down at the dining room table as at least half the others started pulling on jackets and shoes. “Your Auntie Ellen used to bartend at the Royal when she was younger.”
“But what if Jack’s mother shows up tonight?”
“Is she going to?” Not a rhetorical or any other type of bloody-minded question, Auntie Jane looked at her like she actually wanted an answer.
“Jack…”
“I’m asking you, Alysha Catherine. Is she going to show up tonight?”
How was she supposed to… Oh. Allie slid her awareness out through the city, allowed it to be drawn to the sacred site on the top of the hill.
“Second circle makes connections, Alysha.”
“I know that,” she murmured, finding the path Jack had created between realities.
“Of course you do,” Auntie Bea sniffed.
“Kids today.” Auntie Christie rolled her eyes with the expressiveness of much practice. “Think they know everything.”
Auntie Meredith sighed. “I don’t know why we even bother to…”
Allie pushed the aunties’ litany to the spot in her mind where muzak lived, rested her forehead against the window, and moved carefully along the path. A little further. And back one hell of a lot faster at the first brush against the edge of the burning.
The glass had warmed under her skin, so she shifted six inches left, sucking in air through her teeth at the cool touch.
“Well?”
“Not tonight.”
“Well, there you go, then. Roland, you’ll stay here. Michael, you’ll drive. Meredith, have you got the cards?”
“Allie, do you…?”
“Guess again, future-cousin-in-law.” Wearing a pair of NHL boxers and a faded Blue Rodeo T-shirt, Charlie pulled the bedroom doors closed behind her. “Allie’s settling Jack. He ate a tube of toothpaste.”
Graham frowned. He had a vague memory of one of his cousins doing the same. “That shouldn’t hurt him.”
“He ate the tube, too.”
That, his cousin hadn’t done. He leaned back against the dresser, unwilling to get any closer until he knew why she was in the bedroom. “Well, how was the gig?”
“Interesting. When Auntie Christie gets a couple of beers in her, she does a scary two-step.”
“Any sign of trouble?”
“You mean besides there being more bowlegged cowboys in the city tonight than there were yesterday? No.”
It was the expression on Charlie’s face that made Graham decide he didn’t want to know. “So, no Dragon Lords?”
“Auntie Ellen said a couple of them landed outside, but they didn’t come in.”
“Because of the aunties?”
“Or they got freaked by our kick-ass cover of ‘Roughest Neck Around.’ Hard to say. So, look at you two…” She dropped onto the end of the bed and bounced. “… all alone in this great big bed while I’m fighting the Jolly Green Giant for space. Plus, he’s a blanket hog. He’s always been a blanket hog.”
“Did you want to join us?” Graham asked. He’d thought the sarcasm had been obvious, but Charlie looked like she was actually considering it.
“After things are locked down,” she said at last.
“Things?”
“Between you and Allie.” She tucked a bare leg under her butt, and gazed up at him. “I was hoping the aunties would bring Uncle Tom, that’s Allie’s dad, out west with them. He’s a Gale by marriage; you’ve probably got some questions.”
“About marriage?” He ran a hand back through his hair. “Charlie, Allie and I are…”
“Twinned, turbo-charged souls who have miraculously found each other and now have an eternity of bliss ahead. Also, you’re really hot together. No, not about marriage, you ass, about what it means to choose a Gale-so this time, when she asks you if you understand your choice, you won’t be talking through your fucking ego.” She leaned back on her elbows, and Graham tried very hard not to look at the nipple poking Jim Cuddy in the eye. “Figured out what you want to say to her yet?”
“Do I need to say it at this point? I mean, I’m here.”
“Not at this point.” Charlie rolled her eyes. “But it’s going to come up. So, since I’m here and you and Allie are still…” She sketched the most sarcastic set of air quotes he’d ever seen and given that she had to know about the sex, he supposed he didn’t blame her. “… treading carefully, any immediate questions? Say, about the aunties?”
“The aunties…” Graham remembered everything Stanley Kalynchuk had told him about the Gale women and suppressed a shudder. From what he’d seen so far, that, at least, the sorcerer hadn’t lied to him about. “The aunties are self-explanatory.”
“True that.”
“Most of my questions…” Most of his questions, he wanted to howl at Kalynchuk. “… you can’t answer. Except… No.”
“You’re thinking that if you want to know the thing you want to know, you should ask Allie, not me, aren’t you?” She shifted to run a hand back through her hair, frowned at the single brilliant strand caught on a guitar callus and flicked it off onto the floor. “That means it’s either about Michael or David. She loves Michael, always will.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Big of you,” Charlie snorted. “David…”
“She apologized to David.” It was all Allie had said to him during the whole meal. She’d said, I’m sorry. He’d
kissed her forehead and called her an idiot.
“David’s going to have to anchor the whole first circle.”
“And that’s dangerous.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“About what?” Allie glanced between them as she came into the bedroom and frowned. “What have you guys been talking about?”
“You.” Charlie bounced up off the bed, grabbed Allie by the shoulders of the faded Great Big Sea T-shirt she wore and kissed her soundly. Graham tried not to think about implications. Or east coast Canadian music meeting up with west. “I told him all about the spot under your right ear.”
“He found that already,” Allie snorted.
“Really? Well, did he find…” She shot a wicked glance in Graham’s direction and bent to whisper in her cousin’s ear.
Allie grinned. “No. Not yet.”
“Should I…”
“You should leave. Joe’s sharing with Michael, you and Katie are sharing with Roland.”
“I could help him find…”
“If I need your help,” Graham said, “I’ll ask for it.”
Charlie turned to look at him, fully at him, and just for a moment, he thought her eyes had turned a darker gray. “Deal.” Then she winked, and the moment passed.
Later, with Allie’s head pillowed on his shoulder, he stroked along the damp curve of her spine and thought she was beautiful and thought for the first time in a long time he was exactly where he belonged and because he couldn’t entirely shut the reporter up, he thought about that niggling ten percent.
“You’re thinking very loudly.”
“Sorry.”
“You can ask me anything, you know.”
“Anything?”
He could feel her smile against his skin. “I’m fairly certain you’ll keep it out of the papers at this point.”
It might be the only way he’d ever find out. “Are you…” It sounded like such a stupid question even before he asked it. “Are you Human?”
“Was I just that amazing?”
“Allie.” Graham caught her hand before it slid lower on his body.
She sighed. “Yes. No. Essentially. If the world doesn’t end and you decide to stay, there will be babies.”
“He managed that with a dragon.”
“Okay, so not my best argument.” Her thumb stroked the hollow of his hip and he knew she was drawing another charm. He thought about stopping her. He didn’t. “Do you remember your family?” she asked softly. “From before the fire?”
Did he? He pushed through the smoke. “I remember a house too small for the number of people in it. I remember a lot of yelling and laughing and broken toys and the reek of wet hockey equipment piled in the summer kitchen. I remember knowing that wherever I went in town a spiderweb of connections defined me.”
“Good.” She kissed the spot under his ear. “That’s what we are.”
“It’s not all you are.”
“It’s all that matters.”
He wanted to believe that.
Graham lay quietly, one arm trapped under Allie’s body, trying to identify the sound that had woken him. Instinct told him it hadn’t come from one of the five sleeping out in the living room. Jack, maybe. But what was Jack doing up at 6:10?
Allie murmured as he slid his arm free, but he kissed her bare shoulder and she settled back to sleep. He’d left his clothing so that he could dress quickly in the dark, and it only took a moment’s extra time to scoop the boxers he’d worn to bed-and not kept on long-up off the floor.
Staying low, he slipped out into the main room, silent on sock feet, and nearly crapped himself when Auntie Kay turned from the kitchen and waved.
“I couldn’t sleep any longer,” she whispered as soon as he was close enough. “Time change, you know. Bea and Meredith are in the pool. Jane is on the phone with Ruby-the silly old dear was up the water tower again, wrote Surrender Dorothy with the paint left over from when Tom redid the trim on the farmhouse. When Christie started in on that Tai Chi nonsense, I decided to come over and get a start on the biscuits for breakfast. You wouldn’t know where Allie keeps her shortening, would you?”
It seemed safest to merely answer the direct question. “Sorry, no.”
“I have this terrible fear she’s out and that’s, well, that’s just wrong.”
Graham knew where this was going. “There’s a twenty-four-hour convenience store just down the road. Do you want me to go out and get some shortening for you?”
“Would you, dear? How sweet to offer. Get as much as they have. If Jack’s mother doesn’t have us all flying about in circles today, we’ll use it for pies.”
She didn’t offer to pay for the shortening, and Graham didn’t ask. Truth be told, he was just as glad to get out on his own for a few minutes, even if it was just walking a couple of blocks to the store and back. He’d shut the newspaper down-citing a family emergency when he’d made the calls, and his whole life had devolved into waiting for Jack’s mother. The Dragon Queen.
And after?
“If the world doesn’t end, and you decide to stay, there will be babies.”
Yeah, he could use a walk.
As he slipped into his boots, tugging them from the pile at the door, he realized his jacket was still in the bedroom. He pulled what had to be Roland’s off a hook-it had to be Roland’s because although the jacket he’d found was big on him, Michael’s would have been like wearing a circus tent.
Leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs were a dozen new corn brooms.
“Do you remember your family? That’s what we are.”
“Oh, yeah…” The orange sale stickers were very bright on the blue handles. The aunties had gotten a deal. No surprise. “… just like my family.”
When he glanced over at the mirror, fourteen reflections glanced back. Most of them were dressed. The one out front was holding a suitcase.
“I’m not leaving, I’m just going on an errand for Auntie Kay. And I’m talking to a mirror.” Since he didn’t have a key to the store, he went out the back door and through the garage. Since anything coming back in would have to get past David, still in the loft, it seemed safest.
He kept close to the walls of the alley and, when he reached the street, stayed close to the storefronts. The sky had lightened enough to keep the Dragon Lords flying high, but one had landed and walked right into the store, so daylight wasn’t exactly the protection it should have been. He kept half his attention on the local pigeons. If they dove for cover, he was heading right under that newspaper box with them.
Early morning traffic had started to pick up by the time he left the store, six pounds of shortening in a bag and the storekeeper’s puzzled gaze still on the back of his head. He didn’t notice the big black SUV before it stopped beside him on the road.
No, he didn’t see the big black SUV before the door opened and Stanley Kalynchuk growled, “Get in.”
“No.”
But he stepped up into the car.
“Hurry!”
He couldn’t stop himself from dropping into the seat and closing the door behind him.
THIRTEEN
The grass across the top of the hill burned first, a circle of black spreading behind a ring of gold. Then the trees ignited with a roar, towers of flame enclosing the summit. The world burned too fast after that for Allie to see the individual pyres. Cars exploded, the slam of sound devolving to gentle popping as the fire spread.
Here and there, amidst the crackle of cooking fat, she saw faces.
Charlie. Graham. Kenny in the coffee shop. Her mother. Her father. Roland’s daughter Lyla. Dr. Yan. The aunties burned last, but even they burned, falling out of the sky trailing tails of black smoke like particularly dirty comets.
Then, when enough of the world had been remade, Jack’s mother rose from the center of the circle where the flames had died to glowing embers. Thunder boomed when she spread gleaming white wings an
d two of her brothers, tiny against her bulk, tumbled broken from the sky. Scimitar claws extended, she gouged great gashes in the blackened, pitted rock, and roared.
And roared.
And roared.
Left hand groping for something to hold and finding only an empty bed, Allie stared up into the darkness and listened to the sound of her family moving out in the next room, to the sound of the city waking beyond the walls of the apartment, to the sound of claws on rock coming closer.
And closer.
Heat lingered in the hollows next to her so Graham couldn’t have been gone long. Clock said 6:47, so she hoped he hadn’t been gone long. If he was that much of a morning person, there were going to have to be significant adjustments made.
If they…
Although she was fairly certain at this point it wasn’t so much if as when. Not that it mattered, she wasn’t going to scare him away, not again. He could choose when he was good and ready to choose and not a moment before. Here and now, it was enough to know he was…
Wasn’t.
She could feel her connection to Michael. To Charlie. But it was like Graham had suddenly ceased to exist.
“I sent him for shortening, Allie, that’s all.” Auntie Kay reached out a comforting hand, reconsidered, and tucked it back in her apron pocket. “He just went down to the store. He’ll be back any minute.”
“No.” Clutching Graham’s jacket closed, Allie shook her head. “I can’t feel him. I can barely feel the city and I can’t feel him. One minute, everything was fine, the next I’m holding the end of a broken rope!”
“He ran once before.”
Pivoting on one bare heel, she whipped around toward Roland, but Michael slid into her line of sight, hands raised, voice gentle. “Rol’s right, Allie-cat. He did run once before, and you know the aunties can be a bit much for people. Even people who know them. No offense,” he added hurriedly in Auntie Kay’s direction.
“None taken, dear.”
“You don’t understand!” She cast herself out again. David. The aunties. Even the Dragon Lords circling high overhead. No Graham. “If he left the apartment around six twenty, he couldn’t have gone far enough for me not to be able to feel him.”
