by Tanya Huff
* * *
“I’m not running away from you because I don’t like you. I’m running because I like you too much.”
Jack stared up at her, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and finally said, “What?”
Perched on the rock Jack and Dan had been leaning against, taking advantage of the residual warmth, Charlie picked at a bit of charred lichen. “The seven-year rule is there for a reason. Gales are all attracted to power and that attraction opens up a terrifying potential for abuse.”
“Yeah, that’s what David said.” Head cocked, he studied her face for a moment, then stepped closer as a patch of dead brush and a medium-sized hunk of stone disappeared to become gray jeans and gray shoes and a beige, corduroy jacket. “So . . . you like me too much because I’m powerful?”
Easy out. She sighed and wished she could take it. “No. I like you too much because I like you too much. The power has something to do with it, sure, but you’re funny, you’re smart, you’re unique, you’re attractive, you laugh at my jokes. Who knows why someone likes someone too much? They just do.”
He looked intrigued. “How much is too much?”
“It’s too much when certain people bring up the seven-year rule.” Certain people were certainly listening.
Jack nodded, hair falling into his eyes. “Oh. Okay.” When he looked up, the line of his shoulders had changed just enough Charlie realized he’d relaxed—which made her wonder how long he’d been tense and why hadn’t she noticed it. “Then I like you too much, too.” There was gentle mockery behind his repetition of her phrase. Before Charlie could call him on it, before she was even sure she was going to call him on it because she’d certainly tossed around a little self-mockery back when she’d first realized her feelings, he added, his tone matter-of-fact, “I want to be with you all the time and it drives me nuts when you just take off like I don’t matter.”
Charlie was reminded that dragons weren’t raised to indulge in the emotional constipation of seventeen-year-old boys. “You matter.”
“Great.” His attempt at looking lecherous was funnier than it was sexy. She managed not to laugh. “Let’s . . .”
“Talk.”
“But . . .”
“No.”
Eyes flaring gold, Jack rocked back on his heels. “It’s a stupid rule and it shouldn’t matter.”
“No, it shouldn’t. Do you know why?” she added, cutting him off before he could get all excited about her agreeing with him. “Because I am thirteen years older than you and nothing is going to happen. Rule or no rule.”
“But we’re Wild.” He climbed up and sat beside her.
“You’re seventeen, Jack.” Staring down at their dangling feet, she bumped the toe of her boot against the toe of his sneakers.
“I’ve been an adult for two years!”
“I’ve been an adult for fifteen. The numbers aren’t really helping your case.”
“But in ritual . . .”
“Ritual’s different.” Slate-gray clouds had started to pack into the arc of the sky and the temperature had dropped. She wished she could lean into the warmth Jack radiated even in skin. “I’m probably the only third circle who could handle you—maybe Katie, maybe not—but I don’t go into the circle where age doesn’t count because I don’t want to drive myself crazy with what I can’t have outside the circle.”
“What about what I want?”
Charlie shrugged. “I don’t want to drive you crazy with what you can’t have outside the circle either.”
“Think highly of yourself.”
“No complaints so far.”
Jack snorted. Charlie had to lean back out of the cloud of smoke. They sat in silence for a few minutes until it dissipated, then he said, “You said I’m unique.”
“I did.”
“So the situation is unique.”
“Not arguing.”
“So the age thing . . .”
“Matters.”
“If you were a dragon . . .”
Charlie waited, but Jack didn’t finish. The only female dragon he’d ever known was his mother and that probably made it a little hard to extrapolate relationship cues.
“If I was thirty and you were forty-three?” he asked at last.
“Then the seven-year rule would apply.”
She could hear the heels of his sneakers impacting against the rock as he kicked his feet. Thud thud. Thud thud. Thud thud. After a moment, she realized he’d matched her heartbeat. Sitting up, she cocked her head and listened, shifting through the ambient noise.
His head swiveled around until he was staring back over his right shoulder. “What?”
“Nothing.” Their hearts were beating in time—a cardiopulmonary twist on happily never after. Had they been synced since she’d matched his rhythm in the Wood? Had she moved them one double step closer to the point of no return?
Nothing she could hear offered an answer. Thanks, world.
“So what do we do?” he asked after a long, quiet moment.
“We suck it up. We spend more time apart than together. You’ll know that when I leave it’s not you, it’s me.” She’d never hear that cry of pain in the Wood again. “When we’re together, we enjoy what we have and try not to think about what we can’t have. We don’t let misunderstandings destroy Tokyo.”
“What?”
“Godzilla versus Mothra.” When he continued to stare at her like she was speaking Urdu, she shook her head. “Not important. We accept that the universe occasionally acts like a dick and we make the best of it.”
“I thought we weren’t allowed the best of it.”
“Fine. We make the second best of it. Honesty. Friendship.” Heels and fingertips, she tapped out random rhythms, trying unsuccessfully to break the pull of his heartbeat. “The smug and sanctimonious feeling that comes from knowing you’re doing what’s right, not what you want.”
“Yeah, that sounds like so much fun.” He twisted around on the rock to face her, spine curving in a way Human spines did not. “Charlie, Gale boys choose. What would happen if I chose you?”
I chose you. She was wet-wired to respond to the words and, given the feelings involved, the if out in front almost wasn’t enough. It took a silent recitation of the chromatic scale before she could trust her voice. “Okay, you didn’t grow up with this so, first, you know that whole no one says no to a Gale boy thing? It’s kind of the way no one says no to kittens or puppies. They’re . . . you’re indulged because there’s so few of you. And second, by the time a Gale boy makes a choice, no one says no because it’s pretty much a done deal. And third, the aunties wouldn’t allow it.”
“They’d take away the one power that Gale boys have in this family?”
“Sucks to be you.”
“And if I don’t choose?”
“Then they won’t take your choice away.” And some day, in the future, when the Gale girls now concentrating on soccer and Justin Bieber grew up, he’d still have the chance to choose. Maybe he never would, not if he was as fucked up about this as she was, but if he did, she’d be happy for him. She’d go live in Nashville and have sex with fake cowboys and drink too much and only come home to annoy Allie and spoil her kids, but she’d be happy for him. And really pathetic. Screw that. It couldn’t hurt any more than not having him now and while she would be happy for him, she’d resent the hell out of the situation, pour that resentment into an album, and continue the fine musical tradition of making a fortune off a broken heart. Maybe she’d have tea with Adele circa 2011.
“What’ll the aunties do if they find out? Would they keep us apart?”
“No. They wouldn’t need to because, and this is me repeating the chorus, I’m not going to do anything.”
Golden brows drew in. “What if I do something?”
It actually hurt to grin
at him, but hey, thirteen years, that’s why she got the big bucks. “You think I can’t stop you?”
He didn’t return the grin and Charlie could see how hard he fought to hold his current form, scales slipping across his face and hands like drops of liquid gold. “I know you can’t.” Matter-of-fact. Fact.
Matched. “Then I’ll go where the Wild things are and the aunties will tell you over and over that you’re young, you’ll find someone else, as though what you’re feeling right now doesn’t matter. Worse, Allie will drown you in sympathy until you boot. You may be able to track me . . .”
“I can.”
“. . . but I can move faster than you. We won’t have family. We won’t have each other. I’m banking on you being too smart to start something where nobody wins.”
“It’s not fair.”
And hello seventeen. “Fair has nothing to do with this. But at least we know why we’re hurting.”
“Joy,” Jack muttered. “I still think you being old shouldn’t matter, if we want each other.”
“You can’t always get what you want.”
His shrug was more Dragon Prince than Gale. “But sometimes you get what you need.”
Her smile felt like it fit on her face for the first time since breakfast. “Seriously, you’re quoting the Stones?”
This shrug was all nonchalance. “They’re old, too.”
She’d almost managed to push him off the rock when her phone rang and she called a time out. “What’s up, Allie-cat?”
“Do I even want to know why you’re breathing heavily?”
“I’m old.” She flipped Jack off when he snickered.
“But you act like you’re seventeen, so it doesn’t matter.”
Charlie’s breath caught in her throat. Had Allie been there, she’d have noticed the reaction to her word choice, but Allie was on the phone and by the time Jack glanced her way, Charlie’d forced herself to breathe.
“Did Jack not ask if you guys were coming home for lunch? I’m just about to take the corn bread out of the oven.”
“We’re on our way.” Charlie carefully said good-bye and waited for Allie’s response before she hung up. She drummed out “Luke’s Theme” against her thigh. “Lunch will be the test. Allie’s sensed a disturbance in the Force.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about half the time,” Jack muttered jumping down off the rock.
“Yeah, but you love me anyway.” The words dropped out of her mouth into silence. No, not silence—she could hear the wind rubbing tree branches together. She could hear two crows arguing just out of sight. She could hear traffic in the distance. She could hear her own heart beating.
Jack turned to stare up at her, his eyes gold from rim to rim. “I do, you know.”
“I know.” He was waiting so she sighed and said, “I do, too.”
“Like me too much?”
“Jack . . .”
“Okay, then.” He disappeared in a tower of flame. Reappeared, spreading his wings. “Fly with me?”
“No thanks, I’ll Walk.” She could use a few minutes alone in the Wood. It would give her a chance to beat her head against a tree.
Allie watched Charlie butter a piece of corn bread, and frowned. Barring the piece of bark in her hair, she looked much like she always did. Acted like she always did. She added hot sauce to her chowder, she laughed with the twins, and she pretended nothing was wrong. She pretended so well that had Allie not known Charlie inside and out, she might have even believed it. Charlie felt like guilt and concern.
It had nothing to do with the street person Charlie’d thrust into the protection of the family so he didn’t repeat thoughts he shouldn’t have heard—not that he should hear thoughts at all. No, Allie knew that if something was wrong it could be traced back to her grandmother’s call because anything off in the Gale family in the last thirty years could be traced back to her grandmother.
“It was a Wild thing, Allie-cat, don’t worry about it. The crazy street people prophecies are being dealt with.”
She anchored second circle. Charlie would have to tell her if she pushed. Allie didn’t know if Charlie could lie to her or how she’d be able to tell if Charlie had. She knew she never wanted to doubt her, not the way she doubted her grandmother, so for now she’d let it go.
Jack, who was clearly a part of the Wild need-to-know excuse, still ate like he’d missed his last six meals, but since nothing affected his appetite, that wasn’t as reassuring as it might have been. Allie frowned as she studied the side of his face; he felt like resentment and relief and . . . “Are you two keeping secrets?”
“Secrets?” Charlie winked. “You make it sound so dirty, Allie-cat.”
That explained the guilt, Allie reasoned as Jack spit soup across the table. But if it also explained Jack’s resentment, it could be . . . She lost track of the thought as the twins shrieked with glee and added to the mess.
“You hiding up here?”
Stretched out on an elderly teak chaise, Charlie watched the pigeons who’d been perched on the edge of the roof take flight, and muttered, “Why would I be hiding from you?”
The matching chaise protested as Jack dropped onto it, but held together. “I didn’t ask if you were hiding from me, I just asked if you were hiding.”
“Not hiding. Thinking.”
“Yeah, I could smell the smoke. You’re going to get wet.”
She transferred her gaze to the sky. Pure October in Calgary, the clouds they’d watched moving in while they were in the park now hung so low it looked as though she could reach up and touch them. “Please, it’s barely spitting.”
“We could go inside. . . .”
“No one’s stopping you, princess.” She nodded toward the door.
“Oh, yeah,” Jack snorted. “You’re tough.”
The roof deck had been added during the renovation of the apartments; built by Michael so Jack would have a place to land out of Auntie Gwen’s direct line of sight. Charlie had no idea how often he used it, but after Allie’d grown too large to maneuver her bulk around the turns of the spiral staircase, she’d found it an excellent place to get a little alone time. She was well aware of the irony of looking for alone time in a place built for Jack.
“So at lunch . . .”
“Come on, you hunt. You’ve got to understand the whole leaving a false trail thing.”
“With dragons, it’s not so much hunting as it’s swooping and devouring.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Hunting implies a chance of failure.”
“Right.”
“So, what’re you thinking about?”
He didn’t add, Us? Charlie heard it anyway. “Dan.” A raised hand held him silent while she sang out a subtler anti-eavesdropping charm than she usually used. Piss off, this is private! occasionally backfired and attracted more attention than it prevented. She hadn’t had a chance to tell Jack what Dan had told her in the Wood; not with David able to hear every word. David could keep personal secrets as long as Allie or the aunties didn’t ask a direct question, but if there was the slightest chance the family was in danger, he’d raise the alarm without considering that they might need more information. It was part of his function to be crazy overprotective and part of hers as a Wild Power to make an end run around him.
“He could’ve heard Auntie Catherine?” Jack said thoughtfully when she finished filling him in.
“Millions are going to die? I’m positive that wasn’t Auntie Catherine overreacting.”
“Yeah, because the aunties never overreact.”
“The aunties can make Game of Thrones look like Dora the Explorer, but that’s not the point. The point is, out of all the millions of people tossing their thoughts into Dan’s head like it was some kind of mental dumpster, how do we find the other person who knows about
the asteroid?”
“You don’t know it’s only one person.” When Charlie turned to glare at him, Jack shrugged. “You think Dan heard one person, but there could be more people Dan didn’t hear. He doesn’t hear everyone.”
“Stop helping.”
“We should check Dan’s Facebook page. He didn’t set it up,” Jack continued, before Charlie managed to move past the stunned surprise of her initial response. “It’s the bam bam video and reactions. Maybe the person Dan overheard posted a ‘dude, you know the sky is falling, I know the sky is falling, too’ comment.”
“Yeah . . .” Charlie shook her head. “I bet there’s a bunch of those and they’re probably as useful as most things on Facebook.”
“How would you know? You’re still on MySpace.”
“It’s an indie music site now!”
“Uh-huh.” Tipping his head back, Jack let out a short burst of flame. “And now it’s snowing.”
“Three flakes hardly count as snow.”
“Four.”
Charlie held out her hand and watched as the fourth flake, grayer than the rest, drifted down onto her palm. “I think that’s ash.”
Jack stared down at it. “What did I burn?”
“No idea.” She scrubbed her palm clean against her jeans and wished everything that fell from the sky could be dealt with so easily. “Count the pigeons.”
He snickered instead of protesting; an adult’s response not a child’s. Not adult enough, unfortunately.
After a moment, Charlie sighed and said, “I suppose I could just go looking for people having random panic attacks. That might narrow it down a bit.” Panic seemed like a reasonable response to believing millions of people only had six months left. “First you panic, then you go a little crazy and do all the things you always . . .”
Her personal soundtrack played the Jeopardy theme as the pieces fell into place.
“I’m an idiot.”
She expected a smartass remark. When all she got was silence, she turned to see Jack staring at her, his expression pure dragon.
“You’re leaving again.”
“I have to see a man about a bouzouki.” She sang the anti-eavesdropping charm away as she stood—an auntie stumbling over it would lead to an exploration of the entirely incorrect statement that “In this family we don’t keep secrets.” The aunties kept plenty of secrets. Charlie was just the only non-auntie who could manage it, and reminding them of that never ended well. When she reached the door alone, she assumed Jack planned to stay on the roof. Then she heard the chaise fall over, and he joined her on the stairs.
