by Tanya Huff
“No, just skate guards.”
“Really?”
“Sometimes you lose one but you can’t buy one new, so you end up with an odd number. People bring the leftovers to us.” Jack shrugged. “Other people buy singles from us.”
Charlie tossed the pink guard back in the box. “That’s a little anticlimactic.”
“Yeah, well, junk retail.” He frowned. “You okay?”
“Not so much, no.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice below eavesdropping range. “Tell Joe you’re leaving. We’re going to find out if the Courts can help.”
“But Auntie Jane said . . .”
“That we don’t deal with the Fey. First, Auntie Jane’s line in the sand aside, we’ve always interpreted don’t deal with pretty broadly. You’re Fey. Joe’s Fey. The Corbae, the Loireag, Boris . . . everyone who uses this store for a mail drop or buys potions is Fey. The family dealt with your uncles right up until we sent their scaly asses home. Okay, that was mostly Allie, but Allie’s kind of definitively family, so the point stands. Second, we’re Wild. We do what the family doesn’t.”
“And we pay the cost . . .”
“No.” She cut him off again. “Not for this. We tell the Courts what’s happening like we figure they already know and we use their own self-interest so, if they can, they save the world for themselves, not us.”
Jack grinned. “That’s almost twisty enough to be dragon thinking.”
“Thank you.” She assumed he meant it as a compliment.
And the grin faded. “But there’s nothing here they want.”
“Not entirely true.” Charlie picked a keychain out of a basket on the shelf beside her and dangled the miniature ball from her finger.
“Basketball?”
“Basketball. They’re nuts about it. No one knows why, but it’s like an addiction. Last night, while we were waiting for the kids to settle, I overheard Melissa explaining to Dave why both the men’s and women’s teams at UA are topping the Prairie Division.”
“The Courts?”
Charlie nodded. “A full-blood on each team. The full-bloods never play in televised games—as I understand it, it has something to do with soul stealing . . .” Although understand might be too strong a word since the explanation twisted commonly held folklore sideways then sat on it until it cried uncle. “. . . so that explains what they’re doing in Canada. Four or even five years of university ball would mean nothing to them. Melissa says they’ve never been benched, they play every game. As I doubt they’re hanging out in the library working on their classical myth and religion assignments when they’re not playing, can you find them?”
“I didn’t even know they were here. They don’t want me to find them.” His eyes flared gold. “I could flush them, but I don’t think Allie’d appreciate the collateral damage. However . . .” He tapped his fingers against the edge of the metal shelf. Charlie heard claws. “. . . I bet the lesser Courts will know; it’s in their own best interest.” Jack snorted remembering at the last instant to turn his head. “Like mice knowing where the cat is. I take it we’re not waiting for sunset?”
“Good call.”
“The Saddledome Brownies are the closest and the easiest to find. Fly with me?”
“It’s not going to happen, Jack.”
He shrugged with less grace than usual, like he was holding himself back from the movement he wanted to make, and scales slid across his cheeks, there and gone so quickly it looked as though they were moving. “I’m not going to stop asking.”
The keychain went back into the basket. Charlie stared into the jumble of sports fetishes because it was safer than looking at Jack. “There’s plenty of greenery around the dome. I’ll meet you there.”
“I’ll tell Joe I’m leaving.”
* * *
On days the parking lots were full and crowds swarmed the entrances, the Saddledome buzzed with energy, the colors of its buttresses and trim reflected back in jerseys and pennants, hats and scarves. Lit up, the skyline of the city at night cupped in its curve, it was almost art. On a rainy afternoon in late October, Charlie had trouble seeing anything more than tons of concrete surrounded by asphalt. Although, in fairness, very few buildings were at their best by the dumpsters.
Tucked in close to the building where it was more-or-less dry, she heard Jack approach—the distinctive wet laundry in a high wind sound of dragon wings—but didn’t see him until he landed beside her.
“We’re not going to be here long,” he pointed out as she raised a brow when he didn’t change, the rain steaming slightly as it rolled down the curve of his neck. “And no one can see us from the road.”
“And that’s the form the Brownies respond best to,” Charlie guessed.
Jack looked puzzled. “The form doesn’t matter. I’m still me.”
“I meant, you’re more threatening in scales.”
“Oh. Well, yeah. Except threatening a Brownie would be like threatening a . . .”
“Girl Guide?” Charlie offered, when he paused.
He thought about it for a moment. “Not really.”
“Okay.” Now she thought of it, the twins had been Guides. For two years in a row, they’d sold the most cookies in Ontario; then the aunties had noticed their sales pitch and put a stop to it. “So do they just show up now you’re here?”
“No, I need to call.”
It wasn’t so much a call as a hum. Jack dipped his head low to the ground, tail stretched out for balance and when Charlie laid her fingertips against his neck—carefully, in case the heat hadn’t completely dissipated—she could feel as much as hear the sound. When a slightly higher tone layered in, she realized the dumpsters were vibrating like big, rectangular, smelly tuning forks.
“Highness?”
She couldn’t quite see the Brownie. There was an awareness of a shape around a meter high, but definition kept sliding by too quickly to grab. By. And back. And by again. Temples throbbing, Charlie decided to look at a crack in the pavement.
The Brownie sounded shocked to learn the Courts were hiding from the prince. “Shocked, I tell you,” Charlie murmured as it continued to be amazed at such a level of disrespect. Of course, it knew where they were.
“Why would they even think to hide from us, Highness? We are no threat. When they are not playing, they often take their ease at the Silvan Diner. Open twenty-four seven, best grilled cheese in the city. My hantri works the grill. Try the sweet potato fries.”
“Hantri?” Charlie asked as the Brownie went back inside.
“Part of a kin group.” The dumpster bonged as Jack shrugged and hit it with a wing, the sound wave rolling away from the building like an invisible tsunami.
Charlie charmed it flat as she dug out her phone, spreading the vibrations out into inaudible. The Saddledome was never entirely empty, and the last thing she wanted to do right now was play “dragon-what-dragon” with maintenance or security. “Okay, here it is, Silvan Diner, 4627 Bowness Rd NW.”
“Why do you need an address? I thought you went into the Wood and sang your way out.”
“If I could do that, we wouldn’t have needed the Brownie. The Courts have no song here. You flying or sharing my cab?”
“You could fly with me.”
“Still no. If you’re flying, leave now.” When Gales needed cabs, cabs appeared.
* * *
The Silvan Diner was one half of a single-story brick building, the other half divided into a hairdressers and a Vietnamese sandwich shop. Too far from the university to be a student hangout, it still was close enough to be a plausible retreat for the basketball teams. Although Charlie doubted the Courts worried much about plausible.
She had the cabbie drop her off in front of the small white house that separated the diner from a four-story apartment building. Her umbrella barely had time to get wet
before Jack stepped out of a flare of light in gray jeans and jacket. The roof shingles, Charlie guessed, although the white T-shirt and sneakers had probably been one of the pickets from an actual white picket fence—now a picket short.
“You’d better not come in.” He made an impossible leap over the fence from the lawn onto the sidewalk. At midday on a crappy Monday the road was empty, so Charlie bit back her comment on the dangers of attracting attention. Nothing like an unnecessary warning to be careful to really emphasize an age difference. “They don’t trust Gales and once they know who you are, they’ll assume you’re trying to geis them.”
“How will they know what I can do?”
He rolled his eyes, Allie’s expression borrowed. “Duh. The Courts keep tabs on anyone who could challenge them, and you’re Charlie Gale.”
That sounded like a compliment, so Charlie accepted it as one. “I don’t geis.”
“You can make people do what you say; it might as well be a geis. They won’t talk to you.”
“I don’t want you going in alone.” Given the price he’d already said he was willing to pay the Courts for training, she didn’t want him suddenly facing an opportunity to pay for saving the world. Not without talking it over with her first. If it came to it, they’d split the bill.
“I’ll go with him.” Joe ducked as Charlie spun around, and scowled up at her umbrella. “You trying to put my eye out with that thing, then?”
“How did you know we were here?”
He shrugged. “Security system in the store. Those corn husk dolls are gossips and, well, the walls have ears. Heard all about your plan to piss off the aunties and see what the Courts can do.”
“But how did you know we were here?” Charlie repeated. “Did you follow us to the Brownie?”
“Why would I have to do that, then?”
Charlie glanced over at Jack who shrugged, and back at Joe who shoved his hands into his jacket’s pockets, and sighed. Were the aunties tracking her phone? Was Allie tracking her per . . . “Oh. Leprechaun. I’m an idiot. You know where the Courts are.”
“Damned right I know where they are. They’re not the sort you want to be running into by accident. I’d assumed you hadn’t asked because you figured I wouldn’t help, given Gwen and all. Never occurred to me you’d forgotten.”
“Ignoring the fact that you haven’t been back to the UnderRealm since your parents swapped you out for a mortal baby over eighty years ago, we think of you as family not Fey.”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded. “All right, I’m flattered.”
Although that didn’t mean Allie wouldn’t be tracking them. “Who’s watching the store?”
“We’re closed Mondays; that’s why me and the prince were taking a run at the inventory. I parked across the street.” He tossed Charlie the keys. “You can wait in the car unless you prefer getting wet.”
Charlie waited until a panel van passed and then peered across at Joe’s ancient hatchback. “That thing’s watertight?”
“Cute. Only not really.”
“Joe, Auntie Gwen won’t be happy about this.”
He met her gaze evenly, ignoring the rain dripping off his eyebrows. “Well, the way I see it, she isn’t happy about the world ending before George R.R. Martin finishes Game of Thrones either. I’ll deal with Gwen.”
She had to trust he could. “Jack, you know the Courts so I’m not going to tell you what to say, but . . .”
“Appeal to their self-interest. Make it seem like their idea. I’ve got it, Charlie.” His grin showed teeth. “Dragons are all about twisting the situation in their favor.”
“I thought they were all about twisting arms off?”
“And that.”
“Can’t think why the Courts don’t like you,” Joe muttered.
“I thought I’d be going in with you.” Half of her wanted to declare if I don’t go in, you don’t go in, but the other half pointed out that twenty-one and a half months until the end of the world justified a little risk. And Jack was an adult, albeit a young one. And dragons were very hard to kill. “Joe . . .”
“I’ll see that he comes out again.”
Jack waited until Charlie was safely inside Joe’s car before he started toward the diner. Four meters of sidewalk, six meters of parking lot—he changed the color of his sneakers with every step. Gold. Black. Gold. Red. Gold. Green. Gold . . .
“Nervous?”
He shrugged and changed his sneakers to black. Uncle Adam’s color. He could use a little of his oldest uncle’s certainty. After a moment, he added red laces. Considering where they were heading, he could use a little of Uncle Viktor’s viciousness, too.
“It’s okay to be nervous. You can’t let them see it, though.”
Jack turned and stared at Joe in disbelief. Usually, the Leprechaun got him better than anyone in the family except for Charlie, but that was a total miss. “Dude, seriously, I’m not nervous. I’m messing around.”
“These aren’t Hobgoblins and Brownies we’re going to be talking to, Jack; these are members of the Court. Full-bloods. Minor nobility, sure, but as arrogant a bunch as you’ll ever meet. They’re armed and dangerous, and you’ll never know as you face them if you should expect a blade in the eye or a spell to turn your bones to jelly.”
“You’re a full-blood.” Here in the MidRealm, that had weight. Joe’d flipped the finger to the Courts when the mortal changeling had died and they’d Called him home and that took guts. And he treated Jack like he treated Cameron, somehow quieting the instincts that shouted both dragon and prince. That took strength.
“I am a Leprechaun.” He dropped his voice, even though the parking lot was empty of anyone who might overhear. “The Courts tolerate us because of our way with gold, but they sure as shit don’t respect us and, as I have no gold, they have no reason to tolerate me.”
“You have Auntie Gwen.”
“That’s not . . .”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Jack turned to walk backward so he could look Joe in the eye. “You voluntarily lie down every night with a Gale auntie. Naked. And you get up again every morning. These guys aren’t about unearthly tresses, never left their Grove, all thee and thous and sipping dew out of freaking bluebells. These guys have been living here, in the MidRealm, with the Gales. In the same city as the Gales. If they don’t respect you, they’ve got their heads so far up their ethereal asses they’ve cut off all circulation to their brains.”
The pointed tips of Joe’s ears, barely visible through ginger hair, darkened. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem.” Jack had no idea what he’d said to make Joe blush, but since he had no idea why he sometimes blushed while looking at Charlie, he wasn’t going to give Joe a hard time about it. “Besides,” he added as they reached the diner, “At full size, I’m at least four times as big as a city bus and I breathe fire and, for all they know, given my parentage, I could throw a spell that would turn their bones to jelly.”
“Can you?”
“Not a chance. And these guys will have been trained so they know what they’re doing, and they can probably block anything I can throw by accident.” He spread his hands. “But they don’t know that.” The heavy condensation on the inside of the diner window meant they’d be going in blind. Jack drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I just, you know, don’t want to let Cha . . . the family down.”
Joe stared at him for a long moment. Then he smiled, lines folding around the freckles. “All right, then.”
“All right what?”
“Let’s be going in.”
“Joe!” But Joe had pulled the door open and stepped inside. Unless he wanted to be shown up by a Leprechaun, all Jack could do was follow.
The Silvan Diner had a counter with eight stools along the left wall. The countertop held a glass case with three pies, four
groupings of ketchup and napkins and salt and pepper, and the elbows of a teenage girl in a pink-striped shirt who didn’t look up from her magazine as they came in. Jack’s nose pinged her as Court descended, but without enough blood to need a glamour. A rectangular opening at the end of the counter led to the kitchen. Pitted blue-and-gray tiles covered the diner’s floor, and four big lights dimmed by grease and dust hung from the ceiling. The two full-blood members of the Court overwhelmed a six-person booth by the window, the third full-blood sitting with them made a nonevent by their presence. Nine humans, five females and four males, filled two of the other booths along the right wall.
The diner smelled equally of food and Fey. Humans were Not Food; it was one of the first lessons Jack had learned after arriving in the MidRealm. Fey, on the other hand . . . His stomach growled, and he wished he’d eaten a second pie before leaving the house.
The full-blood at the Court’s table looked up as the door closed, started, then slouched down in the seat as though that had been the intent all along—gaze skimming dismissively over Joe and locking on Jack. The Court appeared unaware that a dragon and a Leprechaun had walked into their territory although they weren’t fooling anyone. One by one, even the humans fell silent and turned to stare, their expressions a mix of suspicion, aggression, and challenge—a two-legged hunting pack, Jack realized, to make up for the four-legged pack left back in the UnderRealm.
Head up, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, eyes half lidded in a way he hoped made him look dangerous and not sleepy, Jack walked toward the Court, Joe back of his left shoulder. When he stopped, about a meter and a half out, he swept a bored gaze around the booth. It was the expression Allie used when Auntie Carmen got enthusiastic about plot development on Coronation Street—but they didn’t need to know that.
Under the University of Calgary jackets, the Court wore glamours, a shimmer of power wrapped head to toe. Their true forms had angles too sharp, eyes too large, hair too sleek. The common belief was that they had the same opinion of casual cruelty as cats. The Dragon Lords believed cats were kinder.
