by Tanya Huff
Jack appreciated the gesture. Not that he’d been feeling excluded or anything.
The last slice of strawberry ice cream pie and a half a slice of peach pie later, Graham stuck his head out of the room. “She’s wondering where the hell you are.”
“I’m right here.” He licked his fork.
“Missing the point, kid. Get your ass in here.”
Jack sighed and stood. He stretched, scratched under the edge of his T-shirt, and padded barefoot across the room. When he paused at the door, Graham reached out and gripped his shoulder.
“She’s fine. A little damp, given Allie’s reaction, but fine.”
“I know.” Jack shook himself free. “I was there when they fixed her. She’s just been sleeping.”
“Okay.”
Okay? He had no idea what Graham meant by that. He pushed past, ignored whatever Allie had to say as she moved to join her mate, man, Graham at the door, and stopped at the foot of the bed.
Charlie was sitting up against a pile of pillows. Her hair was sticking out and needed washing and she had purple shadows under eyes although he didn’t know why because she’d been asleep for nine days. She was drinking out of one of Richard’s sippy cups that Aunt Judith had brought over even though she was sitting up.
And she was fine.
“Hey.” She put the cup down and held open her arms. “Come here.”
Jack didn’t remember crossing the rest of the room. There was a damp spot on the T-shirt Charlie was wearing, but he hadn’t made it.
“I’m okay.”
“I know.” When he’d seen her last, they’d said she was fixed, but she’d been all limp . . .
“Hey, you saved me.”
“I know. I bit Uncle Viktor’s wing off.” He felt her laugh. He liked that she laughed about it because it was pretty cool.
“For what it’s worth, if they try to send you back or make you do anything you don’t want when you’re fifteen, they’ll have to go through me first. Actually,” she added as he sat up and wiped his eyes that had totally gotten wet off the mess Allie’d left on Charlie’s shirt because he wasn’t crying, “I’d have had your back regardless, but I have a feeling it means a little more now.”
Her eyes were black. Then she blinked and they were gray again.
Jack took a deep breath and waved the smoke away as he exhaled. “There’s pie.”
Charlie shifted Graham’s hand from her hip to Allie’s, slid out from under Allie’s arm, and got out of bed without waking either of them. Years of bands and bars and leaving town early the next morning, had given her mad skills in slipping away, no fuss, no muss. Although, after nine days, it should surprise no one that she couldn’t sleep.
Grabbing a robe on her way out of the bedroom, she thought about looking in on Jack, but he was fourteen, not four or forty, so she kept going out of the apartment and down the stairs to the store. Or the hall behind the store.
The mirror shimmered in the light coming through the courtyard windows.
Her reflection, dressed in the red-and-black-checked dressing gown, appeared to be wrapped in silver bands.
She leaned in, cheek pressed against the cool glass, hands lightly gripping opposite sides of the frame. “I’m glad to see you again, too.” Straightening, she rubbed at the smudge her face had left with the sleeve of the robe. “Enough of this mushy stuff, though. I’m fine. What’ve you got for me?”
What it had was her, still in the robe, eating sushi with Jack. As she watched, he picked up a piece of octopus with his fingers and dropped it into his mouth, the golden armor he wore moving with the sinuous grace of scales.
“Jack is my knight in shining armor and I should take him out to dinner?”
Her reflection’s hair turned turquoise.
“And my look could use updating. With you there, dude.”
There were little bears on the dressing gown at each intersection of red and black. Charlie’d never noticed that before. As she checked to see if the actual robe matched up with its reflection, she heard the door to the loft open out in the courtyard.
The hinges needed oiling.
Or, more likely, given that Auntie Gwen was knocking boots with a leprechaun and he’d never have let that go, the noise was just to get her attention.
Charlie glanced into the store on her way by. She’d never noticed before, but the metaphysical items gave off a green glow in the dark. Given the absence of light behind the counter, the signed photo of Boris was enough to cover the glow of the nail. The nail that lost the horseshoe, the horse, and the war. “Lose it,” Allie’s voice said, in memory, “and you lose everything.” Seemed like the nail couldn’t be all it was cracked up to be if a hot shot of a minotaur could block its light. Even the painting of Elvis on black velvet shone brighter. She could feel its eyes following her as she went out the back door.
Auntie Gwen waited by the tiny shrubbery wearing one of Joe’s shirts. She folded her arms, yawned, and said, “So, ask.”
“I don’t . . .” Actually, she did. “You congratulated me on accepting the responsibilities of being a Wild Power.”
“That’s not a question,” Auntie Gwen pointed out after a moment.
Pointless to argue she’d known what Charlie’d meant as it was pointless to argue with an auntie just generally. “What does that mean?”
“Congratulations is an expression of pleasure at the good fortune of another.”
“Auntie Gwen . . .”
She yawned again. “It’s three in the morning, Charlotte, and you hauled me out of a warm bed. You’re lucky I’m still grateful you’re alive. Okay . . .” She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding Charlie of Shelly and her early morning yoga. Reminding Charlie she still hadn’t called Mark. “Charlotte!”
“Sorry.” Her broken commitment to Grinneal would have to be dealt with, but for now, she aimed an expression of rapt attention at Auntie Gwen. “Go on.”
“You’re sure?”
Charlie nodded, fully aware it had not been a rhetorical question.
“All right, then, at some point, and I assume it was during your struggle with the Troll, you had an epiphany.”
Point was, the power wasn’t in the guitar . . . the power was in her.
Because every now and then, something too big to ignore just had to belly up to the bar and declare it could take all comers.
When Charlie opened her mouth, Auntie Gwen cut her off. “I don’t need to hear what it was. It’s always a variation on a theme.You don’t get this kind of power in order to charm strangers in bars or rack up frequent flier miles going through the Wood. With great power comes great responsibility, a responsibility someone decided generations ago that not everyone in the family can be trusted with. You, Charlotte Gale, are a free electron, able to affect what you will. A warm body between this world and all the metaphysical shit that comes down the pike.”
“Because I’m responsible enough to handle it?”
“Because until you were put in a position where you needed to use it, you had no interest in it. People who want this kind of power . . .” Her dark eyes gleamed. “. . . should never have it.”
“Jack?”
Auntie Gwen looked like she’d eaten something that disagreed with her. “There could be an argument made that Jack also accepted his responsibilities.”
“There could be an argument made that Jack has always accepted his responsibilities,” Charlie pointed out. “Being the Gale formerly known as Prince.”
“Yes, well, you can make that argument to Jane because I’m certainly not looking forward to it. You know that in spite of his saving your life, she’s still going to be suspicious of his power. Given that it’s his power.”
“I handled a Troll. I think I can face Auntie Jane.”
“Really?”
Charlie thought about it for a moment. “No. Not really. So what about Auntie Catherine?”
“Catherine is a Seer, as you are a Bard.”
&nbs
p; “Not what I was asking.”
“Yes, well, no one said the system was perfect or that any one of us is fully aware of the whole. And now that I’ve gifted you with pearls of wisdom you’ll probably ignore . . .” She yawned again. “ . . . I’m going back to bed.”
“Wait! What do I do?” Charlie asked as Auntie Gwen turned back toward her, one eyebrow raised.
“What has to be done.”
“What has to be done?” Charlie repeated watching the door to the loft close behind Joe’s shirt tail with a definitive snap. “Thank you,Yoda.”
She’d left a mess behind in Cape Breton, that was for sure. Eineen had the skins back, so Carlson Oil had been stopped and the Selkie rookery saved, but making it right with the band was going to take a little work.
Three AM in Calgary. Seven in the Maritimes. No way would Mark be up. But it was six in Ontario, and Auntie Jane never missed a sunrise.
Charlie pulled her new phone out of the robe’s pocket, a little disgusted by the used tissue wrapped around it. Still, she hadn’t put the phone in the robe’s pocket, so dealing with crunchy mucus wasn’t entirely unreasonable.
“Good morning, Charlotte.”
“Good morning, Auntie Jane. I just called . . .” Except there wasn’t any just about it. “I called to say thank you.”
“For what, Charlotte?”
“A little less smart-ass and a little more focus. I will not have you killed in such an embarrassing manner.”
“For being there when I needed you.”
The pause extended. Charlie figured it took time for Auntie Jane to remember how to smile.
“You’re welcome. I’m pleased you survived.”
“Me, too.”
“Of course you are. Is there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
Jack. Jack’s future. “No, I’m good.”
“That, Charlotte, is still open to debate.”The dial tone punctuated Auntie Jane getting the last word.
As usual.
Feeling eyes on her, Charlie looked up to see Allie standing in the window. She slipped the phone back in her pocket and headed indoors. It wasn’t like the situation back east could get worse in the next few hours.
The entire family—minus David, who reverted to hooves and horns in crowds—descended on the apartment for breakfast. The center of a talking, laughing mass of adults and teenagers and babies, all happy to see her up and about, Charlie figured Mark could wait a little longer. Chased away from the kitchen—there were benefits in being the only living Gale girl who couldn’t cook—Charlie settled in one of the big armchairs, Wendy and Jennifer tucked in beside her, and told the story of the Selkies and going after their sealskins, and fighting the Troll. She stopped when she hit the floor of the mine, got Jack in a headlock, and noogied him until he agreed to continue.
She noted how no one looked concerned by her roughhousing, the awareness of Jack being both a Dragon and a sorcerer buried under their knowledge he was a Gale. The kids cheered when he bit his Uncle Viktor’s wing off. He finished his part of the story just as platters of French toast and sausages were set out on the big table and he blushed, just a little, as Cameron took the time for a fist bump in the rush for food.
Cameron was nearly twenty. To a fourteen-year-old boy, that made him more relevant than anyone else in the room. Auntie Jane aside, it looked like Jack’s place in the family was secure.
French toast left fewer opportunities for charms than pancakes so, except for baby Richard trying to inhale the sausage he’d been happily gumming, breakfast was uneventful by Gale standards.
After, having been hugged hard enough to rebreak her ribs as people left, Charlie settled into washing the final sink full of dishes.
“So,” she said, scrubbing coffee stains out of a mug as Jack dried a plate, “what happened to Eineen and Paul? The Selkie and her new boyfriend,” she added when Jack looked confused.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I left them in the mine.”
“In the mine?”
“Duh. That’s where the gate was.”
Charlie replayed the events in the mine as she washed another mug. “Jack, did the Goblins go through the gate?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, one arm stretched over his head to put a plate on the pile. “I don’t think so.” He was frowning when he stepped back from the cupboard. “I followed the Boggart trail to the gate, but I don’t remember seeing any Goblin sign. Nothing new, anyway.”
“Okay, that’s bad.”
“He was a little distracted ,” Allie put in from where she was curled up on the sofa with Graham.
“Not what I meant.” Grabbing Jack’s dish towel to dry her hands, Charlie turned from the sink. “The gate was pretty deep in the mine, right? If the Goblins didn’t go through the gate,” she continued when Jack nodded, “then it’s very likely that they were between Eineen and Paul and the exit.”
“I thought she was Fey,” Graham began.
“She’s a Selkie. That’s basically a serial monogamist with debatable taste in men and a fully fish diet. She’s stronger than your average bear, sure, but unless she’s facing a cod not very scary. And Paul had recently had a manicure.” Charlie sagged back until her ass was supported by the edge of the sink. “I got the impression he’d suck big-time in a fight.”
“You don’t ever fight one Goblin,” Jack said, sagging against the counter, his movement as near an exact copy of Charlie’s as differing physiognomy allowed. “They’ll come at you all at once, figuring numbers beats size.”
“So unless they got very, very lucky, like winning a multimillion lottery level of luck, Eineen and Paul are dead.”
“I can find out.” Graham stood, ignoring a muffled protest from Allie as she toppled over. He walked over to the computer desk by the front windows. “I’ll e-mail a friend at the Herald,” he said, crossing to where his phone sat in the charger. “If she doesn’t know off the top of her head, she’ll be able to pull the stories. Bodies found in a mine . . .”
“Not enough left to be bodies,” Jack interrupted.
“Body parts found in a mine,” Graham amended, “will be news.”
“It’d be national news.” Charlie swept a gaze around the room. “Did no one watch the National while I was out?”
Jack shrugged. “I never watch the National.”
“We were a little a distracted,” Allie said, sitting up and retrieving her mug from the coffee table. “Particularly during the first forty-eight hours when the story would have been . . .”
“Graham, stop! Sorry, Allie,” Charlie waved an apology in Allie’s general direction. “I don’t want to know. It’s better we don’t know.”
“They aren’t family,” Allie agreed.
“No, it’s better we don’t know because I’m going to fix it.”
“Fix death?” Graham asked putting his phone back on the charger.
About to snap out the kind of reply that kind of smart-ass question required, Charlie paused and thought about what she intended to do. After a moment, she said, “I’m not going to fix death, I’m going to make sure no one dies.”
Charlie let Allie and Graham shout at her for a few minutes. She had lots of time. When they began to wind down, she said, “Allie, remember how you always said I could get you home through the Wood before you left?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“I’m going to go back to the mine before I left.”
ELEVEN
CHARLIE CAME OUT of the Wood just inside the perimeter fence, facing the mine-head.
“All I need is a definitive moment in time. Something that resonates so loudly, I’ll have no trouble following its song out of theWood.”
Allie folded her arms. “What if you’re wrong?”
“Then it doesn’t work and I end up where, not when.”
“And if you get lost?”
Charlie sighed. “Get lost once your first time in and no one ever lets you forget it.”
The landscape told
her absolutely nothing about when she was. She’d followed the stirring anthem “Charlie Kicks Troll Ass” which should have brought her out just as the Charlie of ten days ago realized how things worked. Unfortunately, all that had happened/was happening deep in the mine leaving no impression on the surface. There was always a chance she’d followed an echo, a chance the song had been so powerful it would resonate through the Wood for years leading travelers astray. Well, travelers attuned to that sort of thing. Okay, her.
If it had worked, here and now Jack was chasing a Boggart down the elevator shaft and she was just about to hit the floor.
“What about paradoxes?” Graham had demanded.
“Chill.What happened, happened. And we don’t know what happened after that happened, so anything can happen.”When he seemed about to protest, she kissed him, kissed Allie, hugged Jack, and walked through the shrubbery in the courtyard into the Wood.
As Charlie emerged from an annoyingly dense bit of dog willow, she spotted Paul’s penis-mobile. No way would it still be sitting there ten days after Paul had disappeared or been discovered disemboweled. Either way, it’d be in a police impound lot.
Punching the air seemed entirely justified.
“Holy shit, I traveled in time. I’m like freakin’ Dr. Who, and the cute redheaded companion should turn up right about . . . now.” A quick look around. “Or not.” Apparently time travel was fine, but a cute redheaded companion was too much to ask of the universe.
She patted the penis-mobile’s shiny black roof as she jogged by. Kept jogging past the big double doors they’d left unlocked ten days earlier, and charmed open a standard-sized door in the next building. The big elevator was down in the mine, but a little research had turned up three smaller ones.
“Machinery breaks,” Graham pointed out. “If the big elevator is fried and they absolutely have to, they can get the miners out the coal shaft, let them ride the belt up, but better to spread their eggs over a few baskets and get them out one or two at a time in smaller, supplemental shafts.”
Much smaller, Charlie realized peering through the grating as the motor powered up. This cage would hold two people, three if they were willing to be very friendly and if Graham hadn’t printed up the schematics of the building for her and marked a big X on the spot, it would have been easy to miss. The steel door said only, no unauthorized personnel beyond this point not open me to find an elevator you can use to save the day.
