by Tanya Huff
“See you Friday morning in Ingonish!” She waved out the window and was gone.
It didn’t seem to matter to Shelly’s brother-in-law’s cousin, who’d already left for work, that the rest of the band was still in residence.
Only in the Maritimes, Charlie mused, heading up the driveway, wincing a little as the gravel dug into her bare feet. Her gear was already in the back of the station wagon, but she figured she’d help Mark and Tim finish loading before she hit the road. After all, they had the amps, their roadie was back in Calgary, and she wasn’t in any hurry to leave. Although lining up a few paying jobs wouldn’t hurt, probably, maybe pretty much summed up her interest in studio work right at the moment.
The fiddler in her head decided to chime in with “I Won’t Do the Work.”
“Who asked you?”
Deciding to soak up a little more sun before breaking up the accordion/ bodhran jam session she could hear going on in the basement, she leaned back against the rear of her car and closed her eyes. Having Wild Powers activated didn’t seem to have changed much. Okay, sure, she was alive and ten days out of time, but other than that, she still had no idea of what she should do next.
A car screeched to a stop out on the street.
Charlie opened her eyes to see Paul and Eineen spilling out of his penis-mobile. “I still have no idea of what I’d do with a hundred thousand dollars,” she murmured, glancing up at a cloudless sky. When no money appeared, she shrugged philosophically and, given the way Eineen’s glamour was flickering, braced herself for yet more Selkie Sturm and Drang.
“Another skin missing?” Made sense for Amelia Carlson to have sent Auntie Catherine back out, and it was only Human nature to slack off covering the mirrors after a few days. Fey nature, too, it seemed.
“The barges are going out today!”
“Excuse me?” First she’d heard about barges.
“The Minister of the Environment signed off on Carlson Oil’s permits for the shallow well,” Paul explained. “Everything else was in place, waiting for the permit, so, this afternoon, Amelia Carlson is sending out the barges with the pieces of the production platform. She had a small army of men waiting to go to work building this thing; they’ll have the piles driven before a protest can hit the courts and the platform constructed before a stop order can be issued.”
“Succinct explanation. Also, nice suit.” She sagged back against the car and tucked her thumbs behind the waistband of her shorts. “But what do you want me to do?”
“Stop the barges.” Eineen was actually wringing her hands. Charlie’d never seen anyone do that before. “Save my people.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only one who can!”
Okay, so maybe it was a little childish to make Eineen pay for being entirely straight, but Charlie figured she was due a bit of self-indulgence.
“And because this is one of those decisions you’ll be making every minute of every day,” Paul added quietly.
Charlie blinked. “You’re good.” She’d had every intention of helping, but if she hadn’t, that would have been the button pusher. “Fine. I’ll stop the barges. Any idea of how I can stop the barges?” she added wiping the smile off Paul’s face. “If you got me on board, I suppose I could get the captain to scuttle . . . scuttle?” She frowned. “That doesn’t sound right. I suppose I could convince the captain to sink his ship, but then I’d be on board a sinking ship along with Amelia Carlson’s small army of men. Not that far from shore, granted, but even if everyone survived, explanations would be tricky and I’m not throwing a perfectly innocent captain out as a scapegoat. “
“Couldn’t you make it look like a natural disaster? Whip up the seas or something?”
“Okay, two points.” Charlie flicked up a finger. “One, I’m still not up with drowning everyone on board the barge and you . . .” She pointed the finger at Paul. “. . . are being remarkably bloodthirsty which is probably your influence . . .”The finger moved to point at Eineen. The Fey seldom worried about Human lives. “. . . so cut it out. And two, did I not mention the whole land not sea thing last night?”
“There’s land under the water,” Eineen said.
And the fiddler in Charlie’s head broke into “The Champion.”
“That’s very true.” She squinted into the sun and swiped at a dribble of sweat running down her throat and over her collarbone, teasing out the bright beginning of a possible plan. “There’s a lot of water over that land . . . I’m going to need a backup band.” Blinking away spots, she refocused her attention on the two people standing in front of her. “Eineen, you need to find me as many fiddlers as you can, preferably men who’ve had contact with your people.”
Eineen’s brows rose up behind the fall of her hair. “By contact, you mean . . . ?”
“What are you, twelve? I mean I need fiddlers who won’t freak at what I’m going to do, so I need fiddlers who’ve done the freaky with you lot. If we had another moonlit night, you could recruit a few more, but as it is, get in contact with as many as you can. Tell them we’ll need them this afternoon and we’ll send the location as soon as we get one. Paul, find me a location. I need the route the barge will be taking, the deepest water possible, and waterfront property without a vacation home built on it.”
Paul pulled out his phone. “There’s a very good chance Ms. Carlson hasn’t informed the relevant parties I’m no longer working for her.”
“And what will you be doing?” Eineen demanded.
“I will be finding a piece of music I can use to focus power. All right, fine.” She held up her hand. “I know what I want to use, I’ll be acquiring the rights. This isn’t the sort of thing you can do with questionable authority.”
The front door of the house opened behind her. “As Mark enters right on . . .” From the look on Paul’s face, it wasn’t Mark. Of course it wasn’t Mark, Charlie could still hear the accordion and bodhran. This close to the harbor, there wasn’t a decent sized shrubbery in sight, but every house had mirrors. Charlie grabbed Paul’s phone, sketched a very fast charm, and shoved it back into his hands. “Go. Call me later.”
Clutching Eineen’s hand, he ran for the car.
Smart man.
“We need to talk, Charlotte.”
Charlie turned. She didn’t bother faking a smile. “I have nothing to say to you, Auntie Catherine.”
“Not even a thank you for giving you the opportunity to embrace your full potential?” Auntie Catherine stepped off the porch and spread her hands, bracelets chiming. “I Saw your eyes when you came out of the mine after facing those Goblins.”
“Really? Did you See my eyes when I faced the Troll? Enough broken blood vessels they looked like two balls of very lean bacon. Wasn’t pretty.” If she hadn’t been glaring at the older woman’s face so intently, she’d have missed it. “You didn’t know, did you?You didn’t know there was a Troll in the mine. Something that big, and you didn’t See it.”
“I don’t need to tell you what I did or didn’t See, Charlotte.”
“Weak,” Charlie snorted. “Very weak.”
“The point is, you wouldn’t have been in the mine without me, you wouldn’t have fulfilled your potential without the mine, therefore, you owe me.”
“Bite me.”
“Don’t push it, Charlotte.” Dark eyes narrowed. “Potential is one thing. Actualizing it is another. You still have no idea of what’s going on.”
Charlie spread her hands in a mocking mirror image of Auntie Catherine’s gesture. “If you’re willing to be straight this time, enlighten me.”
“The well must be drilled. Steel must be sunk deep into the seabed.”
Gulls cried. Someone hit their horn in the tourist-clogged streets across the bridge.
After a moment, Charlie sighed. “Not so much with the enlightenment there. Because I said so isn’t going to float this boat, Auntie Catherine. The way you’ve been dicking people around, I’m not taking your word for anyt
hing. You didn’t have to convince Amelia Carlson that blackmailing the Selkies was the way to go—you could have figured out a number of ways to accomplish the same thing—you just like to fuck with people. Newsflash, you’re not a nice person.”
“Nice isn’t required, Charlotte.” The flash of teeth could not be called a smile by anyone sane. “Not for what I do.”
Folding her arms, Charlie propped a hip against the porch railing. What is it you do? would slide the conversation into another key entirely, and so she waited. And waited. Two cars and a camper drove by. Gulls continued crying. The wind pushed a cloud over the sun, adjusting the glare but not affecting the temperature. The aunties didn’t wait for what they wanted. Auntie Catherine was out of practice.
“Do not assume you are my equal,” she snapped at last.
“If you could stop me, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
Auntie Catherine sighed, the sort of sigh that said, you are young and foolish and I don’t know why I bother. Which pretty much proved Charlie’s point as far as Charlie was concerned. “If you stop this well from going in, something old and more dangerous than you can imagine will rise from beneath the sea. I have Seen it.”
“You didn’t See the Troll.”
“That’s an apples-and-oranges distinction, Charlotte.”
Charlie shrugged. “They’re both fruit.”
“Oh, that’s right, make a joke.” Auntie Catherine pushed a strand of silver hair back off her face and snarled, “Fine, you want enlightenment? If you stop the well from going in, you’ll be responsible for the end of the world. There’s an enormous difference between one of the ancients rising and an oil spill or two!”
“Not if you’re in the path of the oil spill. Besides, ancient gods rising from beneath the sea is so last millennium.” She slid off the railing and planted her feet, peeling paint making the planks of the porch rough under her soles. “So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop the well, then I’m going to stop the end of the world.”
Auntie Catherine’s lip curled. “What, with a Song?”
“Why not?”
“Because it won’t work!” She took a deep breath, hands clutching the tangerine muslin of her skirt. “Let the pilings go in, then stop the well before there’s any drilling.”
“Why me?You stop the well.”
“That’s not what I’ve Seen.”
“You’ve Seen me stop the drilling?”
“No, I’ve Seen the need for the pilings. The rest is incidental!”
“Okay.” Charlie folded her arms. “How do I stop the drilling?”
“How else? With a Song!”
“Now you’re mocking me.” Not the words, but the clearly audible exclamation mark. “Nice talking to you, Auntie Catherine.”
“Charlotte . . .”
Charlie made another of those minute-by-minute decisions. “You should leave now.”
The aunties were used to getting their own way, leaving Auntie Catherine just as out of practice when it came to dealing with defiance. The audacity of a younger Gale standing so definitively against her had visibly thrown her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly open, and her hands couldn’t find a place to settle as she responded to Charlie’s voice. Charlie suspected this was entirely a one-shot deal as far as the aunties were concerned, but here and now this was the only time she needed it to work.
“You will be sorry for what you have done this day, Charlotte Marie Gale!” Unable to stop her march down the drive, Auntie Catherine turned at the sidewalk to deliver the last word, then strode around the corner, skirt swirling around her calves, phone in her hand.
Back on the porch, Charlie waited for her phone to ring.
Except . . . she was out of her time. As far as the aunties were concerned, the ones back home in both Calgary and Darsden East, Charlie was still in a healing trance. Which was actually irrelevant because Auntie Catherine was certainly not going to call home to complain that Charlie was disrespecting her and some other auntie needed to bring her in line. The world would end first.
It came down to just the two of them.
And Charlie had proof that Auntie Catherine didn’t See everything.
The fiddler in her head played “Mrs. McCarty, Have You a Daughter.”
That was a little thematically obscure. “Say what?”
“I didn’t say anything. Yet.”
She could just make out Mark’s expression through the screen door, and Tim’s bulk behind him. Not good. “How long have you been there?”
“Tim saw your Auntie Catherine come out of the big mirror in the hall. He came and got me.”
“Out of the mirror? Really?” She sent a silent apology to Tim. “And you believed him?”
Mark’s expression didn’t change. “Tim’s never lied to me.”
Charlie bristled at the implication. “I’ve never lied to you. Okay, maybe a few small lies and, at that, mostly lies of omission, but . . .”
“We want in.”
“What?”
Mark opened the door and the two of them came out onto the porch. “We want in.”
“Into what?” Charlie asked in her best Pie?What pie? voice
“You’re going to stop one of the ancient gods from rising.”
“That’s not . . .”
“Do you even read the paper? Have you seen what they’re catching off Scatarie? Look, we know you’re different, Chuck.” Mark shook his head, his hair spilling out of the grimy Barbie bandana that secured his ponytail. “For fucksake, that first day you came east? You didn’t even have a copy of the set list when you went out on stage and you never missed a note. Okay, you missed a couple, but I suspect that was a variation not a mistake. And,” he continued before Charlie could argue, “your cousin’s eyes glow gold.”
If her experience with Auntie Catherine was any indication, she could make him, make both of them, believe whatever she wanted them to. “You noticed that?”
“In all fairness, I thought I was stoned, but Tim noticed, too. So, we want in.”
“I could tell you that you don’t and you’d believe me.” No wonder Allie had let Jack come east. Charlie’d asked her to. With any luck, Allie’d never figure that out. “I could make you forget this conversation ever happened.”
Tim shook his head. “You won’t,” he said.
“You’re right. I won’t.” Because she’d made a decision not to fuck people around. Another minute-by-minute decision safely made. “Okay, you’re in. But,” she added cutting off Mark’s triumphant smile, “there’s one inarguable condition.”
He spread his hands. “Anything.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“The barge is coming out from Glace Bay, heading east around the headland then southeast around Scatarie Island. The closest point we can reach on shore to deep water is going to be out on South Head. Go up 255 to South Head Road, turn right. Cross the bridge and follow the road until it becomes Sailor Dan’s Lane—there’s tracks past the end of the lane, but they may require four wheel drive.”
“I grew up in the country. Odds are they were made by a twenty-year-old rear wheel drive pickup full of teenagers.” Phone tucked against her shoulder, Charlie scribbled directions. “Tracks are no problem.”
“If you say so.”
She bit off a laugh.
“If you’re still in Louisbourg,” Paul continued, “it’s about fifty minutes.”
“Leaving now. Have Eineen tell the fiddlers to meet us there.”
For all it had been one of the first parts of Canada settled, empty places remained along the Nova Scotia coast where the rock was too close to the surface or the sea winds too harsh or the sea itself too unforgiving. Barely four hundred meters wide and about five kilometers long, South Head challenged the might of the Atlantic and, so far, seemed to be winning. The nearest cottage was back at South Port Morien and, although the day was hot and still, and the ocean was as calm as the Atlantic ever managed, they had t
he headland to themselves.
Charlie parked by Paul’s car at the end of the track. “Second last chance to back out.”
“Second last?” Mark asked from the backseat.
Her hands left damp smudges on the steering wheel. “We haven’t started playing yet.”
“We’re in. All the way.”
“Okay, then.” Another time, the wind across the headland would have ripped the car door from her hand. Today, a gentle breeze pushed her hair back off her face. Mark and Tim fell into step behind her as she walked out to join Paul and Eineen on the edge of the cliff. She looked down into deep water. Then she looked west at a dot on the waves. “Is that it? Is that the barge?”
“That’s the barge. It’s due past here at precisely . . .” Paul checked his phone and frowned at the lack of signal.
Charlie pushed his hand down by his side. “We’re not working with precisely .”
“What are they doing here?” Eineen asked, nodded toward Mark and Tim.
“Percussion.” Lifting his drum, Mark answered for himself. Tim held Mark’s second best bodhran.
“Wait, you play the bodhran, too?”
“He’s a fucking show off, is what he is,” Mark muttered, stuffing an extra tipper into his sporran. “I haven’t found anything he can’t play. Fortunately, he loves me enough to allow me the delusion of being the better drummer.”
“What if they don’t come?” Eineen stared out at the distant barge. Back at Charlie. Out at the barge. “What if the fiddlers don’t come?”
Charlie listened to “Over the Cabot Trail” and smiled. “They’ll come.”
“My cousins reminded me yet again that the Gales don’t get involved in the business of the Fey.”
“This is my business, so this is Gale business,” Charlie said. “Sounds like Bo borrowed his brother’s truck.”
The five of them turned to watch Bo park, Tanis hanging out of the window and waving. Neela and Gavin pulled in beside him.
