Almost.
Later that night she almost asked Mac what he’d meant, but, by then, they were trading other secrets.
The drive south from Fort McMurray to Calgary took almost nine hours. Theoretically. They’d managed it once in nine and a half but only by keeping rest stops to an absolute minimum. Fortunately, in the last fourteen months of intermittent touring, they’d become old hands at covering the less well traveled parts of the western provinces and had two coolers of food stuffed in between the stack of amps and the box that held the snow chains and the twenty-kilo bag of clay kitty litter no one wanted to remove in spite of it being almost the end of July and nearly thirty degrees. Why tempt fate? They had six drivers—the band plus Tony’s wife Coreen and Taylor’s girlfriend Donna, who’d joined them at Provost just after they’d crossed back from Saskatchewan—and, of the six, Charlie was, by no means, the most disdainful of posted speed limits.
Since Donna’d had no actual obligations during their last gig at the Newfoundlander’s Bar, she’d drawn short straw as first driver.
They were on the road by eight, five of the six passengers completely unaware of the charms sketched under the grime covering the old school bus, charms that had ensured an almost miraculous absence of mechanical difficulty considering the vehicle’s age. Charlie’d done what she could for the gas mileage as well but suspected it’d need a full circle of aunties to drop it from
Oh, my God
to merely appalling.
Of the three aunties she had available out west, Auntie Gwen had suggested they switch it to bio diesel, Auntie Carmen had sighed damply, and Auntie Bea had said,
“If you choose to ride in that death trap, Charlotte Marie Gale, rather than Walk the Wood as any sensible person with the ability would choose to do, do not assume we will ride to the rescue after the inevitable fiery crash.”
The aunties were big believers in
you made your bed, you crash and burn in it
.
And, while Charlie was one of the family’s rare Wild Powers, it wasn’t as if she could take the whole band through the Wood. Of course she’d thought about it, even worked out the charms she’d need to handle the remaining iron in the bus, but had balked, in the end, at explanations. They were a country band; beer and Jack did not set the stage for the truly inexplicable.
“They told me this road was only busy on Thursday nights,” Donna muttered as half a dozen tanker trucks roaring north on 63 nearly sucked the bus over to the wrong side of the two lane highway. “They needed to define
busy
.”
Sitting in the first seat back—Board of Education back-cracker seating having been replaced by the bench from a wrecked Aerostar—Charlie picked out a complex pattern nearly at the top of her fretboard and said, “Yeah, well, what do
they
know.”
“Excellent point. What’re you playing? It sounds familiar.”
What was she playing? She had to pick out another four bars before she recognized it. “‘One.’ It’s
Metallica
.”
“I know it. I hold my breath as I wish for death. Oh, please, God, wake me.” Donna met Charlie’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and grinned. “Trapped in a broken body, begging for release. And I thought country music was depressing. Problems, chica?”
“No, everything’s good. It’s just where my fingers fell.” Because everything was great. The band was getting some solid recognition, their EPs selling well enough that Tony was talking about them taking it full time and touring outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan. More Gales were moving west to Calgary and, as much as she enjoyed staying with Allie and Graham, Charlie’d been thinking of getting her own place. There’d been rumors that the apartment over the coffee shop next door to the Emporium would be available sometime in the fall and she couldn’t think of anything more perfect. She’d gain a little privacy while changing almost nothing about how she lived.
“Broken Wings?” Donna’s question jerked her out of her thoughts. Apparently, her fingers had moved on without her. “Chica, I wasn’t suggesting you
play
depressing country music. I mean, sure, there’s nothing like starting the day with a song about a woman trapped in a . . . Shit!” Swerving onto the shoulder, she somehow missed the car suddenly in their lane trying to pass an oil truck headed north.
Charlie hit a quick A minor 7th and managed to get all four wheels back on the pavement.
“Know any songs about assholes on the road?” Donna wondered after they’d spent a moment or two remembering how to breathe.
Charlie could feel a faint buzz under her skin. As though the adrenaline rush had plucked a string with its action set too low. “I know a few . . .”
Almost eight and a half hours and an uncounted number of assholes slowing them down later, they reached Edmonton. An hour after that, pulling out of a gas station onto highway 2 on the south side of the city, Charlie gripped the bus’ steering wheel and smiled. She could feel Calgary, feel the branch of the Gale family newly anchored there tugging at her. Anticipating home, she could almost ignore the lingering buzz.
“Fifty says I can make it to Tony’s place in less than three.”
Before anyone could point out that a legal speed would take closer to four hours, Jeff, the bass player, took her up on it.
Two hours and forty-seven minutes later, they unloaded the essentials off the bus in Tony’s driveway.
“If I hadn’t seen it,” Jeff muttered, handing over a twenty and three crumpled tens, “I wouldn’t have believed this hunk of junk could make a lateral move across four lanes of traffic at one twenty.”
“I didn’t think it could
do
one twenty,” Tony grunted, loading the last of his drum kit onto the bus’ old wheelchair lift. “All right . . .” He straightened and stretched, twisting the knots out of his back, damp streaks of darker gray staining his pale gray T-shirt. “ . . . since I’m pretty sure you lot are as sick of the sight of me as I am of you, let’s give it a couple of days, and say Tuesday evening for the debrief at Taylor’s place.”
Taylor waved a finger but allowed the offer of her apartment to stand.
Weighed down with two guitars, her mandolin, her banjo, and a duffel bag of dirty laundry, Charlie waved an entire hand and then staggered down the driveway to where one of the younger members of the family had left her car.
“Allie, it could easily be stupid o’clock in the morning when we get in.”
“Yeah, and they have these things called phones, you know. You could call when you’re close.”
Gale family phones began as the cheapest pay-as-you-go handset available, spent quality time with the aunties, and finished as free, reliable cell service—where reliable meant the aunties saw no reason to allow an absence of signal to interfere with their need to meddle. In the right liver-spotted hands, tech sat up and begged.
Charlie’d rolled her eyes in her cousin’s general direction.
“Or you could just have one of the kids drop my car off at Tony’s Sunday afternoon.”
Given that their younger cousins considered the car theirs while Charlie was touring, they’d gone with the second option.
Embracing the clichés of playing in a country band, she’d intended to buy a pickup, but safely transporting more than one instrument at a time turned out to be more important than a faux redneck image. Sitting behind the wheel, everything securely stowed, Charlie sighed and glanced up at her reflection in the rearview mirror. “I have a station wagon.”
Her reflection wisely did not point out that the amount of crap she’d accumulated required a station wagon.
She used to store her extra instruments at her parent’s place, dropping by to grab what she needed when she needed it.
She used to travel with her six string and a clean pair of underwear stuffed into a pocket on her gig bag. Some days, the underwear had been optional. The roads she used to take had no traffic, no GPS location . . .
“No idiot driving like a gibbon with hemorrhoids!” she snarled, finally managing to get around the SUV driving 10K under the limit while hugging the center line.
No Gale ever said
driving like an old lady
. Old ladies in the Gale family drove like they owned the roads. And the other drivers. And the local police department. And the laws of physics.
Roaring up the ramp onto Deerfoot, Charlie felt the city tuck itself around her. It was nice. There was nothing wrong with nice.
Glancing over at Nosehill Park, she searched the curve of the hill for the silhouette of a ten point stag. Even passing at 110K, she could feel the power radiating from both the ancient and current ritual sites, but there was no sign of David. It wasn’t like she’d
expected
to see him. He’d been spending more time on two feet lately and, for all she knew, he’d headed into town for a beer.
With the change under control, he’d been talking about finding some consulting work. Everyone felt a job would help him regain the scattered pieces of his Humanity where everyone, for the most part, meant Allie, who still felt irrationally guilty about her part in her brother’s transformation into the family’s anchor to this part of the world. Charlie figured it had been a fair trade for saving said world, but David wasn’t
her
brother and Allie . . . Well, Charlie loved her, but Allie had a habit of holding on just a little too tight.
Three weeks ago, just after the Midsummer ritual and before the band had left on this latest mini tour, Charlie’d spent some time with David in the park and he’d seemed fine to her. He’d been managing weekly dinners with Allie and Graham at the apartment over the Emporium, with Katie at Graham’s old condo, and with Roland and Rayne and Lucy at Jonathon Samuel Gale’s old house in Upper Mount Royal.
Plus variable members of the family
being a given in each case. Over the last year, three sets of Gales—couples of Charlie’s generation—had transferred from the Toronto area to equivalent jobs in Calgary, and bought houses next to each other on Macewan Glen Drive. It wouldn’t be like it had been back in Darsden East when Charlie was growing up, when the Gale girls had run the schools from kindergarten to college, but it was a start.
Gale boys were too rare to be allowed out alone, but they couldn’t run a ritual without at least one in the third circle, so Cameron, now heading into his second year at the University of Alberta, had been sent west with six of the girls on his list, carefully picked by the aunties to be distant enough cousins to eventually cross to second circle with him. Charlie hadn’t bothered keeping track of the girl cousins who’d come and gone and returned and reconsidered. Cameron’s list, Roland’s list, David’s list—Gale girls flocked around Gale boys like bees around flowers.
Fortunately, only three aunties were required for a first circle. Although nine short of a full circle, three were enough to keep things going, particularly when backed by Allie’s second circle
why yes, I can do scary things
level of power. After that whole saving the world thing, Auntie Bea and Roland’s grandmother, Auntie Carmen had gone back to Ontario only long enough to pack up the essentials and have an extended meeting behind closed doors with Auntie Jane. No one could tell Charlie what had been said, but no one doubted Auntie Bea and Auntie Carmen were Auntie Jane’s eyes on the ground.
When they’d returned to Calgary, they’d been the first to buy property on Macewan Glen Drive as two of the twenty-five houses overlooking the park had gone on the market the moment they’d made it clear they were interested. They currently lived together in the smaller of the two and rented the other to Cameron and the girls. Cameron had the basement apartment and got in a lot of practice recharming the lock on his door.
Auntie Gwen remained in the apartment over the Emporium’s garage, refusing to share her leprechaun.
Charlie’d spent most of the time she wasn’t with the band helping the family get settled in and agreeing, as graciously as she could, to retrieve treasures forgotten in Ontario.
The buzz returned, running across her shoulders. She nearly spun out on the off ramp trying to scratch the itch it left behind.
At nine thirty on a Sunday night, 9th Avenue was empty enough that Charlie could make the left turn onto 13th Street without pausing. She parked in the alley behind the Emporium, noted what looked like a new scorch mark on the wooden siding, grabbed her guitar, charmed open the small garage door, and squeezed through to the inner courtyard. Extending the space to put Graham’s truck and Allie’s car under cover without collapsing the loft upstairs had required impressive charm work.
Charlie couldn’t have done it.
But then Charlie
wouldn’t
have done about eighty percent of what Allie’d been up to lately even if she could have. Second circle, Allie’s circle, was by definition appallingly domestic and Charlie considered showing up in time for dinner to be quite domestic enough, thanks very much.
Not that there was something wrong in always showing up at the same place for dinner; Allie was one hell of a cook. All the Gale girls could cook—Charlie herself being the exception that proved the rule. Her sisters claimed that Charlie’s single attempt at lemon meringue pie still gave them citrus-themed nightmares. The grass never had grown back.