“I don’t . . .”
“Think it over, that’s all I’m asking. Okay, that’s not all I’m asking, I’m totally asking you to ditch the band you’re with for us, but you don’t have to tell me right away. What time is it there?”
She stopped running a die-cast tractor along the edge of the shelf and checked her watch. “Almost ten.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Calgary.”
“Why? Never mind. Look, get back to me by four, four oh five, four ten maybe your time and we can figure out the best place for us to hook up. We’re in Cape Breton, but you’ll fly into Halifax, right?”
“Mark, I don’t . . .” He’d hung up.
Allie was perched on a stool behind the glass counter, the yoyo ledger open in front of her, when Charlie emerged from between the shelves. “So?”
“So Mark’s guitarist lost two fingers to a seal, and he wants me to head east and finish the festival season with him.”
“Seals bite?”
“Apparently.” Charlie waited while Allie recorded the latest sale, put the ledger away, and straightened.
“Your hair’s blonde.”
Okay, not what she’d expected. “What?”
“Your hair . . .” Allie gestured at the top of Charlie’s head. “ . . . is blonde. It was blonde when you woke up this morning.”
“It was turquoise when I went to sleep,” Charlie muttered pulling an orange plastic hand mirror off a shelf. One of those trick Halloween mirrors, it substituted a skull for her face, but the hair above the empty sockets was definitely her natural ash blonde.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Allie’s tone made the question almost more of a statement.
Cape Breton seals in Fort McMurray. Then on the news in the coffee shop. Then eating Aston’s fingers. That was three.
Meet me in Halifax and we’ll talk.
Okay, four.
The last thing we need is a Wild Power playing at being domestic.
Fine, five. But who was counting.
The buzz under her skin made it hard to stand still.
“Yeah, I’m leaving.”
And the buzz stopped.
Oh, really?
she thought, putting the mirror facedown on the shelf.
Subtle much?
The thing was,
Dun Good
had only made it as far as it had because of Charlie. It wasn’t ego and it wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose, but sometimes she wasn’t as careful as she could’ve been with the music. Charm a set of broad shoulders here, a rounded cleavage there, don’t stay on top of the way it’s spreading and, well, it was no surprise people loved the band.
Literally.
Without her, things wouldn’t go as well.
Not ego. Fact.
All right, fine; a little ego.
She didn’t owe the other members of
Dun Good
anything. They weren’t family. But they
had
been together for over a year, and breaking up via text seemed like a bad high school cliché, so Tuesday evening found Charlie at Taylor and Donna’s one-bedroom basement apartment, guitar slung on her back, fully aware she might have to charm the lot of them if things got ugly.
Noise spilled out through the open door. Charlie’d arrived last by intent. She stepped over a grubby gray backpack, moved down the short hall to the living room, and saw a natural redhead she didn’t recognize. Strange. The apartment was so small, even Donna usually vacated the premises when the band met there.
“Charlie!”
“Tony!”
Tony grinned a little too broadly. “This is Kristie!”
Charlie nodded at Kristie and glanced around the room. Taylor stood in the doorway to the kitchen, arms crossed. Jeff straddled a chair over by the television. They were both watching Tony. The redhead, Kristie, gave a little wave.
“You replaced Kristie, you know when you started, last um . . .” Tony’s voice trailed off, then his smile broadened back out again. “She had a baby! Uh, anyway, she was thinking of coming back and well, me and Jeff have known her since high school and . . .”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I know this is . . .”
Charlie raised a hand and cut him off again. “I’m talking to the universe, Tony. But thanks for playing.”
Allie twisted the end of her braid around her finger, perilously close to pouting. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I’ve left before,” Charlie reminded her, checking to make sure she’d put a couple pairs of underwear in the outside pocket of her gig bag.
“Sure, a week or two touring with the band . . .”
“Before that.”
“That was before this.” Her gestured somehow seemed to take in the entire city of Calgary. “This is the first time after this. And the first time since this when I don’t know when you’ll be back.”
It took Charlie a moment to parse that. Since Calgary, she’d toured on a schedule, out and back like an Emporium yoyo. This trip, no string. She wanted to say,
I always come back to you,
but the words got stuck, so she wrapped a hand around the back of Allie’s head, pulled her in close, and kissed her instead.
“Yeah.” Allie’s smile looked bittersweet as they pulled apart. “That’s what I thought. Are you going to talk to Gran?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m feeling manipulated enough.”
“It hardly counts as wild when the whole universe is telling you to hit the road,” Graham muttered. His arms were crossed and his brows drawn in, but odds were he was reacting to Allie’s mood not Charlie’s imminent departure.
“That’s what I’m saying.” Charlie moved in close, waited pointedly until he unfolded his arms, then kissed him, too, tracing a quick charm on the damp skin behind his ear for Allie to find later. “You’ll have to be the man of the house while I’m gone,” she said, as she stepped away. “Think you’re up to it?”
“At the moment, I can’t think why I let you hang around.”
Charlie grinned. “Takes a village to raise a dragon. And speaking of . . .”
“He won’t come out of his room.” Allie half turned toward Jack’s door.
“Then I’ll just have to go to him.”
“He slammed the door and a power grid went up.”
“Sorcery?”
“You think? He knows he’s not supposed to do sorcery in the apartment.”
“He was angry. He probably didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You’re always making excuses for him.” Allie tossed her braid behind her shoulder. “He won’t let you in.”
“He won’t let
you
in,” Charlie corrected, crossing the living room. So what if she occasionally made excuses for Jack; she knew what it was to be the odd Gale out.
The power grid flashed gold when she knocked. Charlie leaned in as close as she could without getting singed and said quietly, “Open the door, or I tell Allie about . . .”
The grid vanished, the door swung open, and a voice muttered out of the smoke, “I never thought you were a snitch.”
“Dude, empty threat. If it happened in Calgary, Allie knows about it.” She slipped in as the door closed again, waving a hand in front of her face. The temperature was in the high thirties, making the sulfur smell stronger than usual—could be dragon, could be teenage boy. Impossible to tell for certain. “What do you have against open windows?”
“Stupid neighbors keep calling the fire department.”
“All right, one last freebie before I go.” Right hand on the outside wall, Charlie came farther into the room, only tripping twice over the debris on the floor before she found the window. “Back in the day,” she grunted, forcing the casement up, “there was a time or two I didn’t want my parents to know what I had going on.” Pressing only enough to lightly etch the weave, she dragged the edge of her thumbnail over the exposed screen. “This will filter everything coming out of your room. No visible smoke. No . . . uh, nosable smell.”
“Nosable?”
“Shut up, I’m doing you a favor.”
“You’re leaving.”
The smoke had already started to clear. When Charlie turned, she could see Jack sprawled on his bed, wearing a pair of shorts and an award-winning sulky expression. “Yeah, I’m leaving. So?”
“So, nothing.” He scratched at the gold scales scattered over his chest and stomach. “Go ahead. Leave.”
“They have these things called phones in this world.” Jack wouldn’t get his family phone until fifteen, but even considering Canada’s crappy cell coverage, there were other options. “You want me, call me.”
“Why would I want you?”
She kicked a pair of enormous, glossy, red board shoes to one side and leaned against his dresser. “Maybe because you can’t stand how uncool it is around here without me.”
“You’re in a country band.” He balled up a dirty sock and threw it at the poster of
Inner Surge
taped to the back of his door. “That’s not cool. And cool’s not cool, it’s sick.”
“Okay, point one, not in a country band anymore; I’m in an alt Celtic band.”
“Wow. So much better.” Teenagers did sarcasm almost as well as the aunties.
“And two, what’s really up with you?”
Jack threw another sock. After a long moment he sighed, a gust of smoke wafting toward the open window. “I’m trying really hard to be what they want me to be.”
“Allie and Graham?”
“Them, too.” Another sock. “There’s too many stupid choices here. You’re the only one who gets that.”
“Thanks. I think. For what it’s worth, being fourteen is all about making stupid choices.”
“Not for me.”
“Are you lying on your dirty laundry?” Charlie asked as another sock hit the poster.
He turned to glare at her. “What if I am?”
“Then you’re doing better at being a fourteen-year-old boy than you think. Look . . .” She crossed the room, shoved his leg out of the way, and sat on the edge of the bed. “. . . Allie’s not going to send you back if you don’t want to go, no matter what you do.” The bed quivered as he stiffened. Bingo. “She fought the aunties for you. She sends you back, she’s lost the fight.”
Those were the kind of power dynamics Jack understood. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully, showing a glimmer of gold.
“Don’t waste energy worrying about Allie, just concentrate on finding who you are here. And that advice was so tree-of-life tote bag, I think I’m going to hurl.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I didn’t want to say.”
“I promise I’ll keep trying to come up with something more interesting for you to do than working Graham’s skeezy newspaper.”
A pair of underwear hit the poster and slid to the floor. “Push pins melt.”
“Good to know. Remember, I’m only a call or text away because I’m so totally sick you’re going to miss me like crazy.” She closed her hand around his knee. The skin under her fingers was just on the edge of scorching. “Pretty much the way I’m going to miss you.”
He had enough white showing around the gold to make the eye roll obvious. “You won’t miss . . .”
“Call me a liar again, and I
will
use the charm of disgusting backney I created for my sisters.”
“Gross.”
“Exactly.” She shook his leg. “We good?”
“I guess,” he admitted reluctantly. He stood when she did, kicking a stack of old comics under the bed.
“If those are Graham’s, I’d be a little more careful. He doesn’t carry them anymore, but he didn’t actually get rid of his weapons. Now, come’re.” Dragging Jack into a hug, she found his skin had cooled to as close to Human body temperature as it got. Always a good sign.
“If you just drew a charm on my back, I’m telling Auntie Gwen who ate that rhubarb pie,” he snarled, jerking away.
“You shared it.”
“You cut it. And I’m just a kid, remember? You led me astray.”
“That’s part of my job.” Reaching behind her for the doorknob, she sobered. “Be careful with the sorcery. I know it usually just happens,” she cut off his protest. “But that’s part of the problem. The aunties think you have no control.”
“Yeah, but they don’t want me to do it on purpose or practice.” Jack scratched at the old crescent scar on his cheek. It looked like a hockey scar but had probably been a near miss by one of his uncles. “They say practicing accumulates power. They can’t have it both ways.”
“How long have you been here?The aunties have it any way they want it.” She opened the door about two centimeters then closed it again. “Keep an eye on Allie for me, would you? Graham’s cool, but he’s not blood.”
Her reflection in the mirror was so close to how she actually looked—jeans, sneakers, tank, gray eyes, short blonde hair, three gold rings in her left ear, one in the right—that it took her a moment to find the changes. Change. Probably.