The Enchantment Emporium (Gale Women #1) - Page 13

The grass across the top of the hill burned first, a circle of black spreading behind a ring of gold. Then the trees ignited with a roar, towers of flame enclosing the summit. The world burned too fast after that for Allie to see the individual pyres. Cars exploded, the slam of sound devolving to gentle popping as the fire spread.

Here and there, amidst the crackle of cooking fat, she saw faces.

Charlie. Graham. Kenny in the coffee shop. Her mother. Her father. Roland's daughter Lyla. Dr. Yan. The aunties burned last, but even they burned, falling out of the sky trailing tails of black smoke like particularly dirty comets.

Then, when enough of the world had been remade, Jack's mother rose from the center of the circle where the flames had died to glowing embers. Thunder boomed when she spread gleaming white wings and two of her brothers, tiny against her bulk, tumbled broken from the sky. Scimitar claws extended, she gouged great gashes in the blackened, pitted rock, and roared.

And roared.

And roared.

Left hand groping for something to hold and finding only an empty bed, Allie stared up into the darkness and listened to the sound of her family moving out in the next room, to the sound of the city waking beyond the walls of the apartment, to the sound of claws on rock coming closer.

And closer.

Heat lingered in the hollows next to her so Graham couldn't have been gone long. Clock said 6:47, so she hoped he hadn't been gone long. If he was that much of a morning person, there were going to have to be significant adjustments made.

If they…

Although she was fairly certain at this point it wasn't so much if as when. Not that it mattered, she wasn't going to scare him away, not again. He could choose when he was good and ready to choose and not a moment before. Here and now, it was enough to know he was…

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Wasn't.

She could feel her connection to Michael. To Charlie. But it was like Graham had suddenly ceased to exist.

"I sent him for shortening, Allie, that's all." Auntie Kay reached out a comforting hand, reconsidered, and tucked it back in her apron pocket. "He just went down to the store. He'll be back any minute."

"No." Clutching Graham's jacket closed, Allie shook her head. "I can't feel him. I can barely feel the city and I can't feel him. One minute, everything was fine, the next I'm holding the end of a broken rope!"

"He ran once before."

Pivoting on one bare heel, she whipped around toward Roland, but Michael slid into her line of sight, hands raised, voice gentle. "Rol's right, Allie-cat. He did run once before, and you know the aunties can be a bit much for people. Even people who know them. No offense," he added hurriedly in Auntie Kay's direction.

"None taken, dear."

"You don't understand!" She cast herself out again. David. The aunties. Even the Dragon Lords circling high overhead. No Graham. "If he left the apartment around six twenty, he couldn't have gone far enough for me not to be able to feel him."

"Could you feel him the last time he ran?"

"Could I what?" Allie stared at Michael in astonishment. "No, of course not! I didn't try! What does that have to do with him now?"

"Maybe when he's with the sorcerer, you can't feel him. He might have run back to him this morning, Allie. I mean, he's been with this guy half his life. Hell, between the protecting and the paper, the guy is Graham's life. Maybe Graham woke up this morning, heat of the moment long past, and realized he couldn't just walk away."

"He had walked away." She was not going to cry.

"And you know this because?" Michael sighed and cupped one hand under her chin and lifted her head. "I hate to say this, but we both know you don't love exactly rationally."

"Who does!"

His thumb stroked her cheek. "You're a little further off the bubble than most."

"I'm a little…" She'd known him most of his life. He'd been the first boy she'd ever kissed. Thought he was the only boy she'd ever love. And she could see all those years together on his face. "I thought you didn't know."

"I'm not an idiot, Allie-cat."

If he'd known, and never said… "So you've been laughing?"

The fox eyes, widened. "Allie, I would never…"

"Patronizing me, then!" The force of the blow, although she didn't raise a hand against him-had never, would never-sent him flying over the closer of the sofa beds and slamming into the closed bathroom door.

"Yeah, so much for the not an idiot part," Charlie murmured, taking Allie's arm. "If Graham's with the ex-boss, he didn't go willingly. Come on. Into the bedroom, we'll put on some clothes, and we'll set up the search and rescue. Rol…"

"I'm calling."

"Michael…"

"Michael's fine. Joe'll pick him up, Auntie Kay'll slap a little arnica on the impact points, and he likely won't even bruise.

"I didn't mean to…"

"Yeah, you did." Charlie's grip moved her back into the bedroom. Twisting and trying to get to Michael only gained her a sore arm. "Oh, no. Until you've actually got your brain booted up and working, you're staying away from the noncombatants. Also, next time I tell you to handcuff your boy to the bed, you should listen to me."

"You didn't tell me to handcuff him to the bed."

"I didn't? Damn, I meant to."

"He asked if we were Human," Allie said softly as she sank down onto the end of the mattress. "He's been taught to hate everything that isn't Human. If it's not Human, it's nothing. It's…" She made the shape of gun with her right hand and pulled the trigger.

Charlie stopped rummaging in her drawers, turned to face her. "So you're half afraid he did fuck off?"

Allie nodded.

"Well, he didn't." A pair of clean underwear smacked Allie in the face. "And if you weren't bent on acting like a bad romance heroine, you'd know the thing between you is real and there's no fucking way he'd walk."

"Eaten!"

"By underwear?"

Which was when Allie realized she was staring at a burgundy cotton string bikini. "I forgot about the Dragon Lords! They could have eaten him."

Charlie sighed and crossed the room to crouch at Allie's feet. "Okay, one, they didn't eat him before when the aunties were just a threat, so they're sure as shit not going to eat him now when we're overrun with aunties available for immediate retribution. Two, remember how Aunt Judy reacted when Uncle Roger died?"

"I remember." The pain had drawn Allie home from Toronto and other members of the family home from farther still. The second circle had disappeared into Aunt Judy's house for five days. First and third had baked a lot of pie.

"You'd know if Graham was dead and eaten, well, that's pretty fucking dead. Now…" Charlie straightened. "Get dressed. Actually, answer your phone first." She scooped Allie's messenger bag off the chair and threw it at her.

"It's probably Auntie Jane," Allie muttered, digging through accumulated junk for her phone. Charlie had made her feel both better and worse. Better because it was hard to doubt Charlie's certainty and worse because she should have been just as certain. When she thought of tomorrow, Graham was there. When she thought of thirty years down the road, Graham was there, too. It was just today she was having a little trouble with. "I'm not sure I'm up to Auntie Jane right… oh, it's David."

"So, how is my nephew?" Adam wore a burgundy suit Allie was pretty sure she'd last seen Timothy Hutton wear playing Archie Goodwin for A&E. And, nothing against Timothy Hutton who she thought was getting even more attractive as he got older, but, on Adam, the suit was smoking.

Literally.

Allie stopped a careful distance away, one hand resting on Graham's truck. He wouldn't have left without his truck. Not willingly. The contact helped her ignore the remaining doubt. "Jack's fine."

The dark eyes glittered as his gaze dipped off her face for a moment. "In the bosom of his family, is he?"

She had just a little too much on her plate this morning to react to a hypersexual, shape-shifting lizard looking at her breasts. "You knew?"

The shrug was equal parts sinuous and unconcerned. "The scent of the blood is unmistakable."

"So the family business you didn't want us involved in turns out to be my family's business as well."

"I never said it wasn't." His tone dared her to challenge him on that, but she honestly didn't care enough to bother. "You must admit, it would have been much simpler for all concerned had you not become involved."

"Simpler for everyone but Jack."

"Death is not particularly complex, Alysha Gale."

Her thumbnail cutting through the dirt, she sketched a charm on the truck. "Why are you here, Adam?"

He glanced around the alley. "The store was not open; we needed to talk."

"Why?"

"I saw the man who wears your mark, taken."

Adam's smile let her know he'd heard her heart speed up. "Taken?"

"I saw him walking back to you. I saw him stop walking. I saw him disappear into a nothing in the road."

"A nothing?" The hand not on the truck held her phone, her thumb on the speed dial that would connect her with her brother. If Adam was messing with her, she was going to give David a way to work out more of the energy he still held with a little head butting. "What's a nothing?"

"A lack of something, Gale girl. There he was." Adam spread long-fingered hands. "There he wasn't."

"Did he go willingly?"

"Away from you? How could he?" His smile was heated but when Allie narrowed her eyes, it cooled. "In all honesty, I saw no coercion, but there are bonds even I cannot see."

A nothing in the road.

"The sorcerer."

"So I suspected."

"He's in his car. He's hidden it, the way he hid the office from you. It's a secondary bolt-hole-a way for him to escape, except he won't run while Jack can lead your sister to him."

"He couldn't go far enough unless he left this world entirely. For some world other than mine, of course," the Dragon Lord amended. "As that would certainly not solve his problem."

His problem. Allie appreciated the understatement. "He's grabbed Graham because Graham's still his best bet to take out Jack…" Lifting her hand off the truck, she closed her fingers around the bullet in the breast pocket of Graham's jacket. "… except we're not likely to put Jack anywhere he can get to him unless he thinks we'll just let Graham back in, which we would, because Gran's wards would strip a geis, so…"

"Gale girl!" His tone snapped her out of reflection. "As fascinating as time spent in your company is, if you cannot tell me how to find this nothing, I will return to the sky."

"I can't. But if the aunties can," she added hurriedly, "how do I contact you?"

"If you cannot contact me, Gale girl, I doubt you have anything to say I need to hear." He stepped back, and Allie knew the fire was a heartbeat away.

"Adam!" When he didn't begin to burn, she took a deep breath. "Just whose side are you on?"

Sulfur overwhelmed the alley's scent of old garbage, cat piss, and car exhaust as he sighed, the heat dialed back to a level she thought she could endure. "If my sister comes to this world," he said wearily, "we are bound to protect her. To serve her. I am fond of this place and there are many parts of it I do not wish to see destroyed." He twitched a nonexistent wrinkle from his suit jacket. "But mostly, I am fond of it because it has been a refuge. Here, I am not in my sister's service. I am on my side, Gale girl." His smile held multiple points. "But I suspect you knew that."

"You're probably right about the car," Auntie Jane said thoughtfully. "He'd want a way to run."

"Except if he thought he was going to be running instead of hanging about the city, he may need to keep moving to stay undetectable," Auntie Bea added.

Auntie Christie set a shallow bowl of water on one end of the dining room table. "He'll have to stop for gas, and when he does, I'll find him."

"In that?" Auntie Meredith snorted, staring into the screen of her phone.

Allie thought Auntie Christie's smile looked a bit like Adam's. "At least I don't have to scry through incoming calls."

She moved closer to Auntie Jane as the other two continued bickering. "Graham didn't go willingly."

"Of course he didn't. Stupid boy probably participated in blood magic at some point over the last thirteen years. That sort of nonsense creates ties that aren't easy to break and Jonathon Samuel is powerful enough to use them."

Allie held out the bullet. "His blood's part of this."

"So is Jonathon Samuel's." Auntie Jane snickered as she rolled it across her palm. "He's not going to be pleased he didn't get this back," she said returning it. "But it proves my point.Young men are idiots."

"He didn't know any better."

"Then you'll have a lot to teach him, won't you?"

"If…"

"When, Alysha Catherine." Strong fingers pinched her chin. "When."

"Allie, why do I have to be up?" Yawning and scratching, Jack slouched across the room and glared at her. "It's still stupid o'clock in the morning."

"If you can sleep through this…" she waved a hand at the baking and the scrying and whatever the hell Katie was doing to Charlie's hair. "… go back to bed."

"Thanks, Al.You totally don't suck."

"What?" she asked as Auntie Jane snorted disapprovingly. "It still is stupid o'clock in the morning."

Kalynchuk took a long swallow of coffee and gunned the SUV through a yellow light. "I am living in my car," he snarled, tossing the empty cup into the backseat. "Me. In my car. Like a transient. Like a mere mortal. Like I am not the only man of power to master the Dragon Queen!"

"Hiding from a group of old women who can destroy you with a word," Graham reminded him. His shoulder ached from where he'd been slamming it against the door.

"Please, they're the least of my concerns."

"You never told me you were a Gale."

"There's a great many things I never told you." He took his eyes off the road long enough to sneer in Graham's direction. "We were not friends."

"No shit." Major fail on emotional pain if that had been the intent. "Did you kill my family?"

"Did I what?" That drew his attention off the road so completely the car wandered off with it.

"Simple question." Graham reached over and jerked the wheel to the left to avoid impact with a parked car. Given the whole invisible thing, Kalynchuk had taken them onto quiet, empty, residential roads, but that didn't mean there weren't dangers. He realized too late impact could have given him a chance to get away.

From his smug expression as he regained control of the vehicle, Kalynchuk realized it, too. "Your family died years ago. Why do you care?"

"Why do I care?" Fingernails dug half moons into his palms as he stopped himself from taking another futile swing at the son-of-a-bitch. "For fucksake, they were my family!"

"It's been thirteen years, and you never asked me.You don't think that's interesting? You made a living asking questions, and you never asked me that. It's like you knew that if they'd lived you'd still be stuck in that back-woods pitiful excuse of a life. I saved you, and you know it."

"I'd always thought it." Although, here and now, he didn't know how he could have. He'd worked for Kalynchuk for half his life, had started out overwhelmed and honored to think an orphaned boy from Blanc-Sablon would be trusted to guard so important a man, had ended up thinking his life had a greater meaning than some office drone with no idea of how much larger the world actually was. Start to finish, he'd been an idiot. "The whole sex with a dragon thing? That proves your mastery of fire pretty definitively. Your enthusiasm for killing your son proves you're a heartless fuck."

"My son," the sorcerer snorted. "I was willing to have you kill him, which is, I admit, merely a difference of degree.You don't seem to understand that the creature is more dangerous to me than those old women are."

"And you've lost your chance."

"I didn't lose it!" The force of the words sprayed saliva over the windshield as he turned down another empty suburban street. "You took it from me."

"Damned right." Graham didn't bother hiding his triumph. "They'll never let you near him. And they won't let me near him if there's a chance I'm under your control."

"Fortunately, I don't care what they want or they intend. However, in case we can't remove him, his mother will be at least as disoriented upon arrival as he was-perhaps more, given that she has no connection to this world except through him-that's when the old women will do whatever it is they plan to do. They'll fail-they have no idea of how strong she is-but that failure should further distract her. I controlled her once, I can do it again. If I can get her into skin, you can kill her with Blessed rounds. A lot of them, admittedly, but it can be done."

"Should have thought of that before you grabbed me." He spread his hands. "No weapon."

"Not your favorite, perhaps, but I stopped by your condo and picked up your other M24."

The thought of Kalynchuk knowing how to find his very well hidden weapons cache made his skin crawl. "I won't use it."

"Stop being so stupidly squeamish. She's not Human."

"Are you Human?"

"That doesn't matter." Maybe he said it to Allie. Maybe to Kalynchuk, he wasn't sure.

"You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?"

"If she's not Human," Graham growled. "Neither are you."

"She's a Dragon Queen, you… Oh." The near side of Kalynchuk's mouth curved up into a derisive smile. "You're talking about Alysha. What did the little bitch tell you? That we're descended from some magical mating between a woman and the Horned God? Could be true. Could be total bullshit. What you need to remember here and now is that the creature's mother will kill you when she kills me."Years of questioning unreliable witnesses slid Graham past the sudden change of topic. "Kill you, me, half of the city, most likely. She's not exactly precise when she's in a temper. And then she'll hunt, because she'll have worked up an appetite, and more people will die. The Gale girl. The old women."

"Or they'll win."

"Unlikely."

"I'll take that chance."

"No," Kalynchuk sighed, turning on the windshield wipers as it started to rain, "you won't because in the end you will do what I tell you to do. Just like you always have."

"Fuck you."

"Touch your nose with your right thumb."

Graham fought the impulse, but his right arm rose like a puppeteer held the string. He could feel a trickle of sweat run down his side, but he could also feel his thumb against his nose. Then his body was his own again and he threw himself across the seats only to be slammed back, his head impacting with the window. The pain was strangely cleansing.

"Do your seat belt up.You may obey me now for more easy-to-understand reasons than you did," he continued as Graham did as he was told, "in that now you have no choice-but you will continue to obey. Don't worry, after it's over, I'll skip out on watching the old women swatted out of the sky by the Dragon Lords, and for all I care, you can return to your one true love. Have they told you the men choose? Also bullshit. Choose the decoration of your cage. Choose the length of your leash." His knuckles whitened as the steering wheel creaked under his grip. "Choose whose hands hold the end of that leash, but never for a moment think you can choose to be free."

"They say you chose to kill eight members of your family." Freedom being just another word for mass slaughter. "Is that true?"

"It was them, or me. All power corrupts." The laugh lifted the hair off the back of Graham's neck. "Hypocritical fucking cows."

"Jack's bored."

Glancing up at Charlie leaning against the end of the counter, Allie sighed. "I thought you were teaching him to play World of Warcraft?"

"He's a little aggressive, where a little means he went completely fucking nuts. Although, to be fair, the flamethrower was a bad idea. What are you doing?"

Allie waved the dimpled metal cap covering the tip of her baby finger. "Entering this basket of thimbles into the database."

"Each individual thimble?"

"They're for sale separately, so, yeah."

Charlie slid one on, and then another, and then another until all eight fingertips were armored. "Give a thimble for luck, use a thimble to predict a death, we beg your acceptance of this elegant thimble, the dodo said solemnly." She rattled them off back into the basket. "And no, anal retentive does not have a hyphen."

"Cataloging helps me not think."

"Didn't cataloging used to be your job? I mean, I'm all in favor of a job that requires no thought but you ever think that might be why you were let go?"

"Bite me." Allie pulled a pale blue Wedgwood thimble, slightly chipped, out of the basket as Charlie sprawled over the counter. "It helps me not think of anything but cataloging, okay? When I think about her, I can feel the fire."

"That'd suck," Charlie allowed. "Let me give you something new to think about, then. Where's Joe?"

"In the bathroom." She frowned at a Thimble Collector's International twentieth anniversary thimble. Definitely commemorative, but was it collectible to anyone outside the club? "Does this look like actual silver to you?"

"Don't know, don't care. What do you figure Joe's doing?"

"Charlie!"

"Got you, it's a trick question. I should have asked, who do you figure Joe's doing?"

Allie turned slowly to face the back of the store. "Please tell me it's Katie."

"Nope. Now, where do you think Auntie Gwen is?"

"With the rest of the circle at the spa?"

Charlie's brows went up.

"Oh, no…" Allie moved out from behind the counter but before she could get any further, Charlie grabbed her arm.

"He's Fey. He'll be fine. He only looks like a kid."

That was true as far as it went. Joe'd told her the Call commanding his return to the UnderRealm had probably been a result of the Human half of the changeling bond dying of old age. That was also completely irrelevant as far as Allie was concerned. "He's my responsibility."

"Why? You're not banging him."

There was that.

"Not banging who?" Michael asked.

They turned together.

Charlie released Allie's arm and stepped away. "I'll just go over here," she said, walking to one of the center tables, "and poke through this box of… Okay, don't care about power cables. Have plenty." Both hands in the air, she continued backing down the aisle. "Maybe I'll look at the books."

Allie looked up at Michael, who brushed his hair back off his face, blush rising under his tan. "I could have really hurt you."

He shrugged. "You didn't."

"I could have." And then she realized he couldn't possibly hear her since he was also talking.

Apologies spilled out simultaneously, tangling in each other until he held up both hands and managed to slide "Me first" into a pause.

She owed him that much. "Okay."

Taking a deep breath, he dried his palms on the thighs of his jeans. "Allie, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

She waited but, bottom line, Michael was still a guy, and that was it. "Or maybe you should have said it years ago."

He shrugged. "How could you think I didn't know?"

"I was that obvious?"

"To the people who love you, yeah."

When he opened his arms, she hesitated a moment before moving into them. "Things are changing."

"Not us."

Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they already had. Maybe it didn't matter because she knew Michael would stand there, with his arms open, waiting for her to find him again. Barely aware of moving, she tucked herself up against the broad shelter of his chest, resting her head against his heart. "No matter what happens between me and Graham, I will always love you."

She felt his lips against the top of her head. "I know."

"How can you know?"

"Because no matter what happened with me and Brian…"

"And Peter and Joey and Steve and…"

"Shut up." He tightened his grip. "Because no matter what happened with me and Brian, I always loved you."

"Medic!" The plaid of Michael's shirt might be all Allie could see, but Charlie, for all her ability to project over a crowd, was definitely a lot closer than the bookshelves at the far end of the store. "My pancreas just shut down from the sugar overload. On the bright side, I've got two verses and a chorus finished. A couple more verses, a dead dog, and a banjo, and this is going to make 'em cry."

"I thought banjos did that all on their own," Allie snorted backing out of Michael's embrace. "I should really get back to…"

Burning!

Raging!

She didn't remember hitting the floor, but both knees were telling her she'd dropped like a brick. The hardwood smoked slightly against her palms. It felt as though her blood was on fire.

Under Michael's panicked reaction, she could hear boots on the stairs.

"Hey, Al! My mother's…" The boots skidded to a stop just inside her somewhat limited field of vision. "Oh, you heard."

"At least with the rain, there won't be too many people in the park." Allie came out of the bedroom buckling her belt. Clothes suitable for thimbles didn't cut it for a potential apocalypse. Too flammable, for starters. "Auntie Gwen…" She slid right past the reason Auntie Gwen had a purpling bite mark just under the edge of her jaw. "… you're driving the bus because Michael and Joe are staying here. I don't want noncombatants anywhere near this. Pick up the others at the hotel, and we'll meet you there."

"Don't forget to remind them about the police helicopters," David growled from his place by the door. Allie was just barely coping with having him that far inside the room. With only Auntie Gwen about, and her distracted, David's presence just added to the heat in her blood. "They've got to make sure the weather's bad enough to ground them."

"Good thing it's already raining," Auntie Gwen muttered. She glanced between Allie and her brother, gestured Katie and Roland into the space between them, kissed Joe-who to his credit kissed her back in spite of the audience-grabbed the keys off Michael's palm, and ran.

Joe flushed under the scrutiny, and while his hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his shoulders were square and his chin was up.

If it worked for him, it worked for Allie.

She shrugged back into Graham's jacket, wanting as much of him near her as possible. "This also stays here," she added, fishing the bullet from the front pocket. "Just to be on the safe side." The bullet rolled along the table until Katie put out a finger just before it rolled out of reach and stopped it. "And safer yet; Charlie, can you get Jack into the Wood?"

Charlie nodded. "Don't see why not. I got Ryan in.You don't want her to be able to use him as a focus?"

Not with Graham standing beside him. "I want her confused, at least for a minute or two."

"If my mother dies here…"

Allie looked down at Jack's thin fingers clutching her arm, and braced herself.

"… I get to help eat her."

Okay, that needed different bracing. She opened her mouth. Closed it again. Figured what the hell. "Sure."

"Awesome." Looking pleased, Jack gave her arm a little squeeze before he let it go. Allie could smell the fabric scorching.

"All right, the aunties may know what they're doing, but we're going to be making this up as we go along." She paused halfway to the door. Speaking of the aunties… "David?"

He nodded once, horn not quite visible but still very present. "Do what you have to, Allie, I'm stronger than you think. So are you."

Hands outstretched, their fingertips just barely touched, sending a frisson of want up her arm. She thought of Charlie wearing the thimbles, wondered if it would help. Without Graham right there to ground her, she didn't dare risk hugging him although she very much wanted to.

Eyes dark, Roland stepped between them. David would anchor the first circle, but Roland would anchor her. Today and, if they survived, every ritual where he was the only second circle male. Her father, not a Gale, had never been a part of ritual. Allie thought of explaining all that to Graham. Oh, fun.

Roland read the thought off her face. Or maybe from deeper in, all things considered. "Perhaps it's for the best Graham isn't here right now."

"Yeah." Her voice shook only a little. Little enough to ignore.