The Enchantment Emporium (Gale Women #1) - Page 4
"I mean, you've got to wonder, who'd ever buy one of these in the first place, right?" Graham was smiling as he slid open the back of the case. His fingers were actually over the monkey's paw when Allie grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand back.
"It's old," she said quickly, as his smile slipped. "I'm afraid it'll fall apart if it's handled."
"Sorry."
"It's okay. You couldn't have known." But it was interesting that he'd gone straight for the artifact. Was he testing to see if she knew what it was? She wondered what he'd have done if she hadn't stopped him. How would he have reacted when the severed paw squirmed in his grip? Not that it mattered because she'd have stopped him regardless. Allie had no idea who'd made those first two wishes, had no idea what they'd wished for, but she knew it had ended in horror and regret. It always ended in horror and regret. "If I had a choice, I'd lock it away out of sight."
"Don't you have a choice?" That was the reporter asking. Just a little too emphatic for a polite inquiry.
"I don't think my grandmother would like that much."
"Ah." When he nodded, Allie wasted a moment thinking about brushing his hair back off his face. Would it feel as silky sliding through her fingers as it looked? "She's coming back, then. Is she all right?"
The aunties' opinion aside, it seemed safest to stick to the party line. "She's dead."
His face blanked for a moment before sympathy took over, but she couldn't tell for certain if his reaction was to the news or the way she'd delivered it. "I didn't know." Not exactly the truth but his lies were better hidden than they had been. "It must've been sudden."
He said he'd been talking to her last week. "It was."
"Forgive me for saying this…" Head dipped slightly, he studied her through the shield of his lashes. "… but you don't seem too upset."
"I don't think I've really accepted it yet." And that, at least, had the benefit of being the absolute truth.
Outside the store, thunder rolled, gentled by distance, and while the rain continued to fall, it was now possible to actually see the other side of the street. The storm had moved east, heading for the prairies.
"Uh, Ms. Gale."
"Allie."
"Okay." He didn't step away from her smile this time. Good for him. "You're still holding my wrist."
Oh.
They were standing close enough that fabric touched-his open suit jacket brushing against her sweater. Close enough shared body heat had warmed the air between them.
His pulse beat strong and fast under her fingertips. A little faster than it should given it was the pulse of an apparently healthy young man just standing and dripping rainwater onto a hardwood floor. Allie suddenly realized she'd actually traced most of a charm onto the smooth skin of his inner wrist without thinking and swiped it clear as she released him, her fingers lingering just a moment longer than necessary. Gale girls took what they wanted…
Down at the other end of the counter, her phone rang. Long distance, but not one of the family rings.
"Are you going to get that?"
He expected her to say no. Which, to be fair, was her intention. She opened her mouth to say, let it ring. What she actually heard herself say was, "I'll just be a moment."
Telemarketers did not call Gale phones and she could count the number of non-family members who had the number on the fingers of one hand. When an anonymous voice asked if she'd accept a collect call from Charlie Gale, muscles she didn't remember tensing relaxed.
"Charlie?" Allie mouthed my cousin at Graham. "Did you lose your phone again?"
"I think I left it in Halifax."
"Left it? Where are you?"
" Brazil."
"What are you doing in Brazil?"
"I got pushed out of the Wood. Four times now."
"Shit." She turned, her back to the reporter, her body curled protectively around the phone as though she could send that protection through to Charlie. With her free hand, she traced a charm against the countertop, and her voice slid sideways, out of eavesdropping range. "By what?"
"I couldn't tell. Shadows." Charlie sighed, bone-deep weariness apparent in the sound. "Well, shadow, singular, probably… I think it was the same fucking thing every time."
"Are you all right?"
"I'm tired and I'm angry and I've puked up everything I've eaten for the last six years, but yeah, I'm all right. I'm just in Brazil. Rio. I think it's trying to keep me from you."
"What?"
"For fucksake, Allie, pay attention. I said, I think…"
"I heard you." Fear, not for herself but for Charlie, sharpened her tone. "That was an exclamation of surprise, not a request for you to repeat yourself. If you can't get to me, go home!"
"Oh, stupid me, not to think of that!"
She gentled her tone, pulled Charlie back from the edge. "You tried?"
"I tried. Every time I go in, fucking shadow bounces me out. Doesn't matter where I'm pointed."
"Then why do you think it has to do with me?"
"I just… I can hear your song in the way the Wood changes, okay? And yeah, I know that doesn't make sense to you, but it does to me, so be careful. Don't trust anyone outside the family. I'm on my way."
"How…?"
"They have these things called planes."
"Yeah, but they smell like ass and they make you check your guitar." Allie could hear Charlie smiling in the silence. "Have you got the cash to…?"
"Credit card. I'm on a flight that's boarding in about forty-five minutes. It's going to take a while, though." She could hear paper rustling and maybe, now she knew what to listen for, a distant security announcement. "It's Rio to San Paulo to O'Hare to Denver to Calgary. Thirty-six hours and fifty minutes. I'll get in about six thirty in the morning on Saturday if there's no delays… except that I'm going through O'Hare, so delays are fucking inevitable."
The layout of the runways at O'Hare meant that two or three times a day, planes heading east sketched a dark charm on the airport. Had the family needed to fly into Chicago with any regularity, they'd have done something about it. As it was, it was easier to just to avoid the city.
"Wait a minute, O'Hare to Denver to Calgary?" Allie mapped it out against the counter. "That's going back south before you go north."
"Beggars and choosers, babe.At least I'll get caught up on some sleep."
Charlie didn't have her phone; she'd have thirty-two hours and twenty minutes of peace and quiet. "You haven't called the aunties yet, have you?"
"Figured you should get a heads up first."
"You're too good to me."
"I know it."
"Charlie…"
Charlie's interruption was more of a snort than a snicker. "I'll be careful if you keep from doing anything stupid."
"Define stupid?"
"Bite me."
"Love you, too."
She pressed a kiss to the phone before she closed it and turned back to Graham. His brows rose, and questions about why he suddenly couldn't understand a word she'd said swam just under the surface of his expression. "Problem?"
"Unexpected travel screwup." She still needed to know what he knew, but she really didn't need the distraction of his eyes and his scent and his smile and his hands and all the lovely that cheap suit was covering while dealing with the inevitable calls from the aunties.
"Family member?"
Interesting phrasing.
"Cousin."
"In Brazil?"
"Yes." But that much he'd overheard. "She's a musician."
"I should go." He didn't want to, and he wasn't bothering to hide it. Easy enough to see that his desire to stay mostly had to do with wanting confirmation of whatever he thought was going on. With the store. With her grandmother. With a cousin in Brazil. She could almost see him drawing lines, connecting dots he thought he had. But that wasn't the part he let her see; she took a look at that all on her own. The part he let her see had more to do with her, personally, and she really wished she had the time to appreciate the sentiment.
"Yeah, you should go." Her fingers tightened around the phone. "It's going to get very… family around here soon."
Graham smiled at that, like he understood what she meant. He really didn't. He really couldn't, but she appreciated the thought and caught herself wondering about his family as he said, "I'd like to see you again. To talk about the store. For my article."
Nice save. She wondered why he felt he had to make it. He wasn't wearing a ring, but that didn't mean there wasn't a significant other attached. "How about coffee tomorrow?"
"Coffee's good."
"I'll see you around eleven, then."
"Great."
Graham hadn't expected to have quite so visceral a reaction to Alysha Gale. He stepped wide off the curb avoiding a puddle, ignored the shouted, Watch where the fuck you're going! from a passing truck, tried to stop thinking of her as everything he'd ever looked for in a woman-news to him he'd been looking-and tried to start thinking.
He could do this. He could do his job and keep it from getting personal.
If his watch was right, and the cheap piece of shit hadn't been ruined in the rain, it was only a little better than seventeen hours until he could talk to her again.
Lying flat on the roof, holding a directional microphone instead of his rifle, he watched Alysha Gale walk down 9th to the twenty-four hour convenience store at 11th Street. She'd headed out to shop almost immediately after she'd closed the store and received two phone calls on the way down the street-two liters of milk, a pound of butter, a dozen eggs, and three lemons-three calls on the way back. This particular microphone could pick up fly farts at three kilometers, but he had no doubt she could block it if she cared to.
Strangely, she didn't care to.
"I'm fine. Everything's fine. You know as much as I do. No, no sign of her. I'd rather you didn't, I can manage."
And around again. And again. Her end of the conversation barely changed there and back.
Maybe her lack of concern for eavesdroppers wasn't that strange after all.
The sound cut off when she reentered the store; before she'd disappeared, the old woman had put security in place even his boss couldn't crack. The boss had upped his own security the moment Catherine Gale showed up on the radar. Given the security he'd already put in place, that was saying something.
"She obviously doesn't know I'm here, and I'm fucking well going to keep it that way."
Given what he'd been told about the Gales, the youth of this newest family member to show up in the city had come as a bit of a surprise. Gale females of any age had the potential to be dangerous adversaries, but in the older women, all that potential had been realized and they were apparently borderline bugfuck besides. Was the girl a trap? Was her function to lull them into a false sense of security? Distract them while the others gathered?
He could wait here and hope she left the building again, or he could be more productive and have a few words with the changeling.
Six aunties, her mother, Charlie's mother, and two of Charlie's sisters later, Allie got the one call she wasn't expecting.
"Do I need to come out there?"
"David?"
"I'll be finished with the job I'm doing currently in seventy-two hours, but I can be there in forty-eight if you need me."
Phone trapped between ear and shoulder, Allie broke the third and final egg onto the third and final cup of flour. "To do what?"
"Mom says you're in trouble."
"Me? Charlie's the one who got bounced."
"Four times. Trying to get to you."
"It didn't matter where she was going."
"But she said it had to do with you."
"Nothing's happening here." As the ancient, upright mixer struggled to fold air into the thick batter, she glanced over at the window, opened her mouth to tell David about the shadow, and closed it again. She didn't need to bring big brother all the way to Calgary to chase shadows. "There's no sign of Gran, and I hired a leprechaun to work in the store."
"A leprechaun?"
"Yeah."
"Full-blood?"
"Changeling."
"The family doesn't mess with the Fey, Allie."
"I'm not messing with him." Hadn't even occurred to her actually, and that was a bit weird; he was cute in a scruffy sort of way. "He needed a job and, if I'm going to figure out what's going on, I needed part-time help."
"So you hired a leprechaun?"
"Let it go, David."
"What's a leprechaun doing in Calgary anyway?"
"He tells me that things are happening here." She hadn't been able to find a tube pan, but a bundt pan would do.
"I'll be there in forty-eight hours."
"Not those kind of things."
"You sure?"
And she convinced him that she was. For all his power, David was still a Gale boy, and they took Gale girls at face value. It was safer that way.
The traditional way to catch leprechauns was to sneak up behind them while they worked on their shoes. Count on them being particularly obsessed if they're whistling. People in his line of work who relied on folklore rather than more mundane skills tended to die young. Or wish they had.
He stared at Joe through the night vision goggles-the changeling had one foot up on the park bench, tunelessly whistling "Mime Abduction" as he struggled with a knot in one bootlace-thought about irony, and hit him with the Taser. The current theory among those in the know was that, as well as overwhelming the nervous system and causing temporary paralysis, a Taser could be used to disrupt the more exotic abilities of the Fey. He hadn't actually seen Joe use any of those exotic abilities, but the redundantly careful lived longer.
Cable ties were in place around grimy wrists before the paralysis wore off, even given the Fey's accelerated recovery time. Under the baggy clothes, the boy-Not a boy, he reminded himself-was surprisingly thin. Maybe he'd swapped bulk for height. Didn't matter. Facedown on the asphalt path, hands secured in the small of his back, a knee between his shoulder blades and the end of the silencer tucked under one pointed ear, Joe O'Hallan wasn't going anywhere.
"Blessed rounds," he growled as Joe tried to twist his head far enough to see his attacker. "Stay still."
The changeling froze, his muscles spasming as they finished throwing off the effect of the Taser. From this point on, it was the threat of a true death and the belief that his captor would pull the trigger that held him. A full-blood just up from the UnderRealm wouldn't believe the threat-it would take a certain kind of scary crazy to go up against the Courts-but Joe had been living Human long enough he probably had no idea he was protected.
"We talk, then you can go." Using his free hand to pull the back of the sweater down, he pressed the pendant against the damp, pale skin just under the hairline and watched goose bumps rise at the touch of the cool metal. "What do you know about what's happening in the city?"
As the silence extended, he thought maybe he'd been a bit too obscure. He hadn't wanted to give away any answers, but perhaps what's happening hadn't been specific enough. Then the changeling shivered as though he'd worked his way through to the actual question, snorted, and said, "I know what's come through, don't I? I'm not blind, and they don't give a fuck who sees them."
"Have you told anyone?"
"No! I'm not fucking stupid either! Best way to deal with them is to keep your head down."
The pendant forced the truth. Anger added the flourishes-the Fey hated being bested by Humans. Anger usually added the flourishes. In this case, it sounded a lot more like fear.
"Have you had word from the UnderRealm?" If he had, he'd know why as well as what.
"No. They don't give a fuck about me, and I wouldn't listen to the fuck ers if they did!"
It seemed the changeling hadn't learned not to let sentiment stand in the way of survival. Good. And Alysha Gale hadn't been given even the minimal information he had about their visitors. Better.
Still that did raise the question of what he'd been doing in the store for so long.
"I'm after working there, aren't I."
"Working?" There were any number of jobs a leprechaun's strength and speed could be useful for. "What are you doing?"
"Selling shit."
"Selling shit?"
"And going for coffees."
"You're working retail?" That was… unexpected. "Why?" He repeated the question with a little more physical emphasis when the silence extended.
"I think…" Pureblood or not, the changeling's voice had nothing of the UnderRealm in it, sounding more young and terrified than immortal and devious. "I think she felt sorry for me."
Pity made sense. He was starting to feel a bit uncomfortably like a bully and had to remind himself Joe O'Hallan was not Human.
He wanted to ask specifically about Alysha Gale, to see if the details of her story changed with her audience, but rumor had it that the family had an uncanny way of knowing when they were the topic of conversation, and he didn't want to risk tipping her off.
Pressing the gun just a little harder against Joe's head, he slid his knife blade through the ties, and freed Joe's hands. "If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead." Muscles tensed under his weight, a clear indication he'd been believed. "Talk about this, and I'll want you dead."
"I'm not going to be saying anything! I swear!"
The pendant felt warm as he dropped it into his pocket. "Count to fifty before you get up."
Allie told herself that the time difference had hauled her ass out of bed at dawn, but standing at the window, hands cupped around a mug of coffee, she knew that was a lie. Mostly a lie. After the cake came out of the oven, she'd stayed up until midnight cataloging the contents of the spare room and finding nothing, so the two-hour time shift had certainly helped her haul her ass out of bed.
If the shadow returned, then yesterday's pass over the store hadn't been random.
And?
And then yesterday's pass over the store hadn't been random.
There really wasn't a lot more information a shadow passing at that speed could impart.
Well, except for the obvious.
When the pigeons crowded back under the newspaper box, she braced herself.
There.
And gone.
And not alone.
"Great." Allie finished her coffee in one long swallow. "We've got dragons."
"If Catherine allowed herself to be eaten by a dragon, I have no sympathy for her at all. Unless you're a virgin sacrifice, which she most certainly is not, they're easy enough to avoid."
"They know where the store is, Auntie Jane."
"Of course they do, they can sense the power. If you follow them, you'll probably find them acknowledging every power signature in Edmonton."
" Calgary."
"What?"
"I'm in Calgary."
"Are you asking me to join you there?"
"No!"
"Then don't start complaining to me about geography. Dragons are not this family's business."
"Unless one ate Gran."
After a long pause, Auntie Jane sighed. "Yes, unless one ate your grandmother."
"How do I…?"
"Oh, for pity's sake, Alysha, just consider it for a moment. You'll need to examine the scat for the nasty indigestible bits."
She was almost afraid Auntie Jane hadn't been kidding.
When she paused in front of the mirror and murmured, "Dragons?" her reflection lifted a familiar tabloid. The headline read "Not all THUNDER LIZARDS Come out of the Ground at Drumheller." And under it, in slightly less strident type, "Thousand-Year-Old Lizard Baby." She was worried for a moment that the tabloid had already been reporting on the dragons when she saw that the date on the paper was closer to the end of the month.
"Trust me, I wasn't going to tell Graham about this." Giving the frame a quick pat, she moved on into the store figuring she could use the ninety minutes until opening to begin cataloging.
Joe sat tucked up into the small offset of the door, head against the glass, arms wrapped around his knees.
Allie dropped her laptop on the counter and hurried across the store. When she turned the lock, his head jerked back and he stared up at her with wide, terrified eyes. Then he blinked and only looked tired as he pulled himself to his feet, one palm against the door.
"Joe? What are you doing here?"
"You want me here.You do want me here?"
"Of course I do. I only meant that it's early."
"I don't…"
… have anywhere else to go.
The subtext was so loud, he might as well have said it.
She stepped aside and watched how his shoulders relaxed when he crossed the threshold. Whatever had happened to him, he believed it couldn't follow him into the store. She hated to disillusion him, but down here in the store, Gran hadn't set things up to keep anyone out. She'd just wanted to know what was coming.
When the lock snapped into place, he raised a hand and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. He probably figured that Allie'd ignore the way his fingers were trembling.
Not likely.
"Have you eaten?"
"What?"
"Breakfast? Have you eaten? No, of course you haven't. Come on, then, upstairs. I'll make pancakes."
He stared at her in disbelief. "You'll what?"
"Make pancakes. Unless they call them flapjacks out here in the west, then I'll make flapjacks."
"Upstairs?"
"It's where the kitchen is." Hand in the small of his back, not terribly happy about the way she could feel the knobs of his spine through his sweater, she moved him across the store toward the other door.
"I can't…" His need for sanctuary rolled off him like smoke. He wasn't fighting her, he hadn't even stopped walking, but he needed reassurance.
"Why can't you?"
"Your grandmother…"
"Isn't here. I am. Don't look in the mirror, just keep walking."
If he'd been Human, he wouldn't have made it up the stairs. She could feel him trembling, forcing each leg to rise and pull himself up the next step. She didn't help, but she made it clear she'd be there if he fell.
When he was standing, staring stupidly around the apartment's big open room, she gave him a gentle shove toward the bathroom. "Go shower and toss your clothes out, I was going to run a load of laundry, and I can easily throw them in. If you don't mind that it says Niko, I've got sweats you can wear until they're dry."
"Niko?"
"Misprints. There's a couple of boxes of them in the spare room. Go on," she added when it looked like he might be gathering enough energy to argue. "Pancakes will be ready when you are."
He blinked at her, shook his head like he couldn't quite believe he was doing it, and shuffled off to the bathroom.
Allie snorted as she pulled the big mixing bowl down off the shelf. Twenty-four years of handling Gale boys made handling the Fey a piece of cake. She'd been getting David to the table since she was five.
When Joe sat down, his hair tucked wet behind his ears, points exposed, she slid a plate of six steaming pancakes-nearly as big around as the plate they were on and half an inch thick-in front of him. "I'm afraid we've only got maple syrup," she told him, sliding the bottle across. "There's a bottle of blueberry syrup in the pantry, but since it probably came from Auntie Jane, it'd be safer if we didn't open it."
"She charmed it, then?"
"If she made it for Gran, she likely poisoned it."
"Poisoned?" His voice rose a little on the second syllable. Not quite far enough to be called a squeak.
"Apples are more traditional, but Auntie Jane has a thing for blueberries."
"You're kidding?"
Allie smiled. "Eat up, you don't want your pancakes to get cold."
The first forkful dripping with butter and syrup slid tentatively between pale lips. The second forkful rose a lot more enthusiastically. "These are good!"
"Of course they are." Allie had two smaller pancakes on her plate, mostly just to keep him company while he ate. When he finished, she smiled and said, "So what happened last night?"
While it was true that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, Gale girls tended to believe food should be more inclusive.
Joe pushed the last bit of syrup around his plate with his fingertip. "I got jumped by a guy with a gun."
"You got jumped?" Her turn to stare in disbelief. Calgary had some hard-assed petty criminals if the Fey were getting mugged.
"He knew what I was, didn't he? Tasered me first. Tied my hands."
"Tied?" She took one hand in hers and gently pushed the sweatshirt cuff up. Not even the faintest residue of a binding.
"Well, it wasn't just the ties, was it? I could have broke them, sure, but he had a gun, here." Two stiffened fingers tapped his head just below his right ear. "Told me he had Blessed rounds, then he asked me what I knew. Asked if the UnderRealm had been in contact with me."
"So what do you know, Joe?"
"I know about the dragons."
"I've seen them." Still holding his hand, she glanced toward the window. "Well, seen them pass, which is almost the same thing."
"No, it's not. They're…"
Bigger. Scalier. Toothier. Definitely scarier in person. "It's okay. I know. Has the UnderRealm been in contact with you?"
"No, and like I told him, I wouldn't fucking listen if they had. Then he wanted to know what I was doing in the store. I told him I was working here." His eyes widened as he suddenly realized what he'd been saying, and he yanked his hand free. "You enchanted me!"
"Yes."
"He told me he'd kill me if I told anyone!"
Allie kept her tone matter-of-fact. "How will he know you told me?"
"He has a truth thing! A silver thing.You can't lie when it's on you! He'll know I told you and he'll kill me! He had Blessed rounds! True death!"
"Joe! Stop it!" When he froze, she took his hands, thumbs stroking the backs. "If he threatens you again, he's in for a surprise."
"What have you…" He stared at the backs of his hands, eyes wide, the charms clearly visible to him. "You can't."
Allie shrugged. "I just did."
"You don't speak for your whole family!"
"Actually, we all speak for the whole family." She knew better than to look deep into his eyes so she stared sincerely at a freckle in the middle of his forehead. "That's what family is, Joe, we stand by each other, no matter what."
"You just told me your Auntie Jane was trying to poison your grandmother!"
"Doesn't count. If I call, they'll come. If he touches you, he'll know that."
"And if he shoots me from a distance?"
"Then it won't matter if you told me or not since he clearly has his own agenda."
Joe frowned, shifting the freckle. "That's not particularly comforting!"
"Sorry. He didn't happen to mention what that agenda was, did he? I mean, the level of threat does not match the level of his interrogation. We've got a big, big threat." She spread their joined hands apart, then moved them closer together. "Little bitty questions."
"He wasn't after explaining himself, if that's what you're asking."
"Pity."
"You think he had something to do with your grandmother's disappearance, then?"
"I think my grandmother disappeared, and now there's an armed man threatening someone who just started working at her store. My store. There's got to be a connection. There's the wash done." She let go of his hands. "I'll just toss everything in the dryer."
He rubbed his right hand over the back of his left and had no effect on the charm. "What does it actually say?"
"It's complicated, but basically…" Allie thought of him translucent one day and panicked the next, curled up on her doorstep terrified, and gentled her voice. "… it says, hands off."
He seemed almost content about that, so she didn't regret lying to him.
A more accurate translation would be mine.
"Someone's watching the store."
"Who?"
Allie rolled her eyes and glanced toward the bathroom door. Joe wouldn't be in there much longer. "I don't know who, Auntie Jane. But he carries a gun with Blessed rounds and has access to an artifact charmed to force the truth."
"It's entirely possible he bought the artifact from your grandmother," Auntie Jane snorted. "I assume Catherine has charms in place keeping the family business from being broadcast to all and sundry?"
"Yes, but…"
"Then let him watch. If he actually wants to see something, he'll have to come through the door."
"And then?"
"Oh, for pity's sake, Alysha Catherine, use your imagination."
"A reporter?"
"For The Western Star." Allie restacked the latest pile of saucers and added the number to the catalog. So far, she&#