Enchantment Emporium

by Tanya Huff

  The band? “You’ve had one rehearsal.”

  “Good thing I’ve got more buck than a Brahma, then.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind; the pithy country saying thing’s harder than it looks. We start at eight and play a forty-five minute set.”

  She reached out and lifted Michael’s arm to check his watch, so she didn’t have to change hands on the phone. “That’s in ten minutes!”

  “Okay, eight-thirty, but that’s my final offer because it’s a work night and our keyboard player has to be on the job at six. This is kind of a shake-down flight, a favor to our drummer Curtis because his brother-in-law’s cousin owns the bar.”

  “And he gets a lot of country music fans in on a Wednesday night?”

  “Probably not. Which is why I’m calling you. Bring the boys.” She paused while something large and metal crashed in the background. “Tell Roland to leave the sweater vest at home.”

  “Okay, we’ll…” Then she remembered. “You have Gran’s car.”

  “Use David’s rental.”

  “How do you know David’s here?”

  “My mother called. Then your mother called. Then Auntie Meredith called. And then I locked my phone in the trunk for a couple of hours. So you’re crossing. Thought so. Congratulations and look at the bright side. If Graham had chosen differently, you’d have probably been knocked up by morning.”

  “Thanks for putting crushing heartbreak in perspective.” She moved the phone away from her mouth. “Charlie’s band is playing tonight. She’s asking us to be warm bodies.”

  “Country band,” Roland expanded before David could say anything. “Probably country and western.”

  David looked as close to astounded as Allie’d ever seen him. “Our Charlie? This, I have to see.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “I should,” Joe began, but Allie raised a hand and cut him off.

  “We’ll all be there.”

  Charlie snickered. “Because you said so.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Try that second circle thing on me, Ms. Bossypants, and I’ll tie your hair to the bed. Later.”

  She hung up to find all four men watching her. “What? Joe was just unsure, and the rest of you had every intention of supporting Charlie.”

  Graham could drive past the store, but he couldn’t park the truck. The wheel wouldn’t turn, the brakes wouldn’t engage, and the gears wouldn’t shift. He tried both sides of the road. Same problems. He suspected that the door wouldn’t open if he tried to throw himself out. Which he was not planning to do. There were limits to how far he’d let the hollow feeling in his gut take him.

  He didn’t know if the problem had been caused by the choice he’d so foolishly made or the direct order from his boss to stay away from both the store and Alysha Gale, but the result was the same.

  The odds were better it was something to do with the freaky way the Gale family had gone all or nothing on him. His boss expected to be obeyed; he wouldn’t bother wasting time and energy on a tag, not with the Dragon Lords watching for him.

  He wasn’t personally concerned with the Dragon Lords. They knew about him, they had his scent, but they’d also proved to be as terrified of little old ladies interfering as everyone else.

  Pointless to peer at his forehead in the rearview mirror, searching for Allie’s mark; he could no more see it than he could the glyphs under his shirt. Pointless, but he looked anyway.

  On his third run up to the store, heading west, heading home before the evening passed from disappointing to pathetic, he saw the door open and a crowd of people come out. Allie, Joe, and Roland he recognized. The very tall young man was probably Michael, but he couldn’t identify the dark-haired man in the heavy brown leather jacket. If he wanted to know what was going on, questioning the leprechaun would still be his best bet, but it looked like Allie had decided to keep the changeling close.

  No way he’d been replaced already. Even Gale girls didn’t work that fast.

  Did they?

  He moved over to the curb lane, cruising through parking spaces empty with the street’s businesses closed for the evening, and slowed as far as the compulsion allowed.

  The unknown man was a man of power. Business, political, metaphysical; exactly what kind of power it was impossible to tell, but Graham had spent too many years working for Stanley Kalynchuk not to recognize the attitude that came with power when he saw it. What he didn’t see was any kind of loverlike interaction between this guy and Allie.

  All five of them piled into a gray sedan, clearly a rental, the unknown man driving and the probable Michael riding shotgun. An illegal U-turn pointed them back into the city.

  Graham let a car and a truck get between them, then he followed.

  When he saw them pull over and park in front of a good ol’boy kind of bar, he managed to make a last-minute turn down a side street before he passed them and gave himself away. An immediate left took him down the ubiquitous alley along the back of the buildings. No surprise, the bar had a small parking lot in behind. In it, the lime-green Beetle was obvious among the pickup trucks.

  Charlie, the cousin, was a musician.

  The Beetle out back and family and friends pulling up out front seemed to suggest she was playing tonight.

  He could walk in and pretend he just happened to be out for a drink. From the outside, it certainly looked like a place a guy would go to drown his sorrow after he inadvertently set off a magic ritual that royally screwed over his love life.

  Except, he’d been told explicitly not to go near Allie.

  And maybe he didn’t want to talk to her when she was surrounded by three other men-one a man of power, one a Gale, one fucking huge-and a full-blood Fey.

  So maybe he’d just park and sit here and wait for Charlie to come out.

  “You knew she was a Gale when you started seeing her.”

  She hadn’t sounded entirely unsympathetic.

  The inside of The Paddock was pretty much what the outside had promised-a not very large, not very well lit room that smelled a lot like beer with a faint overlay of damp denim. The bar, a scarred wooden slab complete with an elderly woman precariously perched on a stool and glaring into her drink, filled most of the wall by the door. There was a dartboard tucked into the front corner by the left wall, a row of booths against the right wall, a scattering of tables, a small dance floor, and a stage tucked into the far left corner just barely large enough for the four musicians setting up on it.

  “When she said red,” Roland muttered beside her.

  Allie took another look at the stage. Charlie’s hair blazed under the stage lights. “Wow, that’s very…”

  “Charlie,” Michael finished, pushing two tables together in the middle of the room.

  “I was going to say scarlet,” Allie admitted, claiming a chair, “but Charlie works.”

  There were two other groups of people at the tables, thirteen all together and clearly there for the band, as well as four people in one booth and two in another who were just as clearly there for the beer.

  Charlie looked up as they sat down, waved, set her guitar on a stand, and made her way over to them. The jeans and the cowboy boots were country, but Allie wasn’t so sure about the Joss Whedon is my master now! T-shirt. She ruffled Michael’s hair in passing, kissed Roland and David, looked speculatively enough at Joe that Allie had to grab his arm to keep him from bolting, and then cupped Allie’s face between her hands.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” It only hurt when she breathed or blinked or… Allie couldn’t think of anything else that started with “b” except bleed and she wasn’t going there.

  “Really? Because I’ve got some great hurtin’ songs lined up.”

  “And emo-country’s supposed to help?”

  “They tell me it’s cathartic.” Charlie shrugged, kissed her, and released her. “Although since most of the solutions seem to be drinking yourself to death, I woul
dn’t consider them instructive.”

  “Do you know enough country songs to make up a play list,” David wondered.

  “Darlin’, I have been listening to nothing but country since I arrived.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “This is me, sweet cheeks. I could boogie till the cows come home.”

  David glanced around. It looked like he expected those cows to appear. “And when does that happen?”

  “Nine forty-five. Like I told Allie, it’s a work night.” She waved an answer to the call from the stage… “And speaking of work…”… turned on one bootheel… “Like them? I bought them this afternoon.”… and headed back to the front of the bar.

  The music was better than Allie’d expected.

  “That’s the beer,” Michael explained when she leaned close and yelled her opinion into his ear.

  “I’ve only had half of one.”

  Dimples flashed. “Just think how much better it’ll sound when you finish!”

  “I could call in a favor from the local Horsemen and get the guy investigated.” David tossed back the last of his whiskey and set the glass down with a definitive thud. “He publishes a tabloid, that’s suspicious activity right there.”

  Allie rolled her eyes, reached across the table and smacked her brother in the arm. “Let it go, David!”

  Considering that he’d spent hours in concealment at all times of the year while waiting for targets to appear, sitting in his truck out back of a bar in May wasn’t particularly arduous. He’d long ago learned how to slide into a semi-meditative state that disconnected the waiting from the actual time spent.

  He roused when the back door of The Paddock opened and checked the time. Twenty-three minutes made it unlikely that the skinny, pale-haired man who stepped out into the parking lot was part of the band. When he moved away from the door and fumbled out a pack of cigarettes, his reasons for leaving the bar became clear.

  Graham sighed, rubbed a hand over his face pushing his hair back, and wondered what the hell he was doing. His orders had been clear. If he’d been able to park at the store, would he have rung the bell? Gone in?

  Would he have been asked in?

  Probably not.

  Moot point on disobeying, then.

  He’d never even considered disobeying a direct order until Allie.

  “Less than a fucking week,” he muttered as the skinny, pale-haired guy blew out a long stream of smoke while staring up at the sky.

  The smoke dissipated almost instantly, caught in a gust of wind.

  Wind?

  Up until right this moment, the night had been uncommonly still.

  Pulling his Glock from the hidden compartment in the glove box, Graham tucked it into the back of his jeans, and got out of the truck just in time to hear the sound of heavy wings beating at the night. The sound should have faded into the distance. It didn’t. It stopped suddenly.

  “Did you fucking hear that, man?” The smoker gestured, the lit end of his cigarette drawing lines against the darkness. “It sounded like the world’s sails were freakin’ luffing.”

  There were a lot of guys from the east coast working in Alberta. This one sounded well lubricated.

  “What the fuck was it?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Graham muttered. Just this morning-it only felt like a week ago-a Dragon Lord had dropped by the store. To talk. To be told how it was supposed to behave while in a city with Gales.

  The bar was full of Gales.

  Three confirmed Gales and a leprechaun and a man of power. Full enough.

  It could be at the bar to talk some more over drinks and stale pretzels.

  Supporting the bands Gales were in could be part of their expected behavior.

  Hell, maybe Dragon Lords liked country music.

  And that was the kicker: Dragon Lords.

  The wings had almost been in sync. Almost, not quite.

  He’d heard two for certain, possibly three.

  Allie felt them before she saw them. Felt the sizzle along the back of her neck, felt the air currents in the room shift to accommodate them. When she turned, all three of them were staring. Eyes nearly as brilliant a blue as Graham’s, golden hair brushing his shoulders and skin tanned golden brown. Eyes a glittering copper, dark hair cropped short, and skin like burnished bronze. The third gave her a moment to look, then settled dark glasses back over eyes as red as his hair. Against skin skim milk pale, the lenses looked too dark to see through.

  The clichйd black jeans, biker boots, and leather jackets over T-shirts that matched their eyes detracted a bit from the effect.

  “Oh, that’s disturbingly gay,” Michael smirked. “They look like the chorus line from Villains on Broadway. What?” he asked when Allie turned toward him. “I wondered what you were looking at.”

  David reached out and turned his head back toward the stage. “She’s looking at something very dangerous,” he said quietly. “When the shit hits the fan, I want you under the table.”

  Michael shot the area in question a dubious glance. “I don’t think I’ll fit under the table.”

  “Try. Allie…”

  “Hey, I’m not picking a fight with three Dragon Lords. They’ll have to start it.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”

  If Ryan was the youngest, then these were the next three up, banding together as protection against older brothers and the indulged younger. Adjusted for swagger, they had the same elegance of movement as Adam. The same certainty of strength. The same awareness of their power.

  The prickly instability that came from being near the bottom of the pecking order, that was new.

  They had something to prove, and Allie would have hated to face them on her own.

  Good thing she wasn’t on her own.

  It didn’t matter that she hadn’t finished crossing, it only mattered that she was the dominant female. She settled more securely into herself, feeling for the family connections. Roland would anchor, Charlie would direct, David would use. They had no one from first circle with them, but hopefully, with David in the fight, it wouldn’t last long enough to matter.

  And David would appreciate a chance to hit something.

  She reached out just far enough to make sure Charlie was aware of what was happening, then she waited.

  Bootheels rang against the scuffed hardwood floor as the Dragon Lords advanced.

  Allie rolled her eyes. With the band giving all they had to a Blue Rodeo cover, they had to be amplifying the sound for effect. Trying to psych her out.

  “This city is not yours, Gale girl.”

  The heat of his hand went through hoodie and T-shirt, intending to burn when it reached her shoulder. She didn’t let it.

  Turned.

  Stared up at Red Eyes, flanked by his brothers, and sighed. “Nonsmok ing establishment.”

  “What?”

  Allie gestured at the two thin streams of smoke coming from his nose. “You’re not allowed to smoke inside.”

  His lip curled. Given that his jaw was essentially human, he’d managed to fit in an impressive number of very sharp looking teeth. “And you are not funny.” She could smell her hoodie scorching. “What conceit allows you to believe you can tell Princes of the UnderRealm how to behave?”

  “You’re not in the UnderRealm.”

  “That makes little difference to us.”

  “It should.”

  “Why? Because you say so? Support your claim, Gale girl.”

  “Or?”

  Even with the glasses on, she could tell he blinked. “Or?”

  “Or what? You’ve made an implied threat; I’d like to hear the specifics.”

  Blue Eyes and Copper Eyes exchanged a glance that eloquently said, “This isn’t going quite the way we’d imagined.”

  Red Eyes smiled. “Or we will burn this bar down with everyone in it.”

  “That’s pretty specific,” Allie admitted.

  An
d three things happened almost simultaneously.

  Charlie began to play an entirely different song.

  David stood up and said, “Get your hand off my sister.”

  Allie spilled the dregs of her beer, sketched a quick charm with the liquid on the table, slapped one hand down in the middle of it, and reached for Roland with the other.

  Then she opened herself up to the available power.

  As it surged up and through her, Red Eye swore and snatched his hand back. Charlie’s song caught the power and shaped it and fed it to David, a continuous stream he didn’t have to think about or conserve; all he had to do was use it.

  “It’s like the rest of us know where the key to the gun cabinet is kept, but David’s always got a loaded gun in his hand,” Allie’d explained to Michael way back when the family’d first started to worry about David. “But he can fire all his bullets…”

  “Rounds.”

  “Shut up… and then he has to reload. If he’s connected to a ritual, the bullets are unlimited. If the ritual is directed toward him, suddenly he’s not holding a metaphorical pistol, it’s a rifle.”

  “But I thought your family didn’t like guns?”

  “Do you even know what metaphorical means?”

  Blue Eyes flew backward and slammed down on the table in one of the occupied booths. The occupants, clearly veterans of many a bar fight, snatched their drinks out of the way and looked unimpressed. Copper Eyes hit the ceiling and then the floor in quick succession. Red Eyes opened his mouth and roared out a geyser of flame.

  Someone screamed.

  The flame folded back on him. Ignited two chairs.

  Allie reached for Michael, wrapping him in protections.

  David put the chairs out. Caught Copper Eyes as he scrabbled to his feet and smacked him back down again. Ducked under the swipe of Red Eyes’ claws and used that momentum to spin him in place. Flicked enough power at Blue Eyes to knock his feet out from under him and slam him into the table again.

  Wait a minute? Claws?

  “David! They’re changing!”

  They’d be stronger in their true forms. Not to mention one hell of a lot bigger.

  Allie wasn’t sure when, but Roland had moved to stand behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. She leaned back into his strength and opened herself further.