Enchantment Emporium

by Tanya Huff

  Allie followed his gaze. “You can see them? Great.” Reaching out, she swept her fingertips through the lower prongs. When she turned to him again, she was frowning. “You shouldn’t be able to see them, they’re insubstantial.”

  Behind her, David turned, and his expression shifted Graham’s grip on his weapon. He knew what power barely under control looked like. “Allie.”

  He couldn’t see her expression when she turned to face her brother, but he did see her shoulders tighten.

  “David, I’m so sorry. I didn’t…” A long step back bumped her up against Graham’s chest-the car door limiting his movement. She reached behind her and wrapped her fingers around his wrist to steady herself.

  To his surprise, the tension visibly eased, and David suddenly looked like less of a threat. “You’re Graham.”

  “Yeah.” They’d never actually been introduced, given the flaming flying lizards and all.

  David stepped back, long legs moving him around the front of the car until the bulk of it was between them. “Later.”

  “He means you’ll talk later,” Allie murmured, releasing him.

  His wrist throbbed where her fingers had been, the skin feeling hot and tight. “I got that. What’s up with the…” A jerk of his head toward the flickering horn.

  “It’s a family thing. But you can thank Jack that they’re not solid. I think he drew on David to fuel the transfigurations he did in the car.” She wasn’t exactly looking at him, but she wasn’t moving away, so Graham decided to count that as a win. “I mean, it’s no wonder his uncles freaked-he’s an instinctive sorcerer with Dragon Lord access to power.”

  “Instinctive?”

  “Unless your boss…”

  “Ex-boss.” Probably. She actually smiled at him then, and he hoped the qualifier hadn’t shown on his face.

  “Okay, unless your ex-boss kept trotting back to the UnderRealm to give lessons, he’s untrained.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “As I can be. So he was right; Jack’s dangerous.” He wasn’t exactly asking, he wasn’t stupid.

  Before Allie could respond, the paint can Jack had moved to the workbench to examine exploded.

  Graham hit the dirt but lifted his head in time to see David clench a fist and the blast crumple in on itself. The antlers seemed to firm up for a moment.

  “Jack’s thirteen,” Allie told him as he stood, brushing off his jeans. “That’s always dangerous.” They locked eyes for a moment, but before Graham could figure out what to say, Allie turned away. “Come on, Jack…” She tugged the boy away from the bench. “… let’s go inside. I bet you’re hungry.”

  “Starving!” In the low light of the garage, his eyes glowed.

  “Do you like pie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Let’s find out.”

  Roland followed Allie and Jack out into the yard, staying close enough that Graham had to swallow the growl rising in his throat. He looked away to find David studying him. Speculatively? Suspiciously? Hard to say.

  But this was apparently not later as David turned his head to maneuver his purportedly insubstantial antlers out the door. Graham fell in beside Charlie, moving a little more slowly because of her bare feet.

  “So,” she said as they stepped out into the courtyard, “figure out what you want to say to her yet?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s not supposed to be easy, dumbass.”

  He nodded at David crossing the courtyard. No way the three scrawny bushes leaned toward him as he passed. “How did he get those things into the car if it was Jack who made them insubstantial.” Kalynchuk had never mentioned the abilities of the Gale men, and Roland had been able to stop him cold, sweater vest and all. David seemed like an entirely different level of problem, especially since Graham had no idea where he and Allie actually stood. Or if they stood together at all.

  Charlie rolled her eyes. “Please, that was later. I had to blow him in the parking lot and bring them down a bit, or he’d have been walking back.”

  Graham literally felt his jaw drop. She didn’t sound like she was bullshit-ting, and he had a reporter’s built-in bullshit detector. “Seriously?”

  “Why do you think Auntie Catherine drove a convertible?”

  “She didn’t have…” He waved a hand above his head.

  “The aunties are first circle.” Charlie’s smile curved wickedly and Graham’s pants felt suddenly, uncomfortably tight. “She could get as many of those as she wanted.”

  All of a sudden, his memories of conversations with Catherine Gale showed up in a whole new light. “So when she suggested we…?”

  “She meant it.”

  “That’s…” Graham paused, caught by his reflection in the enormous mirror in the back hall behind the store. “Why are there fourteen of me?”

  Charlie shrugged as she pushed past. “Maybe it likes you.”

  Jack liked pie.

  Allie cut him another slice of her mother’s lemon meringue-minimally and nonspecifically charmed with the Gale version of wear nice underpants in case of accidents-and slid the plate across the table.

  “We don’t have anything like this back home,” he moaned, shoveling an enormous forkful into his mouth. “Although,” he added thoughtfully, after he’d swallowed, “I did eat a nest of pixies once that tasted kind of the same, but you know…” Sweeping his tongue over his lower lip, he retrieved a bit of meringue. “… chewier.”

  “You ate pixies?” Joe put down his fork.

  Jack shrugged as he chewed. “Not often. They’re so small you have to find a nest, or they’re not worth it. I like them, though.”

  “So are pixies…?” Michael tapped his head, and Allie didn’t think he meant imaginary.

  “Thinking, reasoning, obnoxious little shit disturbers.Yeah.” She pulled out the chair beside the young Dragon Lord and sat down. “Jack?” When he looked up from his rapidly disappearing pie, she took a deep breath. “Here, in this world, we don’t eat anything we can have a conversation with.”

  “Not unless both parties are enjoying themselves,” Charlie added.

  “I don’t see how that’s possible,” Jack admitted, frowning.

  “Well…”

  Roland kicked her under the table. “Let’s not confuse him. Jack, here in this world, we have very distinct ideas of what constitutes food.”

  His frown deepened. “I don’t know what constitutes means.”

  “It means we don’t eat people,” Allie said quickly, cutting off Roland’s certain to be even more confusing explanation.

  A nod down the table at Joe. “He’s a leprechaun.”

  “Leprechauns are people.”

  “Those small things with wings outside?”

  “Those are pigeons, you can eat those. Except not those particular pigeons,” she amended, “because I know them.”

  “You knew this pie.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “My mother says if you limit your food, you limit your chances. My Uncle Viktor has been trying to eat me my whole life.”

  “Why?”

  Graham’s voice lifted the hair on the back of Allie’s neck. She’d been treating him exactly like the others, giving him a place at the table, feeding him, ignoring the way he made her skin feel too tight and like there wasn’t enough air in the room.

  Jack shrugged thin shoulders. “Because of who my father is. Mother says I frighten them because of what I can do, and that fear makes them stupid, but they really don’t like that as long as I’m alive Mother won’t clutch again and that makes me heir. There’s never been a male heir. Mother says there’s no way I’ll live as long as a pureblood anyway, so they can just fuck off and she’ll clutch again when she’s good and ready. Also, they really, really hate my father because he showed up and messed things up. Although they don’t hate him as much as Mother does, but you don’t eat the only egg in the clutch. Is there mo
re pie?”

  The pan on the table was empty of everything but a few crumbs of crust.

  Charlie pushed her chair back. “I’ll check.You eat like Michael; he was a skinny little shit at your age, too.”

  “I’m bigger in my other form,” Jack protested indignantly.

  Flames licked at his edges, but before Allie could get out so much as a clichйd “No!” they disappeared and only his eyes showed any evidence there’d ever been a fire. She glanced over at David. He shook his head. If David hadn’t stopped it, then…

  Jack’s chair tipped over as he surged up onto his feet. When the heavy wooden back slammed against the floor, everyone jumped and the lights flickered. Allie wasn’t sure who was responsible. Wasn’t positive it hadn’t been her.

  “It’s gone!” His eyes gleamed gold, lid to lid. “I can’t find my other self!”

  “It’s your father’s blood.” Graham glanced at Allie as everyone turned to face him. “Blood magic’s the strongest there is,” he continued when she nodded to let him know he had the floor. “You lot should all know that. He’s in the same reality with his father for the first time in his life, and it’s locked him down.You don’t need scales while you’re here, kid, and you’ll get them back when you go home. I’ve picked up a bit over the years,” he added in answer to David’s raised brow.

  “My father’s blood,” Jack repeated. His gaze jerked around the room like he was in a cage. “When do I get to see my father? I want to see my father.”

  Everyone turned to look at Graham. Who sighed.

  “It’s complicated, kid.”

  “But he sent you.”

  “Yeah. He sent me.”

  Allie wondered what Graham had in his front pocket. Every time he spoke to Jack, his hand rose to touch the small lump. She suspected he didn’t even know he was doing it. It was an artifact, she could feel that much but nothing more specific, not with the amount of free-floating power in the room.

  The Dragon Lord-no, Dragon Prince, she guessed if he was heir-drew himself up to his full height. “You should take me to him,” he declared imperiously. “Now.”

  “I’m not…” His fingertip whitened. He was pressing against the lump so hard it had to have been digging into his chest, but he gave no indication that it hurt. “Your father might not want to see you.”

  “So? I want to see him.”

  “And they say Gale boys are spoiled,” Charlie murmured, setting half a rhubarb pie on the table and dropping into her chair.

  Allie bumped her with her hip as she passed. “You could call him.” They were the first words she’d spoken directly to Graham since the garage, and that had been a whole pie ago.

  “Call him?”

  “I think we all need to know where he stands.” She held out her phone. “You’d better use this. It’ll make sure you get through.”

  “I don’t…” His gaze slipped past her to Jack and back to her again. “All right.”

  When their fingers touched, Allie felt the shock race up her arm and pool warm and heavy in her belly.

  David growled and pushed away from the table. “Loft.”

  Head cocked, eyes whirling, Jack watched David leave, then jerked his head around toward Allie as the door slammed. “We don’t have that problem,” he said.

  That problem. They needed more third circle here while David was or it was going to become a bigger problem. “Lucky you.”

  “Allie?”

  Which was when she realized she hadn’t let go of the phone. “Right. Sorry.You can go into…” She started to gesture toward the bedroom, felt power building, remembered there was now a bed in the second bedroom as well and jerked her hand more or less toward the bathroom.

  “No. Better you all hear.”

  He wanted them to trust him. Allie could see that. Understand why. Still… she glanced over at Jack. “Are you sure?”

  “If it goes wrong…” Graham’s one-shoulder shrug reminded her of his injuries although there were no visible bruises, so it seemed he’d been healed. She hated that it was Kalynchuk who’d healed him. “It’s better he hears it from the source than secondhand.”

  “The fast Band-Aid approach?”

  He started to frown in confusion, then smiled up at her, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, the fast Band-Aid approach. Here, where he has people…” She wondered if he even knew he was reaching for her. “… who’ll support him.”

  Allie wanted to take his hand. She wanted to take his hand more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. More than Michael. But Graham had chosen, and they couldn’t… it wasn’t…

  “Maybe you two ought to save that for later,” Charlie suggested.

  “They have no later,” Roland reminded her.

  She heard Michael sigh. “He chose to come back.”

  Apparently, everyone but Joe had an opinion. Allie watched Graham’s hand settle on the table.

  She spun around as Charlie’s foot impacted with her butt, glared at her cousin, and said, “Jack, do you care if we can all hear your father talk to Graham?”

  Jack’s shrug was all teenage boy. “What could go wrong?”

  She couldn’t let him go into it blind. “Graham.”

  “I don’t…”

  “Tell him.” It was only logical to stand by Graham’s side where she could see both Jack and the phone. She was close enough to hear him sigh, see the fine muscle movement as he squared his shoulders.

  “Your father sent me to kill whatever emerged from the UnderRealm.”

  Jack cocked his head to one side, the motion almost birdlike. If birds had evolved from dinosaurs and dragons were sort of like dinosaurs, then… she shook the thought away. Not the time to consider parallel evolution in metaphysical realms. “Did he know it was me?”

  Graham touched the artifact in his pocket again. “He said it was an enemy.”

  Not the whole truth, Allie realized as Jack said, “Then he didn’t know it was me.”

  “You’re no danger to him?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met him yet.” He looked around the table and rolled his eyes although with the whites still barely showing Allie found it a strangely nondefinitive movement. “And he hasn’t met me. How can you tell a person is your enemy if you haven’t met them yet?”

  “He has a point,” Charlie admitted.

  “He has a mouthful of them,” Roland murmured in what Allie suspected was intended to be a warning but only came across as somewhat petulant.

  “He only looks like a thirteen-year-old kid, doesn’t he?” Joe said suddenly. “He’s not, though, is he? He’s a Dragon Prince. Heir to the sky. Stop treating him like he’s fucking made of soap bubbles, remember he eats people when he’s at home, and call his old man.”

  The silence was broken by a snicker.

  From Jack.

  “Is there a speaker on this thing?” Graham asked.

  Allie held out her hand, and he dropped the phone in it without them touching. When she set up the speaker function, she returned it the same way.

  Eyes locked on the number pad, Graham punched in ten digits and set the open phone down beside his empty plate.

  It seemed Kalynchuk had been waiting for the call.

  “Is it alive?”

  “He’s standing right here,” Allie told him, watching Graham close his fingers around the artifact.

  “Then you’ve doomed us all!”

  “Overreact much?” Charlie snorted.

  “It maps the way, you fools! I warned you, Alysha Gale! I warned you that disaster would follow if it was not destroyed. If you’re there, Graham, kill it! Kill it now! It may not be too late!”

  Graham took a deep breath and quietly asked, “Did you know?”

  To give him credit, although Allie hated doing it, Kalynchuk didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Of course I knew. And that shot, that shot you didn’t take, that shot was the whole reason for your existence! The stars told me my past would find me sooner or later. Th
ose other, minor annoyances over the years-I could have lowered myself to deal with them if I’d had to. This was your task, and you failed me! Failed me after I trusted you with my life! It is most definitely safe to say I will not look kindly upon you should we meet again, but since the lucky ones among us will shortly be dead, thanks to your stupidity, my displeasure seems moot. Kill it if you want to live!”

  “Father?”

  The silence extended long enough Allie opened her mouth. Closed it again when it turned out Kalynchuk had one final point to make. “Of all the men of power, back to the first man who claimed his birthright, only I dared that action which brings this doom upon us. No one else ever dared so much. I have that at least.”

  “Wow,” Jack said over the dial tone. “He’s a bit of an ass, isn’t he?”

  It had rained at some point while they were all upstairs, but except for directly around the three scrawny shrubs, the courtyard dirt had been packed too firmly for anything less than a downpour to make much of an impression. Graham leaned against the west wall by a stack of lumber under a tarp and wished he hadn’t stopped smoking.Yeah, it was a filthy, expensive habit likely to shorten his life-in point of fact, the reasons he’d quit-but it had given him something mindless to focus on when his thoughts slid off into unpleasant areas.

  Like how he’d spent thirteen years working for a man willing to kill his child. Have his child killed. He pressed two fingers against the pocket.

  “You okay?”

  “Just needed some time alone,” he said, watching Allie close the door and walk toward him while frowning down at the wet ground.

  “Okay.” She settled against the wall, close enough he could feel the narrow strip of air between them begin to warm.

  “What part of alone didn’t you get?”

  “You said needed. I figured you were done.” She still hadn’t looked directly at him. “Charlie said we should talk-actually, she was a little more definitive about it than should-but I’ll go. If you want me to.”