by Tanya Huff
“Jack.”
He looked up in time to catch Evan as Graham dropped him into his arms.
“Don’t make pigs fly.”
Allie woke up as Graham got out of bed. She kept her breathing steady, listened to him dress, heard the short burst of sound as he opened the bedroom door into the living room, and relaxed back into the only real quiet time she’d get all day. Reaching out, she checked on the boys, checked on the family in the city, checked on David and was thrilled to find him out of the park and eating breakfast with Auntie Carmen and Auntie Bea. With any luck, his presence would mute their smugness at her news.
It looked like they were getting their seven sons.
Given the Gale ratio of sons to daughters, she and Graham and Charlie had laughed about the thirty-five girls they’d have to get through for seven boys. The only thing keeping the aunties from putting Graham out to stud was that cursory research on blended families suggested the seven boys had to be full siblings.
She could still draw the line at four.
“And if a condom can’t stop your daddy, there’s always more permanent solutions,” she murmured as she stroked the slight curve of her stomach—a curve that had nothing to do with this set of twins and everything to do with the last set. And possibly all the pie her mother had been sending. The permanent solution would mean she and Graham would no longer be anchoring second circle, fertility being nonoptional, but there were enough second circle Gales out here now . . .
Of course none of them had the benefit of their grandmother’s meddling, the need to defeat the Dragon Queen making them strong enough to hold the entire city.
They could take turns so no one would have to hold it for more than the space between rituals, but with Calgary changing so quickly on its own, they’d have to scramble to keep up.
“Looks like we’re doing this, babies.” She sat up and threw off the covers. “So let’s do it right.”
After she broke the news to the aunties, she’d call Peggi and talk her into moving west. Her son would horn by next ritual and Cameron needed backup. The city could always use another pharmacist and her husband could return to school for the master’s degree he always talked about. Both her older daughters were already third circle so, if they didn’t want leave Darsden East in their last years of high school, there was plenty of family to take them in. Peggi wouldn’t be hard to convince; Allie’d heard she hadn’t spoken to Auntie Jane since the Hunt for Uncle Evan.
“The aunties won’t like losing Steve,” she told the babies, “but I don’t really care what those aunties won’t like. We have more than enough aunties of our own.”
But no sisters.
She pulled on a pair of Katie’s yoga pants and grabbed one of Charlie’s band sweatshirts from the pile of clean laundry on top of the dresser. Judith had given her Richard’s old crib, Rayne and Lucy had passed on about three dozen onesies, and there were tiny overalls that had been circling the family for generations.
She could manage without sisters; she’d done it her whole life.
But now there’d be no daughters either.
Just six sons and then the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale.
So she’d love her sons like she would have loved her daughters.
Flinging open the bedroom doors, she stood and looked and listened . . .
Jack and Graham were arguing over porcine aerodynamics. Given the cloud of smoke up near the ceiling the debate had gotten heated. Evan was chasing Edward around waving a stuffed sheep, both of them yelling, “Bam! Bam! Bam!” Charlie and Katie stood shoulder to shoulder at the long counter dealing with the last of the zucchini. Charlie seemed to be weaving complaints about grating off her calluses into an explanation of the differences between a bouzouki and a guitar.
French toast this morning, Allie decided as the boys spotted her and charged across the room. Harder to charm than pancakes so she’d be less tempted to . . . fix some things.
* * *
“Jack, do not let Evan drink the syrup out of the bottle!”
“I didn’t exactly let him.” Jack grabbed the bottle with one hand and shoved half a banana toward his cousin with the other. “He’s fast.”
“Graham! Incoming!”
“Charlie, don’t throw the eggs!”
“He can’t miss, remember?”
Allie dropped a fresh loaf of bread on the counter and turned as the apartment door opened. “Auntie Gwen, have you got any . . .”
“Cinnamon.” Auntie Gwen held up a spice container as Joe grabbed Edward on his way out the door.
“He’s fast.”
“See?” Jack demanded. “It’s not my fault.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Jack, if he’s running circles around you now . . .” Auntie Gwen’s voice trailed off, the sudden silence so weighted it squashed all other conversations. She stared at Allie, dark eyes wide. “You’re expecting again.”
“I am.”
“Twins.”
“Yes.”
“Boys.”
“So it seems.”
“You’ve been hiding it.”
“Yes, I have.”
To Allie’s surprise, Auntie Gwen nodded. “I can’t say as I blame you. Once Bea finds out, she’ll go right to Jane and none of us will get any peace.” She crossed the room and wrapped Allie in a hug. “Congratulations, at least now I know what we’re celebrating.”
“This isn’t a celebration, it’s breakfast.”
“So it is.”
Five adults, a Leprechaun, a Dragon Prince, and two toddlers required a lot of French toast, but with Allie on one grill and Katie on the other, Graham beating the eggs, Charlie pouring juice, Auntie Gwen setting the table, Joe dealing with the coffee maker, and Jack watching the twins, breakfast got made.
This was what she needed, Allie realized. When Charlie was home, then her family was home and family could deal with anything life threw at it.
Even near noon, the sunlight felt thin and the wind was cold and damp. As Catherine tucked her chin down in the collar of her down jacket, she thought of all the reasons why she’d left Ontario and put the weather at the top of the list. She hadn’t been back since Edward’s Hunt; he’d fathered her children, she’d owed him for that. She hadn’t been the one to take him down, that honor had gone to their eldest daughter, newly changed, but she’d been there at the end. When she’d left, she’d assumed it was for the last time.
Second last, she’d be back when her time came.
Fine, third. She’d be back for Jane’s time, too.
Her eldest sister had wanted her to be her good right hand—a desire she’d have been less insulted by had Jane not been left-handed. She’d Seen how it would be; Jane, already armed with both power and personality—and fully aware of how to wield them both—would use the Sight to nudge the family, then to steer the family, then to command the family, then it would have spread outside the family, then it would’ve been poisoned apples all around and no one wanted to go there again, least of all, if she were honest, Jane. It always took months to sort out the pies.
With the wind trailing chill fingers across the back of her neck, she watched Jane stand on the back porch for a long moment before descending to cross the yard, sighed, and revised her list. The weather now came a close second to her sister.
Dressed in boots and jeans and one of her late husband’s jackets, Jane had begun to look old. To anyone else, she appeared to stride across the field much as she ever had, but Catherine could see how she placed each foot with care. The frailties of age might come late to the Gales, but they came. Of course, anyone who assumed those frailties lessened the danger was an idiot.
Catherine was no idiot. Which was why she’d walked out of the Wood at the edge of the woods and stayed there. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t See any charms of Jan
e’s on the house. The ones she couldn’t See would be the problem.
“You’re so Wild you can’t come in for a cup of tea like a civilized woman?”
“The tea would be charmed and we’d spend the entire time jostling for position.” She’d stepped outside those petty power struggles a long time ago and she had no intention of stepping back in.
“You’ve Seen that?”
“I know you.”
Jane clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Fair enough. Why are you here, then? Or more precisely, what have you Seen that’s brought you home?”
“I’ve Seen Ruby’s death.”
“Please, we’ve all seen Ruby’s death. Ruby’s seen Ruby’s death, she’s just too loopy to recognize it.” Steel-gray brows drew in. “While I think of it, Meredith says if you’re not coming home for pickling next summer, she wants Auntie Martha’s recipe for bread and butter pickles. She’s given up trying to replicate it.”
“Auntie Martha left the recipe to me.”
“That’s why I’m asking you, Catherine.”
And just like that she was fifteen again, at her first ritual, watching Jane, already in second circle, blazing like a comet across the night sky.
Which reminded her of why she was there.
It must’ve shown on her face because Jane sighed, shoved her hands deeper into her jacket pockets, and said, “Out with it.”
Because she’d never been about making it easy for Jane, she smiled and said, “The sky is falling.”
AUNTIE GWEN PUT THE LAST FORK AWAY, closed the drawer, and turned with enough deliberation in the movement that Charlie dropped Evan into the curl of Jack’s tail with his brother and stepped in front of them. Jack shoved her out of the way with his muzzle.
“Call your mother, Alysha.” Auntie Gwen sighed as she pushed Jack’s wing aside with her foot—even at a fraction of his full size, he took up most of the floor space in the apartment. “You have sixty seconds, then I’m calling Bea. You don’t want your mother to find out from Jane, and Bea will waste no time calling Jane to gloat.”
“Auntie Bea has nothing to gloat about.”
“Do you honestly believe that will matter?”
Allie picked up her phone. “I should open the store . . .”
“Joe’s got it. Call your mother.”
Charlie thought of the likely fallout should Auntie Bea be the one to spread the news and shuddered. “She’s right, Allie.”
“And your acknowledgment of that has made my day, Charlotte. Don’t chew on the dragon, Edward.” She reached down and pulled the tip of Jack’s tail out of Edward’s mouth. “You don’t want him to chew on you. Fifty seconds, Alysha.”
When the door closed behind her with Allie still staring at her phone, Charlie crossed to the kitchen, plucked the phone from Allie’s hand, and dialed. “Hey, Aun . . . tie Mary.” Even two years after Aunt Mary’s eyes had darkened and she’d crossed to first circle, Charlie still screwed that up. “Allie has something she needs to tell you. We’ll be downstairs,” she added as Allie snatched her phone back. “Jack, you’ll need arms. Grab a twin.”
“Mama?”
“Mama’s busy right now, Edlet.” Charlie lifted him from Jack’s hold. “Let’s go down to the store and see what Joe’s doing.”
“Yoyo!”
“Probably.”
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused in front of the mirror and let the baby dive toward the glass, playing patty cake with himself. Her reflection looked up toward the ceiling, her face in shadow. Beside her, Evan hung from two enormous claws in front of a gleaming gold background. Except for the fact that the claws were unattached—Jack’s forefeet would have engulfed Evan, Edward, and Charlie completely, taking up the entire reflection—they appeared to be to scale.
“Are you looking up at me?” Jack bounced Evan who shrieked with laughter.
Given their relative sizes and how little of Jack’s reflection she could see, it was hard to work out the eye lines, but Charlie shook her head. Looking up, yes. Looking up at Jack . . . “No, I don’t think so.” With Edward balanced on her right hip, she lifted her left hand and stroked a line of blue into her hair.
Jack grinned, the mirror adjusting his reflection’s size until his teeth were visible. “Did you do that for me? Because I said it was bland?”
“No, I did it for me.”
“Why?”
“None of your damned business.”
His grin broadened. “You did it for me.”
She hadn’t, not consciously. She’d just thought a little color might be less domestic. Less . . . bland. Yes, fine, she’d done it for Jack. Done it so he’d smile at her exactly the way he had. But he didn’t need to know that. “Sure I did.” Nothing sent up a smokescreen quite like the truth. “Because you’re the arbitrator of all my fashion choices.”
“Yeah? Then you might want to give the cowboy boots a rest.”
“Bite me.”
A burst of laughter pulled them away from the glass and into the store in time to see a pair of girls dressed in purple and black head out the door. A tattered lace shawl and trailing ends of a purple scarf became black wings on the other side of the clear-sight charm etched into the glass of the door.
“Corbies,” Joe said as Charlie set Edward down on the counter. “They emptied their box. Seems they’re moving on.”
Charlie glanced behind the counter at the mailboxes the store provided for the local Fey. A surprising number of them got government checks, a few had magazine subscriptions—the water-based had trouble with personal electronics—and Boris regularly got the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog. Charlie really hoped it was for the obvious reason because the thought of the minotaur in drag hurt her head. Bad enough that every time she saw him she had to squash the probably suicidal urge to say, “Don’t have a cow.”
“Corbies never stay in one place for long,” Jack pointed out, setting Evan beside his brother.
“Yeah, but the whole flock’s leaving.” Joe pulled the royal blue, classic wooden yoyo from Evan’s hand just before he bit down. “I wouldn’t, kiddo. Your Auntie Catherine left these behind and they’re likely to bite back. A flock of Corbies,” he continued, moving the box of yoyos out of reach, “can’t agree on what day it is, most days. Granted, they don’t care, but that’s not the point. For a whole flock to move on . . .” Dragging a hand back through ginger hair, he frowned at Jack. “You haven’t heard about anything that might’ve spooked them?”
“Not a thing.”
“If you caught up, think they’d talk to you?”
“They’d most likely shout insults at me.” Jack caught Evan as he threw himself off the counter and set him down on the floor by a basket of toy cars.
“Even though you’re you?” Charlie asked, pitching her voice to carry over Edward’s scream of “Down, down, down!” As she understood it, the whole Dragon Prince thing had as much to do with being the meanest SOB in the immediate area as it did with politics and, excluding the aunties, that certainly carried over to the MidRealm.
“Corbies don’t care. Not here, not in the UnderRealm. Just after I hatched, a couple used to come by and talk to my mother sometimes, but my uncles told me you couldn’t trust anything they said.”
“Could you trust anything your uncles said?”
“Not usually,” Jack admitted. He turned back to Joe and waved at the door. “You want me to catch up.”
He didn’t look thrilled by the idea, not that Charlie blamed him. The Corbies never bothered with volume control, and their insults had a way of turning both nasty and personal. “I’ll go,” she said before Joe could answer. “They’ll talk to me.”
“You can make them talk to you, sure, but I don’t think even you can make a Corbie tell the truth if they don’t want to and if they think you’re laying down a geis .
. .”
“It’s not a geis,” Charlie protested. “It’s just asking questions the right way.” When both Jack and Joe looked dubious, she sighed. “Whatever. Call it what you want. Bottom line, it’s Corbie business, not ours.”
“If it’s enough to spook a Corbie, we’ll hear about it sooner or later,” Jack pointed out, nudging a fire truck back toward Edward with his foot. “Probably sooner.”
Charlie didn’t find that exactly reassuring and, from the way Joe’s brows nearly touched his nose, neither did he.
“They could have been lying about leaving,” Jack reminded them after a long moment where the only noise came from plastic wheels on worn hardwood.
“True enough.” Joe reached into the cash box and pulled out a twenty. Charlie wondered if it had been fairy gold the night before, changed to Canadian currency by Auntie Catherine’s charm on the cash box, or if it had come from the slightly less mythological community the store also serviced. It never ceased to amaze her how many people needed mismatched saucers. “And now you’ve reassured us, Highness, go get coffee. When you get back, I need you to sort through a couple of boxes of old magazines. Last time we put a box out without checking, there were three that hadn’t been published yet.”
“It’s like a bad episode of Warehouse 13 in here some days,” Jack sighed, waved the smoke away, and took the twenty. “Charlie, coffee?”
He said coffee. The subtext said, at least you’ll have to stick around long enough to drink it. Fort Minor’s “Where’d You Go” played in the background. She knew Jack didn’t understand why life couldn’t be a constant loop of that summer together down east, but the thought of sitting down and explaining things to him gave her hives. She valued their friendship even if a good part of it had become smoke and mirrors.
“Charlie?”
“Why not.” It wasn’t like she could leave before the aunties descended on Allie—not unless she wanted to find new living arrangements.
Over the next half hour, she drank a very good coffee and told her mother that, yes, she’d known Allie was expecting. Built a fairly decent reproduction of the Saddledome with the twins out of old wooden blocks while she told Auntie Meredith that, yes, she’d known Allie was expecting. Watched without watching the muscles in Jack’s back and arms shift as he lifted boxes of magazines up on the counter to be sorted while she told Auntie Esther that, yes, she’d known Allie was expecting. Dragged Evan out from under a set of shelves while telling Auntie Ruth that, yes, she’d known Allie was expecting. Rescued Edward from the top of a set of shelves while she told Auntie Trisha that, yes, she’d known Allie was expecting.