by Tanya Huff
When she came back from cleaning the grime off both boys, Joe had sold a yoyo.
“Mama!”
Charlie turned from the ledger in time to see Allie enter the store and stagger slightly, tackled by her sons.
Shuffling forward, a toddler around each leg, she smiled tightly at Charlie. “I’m about to ask Jack to eat Auntie Carmen.”
“Did you want me to stop you or get Jack some condiments?”
“Good question.” Allie gave up on the smile. “Mom’s bearing the brunt of Auntie Jane, but Auntie Carmen’s in tears because she was the last to know. Translation, she found out after Auntie Bea.”
“They live in the same house.”
“Auntie Bea answered the phone when Auntie Gwen called. While Auntie Bea was on the phone with Auntie Jane, Auntie Carmen called me and wailed for . . .” She checked her watch. “. . . just over twenty minutes. Auntie Bea wouldn’t get in a taxi with her as long as she kept crying which is why they’re still not here. Mixed blessings. Where is Jack?”
“Taking the mugs back to Kenny’s. You weren’t seriously considering . . . ?” Charlie waved her hands in the universal gesture for going to ask Jack to eat an auntie? Perhaps not universal, she acknowledged silently, but it came up surprisingly often.
“No, but they’re on their way over now and he might need to singe them slightly.”
Before Charlie could point out that would probably just make them angry “Will the Future Blame Us” rang out from her pocket. “I should take this, it’s Auntie Catherine.”
“She still gets her own ringtone?”
“It seemed safest. Do you think your mother called her?”
“Maybe. Maybe Auntie Jane called her to brag. My plans are working,” Allie cackled, rubbing her hands together. Edward stared up at her wide-eyed. Evan sat down and put his thumb in his mouth. “Even though I’m thousands of kilometers away, I’m directly responsible for a seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale!”
Charlie paused, finger over the phone. “That’s your impression of Auntie Jane?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“She doesn’t usually sound like she’s about to toss a fireball at the Scarecrow.”
“Neither did . . .” Lips pressed into a thin line, Allie bent and scooped Evan up off the floor. “Answer your phone, Charlie.”
That seemed like the best option. “Hello, Auntie Catherine. Yes, I did know that Allie was expecting.”
On the other end of the phone, Auntie Catherine snorted. “Oh, for pity’s sake, Charlotte, who asked? I Saw my granddaughter’s condition months ago and it doesn’t take a Seer to realize you’d be one of the first to know that she was about to present the family with yet another set of male twins.”
“You Saw it and you didn’t think to mention it?” Saw the babies, she mouthed at Allie.
“You’d be astonished at what I See and never pass on to the family. Half of it they wouldn’t believe and the other half they don’t need to know. You may still be all about sharing and caring, but I live in hope that you’ll stop diving to my granddaughter’s lure when you’ve been Wild a little longer.”
“If you already know about the babies, then why did you call, Auntie Catherine?”
“I can’t call just to talk?”
“You don’t.”
“True. There’s a Calgary . . . What is the politically correct label for bums now? Economically disabled? Never mind,” she continued before Charlie could answer. “Let’s go with personality. There’s a Calgary personality known as Doomsday Dan.”
Charlie felt a cold touch along her spine. The odds of it being a coincidence that she’d seen Dan on the same day Auntie Catherine called and mentioned him were slim to none. The universe didn’t work that way, not for Gales. “What about him?”
“He’s right.”
“What’s he right ab . . . Auntie Catherine?”
“She hung up.”
It wasn’t a question, but Charlie answered anyway. “Yeah.”
“And you’re leaving.”
“How did you get that from yeah?”
With Evan on her hip, Allie couldn’t fold her arms, but her entire posture screamed that, had she been able, they’d have been crossed with extreme prejudice. “Are you?”
“Well, yeah.” Although she still didn’t get how Allie’d figured it out. “There was a crazy street dude on television this morning before you got up, ranting about . . .” Charlie edited the end of the world out of her explanation. Since the babies, even joking about death and disaster had been taken off the table. “. . . all sorts of weird shit. Your grandmother just called to say he was right.”
Allie’s left foot began to tap. Edward watched it, fascinated. “She’s Seen a crazy street dude talking about weird shit?”
“Apparently.”
“Crazy street dude talking about weird shit? Really, Charlie? You’re thirty, not thirteen.”
“And thank you for reminding me.” But, yes, it sounded idiotic repeated over and over. “Mentally unstable homeless person making obscure prophecies about the future.”
“Was that so hard?” As Edward grabbed two handfuls of Allie’s jeans and began to haul himself up onto his feet, she shifted position and even Charlie, third circle though she was, felt her anchor herself in the city. Her gaze blanked for a moment—checking on the rest of the family, Charlie assumed—then refocused on Charlie’s face. “Why did she call you about it?”
Because I’m Wild and she’s Wild and we’re not like you. We don’t dig in and wrap ourselves in family to the exclusion of all else. But we’re still Gales and we still need family . . .
“Charlie? Charlie, are you having an epiphany in front of my children?”
“What?” She shook herself free to find Allie and both boys grinning at her. “No. No epiphanies. Not with minors in the room.” Allie’s grin broadened, Evan blew a spit bubble, Edward climbed onto Allie’s foot, and Charlie felt like she’d dodged a bullet. The last thing she needed was for Allie to think she’d ever take Auntie Catherine’s side. Not after what had gone down with the Dragon Queen. “And I don’t know why Auntie Catherine called me,” she continued as if there hadn’t been both an epiphany and a lie about it. “That’s why I need to talk to her and find out what she’s actually Seen.”
“Maybe she’s just messing with you. You know how she hates not being the center of attention.”
Actually, Charlie knew how Auntie Catherine had created a new life for herself in Calgary away from the family and then left that life to Allie when she was banished. Later, she’d set in motion a plan to stop one of the old gods from rising and while the plan had been high-handed and bordering on downright nasty, the family wouldn’t have known about the rising or the plan had it not overlapped with Charlie’s music. In Charlie’s opinion, Auntie Catherine had no interest at all in being the center of attention. But this was not the time to address Allie’s issues with her grandmother, so Charlie let it go.
“How do you know she’ll talk to you?”
Charlie shrugged. “She called me.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean . . .”
“Precedent suggests it does. Okay, you two, take care of your mama. And you,” she leaned in and kissed Allie softly, “I’m sorry I won’t be here when the aunties arrive. If you want to distract them, why not feed them your grandmother.”
“Oh, I wish,” Allie sighed.
“Metaphorically.”
“Sure. Be like that.”
Charlie dropped her hand to the slight curve of Allie’s belly. “She knows they’re boys.”
“Of course she does.”
Warm enough in a T-shirt in spite of the damp cold, Jack paused outside the door of the Emporium and wondered what the clear-sight charm would show if it worked both ways. From inside the stor
e, the charm gave the family advance warning on the true form of their customers—a precaution Jack heartily approved of even if none of the customers were a threat to him. From outside, it was just glass. Watching Allie watch the twins build a fort out of old goalie equipment, Jack doubted he and David were the only Gales with another form. Distracted by the family/food scents of flesh and blood, he hadn’t noticed it at first, but nose to any Gale and he could smell damp earth and ancient trees. Nose to Allie, he could smell earth and trees plus asphalt and car exhaust and people. Pancakes and livestock during the stampede. Nose to Charlie, the trees were stronger and sometimes she smelled like cheap beer and new guitar strings; under that a scent unique to Charlie. He’d sniffed a lot of stuff trying to figure out what it was but had never been able to. If she ever got lost, he knew he’d be able to find her.
Of course Charlie would never get lost, so that was pretty useless.
Thing was, after four years working off and on in the store—more off than on, but still—he’d never managed to see a Gale through the charm.
Allie glanced up, frowned, and beckoned him in.
“Where’s Joe?” he asked.
“Down in the basement.”
That explained the noises coming from under the floor. This time. “And Charlie?”
“My grandmother called and . . .”
He snorted, remembering at the last instant to turn his head away from the twins. “She’s gone. That figures.”
“What figures?”
“Like it matters if she says good-bye or fuck off or even acknowledges I might give a flying fuck.”
“Flying!” Evan chorused.
“Fuck!” Edward agreed.
“Sorry.” He cut off Allie’s rebuke before it began, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed for the back door. Charlie’d taken him with her once, but that didn’t mean she’d ever need or want him with her again. “I’m going hunting.”
Once in the Wood, it didn’t take Charlie long to tease Auntie Catherine’s song from the aunties’ chorus and that meant Auntie Catherine wanted to be found. Convenient, sure, but not exactly comforting. Humming along under her breath, Charlie let the song draw her forward. One step. Two.
Slammed back on her heels by a burst of percussion, she fought for breath against the sudden pressure on her chest.
Jack.
Anger. Confusion. The drum solo wasn’t merely a place holder for the teenage petulance he’d almost outgrown, Charlie could hear an undertone of pain. The beat resonated under the arc of her ribs, reverberating through the bone. Her heart skipped a beat until it matched Jack’s rhythm.
She half turned.
Then turned again.
Jack had Allie, and Graham, and Joe, and four aunties more than willing to interfere in his emotional well-being, but Auntie Catherine wouldn’t wait. If Charlie ignored the window of opportunity provided, there might not be a second chance. Charlie could no more lose Jack’s song than she could lose Allie’s, but Auntie Catherine could go to ground like a ninja.
Mixed amid the crazy and the phlegm, Doomsday Dan had said, “I think we’re all going to die.”
Auntie Catherine had said, “He’s right.”
Murmuring an apology Jack would never hear, Charlie took up Aunt Catherine’s song again . . .
...and emerged between two enormous ferns outside Caesar’s Palace. Given that she was by no means the weirdest thing that had ever happened in Vegas, she headed inside without bothering to charm her sudden appearance away. The lack of crowds midmorning in the casino should have made it easier to find an older woman with a three-foot silver braid and a fondness for lime-green clothing, but the layout had been designed to confuse and confine. It was a maze of bright lights and noise with a five-star steak house at its center instead of a minotaur. Charlie finally closed her eyes, cocked her head, and headed for the sound of a consistently winning slot machine.
When she bounced off the first three bars of “Mandy,” she opened her eyes to see a middle-aged man holding a beer in one hand and his phone in the other. He stood frowning at her, a polyester-covered barrier preventing her from covering the last few feet to the Lucky Seven slot machine with the good luck charm gleaming on the glass.
“You’re carrying a guitar.”
“Wow.” Charlie’s lip curled. “It’s like you can actually . . . see.”
Unwashed hair flopped over his forehead as he shook off her tone and said, “Why do you have a guitar?”
In spite of the hour, that wasn’t his first beer. “Go eat something healthy.”
“I should go eat something healthy,” he muttered, and wandered away.
“You’ve lost your edge.” Silver bracelets chiming, Auntie Catherine entered her bets. “You should have told him to go get a tattoo. Or a hooker.”
“Or a tattoo of a hooker?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Charlotte.” She touched the icon to double up, then leaned back waiting for the machine to run through half a dozen complicated patterns before settling on an enormous flashing seven and what sounded like a midi version of six bars from around the middle of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. “I think that’ll do it for now.” The number on the strip of white paper was pleasantly, but not impossibly, high. Auntie Catherine had learned that lesson some years ago and Auntie Jane still brought it up whenever she wanted to stress the irresponsibility of her youngest sister. Rubbing the charm off the glass as she stood, Auntie Catherine caught up Charlie’s hand and tucked it in the crook of her arm, holding it in place. “We’ll talk while we walk.”
Given the rarity of one-handed guitarists, Charlie walked. “Where are we going?”
“The cashiers’ cages, of course.” The wide legs of her black linen trousers whispered secrets as they crossed the casino.
“Of course.” Away from the slot machines and cutting through the closed section that catered to the more serious weekend gamblers, it became obvious Auntie Catherine wasn’t going to begin the conversation. “So, Doomsday Dan is right?”
“Has all that loud music damaged your hearing?” Silver hoop earrings glittered as Auntie Catherine shook her head with exaggerated sympathy. “Did you come all this way to have me repeat myself?”
“Fine. Dan’s right. He thinks we’re all going to die because the sky is heavy.” Charlie matched the annoyingly artless tone. “Now, what did you See?”
“Besides Doomsday Dan?” Auntie Catherine turned her head far enough to meet Charlie’s gaze and, between one blink and the next, her eyes flashed black; a warning, Charlie assumed, to take her next words seriously. “I Saw an asteroid in the night sky.”
That was serious. “The sky is heavy. I think we’re all going to die.”
“What,” she demanded a moment later, “did you think I Saw?”
“No idea.” Charlie sang in cowboy bars. She knew how to sound like it didn’t matter. “Dan was a little less than specific.” Auntie Catherine offered nothing else and Charlie considered her next question while they passed the high stakes blackjack tables, closed now given the hour. Her free hand felt damp enough to smudge the felt should she reach out and touch it. The hand Auntie Catherine held in the bend of her elbow seemed to know better than to stain the lime-green silk. I think we’re all going to die. Jack was right, belief wasn’t truth, but Auntie Catherine Saw an asteroid in the sky. “I don’t suppose you Saw a date?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“How big was the asteroid?”
“Big enough that if it’s not stopped, we’ll be the dinosaurs.”
“Really? That big?” The sudden flush of relief was so intense, goose bumps rose on Charlie’s arms. Dan was right about the sky being heavy. About the sky falling. He was wrong about the dying. And this had nothing to do with the Corbies leaving. “It’s not going to just hit Calgary, then?”
“What part of �
��this was a very large rock’ are you having trouble understanding, Charlotte?”
“Dan said we and you said he was right and I assumed that meant your asteroid was going to land right on Calgary.”
“It’s not my asteroid, and I have no idea where it’s going to land.” Auntie Catherine sighed. “But it’s large enough that the impact will definitely affect more than merely Calgary. Or Alberta. Or Canada for that matter.”
“Then we’ve got years.”
Charlie stopped because Auntie Catherine did. When an auntie refused to be moved, she became both the immovable object and the irresistible force. Charlie saw practiced pique in the thinned lips and the dipped brows. “Years?” But she heard hope. “How do you figure that, Charlotte?”
“NASA.”
The grip on Charlie’s hand tightened. “Now you’re being a little nonspecific.”
“Okay.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m a musician. Most of what I know about NASA, I learned from the Discovery Channel . . .”
“Where a show called Ice Road Truckers is apparently science.”
“. . . and I know,” Charlie continued, ignoring the interruption, “that if there was an asteroid, a big asteroid, heading for impact in the near future, NASA would know about it and it would be all over the news. I mean, that meteor that hit in Russia and ended up recorded on half a hundred cell phones and all over the internet, it fell off an asteroid NASA’d been monitoring for years. Years. There’s telescopes all over the world pointed into space, Auntie Catherine. There’s scientists on a space station in space watching for this very thing.” Graham’s observation aside, she didn’t know that they were watching in the station, but they’d have definitely noticed an asteroid that big and that close or what the hell were they doing up there. “You just See farther than NASA does.”