by Tanya Huff
“If the asteroid was close enough that millions would die in six months, it would be really, really close. We’d be able to see it. You and me.” She waved a hand between them. “Without a telescope. Okay, not from here,” she allowed when he glanced up. “From out in the real world. We can’t see it, so it isn’t close enough for anything to happen in six months. Okay?”
“You should ask them.”
“Them? The person you heard?”
He nodded. “Them. Gender neutral not plural people.”
“All right. How do I find them?”
He snorted, a gentle, dry snort. “We’re sitting in a wood that doesn’t exist. You tell me.”
“I wish I could.” She stood and looked down at Dan, who’d closed his eyes, the deep creases across his brow smoothed out enough that she could see clean lines of skin. Damn. Taking Dan back to Calgary meant taking him back to the cacophony of overheard thought. He wasn’t family, so it shouldn’t matter, but Charlie couldn’t just drop him back into crazy.
Not when she could help. Great power. Great responsibility. Pain in the ass.
“When this is over, will I be able to play the piano?” he asked as she dropped to one knee and freed her guitar.
“Can you play it now?”
“The joke doesn’t work if you step on my line.”
“Sorry.” Standing and running her fingers lightly over the strings, Charlie watched him lean into the notes and wondered if the voices he heard in his head counted as sound. Did a voice falling in the overgrown area between Dan’s ears make a sound if there was only Dan to hear it? She frowned at the strain on the homily and fiddled with her tuning pegs even though everything seemed fine. Usually, she’d be all over a charm about sound, but right now, next to a man who certainly knew every dirty crack in the sidewalk, the only thing in her head was George Canyon’s cover of “Rhinestone Cowboy” and once that got in, good luck getting it . . .
She smiled. “Do you know what an earworm is, Dan?”
He scratched up under the edge of his toque again. “Crawls in your ear, lays eggs, lots of screaming?”
“No, I think that was an episode from one of those retro TV shows.” She really didn’t want to know what he was studying under his fingernails. “An earworm is what they call a piece of a song you can’t get out of your head.”
“No room in my head.”
“Not out there, no.” Humming softly, she ran G F E up the fretboard. “But I’m going to give you an earworm that’ll write a charm on the inside of your head, and that charm will block all the thoughts that aren’t your own.”
“So, no screaming?”
“Not unless you want to.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes it helps.”
“Used be in a punk band,” Charlie told him. C, Cmaj7, G. “I get that.”
Dan held up his hand before she could touch the strings again. “You’re telling me all this because I’m crazy, right? Because if I tell people about sitting in the forest with a girl writing a song on the inside of my head, no one will believe me.”
“Pretty much.”
“Okay, then.”
“I DON’T SUPPOSE IT OCCURRED TO YOU to ask if Dan might be wanted by the FBI for reasons pertaining to actual criminal activity?”
Charlie shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and stared out over the city skyline. Naked and horned, David sounded more like the old David, the David with the doctorate in criminal psychology, than he had at any time since the change. Which would have been a good thing had he not been sounding like the old David at her. The old David had been a pedantic know-it-all and she’d always been glad they were too close to be listed.
“Charlie?”
“That would be a no.”
“That would be because?”
“Because it doesn’t matter. Dan hears thoughts and most of the family thinks. If he overhears a member of the family thinking and repeats what he heard, we could be playing clean up in aisle three for months even if he never makes it back on YouTube. Better an ounce of prevention.” Here and now, Charlie saw no reason to mention the incoming asteroid to David. While she still had faith in NASA’s ability to save the day, her conversation with Dan had raised a couple of questions she wanted answered before she spread the word the sky was falling. Dan hadn’t overheard Auntie Catherine, so who else knew? And what was up with their belief that millions were going to die? If she told David what his grandmother had Seen while those dead millions were still on the table out of context, he’d pass the information straight to Allie and send Calgary into a lockdown that’d make the last NHL strike seem like a pleasant memory in comparison. “Besides,” she added when the silence stretched a little too long, “Jack likes him.”
“Jack’s feelings in this case are irrelevant.”
“Not to me.”
David’s brows rose until they disappeared under the shaggy fall of his hair.
“Wild Powers stick together, right?” A laugh would oversell it, so she let the words stand alone and hoped they had enough weight to counterbalance the response she’d snapped out without thinking.
After a long moment, David made an indeterminate sound—a little worrying; there weren’t a lot of indeterminate sounds left in Charlie’s world. “If Dan’s going to be protected by the family, we need to know the extent of his criminal background, if only to determine how much effort the FBI is going to put into retrieving him.”
“Big words.”
“Charlie . . .”
“Fine.” She started down the hill, her tone a mix of annoyed and resigned, the relief carefully buried. “If it makes you happy, I’ll ask.”
“Ask. Don’t let him lie to you.”
“Hey!” Turning to face him, she walked backward, arms out to keep her balance, one finger up on each hand. “You don’t tell me how to do what I do, I don’t tell you how to do what you do.”
David snorted, sounding significantly less doctoral. “You’ll be first circle soon enough.”
The hell she would; she was thirty. “Twenty-five years, and that’s a lowball estimate.”
Facing downhill again, she could hear the future in his voice. “Twenty-five years, then. I’ll be waiting.”
She found Jack and Dan about halfway down the hill, sitting out of the wind with their backs to a charred slab of granite. Lichen sacrificed to Jack’s flame, the stone radiated heat enough to keep the chill away. Charlie’d expected Dan to look relaxed, pleased the silence of the Wood had carried over into the world. The dirt made it difficult, but, if Charlie had to hazard a guess, she’d say Dan looked pissed.
“. . . because it’s not where I live!”
“If you go back to your flop by the river, the police will pick you up.” Jack’s hands were clenched. Charlie figured he’d gone over this a few times already. “If you go to a shelter, the police will pick you up. If you just wander around, the police will pick you up.”
“They have granola bars.”
“Who do?”
“The police.”
Two streams of smoke rose from Jack’s nose. “This isn’t like spending a cold night in the drunk tank. You get picked up now and the cops will hand you over to the FBI.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed. “Smoking will stunt your growth.”
Jack pinched his nostrils closed. “Do you want the FBI to pick you up?”
“Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.?”
“What?”
“Marvin Miller?”
“Dude . . .”
“Why’s the FBI want me?”
As Jack opened his mouth, Charlie cut him off. “You tell us, Dan. Have you done anything in the US terrible enough they’d want to haul your ass across the border?”
“I went to North Dakota once.”
“That doesn’t sound so terrible,” Jack muttered.
/> “You ever been to North Dakota, golden boy? I don’t go to shelters, though.” Hands over his ears, Dan shook his head. “Too noisy. It’s like a murmur, here. The sea in the distance. Wind in the trees. Background noise.”
“Partly that’s the park,” Charlie allowed. Then repeated it when Dan lifted his hands. “It’s muting the city. I couldn’t make the earworm a complete block, not and leave you functional.”
“The worm in my ear sings to me.”
“Yeah, sort of.” Functional was, after all, variable. She reached for compulsion because David had a point. They needed to know if the FBI was going to be a problem so someone—probably Auntie Bea, she had the most experience—could deal with it. “Dan, you need to tell me if you’ve done anything that would make the FBI want you.”
He thought about it for a moment. “I hear what people think.”
“Does the FBI know that? That you hear what people think?”
“I didn’t tell them.”
“And there’s no other way they might know?”
“The internet told them.”
“Any other way?”
“No. I don’t know why they want me.”
“Truth,” Charlie said for David’s ears. Within the park, it was safest to assume he was always listening.
“Don’t let them take me to America.” Dan grabbed Jack’s sleeve. “They’ll make me watch NASCAR. I don’t want to watch NASCAR.”
“No one’s taking you anywhere.”
“Except you.” He released Jack and pointed at Charlie. “And her.”
He had a point. “If you stay with us, you’re safe.”
“From the FBI?”
“Yes.”
Dan folded his arms although it wasn’t a particularly definitive gesture given the bulk of three coats and whatever he had on under them. Dirt cracked and flaked off the outermost layer with the movement. “Then I want my stuff.”
“I’ll get it.” Jack bounded to his feet, wings visible on his shadow. “The aunties—not Auntie Gwen, but the rest—are on their way up from the parking lot.”
“And I want Chinese food. Noodles!” he added, squinting against the backwash as Jack left the ground. “Not rice!”
Charlie could hear Auntie Carmen complaining about her shoes as she climbed.
“Charlotte Marie Gale.” Auntie Bea’s voice carried. Charlie gouged a quick charm in the dirt and stepped over it, putting the charm between her and Dan. As long as he stayed put, he wouldn’t hear what the aunties had to say. Better safe than sorry was a given around the aunties. “It isn’t enough Alysha brings in strays,” Auntie Bea continued, “now you have to start? Is that him?”
“No, I’m standing in front of a random vagrant.”
“And I doubt it’s the first time.” An arm’s length away, Auntie Bea mirrored Charlie’s position; feet planted a shoulder’s width apart, hands in her pockets. It might have been a sign of respect, but Charlie suspected mockery. “You’re sure he’s hearing actual thoughts?”
“Positive.”
“Well, that’s not something we want wandering around. Particularly not now he’s gained some notoriety. You say you’ve blocked what’s coming in?”
“I’ve blocked most of it. I can’t block it all and still leave him functional.”
“Of course you can’t.” Auntie Bea sighed. “I miss the old days.”
Auntie Trisha leaned out to peer around Charlie at Dan, one hand patting her hair back into place, the curves of her cheeks a windblown pink. “I think it’s fascinating that he knows what people are thinking.”
“Really?” Auntie Bea pinched the bridge of her nose. “Well, I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking Gwen got the Leprechaun, you should be able to have this one.”
Unrepentant, Auntie Trisha smiled. “He’s not bad looking under the dirt.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Waving off her answer, Auntie Bea muttered, “Never mind, I don’t care.”
“Have you determined why he’s wanted by the FBI?” Auntie Carmen asked.
Charlie shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“It does not.” Auntie Bea’s smile suggested the FBI wouldn’t know what hit it should they attempt to remove Dan from her protection. Which was, Charlie acknowledged, completely accurate. “Get out of the way, Charlotte.”
Charlie stepped aside, but turned as she did. “Dan, these are my aunties. They’re going to help keep you safe.”
“They look like hot baths and vegetables.”
“Yes, they do.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Dan admitted.
* * *
“So, that’s Dan taken care of.”
“It is.” Charlie had retreated to David’s side as the aunties escorted Dan out of the park. Someone had to tell Jack where to take his stuff and David couldn’t be counted on to remain on two legs. “Jack thinks he’s part of a secret government experiment, got spotted by the wrong people when his rant went viral, and now they want him back.”
“Possible.”
“Seriously?”
“All governments keep secrets, Charlie.”
She could hear sirens in the distance—ambulance, given the distinctive out of my way, out of my way sound. Not like David was saying anything she didn’t know, although the secrets governments kept were generally about money wasted on dumbass ideas while social services held bake sales.
“Do you want him?”
After a brief and unsuccessful attempt to breathe spit, Charlie managed a mangled, “Who?”
“Dan.”
“What? No.”
“After he’s been cleaned up a bit?”
“No!” Wanting Dan was the farthest thing from Charlie’s mind. She shoved both hands back through her hair, walked three steps out, three back, and snarled, “For fucksake, David, we’re standing on sacred ground. On your ground. You feel what I feel. Why would you even say something like that?”
He tossed his head, the antlers suddenly much more physical than they had been.
Oh, shit. They were standing on sacred ground. He felt what she felt, and he’d prodded her into feeling it strongly enough that he couldn’t mistake it.
“Jack’s thirteen years younger than you.”
“I know!” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Yelling at David wouldn’t help. “Trust me, I know.”
“You would never take advantage.”
“Of course I wouldn’t!” As it happened, yelling at David wouldn’t hurt either. “What kind of person do you think I am? He’s seventeen. He’s Wild, I’m Wild, and he thinks I’m cool because, frankly, I am, but what I feel for him is irrelevant because I’m an adult and am fully able to recognize I can’t always have what I want. So do you know what I do?” David opened his mouth, but Charlie cut him off. “I’ll tell you what I do, I put on my big girl pants and I suck it up and I live my life knowing I will always have a dragon-sized, empty hole in my heart and, in the finest tradition of crappy ballads, I’ll never let it show. So don’t patronize me, you overgrown billy goat.”
“You done?”
“Yes.” The October wind had made her eyes water. She swiped at her cheeks.
“That’s not all you do.”
“What?”
“You run.”
“Fine, and I run. Hello! Wild. I don’t have to stick around, it’s in the rules.”
“Jack feels the same way.”
“As what?”
“As you do. You fill that same place in his heart.”
And now she knew how the dinosaurs had felt when their asteroid hit. “Oh, that’s just fucking wonderful,” she growled when she got her breath back.
“I tried to convince him it was the pressure of ritual.”
She could hear a dog barkin
g off to the northeast, a siren to the south. “Why?”
“For comfort. It seemed like the logical solution; I had no idea you felt the same way until I saw the two of you together.”
“You didn’t see . . .”
“Felt,” David amended, eyes black from rim to rim.
“Right. Fine. Whatever.” Charlie knew a warning when she saw one. “I’m sure you were trying to help. You want to keep helping. Tell me how the hell am I supposed to look at him now and not see him looking back?”
“You two need to talk.”
“Talk to each other? No, we don’t.”
“He doesn’t know why you keep running away, he thinks it’s about him and . . .”
“It is about him. I know, I know,” she continued before David could respond, “he assumes he’s done something wrong or that I suddenly don’t like him.” Positions reversed, him thirty, her seventeen it was what she would’ve thought.
“So talk to him.”
Eyes narrowed, Charlie folded her arms. David had made no effort to hide the threat. “Or?”
“Or you can continue living your lives at cross purposes, trapped in a bad romance novel, until it goes beyond misunderstandings and one of you lashes out—which is likely to cause irreparable damage to the relationship you already have, the family, and very probably the city, given who and what you two are . . .”
“You make it sound like Godzilla versus Mothra,” Charlie muttered under her breath.
“. . . or you can talk to each other. Now. When the aunties find out, they’re not likely to give you that option.”
“They’re not likely to be quiet about it long enough for us to have the opportunity.”
“That’s what I said.” His eyes flashed black again, he dropped to hooves, and shoved her shoulder with his nose.
She didn’t fall over, but it was close. “You’re a little hard to argue with in that form.” Probably why he’d changed. Arms around his neck, Charlie rested her cheek on his shoulder. There were times when a world-destroying asteroid didn’t sound like an entirely terrible prospect.
Her backup band usually took a break while she was in the park, so there was a distinct lack of hurtin’ music happening. She kind of missed it.