by Tanya Huff
“I’d like to leave my grandson out of this. He’s your stray, Charlotte.”
“It’s your bathtub, Auntie Carmen.” Charlie hung up and caught a sympathetic look from one of the valet parking guys. “Family.”
He nodded. “Claro que si.”
Out of Town Girl led her to the 41st floor of the Augustus Tower where she found a member of the hotel staff backing out of Auntie Catherine’s room with a room service trolley, a disheveled uniform, and a sappy expression. He had gorgeous dark eyes, broad shoulders, and was in shouting distance of his early twenties which explained the Rihanna now playing in the background at least. When he caught sight of Charlie, he blushed up to the roots of his sweat-damp hair.
Charlie patted him on the shoulder as she went past him into the room.
“Charlotte.”
“Auntie Catherine.” There might have been a plaintive call me from the hall as the door shut behind her. Charlie chose to ignore it. “We need to talk.”
“Please, he’s twenty-six and this is not the first time he’s offered his services to a woman traveling alone. Although,” she added thoughtfully, braiding her hair, silver bracelets chiming, “it’s the first time he didn’t expect to be compensated for his effort.”
“We don’t need to talk about that.”
“Pity. It was worth commenting on.” End of the braid tied off, Auntie Catherine locked a serious gaze on Charlie’s face. “Go ahead, child. Talk.”
“He’s twenty-six?” Okay. That wasn’t what she’d intended to say.
“It’s not about age, Charlotte, it’s about power imbalance.”
“Imbalance? What power did the boy-toy have?”
“Oh, we were talking about Kevin? My mistake.” She leaned in toward the mirror, licked her fingertip and ran it over her eyebrows, then turned back to Charlie. “Never underestimate the power of abs so defined you can open a Corona on them. Now then, get to the point. I’m due in the spa in forty minutes.”
“You may want to cancel because that asteroid you Saw . . . NASA won’t be able to stop it.”
“And why would that be a reason to cancel my spa appointment?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . .” Charlie picked the box of mixed nuts off the dresser and frowned at the exposed flashing lights. “Asteroid? Impact? Extinction event?”
“That seems like an excellent reason to get a massage.” Auntie Catherine plucked the nuts from Charlie’s hand and put them back on the sensors. “You told me they’d have years to come up with a solution. What happened?”
“It turns out that as an astrophysicist, I’m a great musician.” The bathroom was definitely big enough for a tiger and she could see the Bellagio fountain from the window. Of the room. Not the bathroom. Although there was a television by the toilet. Having paced out the dimensions of the room, Charlie flipped the duvet back into place before dropping onto the rumpled bed. “There’s a heavy metal asteroid blocking the rock you Saw—an asteroid heavy in metals, not a head-banging asteroid. Although there will be some head banging . . .”
One silver brow rose. “Charlotte.”
“Right. Because the asteroid that’s going to impact has been blocked from sensors and telescopes and science stuff, it’s gotten too close. We’ve got a maximum of six months before the blocking asteroid has moved far enough out of the way that the falling asteroid is spotted and all over the news. And, news flash, no one I talked to thinks we’ll get the whole six. All told, twenty-two months to impact.”
“I see.” Auntie Catherine tightened the belt on the hotel bathrobe, the plush fabric dipping in around her waist. “It seems we’re the dinosaurs after all. I assume there’s a reason you’ve come back to tell me this before telling the rest of the family.”
“How do you know I haven’t told . . . No one’s called you.” Obvious really. “I need to know if you’ve Seen anything else.”
“I’ve Seen many things. I’ve seen next year’s Oscars—no real surprises. I think Peter Jackson was in Armani again. I’ve Seen a white tiger cub born in Kiev. I’ve Seen a bridge fall in Chunox. Or perhaps it was Consejo. I’ve Seen you embarrassing yourself mooning over . . .”
“Yeah, you’ve seen fire and you’ve seen rain. Anything else that might help?” When both Auntie Catherine’s brows rose, Charlie sighed. “Help us survive.”
“No.”
“That’s it?” Charlie asked after a long moment. “Just no?”
“Just no.” The bed dipped as she sat.
Across the road and forty-one stories down, the Bellagio fountains thumped out a few thousand gallons of water. Charlie stared at the back of Auntie Catherine’s head, at the slope of her shoulders, at the bow of her spine, and realized she’d never seen an auntie look undone before. She sat up so that her right arm touched Auntie Catherine’s left and her boots sank into the plush, cream-colored carpet beside Auntie Catherine’s bare feet. It looked like she’d gotten a pedicure recently, her toenails were a bright sapphire blue. “They’re pretty sure that impact’ll be just south of Hudson Bay. Darsden East goes early, but the rock’s big enough that the rest of us, where us means pretty much everyone, goes a little later.”
“Yes, well, it is a very large rock.” After a moment she added, “You should say dies, Charlotte. Everyone dies, not everyone goes. Euphemisms are for the childish and the weak, and you’re neither.”
“Thanks.”
“It was the truth, not a compliment.”
“Yeah, well, the truth and I have been a bit pitchy lately.”
“I have Seen you and the young man I assume . . .”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Auntie Catherine.”
They sat in silence for a moment. It would be easy to give up, Charlie realized. Easy to say, we can’t stop it, we’re all going to die, and spend at least some of those twenty-two months alone with Jack. But, the truth was, she wasn’t ready to die. She might be ready to trade in the so much less than it could be and slightly emotionally masochistic relationship she had with Jack for a happily ever after, but by no definition was twenty-two months ever after. She wasn’t ready to give up Allie, music, the twins, pancakes, pizza and bourbon at two AM, sunrises, sunsets, pickup trucks, accents, and beer either. “You still haven’t Seen the impact.”
“Not yet, no.”
She swept the edge of her boot sole back and forth, flattening then fluffing the nap of the carpet. Pale. Dark. Pale. “So maybe we can still stop it.”
“You and I? You and I are tapped out, Charlotte. I have Seen it. You can sing of it but not at it. As you haven’t brought it up, I assume Jack’s as helpless as we are.”
“I meant we, the family.”
“It’s not what we . . .” The emphasis was mocking. “. . . the family, do.”
“No, we don’t.” The family didn’t interfere in the concerns of the wider world. They left that up to the Wild Powers, albeit not always graciously. Or consciously. On the other hand, the concerns of the wider world didn’t usually interfere quite so emphatically with the family. “We’re pretty fond of eating and sleeping and fucking, so I think we might make an exception this time.”
Auntie Catherine made a noncommittal noise Charlie chose to hear as agreement before saying, “I went back to Ontario to tell Jane.”
“Auntie Jane?”
Her answering snort was entirely committal. “No, Jane Banks.”
“What did she say?”
“Honestly?”
“That’d be nice.”
“I don’t think she believed me.”
“So the aunties still haven’t had a chance to weigh in.” Charlie chewed at the thought. The aunties were, well, the aunties. Individually, they were like cats, but working together . . . Charlie’d always believed that the aunties could do anything. Charlie’d been taught that the aunties could do anything. By the aunties. W
ho didn’t believe in false modesty.
“I am an auntie, Charlotte, and I . . .”
“So the aunties,” Charlie repeated through clenched teeth, “still haven’t had a chance to weigh in.”
“Not as such, no.”
“And you are Wild. That trumps auntie, or you wouldn’t be staying in a hotel room in Vegas no matter how attentive room service . . .”
“Very attentive.”
“. . . might be. You’d be in Darsden East or Calgary complaining about the way your granddaughters never add enough tapioca to raspberry pie to soak up the juice.”
“Allie?”
“Katie, but that’s not my point. We need to take this to the family because me and you and Jack, we’re not a part of what they are. We’re more. Or less, depending on your perspective. We don’t see the world the same way.”
“I don’t see the world through beer glasses.”
“Don’t patronize me.” Charlie snapped. The champagne glass on the dresser hummed. “I’m over thirty and as Wild as you are.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you have a way to go to be as Wild as I am, but, by all means, gather the family.” Auntie Catherine spread her hands, the bracelets chiming with the movement, the gleaming silver fracturing the light around them. “Feel free to see if the collected power of the Gales is enough to save the world.”
The Bellagio fountains thumped again as Charlie got to her feet and turned to face the bed. “You don’t think it will be, do you?”
“I don’t know . . .” She stopped. Shook her head. Started again. “I don’t know why I told Jane. I don’t know if I was telling her the world was about to end, or if I was telling her to stop it.”
“Please. Like you can tell Auntie Jane to do anything.”
The edged smile softened slightly. “True enough.”
“Will you come if Allie calls the family together?”
“If Allie calls? Yes,” she continued thoughtfully before Charlie could respond. “They’ll come for her. She’ll do it for you.”
“Will you come?” Charlie repeated.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have slipped my leash.”
“Allie doesn’t hold . . . Never mind.” Charlie headed for the door, turned and said, “So you haven’t Seen yourself actually doing something about this, then?”
And the edge returned. “Charlotte, when I was ten years younger than you are now, I began the arrangements that ensured two of my grandchildren would be who they were and what they were, not to mention where they were, in order to stop a rampage by the Dragon Queen. What makes you think I’m not doing something?”
Charlie was back in the Wood before she realized Auntie Catherine hadn’t actually answered the question.
She found Joe in the store going through a box of videotapes.
“If you’re looking for Jack, he just left. Carmen had a problem.”
“With Dan. She called me first,” Charlie added when Joe looked up.
“If he wants to leave,” Joe began.
“Leave? I though he wanted to live in the bathtub?”
“As I heard it, Bea and Carmen had a fight about it, Carmen started to cry . . .”
“Auntie Carmen cries at Heritage Moments.”
“. . . and Dan said he wouldn’t stay if he was going to be a cabbage.”
“Cabbage?”
“That’s what Bea said. He got out of the tub . . .”
Elbows on the counter, Charlie dropped her head into her hands. “That should’ve made someone happy.”
“. . . and he tried to leave. Bea stopped him. And Carmen says you said that Jack should sort it out.”
“Jack the Dragon Prince, not Jack the Gale boy. He’ll know what to say.” Joe made a noise so entirely noncommittal, Charlie lifted her head and turned to stare at him. “What?”
“Wasn’t it you who argued so vehemently for his acceptance as a Gale boy?”
“I don’t see any reason he can’t be both a Dragon Prince and a Gale boy as the need arises.”
“No . . .” Joe set a stack of tapes on the counter beside her. “. . . you wouldn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that if Dan wants to leave, he should be allowed to leave.”
Charlie watched Joe sort seasons one through six of The Littlest Hobo into the correct boxes and finally decided, screw it, let him change the subject. “We’re keeping him within the protection of the family for his own good, but, yeah, it’s a slippery slope. With great power, great responsibility, yadda yadda, and you have no idea how much I miss the days when all I had to worry about were broken strings and drunks who wanted us to play ‘Freebird.’”
Joe cocked his head and frowned at her. “When was the last time you slept?”
When she closed her eyes, she saw big rocks land on people she loved while she struggled to string her guitar. “I’m pretty sure I got a couple hours on the roof this morning. Why?”
“Because you look a little rough.”
“Good. Rough may get me some sympathy points.” Charlie picked up a 1997 tape of Girls Gone Wild and frowned at the fangs and claws. Not the wild she’d been expecting. “Allie upstairs?”
“She is. Gwen took the boys to the park.”
Allie was alone upstairs because the universe rearranged itself for Gales. Metaphysically speaking; geologically speaking, not so much.
“If any of the family come in, keep them down here.”
After a long look at her face, Joe nodded.
Charlie tossed the tape back in the box and wondered what he’d seen.
* * *
“Auntie Bea, I need to talk to Jack.”
“Of course you do. In case you’re curious, although I notice you didn’t ask, Dan is currently sitting at the kitchen table eating butter tarts.”
“I hope he’s sitting on a towel.”
“Of course he is. Jack! It’s Charlotte.”
Jack listened without comment as Charlie leaned on the wall beside the mirror and sketched out her meeting with Auntie Catherine. “I’m about to play the whole opera for Allie, then we’ll throw the aunties at the asteroid.”
“If you threw enough of them, you could knock it off course.”
“Catapult it is, then.”
“You sure you want to tell Allie before I check with the Courts?”
“The Courts will assume the aunties already know. If we take it to the Courts before the aunties . . .”
“We’ll be the first casualties.”
He was smiling—Charlie could hear the smile in his voice—but he was also entirely serious. His uncles had seen to it that Jack’s sense of survival was as finally tuned as any Gale boy’s.
“Charlie?”
She’d been listening to him breathe for just a little too long. Twenty-two months, but he could save himself and that was . . . not exactly a comfort, but it helped. Her reflection stood on a pile of broken glass. It seemed the mirror had a sense of its own mortality. “We’ll stop it,” she said, and hung up.
* * *
“Allie, we have to talk.”
Allie turned the mixer on low and poured the half cup of lemon juice into the bowl before looking up. “All right.” Her expression suggested relief, but Charlie could hear betrayal under her words, like the snares vibrating against a drumhead. Lovers, cousins, friends, they didn’t keep secrets. Hadn’t kept secrets. “Pass me the flour.”
Charlie slid the quarter cup of flour down the counter. “I thought this was another Wild Powers problem, like the Selkies. Keeping it from you had nothing to do with you personally.”
“Okay.” She tipped the flour into the bowl, then turned up the power.
“You’re taking this well.” Charlie pitched her voice over the
roar of the machine, not bothering to mask the sarcasm. Gale girls baked when they were upset. Allie, figuring there was pie enough in the world, baked lemon squares.
“You’re obvious when you have a secret, Charlie.”
“In my own defense, this isn’t an easy family to keep secrets in.” It would certainly be easier from Vegas. She felt another wave of understanding for Auntie Catherine. “Look there’s no good way to do this so I’m just going to sing out. There’s a huge asteroid heading toward an impact with Earth in twenty-two months, which probably isn’t enough time for NASA to stop it, so unless we, being us, being the family, although mostly I’m figuring the aunties at this point, can stop it, we’re all, and when I say all I mean all, going to die.”
Allie shut off the mixer and stared at Charlie while the silence vibrated through the apartment. “What?” she asked after a long moment.
Maybe a few more details wouldn’t hurt. “What part did you miss?”
“The part where you’re supposed to be telling me about you and Jack.”
“Allie . . .” The edge of the counter creaked under Charlie’s white-knuckled grip. “There is no me and Jack!”
“I know, I can do the math.” Allie picked up a spatula. “We can all do the math. I understand why you don’t want the whole family talking about it . . .”
“Wait.” Hand wrapped around Allie’s wrist, Charlie stopped her from scraping the bowl and folding her emotional state into the lemon custard. “Are you saying, the whole family knows?”
“Did you miss me saying you’re obvious when you have a secret? Between you running and him scorching and all the watching you’ve both been doing with little pink hearts in your eyes . . .”
“Actual?”
“Metaphorical.”
“Good thing.”
“But the point is, I have never closed my heart to you. Why didn’t you come to me?”