by Tanya Huff
“Twenty years of training in sorcery.”
Until now, Charlie amended.
Hands flat on the table, Auntie Gwen turned a black-on-black gaze toward Jack. “We do not, as a family, allow sorcerers to live. The deal, when we allowed you to remain, was that the moment you stopped using sorcery and became a sorcerer, we would hunt you down like any other Gale male.”
Jack’s eyes remained amber, as Human seeming as they ever got. “And you, all twelve of you, meant it sincerely, but it was a justification without substance. I’ve been a sorcerer, albeit untrained, since I first arrived.”
“True enough.”
“Say what?” Charlie regarded Auntie Gwen’s smile and the whites of her eyes with suspicion.
“He’s a Dragon Prince and a Gale, Charlotte. That he is also a sorcerer should be the least of our concerns.”
“So that whole we do not as a family allow sorcerers to live?”
“We don’t. But times change and I’m very much looking forward to discussing the matter of him saving the world with Bea.” Her emphasis suggested that by discussion she meant baked goods at twenty paces.
“Yeah, well, Auntie Bea and I need to work some things out, but I’m not so much worried about her as I am about Auntie Jane. The family response to sorcerers is not a rhetorical response, and you can say times change until you’re blue in the face, but Auntie Jane . . .” Had given her a humbug. One linty candy tossed on the scale shouldn’t balance Jack’s safety, but Charlie suspected it did. Would.
“Jane . . .” Auntie Gwen picked Evan’s shoe out of the butter and handed it to Allie, allowing the name to hang in the air much the way the asteroid had.
Interesting times ahead.
“Is there more pie in the fridge?”
“Gary, are you all right?”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, murmuring “I’m fine,” over and over into her hair.
“Okay.” And after a minute. “You’re squashing me.”
“Sorry.” He took a minute to breath before saying, “That was Kiren.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s good. Everything’s good.”
“Okay,” Sheryl said again. Gary could tell she had a million questions, and he’d never loved her more when she didn’t ask any of them. “I thought you were dealing with the band’s sudden lack of a guitarist.”
“Right.” They’d talk later. About leaving home and the world not ending and following dreams regardless. He was amazed at how steady his finger remained as he searched his contact list.
Charlie hung up the phone as Auntie Gwen came out onto the roof. She shook her head at Jack, and he went back to watching the cars pass down below on the street. “If that’s a bowl of soup . . .”
“Allie’s worried about you. Are you surprised?”
“No. But I’m full.” Her belly curved out between the prominent bones of her hips and shifted uncomfortably as she took the bowl. “Over full.” Without taking her eyes off Auntie Gwen, she held it out to the right and felt Jack take it from her.
“So, you two are together?”
Charlie thought about playing dumb as to the meaning of together, but as the entire family would have an opinion they’d happily share, she might as well get one of them out of the way. “Not yet. We thought we’d get to know each other first—all Jack knows is a memory and I don’t know him, this him, at all. People change in twenty years.”
Jack had turned and become a warm presence against her side. “Even dragons change,” he said. “Though slowly.”
“Things have changed.” He’d winked when he said it.
What the hell had that meant? Not that the Wood had changed. That was an observation too obvious even for a god. Why wouldn’t his immortal years weigh so heavily?
“. . . old?”
“What?”
Auntie Gwen rolled her eyes as Charlie focused. “I asked, how old is he?”
“How old is Jack?”
“You say he was in the Courts for twenty years and you started out thirteen years older. Thirteen from twenty is seven. But as I doubt it’s exactly seven, is it seven years minus a month or two or seven years plus a month or two.”
“We saved the world.” More a whine than a declaration, the pitch drove the pigeons off the edge of the roof. The last thing Charlie’d expected was to be blindsided by the one rule, the only rule she wouldn’t break.
“Do the math, Charlotte.”
“Oh for . . . fine. Thirty-two weeks for twins three and four . . .”
“Thirty-one and three days,” Auntie Gwen corrected.
“Two years before the next conception . . .”
“Two years, three months, fourteen days.”
“Hours and minutes?” Charlie snapped.
Auntie Gwen smiled. “If you want. Shall we continue?”
Fortunately, dragons were good at math.
“Happy?” Charlie muttered when they were done.
“Actually, yes.” Auntie Gwen cupped the side of her face and kissed her cheek then did the same to Jack. “You two are good for each other. And I never liked it that the Wild Powers were expected to be alone. Gales need family. If Catherine had someone to run Wild with, she’d be less Machiavellian.”
“You sure about that?”
“Not really, no.”
Charlie took a deep breath when Auntie Gwen left the roof, turned, and beat her head against the solid mass of Jack’s shoulder half a dozen times. She released him reluctantly when he moved away but smiled when she realized why he’d needed the room.
“You’re magnificent, you know that, right? All gleamy gold and muscle and Wild Power barely contained by scales and I should just shut up now.” She’d seen him larger out at Drumheller, but here on the roof he was the bass line that kept the song on course. The skirl of pipes at the start of every parade. A Howard Shore theme.
He spread his wings and dipped his head back under the curve so he could meet her gaze. “Fly with me?”
A dozen responses considered and discarded, Charlie settled on, “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Duh.”
When dragons laughed, the world laughed with them. Or maybe, Charlie admitted, it was just her and Jack.
He adjusted his size as she straddled his neck until she felt as though she’d become a part of him and the anthem she could feel rising contained at least three verses she’d never be able to sing with children in the audience. Hidden within a glamour, Jack’s wings cupped the air, the enormous muscles in his back and shoulders flexed, and they rose up over the city, circling around until their shadow raced along the road in front of the store.
The pigeons dove under the newspaper box, slowly enough Charlie suspected it was for old time’s sake. She clung to the column of Jack’s neck with both hands and reminded herself to breathe. In. Out. In.
It felt like . . .
It felt like flying.
He dipped one wing and circled the Calgary Tower. “Where to, Charlie?”
She sang a charm to keep her hair out of her eyes and laughed. “Everywhere! But first, let’s go see a man about a bouzouki.”