by Tanya Huff
“Pretty much, yeah. Oh, crap. Allie, I’ve got to go. I’ve got an outside elevation I have to finish before the client arrives, and he just walked in.”
“You’re still at work?”
“You can rearrange the world for your convenience, and you can’t remember a three-hour time difference?”
“I can’t rearrange the whole world.”
“So you say. Let me know what you decide. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” But she was talking to a dial tone.
—
“What did Michael say?”
“How do you know I called Michael first?”
On the other end of the phone, Charlie made a rude noise. “You always call Michael first, Allie.”
Michael had received a family phone the same day Allie’d got hers-the day they left for university. Although the phones began as the cheapest pay-as-you-go handset available, by the time the aunties got through with them, they provided free, reliable cell service. There was a strong suspicion among the younger members of the family that the aunties were using the technology to eavesdrop, but-given free, reliable cell service-no one tried too hard to prove it.
Michael’d accidentally flushed his down the toilet during the first party they’d thrown in their shared apartment. Four days later, it had arrived in the mail; plain manila envelope, no return address, still working if a bit funky smelling.
“He said if I moved to Calgary, it’d be easier for us to get together.”
“For what? Cappuccinos?” Charlie snorted, sounding frighteningly like Auntie Jane.
“For…” Sitting cross-legged in the tree house, Allie waved a hand, knowing Charlie’d get the intent even if she couldn’t see the motion. “Why do you think she left her business to me?”
“Because you’re unemployed with no emotional commitments that have any connection to reality.”
“You think she saw that?”
“I think your mother called her when your grant ran out and, as your grandmother, she’s understandably concerned about your creepy obsession with your gay best friend and thinks you should get a life. And I’m on the phone, dipshit!” Charlie’s volume rose. “Keep your pants on, I’ll be right there.”
“I’m interrupting something.”
“Not really. Just a prima donna who’s sucking all the life out of this track by insisting it be perfect!”
Allie didn’t quite catch the prima donna’s answer, but it seemed to involve inserting instruments where they clearly wouldn’t fit.
“This,” Charlie added with a weary sigh, “is why I hate session work. So what are you going to do? You’ve never been that far away from home.”
“I know.” Allie picked at a piece of splintered wood; swore as it drove in under her nail. “I think I’m going,” she mumbled around the taste of blood as she sucked at her fingertip.
“You think?”
“I am.” Staring across the moonlit pasture at the dark line of the woods, she wondered if Granddad was still hanging around. “You’re right, I don’t have anything better to do, and I’d like to know what Gran’s up to as much as the aunties.”
“Doubt that.”
“I actually believed she was dead, Charlie.” Her reaction lingered; like the phantom pain of a missing limb.
Charlie was quiet for a long moment, then she sighed. “All right, then.”
“Besides, I can always come home when I need to.” Like Charlie did. Well, not quite like Charlie did, but there were plenty of aunts and cousins out in the world. As each generation got larger, more of the Gale girls spread out, came home for ritual, spread out again. “You know they have these things called airplanes now.”
“They smell like ass and they make you check your guitar.”
“I don’t have a guitar.”
“It’s not all about you, sweetie. Hey, you want me to come with you? You could be Nancy Drew and I can be the snappy sidekick with the gender inappropriate name. I always figured they were getting it on.”
Allie grinned and leaned back against the tree house wall, the faded catalog pages that covered it crinkling under her weight. “You also figured Daphne and Velma were getting it on. If I haven’t solved the mystery of the missing grandmother by the time you’ve finished the demo, come out then, okay?”
“Okay. And now we’ve got your life sorted, I’m needed elsewhere. Someone found two brain cells to rub together, and we might actually make some music tonight.”
“Have fun.” But she was talking to dead air. Again.
Flat on her back, feet out over the edge, she stared up through the latticework of branches and wondered why, at twenty-four, she still felt as though she were waiting for her real life to begin.
Off in the darkness, a small animal screamed and died.
She decided not to consider it an omen.
—
Allie left Wednesday morning. Aunt Andrea, Charlie’s mother, who ran Darsden East’s single travel agency, got her a last-minute ticket at a deep discount and her father took a personal day to drive her to the airport.
“They’ve all got reading to catch up on, Kitten,” he told her, getting into the truck. “It won’t kill them to sit quietly and make the attempt. Besides, I had a word with Dmitri. He’ll keep our lot under control, and you know what they say…”
“It’s better to follow a Gale than get in their way.” Allie fastened her seat belt, twisted to wave at her mother and the aunties on the porch then settled back in the seat with a sigh as they started down the lane. “Dmitri’s in charge at the school?”
“Fought Cameron for it back in the fall.” They drove in silence for a few kilometers, gravel pinging up against the undercarriage. Then, as they turned onto the paved county road, he added, “I think Dmitri’s after your granddad’s job.”
“Dad, he’s eighteen.”
“Granted, but that’ll change. He’s looking ahead. Building alliances.”
Allie rolled her eyes. Gale boy or not, Dmitri thought a little too highly of himself. “It doesn’t work like that, and the aunties would never choose him, not if he wants it that much.”
“You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.” She shifted inside the confines of the seat belt, really not wanting to talk about why she was sure with her father even though he had to have known that Dmitri’d spent Thursday night. He’d given him a ride to school Friday morning, so the odds were good. “Dmitri’s not powerful enough, and he’s too… tame.” Not quite the best description, but anything more exact crossed over the TMI line. Way over. Gale women were attracted to power, and it took a lot to keep them from wandering off. Dmitri just didn’t have what it took to hold the rituals in place.
“David…”
Allie waited for more, but the name just hung there.
“David’s not tame,” she said at last, rubbing at a smudge on the window with her sleeve. And then, because it was clearly where the conversation was heading, added, “Auntie Jane wants him.”
“So I’ve heard.” The aunties shared the habit of talking amongst themselves like they were the only ones in the room and, with two of them in the old farmhouse, her father had likely heard any number of conversations he’d have been happier remaining ignorant of. “Your Auntie Jane is worried David’s going to turn. Says it’s been very a long time since a Gale boy went bad, and it’s not going to happen on her watch.”
“Really?” Allie felt her lip curl. She couldn’t seem to stop it. “And who put Auntie Jane in charge?”
“I suspect Auntie Jane did.”
Hard to argue with that, actually. Even among the aunties, who insisted on a lack of hierarchy, force of personality won out. Even Gran had deferred to her, although she’d done it mockingly. Allie drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “David’s not going to turn.”
“They’re worried about how much time he spends away from the family.”
“He’s there if he’s needed. And come on, Dad, he works with the
police. He helps put bad guys in jail. He’s… David. Sure he gets all dark and brooding sometimes, but hello, great power, great responsibility… she knows that. They all know that. Or don’t they listen to the lectures they give us?”
“You’re his baby sister, Kitten.You’re not exactly unbiased.”
“You’re his father!”
“Well, fathers. Sons. It’s complicated.”
She glanced over at her father’s smooth profile. Allie had asked her mother once if she’d been afraid the aunties would turn him down when she’d presented him. He was smart and funny and infinitely patient, but he brought nothing out of the ordinary to the family.
Fortunately, her mother had understood. “Don’t worry, Allie, when the time comes, they’ll approve Michael. Everyone likes him and that’s a very useful trait for the family to acquire. Or control if it comes to it. As for your father, well, your gran came home and made such a nuisance of herself that I think they agreed to accept him at least partially just to shut her up. And, who knows, maybe they saw what I saw in him.”
Of course, the aunties had never been given a chance to approve Michael and Allie’d come to see that infinite patience when dealing as an outsider with the Gale family was a wonderful thing to have. David had inherited some of that patience. Allie hadn’t. And none of that changed the fact that her father had no scars. He’d never gone head-to-head in a blind rut, unable to stop the need to dominate. He thought he understood his son, but really, bottom line, he couldn’t.
“David won’t turn,” she told him. “And he’ll choose when he’s ready to choose. If Auntie Jane wants to tie him to ritual and the land, wants to tame him with chains of family obligation, she’ll have to go through me!”
One dark brow rose. Unless he’d been practicing, it was likely they’d both gone up, but Allie could only see the one. “Tame him with chains of family obligation?”
“A little melodramatic?”
“Just a bit.” But he was smiling and the tense line of his shoulders-tension she thought had come from her leaving-had eased. Which was flattering and not terribly realistic since even Auntie Gwen, whose eyes had only just darkened, could go through her opposition like a knife through meringue. “I take it you don’t want me to repeat that to Auntie Jane?”
Allie literally felt her heart skip a beat. “Oh, God, no!”
“It’d help if he’d choose.”
David’s list was long enough that Allie suspected the aunties had bent a few lines trying to get him safely tied to one of his cousins.
“Or he could go Roland’s route. I know there’s cousins willing and that’d take the pressure off.”
“Dad, shouldn’t you be talking about this with David?”
“He gets enough of it from the aunties.” He turned just far enough to flash her a self-conscious smile. “I’m not going to add to the chorus. But I still worry.”
They talked about other things then; about new babies, and future plans, and what they thought Gran was really up to.
“You need to recognize that there’s a chance she’s actually dead, Kitten. If anyone could figure out a way to hide it from the aunties, it’d be your gran.”
“But why?”
“Just to prove she could.”
Yeah. That sounded like Gran. “Then I’ll find out how and why it happened.”
“All on your own.”
“Dad, I’m twenty-four.”
“And you’re a Gale.”
An undeniable statement of fact that could have a myriad of meanings. Allie decided she’d be happier not knowing which particular meaning her father felt applied.
They argued about music.
“I swear to you, Dad, if you say Rush one more time, I’m going to walk the rest of the way to Toronto.”
And they talked about Michael although Allie put it off as long as she could.
“I’m not saying you should stop loving him, Allie. I’m just saying you should stop pining for him.”
“I’m not pining.” Pining meant she thought they might happen someday and she knew they wouldn’t. She’d learned to work around the Michael-shaped hole in her life. “Michael was the one for me, and just because I’m not the one for him, that doesn’t change things.”
“It should.”
“It doesn’t. What if Mom hadn’t wanted you? Or if the aunties hadn’t approved you?”
He did her the credit of actually thinking about it for a few minutes. “I’d have moved on. Eventually.”
“Well, maybe my eventually just hasn’t happened yet.” But she only said it because it was what he wanted to hear. “Dad! Last Tim Horton’s before the airport!” As he decelerated up the off ramp, Allie gave a quiet thanks for coffee and doughnuts. She’d eat enough fried dough with sprinkles to need larger jeans if it got her out of that particular conversation.
Gales didn’t have problems with airport security and, after a short wait, Allie accepted it as her due that the plane had been overbooked and they were bumping her to first class. Or business class. Or whatever they were now calling those seats an adult could actually fit into.
Family influence did not, unfortunately, extend to providing anything worth watching while in the air. Allie read, napped a bit, and pulled her father’s final warning out of memory to examine it for content she may have missed.
“Be careful, Kitten. The aunties have been wondering for some time what your grandmother’s been up to and her getting you out there is no doubt a part of a much larger… thing. Whatever it is. Also, if you ask me, I think they’re afraid.”
“The aunties?”
“If your grandmother is dead, then clearly whatever killed her was something outside the norm, or we’d have heard from the proper authorities. And if something was capable of killing your grandmother, then that something is a danger to the entire family.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me to go?”
“Would you not go if that was what I wanted?” After a long moment, while she searched for the right words, he pulled her into a hug. “It’s all right. Just don’t take anything for granted and call David if you run into something you can’t handle. He’s your big brother, it’s his job to look after you.”
Sometimes Allie wondered if her father paid that little attention to how the family actually worked. “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll be fine.”
She’d be fine but a long way from home. She could feel family ties stretching. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
—
A red light held her cab at the corner of 4th Avenue S.W. and 6th Street S.W. and Allie found her attention drawn to the north along 6th-the streets went north/south, the avenues east/west, but the ease of movement that suggested got canceled out by the compass locations. It wasn’t enough to find 6th Street, it was crucial to know which 6th Street.
This 6th Street ended three short blocks to the north, and it looked like the entire west side of that last block was one long, two-story building.
“Excuse me.” Allie twisted in the seat, trying to get a better angle. “Do you know what that building is?”
“The nice-looking one with the railing on the roof and the kind of pale stone trim? Big windows? Got all those trees out front behind the fence?”
Allie couldn’t see that kind of detail but why not. “Yes, that one.”
“No idea. Probably offices.” He hit the gas as the light finally changed and sped along 4th Avenue mentioning points of interest as the buildings blurred by. He’d been completely silent all the way in from the airport-Allie didn’t count the on-again, off-again duet he’d been performing with Country 105-but her question seemed to have tapped his inner tour guide. “The Old Spaghetti Factory’s on 3rd Street, and then there…” A brisk nod as they raced a yellow light through the intersection. “… there’s a good Korean barbecue and something Spanish or something and a pizza place. And this is pretty much Chinatown,” he added turning south onto Center Street.
Allie would have asked wha
t he meant by “pretty much Chinatown” but thought it might be safer if he concentrated on his driving for a while given that traffic had gone from insane to certifiable. The workday was ending and the sidewalks were fairly crowded, but not one head wore a cowboy hat. What point was there in going west if people dressed like they did in Toronto?
“ Calgary Tower,” he grunted, turning east on 9th.
As freestanding phallic symbols went, it was smaller than the one Allie was used to, but maybe Calgary felt it had less to prove.
The signs said they were in the southeast part of the city now. Allie had no idea where or when they’d crossed the line.
Pulling out to pass a transport, the cabbie jerked his head to the north with enough emphasis the cab swerved over the center line. “ Fort Calgary. Bow River. Oh, and there’s a zoo.” Across a bridge, and they were suddenly on Atlantic Avenue. “I never been, but it’s there.”
“Where?”
“There.” He jerked his head again, and Allie clutched at the edge of her seat.
“Okay.”
Atlantic Avenue S.E. was also 9th Avenue S.E. And 1223 was only three long blocks in from the bridge.
Gran’s business, the business that had become crucial to the local community, took up a double storefront and from the road looked to be…
“A junk shop?”
Her driver paused, one suitcase on the sidewalk the other hauled half out of the trunk, and peered up at the sign. “Says The Enchantment Emporium. Fair number of secondhand shops in this area. On the weekends, you’ll get antiquers.”
“By any other name,” Allie muttered, eyes rolling at the emphasis. Gran had charms in the bottom right corner of all eight narrow windows obscuring the view-the lace curtains covering the top half meter of each gleaming glass pane were probably there to give the place an air of shabby gentility-but, from what she could see of the store’s content, junk seemed more than accurate.
As the cabbie slowly counted out her change, Allie considered drawing a quick charm. She couldn’t stop him from taking other fares to their destinations by the scenic route, but she could arrange it so passengers stayed out of his backseat. In the end she let it go, lifting her finger off the dusty metal and wiping the grime off onto her jeans. Her family didn’t get screwed over, so something they’d passed on the way in from the airport had to have been important.