Wild Ways

by Tanya Huff

A quick pit check suggested stink was an understatement. “Please, we sweat flowers.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Occasionally.” Charlie patted Graham’s cheek and Allie’s ass on the way to the bathroom. “If Jack starts another apocalypse while I’m in the shower, fix it without me.”

  “He’s a teenager.” Washed, dried, and wearing black silk boxers under a faded Dun Good tank, Charlie snickered into her mug of tea and added, “He has to spread his wings.”

  “Wow, that’s original .” Allie poked her in the shoulder as she set a piece of strawberry pie down on the table and handed her a fork. “You should put it to music. And he’s been spreading his wings plenty. They had to stop mail delivery in Bayview because a hawk . . .”

  In the three weeks Charlie had been gone, Allie’s air quotes had gotten a lot more emphatic.

  “. . . kept attacking the postal worker.”

  “Big difference between a hawk and a dragon, Allie-cat. And Jack’s a big dragon.”

  Allie dropped in the chair next to Charlie and prodded her in the thigh with her bare feet. “Jack’s a sorcerer. And we know his uncles played with their sizes, so it may be a Dragon Prince skill and have nothing to do with sorcery.”

  Too tired to make the obvious played with themselves comment, Charlie waved her fork, bits of pie crust speckling the tabletop. “Yeah, but no teenage boy would willingly make himself smaller. Dragon. Prince. Sorcerer. Doesn’t matter which, it’s not going to happen. It’s all bigger is better at that age. Actually . . .” She frowned thoughtfully as she chewed. “ . . . bigger is better at any age. Ow! Allie!”

  Graham sat down across the table with his own piece of pie. “Somewhere in there you have a valid point, but the attacks on the postie stopped when Gwen threatened to clip Jack’s wings.”

  Jack had spent his first thirteen years under the tender care of his uncles. Tender care when referring to Dragon Lords meant no need to marinate. He knew a legitimate threat when he heard one.

  “So if the attacks have stopped, what’s the problem?”

  “He’s working twelve hours a week at the Western Star this summer,” Graham told her.

  “At your skeezy tabloid?” That was new. She leaned away from Graham’s swing. “Why?”

  “Why?” Allie rolled her eyes. “Because school’s out and he needs to do things like a normal boy.”

  If anyone asked, they were home schooling Jack which had the added benefit of being the truth, even if lessons tended toward it’s a bus, you can’t fight it rather than algebra. Although Roland had also taught him some algebra. Dragons were surprisingly good at math.

  “Yeah, but he’s not a normal boy.” Charlie flipped up a finger. “Dragon Prince.” And another. “Sorcerer.” And a third. “Gale. Strike three.” She frowned at the sheen of turquoise on her nails, the same shade as her hair. “Oh, that’s definitely too precious. What the hell was I thinking?” The buzz crawled across her forehead.

  “Why is your eyebrow twitching?”

  “It’s a thing. Back to Jack.”

  “When it comes right down to it,” Allie sighed, “this world isn’t shiny and new anymore. No one’s threatening to eat him, and he’s bored.”

  “So send him to the farm; Auntie Jane’ll threaten to eat him.”

  Auntie Jane made Auntie Gwen look reasonable. Auntie Jane made Simon Cowell look reasonable.

  “Only as a last resort.” Allie’s lip curled. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life listening to the aunties go on about how I failed to deal with him.”

  When Jack broke through from the UnderRealm looking for his father—Stanley Kalynchuk aka Jonathon Samuel Gale—the aunties had been forced by circumstances to explain that sorcerers were Gale boys gone bad. Jack was both a Gale boy and—thanks to the magical means of his conception—a sorcerer, but Allie had argued that, as a Gale, until he turned fifteen he was too young to be judged. The aunties had agreed, and Allie and Graham had started their marriage as the de facto parents of a teenage boy with a Dragon Prince’s power and undetermined sorcerous abilities, who not only smoked in bed, but occasionally set fire to his pillow.

  The first few months had been fun. Allie had overreacted, Charlie had underreacted, and Graham had hit the roof about the marshmallow roasting over the coals of an empty industrial building by the airport. Somehow or other, mostly because Jack absorbed new information like a sponge, they’d muddled through.

  Charlie swallowed the last mouthful of pie and pushed her plate away. “So send him off to eat a bison and sleep for week while he digests. Works while the Stampede’s on.”

  Horses and cattle at the Saddledome, barely two kilometers away from the Emporium, were more temptation than anyone expected Jack to resist.

  “Unfortunately his cave was a little to close to Drumheller.” Graham stacked his empty plate on hers. “Couple of dinosaur guys from the Tyrrell found his scat and nearly had kittens. I had to cover the story in the Star to discredit it. I’m not saying it isn’t a skeezy tabloid,” he added when Charlie snickered. “I’m just saying I don’t need anyone else calling it that.”

  “Sensationalist rag?”

  “That’s better.”

  “He’s been so moody lately,” Allie explained. “I miss how he was in the beginning. You know, minus the whole burning things down and using sorcery to jump the line at the Apple Store.”

  “He’s fourteen. That’s the definition of moody.” Charlie at fourteen had a brief, intense flirtation with Three Days of Grace. “And now that I think of it, isn’t fourteen a little young for a job?”

  “He can’t exactly join a soccer team, can he?”

  Stronger. Faster. Liable to eat the opposing strikers. It was like raising Clark Kent had Clark Kent been likely to make a meal of Lana Lang.

  In spite of the imagery, and the sugar she’d just ingested, Charlie found herself suddenly unable to keep her eyes open. “As much as I’d love to keep discussing your crappy parenting . . . Ow!” She rubbed her thigh where Allie’d kicked her again. “ . . . it’s past eleven, I’ve had a long day, and I need to fall over. You going to wait up for him?”

  “I’m not.” Graham pushed his chair back and stood. He sounded pretty definite, but then he’d spent thirteen years killing nonHumans for Kalynchuk and while he’d made his peace with the Gales, that didn’t mean he gave a half-eaten rat’s ass for a half Gale/half dragon.

  Tonight, Allie was more concerned for her city than for Jack in a teenage snit, but she’d fought to have Jack regarded as a Gale boy and Gale boys, vastly outnumbered by the girls, lived in a bubble of protected indulgence. Her view of Jack was as skewed as Graham’s.

  Charlie, who’d spent more time than either of them with his uncles, had trouble seeing Jack as a special snowflake.

  As Graham put the dirty plates in the sink, Allie leaned against Charlie’s shoulder and murmured, “Coming to bed?”

  Before Graham, she wouldn’t have asked. Nor would she have asked right after Graham had chosen, but about six months in, while acknowledging that Graham was both family and not exactly subject to the obligations of blood, the three of them had worked out an effortless arrangement.

  Nothing wrong with effortless.

  The buzz had spread out, defused by whatever charm Allie had baked into the pie. Charlie yawned. “No, I’ll open a sofa bed and talk to Jack when he comes in.”

  “What makes you think he’ll listen?” Graham asked, arms wrapped around Allie’s waist.

  “Novelty. It’s been three weeks since I told him anything he didn’t want to hear.”

  When the wind was from the north, like tonight, Jack liked to hang out by the big concrete dinosaurs at the zoo because it only took a minimal glamour to make him look like he was part of the display. When the wind was from the south, he didn’t go near the place because his scent made the animals go a little crazy—okay, a lot crazy—and he’d stopped thinking that was funny when Allie’d gone up one side of him and down the ot
her.

  Even without fangs or claws or fire, she could be way scary.

  Sometimes, she reminded him of his mother.

  He didn’t miss his mother because his mother was like his mother all the time, and Allie was only like that sometimes. When she was like that, then he missed his mother. Only not in a good way.

  He frowned at the small flock of Pixies fluttering around the pole light.

  His mother didn’t care when he went flying or what he destroyed or who he ate. In the UnderRealm, he’d been expected to take care of himself.

  He kind of liked being taken care of. Most of the time, he liked knowing he’d survive the day. But it had been more than a year of days in this world’s time and he knew Allie assumed he’d stay and he liked being a Gale, but he also liked being a Prince and a Sorcerer and they were fine with him being a dragon as long as he was careful, but he didn’t have subjects and . . .

  “Highness?”

  Okay, maybe he had a few subjects.

  The Courts came through all the time, more than even the Gales knew—not that the Gales cared if it didn’t affect the family, they were like dragons that way—but the lesser Fey slipped through with the Courts, and it turned out there were a lot of them here.

  He looked down and frowned. Right here. At his feet. Looking familiar. “What?”

  The Brownie bowed. “I bring a petition asking that you roast . . .”

  “Hold it.” Jack folded his neck and peered down his muzzle—it was never easy focusing on things so much smaller than him. “You’re that Market Mall Brownie who’s totally baked about the outlets, right? Dude, for the seven millionth time, I’m not destroying your competition. Have a sale or something.”

  “It’s a matter of quality, Highness.”

  “Still not going to happen.”

  “You fear the old women, Highness.”

  “Well, duh.” The aunties could send him back to the UnderRealm. Okay, he wasn’t sure they could do it without Allie—they’d needed Allie to send his mother and his uncles back—and Allie didn’t like to do what the aunties said, but they were all so stupidly weird about the sorcerer thing—even though he almost never used it—that they’d probably send him back anyway as soon as he turned fifteen and their rules said he wasn’t a child anymore, but . . .

  “They are keeping you a child, Highness.”

  Was it reading his mind? No way was that allowed. Jack reared back. “You want me to roast someone? I could always roast you.”

  The Brownie turned slightly green. “Highness!”

  Snorting out a cloud of smoke, Jack watched the little weasel scurry away, sent a silent apology to weasels because they were actually pretty cool, and thought that maybe if he was gone long enough, his mother would clutch again and he wouldn’t be able to go back. He’d have to stay.

  If they let him.

  Why weren’t there ever any easy answers? Questions sucked.

  He spread his wings and launched himself into the sky, a sweep of his tail knocking the head off the concrete Apatosaurus.

  Crap.

  When the charm jerked her awake, Charlie blinked at the familiar shape sneaking past the end of the sofa bed. Blinked again as the night-sight charms sketched on her eyelids kicked in and Jack came into focus. “Have fun?”

  He spun around to face her. “I didn’t destroy anything!”

  The sudden billowing cloud of white smoke seemed to argue differently. A wave got rid of the smoke although the scent of dragon lingered. “I didn’t say you did.”

  “And I only ate a goose. It tasted like old french fries,” he added sounding disgusted. “Even the food here sucks.”

  “There’s a reason no one eats those things. And remember . . .” She sat up, legs crossed, sheet pooling in her lap. “ . . . if you’re not happy here, you can go back to the UnderRealm any time.”

  “I never said I wanted to go back!” Jack’s eyes flared gold. “I like . . .” He waved a hand, searching for the words. “. . . you know, stuff.”

  Charlie liked stuff, too. The band. Allie. Family. Calgary. They wrapped around her warm and comforting. She twitched.

  “You okay?” Jack saw fine in the dark without charms.

  “Yeah, I’m good.” Nothing wrong with warm and comforting. “So what brought on today’s rebellion?”

  “They won’t let me do anything.”

  “At all?”

  “Nothing . . .”

  Charlie thought he was going to say fun—obvious response—and was a little surprised when he shrugged and didn’t finish.

  “I want to do something,” he said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know!” Another small puff of smoke. Charlie let this one dissipate on its own. Jack glanced toward the double doors leading to Allie and Graham’s bedroom and lowered his voice. “It’s just . . . it itches under my skin.”

  Fingers curled to scratch at her shoulder, Charlie dropped her hand back into her lap and didn’t ask him what itched. Or if he could also call it a buzz. “The job at the newspaper . . .”

  “Is lame.”

  About to explain that pretty much everything seemed lame at fourteen, Charlie reconsidered. It wouldn’t help. And Jack was . . . well, more than just fourteen that was for damned sure. “No promises, but I’ll see what I can come up with.”

  “Vague much?” Jack snorted.

  “Butt munch!” Charlie shot back.

  “That makes no sense.”

  “What does?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “You used to be cool,” he muttered and stomped off to his bedroom, the faint whisper of wings following behind him.

  Amelia stared at the pelt draped over Paul’s arm. “Is that . . .”

  Paul nodded, holding it out toward her as though he was handling a dead animal instead of just the useful, external bits. “It was on my chair when I got back from setting up the board room.” She could hear a hint of hysteria seeping out around the edges of his voice. “No one saw her come in. Or go out.”

  “Well, they wouldn’t, would they?” Beckoning him forward, she hoped he’d reward her trust by postponing his reaction to this evidence of just what exactly they were involved in until he left the building. Only the two of them knew about the arrangement, and she’d like to keep it that way. If he said too much, she was willing to declare the stress of the job pushed poor Paul into a breakdown, but she’d rather not. Who had the time to find a new assistant who was both attractive and efficient?

  “This proves they’re vulnerable,” she declared as he reached the desk. “And now they know who holds the cards.”

  “Card,” Paul amended, nodding at the pelt. Her lack of reaction seemed to have helped to stabilize him.

  “There’ll be more. She knows my needs and she’s being paid very well to fulfill them. As for our suddenly pelt-less opposition, they’ve been informed that they’re to give their full, and fully visible support to our well off Hay Island. Once drilling has begun, they’ll get their property back.”

  “They’ve been informed, Ms. Carlson? She’s dropping off ransom notes?” When Amelia nodded, he shook his head. “Writing this kind of thing down . . .”

  “Means nothing. They can’t exactly go to the police, can they?” The fur was surprisingly soft under the longer, coarse, and oily hairs on the surface. This was, Amelia realized, the first time she’d ever touched a seal pelt. “A pity they stopped killing the white coats back in 1987. If they’d kept it up, we wouldn’t have this problem. Not to mention, I’d have an upgraded winter wardrobe.” She pulled the heavy skin from his hands, draped it around her shoulders, stroked it thoughtfully, and looked up to see Paul staring at her, brows up. “A little too Cruella de Vil?”

  He held his thumb and forefinger about a centimeter apart. “Just a bit.”

  Charlie’s phone woke her at eleven the next morning. Graham, Allie, and Jack had already woken her at seven, eight, and eight-thirty, further convincing he
r that she had to get her own place. A “Ride of the Valkyries” ringtone modulated her greeting to a fairly neutral, “What?”

  “There’s no need to be rude, Charlotte.”

  That, she’d expected. The particular voice, not so much. “Auntie Catherine?”

  “How nice your current lifestyle hasn’t entirely rotted your brain,” Allie’s grandmother confirmed. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “A what?” Charlie rolled over and blinked at the ceiling, scratching under the edge of her boxers where the elastic had dug into the skin. Easier to blame the elastic for the itch. “I mean, what kind of proposition?”

  “You and I are not so different, Charlotte . . .”

  Given the shit Auntie Catherine had put them through, Charlie wasn’t inclined to jump on the Wild Powers all together now, rah rah, go us bandwagon. “What kind of proposition?”

  “One that will get you out of Calgary.”

  “I’m happy here.”

  “Please.” That was possibly the most definitive eye roll Charlie had ever heard. “Meet me in Halifax and we’ll talk.”

  “Of what?”

  “Ships and seas and sealing wax, tentacles and kings. As if I’d risk the others overhearing.”

  “Is that what’s causing the buzz in the line?”

  “Have a coffee and jumpstart your brain, Charlotte. I don’t have time for this.”

  Auntie Catherine had a distinctly emphatic way of hanging up a cell phone.

  “Dude!” Charlie smacked the mirror frame on her way by. “Tighten things up. It looks like my skin doesn’t fit.”

  In the store, Allie and Joe stood staring at something on the glass counter. Their expressions suggested a hazmat suit might not be a bad idea.

  “A nail?” Charlie asked when she got a little closer.

  “The nail,” Allie replied glumly. “For the loss of a nail,” she continued when Charlie shook her head. “Horseshoe, horse, battle all lost. This is the nail.”

  “It’s rusty.”

  “Don’t think that matters,” Joe muttered. He wore a mid-thirties glamour these days. Young enough for Auntie Gwen’s ego, old enough that public PDAs had stopped attracting dangerous attention. The aunties’ response to people stuffing their noses in where they didn’t belong was not subtle by several fairly terrifying degrees of not. “It was in a jar with a bunch of screws, nuts, bolts . . .”