by Tanya Huff
“. . . buddy on the drums, drummer, needs to get a haircut and the other guy . . .”
Turning her mandolin, Charlie ran her fingernail along the E string, catching it just under the edge of the nail. “Seriously, dude . . . Go. A. Way.”
As each of the three notes hit him, he jerked slightly back. “So, I’m going away now because I have to take a piss. Why take a piss?” she heard him say as he turned. “Why not leave a piss?”
Not a bad question, actually.
“Are you Charlie?” The girl was about nine or ten and the boy with her, with the same dark eyes and hair dark enough for the moon to paint on silver highlights, was likely a year or so older. “Our mum says Eineen says we should give you this.”
There, on the palm of her hand, was Charlie’s phone.
Charlie looked past them but could spot neither mum nor Eineen. She could, however, hear very faintly behind the noise of the kids on stage and the distinctly less melodic noise of the crowd yelling the lyrics back to them, a familiar melody that dove from the surface to the depths where bones lay white on the seabed. The hair lifted off the back of her neck; she might not be able to see them, but there were adults watching. These children were as protected as any Gale child.
The fiddler in her head returned with “Ma, Ma, Come Let’s Dance.”
Charlie leaned a little closer to the kids. “Do you hear fiddle music?”
The boy pointed toward the stage.
“Right. So, where did your mum find my phone?”
The girl shrugged skinny shoulders. “Mum says Aunt Roswen found it.” She drew her hand back when Charlie took the phone, showing a crescent of webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Charlie wondered if it had been Aunt Roswen she’d run into during her swim.
“Thank you.”
They glanced at each other, had the kind of silent conversation Charlie remembered from when her twin sisters were small, then turned and ran.
The phone looked none the worse for its adventure, but then, it never did. It rang as Charlie slid it into her pocket. Allie’s ring.
Allie skipped right past hello. “Oh, good, you’re still awake!”
“It’s a three-hour time difference, Allie-cat; it’s only nine forty. What’s up?”
“It’s Jack . . .”
Right. Jack. Charlie made a mental note to quit throwing away her phone until after Jack landed in Halifax. It suddenly occurred to her that given how crowded the van and Shelly’s car already were, they were going to need a bigger vehicle. Or another vehicle. Maybe a motorcycle. She could hear the roar of the engine nearly drowning out the classic rock soundtrack. The Cabot Trail on a bike would be amazing . . . except Jack carried a lot of metaphysical weight, and if he shifted that on the back of a bike, results would be spelled splat. Of course, he could always ride with the band while she . . .
“Charlie!”
“What do you think about Jack on the back of a motorcycle?”
“Ask me what I think about you on the front of a motorcycle.”
“Okay . . .”
“You’re too easily distracted. You’d see something shiny and game over.”
Charlie traced a charm over a mosquito bite on her ankle. “You sound like your mother.”
“Thank you. And speaking of transportation, we got Jack a plane ticket for the third. He’s got a three hour layover in Toronto and . . .”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what kept coming up,” Allie answered pointedly. “Auntie Jane has offered to go and sit with him.”
“Auntie Jane wants to talk to him.”
“Duh.”
The aunties considered airport security to be an indignity other people were forced to endure. As a plane carrying an auntie would be the safest plane in the sky, skipping the grope and grab was significantly safer for the airport employees. “Wait, this is the 29th. Why wait until the third? He’s not old enough for ritual, so there’s no point in keeping him over the 2nd.”
“Yes, but Calgary has police helicopters . . .” Allie’s tone suggested Charlie should have remembered that because of course Charlie kept track of security concerns in a city thousands of kilometers away. “. . . and we have only three aunties, all of whom will have their hands full of David. I want to keep Jack around for air support. I also want you to make sure he knows exactly what that means because Auntie Bea keeps getting all nostalgic about the Ka-32 Helix.”
“The what?”
“It’s a Russian helicopter.”
“I don’t think I want to know,” Charlie muttered. And speaking of not knowing, should she tell Allie about the missing skins and her grandmother’s possible involvement? No. Not until Auntie Catherine had a chance to mislead and manipulate in her own defense. Charlie’d be seeing Allie on the 2nd—it was a travel day for the band and there’d never really been much chance of her going to the ritual in Ontario—and she could tell her everything then.
“Charlie?”
“Sorry. Got a lot going on.” Right on cue, the teenagers finished up to a roar of approval. “I’ll see you Tuesday.”
“Sure.” She could hear Allie smile. “Go wild.”
“Go Flames!”
“What?”
“Not important. See you Tuesday.”
Her phone blipped as a pair of texts came in from the twins.
Tell mom 2 back off!
Stop tossing ur fcking phone!
Dealing with Auntie Catherine suddenly seemed like the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, the call went straight to voice mail. “Hey, it’s Charlie. We need to talk.”
Short and sweet.
Nothing Auntie Catherine could use either as warning or threat.
The beer tent, however, was looking appealing.
Saturday morning, Charlie wandered out onto the front porch while Tim was making pancakes to find Eineen waiting for her with a slender, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman. This new woman was obviously family and apparently about ten years older—except Charlie could see the frayed edges of the glamour wrapped around her and the desperation the glamour didn’t hide.
“This is Neela,” Eineen announced.
“Yeah, and good morning to you two, too.” Yawning, Charlie dropped into one of the Adirondack chairs and waved a hand in Neela’s general direction. “Hers is one of the missing . . .”
“Yes.” The wind off the water danced Eineen’s hair around her head like it had been animated by Disney. Neela wore hers in a braid. A braid like Eineen had worn the first time Charlie had seen her, more beautiful than any other woman in the crowd of . . . “You said you might have a place to start looking.” Eineen’s voice snapped Charlie out of her reverie.
There’d been no promises made. Never were when there was an auntie involved. “I’m waiting for a phone call.”
Eineen’s right eyebrow rose—like the slender wing of black gull. Charlie couldn’t seem to stop the overwrought description from popping into her head. Did gulls even come in black?
“A phone call. That’s all?” Dark eyes narrowed. “Yesterday, you gave us a moment of hope, and now . . .”
Charlie’d had dark eyes narrowed at her for her entire life. The effect had worn thin. “And now, I’m waiting for a phone call. All I have are suspicions, I told you that yesterday. Neela, I hope you’re not here because you thought I’d have found your . . .” She glanced over her shoulder at the screen door. About six feet on the other side of it, Mark was demanding Tim make at least some of the pancakes with chocolate chips. “ . . . thing.”
“No.” Neela hugged her torso, hands wrapped around her elbows, the webbing between the fingers only visible because Charlie was looking for it. “I’m here because doing anything is better than doing nothing. And because I was here anyway; I’m married to Gavin Fitzgerald.”
“Gavin Fitzgerald, the fiddler from Five on the Floor?” Five was one of the festival bands and Gavin was pushing fifty, so that explained the glamour—like Joe and Auntie Gwen, Neela had aged u
p. That she could easily be a few thousand years older than Gavin was moot. “Another fiddler? I thought your people usually hooked up with fishermen?”
Neela shrugged, the movement graceful in spite of her defensive position. “Not many working fishermen around these days, but you can’t throw a rock on this island without hitting a fiddler. A lot of them play down on the shore. They’re very . . .” Her mouth twitched, not quite managing a smile. “. . . alluring.”
“Does he know?”
She nodded. “A marriage based on lies isn’t likely to last.”
The Gales had tried it both ways, but non-Gales who could cope with the family dynamic were rare on the ground. Auntie Ruby muttering there’s always the corn tended to put a few off.
And speaking of the corn. “Traditionally, when your things go missing . . .”
“Gavin didn’t take it. It was Carlson Oil.” Neela slid a hand into the back pocket of her faded jeans and handed over a piece of plan white printer paper folded into quarters.
It had clearly been unfolded and folded again a number of times. The paper was slightly damp and the creases had softened. “Support the well on Hay Island,” Charlie read, “and your skin will be returned when the wellhead is in place. Yeah, that’s pretty definitive.” The writing had been done with a fine tip marker. Charlie rummaged through pockets in her shorts, found three guitar picks, an orange lollipop condom she had no memory of acquiring, and a piece of chewed gum wrapped in torn tissue, but nothing to write with. Laziness being the mother of invention, she licked a charm over the writing, careful to stay away from the edges and potential paper cuts.
Auntie Catherine hadn’t actually written the note. Which meant nothing at all. An auntie could get a perfect stranger to support the arts; convincing one to write a note wouldn’t be a problem.
“It tastes like . . .”
“Alcohol? Dyes?”
“Formaldehyde?”
“No, it . . .” Charlie glanced up from the smeared ink and twisted around to stare at Mark who was standing on the other side of the screen. “Formaldehyde?”
“I heard they used it in some inks. You here for breakfast, Neela? Tim’s made his magic pancakes.”
“No, thanks, Mark.”
Actually, it figured they knew each other.
“I left the kids with Harry,” Neela continued, fighting so hard to make her voice sound normal it sounded as though it was about to shatter under the strain. “I need to get back before they all get matching tattoos and someone calls Children’s Aid. We’re in number four if you want to come by later.” That to Charlie as much as Mark.
“The whole band?”
“Gavin and I brought the RV.”
Mark stared at her for a long moment, then stepped out onto the porch. “Everything okay?”
Her smile had the same tattered edges as the glamour. “Not really, no.”
“Can I help?”
“Not really, no.”
Charlie could feel Mark’s gaze against the top of her head. Finally, he sighed, shifted his attention to Neela’s companion, and said, “So what about you . . .”
“Eineen,” Charlie filled in wondering if Eineen did anything as mundane as eat pancakes.
“. . . he’s made blueberry and chocolate chip.”
Cod flavored, maybe.
“Thank you, no.” Eineen inclined her head and Charlie found herself mesmerized by the curve of her neck. “Come, cousin, I’ll walk you home.”
When Charlie held out the paper—the message smeared and feathering into the path of saliva—Neela shook her head. “You keep it.”
They’d disappeared behind a clump of trees when Mark smacked her on the side of the head. “Come on, Chuck, there’s pancakes calling our names.”
Pancakes that contained nothing but calories. That sounded like a good idea to her.
“Your tongue is blue,” he said as she wrestled gravity to get out of the chair. And, being Mark, he never asked why she’d licked a piece of paper in the first place.
At noon, when Auntie Catherine still hadn’t called, Charlie called Allie.
“I haven’t spoken to her since I ordered her away. Over a year ago.” She still sounded angry. No one held a grudge like a Gale girl. To be strictly accurate, Charlie amended, no one held a grudge like Alysha Gale. “Why do you want to talk to her?”
“Because Auntie Catherine wanted me to meet her in Halifax, so she’s here in Nova Scotia, and she might be screwing over some . . .” Not friends, however close Charlie wanted to get to Eineen. “ . . . people I know.”
“She’s a vicious, manipulative harridan!”
“Yeah, I kno . . .” Wait . . . harridan? “She’s a what?”
“She’s a bitch, Charlie.”
“Not arguing, but she’s still your grandmother, and you know she’ll answer if she sees it’s you. You don’t have to make nice, just ask her to call me.” In the distance, over the sound of bands rehearsing and people packing cars to head over to the festival grounds, a single fiddler played the gentle roll of summer waves, the curl as they crested, and the white foam dancing over blue-green as they lapped against the shore. An actual fiddler, not an imaginary fiddler in her head. Charlie found that reassuring. “It’s important, Allie, or I wouldn’t ask.”
After a long moment, Allie sighed. “Be careful.”
At twelve seventeen, “Ride of the Valkyries.”
“So, Charlotte, it seems I have you to thank for my granddaughter finally climbing down off her high horse and calling me. What can I do for you?”
“Why did you want me to meet you in Halifax, Auntie Catherine?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“If I was willing to do it over the phone, Charlotte, I would have done so then. Join me for lunch and we’ll talk.”
Mark wanted the band together at two, so she had time. “Fine. Where are you?”
Even over the phone she could feel the edges on Auntie Catherine’s smile. “Find me.”
“The Trippers” followed her to the Wood but not into it, her fiddler falling silent in under the trees. Charlie folded her hands on top of her guitar, well away from the strings, calmed her breathing, and listened. Allie had been her touchstone since her third trip in; fifteen and cocky and completely lost with the Wood shifting into shadow around her, she’d followed the younger girl’s song home. Now she dialed Allie’s song back until it was no more than the faintest whisper drifting between the birches, the family harmonies rising to dominate. There, Auntie Jane, nearly Sousa. Her mother’s gentle rise and fall. The twins’ techno wail, threatening to escape but never quite making it out. Auntie Ruby’s dissonant intervals that still worked in the context of the family melody. Under it all, Uncle Evan’s steady bass. One by one, she let them drop out until only the aunties were left and then she began sifting through the layers until, of the aunties, only Auntie Catherine remained.
At twelve twenty, Charlie pushed aside a masking branch on an enormous weeping birch and stepped out into the Halifax Public Gardens. Shrugging out of her gig bag, she stowed her guitar and walked toward Spring Garden Road.
It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the sun when she emerged out onto the rooftop patio at Your Father’s Mustache, but when she finally blinked away the flares, she saw Auntie Catherine smiling up at a gorgeous young man with a brilliant white smile and broad shoulders that strained against the fabric of his uniform T-shirt. Although she assumed she’d be unnoticed until she reached the table, given the scenery, she’d barely moved a meter before Auntie Catherine glanced up and beckoned her over, silver bracelets chiming.
“Charlotte, so glad you could make it. This is Frank. He’ll be our waiter.”
He’ll be our waiter sounded an awful lot like he’ll be our lunch.
“Good luck,” Charlie murmured as she passed him, set her gig bag next to the latticework railing, and slid into a seat.
“Frank says the lobster roll is
to die for.”
“I’m sure.” Charlie shot a less predatory smile at him. “But I’m working the festival circuit out on the island and lobster rolls are thick on the ground. Can I get the mushroom and swiss burger, on the rare side of medium rare, with a garden salad—I know, two-fifty extra—roasted red pepper and Parmesan dressing, and an iced tea, please. I’ve done a lot of studio work in Halifax,” she added as Auntie Catherine’s lip began to curl. “This is not my first rodeo.”The lip curled higher. “Sorry. Leftover cowboy shi . . . thing. I’ve been here before. I’ve played here before. Downstairs in the pub.”
“Of course. It suits you.”
Charlie attempted to work out if that was an insult as Auntie Catherine ordered an asparagus crepe, flustering Frank so badly by discussing the firmness she required in her asparagus—with accompanying hand gestures—that when he turned back to Charlie, she could see his blush even given the darkness of his skin.
“We don’t actually have iced tea . . .”
“Not usually, but check the kitchen; you’ve got some today. However . . .” She raised a hand to cut off his protest. He had no way of knowing that if a Gale wanted iced tea, a Gale got iced tea. “. . . if you check, and I’m wrong, I’ll have a ginger ale.”
Frank backed away from the table before he turned. Credit where credit was due, he had a great ass.
“Evidently not his first rodeo either,” Charlie observed. “So . . .”
Auntie Catherine’s raised hand cut her off. “Not yet, dear. Now, we appreciate the view from this angle. Appreciate . . . Appreciate . . .” A sweeping gesture sped Frank on his way as he disappeared down the stairs. “You were saying?”
Charlie’d intended to slide sideways into the conversation, but the pause for Frank had given her time to reconsider. If Auntie Catherine appreciated it so much, why not be, well, frank. Charlie pushed her chair a little farther out, crossed her legs, tugged a fold out of her cargo pants, and said, “So, are you stealing Selkie skins in order to force them to support Carlson Oil drilling off Hay Island?”
Auntie Catherine blinked and Charlie gave herself a mental high five for coloring outside the lines. Oh, sure, any auntie could fold a simple yes or no question into shapes an origami master would envy, but points for throwing her off her game.