by Tanya Huff
The deal had been for cash. No paper trail linking Carlson Oil to Catherine Gale. Amelia had been told to leave four equal payments overnight in a locked desk drawer—one on July 26th, one on July 29th, one on August 1st, and one tonight on August 4th. Maybe Catherine Gale hadn’t wanted to make a suspiciously large, lump sum cash deposit. Maybe there was some sort of ritual in four payments three days apart. Amelia didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. Although the drawer had still been locked when she returned to her office every morning after having left the money as agreed, the money had been gone. It felt as though she were paying protection to the shoemaker’s elves or leaving one hell of a snack for Santa.
Amelia pulled the two stacks of cash from her top drawer, stared at the fifty dollar bill on the top of each stack for a moment, then she pulled out a piece of paper and wrote, Two Seventy-five N sent her to my office. I saw on her face the curve of your cheek, the angle of your nose.We need to talk.
“Why didn’t you just make her do what you wanted?” Jack asked, peering suspiciously into his hamburger.
“What? Throw a charm at her that made her tell me everything? Because she’d have told me everything.” On the other side of the table, Charlie jabbed the ice at the bottom of her glass with her straw. “Tell me where you’ve hidden the Selkie skins that you had stolen in order to blackmail Two Seventy-five N into supporting you is just a little more specific than charms are.”
“I didn’t mean with a charm.”
“Yeah, well, I could have sung the Selkie pain at her, but she wouldn’t have given a shit.”
Frowning, Jack set the upper bun to one side wondering if Charlie was being deliberately stupid. “You could have just asked her,” he muttered. When Charlie rolled her eyes, he added, “Okay, fine, if you aren’t going to make her talk, I could.”
“You could make her pee herself, but I don’t think she’d tell you anything. What are you doing to that burger?”
“It has onions. I don’t like onions.”
“You ate your father.”
“Not with onions.” He reassembled his burger. “So if you weren’t going to make her talk, why did you go see her?”
Charlie snagged one of the rejected rings. “I thought she’d think she was winning and she’d tell me where the skins were.”
“Seriously?” Jack sputtered, spraying the table with sesame seeds. “You’ve never actually had enemies, have you?”
She thought about growing up surrounded by family, by people who loved her completely, unconditionally, fiercely. About discovering her way through the Wood and how her family had stepped back and let her go, let find her own path. About Allie who had been hers in all the ways that mattered since she was fifteen and about Graham who trusted her. “No,” she said at last, “I haven’t.”
“Duh. Enemies don’t defeat themselves for you; not even if you’re a Gale. You’re going to have to put a little effort in.”
“I don’t . . .”
“And again, duh. And next time, before you try stupid shit, talk to me. Twelve uncles, remember?” His eyes flared gold. “I know about having enemies. You going to eat those?” When Charlie shook her head, he dragged the last of her fries over to his side of the table. “So, what’re you doing tonight?”
“Practice, with the band. It’s a festival stage this weekend in Louisburg.” She flicked sesame seeds back toward him. Not like she could do anything for the Selkies, not without knowing where the skins were. “We need to scoop some points.”
“Playing in the Fort? I read the pamphlet when you were in the can,” he added nodding toward the tourist brochures tucked in between the stainless steel napkin holder and the wall.
“Just outside the Fort by the visitor’s center, I think. But we can go inside the Fort if you want.”
He shrugged, suddenly too teenage to admit he wanted. “Do I need to be there tonight?”
“Depends, what are you likely to do instead?”
“Fly.” He shrugged again. “Scout out the lay of the land, you know, in case I need to get somewhere quick because you have . . .” Teeth more Dragon than Human bit a french fry in half with cheerful overemphasis. “. . . an enemy.”
“Who can’t do anything to me, you know that right?”
“Rules have changed. You’ve agreed to be a Hero.”
Yeah right. A Hero. So far her only contribution had been all about locking the barn door after the skins were stolen. But since Jack seemed to be waiting for a response, she growled, “Shut up.”
“And I may eat a deer.”
It took Charlie a moment to rewind that back to context. “Just don’t fall asleep in a cave someplace. That’d be a little hard to explain to the band.”
Jack snorted. “Not for you.”
“You want dessert?”The diner’s single waitress frowned at the dissipating smoke as she tapped her order pad with what looked like a bowling alley pencil.
“Do you have pie?” Jack’s grin was all Human. Well, all Gale, Charlie amended and the waitress couldn’t help but respond.
Her gaze softened and the tension in her shoulders relaxed as she turned to face him. “We’ve got the best pie in Cape Breton, hon. Blueberry, raspberry, peach, lemon meringue, and coconut cream.”
“Uncharmed?”
Charlie kicked him under the table.
“I mean, yes, please!”
His enthusiasm chased her confusion away. “Well, which do you want?”
Charlie held up two fingers and Jack sighed with such force the blast of warm air curled the edges of the paper placemats. “Blueberry and coconut cream.”
“They won’t be as good as what you get at home,” Charlie warned him when they were alone again.
“Yeah, but pie. Uncharmed pie!”
He had a point.
Paul had no idea why he was sitting tucked out of the wind with his back against a jumbled pile of rock, staring out at the barely visible waves of the North Atlantic slapping against the shore. His day after the press conference had been like a thousand others. He’d been on the phone most of the 398-kilometer drive back to Sydney, booking appointments, touching base with Captain Bonner who commanded the leased barge already loaded with the pylons for the drilling platform, and speaking to three people in the ministry of natural resources office although not to the actual minister. He’d arrived at the office at 4:35 PM then had gotten immediately back into his car and driven Ms. Carlson to the Sydney airport so she could fly to Halifax and attend a dinner for the Nova Scotia Professional Women’s Association along with the four female members of the provincial cabinet and seven Members of the House of Assembly.
The Minister of Natural Resources might issue the permits, but he was as susceptible to peer pressure as anyone.
They did the debrief about the press conference on the road.
“Were they convincing?”
“Stunning. I mean, yes. Convincing. Very convincing.”
After seeing her off, he’d returned to the office and analyzed the minister’s schedule for any leverage they could exert, then gone over the simplified seismic surveys for the Hay Island well, making sure the PR department had covered all the bases. He’d dealt with a list of problems left on his desk in Ms. Carlson’s nearly illegible scrawl about her leased accommodations, brought her appointment with the dermatologist ahead two days because of a television interview, checked that her pale pink linen suit was back from the dry cleaners then, around 9:05, he’d cleared his desk, turned out the lights, and been, as usual, the last man out of the building.
He’d picked up some fast food on the way back to his hotel.
Then he’d driven past his hotel.
He hadn’t intended to head for the coast, but somehow, forty minutes later as the long summer twilight had started to deepen into actual darkness, he’d found himself testing his car’s suspension on a set of ruts leading east off 255 toward the ocean. He’d driven until he’d run out of even the semblance of a road, then he’d w
alked, then he’d sat, and watched the last of the light disappear and the water turn from gray to black.
He didn’t know why he was here.
“The sea gets in your blood,” his father had told him and had listened patiently to a ten year old’s explanation of how blood was, evolutionarily speaking, not much different than the seawater that had surrounded the original, single-celled life destined to eventually climb up out of the oceans. It wasn’t poetry, but science.
It seemed science had his heart pounding in time to the steady rhythm of the waves against the shore. The tide had turned and was on its way back in, but a lot of the rocky beach remained exposed. There wasn’t much of a moon—more than a crescent but not quite half. Paul didn’t know what to call it, but the sky was clear and the moon seemed to be shedding light out of proportion to its size. Each wave had been edged with silver. The rocks glistened. He could see the gleam of shells polished white . . .
Like bone.
Where the hell had that come from? Like bone?
“Men who die at sea,” his father had told him, “die alone.”
Who said that kind of shit to a kid? Really? And he wasn’t alone; he was by himself. Not the same thing. Even if he’d had time to meet women, he didn’t have time for a relationship. He didn’t have time to wake up next to someone, to fight over the last bagel, to unlock the door again so he could kiss them good-bye. He didn’t have time to explain the difference between offside and icing to a warm body curled up beside him on the couch. He didn’t have time to forget anniversaries, remember birthdays, and share ownership of a small brown dog with a curly tail.
But he wasted a moment in want.
This is ridiculous. He shrugged back into his suit jacket and paused, a line of cold stroking down his spine, as he saw a dark oval out in the water. Grown men with two degrees and workplace responsibilities didn’t spend their time thinking of bones and bodies and dying alone. Then the oval became a head. A seal head framed by a silver vee as it moved closer to the shore.
Four seal pelts tucked away in a mine.
Just stay still. It won’t even know you’re here. The odds of it coming up on shore are . . .
It reached the shallows, reared back, and stood, the pelt sliding down over moonlight-gilded skin, flapping for a moment in a grotesque semblance of life, then caught up and becoming . . .
. . . a scarf knotted around slender hips.
Long dark hair flowed across the curve of shoulders, the bell of breasts, dusky nipples exposed, then covered, then exposed again. The eyes were seal’s eyes, too large and too dark. The dance was too graceful for land; flesh needed the support that water offered to move so freely.
Paul didn’t remember standing.
Or clambering down to the water’s edge.
He remember stumbling across the wet rock but only because he fell and drove a sharp edge of storm-split stone into his knee.
The dancer ignored him so obviously it was clear she considered herself alone on this stretch of beach and yet, she danced away every time he tried to move closer.
Finally, as the beach grew smaller and blood ran down his leg to mix with the seawater destroying his shoes, she let him catch up. He reached out and, as she spun, managed to hook one finger behind the scarf around her hips.
The slightest pressure tugged it free and it slapped into his injured leg, wet and heavy and smelling of fish, empty eye sockets starting up at him.
Five pelts.
She stopped dancing and turned.
“Eineen?”
Her smile was as dangerous as deep water and his reaction as unstoppable as the tide.
Careful to keep from crossing the moon and giving himself away, Jack glided away from the drama being played out on the shore below. He’d never paid much attention to the seal-folk back home; they were tasty if caught but had nothing in common with a life of air and fire. They sure were a presence here, though. Every group of seals he’d passed had one or two or half a dozen bright spots of other visible to his sight and most of the seals had at least a touch of shine. No surprise. According to his Uncle Adam, things that tasted good had a strong urge to reproduce and an UnderRealm bull would be dominant in any MidRealm herd.
Did they sense him, he wondered? Did they feel him flying overhead and dive for deep water? Or did they realize he was different and they were safe?
He was a Gale. With wings and scales.Wings and scales, teeth and tail. Sorcery that never failed. Lips pursed, he blew out short blasts of flame instead of the mouth beats—dragon mouths not so much made for rap—and wondered if any of the bands in Charlie’s festival ever played anything good. Gale. Scales. Never failed. In your face; I got a family place!
Wheeling inland toward the sound of a large body moving through the underbrush, he used his shadow to herd the deer into a clearing large enough for him to strike. He used to wonder why the family got totally bent out of shape about Pixies—and no one, not even other Pixies cared about Pixies—but he could chow down on does and fawns and stags and no one blinked an eye. Not even David.
He used to wonder.
He didn’t anymore.
When he finally landed behind the church, he could hear Charlie’s band still playing in the basement. Charlie probably wouldn’t have carried through on her threat to play only bagpipe music in the car if he was late but only a total moron would risk it. Who listened to music that sounded like Naiads being tortured?
Actually, at least half the Courts back home would probably love it.
He remade his clothes from grass clippings and fallen leaves—if he forgot to undress, they burned off when he changed—and pulled them on leaning against Charlie’s car. Head half through the neck of the Green Lantern T-shirt, he froze. Somewhere close, a phone was ringing. It wasn’t loud, but that wasn’t because of distance it was because it was . . .
. . . coming from inside the car. Charlie’s phone, then, but just ringing, not playing a signature song.
Someday he’d make her change the ringtone she’d put on for him. Puff was a stupid name for a dragon.
But a plain ring, that meant it was someone Charlie’d never given a song to. Or maybe, they weren’t calling for Charlie. Maybe they were calling for him. The family knew where he was and he didn’t even have a lame phone that did only voice and texting—although Charlie was probably right about Auntie Jane’s ulterior motives—and he hadn’t talked to Allie since they’d left Calgary. The ring was so faint only someone who could hear a mouse fart under their flight path would be able to hear it.
Jack unlocked the car and, head cocked, tracked the ring to the glove compartment. Unlocked the glove compartment. Used a claw to cut through the duct tape sealing it shut. Pulled out the wad of dirty laundry. Opened the Where the Wild Things Are movie lunch box. Unwrapped the kaiser roll. Pulled the phone out from inside the kaiser roll, ate the kaiser roll, and answered the phone.
“Who are you? Put Charlotte on immediately.”
Okay. Not for him. “Can’t.” He watched the fiddle music stream by, joining the streams always in the air. “She’s at band practice.”
“Band practice.”
It was more of an insult than a question, but he answered anyway. “Uh-huh.”
“Tell her to call me when she gets it right!”
“I don’t think that means . . . Hello?” He snapped the phone closed and tossed it on the driver’s seat. If Charlie’d wanted it to stay hidden, she shouldn’t have made it so easy to find.
He told Charlie about the call after they’d loaded all the equipment back into the vehicles and were on the way to Shelly’s brother-in-law’s cousin where they were spending the weekend.
“No promises,” the brother-in-law’s cousin had snorted, “but the missus, she’s been buying boxes and boxes of dry cereal against the chance of a zombie apocalypse and I can probably convince her to let go her hold on a couple, maybe even throw in a bag of milk come breakfast time.”
“You’re sure it
was an auntie?” Charlie asked, turning onto Beatrice Street.
“All the hair on my body stood on end, and if that wasn’t creepy enough . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck where goose bumps lingered. “. . . she called you Charlotte and that seal-girl you like is the only other person I ever heard do that. And she was kind of mad at you. They’re kind of obvious when they’re mad.”
“But why wouldn’t an auntie know you?”
“Don’t know.” He was impressed Charlie didn’t care about a mad auntie. Angry auntie. Probably. “I thought the aunties had that cool da da DA-da ringtone?”
“Not an auntie trying to fake me out and get me to answer the phone—which would normally mean Auntie Jane.”
“She’d know me.”
“She doesn’t actually know everything. Don’t tell her I said that,” Charlie added after a moment.
They were stopped behind Mark’s van at the bridge when he remembered. “So that seal-girl you like? I was flying up the coast and I saw her come out of the water on legs and dance. And there was a guy there and he grabbed her skin. Her sealskin,” he added in case Charlie’d missed the point even though there’d been other grabbing going on. “You know what that means.” After a minute, when the silence gained weight, he added, “Sorry.”
Charlie sighed. “It wasn’t going anywhere, me and her.”
“I know. But you liked her.”
She sighed again as they started moving. “Yeah, I did. But what can you do.”
“Lots of stuff. If I was your prince instead of your cousin and you came to me, I could get the skin back and tell the seal-girl she wasn’t allowed to make you unhappy. Even if she couldn’t make you happy.” When Charlie turned to look at him, he shrugged. “I would, if you wanted.”