by Tanya Huff
“If you were my prince?” He braced himself for the lecture on how Gales didn’t have princes no matter how spoiled some of the boys got—it was one of Auntie Carmen’s favorites—but all Charlie said was, “Need to be a prince very often these days?”
He shrugged again. “Sometimes the lesser folk like that I’m here. This is . . .” He waved a hand out the open window, “. . . messy.”
“Confusing?”
“No. And I know the difference.”
“Sorry.”
“They just like that I could make order even if I don’t, you know?”
“I think so.”
“But I don’t think the Courts know how many of the lesser folk have come through. That’s got to be weakening the border.” A little of the dashboard melted under his grip. “Look at the road now, okay?”
The brother-in-law’s cousin’s rec room was crowded with all five of them in there, but he didn’t realize how bad it was going to get until Shelly waved him toward the sofa bed, saying, “Charlie and I have shared before, and I know teenage boys need their own space.”
“I can’t!” He turned to stare at Charlie. The music might’ve made the band her other family, but carrying some of their equipment didn’t make them his family and things happened at night he couldn’t control. There were scorch marks on the ceiling of his bedroom to prove it. And this ceiling, it looked flammable.
“You can, but you don’t have to.” Charlie tossed him a pillow. “If you want, you can take your sleeping bag out to the backyard. It’s August, it’s not going to rain, and I doubt Shelly’s brother-in-law’s cousin will care.”
“Really?”
“Sure. You’re fourteen, not four. You can sleep without adult supervision.”
“There’s bugs, though,” Shelly added. “They’ll eat you alive.”
“I ate a bowl of roasted grasshoppers once,” Mark said thoughtfully. “Tasted like peanuts.”
Tim’s snort suggested tasted like peanuts was a relative term.
Bugs didn’t bother him. “I can sleep outside?” He checked with Charlie. “Like this?”
She knew what he meant; in skin, not scales. “Why not? Stay in the yard. Come inside if you have to use the bathroom; don’t pee against the fence.”
“Hadn’t occurred to him until you mentioned it,” Mark snickered.
“Hey.”
His tail nearly ripped its way out of the sleeping bag before he realized Charlie was sitting cross-legged on the grass beside him. “Don’t sneak up on a guy!” he snapped, trying not to sound like he’d nearly changed. He hadn’t changed without meaning to for years.
“Sorry.”
Total lie. “And I don’t need you checking up on me.”
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
He squirmed down in the sleeping bag, muttering, “Yeah, it’s proportional.”
Charlie snickered. “Your cousins?”
“Duh.”
The girls who’d come West with Cameron had stared wide-eyed at his dragon form, then all made a point of drawing him aside to ask. Cameron had patted him on the shoulder and said, “Take my advice, dude; until you’re fifteen just tell them to piss off. They’ll be running your life soon enough.”
“Well, I am way outside your seven-year break, so not my problem. Although . . .” She frowned as she broke off blades of grass and flicked them off her fingertips onto the breeze. “. . . your first ritual had better be with one of the older girls. You burn when you’re stressed and she’s going to need to keep control.”
“Over me?”
“Duh.” Grinning, Charlie sprinkled bits of grass over his face. “Which brings me to my question. Given that worrying about burning the place down is more likely to cause you to burn the place down, why haven’t you ever asked Allie if you could sleep in the courtyard or on the roof?”
“As if. There’s no way up to the roof in skin.”
“Please. Like she wouldn’t jump at the chance to have Michael visit and do that architecture thing. Also, I know for a fact she’s always wanted a spiral staircase.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. Now, answer the question.”
He turned the next sprinkle of grass into ash before it hit him. “Because people, Gales, sleep in bedrooms.”
“Where am I sleeping tonight?”
“In a basement.”
“And last night?”
“In a tent, yeah, I get it you’re a Gale and you don’t sleep in bedrooms, but you’re different.”
“And we have a winner.”
Jack stared at her for a long moment, allowing his vision to sharpen until he could see her as clearly by starlight as he would have in daylight. The charms on her eyelids were freaky, but the rest of her face seemed to be triumphant rather than concerned. That was new. These kinds of conversations with Allie always ended up with her looking like he was a lost sheep or something equally useless and unable to be a Gale.
“Different.” She patted her chest. “Different.” She smacked his.
“Obvious much,” he muttered unable to get his arms out of the sleeping bag to swat her hand away.
“Apparently not.” Bending at the waist, she leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “My bad. I should have noticed and done something about it sooner.”
“So you’re my new mommy?”When her eyes widened, he sighed. “Fourteen, not four. And as Auntie Bea keeps reminding me, when I’m fifteen, and I’m not a child and I’m not protected by being a child, I’ll still be a sorcerer and you know what they do to sorcerers.”
“You’ll also still be half dragon and that makes you unique, unique powers are Wild Powers, that makes you a Wild Power, and Wild Powers play by different rules.”
“Gale boys aren’t Wild Powers.”
“Yeah, that’s what the aunties said. But Gale boys aren’t dragons. Or, technically, princes. First time for everything.”
About to tell her that just because she said something that didn’t make it so, Jack realized that this was Charlie and all he said was, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You know, sleeping outside is going to be a nonevent if you don’t go away.”
“Point.” She stood and smiled down at him. “Firm the ground when you get up. Shelly’s brother-in-law’s cousin won’t want a chunk of his yard feeling like a mattress.”
“I was going to.”
“Sleep sweet, Jack.”
He rolled his eyes, closed them, and faked a snore. She let him hear her walk away.
First time for everything. Charlie said so.
But it was probably still a good idea to try and do something amazing enough they’d want to keep him around.
EIGHT
A MELIA CARLSON’S CELL PHONE rang at 9:02. Her private number. The one very few people had.
Catherine Gale’s last payment and the note had been gone when she got to the office that morning, having already spent an hour with her personal trainer and what felt like twice as long trying to choke down a wheat grass/ banana/blueberry smoothie—anti-oxidants and potassium and she had no idea what the hell the wheat grass was in aid of, but considering what she’d paid for it, it had better work.
Her cell phone rang again. And a third time.
Paul appeared in the open doorway. For the first time since she’d hired him, he looked like he hadn’t gotten enough sleep. On one level, she approved; overworked assistants gave a person credibility. On another level, bags under anyone’s eyes weren’t attractive.
Four rings.
“Boss?”
“I’ve got it.” Always three rings to show she wasn’t at anyone’s beck and call. “Close the door on your way out.” She had no idea why she’d waited for four. “Hello.”
“The fourth ring is just self-indulgent,” a familiar voice said. “What is it we need to talk about?”
Amelia took a deep breath and reminded herself that Sister Benedict was long dead. “I don’t care what the relati
onship is between you and the woman Two Seventy-five N has hired to find those pelts, but I will not have her walking into my office like she owns the place.”
“You won’t?”
She could hear Catherine Gale’s smile, and only years of practice in boardrooms and at drill sites surrounded by the good ol’ boys of the oil industry kept her tone level. “No, I won’t. It appears my people can’t keep her away any more than they can prevent your coming and going.” Contrary to common opinion, flattery was not a universal motivator, but subtle flattery could prime the pump. “I dealt with her yesterday, but I have no doubt she’ll regroup and try again.”
“You dealt with her?”
The question sounded disappointed, but Amelia had no idea if it was because she’d been able to deal or because Catherine Gale had wanted to do it herself. “Yes. I dealt with her, and I’d appreciate it if you could keep your relatives from wasting my time.”
“I am not responsible for my relatives.”
“You are responsible for this one showing up in my office.”
“How so?”
The longer any conversation continued without a discussion of payment rearing its head, the less likely payment would be required. She would much prefer not having to pay Catherine Gale to deal with this. “You came to me.”
“You had a problem I could solve.”
“And now I have another one. The difference being, you caused this problem.” Amelia had a certain skill at reading silences and this one, this one sounded amused.
“All right, here’s what I’ll do.” Catherine Gale sounded more amused than the silence had. “I’ll throw some distractions her way. If she can handle them with time enough left over to bother you, well, you’re on your own.”
Trying to make one last point while people were hanging up looked desperate. Amelia waited until the dial tone made Catherine Gale’s final statement before placing her phone on the desk. She wanted to have Paul set up a meeting with Dr. Hardy, but that wouldn’t move the wellhead fifty feet out of the Atlantic or move the Minister of the Environment off his fence.
“Ms. Carlson? The Honorable Cal Westbrook called. Personally. He wants to set up a lunch date.”
“Isn’t one of his responsibilities the Sydney tar ponds agency?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Come up with a believable excuse.”
“On it.”
On the one hand, it wouldn’t hurt to have another cabinet minister on her side. On the other hand, a perceived association between Carlson Oil and Cape Breton’s enduring environmental disaster was not something she wanted to encourage.
“Ms. Carlson? Since Two Seventy-five N’s press conference supporting the Hay Island well has gotten excellent coverage—I’ve sent you the list, current as of eleven minutes ago,” he added before she could ask, “have you considered returning the pelts?”
“Returning the pelts?” First Catherine Gale’s pale reflection, now this.
“Because they’ve done what you requested.”
“And they’ll maintain that as long as we have the pelts. Is there anything else?”
“It’s just, I got the impression, from the press conference, that I was at . . .”
“Are you drunk?”
He looked startled. “No, of course not.”
He wasn’t lying. “Then get to the point.”
“The owners of these pelts have an emotional attachment to them.”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Of course they do. That’s what makes this effective blackmail.”
“So you won’t . . .” He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Of course not. You have a manicure scheduled for eleven and there’ll be a reporter from CBC Halifax outside the building when you leave for lunch. He’ll be looking for a spontaneous response to the press conference. I’ve prepared your statement. And the CRA has opened a docket on Mathew Burke.”
“Should I know a Mathew Burke?”
“The union rep you wanted dealt with.”
“Of course.”
He paused halfway out the door, looking almost judgmental, shook his head, and kept moving.
Amelia rethought her position on Paul and sleep deprivation. It seemed as though baggy eyes were the least of the effects.
Charlie woke up to the sounds of Mark and Tim in the bathroom, saving water. The fiddler in her head played “Never was Piping so Gay” and given the whole piping/plumbing thing, Charlie supposed she would have done the same had their positions been reversed. Closer, she could hear Shelly up on the sofa bed, snoring softly. The light against her eyelids said it was close to noon, and she could smell grass fires as her uncles burned off the thatch in the ditches.
Wait . . .
Opening her eyes, she came face-to-face with Jack, cocooned in his sleeping bag, mouth open, a smudge of ash on his cheek.
Someone would’ve screamed by now if it was serious, she reminded herself and poked his forehead.
His eyes snapped open instantly, flared gold, then softened to annoyed teenage hazel. “What?”
“You came in.”
“Too light too early,” he muttered, flopped over, and went back to sleep.
Charlie ticked off another fact on her Jack-as-teenager list—doesn’t stress about burning the house down if he wants to sleep in. Since it would clearly be a while before she got to use the bathroom, or would want to use the bathroom if she’d matched up the correct actions to the sounds, she joined him.
Paul had never felt this way about anyone. He thought he’d been in love before—Janis Rinscind in grade six, who’d shoved him off the end of the pier and he’d had to ditch his jacket and shoes to make it back to shore, and Bonnie O’Neill in the summer between first and second year university who’d lost her hat at Peggy’s Cove and he’d almost been swept away getting it back—but what he felt now, what he felt for Eineen Seulaich, was the difference between looking at a puddle and looking at the ocean.
Janis and Bonnie, they’d been puddles.
Eineen was like the ocean—deep, mysterious, too beautiful to describe.
The sea is a harsh mistress had been one of his father’s more persistent homilies. Paul had never understood it. The sea had always been nothing more than a large body of salt water containing rapidly depleting fish stocks that some men chose to risk their lives for.
He understood it now. Palm sweaty against the plastic case, he waited for Eineen to answer the phone.
“Hello?”
It wasn’t her voice. “Is Eineen . . . She gave me . . .” The words got stuck behind his need to speak with Eineen. His need to know nothing had happened to her since he’d left her at dawn. His need to know the entire night hadn’t been a dream no matter how much the bruises on his knees suggested it had been very real. Pebble beach; not his first pick for that kind of activity although at the time, he hadn’t noticed the rocks.
“Paul, right? Hang on, I’ll get her.”
“Thank you.” Sitting in his car in the dry cleaner’s parking lot, he remembered how his name in her mouth had sounded like a storm at sea, sweeping up and shattering everything in its path.
“Paul.” Today, it was like waves sliding up over the shore, quiet and welcoming.
“Where are you?”
“With my cousin in Louisburg.”
“I need to see you.”
“I know.”
“Ms. Carlson won’t give the pelts back until the drilling has begun.”
“I told you.”
“I had to ask.”
She sighed, and Paul swore he felt her breath against his cheek. “I know.”
He thought she’d tell him they’d have to take them back themselves, steal them back, but she said nothing. He listened to his engine purr and his air conditioner hum and thought about the gas he was using and the oil that gas had come from and how there was better than ninety percent chance there were billions of barrels of it under the sea by Hay Island—even if only 500 million were recoverable
with today’s technology, and said, “I know where they’re hidden. We can get them tonight. We can’t get them now,” he added quickly before she could protest. “I have meetings all afternoon and three calls to Fort McMurray I can’t make until after five, but then I’ll pick you up and we’ll get them, I promise.”
“You would turn against your company for me?”
His lips twitched into what was almost a smile. “You told me to.”
“You could have refused me.”
“No . . .” He ran his thumb along the leather seat, thought of the soft skin of her inner thighs, remembered the empty eyes of her seal pelt, and started talking again before things got weird. Weirder. “How could I? You’re the reason I’m breathing.” It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing he’d ever said. And the truest.
“But only after your day’s work is done.”
He could call the office, tell Ms. Carlson something had come up he had to deal with personally. She’d assume it was to do with his job, with her, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t—didn’t—do a good portion of his job in the car. No, wait, he couldn’t, he had to deliver her dry cleaning so she could wear her favorite silk blouse to dinner with Mac Reynolds from the Canadian Environmental Law Association. The blouse was the perfect blend of professional and might-be-interested and he’d been on the lookout for a couple more like it, but for now . . .
“Paul.”
“Don’t ask me to walk away from this job. It’s . . .” It wasn’t his father’s job. It wasn’t up before dawn, and a body destroyed by the cold and the wet, and still not enough money to make ends meet.
“I haven’t. I won’t.”
He believed her. And he chose to ignore the subtext that said she wouldn’t have to.
The Louisburg stage for the Samhradh Ceol Feill was a solid seasonal structure near the Fort’s Visitor’s Center that took advantage of the Fort’s parking. It had a backstage area actually large enough for the bands to transition smoothly and a stage manager who seemed to know what she was doing. Although Grinneal had drawn a Saturday evening spot, the entire band had taken advantage of their all access passes to check it out. When Tim didn’t swear at the electrical, and Mark approved of the roadies who’d be helping Jack, Charlie figured they were set.