The Future Falls (27 page)

Graham moved away and Jack got the bigger coffeepot off the top of the refrigerator. Charlie watched Auntie Gwen drink coffee she didn't like, brows drawn in, both hands wrapped around the mug, dark eyes shadowed, and had a terrible feeling she had real estate listings in her future. As though an asteroid and the whole mess with Jack wasn't enough.

By noon they'd been contacted by three second circle couples and Auntie Mary had emailed the names of four more third circle boys and their lists.

“Fortunately, there's a fair bit of overlap on the lists,” Allie noted, deftly removing one of Charlie's capos from Evan's mouth. “And the eleven still in school can transfer to programs here . . .” Evan squeaked as her hold tightened. “Although I guess it's not really worth it for twenty-two months. And after that we'll have other things to worry about, won't we?”

“Mama! Squish!”

“Sorry, darling.”

The twins, Charlie noted, were not on the lists. The odds were high the twins were prepping for a trip to Australia, thrilled to be heading for a continent where most of the fauna and a good chunk of the flora could kill them.

“Cha Cha?” Small hands clutched at her jeans.

“What can I do for you, Edward?”

“Up!”

We can save him
, Charlie thought as she lifted the toddler onto her lap. And Evan and all five of the brothers to be named later. In spite of Auntie Jane, they were working on that now.
We can save, if not all the family—because Uncle Arthur and the oldest of the aunties wouldn't be able to leave Ontario—most of the family.
An enclave here. An enclave somewhere else. Joined this time only by her ability to Walk the Wood. Hers and Auntie Catherine's if Auntie Catherine could be convinced to help. Charlie wasn't one hundred percent positive that Auntie Catherine would bother to come home.

“Want!”

“Too bad, kidlet.” She set the sharpie far enough away he couldn't reach it, although he tried. Alive was better, she wasn't arguing with that, but what kind of world would Edward and his brothers grow up in? The Gales could slide back to a more primitive existence without much difficulty, back to the land was pretty close to a religious statement, but they'd be robbed of so much.

“No, I think we should concentrate on the north side.” Allie slid her tablet across the table to Auntie Gwen. “Get everything on Macewan that actually touches the park.”

“That'll attract too much attention, Alysha.”

“We can keep a lid on it for twenty-two months. And then it won't matter.”

How, Charlie wondered, could she look any of Allie's children in the eye if she hadn't done everything possible to ensure they could grow up playing the bagpipes on their phone?

“I have to go.” Leaping to her feet with Edward on her lap, probably not the best idea, but she caught him before he hit the floor, swung him into the air, shrieking with laughter, and handed him to Auntie Gwen. “I have to . . .” So easy to lie. Screw it. “. . . talk to Jack.”

“You're only making it harder on both of you, Charlotte.”

A little exasperation, but that was standard for Auntie Gwen. The pity in her voice, that was new. Charlie stopped at the door, and turned around. “You told her we talked about it?”

Color high on her cheeks, Allie shook her head. “Charlie, she already knew.”

“Not that we'd talked about it. Not that it was suddenly all right to talk to me about it. It's no one's business but mine and Jack's, and now it's open season, isn't it? Fucking wonderful.”

“Fucking!” Edward shouted as she slammed the door.

Ron Sexsmith's “Doomed” played all the way down the stairs. Charlie let it run.

*   *   *

Joe glanced up from the invoice books as she came into the Emporium, raised one ginger brow, and pointed his pencil toward the far end of the
store. Charlie opened her mouth, then snapped it closed again. If Auntie Gwen knew, Joe knew.

Jack held up a hand as she approached. “. . . twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Joe! Twenty-nine!”

“Got it!”

“Skate guards,” Jack told her before she could ask.

“For when hell freezes over?” Charlie reached past him and picked up a piece of hot-pink plastic, sized to fit a child's skate. “Donated to charity sale by Jack Frost? Jutunn sandals?”

“No, just skate guards.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes you lose one but you can't buy one new, so you end up with an odd number. People bring the leftovers to us.” Jack shrugged. “Other people buy singles from us.”

Charlie tossed the pink guard back in the box. “That's a little anticlimactic.”

“Yeah, well, junk retail.” He frowned. “You okay?”

“Not so much, no.” She took a deep breath and lowered her voice below eavesdropping range. “Tell Joe you're leaving. We're going to find out if the Courts can help.”

“But Auntie Jane said . . .”

“That we don't deal with the Fey. First, Auntie Jane's line in the sand aside, we've always interpreted
don't deal with
pretty broadly. You're Fey. Joe's Fey. The Corbae, the Loireag, Boris . . . everyone who uses this store for a mail drop or buys potions is Fey. The family dealt with your uncles right up until we sent their scaly asses home. Okay, that was mostly Allie, but Allie's kind of definitively family, so the point stands. Second, we're Wild. We do what the family doesn't.”

“And we pay the cost . . .”

“No.” She cut him off again. “Not for this. We tell the Courts what's happening like we figure they already know and we use their own self-interest so, if they can, they save the world for themselves, not us.”

Jack grinned. “That's almost twisty enough to be dragon thinking.”

“Thank you.” She assumed he meant it as a compliment.

And the grin faded. “But there's nothing here they want.”

“Not entirely true.” Charlie picked a keychain out of a basket on the shelf beside her and dangled the miniature ball from her finger.

“Basketball?”

“Basketball. They're nuts about it. No one knows why, but it's like an addiction. Last night, while we were waiting for the kids to settle, I overheard Melissa explaining to Dave why both the men's and women's teams at UA are topping the Prairie Division.”

“The Courts?”

Charlie nodded. “A full-blood on each team. The full-bloods never play in televised games—as I understand it, it has something to do with soul stealing . . .” Although
understand
might be too strong a word since the explanation twisted commonly held folklore sideways then sat on it until it cried uncle. “. . . so that explains what they're doing in Canada. Four or even five years of university ball would mean nothing to them. Melissa says they've never been benched, they play every game. As I doubt they're hanging out in the library working on their classical myth and religion assignments when they're not playing, can you find them?”

“I didn't even know they were here. They don't
want
me to find them.” His eyes flared gold. “I could flush them, but I don't think Allie'd appreciate the collateral damage. However . . .” He tapped his fingers against the edge of the metal shelf. Charlie heard claws. “. . . I bet the lesser Courts will know; it's in their own best interest.” Jack snorted remembering at the last instant to turn his head. “Like mice knowing where the cat is. I take it we're not waiting for sunset?”

“Good call.”

“The Saddledome Brownies are the closest and the easiest to find. Fly with me?”

“It's not going to happen, Jack.”

He shrugged with less grace than usual, like he was holding himself back from the movement he wanted to make, and scales slid across his cheeks, there and gone so quickly it looked as though they were moving. “I'm not going to stop asking.”

The keychain went back into the basket. Charlie stared into the jumble of sports fetishes because it was safer than looking at Jack. “There's plenty of greenery around the dome. I'll meet you there.”

“I'll tell Joe I'm leaving.”

*   *   *

On days the parking lots were full and crowds swarmed the entrances, the Saddledome buzzed with energy, the colors of its buttresses and trim reflected back in jerseys and pennants, hats and scarves. Lit up, the skyline of the city at night cupped in its curve, it was almost art. On a rainy afternoon in late October, Charlie had trouble seeing anything more than tons of concrete surrounded by asphalt. Although, in fairness, very few buildings were at their best by the dumpsters.

Tucked in close to the building where it was more-or-less dry, she heard Jack approach—the distinctive wet laundry in a high wind sound of dragon wings—but didn't see him until he landed beside her.

“We're not going to be here long,” he pointed out as she raised a brow when he didn't change, the rain steaming slightly as it rolled down the curve of his neck. “And no one can see us from the road.”

“And that's the form the Brownies respond best to,” Charlie guessed.

Jack looked puzzled. “The form doesn't matter. I'm still me.”

“I meant, you're more threatening in scales.”

“Oh. Well, yeah. Except threatening a Brownie would be like threatening a . . .”

“Girl Guide?” Charlie offered, when he paused.

He thought about it for a moment. “Not really.”

“Okay.” Now she thought of it, the twins had been Guides. For two years in a row, they'd sold the most cookies in Ontario; then the aunties had noticed their sales pitch and put a stop to it. “So do they just show up now you're here?”

“No, I need to call.”

It wasn't so much a call as a hum. Jack dipped his head low to the ground, tail stretched out for balance and when Charlie laid her fingertips against his neck—carefully, in case the heat hadn't completely dissipated—she could feel as much as hear the sound. When a slightly higher tone layered in, she realized the dumpsters were vibrating like big, rectangular, smelly tuning forks.

“Highness?”

She couldn't quite see the Brownie. There was an awareness of a shape around a meter high, but definition kept sliding by too quickly to grab. By. And back. And by again. Temples throbbing, Charlie decided to look at a crack in the pavement.

The Brownie sounded shocked to learn the Courts were hiding from the prince. “Shocked, I tell you,” Charlie murmured as it continued to be amazed at such a level of disrespect. Of course, it knew where they were.

“Why would they even think to hide from us, Highness? We are no threat. When they are not playing, they often take their ease at the Silvan Diner. Open twenty-four seven, best grilled cheese in the city. My hantri works the grill. Try the sweet potato fries.”

“Hantri?” Charlie asked as the Brownie went back inside.

“Part of a kin group.” The dumpster bonged as Jack shrugged and hit it with a wing, the sound wave rolling away from the building like an invisible tsunami.

Charlie charmed it flat as she dug out her phone, spreading the vibrations out into inaudible. The Saddledome was never entirely empty, and the last thing she wanted to do right now was play “dragon-what-dragon” with maintenance or security. “Okay, here it is, Silvan Diner, 4627 Bowness Rd NW.”

“Why do you need an address? I thought you went into the Wood and sang your way out.”

“If I could do that, we wouldn't have needed the Brownie. The Courts have no song here. You flying or sharing my cab?”

“You could fly with me.”

“Still no. If you're flying, leave now.” When Gales needed cabs, cabs appeared.

*   *   *

The Silvan Diner was one half of a single-story brick building, the other half divided into a hairdressers and a Vietnamese sandwich shop. Too far from the university to be a student hangout, it still was close enough to be a plausible retreat for the basketball teams. Although Charlie doubted the Courts worried much about plausible.

She had the cabbie drop her off in front of the small white house that separated the diner from a four-story apartment building. Her umbrella barely had time to get wet before Jack stepped out of a flare of light in gray jeans and jacket. The roof shingles, Charlie guessed, although the white T-shirt and sneakers had probably been one of the pickets from an actual white picket fence—now a picket short.

“You'd better not come in.” He made an impossible leap over the fence from the lawn onto the sidewalk. At midday on a crappy Monday the road was empty, so Charlie bit back her comment on the dangers of attracting attention. Nothing like an unnecessary warning to be careful to really emphasize an age difference. “They don't trust Gales and once they know who you are, they'll assume you're trying to geis them.”

“How will they know what I can do?”

He rolled his eyes, Allie's expression borrowed. “Duh. The Courts keep tabs on anyone who could challenge them, and you're Charlie Gale.”

That sounded like a compliment, so Charlie accepted it as one. “I don't geis.”

“You can make people do what you say; it might as well be a geis. They won't talk to you.”

“I don't want you going in alone.” Given the price he'd already said he was willing to pay the Courts for training, she didn't want him suddenly facing an opportunity to pay for saving the world. Not without talking it over with her first. If it came to it, they'd split the bill.

“I'll go with him.” Joe ducked as Charlie spun around, and scowled up at her umbrella. “You trying to put my eye out with that thing, then?”

“How did you know we were here?”

He shrugged. “Security system in the store. Those corn husk dolls are gossips and, well, the walls have ears. Heard all about your plan to piss off the aunties and see what the Courts can do.”