CHARLIE COUNTED TO TEN, not for the first time since arriving back in Calgary, and finally managed to slip into a break in the flow of overlapping words. "But both girls are okay?"
"It wasn't easy gathering and then separating all the butterflies so Jack could change them back." Allie rubbed her face with both hands. "Wendy keeps trying to land on flowers, but, bottom line, they're fine."
"The point isn't that they're okay, Charlotte." Auntie Bea emphasized her point with the rolling pin, smacking it down on the table beside the ball of pastry dough. "The point is that he used sorcery to keep them from hitting the ground."
"That's better than letting them hit the ground."
Allie nodded. "That's what I said."
Auntie Carmen looked up from the peaches she was slicing and shot Allie a look that would have curdled cream. Had curdled cream, Charlie noted as Auntie Gwen snorted, glared at Auntie Carmen, and dumped the contents of her mixing bowl down the sink. "Gales," Auntie Carmen sniffed, throwing a peach pit into the compost bucket, "do not use sorcery."
"Gales don't bounce from a hundred feet up either," Charlie pointed out.
"They had no business being a hundred feet up." Auntie Gwen's fingers were white around the handle as she opened the fridge. "Jack should never have agreed when they asked him for a ride."
"Oh, please, what chance did he have? He had two determined Gale girls nipping at him, both well aware they're inside his seven-year break and equally aware of what that'll mean the moment they join third circle."
"Who may or may not be within his seven-year break is irrelevant."
Charlie snorted. "Yeah, right."
"We will not be breeding him back into the lines." Auntie Bea's tone froze the water in the measuring cup beside her. The glass shattered. The water rolled off the table and smashed on the floor. "We would not breed him back into the lines if he was the last Gale boy alive."
"Oh, come on, if he was the last Gale boy alive, you'd have to . . ."
"Charlotte."
Charlie teetered on the edge of ignoring the warning, but self-preservation won out. "Fine. He's different. We make use of difference, we don't embrace it."
"When have you felt un-embraced, Charlotte?" Auntie Carmen sniffed. "You're still listed with two boys who haven't chosen and another two who have, should you want a child without the inconvenience of a husband.
Auntie Bea slapped the sheet of dough over the pie plate. "Not to mention . . ." Each word came punctuated with a jab of her thumbs, pushing the dough down into place. ". . . the situation with Alysha and Graham having sons would be . . ."
"This isn't about me," Charlie reminded her quickly, before they could get tangled up in that argument again.
"You have useful talents," Auntie Bea sniffed.
"So does Jack."
"Sorcery . . ."
"Isn't necessarily a bad thing."
"Experience begs to differ."
"Experience with a dragon? A Dragon Prince?"
"What?"
"Jack is a sorcerer," Charlie said, slowly, carefully, not giving them a reason to stop listening, "and a Gale boy, and yeah, that combination always goes bad, but he's also a dragon, raised as a prince.You have no idea how he'll turn out."
"Exactly. He's unpredictable."
"Wild?"
"Precisely."
Charlie folded her arms and raised both brows.
"No Gale boy has ever been a Wild Power," Auntie Gwen stated flatly, dumping the bowl of sliced peaches into the pie.
"Or a dragon." Charlie dropped down onto the sofa beside Allie. "When will you . . ."
Hand out of sight between her hip and the sofa, Allie pinched her.
". . . understand," Charlie amended, "that Jack is unique?"
Lip curled, Auntie Bea rolled on the upper crust. "Alysha's argument for allowing him to stay . . ."
Translate stay as live.
". . . was that he was a Gale boy and Gale boys are not unique."
"We're not good with unique," Allie said quietly before the aunties could weigh in.
Yeah. Understatement. "Actually, Allie's argument was that he was a Gale under the age of fifteen and therefore could not be judged."
"His gender seems fairly self-evident," Auntie Carmen noted.
"Charlotte, stop looking like you want to bang your head against the floor and make your point."
Auntie Gwen was perceptive. "Stop thinking of him as a Gale boy and start thinking of him as a Gale dragon." She spread her hands. "New label, new rules."
All three aunties and Allie stared at her.
Given that she couldn't stare back at all four of them at once, Charlie focused on Auntie Bea. Auntie Gwen was the most flexible, but Auntie Bea was the one to convince. "Jack's not a defective Gale boy. He's a fully operational Gale dragon."
Dark eyes narrowed. "We got it the first time, Charlotte. And the sorcery?"
"He's not a Gale sorcerer . . ."
"He's a dragon sorcerer," Allie finished, one hand wrapped around Charlie's arm.
Forehead pleated into a deep vee, Auntie Carmen waved her knife like a wand. "But you just said, he's a Gale dragon."
"Ah, but all cats are not Socrates."
"Yes, Charlotte, you're clever." Auntie Gwen pointed the whisk at her, cream dripping off the wires and back into the bowl. "What do you suggest we do with this Gale dragon?"
We're not good with unique.
"Fine." Charlie sagged back against the cushions and went where Auntie Gwen wanted her to. "He can spend the summer with me. I can teach him how to be a Gale who colors outside the lines. And besides, we could use a roadie; Mark's got us booked into every freakin' festival on the island and I am not carrying all that beer. That last bit was a joke," she added as all three aunties stared. "Look, there's open space in Cape Breton. Deer, moose, he'll be fine."
Allie's grip on her arm tightened. "Do you remember the hamster you had when you were ten?"
"No. And ow."
"I do. It died."
"Hamsters don't live very long."
"You sat on it!"
Oh, yeah, that she remembered. "Dragons are tougher than hamsters, Allie, and it's pretty obvious the p . . ." Auntie Gwen's whisk scraped the side of the bowl and Charlie hastily discarded the peanut gallery. "People who make the decisions in this family don't want Jack to stay here. And as he's not here while we're discussing him, where is he?"
One final squeeze, then Allie released her. "Down in the store with Graham and Joe."
Charlie stood, tugged down the hem of her shorts, and picked up her mandolin.
"Where are you going, Charlotte?"
"First, I'm going downstairs to ask Jack if he wants to go east."
Auntie Bea cut three lines across the top of the pie so quickly Charlie wondered if she'd ever been a ninja. "If he's a Gale, as you two keep saying, dragon or boy, he'll do what he's told."
"You can get more flies with honey, Auntie Bea."
"I can get as many flies as I want, Charlotte, however I want, but I don't want flies. And second?"
"Second, I'm heading back. I've got . . ." Tall and slender, with dark hair and dark eyes, they stood at the place where land met sea, looking more real in the dusk than they could possibly be in full sunlight. ". . . commitments. To the band." Of course to the band.
"And these band commitments, they're more important than family commitments, then?"
"I'm fulfilling family commitments, Auntie Bea," Charlie said, and turned to go. Flip flops, not the greatest for pivoting on one heel, but she managed.
"Your pie isn't ready," Auntie Carmen pointed out mournfully.
Tempting, Charlie admitted, but pie had never been enough to keep her at home.
"If he agrees . . ." Allie caught up to her at the door.
"When he agrees. My persuasion-fu is strong."
"Fine, when. How will you get him there? He's too big to take through the Wood."
Charlie grinned. "They have these things called planes."
A dimple flashed in Allie's cheek. "Yeah, but they smell like ass and make you check your guitar."
Still licking the flavor of Allie's cherry lip gloss off her mouth, Charlie glanced over at the mirror and the reflection of her standing in the hall holding her mandolin, a small duffel bag of clothes slung over one shoulder. It seemed she'd grown out of the whole traveling with only extra underwear lifestyle.
Then Allie slowly appeared behind her. Then Katie, then Maria, then Judith, then Lynn, then Rayne, then Holly, then her sisters, her mother, her aunts . . .
Tall, with blonde hair and gray eyes. Some slight differences in shade of hair, in shape of body, in skin tone, but it was easy to see the family resemblance. Charlie had started dyeing her hair when she was fifteen, a way of saying, "Yeah, I'm different.Want to make something of it?" With it back to her natural color, nothing visibly separated her from the others.
Then her reflection split down the middle and a glittering dragon stepped out holding her mandolin.
"I'm different on the inside." She patted the frame. "Like Jack. A little obvious, but thanks."
The dragon rolled silver eyes and stepped forward with such assurance that Charlie stepped back, convinced for a moment that it was going to step out of the mirror.
"And I thought that whole 3D craze had died," she muttered going on into the store.
"Do I have a choice?"
"Sure." Charlie leaned back against the counter. "You can choose to spend the rest of the summer hanging out with a group of musicians who will very likely teach you a number of bad habits, or you can stay here where the aunties will watch you with suspicion, your cousins will continue to get you into trouble, Allie will treat you like a fourteen-year-old boy, Graham, who could teach you any number of cool things, will insist you do boring office work . . ."
"Hey!"
She ignored him. ". . . and Joe will keep reacting to that Prince thing and resenting it even though he's never actually lived in the UnderRealm."
"Wait . . . You resent I'm a prince?" Jack stopped spinning the wheels of an old die-cast tractor and turned a golden gaze on the leprechaun. "Why would you resent that?"
Joe's freckles disappeared under a sudden flush. "I don't believe your birth makes you better than anyone else."
"Yeah, right. That's 'cause you haven't met my mother."
They'd all nearly met Jack's mother, but she'd been in a hurry to destroy the world and Allie had been in a slightly greater hurry to send her home and that hadn't left much time for introductions.
Charlie straightened, leaving sweaty smudges behind on the glass. "Bottom line, Jack, being forced to wave the sorcerer flag this afternoon has gotten you a get-out-of-boring free card. So make a decision. I've got a beer back east with my name on it."
"Fine." He tossed the car back on the shelf. "I'll go with you."
"I'm overwhelmed by your enthusiasm. And technically you'll be sent after me."
"He's not flying from Alberta to the east coast." Feet shoulder width apart, arms folded, Graham's posture announced he would not be moved.
"Why not? Oh, wait, you mean flying?" Charlie flapped her arms. "Duh. Of course not. Put him on a plane to Halifax, and we'll work out how he'll cover the last few kilometers when he gets there."
"I'll know where you are. I mean I can find you wherever you are," Jack expanded when Charlie flashed a raised eyebrow at him. "Remember how my mother followed the blood link here? I can follow the Gale blood anywhere."
"Anywhere?"
"It's kind of loud. Obvious, I mean."
"I thought you followed your father's blood up from the UnderRealm?" Graham growled.
He shrugged. "I didn't know I was a Gale then, did I?"
They weren't getting him away from Graham any too soon, Charlie realized. Jack's tone had tottered on the edge of challenge and in any testosterone-fueled, teenage rebellion, Graham would lose. No matter what Graham thought.
"Great, you'll get to Halifax, then fly to the island to find me.You'll need to stretch out after the plane. So, we're good." She ruffled Jack's hair, moving just fast enough to keep from being burned by his reaction, then grabbed the front of Graham's T-shirt, pulled herself to him, and kissed him good-bye. "I've got to go, I was in the middle of something. Well, on the edge of the beginning of something. I think."
Charlie'd intended to follow Mark's song back to Port Hudson but ended up following a line of fiddle music that wound in and around the Wood. It wasn't music she could remember ever having heard before, but it had a Pied Piper thing going for it and when she emerged into the world, the last few notes whipped by on the wind followed by a roar of appreciation. She could hear laughter and smell the smoke of the beach fire as she stepped out between the trees, but the corner of damp sand beyond the pier was empty. No women and only one set of footprints heading up to the pier. Not really surprising they'd left - she squinted at her watch - she'd been gone for nearly ninety minutes.
One set of footprints heading up to the pier . . .
Charlie stared out into the harbor for a moment.
She lost the footprints on the hard-packed dirt of the access road, thought about using a charm to keep following, but lured by the distant sound of "Back in Black" played on a fiddle headed for the party instead. Between following a hunch and joining a gang of musicians with beer, well, she'd had enough of being responsible for one night.
On the way through the parking lot to drop off her bag, she passed two guys trying to pretend they weren't breaking into a car, tossed the first three bars of "Sail Away Ladies" at them, and didn't bother waiting around for the splash.
Given that he'd recently been forced to recognize there were significantly more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in his philosophy, Paul figured his reaction when he turned on the light was completely justified. By the time he realized the creature sprawled on his desk was another pelt, his extra-large black coffee was already dripping past the empty eyeholes and onto the floor. The smell of the new paint - first coat applied the moment Ms. Carlson had left for the evening, a light taupe for the outer office and a darker shade for the inner sanctum - had covered the smell of fish. The building had been locked and while the second-floor windows were open, they were securely screened in and the screens were still in place.
Granted, his office was on the twelfth floor in Halifax and that hadn't stopped Catherine Gale's first delivery.
The painters would arrive at five thirty to put on the second coat. He had fifteen minutes to get rid of the evidence or risk damaging rumors about Amelia Carlson and fur. Seal fur. By noon, people would speculate about how she wanted the seal hunt reopened. By tomorrow morning, rumor would have her out on the ice clubbing baby seals herself.
Stuff it under the table in the boardroom?
Or in Ms. Carlson's private bathroom?
No. He'd be driving out to the mine the moment the painters left, and he'd have no chance to smuggle it out while they were in the building. His morning was tightly planned: he'd shove the pelts away in the dark while the paint dried, be back in time for the delivery of the new desk and chair. Be ready for work when Ms. Carlson showed up at ten after her breakfast meeting with the local representatives of the Seafarers International Union, North Atlantic District. Unions had been trying to organize on the deepwater rigs for years, and Carlson Oil was dangling the carrot of a shallow water well. Get the unions on board and the Ministry of the Environment would think twice about blocking the permits regardless of what power Two Seventy-five N wielded locally.
Power . . .
If they had someone like Catherine Gale working for them, would they use her power to influence the government? He paused, one hand extended toward the pelt, and considered it. It would have been tidier to use Catherine Gale to directly influence the government - as they were hip deep in the messier option, clearly Ms. Carlson hadn't been able to convince her to do it.Yesterday in the storage locker, she'd warned him the new player would go after the pelts, but that was all she'd warned him about. Two Seventy-five N were the good guys. They'd use this new player to get their property back, but they wouldn't use her against the government because they were the good guys.
Which was why they were going to lose. Business didn't recognize the generalizations of good and evil although he'd heard a rumor they were adding ethics classes to most MBA programs.
He glanced down at his watch. Currently he wore a eight hundred dollar copy of an Omega Seamaster, but by next summer he'd have the real thing and . . . shit. The painters would be here in ten minutes!
The pelt was as heavy and awkward as the other three, but at least the outer hair had treated the coffee like the North Atlantic and repelled nearly all of it. Fortunately, he'd covered his cleared desk for the painters, so most of the coffee had spread out over the drop cloth. He wasted a moment jerking the damp canvas back into place, then another jerking it back down over the framed maps leaning against the side of his desk.
Coffee soaked into his shoulder while carrying the pelt down the stairs, but he was dressed in a golf shirt and khakis for the mine and he'd change before returning to the office, so he could ignore it.
He'd left his car parked directly in front of the building, willing to risk a bylaw officer wandering by at five thirty in the morning. By the time the first pickup truck of painters rolled past on their way to the parking lot, he had the pelt safely tucked away in his trunk.
The newspaper truck pulled up while he was having a "friendly chat" with the head painter. After talking about the weather, the price of gas, the price of coffee, and other things Paul could care less about - some days he really missed Toronto's surly, no-nonsense contractors - Paul managed to establish when and how he wanted the job finished, sent the yawning man upstairs to his crew, and took a moment to grab a Post from the newly filled box.
The headline above the fold read: Hay Island Environmental Group Withdraws Objection to Carlson Drilling
Good news, but it only meant they'd spoken to a local reporter. He'd reserve judgment until after he spoke to the minister's office although, with any luck, this would be the last disgusting piece of fish-soaked fur he had to deal with. Seriously, this was the twenty-first century; what was wrong with microfibers?
The headline under the fold read: Fisherman Catches Not-A-Squid off Scatarie Island.
Not a squid? Shaking his head, Paul delayed leaving for the mine long enough to drop the paper in the recycling bin by the elevator. Lots of things in the ocean weren't squid; he didn't have to be the son of a fisherman to know that. The slightly out-of-focus photograph suggested Fisherman Catches Tentacled Mutant might be more accurate. And this was the fishing ground environmentalists were afraid Carlson Oil might ruin; an oil spill could only improve things.
Charlie woke up thinking the world was ending. Heart pounding, she jerked up into a sitting position, fighting her way free of her sleeping bag and ready to . . .
. . . deal with Tim snoring.
Mark, head on Tim's shoulder, drooling into a dark triangle of chest hair and a half-inked tattoo of a sea serpent, had apparently gotten used to it. Tucked up on their other side, Bo had earbuds in, cords disappearing under his Ryerson hoodie. Shelly'd hooked up with someone - or someones. Charlie was a little fuzzy on the details. She vaguely remembered being asked to join in, couldn't think why she'd refused, and hoped it wasn't because the people involved who weren't Shelly were from one of the other bands. Even without Charlie accidentally charming them, that never ended well during festival season.
Technically, they were camping. Realistically, no one had been sober enough to drive, so they'd just bunked down on the flattened grass between the van and Shelly's car. Given the number of vehicles in the makeshift parking lot, and at least one set of sinuses giving Tim a run for his money, they weren't alone.
Moving quietly so as not to wake anyone, and carefully so her head wouldn't fall from its precarious perch on her neck, Charlie skimmed the sleeping bag down her body until she could kick free.
The sun was barely up and when she got to the beach, a little early morning fog still clung to the surface of the ocean - silver-gray mist above slate-gray water. Stripping down, leaving yesterday's clothes just above the dark line in the sand, she gritted her teeth and walked out until she could dive through a swell.
Northumberland Strait never got warm, but the shallow water between the mainland and Port Hood Island was closer to refreshing than profanity. By the time she surfaced, her hangover had eased and, provided she got something to eat in the next little while, Charlie felt she just might . . .
The seal looked as startled by their sudden meeting as she felt.
Gasping in surprise while treading salt water - not smart.
By the time she finished coughing, the seal was gone, with not so much as a ripple across the swells to mark its passing. Charlie peered out into the fog a moment longer, remembered why she'd replaced Aston in the band, curled her fingers into fists, and turned for shore.
The elderly man standing by her clothes was clearly a local. "You're not one of them, are you?" he asked as she rose to her feet in the shallows, water sluicing off her skin. "You're not one of the water women?"
Gales were connected to the land and, wild though she might be, Charlie was still a Gale. "No, I'm not."
"They're not happy, them." He jerked his head out toward the island. "I heard them at night. Wailing."
"Wailing?"
"Aye, wailing."
"What about?"
After a noise like a cat coming to grips with a hairball, he hawked a lou-gie into the sand. "How the bloody fuck should I know?" he demanded. "You can't go wandering around naked, then."
"I'm not."
"I'm not blind, girl!"
Charlie scooped up her clothes. "I'm not wandering."
"You think I'm so old it doesn't matter, eh? Is that it? You can just go wild?"
He'd been a strong man once, broad shoulders, large hands, skin browned by the wind and the sun and sea. No ring, so no prior claim.
Underwear dangling from one finger, Charlie dug her toes into the sand, noted the clear flecks of gold in his hazel eyes, and grinned. If he wanted wild . . . "How's your heart?"
"How's my . . ." Silver brows rose as he realized what she was actually asking and, after a moment of stunned silence, he laughed, loud and deep, his eyes crinkling at the corners, the change of expression taking years off his age.
Charlie traced a charm on the inside of his forearm anyway, just in case.
The middle-aged man who'd wandered out of the security trailer when Paul hit his horn had opened the gate with no more than a yawn and a cursory glance at the paperwork. Nearly at the end of his shift, he clearly didn't care about someone from head office arriving in the early hours to check out the mine. Paul had been counting on that. The man's lack of professionalism, however, was not in Carlson Oil's best interest, and Paul made a note of it.
It didn't occur to him until he was on his way down the hoist shaft, elevator cables grinding out protests as the cage descended, that what he was doing might be considered dangerous. Under the dome of the borrowed hardhat, his scalp suddenly prickled with sweat. Paul had been down into the Duke before on one of the quarterly inspections, but that had been with a half dozen other people, another dozen up top in case something went wrong.
This morning, if something went wrong, he'd be entirely on his own.
He checked his phone, feeling unbalanced without his earpiece in.
No signal.
Entirely on his own.
At one hundred and fifty meters, he reached the first transfer station, a big open area about ten, maybe fifteen meters square. On that quarterly inspection, he'd been told the miners had called it Canaveral.
The safety engineer spread his arms. "It's where they took off for the sky."
"Yeah." Paul brushed a bit of dirt off his sleeve."I got it."
He could go deeper, a lot deeper, but it wasn't necessary and he had no intention of spending all day at this. Locking down the elevator, he dragged the pelts to one of the flat equipment carts - a negligible resale value had left them abandoned to rust - and loaded them alternately lengthwise/crosswise trusting their weight to hold them in place. After spending a moment working out how to switch the rails - the carts ran on steel lines like train cars - he pushed his loaded cart down C tunnel.
C tunnel.
It went out under the sea.
Oh, ha. He flicked on his helmet light even though the tunnel lamps threw sufficient illumination, focused on the task at hand and not the kilometers of dark, silent, empty tunnels around him or the way he was probably drawing coal dust into his lungs with every breath, and walked briskly until he reached a point where the schematic on his phone told him he was under the Atlantic. Or maybe the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Either way, he was absolutely not thinking of the water pressing down on the rock over his head.
Sweat rolling down his sides from a combination of exertion and humidity, he stopped at the next cross tunnel, flicked on the breaker for the lights, and unloaded the pelts, stacking them against the wall about five meters in. When he returned to C tunnel and flicked the breaker off again, the pelts disappeared. The darkness filled the cross tunnel so completely that when he held out his hand, he expected to meet resistance.
"That ought to be good enough for Catherine Gale," he muttered.
The words rolled off down the tunnels, bouncing off the walls, not so much fading as disappearing into the distance, in constant motion until they finally reached a coal face and began the long trip back.
A conceit Paul knew was ridiculous.
Gale.
Gale.
Gale.
Any sound other than his own breathing or the motion of the cart or his work boots against the tunnel was a product of an early morning, not enough caffeine, and a unique situation.
About halfway back to Canaveral, returning the empty cart at nearly a jog, he stopped to drag his palm across his forehead, wiping the sweat off on his thigh.
Claws skittered against rock in the pause between inhale and exhale.
Not possible.
If he turned, he'd see C tunnel angling off until it curved out of sight.
He'd see slices of darkness marking the cross tunnels.
And nothing else.
Claws . . .
He didn't turn. He scrubbed his palms against his thighs, got a better grip on the crossbar, and kept walking. Walking. Not running.
Not running until he could see the open gate of the elevator and then he abandoned the cart, raced down the last ten meters of tunnel and across the open area ignoring how many tunnels spilled out into it. How many open, unbarred, indefensible . . .
His boots slammed against the metal grate. He slammed the gate shut. His hands were not shaking as he keyed in the elevator codes and slapped a palm down on the big green button the moment it lit.
His hands were not shaking because there was nothing in those tunnels but abandoned machinery, four seal pelts, three suit bags, and the death of any chance Canada ever had to produce enough coal to supply the generators that kept the Maritimes powered up.
The lights for the main lines turned off at the surface. The tunnels were not growing dimmer.
The elevator jerked up a half meter, then began to rise smoothly toward the surface. Pressed against the side, Paul watched the walls pass, did not look down past his boots through the grate. Concentrated on the sounds of the motor and the winches and the chains.
Had it taken this long on the way down?
At the surface, he shut the system down, hung up his hardhat, and checked his watch when he finally stepped out into blue skies and sunshine.
An hour and thirteen minutes round trip.
The gate guard barely glanced his way before opening the gate to let him out. Paul composed his expression anyway. In many respects, Cape Breton was like one big small town. People were connected in ways no one in their right mind could anticipate and gossip was cheap and easy entertainment. It wouldn't do to have the guard spread a story about how a man had left the mine, the empty mine, looking like he'd seen a ghost.
Or had heard claws against the rock.
At an hour and twenty-four minutes, his phone rang. He fumbled his earphone in, fading adrenaline making him clumsy.
"It's about time, Paul. Where were you that I couldn't reach you?"
"Dealing with storage at the Duke, Ms. Carlson."
"Storage?" She repeated his emphasis. "For God's sake, this is Nova Scotia; our phones have not been bugged." He could hear her ring tapping against the plastic case. "And given that, I need you to find dirt on Mathew Burke. He's with the union, he's being rude at breakfast, is very likely obstructionist, and I want him out of my way."
One hand on the steering wheel, thumb working the keyboard on his phone, Paul noted the name. "Out of the country?"
"Possibly. I definitely want him out of a job."
"I'm heading back into Sydney now." Beside Mathew Burke, Paul typed: BURY HIM. "Anything else?"
"A green tea soy latte waiting for me on my desk wouldn't hurt. I've had a morning."
"Because he's my cousin, he's having a rough summer, and I already told him he could come."
Mark stared at her for a long moment, scratched under the waistband of his shorts, and shrugged. "If you're not worried about contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Chuck, it's no skin off my knees. And, hey, maybe we'll pick up a couple of extra family friendly points."
Knees? Charlie wondered as Bo hung up his phone and glared at Mark. "We've got bigger problems than babysitting Charlie's cousin. We don't have a cottage reserved."
"Yeah, we do." Mark ducked away from Tim's swing. "We do! I called as soon as they set the festival schedule." He frowned. "At least I intended to call . . ." Tim's second swing connected with the back of his head. "Look, I'm sure I called!"
"Dude, it doesn't matter if you sent smoke signals." Bo leaned forward and poked Mark in the chest. "There's no reservation."
As Mark and Bo argued, Charlie dug her phone out of the side pocket on her gig bag, pulled Bo's phone from his hand, and dialed the last number he'd called. She had everything settled by the time Shelly wandered over to join them, carrying a box of pastry and two trays of coffee balanced one on top of the other - three to a tray - in an impressive bit of postcoital share the wealth.
"What's with them?" she asked, putting the box down on the roof of the car, the coffees beside it.
"Mark forgot to reserve one of the cottages in Mabou." The turnover Charlie plucked from the box was still warm. More importantly, the icing hadn't been swirled on with intent to make her settle down and help Allie raise boys.
"Asshole. I need to shower."
"Me, too." The salt residue from her swim made her skin feel tight. "I took care of it."
"Blackmail? Seriously," she continued when Charlie just smiled around a mouthful of wild blueberry filling, "you can't just get a cottage at the last minute."
Bands had dibs on the ten cottages - one to a band - but on the Friday of the Mabou weekend, there was zero chance of one being empty.
"I can."
"How?"
Charlie leaned out of the way as Tim grabbed for a Danish, then leaned back, snagged a coffee, and spread her arms. "The universe likes me. I want a cottage, I get a cottage."
Shelly snorted and rolled her eyes. "Fine, don't tell me, but I'm going to want the truth if I have to help hide a body."
Gales seldom bothered to lie. Unfortunately, far too many of them were addicted to bad Jack Nicholson imitations. Before Charlie could decide if Shelly needed to be told she couldn't handle the truth, her phone rang.
"Ride of the Valkyries?" Shelly's brows nearly hit her hairline.
"Not my idea," Charlie muttered. "I'll just be over . . ." She pointed toward the ocean. ". . . there." Figuring an auntie vs Valkyrie cage fight would would be an easy win for the auntie, Charlie'd never bothered changing the aunties' chosen ringtone. "What can I do for you, Auntie Jane?"
"You can tell me if you've lost what little mind you have left, Charlotte Marie Gale."
Auntie Jane was not the oldest of the Gale aunties nor was she usually the auntie who anchored first circle back with the bulk of the family in Ontario. She was the auntie who decided which of the other aunties would anchor first circle. Charlie wasted a moment feeling very sorry for Uncle Evan.
"Charlotte?"
"Is this about Jack?"
"Is this about Jack?" Auntie Jane punctuated the repetition with a disapproving sniff. "Why on earth would you think that? Could it be because you've arbitrarily . . ."
"Arbitrarily?" Charlie rolled her eyes. "Second circle anchor agreed as well as the entire first circle." All three of them.
Auntie Jane refused to budge. ". . . arbitrarily decided to pull a Gale boy from his home? We do not allow our boys to go wandering about unsupervised, Charlotte."
"I'll be with him!"
"Children trying to raise children."
"I'm nearly twenty-eight!"
"You're third circle, Charlotte."
Charlie took a deep breath. "He doesn't need a mother; he has a mother and she's a dragon. He needs to learn that there's a way to be what he is and a Gale before he turns fifteen and judgment is passed. And," she added, as she reached the pier and kept walking, "I'm here for a reason. Maybe that reason is Jack."
"I very much doubt it. Have you even considered what your friends will say the first time Jack is even a little careless letting the dragon loose?"
"Depends. If he eats that idiot from Tumble Down who plays 'White Rabbit' on a set of Uilleann pipes, they'll probably applaud."
"Don't be trite, Charlotte."
"I trust Jack to be discreet, Auntie Jane. And I trust in my ability to shield him if he isn't. And I'd very much appreciate it if you'd place a little trust in my ability as well." Charlie snapped the phone closed. It had been over a decade since she'd played right field for the Darsden East high school softball team, but standing on the end of the pier watching her phone sink, she figured she'd made the cutoff man.
"As you can see," Mark announced from the middle of the bench seat as Tim eased the van onto the Mabou causeway behind an enormous trailer with Massachusetts plates, "we're not talking a major metropolitan area. Not even for the island. Not much more than four hundred people call this little piece of maritime paradise home, but it's big-time Gaelic around here, Chuck. Big-time Gaelic. Lots of music lovers. Four-day ceilidh back in July where we kicked ass in a major sort of way even though it wasn't one of the Samhradh Ceol stages so, Christ, I hope we didn't spend it all there. Thank God we're not playing until after six - it's going to be hotter than Tim's ass today."
Shoved up against the passenger window, Charlie ducked as he pulled an elastic from his wrist and tied his hair up high off the back of his neck, nearly elbowing her in the ear and exposing the darker circles under the arms of his world's greatest grandma T-shirt.
"And," he continued, the hand back on Tim's thigh doing nothing to keep him from pushing her even farther into the door as they turned left onto the harbor road, "there's ceilidhs every Tuesday at the community center plus a theater slash performing arts center plus a pub owned by the Rankins, so you know what that means."
"A local crowd who knows what it's listening to," Charlie grunted, shoving him back upright. This might be her first run around this particular festival circuit, but some things were a given; an enthusiastic reaction from a crowd of tourists who couldn't tell the "Gay Gordons" from a "Dashing White Sergeant" could influence where the nine unknown judges placed their points.
Just past Larche Way, Tim turned left again into the gravel road that led down to the Rest and be Thankful Cottages, Campground, and Trailer Sites.
Charlie reached past Mark and poked Tim in the bare shoulder. "We're in number ten."
"Number ten?" Mark repeated, dipping his head and staring at her over the edge of his sunglasses. "Seriously?"
"That's what she said when I called." Charlie barely waited until Tim stopped in front of a large clapboard building with a wraparound porch and a view of the water before unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the van. "You were right," she called into the car at Bo as Shelly pulled up beside them.
Bo grinned as he got out and stretched. "Come on, it was less than twenty minutes? You got off easy. Last summer, Dundee to Dingwall, he didn't shut up once."
"We're in number ten." Shelly rubbed a can of soda over her stomach as she came around the front of the car. "That's . . ."
"I told you I made reservations the moment I heard!" Mark crowed from the porch.
Beer cooler balanced on his shoulder, Tim followed him inside.
Case in hand, Bo had a foot on the stone steps when a burst of fiddle music stopped him cold. When a second fiddle answered the first, he turned and ran for the next cottage.
"Bo?"
He half turned and waved. "They just stuffed 'Pretty Peggy' into freakin' Mendelssohn!"
"That sounds kinky," Charlie said as he disappeared.
"Fiddlers," Shelly observed as though that was explanation enough. She popped open the can of soda and took a long drink. "The cottages are assigned to the bands on a first-come, first-served basis. Call early: enjoy two bedrooms, a large kitchen/living room, a view of the water from the wraparound porch, and a shower big enough to share with friends. Call late and cram the band into one rustic room with a shower slightly less wide than my shoulders that'll try to electrocute you if you touch the showerhead while wet. Aston licked it on a dare last summer, nearly melted his fillings."
"Aston is an idiot."
"I'm not arguing, but that's not my point." Shelly waved the can at number ten. "The universe doesn't like anyone this much. What did you do?"
Charlie shrugged, bumped her shoulder into Shelly's, and quickly traced a small charm on the small of the other woman's back, her fingertip skating over fine hairs and sweat slick skin. "I just got lucky."
"Okay, then."
In the next cottage, the fiddles slid out of Mendelssohn and into something wilder that lifted the hair off the back of Charlie's neck.
The shower worked off a flash heater, so everyone got hot water. Charlie would've charmed it but was just as glad she didn't have to. Gales had better luck with sand in places sand shouldn't go than most people but salt water was salt water and she felt significantly better scrubbed and shampooed.
By the time she emerged, wearing clean shorts over her bathing suit, Shelly had flaked out on one of the twin beds in the room they'd claimed up under the eaves and Mark and Tim were arguing over whose turn it was to make lunch. Charlie could no longer hear music coming from the cottage next door - although she could hear music coming from all over the property, not only from the cottages but also the crowded campground and the slightly less crowded trailer park. Bagpipes, accordions, guitars, banjos, drums, a lone trumpet, and through and around them all, the fiddlers, pulling the friendlier tunes together and building walls of sound to keep the antagonistic apart. Music was the whole point of the weekend and the ten bands in the Samhradh Ceol Feill only a small part of a much larger whole.
Heading out to catch a breeze on the porch, Charlie paused, one hand flat against the wooden frame of the screen door. Head cocked, she sifted through the sounds of a hundred or so people settling in, touched the bit of melody that had caught her attention, then lost it again as one of the pipers started up a medley of television theme songs.
"Hey! 'Meet the Flintstones!'" Mark pushed past her, grabbing his bodhran out of the van, closely followed by Tim who scooped up the smallest of his three accordions
"There are times," Charlie sighed stepping out onto the porch, "when playing cowboy covers in Fort McMurray looks like it might have been the better choice."
The music she'd almost heard had been passionate and unrestrained. She couldn't have held it, but she could have laid down a harmony that would have led her along new paths through the wild ways. Paths drenched in salt spray and slippery with . . . well, with that green crap that grew along the rocks down by the shore. She had no idea what it was called.
Mark and Tim had left the van's side door open, so she wandered down and slid her guitar off the stacked drum kit. With half a mind to join the jam - and given that they'd segued into a rousing rendition of the old Anima-niacs theme, half a mind seemed to be what was required for this particular jam - she turned and caught sight of Bo and a young woman by the water's edge. Her long dark hair had been pulled back into a haphazard ponytail and in spite of the heat she wore a sweater, the sleeves stretched down over her hands. Even at a distance, she was visibly upset and Bo looked lost. Body language had essentially erected a neon sign over his head saying HELP ME!
"So, do I help?" Charlie wondered.
As she watched, the young woman threw herself into Bo's arms. When he caught her, the edges of the sound she made lifted the hair off the back of Charlie's neck.
"I heard them at night.Wailing."
Hurrying toward the water, Charlie thought she heard the music again. Then realized it was the cry of a gull. The waves on the shore. As she set foot on the beach, she saw three women, long dark hair whipped about by the wind, approaching from the other direction. All three were dressed for the heat; one wore an orange muslin skirt and a bathing-suit top, the other two were in shorts and tanks.
The tallest of the three looked familiar, Charlie had seen her in the audience at Port Hood and then on another bit of beach in the moonlight. As they drew closer, her eyes were black from lid to lid.
Then she blinked and they were merely dark eyes just a little too large for her face surrounded by long, thick lashes under a sable arc of brow and over a generous curve of mouth. She was the most beautiful woman Charlie had ever seen.
Except, of course, that she wasn't a woman at all. Well, a woman, yes, all three of them were women - all four of them Charlie amended, glancing over at the girl weeping in Bo's arms - but they weren't Human women.
It was hard to breathe. The music filled every space in Charlie's chest, leaving no room for anything as mundane as oxygen, barely leaving her heart room to beat. The tune sounded like "Mary's Fancy," a reel in A, played on a single fiddle. "Am I the only one who can hear that?"
The three women looked confused.
It was probably someone playing up in the campsites. "Never mind."
The other two women held back, their eyes locked on Charlie's face, but she stepped forward, graceful in spite of the way her bare feet sank into the sand.
"I know what you are, Wild One," she said after a long moment.
Charlie sighed. "You're completely straight, aren't you?"
"Tanis, baby . . ." Bo sounded a short hop from hysteria himself. ". . . please stop crying."
"All right, Shelly's out until I wake her." The weight of accumulated regard stopped Charlie three steps from the bottom of the stairs. Bo and Tanis staring up at her from the big armchair, Morag and Aisling, Tanis' sisters, sitting on the sofa on either side of Eineen who looked just as gorgeous inside as she had on the beach. She had broad swimmer's shoulders and lithe, smoothly muscled arms. Her breasts were small and perfectly formed under the dark purple tank top, without a bra to . . .
"Charlie?"
"Right. What?"
Bo rolled his eyes. "Shelly?"
"Shelly? Oh, right." She spread her hands. "It's just a charm. It's perfectly harmless."
"A charm?" Tightening his grip on Tanis, Bo frowned up at her. "What the hell does that even mean?"
"It means she believes her decisions take precedent over Shelly's choices."
"Yes, I do." Charlie smiled at Morag, continued descending the stairs, and dropped into the old padded rocker, draping one leg over the arm. "And, in this instance, so do you, so let's skip the part where you try to set me up as one of the bad guys and move onto the part where we try to get Tanis' skin back."
The silence in the room was so complete Charlie could hear the sand falling off her bare foot as it whispered against the pine floor.
Bo inhaled noisily and said, "Okay, I swear I didn't say anything."
Eineen raised a slender hand and pushed dark hair back off her face. "It would be easier without him."
"Probably," Charlie agreed - as much because she actually did agree as because Eineen had said it. "I can . . ."
"No!" Tanis lifted her face from Bo's chest and twisted just far enough to glare around the room. "I need him! I want him here. I'll speak for his discretion."
"You are not thinking clearly and as long as you are not thinking clearly, you cannot guarantee the behavior of your man." Eineen turned to Charlie. "Can you speak for him?"
"Me?"
"You play with him. A band is a family of a sort."
"Of a sort," Charlie agreed, "but we've only known each other since Wednesday."
"It's not like you need a lot of time," Aisling pointed out.
Charlie thought of the old man on the beach and smiled. True.
"And you know his music," Morag added.
Also true.
"All right, I'll speak for him."
All four women looked like they were in their mid-twenties, but Charlie, who knew damned well they were considerably older, couldn't tell their actual ages. Behavior put Eineen as the eldest and Tanis as the youngest. Case in point, it was Eineen who nodded and said, "Then start at the beginning and tell us how you knew Tanis' skin was missing."
"So not the beginning," Bo muttered, shifting Tanis to a dry spot on his T-shirt.
Charlie snorted. "Valid observation. But once I knew what Tanis was, and noted the level of hysteria . . ."
Tanis sniffed.
". . . what she'd lost was pretty damned obvious."
"Not lost."When Eineen shook her head, her hair rippled across the bare skin of her arms and shoulders like waves. "Stolen. And not the only one. As of last night, three others are gone."
"So I guess it's true. They are trying to start up the seal hunt again . . ." Eineen's glare made Charlie sit up straight and put both feet on the floor. "Okay, not funny. Sorry. You're sure it was stolen?"
"They left a note," Morag growled.
"Ransom?"
"Blackmail," Aisling snarled. "If you want it back, start supporting Carlson Oil's shallow water well just off Scatarie Island. Scatarie is a nature reserve, and Hay Island, right by the proposed well, is a seal sanctuary."
There was a nearly audible thud as the final piece dropped into place.
"Subtle," Charlie sighed.
"Yeah, not really." Morag echoed Charlie's sigh.
Not what Charlie'd meant, but since it was an equally valid observation, she let it stand.
"Our family are environmental activists," Eineen told her. "Since before your people knew what that meant, we've been doing what we can to lessen the damage Humans do to our habitat."
"And the waters off Scatarie have already been damaged," Morag broke in. "Ever since their test ships were out there doing seismic soundings and stuff, things have been weird. The seabed has shifted . . ."
"Okay, not much," Aisling interrupted. "But the water temperature has dropped four degrees and there's about six square meters of sea floor with nothing living on it. Not a crab, not an urchin, not lichen. Nothing."
"If a sounding can change things that much, what's a well going to do?" Morag demanded, eyes flashing black. "We have to stop it."
"We work in the traditional ways . . ." Eineen seemed calmer, but Charlie could hear the anger behind her words. ". . . informing public opinion, making legal challenges, but we find that if we can speak directly to the lawmakers, we can . . ." Her lips curled into the semblance of a smile. ". . . ease them around to our way of thinking."
Charlie glanced over at Bo. He had his cheek resting on the top of Tanis' head, both arms wrapped around her. They had his attention, or as much of it as he was able to detach from the woman in his arms, but it didn't look as though he'd caught on to what Eineen had actually meant. Fiddlers. They didn't listen to the lyrics. It wasn't Charlie's place to fill him in. He'd only doubt his feelings and, besides, it wasn't like the Gales didn't do the same thing. Except that the aunties didn't so much ease as terrify.
And speaking of terrified. . . .
"Bo, do you know what Tanis is?"
"Hello, I play the fiddle in a Celtic band. Celtic-ish," he amended, kissing Tanis' hair. "'The Great Selkie' is on today's set list. You're singing it."
"Right." Charlie made a mental note to look up the lyrics before they hit the stage. "You told me you two haven't been going out for long, but you seem remarkably cool about this whole missing sealskin thing. Not cool about it being missing," she added quickly, "but about it being a sealskin. And Tanis being a Selkie."
He shrugged as well as he was able, given his position. "That doesn't matter. From the moment I saw her dancing in the moonlight, she was my whole life. Why should I care about unimportant details when I have her?"
"And I have you!" Tanis twisted in his arms and claimed his mouth.
"Oh, barf," muttered someone from the sofa.
"Good defense mechanism," Charlie drawled as the kiss continued, shifting her attention back to Eineen. "True love trumps the unexpected, the unexplained, and, I'm guessing, flippers."
Eineen spread her hands, the webbing briefly visible. Charlie couldn't help thinking it was the sexiest webbing she'd ever seen. "Once they have accepted us, it becomes easier for them to accept other . . . oddities."
"Oh, that's . . ." Charlie cocked her head, trying to figure out where "O, She's Comical" was coming from. Bo was the only fiddler in the room, and he was most definitely not playing - although Charlie couldn't see his left hand, so she wouldn't swear it wasn't on his instrument. If the music wasn't being played inside the cottage and it wasn't coming from outside the cottage . . . "Can anyone else hear a reel, in A? Anyone? Bueller? No?"
"If you're hearing things," Eineen began.
Charlie cut her off. "Then I'm meant to hear them. That's how we roll. Moving on." She had a fiddler in her head. Who seemed to be doing editorial commentary. That was . . . okay, that was odd. "So someone at Carlson Oil knows what you are and is using that to keep you from stopping them. The way I see it, you have two options. One, leave them to it and move. Give them free access to what they want and get your skins back. There can't be that many of you on this side."
"Some of us have children."
"Yeah, but . . ." Eineen raised a perfect brow and Charlie actually thought about it for a moment. Selkies had two forms. "Okay." She glanced at Bo again and left it at that. She didn't really want to find the point where the Selkie defense mellow gave way to irrational Human squeamishness. "Okay, then, option two. You get your skins back."
"Duh." Morag snorted.
Granted out of the water, the Selkies didn't exactly have a lot of offense. Give us our skins back, or we'll stand around the waterfront looking gorgeous. Unless they could arrange a one-on-one in the moonlight with someone who knew where the skins were, there wasn't much they could do.
Aisling tucked her legs under her at an impossible angle. "They're being taken from places Humans couldn't get into."
"Then maybe Carlson Oil has made a deal with other Fey. It's not like you lot all get along."
"You think we don't defend against that?" Eineen sneered. "We came here because of the infighting in the Courts."
They were waiting for her to say she'd help. But the Gales didn't get involved with the business of the Fey unless they involved themselves first in family matters.
Except for Allie. And that had turned out to be a family matter in the end.
"I have a proposition for you. Meet me in Halifax and we'll talk."
Oh, crap.