AS MARK'S DRUM INTRO finished up and Tim took them into Brian McNeill's "Best o' the Barley" on his big, forty-five key piano accordion, Charlie stepped downstage, threw in a little mandolin ornamentation, and tried to decide if she was out of her mind. Auntie Catherine had always been considered one of the more unpredictable of the aunties by the younger generations and "unpredictable auntie" wasn't a comforting sort of phrase. Much the same way "I've never seen a rash quite like that" wasn't a comforting sort of a phrase.
Auntie Catherine embraced the Wild in Wild Power.
When Charlie came into her power the Midsummer she was fifteen and it became obvious she was Wild, Auntie Jane had asked Auntie Catherine, who'd been home for the ritual, if she had any words of advice.
"Live your own life, Charlotte," Auntie Catherine had snorted. "Don't live the life they tell you to."
"They?" Charlie asked.
Auntie Catherine sighed. "I suppose brains as well would have been too much to hope for."
She walked the Wood and she saw the future, and she'd been strong enough to bear Uncle Edward two daughters.
Uncle Edward.
Now replaced by Uncle Evan.
Charlie wondered if Auntie Catherine had gone home for that ritual. Seemed like one she'd enjoy.
She'd strung Allie up like a puppet and danced her across Calgary until Allie was in place to defeat Jack's mother. Her only mistake, not realizing Allie was in place to defeat her as well.
Charlie knew Auntie Catherine was involved with the missing Selkie skins. She knew it the same way she knew "La Bamba" used a I, IV, V, V chord progression. She knew it the way she knew the taste of the soft skin below Allie's ear. She knew it because Auntie Catherine was in Halifax, and four Selkie skins were missing. It wasn't rocket science.
There was always the chance that Auntie Catherine had come to Nova Scotia because she'd Seen the skins were about to be stolen. There was a chance that she was here in order to return the skins to their rightful owners and she wanted Charlie's help. There was a chance the Leafs would win the Stanley Cup, too, although it was an appallingly small chance.
Still a chance.
Like it or not, Charlie would have to talk to her.
As Tim announced that Uncle Jim never missed a measure of the dance, she caught back up to wondering if she was out of her mind. And then, as the crowd roared out the final couplet, she remembered she'd thrown her phone off the pier back in Port Hood.
"It's not a bad thing being one of the two bands playing on the Friday night." Mark twirled one of his sticks like a baton, both feet keeping time as four local teenagers kicked the shit out of Ashley McIsaac's "I Don't Need This" up on the festival stage. "Play Friday night and you become the standard all the others are judged by. Of course, you've got to take into account that tonight the judges are fresh and by Sunday it'll be 'fuck it, give me a beer and give them a ten just to get this over with,' but still, we play early and we can concentrate on scooping out the competition."
"Shouldn't that be scoping?"
"Does it matter? I was thinking of using a melon baller."
"Okay, then." Still pleasantly wrung out from their set, Charlie scanned the crowd for Eineen, fully aware that finding one woman amid the dark mass of bodies filling the field in front of the stage was unlikely, bordering on not-going-to-happen. Tanis said she'd stayed, but pretty much from the moment they'd stepped off the stage, Tanis had been attached to Bo at the mouth and so wasn't exactly at her most coherent. At least she wasn't crying. Charlie counted that a win.
If Eineen wanted me the way I want her, there'd be a line of power joining our . . . hearts.
No line of power. No surprise.
"Piper in Albion Rising is American. We ran into him last March down in Texas at the Dog and Duck, and Aston hated him on sight. Guy rocks a kilt almost as well as yours truly. Totally a chick magnet . . ." He grunted as Charlie elbowed him in the ribs. "Total woman magnet," he amended, but Charlie could hear the grin in his voice. "In Aston's tiny little mind, that was the reason he continuously failed to score."
"Was it?"
"Probably had more to do with Aston being a dumbass. Aston being Aston. He called this afternoon, wished us luck, and said you were almost good enough to fill his shoes, so maybe we stood a snowflake's chance in Waa Waa without him. Made so little sense that odds are he was totally looped on painkillers. Not that that's a gimme with Aston."
"Killer ax man, though."
"And if we were a death metal band, that would be relevant, but yeah, he doesn't suck. Neither do you. You're better on the mandolin."
"I know."
"And smarter."
"Hard not to be. He lost two fingers petting a seal."
"He's better looking."
"Bite me."
"Haven't bitten a girl since Jeanie Bennett in third grade. She swung at me with her backpack which, unfortunately, held a hardcover copy of The Hobbit. While I was stunned and reeling, she bit me back. If you're really nice to me, I'll show you the scar." Heaving himself up onto his feet, Mark scanned the crowd as he twitched his kilt back into place. "Which reminds me, I need to find Tim and remind him he's doing a workshop tomorrow morning at ten."
"Tim's doing a workshop?" Charlie tilted her head back so she wasn't speaking directly to Mark's sporran. "Seriously?"
"What? He loves kids, and we get points for community involvement. When you see Shelly, remind her I want us all together around two to go over the new arrangement for 'Wild Road Beyond.' We get a chance to run through it a couple of times and we'll toss it on the set list at the park on Wednesday night and see if anyone salutes."
"You need to stop rewriting that thing."
He grinned as he tucked the drumstick in beside the one already in his hair. "Gets better every time, Chuck."
Charlie watched him walk away until he got lost in the dark and the crowd. A visit to the beer tent was always an option, but she was comfortable on her hillock. Sitting cross-legged with her mandolin tucked safely in the space between her legs and her body, she had a good view of the stage, and . . .
"You're in that bottom of the sea band."
The big guy had moved in quietly for someone so drunk. Charlie hadn't heard him until he'd spoken although, in her own defense, it wasn't exactly a silent night. "Grinneal, that's right."
"Heard you play." Three slaps against the logo on his GBS Courage & Patience & Grit tour shirt loosened an impressive belch and intensified the eau de brewery surrounding him. "Want me to tell you what you did wrong?"
"Not really."
He stared down at her for a moment, swaying slightly. "Okay, like to begin with . . ."
"Go away."
". . . buddy on the drums, drummer, needs to get a haircut and the other guy . . ."
Turning her mandolin, Charlie ran her fingernail along the E string, catching it just under the edge of the nail. "Seriously, dude . . . Go. A. Way."
As each of the three notes hit him, he jerked slightly back. "So, I'm going away now because I have to take a piss. Why take a piss?" she heard him say as he turned. "Why not leave a piss?"
Not a bad question, actually.
"Are you Charlie?" The girl was about nine or ten and the boy with her, with the same dark eyes and hair dark enough for the moon to paint on silver highlights, was likely a year or so older. "Our mum says Eineen says we should give you this."
There, on the palm of her hand, was Charlie's phone.
Charlie looked past them but could spot neither mum nor Eineen. She could, however, hear very faintly behind the noise of the kids on stage and the distinctly less melodic noise of the crowd yelling the lyrics back to them, a familiar melody that dove from the surface to the depths where bones lay white on the seabed. The hair lifted off the back of her neck; she might not be able to see them, but there were adults watching. These children were as protected as any Gale child.
The fiddler in her head returned with "Ma, Ma, Come Let's Dance."
Charlie leaned a little closer to the kids. "Do you hear fiddle music?"
The boy pointed toward the stage.
"Right. So, where did your mum find my phone?"
The girl shrugged skinny shoulders. "Mum says Aunt Roswen found it." She drew her hand back when Charlie took the phone, showing a crescent of webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Charlie wondered if it had been Aunt Roswen she'd run into during her swim.
"Thank you."
They glanced at each other, had the kind of silent conversation Charlie remembered from when her twin sisters were small, then turned and ran.
The phone looked none the worse for its adventure, but then, it never did. It rang as Charlie slid it into her pocket. Allie's ring.
Allie skipped right past hello. "Oh, good, you're still awake!"
"It's a three-hour time difference, Allie-cat; it's only nine forty. What's up?"
"It's Jack . . ."
Right. Jack. Charlie made a mental note to quit throwing away her phone until after Jack landed in Halifax. It suddenly occurred to her that given how crowded the van and Shelly's car already were, they were going to need a bigger vehicle. Or another vehicle. Maybe a motorcycle. She could hear the roar of the engine nearly drowning out the classic rock soundtrack. The Cabot Trail on a bike would be amazing . . . except Jack carried a lot of metaphysical weight, and if he shifted that on the back of a bike, results would be spelled splat. Of course, he could always ride with the band while she . . .
"Charlie!"
"What do you think about Jack on the back of a motorcycle?"
"Ask me what I think about you on the front of a motorcycle."
"Okay . . ."
"You're too easily distracted. You'd see something shiny and game over."
Charlie traced a charm over a mosquito bite on her ankle. "You sound like your mother."
"Thank you. And speaking of transportation, we got Jack a plane ticket for the third. He's got a three hour layover in Toronto and . . ."
"Why?"
"Because that's what kept coming up," Allie answered pointedly. "Auntie Jane has offered to go and sit with him."
"Auntie Jane wants to talk to him."
"Duh."
The aunties considered airport security to be an indignity other people were forced to endure. As a plane carrying an auntie would be the safest plane in the sky, skipping the grope and grab was significantly safer for the airport employees. "Wait, this is the 29th. Why wait until the third? He's not old enough for ritual, so there's no point in keeping him over the 2nd."
"Yes, but Calgary has police helicopters . . ." Allie's tone suggested Charlie should have remembered that because of course Charlie kept track of security concerns in a city thousands of kilometers away. ". . . and we have only three aunties, all of whom will have their hands full of David. I want to keep Jack around for air support. I also want you to make sure he knows exactly what that means because Auntie Bea keeps getting all nostalgic about the Ka-32 Helix."
"The what?"
"It's a Russian helicopter."
"I don't think I want to know," Charlie muttered. And speaking of not knowing, should she tell Allie about the missing skins and her grandmother's possible involvement? No. Not until Auntie Catherine had a chance to mislead and manipulate in her own defense. Charlie'd be seeing Allie on the 2nd - it was a travel day for the band and there'd never really been much chance of her going to the ritual in Ontario - and she could tell her everything then.
"Charlie?"
"Sorry. Got a lot going on." Right on cue, the teenagers finished up to a roar of approval. "I'll see you Tuesday."
"Sure." She could hear Allie smile. "Go wild."
"Go Flames!"
"What?"
"Not important. See you Tuesday."
Her phone blipped as a pair of texts came in from the twins.
Tell mom 2 back off!
Stop tossing ur fcking phone!
Dealing with Auntie Catherine suddenly seemed like the lesser of two evils. Unfortunately, the call went straight to voice mail. "Hey, it's Charlie. We need to talk."
Short and sweet.
Nothing Auntie Catherine could use either as warning or threat.
The beer tent, however, was looking appealing.
Saturday morning, Charlie wandered out onto the front porch while Tim was making pancakes to find Eineen waiting for her with a slender, dark-eyed, dark-haired woman. This new woman was obviously family and apparently about ten years older - except Charlie could see the frayed edges of the glamour wrapped around her and the desperation the glamour didn't hide.
"This is Neela," Eineen announced.
"Yeah, and good morning to you two, too." Yawning, Charlie dropped into one of the Adirondack chairs and waved a hand in Neela's general direction. "Hers is one of the missing . . ."
"Yes." The wind off the water danced Eineen's hair around her head like it had been animated by Disney. Neela wore hers in a braid. A braid like Eineen had worn the first time Charlie had seen her, more beautiful than any other woman in the crowd of . . . "You said you might have a place to start looking." Eineen's voice snapped Charlie out of her reverie.
There'd been no promises made. Never were when there was an auntie involved. "I'm waiting for a phone call."
Eineen's right eyebrow rose - like the slender wing of black gull. Charlie couldn't seem to stop the overwrought description from popping into her head. Did gulls even come in black?
"A phone call. That's all?" Dark eyes narrowed. "Yesterday, you gave us a moment of hope, and now . . ."
Charlie'd had dark eyes narrowed at her for her entire life. The effect had worn thin. "And now, I'm waiting for a phone call. All I have are suspicions, I told you that yesterday. Neela, I hope you're not here because you thought I'd have found your . . ." She glanced over her shoulder at the screen door. About six feet on the other side of it, Mark was demanding Tim make at least some of the pancakes with chocolate chips. " . . . thing."
"No." Neela hugged her torso, hands wrapped around her elbows, the webbing between the fingers only visible because Charlie was looking for it. "I'm here because doing anything is better than doing nothing. And because I was here anyway; I'm married to Gavin Fitzgerald."
"Gavin Fitzgerald, the fiddler from Five on the Floor?" Five was one of the festival bands and Gavin was pushing fifty, so that explained the glamour - like Joe and Auntie Gwen, Neela had aged up. That she could easily be a few thousand years older than Gavin was moot. "Another fiddler? I thought your people usually hooked up with fishermen?"
Neela shrugged, the movement graceful in spite of her defensive position. "Not many working fishermen around these days, but you can't throw a rock on this island without hitting a fiddler. A lot of them play down on the shore. They're very . . ." Her mouth twitched, not quite managing a smile. ". . . alluring."
"Does he know?"
She nodded. "A marriage based on lies isn't likely to last."
The Gales had tried it both ways, but non-Gales who could cope with the family dynamic were rare on the ground. Auntie Ruby muttering there's always the corn tended to put a few off.
And speaking of the corn. "Traditionally, when your things go missing . . ."
"Gavin didn't take it. It was Carlson Oil." Neela slid a hand into the back pocket of her faded jeans and handed over a piece of plan white printer paper folded into quarters.
It had clearly been unfolded and folded again a number of times. The paper was slightly damp and the creases had softened. "Support the well on Hay Island," Charlie read, "and your skin will be returned when the wellhead is in place. Yeah, that's pretty definitive." The writing had been done with a fine tip marker. Charlie rummaged through pockets in her shorts, found three guitar picks, an orange lollipop condom she had no memory of acquiring, and a piece of chewed gum wrapped in torn tissue, but nothing to write with. Laziness being the mother of invention, she licked a charm over the writing, careful to stay away from the edges and potential paper cuts.
Auntie Catherine hadn't actually written the note. Which meant nothing at all. An auntie could get a perfect stranger to support the arts; convincing one to write a note wouldn't be a problem.
"It tastes like . . ."
"Alcohol? Dyes?"
"Formaldehyde?"
"No, it . . ." Charlie glanced up from the smeared ink and twisted around to stare at Mark who was standing on the other side of the screen. "Formaldehyde?"
"I heard they used it in some inks. You here for breakfast, Neela? Tim's made his magic pancakes."
"No, thanks, Mark."
Actually, it figured they knew each other.
"I left the kids with Harry," Neela continued, fighting so hard to make her voice sound normal it sounded as though it was about to shatter under the strain. "I need to get back before they all get matching tattoos and someone calls Children's Aid. We're in number four if you want to come by later." That to Charlie as much as Mark.
"The whole band?"
"Gavin and I brought the RV."
Mark stared at her for a long moment, then stepped out onto the porch. "Everything okay?"
Her smile had the same tattered edges as the glamour. "Not really, no."
"Can I help?"
"Not really, no."
Charlie could feel Mark's gaze against the top of her head. Finally, he sighed, shifted his attention to Neela's companion, and said, "So what about you . . ."
"Eineen," Charlie filled in wondering if Eineen did anything as mundane as eat pancakes.
". . . he's made blueberry and chocolate chip."
Cod flavored, maybe.
"Thank you, no." Eineen inclined her head and Charlie found herself mesmerized by the curve of her neck. "Come, cousin, I'll walk you home."
When Charlie held out the paper - the message smeared and feathering into the path of saliva - Neela shook her head. "You keep it."
They'd disappeared behind a clump of trees when Mark smacked her on the side of the head. "Come on, Chuck, there's pancakes calling our names."
Pancakes that contained nothing but calories. That sounded like a good idea to her.
"Your tongue is blue," he said as she wrestled gravity to get out of the chair. And, being Mark, he never asked why she'd licked a piece of paper in the first place.
At noon, when Auntie Catherine still hadn't called, Charlie called Allie.
"I haven't spoken to her since I ordered her away. Over a year ago." She still sounded angry. No one held a grudge like a Gale girl. To be strictly accurate, Charlie amended, no one held a grudge like Alysha Gale. "Why do you want to talk to her?"
"Because Auntie Catherine wanted me to meet her in Halifax, so she's here in Nova Scotia, and she might be screwing over some . . ." Not friends, however close Charlie wanted to get to Eineen. " . . . people I know."
"She's a vicious, manipulative harridan!"
"Yeah, I kno . . ." Wait . . . harridan? "She's a what?"
"She's a bitch, Charlie."
"Not arguing, but she's still your grandmother, and you know she'll answer if she sees it's you. You don't have to make nice, just ask her to call me." In the distance, over the sound of bands rehearsing and people packing cars to head over to the festival grounds, a single fiddler played the gentle roll of summer waves, the curl as they crested, and the white foam dancing over blue-green as they lapped against the shore. An actual fiddler, not an imaginary fiddler in her head. Charlie found that reassuring. "It's important, Allie, or I wouldn't ask."
After a long moment, Allie sighed. "Be careful."
At twelve seventeen, "Ride of the Valkyries."
"So, Charlotte, it seems I have you to thank for my granddaughter finally climbing down off her high horse and calling me. What can I do for you?"
"Why did you want me to meet you in Halifax, Auntie Catherine?"
"I wanted to talk to you."
"What about?"
"If I was willing to do it over the phone, Charlotte, I would have done so then. Join me for lunch and we'll talk."
Mark wanted the band together at two, so she had time. "Fine. Where are you?"
Even over the phone she could feel the edges on Auntie Catherine's smile. "Find me."
"The Trippers" followed her to the Wood but not into it, her fiddler falling silent in under the trees. Charlie folded her hands on top of her guitar, well away from the strings, calmed her breathing, and listened. Allie had been her touchstone since her third trip in; fifteen and cocky and completely lost with the Wood shifting into shadow around her, she'd followed the younger girl's song home. Now she dialed Allie's song back until it was no more than the faintest whisper drifting between the birches, the family harmonies rising to dominate. There, Auntie Jane, nearly Sousa. Her mother's gentle rise and fall. The twins' techno wail, threatening to escape but never quite making it out. Auntie Ruby's dissonant intervals that still worked in the context of the family melody. Under it all, Uncle Evan's steady bass. One by one, she let them drop out until only the aunties were left and then she began sifting through the layers until, of the aunties, only Auntie Catherine remained.
At twelve twenty, Charlie pushed aside a masking branch on an enormous weeping birch and stepped out into the Halifax Public Gardens. Shrugging out of her gig bag, she stowed her guitar and walked toward Spring Garden Road.
It took a moment for her eyes to readjust to the sun when she emerged out onto the rooftop patio at Your Father's Mustache, but when she finally blinked away the flares, she saw Auntie Catherine smiling up at a gorgeous young man with a brilliant white smile and broad shoulders that strained against the fabric of his uniform T-shirt. Although she assumed she'd be unnoticed until she reached the table, given the scenery, she'd barely moved a meter before Auntie Catherine glanced up and beckoned her over, silver bracelets chiming.
"Charlotte, so glad you could make it. This is Frank. He'll be our waiter."
He'll be our waiter sounded an awful lot like he'll be our lunch.
"Good luck," Charlie murmured as she passed him, set her gig bag next to the latticework railing, and slid into a seat.
"Frank says the lobster roll is to die for."
"I'm sure." Charlie shot a less predatory smile at him. "But I'm working the festival circuit out on the island and lobster rolls are thick on the ground. Can I get the mushroom and swiss burger, on the rare side of medium rare, with a garden salad - I know, two-fifty extra - roasted red pepper and Parmesan dressing, and an iced tea, please. I've done a lot of studio work in Halifax," she added as Auntie Catherine's lip began to curl. "This is not my first rodeo."The lip curled higher. "Sorry. Leftover cowboy shi . . . thing. I've been here before. I've played here before. Downstairs in the pub."
"Of course. It suits you."
Charlie attempted to work out if that was an insult as Auntie Catherine ordered an asparagus crepe, flustering Frank so badly by discussing the firmness she required in her asparagus - with accompanying hand gestures - that when he turned back to Charlie, she could see his blush even given the darkness of his skin.
"We don't actually have iced tea . . ."
"Not usually, but check the kitchen; you've got some today. However . . ." She raised a hand to cut off his protest. He had no way of knowing that if a Gale wanted iced tea, a Gale got iced tea. ". . . if you check, and I'm wrong, I'll have a ginger ale."
Frank backed away from the table before he turned. Credit where credit was due, he had a great ass.
"Evidently not his first rodeo either," Charlie observed. "So . . ."
Auntie Catherine's raised hand cut her off. "Not yet, dear. Now, we appreciate the view from this angle. Appreciate . . . Appreciate . . ." A sweeping gesture sped Frank on his way as he disappeared down the stairs. "You were saying?"
Charlie'd intended to slide sideways into the conversation, but the pause for Frank had given her time to reconsider. If Auntie Catherine appreciated it so much, why not be, well, frank. Charlie pushed her chair a little farther out, crossed her legs, tugged a fold out of her cargo pants, and said, "So, are you stealing Selkie skins in order to force them to support Carlson Oil drilling off Hay Island?"
Auntie Catherine blinked and Charlie gave herself a mental high five for coloring outside the lines. Oh, sure, any auntie could fold a simple yes or no question into shapes an origami master would envy, but points for throwing her off her game.
Momentarily.
Dark eyes gleaming, Auntie Catherine stroked the end of her braid, and said, "Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, I am stealing Selkie skins in order to get them to support Carlson Oil drilling off Hay Island."
"Okay, then." Down on Summer Garden Road, someone hit their horn. Under cover of the noise, Charlie gathered her thoughts. Thought. "Why?"
"Because they're paying me." Dropping her braid on her lap, her hair looking more like white gold than silver in the sun, she grinned. "In fact, they're paying me a great deal. As you'll recall, I handed my business over to Alysha so, as I don't want to return home, a sentiment I'm sure you understand, I needed an alternative income stream."
"An alternative . . ." Hands flat on the table, Charlie leaned forward and snarled, "The Selkies are pretty fucking upset!"
"That's the point, Charlotte. You can't blackmail someone with the potential loss of something they don't care about, now can you?"
"And that's not my point, Auntie Catherine. They're upset. Hysterical. Unhappy."
"Good, that was the intention. But why do you care? They're not family, they're Fey. This isn't even their world."
"I care because this is affecting the band and the band is a family, a type of family," she amended as Auntie Catherine's eyes narrowed. "And I'll be damned if I let you just fuck them over!"
"Yes, quite probably. Oh, look, they did have iced tea after all . . ."
The faked surprise set Charlie's teeth on edge. She stared down at her placemat until Frank was gone - poor bastard didn't need to deal with her mood as well as Auntie Catherine's salacious interest - then kept her eyes on the wet ring marking the table as she drained half the glass and took a deep breath. She'd been expecting jazz, each of them trying to lead the other through complex signatures. What she got was the big bass drum in the marching band. Bam. Bam. Bam. Yes. I. Did.
When she looked up, dark eyes were watching her with amusement. "When you called, when I was in Calgary, why did you want me to come to Halifax?
"I felt sorry for you."
"Well, I wouldn't help you . . . what?"
"You'd been domesticated." Auntie Catherine smiled an aspartame smile, likely to turn to formaldehyde at any moment. "You still believed yourself a wild child with your hair a dozen different, brilliant colors, but my granddaughter would play out the leash, give you the illusion of freedom, and then tug you back to her side."
"I came back willingly . . ."
"I know, dear. And I'm not blaming you. After all, I designed my granddaughter to be strong enough to defeat the Dragon Queen. It's no surprise you can't stand against her."
"And yet here I am."
"Here you are." And there was the formaldehyde. "Still wasting your potential."
"Because I'm not working with you?"
"Because you're dragging that guitar . . ."
Charlie reached back to touch the gig bag. "I'm a musician!"
"My point, exactly. You think you're a musician." She held up a hand for silence as Frank brought their orders, cut the end of her crepe off with the side of her fork, moaned around the mouthful of food and purred, "Exactly firm enough."
"Forget working for Carlson Oil," Charlie muttered, spearing a cherry tomato. "You should try porn."
"What, again?"
Charlie followed Mark's song back to Mabou, stepped out of the stand of Norfolk pines protecting the line of cottages from the north wind, and came face-to-face with Eineen. Literally, face-to-face. Their noses no more than a centimeter apart. Her breath smelled slightly salty and her lips, parted just enough to show the edges of perfect teeth, were slightly chapped. Charlie fought the urge to lean just a little closer and taste, taking the chance she'd probably never be offered again.
Two things stopped her.
One, she didn't want to be that girl.
Two, many of the Human-seeming Fey were significantly stronger than they looked. Charlie had no idea if the Selkies fell into that category and had no intention of finding out as a result of pissing Eineen off. As much as she wanted to know how Eineen's mouth would feel under hers, she was against pain on principle. Pain hurt.
"I was waiting for you to return."
"Yeah." Charlie took a step back, smacked herself in the head with a tree branch, and jerked forward, leaving a clump of hair attached to a gob of pine gum. "Ow! God fucking damn it! Yeah, I got that! What do you want?"
"You said you were waiting for a phone call."
"She called. And then we had lunch." Eyes watering, she rubbed the back of her head. "And - oh, joy - Auntie Catherine is stealing your skins to force your people to support Carlson Oil."
"That's more than we knew. We can use that to try and stop this."
Charlie figured we in that instance didn't involve her. She reached out and grabbed Eineen's arm as the Selkie turned. "What part of auntie were you missing there, babe? This is work for hire right now; it's nothing personal . . ."
"It's very . . ."
"On her part," Charlie cut Eineen's protest short. "And believe me, you don't want to piss her off."
"And yet, we can't leave things as they are."
"No, we can't."
Eineen stared at her for a long moment, long enough to realize the definition of we had changed. "So, what do we do?"
You think you're a musician.
It was nothing personal as far as the Selkies were concerned. Charlie, personally, was hoping she'd piss Auntie Catherine off to the point of spontaneous combustion. "We stop her."
"How?"
Realizing she'd been hanging onto Eineen's arm maybe a little too long, Charlie let go and started for the cottage. "First, we find out how she's getting to the skins, and we block her from getting any more." Eineen fell into step beside her. "Then we find the skins she's already taken, and we take them back. Or I will."
"So easy."
Okay, she did not deserve that level of sarcasm. "Not really. While I'm doing that, you and your people will pretend to play along so that Carlson Oil doesn't up the stakes because it's one small step from Auntie Catherine to nuking you from orbit and letting the gods sort things out."
The campsite was strangely quiet, or their footsteps as they reached the access road were strangely loud.
"I assume your auntie is getting to the pelts by . . ." Eineen waved both hands in random patterns.
"Semaphore?" Charlie guessed. "ASL? Wet nail polish?"
"Magic."
"Can't think why you'd believe that." At the far end of the road, down by cottage number one, two fiddlers were in an argument so intense, even at a distance, it looked as though their bows were about to be used as swords. "If we're going to find out how Auntie Catherine is doing it, I need to examine the crime scenes."
"UnderRealm CSI?" When Charlie turned to look, Eineen gave a soft bark of laughter. "What? I watch television. We should start in Neela's RV."
Charlie stepped over a Nerf crossbow as she stepped up into the trailer, pushed a half dozen tiny cars out of the way with her foot, and had to slide sideways as Eineen followed her in to keep from knocking a stack of dirty dishes into the tiny sink. The bed over the "sofa" hadn't been made, the tangle of sheets sprinkled with plastic building blocks. About four meters of orange track spilled down from the double bed up over the cab.
Seals and fiddlers. Not the best housekeepers in the worlds.
Eineen pointed past her shoulder. "Keep going back that way."
To the left, wet bathing suits had been piled in the bottom of the shower. To the right, a headless doll sprawled on the closed toilet seat like the crime scene for the latest hooker decapitation. Charlie had no idea why those dolls were so popular.
The hunter-green striped wallpaper and the burgundy carpet suggested the rear bedroom had been decorated in the early '90s. An empty violin case shared the unmade bed with piles of clothes and there were two closed cases stacked on the dresser - the lower one held together by strategically applied duct tape. There were no visible charms.
"Neela's was the first skin to go missing."
"How could she tell?" Charlie muttered, lifting a stack of sheet music off the dresser and steadying a trembling tower of DVD cases with her elbow as she scanned the newly exposed artificial walnut wood grain finish for charms. She sketched a quick charm of her own on the top case to prevent disaster before she lifted the DVDs.
"We always know where we put our skins." Eineen reached past her, brushing warm against Charlie's arm. "We keep them on us if we're walking around in daylight and somewhere safe if we're spending the night ashore."
"And Neela was spending every night ashore."
"Neela had a landlife so, yes. She kept her skin in this violin case."
"In that violin case?" Two Transformer stickers held down a worn edge of tape. "An entire sealskin?"
"They fit wherever we put them. In other hands they're larger, heavier . . ."
"Harder to move." Made sense. "For security reasons?"
"Not that it seems to be working, but yes."
Charlie took the case from Eineen's hands and opened it. No charms inside, but then there didn't need to be. By the time she opened the case, Auntie Catherine had found what she was looking for. "Okay, there isn't as much as a potted plant in the entire RV, so she must've come out of the Woods near where Gavin was parked and then charmed a lock open."
"It happened at night, while everyone was asleep."
"Yeah, well, the aunties like to wander around and check on things. If they don't want to be heard, they're not heard."
Eineen frowned. "That's seriously creepy."
"Tell me about it. One of the first charms we learn is how to block our doors." Charlie smacked herself in the forehead. "I'm an idiot. If I put that charm on the hiding places of every skin that belongs to a Selkie with a landlife, Auntie Catherine won't be able to get to them."
"But then you'll know where every Selkie with a landlife hides her skin."
"Only the room they're in."
"You're asking for an enormous amount of trust."
Charlie glanced at her reflection in the big mirror screwed to the wall over the dresser, shifted enough to see herself between the photos of Neela's kids stuck to the glass, picked a bit of pine tree out of her hair, and tried to look trustworthy. "I know."
"You're asking us to trust in a member of the same family who has stolen our skins."
"The aunties are a law unto themselves." The UN Security Council rumors were probably untrue.
"Blood tells."
"Yeah, well, when you put it that way . . ." Leaning forward, Charlie picked a picture of the girl who'd returned her phone off the floor and stuck it back where the tape marks suggested it went. "Think it over."
Auntie Catherine had left no charm on the bedroom door. Or on the window. As Eineen returned the violin case to its place, Charlie checked the rest of the trailer. Nothing.
"This looks like it's been washed recently." Squatting to check the outside bottom of the actual entrance, she looked up as Eineen descended the two steps to the ground and found herself momentarily mesmerized by the long line of her legs and the soft downy hair that covered them.
"It rained last Tuesday. Could rain wash a charm away?"
"Rain could wash a charm drawn in dirt away," Charlie admitted, straightening and shrugging her gig bag back up on her shoulders. "Well, this was time productively spent. Not. If Auntie Catherine's just walking in and your people won't let me close off the remaining skins, I can't stop her. If she's getting in another way, I don't know what the way is, and, I can't . . ."
Her phone rang; John Bonham's drum solo from Zeppelin's "Moby Dick." Proximity had gotten Mark a ringtone of his own.
"Chuck! Where the hell are you? It's two ten and we're waiting."
Shit. She'd forgotten about running through Mark's new song. "I'm at cottage four. I'll be there in five. No, three. I have to go," she told Eineen, sliding the phone back into her pocket. "I am one hundred percent on your side and I will get your skins back, but I have commitments and . . ."
"The music calls."
"The crazy drummer called, but yeah." To Charlie's surprise, Eineen fell into step beside her. "You're . . . uh . . . ?"
"Coming with you so I can take Tanis away for a while. Bo won't be able to give himself fully to the music while she's there."
"True that." It had to be hard to play with a lap full of weeping Selkie. "She's really taking this hard."
"No more than the rest, but Tanis isn't as able to hide her feelings. She's young and this is her first landlife."
How rude would it be to ask about Eineen's past? How many landlives have you lived? Have you loved a Human? Would you like to? Give me a couple of days; I can learn to play the fiddle. Or I could play a symphony on you. Before her train of thought degenerated further, Charlie settled for a neutral, "Ouch. Rough start."
"Yes, your people have made it memorable for her."
"Person, not people. Don't blame the whole family."
"I meant Humans." Charlie could feel Eineen's gaze on the side of her face.
"My people are Gales first. And moving past my people for the moment . . ." She stepped over a rut outside cottage seven. ". . . according to the note, Carlson Oil doesn't just want you to back off, they want you to actually support the drilling. Have you?"
"We spoke to a reporter from the Post, telling him we withdrew our opposition. I believe there was something said about new jobs."
"The Cape Breton Post? I suspect Amelia Carlson is going to think that's nothing more than a local paper."
Eineen shrugged. "We're a local group."
"A local group she brought out the big guns for. Why? I mean, it's not like you can march up and down in front of the legislature buildings carrying protest signs that say Selkies against offshore drilling. Although," she added after a moment's reflection, "that'd be pretty damned cool."
"My family has been in this area for a very long time, and we've made some canny investments."
"Bonus points for planning ahead, but you can't be able to throw the kind of money at the problem that'll worry an oil company."
"Perhaps not. But by approaching their leaders one on one, we can convince other environmental groups to protest with us and bring significant numbers to bear against local and provincial politicians. We stopped the Hay Island seal hunt, we had the effluent regulations tightened for Halifax Harbor, we forced new items onto the environmental protection act regarding the disposal of items other than bilge water at sea. And, as you well know, if those in power are male, we can attract their attention and influence their decisions."
"What if it's a woman?"
"No. My people cannot move outside rigidly defined gender norms."
Charlie snorted. "You have been here for a while. What about your males?"
"We use them if we have to, but our males seldom come out of the water. Their time on land is dangerously constrained."
Charlie waited for more as they turned in toward number ten cottage but that seemed to be all the information about Selkie males Eineen was offering. "Does Carlson Oil know what you can do?"
"They know what we are if they brought one of your aunties in. There's no way of knowing what specifics they're aware of."
"We should find out. It's not like Auntie Catherine had an ad on Craigs-list. Scary older woman available for all your metaphysical ass-kicking needs." Charlie paused, one foot up on the porch step. "Actually, we should check into that."
"Tanis has a smart phone with an extensive data plan. I'll have her look it up." When Charlie turned, Eineen shrugged. "As I said, her first landlife. She's embracing the possibilities. What do you need to know?"
"I'm just curious how they contacted . . ." Charlie turned again to see Mark staring at her through the screen. Back to Eineen. "Mostly, I'm curious, but a few internet searches might distract Tanis long enough for Bo's shirts to dry out." Back to Mark. "I'm sorry I'm late and I . . ."
Her phone rang; "Evelyn Evelyn" by Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley.
The twins. Not answering would only mean they'd keep calling. "What?"
"Ever since Uncle Evan took over, the boys are showing horn most of the time. It's a good thing school's not in."
"Yeah, Kevin got sent home twice last year for fighting as it was."
"Andy broke Peter's cheek, but Peter stuck a tine into his shoulder."
"We didn't know they were that sharp."
"Did Mom tell you about Europe?
"We're totally going."
This is why she preferred to keep her phone elsewhere. Like inside a whale. "Guys, I can't talk right now." She waved her other hand at Mark in the universal sign for family shit.
"Will you be home Tuesday?"
"Yes . . . I mean, no. I'll be in Calgary."
"Ha. Knew it!"
"You've totally switched to the Allie side of the force."
"Totally."
Charlie closed her phone without responding and handed it to Eineen. "Drop it mid Atlantic. I don't actually need it until Wednesday."
The fiddler in her head broke into a perky version of "Over the Waves."
"Charlotte?"
"Sorry." Concentrating brought the volume down, but it seemed as though the intermittent soundtrack her life had acquired was there to stay.
"The mid Atlantic? Are you sure?"
"Get it back to me Wednesday and I don't care what you do with it."
For the first time since they'd met, Eineen seemed honestly amused. "Go. The music calls."
"Yeah, Chuck, the music calls." Mark held the door open. "Let's answer it, shall we. We've got less than an hour before we have to head back to the festival, so chop chop. You remember the festival, right?" He stood aside as Tanis left the cottage, her eyes dry but her nose red. "We've put together a band for it and everything."
Muttering apologies to Mark, Charlie waved good-bye and went in to take her place in the circle.
"Play it acoustic today, but we'll plug in when we play the park."
Mark had written the lyrics to "Wild Road Beyond" a couple of years ago and had been messing with the melody ever since. The heartbeat of the bodhran stayed consistent, but every other part had been discarded and rewritten at least twice. Other songs had come and gone - they had three of his originals on the set list - but this one had never been played in front of an audience. "It's still missing something," was Mark's only explanation.
Because it meant so much to Mark, she blocked out everything else she had going on - Selkies and Auntie Catherine and Tuesday's ritual and her sisters and Jack and Allie - and when they finally put all the parts together . . .
"All right, people, let's put our grown-up pants on and get through this once without stopping as the actress said to the bishop."
. . . Charlie threw herself into the song. Her left hand flew up and down the fretboard, her right moved between dancing the pick over the strings and slamming out the chords. She slid effortlessly up into her falsetto for the descant harmony, winding her voice around Mark's lead. Shelly's rhythm throbbed in her blood and Tim's keyboard stitched them all together as Bo's fiddle called them to the wild side and took them home.
They were dripping wet and breathing hard as they finished.
Bo's last note wailed off into perfect silence . . .
. . . shattered into pieces by a crack of thunder.
"Holy shit!" Shelly jerked, flailed, and just managed to catch her bass before it hit the floor. "That sounded close."
They made the porch more or less together, Bo out in front still holding his instrument, Tim bringing up the rear, having gotten tangled in the accordion strap.
The sky to the northeast looked like a bruise, purple and green and likely to be painful if anyone could come into contact with it. A canvas beach chair tumbled past the cottage, rolled along the gravel by the wind. Thunder cracked again.
"It's moving fast."
"Too fast. What?" Bo demanded when Mark poked him with a stick. "It's what you say when someone says that."
"And besides," Shelly added, "that fucker is moving too damned fast. Storms don't come in like that, not from the northeast. Northwest maybe."
"We need to get to the festival. The festival," Charlie repeated when no one moved, "where they've got a crowd of people to get to safety, and a shitload of stuff to batten down."
"Most of those people are from the island," Bo said, eyes locked on a line of distant lightning. "You really think they'll need our help?"
The thunder cracked before the lightning dimmed.
"Yes."
By the time they piled out of the van at the festival gate, the first drops of rain had started to fall. Although people were jostling for position, arms loaded down with blankets and coolers, trying to move en masse to their cars and avoid a soaking, no one had panicked yet.
But it wouldn't be long.
The potential for panic was there in every wide-eyed glance up at the sky. In the face of every parent who held their child closer than the current situation required. In the expressions of the locals who knew storms didn't come in like that.
The parking lot - field - required the patience of a saint to get out of at the best of times. Charlie shot a glance back over her shoulder at the roiling clouds. Which this wasn't.
"Tim! Mark!" She had to shout to be heard and even then the wind tried to snatch the words away. "One fender bender in that lot . . ."
"On it!"
Shelly grabbed her arm and together they ducked a plastic water bottle. "I'll head for the booths! They'll need extra hands!"
"Not you!" Charlie snagged a handful of Bo's shirt as he tried to follow Shelly. "You head for the stage." She dragged him around, shifted her grip to his left wrist, wet her fingertip and draw a charm on the polished wood of his violin.
He stared at it like he'd forgotten he was holding it. "What are you . . . ?"
"Doesn't matter. Get to the stage and play!"
"Play what?"
At least he hadn't asked why, knowing as well as she did that if anything would keep this particular crowd from panic, it'd be music. "Something familiar, something that'll stand against the storm."
He stood for a moment, frozen in place, then he nodded once and ran, fighting his way in against the exodus.
Charlie followed, hauled a small child up off the ground by one skinny arm and thrust her at her father, swore as an abandoned lawn chair slammed into her shins, saw a man with a fiddle case . . .
She reached him just as he settled a four-year-old boy on his hip. Recognized the two kids hanging onto Neela's hands. The family was a very small island of calm in the growing chaos.
"Gavin!" Had to be Gavin. "You're needed on stage!"
"What?"
She turned him until he could see Bo, bending to plug in. "If enough people pause to listen . . ."
"They'll get hit by lightning?" But he was already handing the boy to his mother and opening his case. He whipped his head around to glare at her when Charlie reached past him and drew the charm. His instrument was visibly older than Bo's; had been played harder.
"What do you think . . . ?"
"Gavin!" Neela's eyes flashed black, rim to rim. "Let it go. Just play."
He scowled, looked from his wife to Charlie and back again. "Is this . . . ?"
"Yes. Hurry!"
"You three stay with your mother. Help her!" Violin and bow in the same hand, he ruffled his other hand through his eldest's hair, kissed Neela quickly, and ran for the stage.
The rain seemed to be rolling off Neela's hair without being absorbed. Which was hardly surprising, all things considered. "Do you need . . . ?" Charlie began.
"You have other things to do, Charlotte Gale."
Someone screamed. And that was all it took for people to start charging toward the exit like the storm wouldn't hit them if they were off the festival grounds.
"It's not that the wind blows," she muttered, as a baseball cap smacked against the side of her head, "it's what the wind blows." It was the punchline of a joke about being out in hurricanes although, at the moment, Charlie didn't find it that funny.
Ducking debris, she cut another two fiddlers out of the crowd. No more time to draw charms, she realized, shoving her reinforcements toward the stage. Gavin and Bo would have to suffice if the power went out.
The rain had started to pound down. Each individual drop hitting hard, then they were hitting so close together it was like being pounded by a wet fist.
Up on the stage, pressed in against the back where the rain couldn't reach them. Five, no six, fiddlers played "Bandlings," one of the classic Cape Breton reels. Gavin must've grabbed a couple more musicians on his way up. The sound system, put together by people who understood maritime weather, continued to hold.
As the speakers crackled to life and the reel danced out on the wind, heads jerked toward the stage. And okay, maybe more people were thinking are they fucking insane than let's stand together against the storm, but hey, whatever worked.
Lightning / thunder.
Ears ringing, blinking away the afterimages, Charlie wondered why popular opinion was thunder/lightning when the lightning always came first.
Lightning / thunder.
Or came too close to call it.
Praying that last impact hadn't been with anything living, she found herself in front of one of the luthier's booths - still mostly standing. With the storm and the music sizzling together under her skin, she reached without thinking for the last of the unpacked guitars, pulling a pick from her pocket with the other hand.
Without a strap, she folded her legs and dropped cross-legged to the ground, water seeping immediately through her shorts. Chin tucked in to keep from drowning like a turkey, she played the two sounds together.
Music. Storm.
The song changed. "The Battle of Killicrankie."
The fiddler in her head took up the harmony line.
Should've grabbed a piper, she thought and swore under her breath as she lost her grip on the wet pick.
No time to find another. No choice but to dig her thumb against the strings.
The wind shifted and slapped a wall of water against her. If she'd been standing, it would have knocked her over. Her palm protecting the sound hole as much as possible, she kept playing, forcing the storm to the music's parameters. The four un-charmed instruments fought her almost as hard as the storm, but she pulled them in, pulled it all together, played it . . .
Played it.
Played it.
Stopped it.
Later, they said the storm blew back out to sea as quickly as it blew in.
No one mentioned that storms didn't do that.
Or that as the soggy people started putting things back together, the sky was a brilliant blue as far as anyone could see, and the sea was so calm the seals looked like stepping stones bobbing in the water, all of them staring toward shore.