The Wild Ways (Gale Women #2)

The Wild Ways (Gale Women #2) Page 8

A MELIA CARLSON'S CELL PHONE rang at 9:02. Her private number. The one very few people had.

Catherine Gale's last payment and the note had been gone when she got to the office that morning, having already spent an hour with her personal trainer and what felt like twice as long trying to choke down a wheat grass/ banana/blueberry smoothie - anti-oxidants and potassium and she had no idea what the hell the wheat grass was in aid of, but considering what she'd paid for it, it had better work.

Her cell phone rang again. And a third time.

Paul appeared in the open doorway. For the first time since she'd hired him, he looked like he hadn't gotten enough sleep. On one level, she approved; overworked assistants gave a person credibility. On another level, bags under anyone's eyes weren't attractive.

Four rings.

"Boss?"

"I've got it." Always three rings to show she wasn't at anyone's beck and call. "Close the door on your way out." She had no idea why she'd waited for four. "Hello."

"The fourth ring is just self-indulgent," a familiar voice said. "What is it we need to talk about?"

Amelia took a deep breath and reminded herself that Sister Benedict was long dead. "I don't care what the relationship is between you and the woman Two Seventy-five N has hired to find those pelts, but I will not have her walking into my office like she owns the place."

"You won't?"

She could hear Catherine Gale's smile, and only years of practice in boardrooms and at drill sites surrounded by the good ol' boys of the oil industry kept her tone level. "No, I won't. It appears my people can't keep her away any more than they can prevent your coming and going." Contrary to common opinion, flattery was not a universal motivator, but subtle flattery could prime the pump. "I dealt with her yesterday, but I have no doubt she'll regroup and try again."

"You dealt with her?"

The question sounded disappointed, but Amelia had no idea if it was because she'd been able to deal or because Catherine Gale had wanted to do it herself. "Yes. I dealt with her, and I'd appreciate it if you could keep your relatives from wasting my time."

"I am not responsible for my relatives."

"You are responsible for this one showing up in my office."

"How so?"

The longer any conversation continued without a discussion of payment rearing its head, the less likely payment would be required. She would much prefer not having to pay Catherine Gale to deal with this. "You came to me."

"You had a problem I could solve."

"And now I have another one. The difference being, you caused this problem." Amelia had a certain skill at reading silences and this one, this one sounded amused.

"All right, here's what I'll do." Catherine Gale sounded more amused than the silence had. "I'll throw some distractions her way. If she can handle them with time enough left over to bother you, well, you're on your own."

Trying to make one last point while people were hanging up looked desperate. Amelia waited until the dial tone made Catherine Gale's final statement before placing her phone on the desk. She wanted to have Paul set up a meeting with Dr. Hardy, but that wouldn't move the wellhead fifty feet out of the Atlantic or move the Minister of the Environment off his fence.

"Ms. Carlson? The Honorable Cal Westbrook called. Personally. He wants to set up a lunch date."

"Isn't one of his responsibilities the Sydney tar ponds agency?"

"Yes, it is."

"Come up with a believable excuse."

"On it."

On the one hand, it wouldn't hurt to have another cabinet minister on her side. On the other hand, a perceived association between Carlson Oil and Cape Breton's enduring environmental disaster was not something she wanted to encourage.

"Ms. Carlson? Since Two Seventy-five N's press conference supporting the Hay Island well has gotten excellent coverage - I've sent you the list, current as of eleven minutes ago," he added before she could ask, "have you considered returning the pelts?"

"Returning the pelts?" First Catherine Gale's pale reflection, now this.

"Because they've done what you requested."

"And they'll maintain that as long as we have the pelts. Is there anything else?"

"It's just, I got the impression, from the press conference, that I was at . . ."

"Are you drunk?"

He looked startled. "No, of course not."

He wasn't lying. "Then get to the point."

"The owners of these pelts have an emotional attachment to them."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "Of course they do. That's what makes this effective blackmail."

"So you won't . . ." He stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. "Of course not. You have a manicure scheduled for eleven and there'll be a reporter from CBC Halifax outside the building when you leave for lunch. He'll be looking for a spontaneous response to the press conference. I've prepared your statement. And the CRA has opened a docket on Mathew Burke."

"Should I know a Mathew Burke?"

"The union rep you wanted dealt with."

"Of course."

He paused halfway out the door, looking almost judgmental, shook his head, and kept moving.

Amelia rethought her position on Paul and sleep deprivation. It seemed as though baggy eyes were the least of the effects.

Charlie woke up to the sounds of Mark and Tim in the bathroom, saving water. The fiddler in her head played "Never was Piping so Gay" and given the whole piping/plumbing thing, Charlie supposed she would have done the same had their positions been reversed. Closer, she could hear Shelly up on the sofa bed, snoring softly. The light against her eyelids said it was close to noon, and she could smell grass fires as her uncles burned off the thatch in the ditches.

Wait . . .

Opening her eyes, she came face-to-face with Jack, cocooned in his sleeping bag, mouth open, a smudge of ash on his cheek.

Someone would've screamed by now if it was serious, she reminded herself and poked his forehead.

His eyes snapped open instantly, flared gold, then softened to annoyed teenage hazel. "What?"

"You came in."

"Too light too early," he muttered, flopped over, and went back to sleep.

Charlie ticked off another fact on her Jack-as-teenager list - doesn't stress about burning the house down if he wants to sleep in. Since it would clearly be a while before she got to use the bathroom, or would want to use the bathroom if she'd matched up the correct actions to the sounds, she joined him.

Paul had never felt this way about anyone. He thought he'd been in love before - Janis Rinscind in grade six, who'd shoved him off the end of the pier and he'd had to ditch his jacket and shoes to make it back to shore, and Bonnie O'Neill in the summer between first and second year university who'd lost her hat at Peggy's Cove and he'd almost been swept away getting it back - but what he felt now, what he felt for Eineen Seulaich, was the difference between looking at a puddle and looking at the ocean.

Janis and Bonnie, they'd been puddles.

Eineen was like the ocean - deep, mysterious, too beautiful to describe.

The sea is a harsh mistress had been one of his father's more persistent homilies. Paul had never understood it. The sea had always been nothing more than a large body of salt water containing rapidly depleting fish stocks that some men chose to risk their lives for.

He understood it now. Palm sweaty against the plastic case, he waited for Eineen to answer the phone.

"Hello?"

It wasn't her voice. "Is Eineen . . . She gave me . . ." The words got stuck behind his need to speak with Eineen. His need to know nothing had happened to her since he'd left her at dawn. His need to know the entire night hadn't been a dream no matter how much the bruises on his knees suggested it had been very real. Pebble beach; not his first pick for that kind of activity although at the time, he hadn't noticed the rocks.

"Paul, right? Hang on, I'll get her."

"Thank you." Sitting in his car in the dry cleaner's parking lot, he remembered how his name in her mouth had sounded like a storm at sea, sweeping up and shattering everything in its path.

"Paul." Today, it was like waves sliding up over the shore, quiet and welcoming.

"Where are you?"

"With my cousin in Louisburg."

"I need to see you."

"I know."

"Ms. Carlson won't give the pelts back until the drilling has begun."

"I told you."

"I had to ask."

She sighed, and Paul swore he felt her breath against his cheek. "I know."

He thought she'd tell him they'd have to take them back themselves, steal them back, but she said nothing. He listened to his engine purr and his air conditioner hum and thought about the gas he was using and the oil that gas had come from and how there was better than ninety percent chance there were billions of barrels of it under the sea by Hay Island - even if only 500 million were recoverable with today's technology, and said, "I know where they're hidden. We can get them tonight. We can't get them now," he added quickly before she could protest. "I have meetings all afternoon and three calls to Fort McMurray I can't make until after five, but then I'll pick you up and we'll get them, I promise."

"You would turn against your company for me?"

His lips twitched into what was almost a smile. "You told me to."

"You could have refused me."

"No . . ." He ran his thumb along the leather seat, thought of the soft skin of her inner thighs, remembered the empty eyes of her seal pelt, and started talking again before things got weird. Weirder. "How could I? You're the reason I'm breathing." It was quite possibly the most ridiculous thing he'd ever said. And the truest.

"But only after your day's work is done."

He could call the office, tell Ms. Carlson something had come up he had to deal with personally. She'd assume it was to do with his job, with her, and it wasn't like he couldn't - didn't - do a good portion of his job in the car. No, wait, he couldn't, he had to deliver her dry cleaning so she could wear her favorite silk blouse to dinner with Mac Reynolds from the Canadian Environmental Law Association. The blouse was the perfect blend of professional and might-be-interested and he'd been on the lookout for a couple more like it, but for now . . .

"Paul."

"Don't ask me to walk away from this job. It's . . ." It wasn't his father's job. It wasn't up before dawn, and a body destroyed by the cold and the wet, and still not enough money to make ends meet.

"I haven't. I won't."

He believed her. And he chose to ignore the subtext that said she wouldn't have to.

The Louisburg stage for the Samhradh Ceol Feill was a solid seasonal structure near the Fort's Visitor's Center that took advantage of the Fort's parking. It had a backstage area actually large enough for the bands to transition smoothly and a stage manager who seemed to know what she was doing. Although Grinneal had drawn a Saturday evening spot, the entire band had taken advantage of their all access passes to check it out. When Tim didn't swear at the electrical, and Mark approved of the roadies who'd be helping Jack, Charlie figured they were set.

Actually, some of the roadies looked familiar.

"Those two played in Mabou," Shelly told her, pointing at a couple of scrawny teenagers staggering past with cases of bottled water. "They volunteer and get a chance to go on stage between bands. Most of them are solos, but they can have up to three in a group. Their names go into a lottery; winners sit out the next draw but go back in the draw after. The festival stage offers a lot of exposure."

"Sure," Charlie snorted, "if you want to be an itinerant musician dependent on the kindness of strangers, which I'm not saying is a bad thing," she continued as Shelly's brows went up. She spread her arms. "I mean, hello, knowing of what I speak."

"It's not a bad life." Shelly grinned. "In fact, it's a fine life."

"No show tunes!" Mark snapped, swinging around to face them, sunlight glinting on his holographic Sharon, Lois, and Bram medallion. "I end up in one more drunken ode to Rodgers and Hammerstein and I will put my head through my floor tom."

"It's three in the afternoon. Who's drinking?"

As Shelly began naming names, Jack poked Charlie in the side. "Ow."

"Yeah. Whatever. The seal-girl, I mean the fiddler's girlfriend, is trying to get your attention."

"Tanis? Is she crying?"

Jack leaned out to the right, and squinted. "I don't think so."

"Wonder of wonders." Charlie turned and Tanis waved. "Come on."

"I don't . . ."

Jack's arm was warm when she grabbed it but more like car parked in the sun than burn the flesh from your bones. "This may be about what happened last night. You're my distraction."

"From what?"

"I don't know if you've noticed, but Tanis is a bit emotional. Tanis, hi. What's up? Don't kneel!"

Tanis wobbled but stayed standing and compromised by so obviously not looking at Jack she might as well have been staring. "Eineen . . ."

"Has hooked up. I heard. I'm happy for her."

"Who told you . . . ?" Her gaze flicked over to Jack for a millisecond then locked back onto Charlie's face, eyes moist. "The Dragons are wise and all knowing."

"Know-it-alls, maybe," Charlie grunted as Jack elbowed her in the ribs.

"I wouldn't say . . ."

"You didn't." She got him in a headlock but knew she'd never get him to say auntie before he raised his body temperature from sun-warmed to deep-fried. "Was that all?"

"No . . ." Tanis watched them, confused, but that was a huge improvement over moist. "The man she joined with, he works for Carlson Oil."

Suddenly released, Jack hit the ground on his hands and knees. Swearing under his breath, he slapped out a small grass fire.

Charlie kicked him lightly with the side of her leg. "Watch your language, Your Highness. So Eineen's with a man from Carlson Oil? That's interesting."

"More than interesting; he's the personal assistant of Amelia Carlson."

"Not a fiddler, then?"

Tanis searched out Bo in the crowd of musicians. "He says his father was a fisherman."

"He?"

"Paul."

"Okay." Charlie waved a hand in front of Tanis' face until the Selkie stopped staring at her boyfriend. "Did Eineen plan this?"

"We don't plan the dance."

Jack made a rude noise that morphed into a squawk when Charlie smacked the back of his head. "If it was a plan, it's pretty clever. If it wasn't . . ." She glanced up at a cloudless blue sky and wondered if the gods were laughing. ". . . it looks like the universe is sticking its oar in again. It's a seagoing reference," she added when Tanis looked confused. "Is Paul giving your sealskins back?"

"He doesn't have them, but he knows where they're hidden. Eineen says they're going to pick them up tonight."

"They are?" Charlie looked up at the sky again. "So, I wonder why I'm even here . . ."

The fiddler in her head broke into a reprise of "I Won't Do the Work."

"I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I just said I didn't know what needed to be done."

"Uh, Charlie?" Jack poked her arm. Hard. "You're talking to yourself."

"I have a fiddler in my head," she sighed.

"Is that like one of those things that means something else?" he asked. "Because if it isn't, you're officially the weirdest person I'm related to."

"I'm officially the weirdest person you're related to."

"Okay, then."

And the fiddler played "Farewell to Decorum."

When Paul walked out of the office at 7:22, the earliest he'd ever left voluntarily, Eineen was waiting for him by his car. She wore a purple tank and faded, low-cut jeans held over the sweet arc of her hips by a worn leather belt. On her feet, cheap department store sneakers. She looked like the girls he'd grown up with in Dartmouth except that her hair flowed over bare shoulders like water from the darkest, deepest part of the ocean and the curve of those shoulders was the perfect curve of a wave heading for shore. He cupped her face with both hands and realized, as he caressed her cheeks with his thumbs, that her skin felt like water sun-warmed in tidal pools. Her eyes promised him everything, unconditionally.

He felt as though he was being swept away by all she offered, so he anchored his mouth to hers and . . .

. . . remembered he was in the parking lot outside of Carlson Oil's Sydney office.

Licking lips that tasted of salt, he pulled away. "I can't do this here."

"But you're doing it so well." She yanked him back against her by his belt loops.

"No, I work here. It's unprofessional." He shifted slightly, changing the angle of contact while he was still able.

"To have a life?"

"I was going to pick you up in Louisburg."

Her shrug moved their bodies together in interesting ways. Goose bumps rose on his scalp under the cool paths her fingertips stroked over the side of his head. He didn't realize she'd removed his earpiece until she handed it to him. "It was faster for me to come to you."

"How . . . ?"

"I took a taxi."

"But money . . ."

"Dead men's bones can't stop us claiming treasures from the ocean floor. Also," she added, allowing him to step away, "about forty years ago one of my cousins danced for an investment banker. We have a comprehensive portfolio."

"An investment banker?"

Eineen smiled. "His father was also a fisherman. And he was a better than average fiddle player, if only at ceilidhs."

She spoke like she'd known him.

Paul remembered seeing her change, he remembered seeing the pelt fall empty-eyed to the rock, and while he knew it had happened only the night before, it felt as though it happened to someone else a long time ago, everything that had happened overshadowed by the crystal clear memory of how she'd danced to the rhythm of his heart. He knew what she was. He didn't care. Hell, if she didn't care what he was, he had no grounds for complaint. She was tall enough, he barely had to bend when he stepped back in and kissed her. "Let's go make this right."

She licked her lower lip as though chasing his taste, but she didn't look happy. "Returning the skins won't make it right."

"But it's a start?"

"Yes, it's a start."

He knew he should put his earpiece back in. The greater part of his job involved being available when Ms. Carlson needed him. The plastic housing was warm and slightly greasy in his hand. He slipped it into his jacket pocket.

"Yeah, I had a call you were coming, Mr. Belleveau." The guard at the gate frowned, but it looked more like concern than suspicion. "It's kind of late and it's going to be dark soon. Are you sure you don't want to do this tomorrow?"

Paul fought to keep his grip on the steering wheel loose. He'd been pleased to see a different guard than the one who'd let him in before although a repeat of the first man's disinterest would have been a bonus. "I'm here tonight."

"Pardon me for saying this, but you're not exactly dressed for . . ."

"I came straight from the office."

"Well, okay, but . . ." He pushed his cap back and rubbed at the red dent in his forehead. ". . . you shouldn't be going in alone. What if something happened?"

"You know where I am."

"Well, yeah, but . . ."

"If I'm not back in three hours, assume something has happened."

"Three hours is . . ."

"I have no intention of rushing an inspection."

"I guess that'll . . ."

"Good. Thank you." Paul stepped on the gas just emphatically enough for instinct to move the guard away from the car. He drove as fast as he thought was unremarkable to the other side of the wellhead and parked. And exhaled.

"He didn't see you."

"I told you he wouldn't. He saw your jacket and your briefcase." Eineen lifted them both off her lap, twisting gracefully to drop them in the backseat.

"That's amazing. You're amazing."

"I just wasn't the droid he was looking for." When he frowned, she shook her head. "Never mind. Come on."

Paul hadn't even considered going back to the Duke alone, although had Eineen not been able to do whatever she'd done to the guard, getting her in would have been complicated. In all honesty, he had trouble thinking about doing anything alone. Every thought of the future, from ten minutes to ten years, involved Eineen. There were whole blocks of time, minutes stacked on minutes, when he didn't think about work at all.

She looked incredible in the hardhat. As the cage descended down the hoist shaft, he wrapped his hands around her waist and kissed a line up one side of her throat, along her jaw, and down the other while she murmured his name and held onto his arms tight enough to leave bruises.

When the cage jerked to a halt at Canaveral, Paul pulled away and fixed his shirt before opening the gate. The corner of Eineen's mouth twitched and he knew she was laughing at him but there was nothing wrong with looking good even one hundred and fifty meters underground. He was still who he was, and who he was did not wander about with a dress shirt untucked and rumpled.

"It's this way, down C tunnel. We can grab the cart I used the last time; it's just inside the tunnel."

When he turned his helmet light on, Eineen reached up and turned it off again. "It might be best," she said quietly, "if the shadows weren't moving."

There were more shadows with the only illumination coming from the tunnel lights, but Eineen was right. They stayed put and that was a huge improvement over his last trip when fear had seeded the deserted mine with imaginary dangers.

Pulling his phone from his pocket, Paul called up the schematic as they walked. Without it, he'd never recognize the correct cross corridor. In all honesty, he hadn't tried very hard to mark the place where he'd left the pelts. That wasn't like him, and he wondered if it had been guilt, already present but buried under his obligations to his job.

The cart rolled effortlessly along the tracks, easy enough to push one-handed. They walked silently, Eineen close enough to his side he could feel the turbulence her movement caused in the still air.

"We're under the sea . . ." Cool fingers pressed down on his mouth, stopping the words. When he turned toward her, she shook her head, reached out, and pulled the cart to a stop. Pulled it to a stop before he stopped pushing. He looked at his hand on the crossbar, on her hand beside his, and decided beside his was the important thing to remember.

As the last of the noise chased itself down the tunnel - metal on metal, his leather soles on the stone - she leaned close and whispered, "There's something down here."

And all at once he remembered the sound of claws against rock.

"Where . . . ?"

She shook her head, but whether she wanted him to stop talking or because she didn't know where, he couldn't tell.

The cross tunnel, the first cross tunnel out under the sea where he'd left the pelts, was still about ten meters away. Paul pointed and jerked his thumb to the left.

Eineen nodded, came out from behind the cart, and started forward slowly.

Completely silently.

Sweat dribbling down his sides, he followed. Not quite so silently.

It was a deserted mine. It had been deserted for years.

There was nothing down here with them.

They were granting the dark and the quiet and the heat and the oppressive weight of rock and water too much influence.

They were allowing their imaginations to . . .

He missed his footing on a bit of uneven rock, brought his right foot down a little too hard.

It wasn't much of a sound. Anywhere else, it would have gone unnoticed, lost in the ambient noise. Anywhere else, there would have been ambient noise.

He froze. Eineen froze, then slowly reached back toward him. Paul caught her hand and laced their fingers together, breathing shallowly, trying to hear past the blood roaring in his ears.

It sounded like rats at first, rats in the distance.

Claws skittering against stone.

He remembered that sound.

It grew louder and sounded less like the random movement of animals.

Still claws against stone, but moving purposefully.

Behind that sound another sound, harder to hear. A rough burr. Stone scraping against stone? As if whatever moved slowly up from the lower tunnels dragged a rock. A large rock. Under the scraping, he could hear a slow thud. Slow but steady. His heart began to match the rhythm.

Eineen's grip tightened as she turned. Her voice bypassed Paul's ears and jabbed straight into his brain, overriding the rhythm that held him in place. "Run!"

They abandoned the cart, and when Eineen's hardhat fell off, crashing and rolling behind them, they abandoned that, too.

Slick soles slipped against the rock. These were not the shoes he would have worn if he'd known he was going to be running for his life. He'd been a runner in high school, quit in university when someone had made a crack about Kenyans, making it a race thing, but he was barely keeping up and he could tell Eineen had slowed her pace.

He wanted to tell her to go on without him.

He didn't.

He hung on, let her yank him forward, keep him from falling, keep him moving faster than he could've gone on his own.

He tasted iron at the back of his throat.

His lungs fought to suck in enough hot, humid air. Then fought to force it out. In. Out.

Don't think of what might be following.

Just run.

Eineen reached the cage first, out in front by the length of their stretched arms. She ran in through the open gate and turned, staring past him. Her eyes were too large. Too dark. Her face the wrong shape. Nostrils flared too wide. He could see her chest, rising and falling. Her shoulders were too broad. Her torso out of proportion. Then he touched the steel and she was Eineen again. Stronger than him; he couldn't have turned to look behind them. Not for anything.

Panting, he keyed in the code with his free hand.

Nothing happened.

The hoist wouldn't work with the gate open.

He'd have to turn.

He spun on the ball of one foot. Grabbed the bar. Yanked it sideways. Swore as it bounced back.

The skittering scraped over his skin, rubbed nerves raw. The boom boom boom slipped into a more primal place.

Eineen's hand beside his, he slammed the bar home again.

This time, it caught.

No, latched. This time it latched. Don't think caught.

He input the code again.

Smacked the green button.

The cage jerked up. He staggered back, Eineen steadying him as the cables groaned and the elevator began to rise steadily toward the surface.

Then something hit the bottom of the cage, slamming into the metal grating hard enough they both grabbed for the safety bars to keep from falling.

"Don't look down!" Eineen made it a command.

Paul wanted to obey, but he'd already ducked his head.

Clinging to the cable, the claws of one hand stuffed through the grate, was something out of nightmare. Huge eyes. Like a lemur's. An evil lemur's. Bulging and glistening. Too many teeth. Too many sharp pointed yellow teeth in a mouth too wide. Small ears, small and round and tight against its head. Paul couldn't help thinking they should have been pointed. Not much of a nose. Black skin. Really black. Not black like he was black. He was medium brown at best. These guys were black like the coal that had come out of the Duke back in the day. Purple iridescent highlights - the whole nine yards.

And the thing on the cable wasn't alone. Seven, eight, ten . . . They spilled into Canaveral like cockroaches. As the cage rose past the roof, they crowded to the edge of the hoist shaft.

"Do you have any salt?"

"Do I what?"

"Have any salt!"

"No! But I have sugar substitute." Not every coffee shop had the brand Ms. Carlson liked.

"Sugar substitute?" She was laughing at him, but it wiped the look of horror from her face and that was all that mattered. And looking at her was better than looking down. She cupped his cheek, leaned in . . .

Steel screamed as claws gouged deep lines in the grate.

. . . and she snatched the hardhat off his head.

"The light!" Dropping to her knees, she flicked the headlamp on and aimed the beam right into the creature's face.

It screamed, much as the steel had, and dropped away. The light glinted off its flailing hands. The creatures it passed as it fell screamed with it.

"Rings."

"What?"

"It's wearing rings!" Paul expanded, not sure he recognized his own voice. "It's not an animal."

"Of course not." Eineen rocked back up onto her feet, impossibly gracefully, still pointing the headlamp down the shaft. "It's a Goblin. A type of Goblin, anyway. And they shouldn't be here."

"No shit!"

"A gate has been opened."

Paul sagged against the side of the elevator, only barely managing to stop himself from clinging, raising both feet up into the air. The air still seemed fine. The sea had hidden depths and the earth wanted to kill him, but the air, it hadn't changed. That was comforting.

Eineen leaned against him, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and anchored himself in the one thing that really mattered. Laid his cheek against her hair and breathed in the faint scent of fish.

When they were outside, when the system had been shut down and the lights turned off and all the doors locked behind them, when the stars were shining overhead and he was standing drenched in sweat beside the very normal, very solid bulk of his car, he asked the other question. "What was the big thing coming behind them?"

Eineen shrugged. "Demons. Demons in the dark."

"Demons? Are you serious?" At this point, he had no trouble believing in demons.

"Shhh. It's okay!" Her voice calmed him enough he could remember to breathe. "I meant I didn't know. It's a movie quote, from The Two Towers."

"The what?"

She tucked herself up against him, one arm around his neck, head on his shoulder and murmured, "I think I've spent more time out of the water than you have these last few years."

Her sympathy almost undid him. "My job keeps me busy."

"I know."

They stood there for a moment, regrouping, then he lifted his head and said, "What now?"

Her body moved against him as she sighed. "We're not fighters . . ."

Paul wasn't sure if she meant him and her or her people. Didn't matter, he supposed. He'd never been in a physical fight in his life.

"I know someone who is, though."

"Will they help?"

"That depends on how I ask him."

The festival had reserved a section for the bands off to the left of the stage. Some of them used it, but more of them sat with their families.

"Where is everyone?" Jack asked as Charlie handed him a wrapped package of fish and chips.

"Shelly's trading out her current A for a jazz string, for what I'm sure are very good reasons, Mark and Tim are in the beer tent . . ." Stacking two cans of cola on top of the second package and holding them in place with her chin, she dropped to the ground between Jack and her guitar case. ". . . and Bo is trying to get Tanis to stop crying."

"Again?"

"Still."

"I kind of feel like we should do something about that.You know?"

"I know, but they don't need us." Charlie'd thought she'd been called/ sent/annoyed east to help the Selkies, but she'd started to believe that Jack learning how to be of the family rather than within it was the primary not the secondary reason. She tossed him a cola. Hers had been charmed to keep it from spraying after the hazardous journey from the United Church W.I. trailer. Jack's had not.

His eyes narrowed. Then he opened the can, took a long swallow, and sighed the long-suffering sigh of the put-upon teenager. "You're watching me."

"You used sorcery to keep your soda from exploding. Last night you used it to soften the ground."

"Yeah, but that's . . ."

"It's not a problem, Jack." Holding onto his ear, she shook his head until he swatted her arm away. "You use sorcery the same way the rest of the family uses charms. To smooth out life's little bumps. It's not a big scary different thing, it's just a 'remove the middleman' thing."

"The aunties say I could use it to take over the world."

"Do you want to?"

"Do I want to what?"

"Take over the world. They've never asked you, have they? They just assume you're going to."

"Yeah, well, I'm not going to and I don't want to. When you take over the world, you have to run the world and that's way too much work plus everyone else who wants to run the world tries to take you out." The can dimpled in his grip. "I had enough of that back ho . . . back in the UnderRealm."

Charlie watched him cram a half a piece of fried cod into his mouth and wondered if they could keep Gale boys with too much power from going darkside by trying to kill and eat them in their formative years. Jack's early upbringing certainly seemed to have created a perspective that the indulgent life the Gale boys lived did not.

The aunties would probably be all for it.

"Charlie?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't the aunties try to take over the world?"

"You're not the first to ask this, young Padawan." She stretched out her legs, kicked off her flip flops, and crossed her ankles. "We all ask."

He waved a french fry at her. "And the answer?"

"The aunties are all about family. As long as the world leaves the family alone, they leave the world alone. Something interferes with the family, they cut a metaphorical willow switch and deal." After a moment's thought, she added, "Usually metaphorical anyway." Auntie Catherine had thrown Allie at Jack's mother in an entirely actual way.

They'd lost the light by the time Captain Wedderbrun, the second festival band, took the stage, but it was a Friday night and no one was in a hurry. Although it had to be past their bedtime by Charlie's nonmaternal estimate, kids still ran around the grounds watched over by extended family - she saw Neela's charge past in a crowd and then back again in a different crowd. A soccer ball slammed into Jack's side and when Charlie nodded, he took off to join the game. All through the audience, friends and family stood shoulder to shoulder, music moving feet and hands and smiles. Even the tourists were starting to relax.

If this were a Stephen King book, this is when the monsters would attack, Charlie thought. An old friend from another band kicked her legs as he passed, and they exchanged genial and complex insults.

Captain Wedderburn was good and, more importantly, knew how to play to the crowd. Their fiddler subscribed to the Natalie McMaster school of step-and-play and their keyboard player - an older woman no more than five feet tall - perpetually appeared to be about to join in. Nine members strong, they were the largest band in the festival and likely to be one of the top three.

At 11:09, the crowd demanded and got the single encore the competing bands were allowed. At 11:21, they were still screaming for more.

Then they were just screaming.

At one end of the field, the stage rocked back and forth as though subjected to its own personalized earthquake. A couple members of the band jumped free, but it looked like the keyboard player and the drummer were caught in their gear. Or refusing to leave their gear.

Charlie could see small dark figures shaking the supports under the stage but it appeared no one else could.

"No way! Boggarts!"

No one else but Jack.

At the other end of the field, a food trailer crashed over onto its side and went up in flames.

Grabbing Jack's arm, Charlie pointed toward the fire. "I'll get the ones under the stage, you put that out."

"How?"

"Hello! Sorcery!"

"Hello! Dragon!" He twisted out of her grip. "Not big on putting fires out. I could . . . I don't know. Drop a whole bunch of water on it?"

"Yeah, and a random water bomb would be a little hard to explain. Contain it. Keep it from spreading. If the grass catches . . ."

"It'd be big trouble, right!" He squared his shoulders. "I got it."

"Jack, do it in skin! And plausibly deniable if you can!"

He turned to stare at her. "I don't even know what that means."

"If you have to lie, make sure it's one they'll believe."

"Right." A quick thumbs up, then he turned and ran.

Charlie scooped her guitar out of the case and wrestled the strap over her head as she pushed through people running the other way. Besides being squat, hairy, and smelly even at a distance, evidence suggested the Boggarts were among those Fey who were disproportionately strong. There were only three of them, all just under a meter tall, but they were rocking a stage built to hold up under multiple dancers with more enthusiasm than skill. Music may have charms to sooth the savage breast, but it seemed unlikely these three would be soothed quickly enough to keep those members of Captain Wedderburn being flung about on the stage from injury.

As Charlie rocked to a stop, the left side of the stage buckled, nails ripping free, plywood cracking. A two by four snapped. The front corner of the roof dropped half a meter, shaking free a light that smashed against the corner of the stage, spraying glass and sparks. The immediate area plunged into shadow.

No time for anything but quick and dirty.

Eyes narrowed, Charlie put her fingers to the strings.

Music could empty a room as fast as fill it.

Bagpipes could empty whole neighborhoods.

Charlie wished she could play Jack's song on the bagpipes - it'd serve the destructive little shits right - but, as she couldn't, she hit the top E so hard it buzzed against the frets like an angry wasp. Then she bent the buzz.

Heads turned.

At least, she thought they turned. In all honesty, there wasn't much to choose from between the back and the front.

She didn't so much play Jack's song as wield it like a club.

Hey, Boggarts! Don't make me go Draconis on your ass! I have a dragon in my pocket, and I'm not afraid to use him. Okay, not actually in my pocket because he's way too big. And hungry. Big and hungry!

Mouths open, eyes wide - or if not mouths and eyes then facial features in approximately the same position - the Boggarts shrieked like middle-aged women at an Adam Lambert concert, and ran for it. Charlie closed the last two meters between her and the stage, reached out as the corner began to collapse and sketched a quick charm in the dust. Timbers creaked but held.

It wouldn't hold long, but the keyboard player had gotten her foot out from under her pedals and Captain Wedderburn's fiddler was hauling the drummer, clutching his bass drum, down to the grass.

Stage secured, Charlie spun around, hoisted her guitar up under her right arm, and ran for the other end of the field. She'd taken no more than a dozen strides when something exploded.

Those who'd been unsure of how to personally take part in the growing panic suddenly decided, charging away from the column of fire now rising ten to fifteen meters into the night sky. Half a dozen Boggarts ran with them, shoving, pinching, and spraying beer around.

Charlie pivoted without breaking stride. If she could plug into the sound system, she could clear the Boggarts off the . . .

The empty stage shuddered as a dangling cable scraped across the charm, then the whole thing fell in toward the collapsing corner. Cables ripped free. The sound system gave one last bleat of protest, and died, taking the stage lights with it.

"Okay, then." Another pivot. Dodging through a dark mass of hysterical tourists, Charlie ran for Jack. "Plan B."

Having spent the evening watching the action on a well-lit stage, she hadn't bothered with night-sight charms. If she had it to do over, she'd say screw the ambiance and sketch them on. At least the Canadians apologized as they careened off her.

She finally got close enough to see it was the Lions Club chip wagon that had gone over; the three double deep fat fryers the genesis of the blaze. Charlie couldn't see bodies and she couldn't smell pork so, since the food court had closed at ten, it seemed the club's volunteers had been long gone before the Boggarts showed up. The good news: it was only the Lions Club chip wagon burning. Papa Dog, previously tucked up snug to the left, was now about six meters away. Given that the paint on the side closest to the fire had blistered and peeled, it looked like Jack had stepped in and shoved it clear. A dozen or so people worked to carry everything even vaguely portable away from the heat, and a dozen or so more had their phones up, recording. The beer tent continued doing brisk business.

Charlie didn't see Jack until a second explosion slammed the shadows back.

"Propane tanks," he said as she stopped, coughing, beside him. "I fixed it so they shoot up into the air and any bits of metal fall straight back down into the fire. Is that okay?"

"That's great." His T-shirt had started to scorch. She licked her finger and charmed it cool. "Now roar!" The remaining Boggarts were still working the crowd. So far, in spite of the shrieking and the swearing, it didn't look as if anyone had gotten seriously hurt, but as long as the Boggarts kept ramping up the levels of hysteria, that wouldn't last. "If you can talk while you control this, you can roar. We need to let the Boggarts know you're here!"

She'd told the Boggarts to run. To be afraid. Very afraid even. Hopefully, since Jack couldn't roar for the Boggarts' ears alone, Human brains would refuse to acknowledge the information as he announced his presence with authority. Where the authority came from being a dragon.

When Jack opened his mouth, Charlies stuffed her fingers in her ears and watched the crowd split into three. The Boggarts and the pureblood Selkies ran. Humans with Selkie wives and Humans with Selkie blood turned to stare - and a lot of the locals had a touch of Fey. Seemed the Selkies had been getting busy over the last couple hundred years. Those in the crowd who were nothing more or less than Human, froze as their hindbrains screamed, OMG DRAGON! and an instant later carried on running and shouting as their forebrains added, NO SUCH THING AS DRAGONS, DUMBASS! FIRE, THOUGH, THAT'S REAL!

When Jack closed his mouth, Charlie unplugged her ears. Her bones were still vibrating, and she had a certain amount of sympathy for the Fey who'd run. Half of her wanted to get the hell out of Dodge before scaled death arrived to rend and tear, the other half muttered, Please, it's a Gale boy. What's he going to do, sulk at you?

"How . . . ?" Oh, great, she was deaf. She'd formed the word. Said the word. Couldn't hear the word.

Another propane tank exploded, and her ears popped.

I'm not sure it works that way . . . She swallowed hard, then forced a yawn . . . but what the hell. "How many more tanks in there?"

"How should I know?" Jack rolled golden eyes. "It's not like I have propane sense or something."

"Fair enough. Listen, when the last tank blows, you need to go after those Boggarts. Catch one alive if you can."

"Why?"

"They're small scale. They can't open a gate, so someone invited them in; I want to know who."

Jack cocked his head, frowning. "You think it was Auntie Catherine, don't you?"

"Yeah, well, she's here." Charlie flicked up a finger. Then another. "She's already screwing the Selkies." And a third. "And you know what Chekhov says."

"Um . . . Wictor, wictor, seven?"

"If you hang an auntie on the wall in act one, she'll be a pain in the ass by act three."

"Is that in the extras? Because I didn't watch the deleted scenes."

"That was . . . never mind."

"Whatever." He shrugged and waved a bit of flame back into the bulk of the burn. "Charlie, why didn't the Boggarts know I was here? I mean, before I told them."

"They weren't ignoring you, Your Highness. You're wearing skin, surrounded by skin, and they can't have had a lot of experience with Humans. Also, you were close to the fire; it was probably masking your innate dragon-ness. Plus . . ." She bumped his shoulder with hers. ". . . they would have been able to tell that I'm a Gale and they didn't seem to care. That makes them not too smart."

Another tank blew, then one more immediately after it.

Charlie tried to count to ten, got to seven, and said, "Okay, I think that's it." Some of the lingering ringing in her ears turned out to be sirens in the distance. At least they'd gotten rid of the Boggarts before the Louisburg Fire Department had shown. The whole thing - encore to roar - had taken just under fifteen minutes. Auntie Catherine - and where the aunties were concerned, Charlie believed in guilty until proven innocent - had to have known how the Boggarts would run from a Dragon, so why had she gone to all the trouble of opening a gate for such a minor bit of vandalism?

"You need to catch one of those little shits and find out why they attacked the festival." She shoved Jack past the burning trailer toward the darkness on the other side and the masking bulk of the Visitor's Center. He could change behind it, so she wouldn't have to spend the rest of the night saying, What dragon? "And you need to do it before they run wee wee wee all the way home." If she were Auntie Catherine, she'd have left the gate in place but set it so it only worked one way, allowing the Boggarts to return to the UnderRealm on their own, but preventing anything else from coming through. However, given that she wasn't Auntie Catherine and Auntie Catherine was at best unpredictable and at worse really fucking unpredictable, the gate could just as easily be swinging wide for anything who wanted to come visiting. "Find out where the gate is so we can close it."

"Couldn't you just sing your way to it?"

"Probably. But the last time Auntie Catherine didn't want me to get somewhere, I ended up in Brazil. And, if the gate is guarded, I'd rather the large, fire-breathing, nearly indestructible dragon discovered that first." Another shove. "Now go."

"You want a coffee, too?"

"No, I'm good. Fly, my pretty!"

Jack dug in his heels.

Given how far they were dug in, Charlie suspected he was using dragon weight. The sweat on his T-shirt was drying out fast in the heat rising off his skin. "I'm sorry I called you pretty."

He folded his arms, smoke trickling out of his nose.

"And referred to you like you were a flying monkey. Now please get your golden ass in the air before our answers take a powder."

"What are you going to be doing?"

Good question. She stopped applying pressure between his shoulder blades and glanced around at the festival grounds - at the smoldering chip wagon, at the clusters of babbling people, at the crying children, at the half dozen musicians still sitting in the beer tent, at the fire truck and the EMTs. The excitement was over and the professionals were here. Hysteria would rewrite what had happened, editing the Boggarts out.

Reaching under her guitar, she pulled her phone from the pocket of her shorts. Jack turned and tracked the movement. Aunties didn't lie. And aunties loved messing with people more than Gales loved pie. If Auntie Catherine answered . . .

Auntie Catherine didn't.

Charlie put the phone back in her pocket.

"You going to go find her?" Jack asked.

"No."

"Are you scared of her?"

"Wary. Careful. Confronting an auntie has been known to end in gingerbread."

"I like gingerbread," Jack pointed out.

"As a career choice?"

"Oh."

"Besides, if she intended to tell me what was going on, she'd have answered the phone. Face-to-face, the best I'd get would be, "My business is none of your business, Charlotte." And I'd say, "Your having the Boggarts attack the festival makes it my business." And she'd say, "Did the Boggarts tell you I told them to attack the festival?" There's no point in talking to her until after you talk to the Boggarts. So . . ." Charlie took a deep breath and shook off the anger she'd felt since the stage started to shake. "I'm going to make sure the band is safe, retrieve my guitar case, and then I'm going to wait until you bring me some answers. You find the gate; I close it. You find out what Auntie Catherine told the Boggarts; we decide what we're going to do next."

We decide . . .

He's fourteen, Charlie! Yeah, he's more than that, but he's that, too.

Damn.

She took a step back, giving him space. "This is more than you signed on for. You can head back to Calgary tomorrow: no harm, no foul."

"Calgary is boring. Besides," he continued, his voice coming from inside a sudden cloud of smoke, "all you asked me to do is catch a Boggart. I can do that in my sleep." The smoke cleared, and he didn't look disgusted by the thought of going back to Calgary and boredom; he looked like someone had just killed his puppy. "Okay, not in my sleep but almost. It's easy. I'm sorry I didn't fly after them right away. Don't send me back, okay? I thought you wanted me here."

Charlie pushed her guitar out of the way and pulled him into a hug. "I want you here," she told him as he fought her grip, but she knew she couldn't have held him if he didn't want to be held. "You decide if you go back. I just want you to realize it could get dangerous."

"Yeah, the gingerbread crack kind of gave that away." He squirmed, suddenly very fourteen about being hugged, and she let him go. When they were far enough apart, he grinned. "You met my uncles, right? So far, this world is pretty much not dangerous."

"So far, the aunties have left you alone."

"So far, I'm still fourteen."

"That was my point. Fine." She held up her hand. "Fist bump. Wild Powers activate. Enough time wasted on mushy shit."

Jack's knuckles sizzled against hers. "Weirdest person I'm related to."

"Pot, kettle, cuz."

A few moments later, Charlie watched him rise from behind the shed like a shooting star in reverse, easy enough to explain away as a spark against the night sky to people already staring at a fire. She started back to the festival grounds and realized she was walking across bare earth. An arc about two meters wide had been completely cleared of grass out in back of the burning chip wagon. Jack had removed the grass. Since she couldn't see a pile of it, she hoped he'd just tossed it onto the fire. The day he first arrived, he'd made a pair of jeans out of fabric ripped from the interior of a rental car, so all that grass could have become a couple dozen . . .

She frowned, sighed, and muttered, "I got nothin'."

"Little Burned Potato," her fiddler suggested.

"Dude, trust me, you've got nothing either."

"A gang of teenagers on drugs?" Charlie stared at Mark in disbelief. "Seriously?"

Mark shrugged. He had a smear of ash on one cheek, and his sporran looked singed. "You got a better explanation, Chuck? That chip wagon didn't take a dive all on its own. Of course, Marty . . ."

"Piper from Hallelujah Frog?"

"That'd be the Marty. He seems to think it's a plot by the other bands to keep the Frog from winning."

"How much had Marty had to drink?"

"Funny, that's what the Horseman asked him. Looks like Tim's ready to go; I guess the festival committee doesn't want our help rebuilding." Mark jumped down off the picnic table and flipped his kilt into place. "You heading back to Shelly's brother-in-law's cousin's place?"

"No." She stood her guitar case on end between her feet, crossed her hands on the top, and rested her chin on them. "I'm waiting for Jack."

"Jesus, Jack!" Mark whirled in place as if he expected to find Jack standing behind him. "Where the hell has the kid gone?"

"He's fine. He's . . . gone off with someone." After, not with, but otherwise, not exactly a lie.

"A friend?"

"A friend."

"Ah." Mark nodded sagely. "Adrenaline rush. It's a statistical truth that more people get laid after horror movies than . . . Wait a minute. I thought you said he was fourteen! I mean, I was precocious, but . . ."

"They're talking," Charlie sighed. "Not fucking."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Not that it was immediately relevant, but did Boggarts even have a gender? Although, she considered as she watched Tim wipe the ash off Mark's face with some spit and the hem of his T-shirt, little Boggarts had to come from somewhere.

Charlie had no idea how Jack's hunt was going, but the rest of Grinneal hadn't been hard to locate. She'd found Shelly helping a cousin deal with three terrified kids and, in reaction to the growing no court in the land would convict me expressions on both adults' faces, had strummed a charm onto each child. Shelly's cousin had burst into tears of relief when all three kids had simultaneously calmed down and cheered up. Tanis had fled toward the Fort and the water when Jack roared, and one of the pipers had seen Bo go after her, upset for her sake but fine on his own account. Turned out that Mark and Tim had been among those helping to haul stuff away from the burning chip wagon and had been thanked and then chased off by the fire department. When Charlie had retrieved her case and caught up to them, Tim was on his way to see if he could help rebuild the stage, so Charlie and Mark had claimed a picnic table between the parking lot and the temporary fencing, sitting in a circle of illumination under one of the pole lights.

Although the stage remained dark, the perimeter lights hadn't gone out. Small mercies.

"Right, Chuck?" Mark's question jerked Charlie's wandering mind back to the here and now. He grinned and elbowed Tim. "I told you she wasn't listening."

Eyes open wide, she faked a look of rapt attention. "I'm listening now."

"Good. Because this is your leader speaking. I want to run through the set list tomorrow morning. The fine people in paid attendance at Samhradh Ceol Feill deserve a band that's got its musical shit together after tonight's excitement."

"And it won't hurt our standing with the judges either."

"That's what Tim said. So . . ." He gripped her knee, his palm warm and dry. "Don't stay out too late. There'll be a thermos of my secret recipe honey/lemon tea left on the stairs, so drink it before bed for your voice. You've been sucking smoke and we don't need another baritone. And maybe think about changing your two." A nod toward the guitar case. "It's sounding a bit harsh."

"Anything else, Mom?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Think about dying your hair. You walking around all natural and blonde is freaking me the hell out."

There weren't many cars left in the parking lot when Tim and Mark pulled out: her wagon, a few vehicles close to the stage she assumed belonged to the volunteers doing the rebuild, and a bus from Sydney that seemed short a few passengers.

More to have something to do with her hands than in any expectation of an answer, Charlie pulled out her phone and called Auntie Catherine again. Five rings. Nine. Thirteen. Charlie cut the connection.

The phone rang.

"Hey, Mom."

"Your sisters . . ."

Charlie balanced her chin on the top of her guitar case, letting the words literally flow in one ear and out the other, listening past the sounds of construction and profanity for the sound of wings. At the first pause in the monologue, she straightened and said, "Mom, they're going to Paris, not spending seven years in the Under Realm. Let it go."

"But they'll be alone!"

"Everyone has to go it alone sometime, Mom. Even Gales. And there's two of them," she sighed to herself as she hung up.

Hanging up would come back and bite her on the ass later, but right now, hip-deep in family drama, she didn't have the patience for family sitcoms. She thought about calling to see if Allie was still mad, but a glossy black penis-mobile turning into the parking lot caught her eye. At first she thought the driver was a family member arriving late to rescue loved ones from the chaos, but then she realized it wasn't so much heading toward her in a general sort of way as it was aiming right at her.

She wouldn't have let that go on a good night. Tonight . . .

Time spent touring the prairies on the Dun Good bus had taught her a lot about vehicular charming, and these assholes with their size-fourteen carbon footprint were about to find out what happened when Charlie Gale played a country song backward.

Then the car stopped, parked diagonally across two spaces. Okay, maybe she'd overreacted a bit to their sense of direction, but given how much she hated people who didn't know the definition of parallel, she was half inclined to charm their manifold off just on principle.

She had her guitar out of the case when the passenger door slammed open, and Eineen emerged looking gorgeous and determined. Charlie froze, the strap held over her head. She hadn't seen Eineen in jeans before. She had an amazing ass.

"I need to speak to the Prince."

And suddenly the finger was off the pause button. "Hello to you, too," Charlie muttered settling the strap over her shoulders. "Yeah, we had a bit of an incident tonight; stage fell down, chip wagon burned, but everyone's fine, thanks for asking."

Eineen glanced over at the festival grounds and the smoke rising from the remains of the fire. "What happened?"

"We had Boggarts."

"We had Goblins."

Charlie opened her mouth. Closed it again. Finally slid off the picnic table onto her feet and said, "Okay, you win." Goblins wouldn't have stopped at malicious vandalism; they'd have gone straight to rending and tearing. Jack would've had to change to deal with them, and Charlie would've had to call in the aunties to deal with the fallout. She shuddered. Fun, wow.

Speaking of aunties . . . Boggarts fell into the general shit-disturbing category, but why would Auntie Catherine bring Goblins over?

Wait a minute.

"We?"

The driver's door opened, and a tall young man emerged. In his own way, he was just as gorgeous as Eineen. Beautiful dark skin, that sexy shaved head and goatee combo, slim but in good shape. He looked vaguely familiar, so Charlie leaned out for a better angle as he walked around the car to stand beside the Selkie. His suit pants clung to the curves of an equally great ass and the sleeves of his pale blue dress shirt had been meticulously folded to expose an expensive watch. On his feet, he wore a pair of scuffed and dusty shoes that probably cost more than the combined value of every piece of clothing Charlie'd brought with her to Nova Scotia.

"Paul Belleveau." Eineen's voice laid overtones of possession on the name. "Charlotte Gale."

Paul visibly paled. Considering the lack of light and his skin tone, it was an impressive reaction.