Enchantment Emporium Page 34
She’d started to move before he found his voice. “Stay.”
They stood-leaned-silently for a moment, then Allie said, “Can I see it?”
“It?” The corners of his mouth twitched although he couldn’t quite manage a smile. “You’ll have to be a little more specific.”
“Did I ask to see it again?” Her elbow impacting with his side turned out to be a lot pointier than it looked. “I meant the artifact in your pocket.”
Yeah. He’d figured. It felt warm as he fished it out. Body temperature. “You’re not going to see much.” The fixture over the door held one of those energy-saving fluorescent bulbs, and the circle of light ended about a meter out.
Her fingers were warmer than the bullet as she plucked it off his palm. He found that vaguely comforting. “I have night-vision charms on my eyelids.”
“Seriously?”
“Gale girls aren’t big on eye shadow, and we like to minimize our chances of waking up the aunties.”
He matched his tone to hers; all surface, no depths. “No lights on when you come home late?”
“Or go to the bathroom. Or raid the fridge. This would have killed him?” Her voice suddenly serious, she held the bullet up between thumb and forefinger. It seemed to glow with a dull, dirty light. Optical illusion. Probably. “In either form?”
“That’s what he made it for.”
“Your blood’s in this, too.”
Interesting she could sense that but not surprising, all things considered. “My blood’s just there to help my aim.”
Allie made a noncommittal sound, then said, “Or to give his uncles a scent when they set out to find the shooter. My charm wouldn’t have lasted against blood magic.”
“You think…”
“I think,” she interrupted, “given that your target would have been standing absolutely still in the moment just after emergence…” The moment she’d tackled Jack to the ground. “… you couldn’t have missed a shot at that distance.”
Nice to think that. “I wasn’t a lot farther away the last time I missed.”
“But now you know how fast they change.You wouldn’t make that mistake again. That miss, just made this shot…” She raised the bullet a little higher. “… more likely.”
Graham frowned. “He’d still be in danger from the Dragon Lords. He’d need me to take out as many of them as possible.”
“Unless he thought your death by Dragon Lord was the best way to get my family involved. While we’re going after the Dragon Lords, he can slip away. Hide again.”
“Again?”
“If the aunties haven’t taken him out, it’s only because they don’t know where he is.”
And that just begged for a sidebar. “Why do the old women in your family hate sorcerers?”
She shrugged. He didn’t know if she’d moved closer without him noticing, or if he was so attuned to her, he could feel the air currents shift. “Power corrupts.”
“That’s a pretty nonspecific reason to kill someone.”
“He ordered you to kill his son.”
Yeah. Definitely a specific example of the premise.
“As much as I hate to admit it,” Allie continued. “Actually managing to have a son with the Dragon Queen suggests he’s a lot more powerful than I thought. Because that’s, as Charlie pointed out, fucking amazing.”
“He was good with fire,” Graham told her dryly, remembering the blaze answering Kalynchuk’s gesture in the workshop. Then, suddenly, he froze.
“And that shot, that shot you didn’t take, that shot was the whole reason for your existence!”
“Graham?” She’d finally turned to look at him. He could feel the heat of her concern on the side of his face. And then the press of her hand against his chest. “Breathe!”
The air in the courtyard felt superheated as he drew it into his lungs and gasped it out. Then Allie started to breathe with him, her mouth near his, slowly in and out, the vise around his ribs loosening. “He was good with fire,” he repeated, barely recognizing his own voice. Allie stood close enough he could see that her eyes were the cool gray of a winter sky, and he let himself fall into them. “I saved him out in the woods, made a one-in-a-million shot, and two days later my whole family was dead in a fire.”
Allie made the jump with him. “You think he killed your family?”
“I think he was willing to kill his.” His hands were shaking. Graham didn’t remember reaching out to hold Allie’s hips, but it helped. It helped to have something warm and alive in his grasp. “He showed up in the village almost before it was over and took care of everything.” His family had been nearly hysterical with grief. He remembered uncles, hard men who’d fought the North Atlantic every day of their adult lives, crying like children. He remembered how Stanley Kalynchuk’s hand on his shoulder had felt like the only thing he had left that was real.
This time, when the memories tried to slip away, he fought to hold them.
It was like trying to hold smoke. He had the essence but not the substance.
“Why can’t I remember?”
Allie touched her forehead to his. “He doesn’t want you to. He wouldn’t, would he?”
“No. He wouldn’t.” Graham took a deep breath and loosened his hold on her just a little. Probably too late to prevent bruises. “He was there for me for all those years because he needed me today. Needed to know someone could take that shot and not miss. I’d have shot through you, wouldn’t have hesitated if I hadn’t gotten to know you. I’d have killed you and considered you collateral damage for the greater good.”
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could have.”
She cupped his face between her hands and repeated, “But you didn’t.” Then she kissed him. Softly, comfortingly.
She was all he had left. When she pulled back, he murmured, “If I could choose again…” and she stared at him like she was seeing him for the first time and she smiled.
“No.”
“I just…”
“No. Not until you really understand what it means.”
It took a moment to hear not yet instead of no. “But I thought I only got one chance.”
“Well, you’re like two people, right? The reporter and the sorcerer’s… person? Two people, two choices. Besides, there’s a half-Human Dragon Prince upstairs eating pie. We’re making this up as we go along.”
“We are?”
“Yes. We are.” And she kissed him again.
“He needs to talk to someone,” Charlie had said, “and it can’t be either of the boys, not with all that horn showing. He’ll end up going all bantam rooster and getting damaged.”
“You go, then.”
“No.”
“Charlie…”
“Get your head out of your ass and get down there!”
“Michael…”
Michael had given her the saddest smile she’d ever seen, and she knew he was thinking of Brian. “Talk to him, Allie. It doesn’t have to go further.”
So she’d talked to him. And she’d listened to him.
She hadn’t planned on kissing him, but she’d needed to do something to ease the pain. Kissing him was just the best way she could think of to say she was there if he needed her and have him believe it. Funny thing, though, she’d ended up convincing herself.
“If I could choose again,” he’d said.
She’d been ready to tell him it didn’t work like that when she’d realized there was no reason why it couldn’t. And maybe she’d babbled a little, but he hadn’t seemed to mind.
The second kiss was less about comfort and, selfishly, more about finding him again.
Turned out, he’d never been gone.
She felt as though she were sinking into him and pulled away before she lost herself. Not the time, not the place… Well, not the time and only the place when she was sure Charlie wasn’t watching from the apartment window.
“Allie…”
The sound of wet laundry
flapping by just above the building cut off whatever Graham had been about to say, but when Allie leaned back against the wall beside him, he kept his hand around hers as they watched the sky. She half expected one of the triangular shapes to land on the top of the building, but all three flew on by. “What do you think they’re doing up there?”
“Regrouping. Licking their wounds. Getting ready for round two.” He stroked her palm with his thumb, and it felt so much like family that it literally made her knees weak. “Do you think Jack’s mother is on her way?”
“It’s the only thing Adam and your ex-boss seem to agree on.”
“But what do you think?”
Allie took a deep breath and tasted sulfur on the breeze. “I don’t know. It seems like the females are the defining avatars of the Dragon Lords’ power. It takes a lot to shift that kind of thing.”
“She has a way to finally get to Jack’s father. That’s a lot. Do you think she sent Jack?”
“I don’t think she’d have risked him, especially since it seems that keeping him alive this long has been a big ‘fuck you’ to pretty much everybody. But what do I know about Dragon Lords? I’m almost positive Adam wanted to stop Jack. To stop her. But then Jack gets here, and he changes his mind.”
“Because you claimed him?”
“It can’t be me.”
“Can you stop her?”
“Not alone. And I’m not exploring other options until I’m sure she’s on her way.” The aunties were still the court of last resort. “Adam’s playing some weird game of his own, and I’m not taking the ravings of a man who wants to kill his own child as truth.” She frowned at the sound of sirens in the distance. “Is that fire or police?”
Graham cocked his head. “Fire.”
Allie sighed. That so figured. “You know what I said when we left for the hill? I said all we were going to do was stop the city from burning down.” Without really thinking about what she was doing, she found herself sliding almost effortlessly through the imprint of the city until she touched the place where it went wrong, touched the fire, and put it out. Senses humming, reveling in the unexpected freedom, wondering if Charlie felt the same lack of boundaries stepping into the Wood, she reached a little farther and touched the scar on the top of the hill.
Moved down it just because she could.
Heat.
A little farther.
Rage. Surging. Consuming.
Allie didn’t know where the city ended and it began. Where she ended and it began. It roared through her, scouring bleeding bits of self free as it passed. Then it came around and did it again. And again. She couldn’t find herself.
Pain…
Hatred…
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
But there, on the edge.
Something.
If she could only remember…
Hand.
She could feel her hand.
“Allie!”
She could feel her nails digging into Graham’s skin where he held her hand between their bodies. She could feel bruises rising on her shoulder blades from where she’d pressed back into the wall.
“Allie? Are you all right? You went away for a minute.” He looked concerned but not terrified. That was weird because given the way her heart was slamming up against her ribs, she had to look like she’d just brushed up against the end of the world. Then she remembered he couldn’t really see her.
“Sh… sh…” Dragging her tongue over dry lips, she tried again. “She’s coming.”
“Jack’s mother?”
“I have to make a phone call.” When he started to release her hand, she tightened her grip. “I can use the other one.”
The number she needed had moved to the top of her phone book. Another time, she’d be annoyed about that. Four rings. Five. Six.
“It’s the middle of the night, Alysha Catherine.”
“I need a first circle, Auntie Jane.”
“You need a first circle.” She heard Auntie Jane yawn, teeth clacking together when she closed her mouth. “Why?”
About to say it was complicated, Allie suddenly realized it wasn’t. “The Dragon Queen is on her way.”
“Really?” Auntie Jane sounded more curious than angry. That was good. “How is she finding her way?”
“Her son, by a sorcerer, is here.”
“Try to be more precise, girl. Her son by a sorcerer is where?”
“In the apartment. Eating pie. The sorcerer is here, too.”
“In the apartment?” Allie was fairly certain she could feel frost forming on the phone. “Eating pie?”
“No. But in Calgary.”
“I see.”
She thought she did. “It’s more complicated than that.”
“No, Alysha Catherine, it is not. A full circle?”
Burning.
Burning.
Burning.
And never burning out.
“Yes. Please.”
“And who will anchor a first circle, Alysha Catherine.”
Allie glanced up at the loft. knowing she’d see her brother staring down at her, knew that when he felt the burning, he’d understand. Hoped that one day, he’d forgive her. “David.”
TWELVE
“They’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”
No one in the room seemed surprised that the Gale family expected to be able to book twelve seats on a Calgary-bound flight with less than twelve hours’ notice. Given how much of a threat both his ex-boss and the Dragon Lords had considered them, Graham knew the older Gale women were powerful, but they were clearly more powerful than he’d imagined.
“They’ll be bringing Katie with them,” Allie added.
Thirteen seats, Graham amended as Charlie’s brows rose. She glanced over at Roland-who looked admirably neutral-before saying, “Katie’s closer than I am. Way too close to do David much good.”
Standing just behind her right shoulder, Graham watched the muscles tense in Allie’s jaw.
“They’re not bringing Katie for David.” Her tone suggested that whatever was going on-and he wasn’t positive he wanted it explained-was not open to discussion.
Not that Charlie didn’t try.
“But…”
“David will be anchoring the first circle.”
Roland let out a long sigh that suggested he’d expected as much.
Charlie shook her head, the mute denial as much of a denial as she could evidently make. “Oh, Allie, I’m sorry.”
“It might not… I mean, he’s strong, and nothing might…” Allie pushed a hand back through the hair that had worked its way out of her braid. “But if he does, it means at least one of the aunties will have to stay.”
“Oh, sweetie, now I’m really sorry.”
Allie cracked the first smile she’d managed since she’d hung up the phone. “So you won’t be abandoning me when this is all over?”
“If the Wood stays clear…” Her head cocked, Graham suspected she was listening to a call no one else in the room could hear. “… then I’ve got some traveling to do, but if you’re staying, I’ll base here with you.” She glanced past Allie to flash an exceedingly smug smile at Graham. “With you two.”
“So it’s like that, is it?” Michael’s brows rose, and his expression had enough of a warning in it that Graham had to fight to keep his hands from curling into fists.
“No,” Allie told him, stepping back, bumping her shoulder into Graham’s. “No one’s made any choices yet. We’re taking it slow this time.”
“Shouldn’t be a this time,” Roland pointed out.
“Shouldn’t be a half-Human Dragon Prince in the bathroom,” Charlie reminded him. “Cope.”
Roland snorted. “Then speaking to that-it’s a little early to make plans for after, don’t you think? If his mother is as terrifying as reports indicate, we might not survive.”
“Joe.”
When Joe looked over at her, Allie gestured that he s
hould smack Roland on the back of the head.
The leprechaun sank back into the sofa cushions. “I couldn’t.”
“I’ve got it.” Stretching out a long arm, Michael did the honors.
Roland dove over Joe to get to him.
Graham could just barely remember his brothers Frank and Evan, the closest to him in age, wrestling like that, using the physical to defuse tensions rising over… over… He couldn’t remember what, exactly, but this was the clearest memory of the time before the fire he’d had in years.
He wanted to blame it all on Kalynchuk, wanted to say it had everything to do with the way his life had been manipulated to create the man the sorcerer required, but he suspected he’d been a willing participant in dividing his life into the years before and after the fire. What thirteen year old wouldn’t have wanted to stop hurting so badly?
“Hey! If the little guy is going to eat the bigger one, I should get to eat the leprechaun!”
Jack’s voice drew Graham out of the smoke-filled corners in his head, and Michael’s roar of laughter banished the flame.
Still laughing, he bucked up against Roland’s hold. “You wish you were going to be eating me, don’t you, littler guy?”
“Bite me,” Roland snorted, catching Michael’s flailing hand and pinning it beside the other. “Say uncle.”
Dimples flashed. “Auntie!”
“Close enough.”
Jack frowned as the two disengaged and dragged themselves up onto facing sofas, breathing heavily. “So no one’s being eaten?”
“Not tonight. Or rather this morning,” Charlie amended glancing at her watch. “I am totally bagged and I have a gig tomorrow night, so at the risk of doing Allie’s job and sounding like the grown-up, it’s time for bed.”
“Well?”
Standing at one of the windows facing the street, Allie leaned back against Charlie’s warmth as her cousin wrapped her arms around her and rested her chin on Allie’s shoulder. “Well, what?” she asked just as quietly, aware of Michael and Roland and Joe asleep on the sofa beds behind them. Jack had the other bedroom-everyone seemed fine with giving a teenage Dragon Prince his space-and David had stayed in the loft.