Nearly two weeks after ritual made it safe enough for hugging, so Allie launched herself off the floor and into David's arms. He felt like home, and under the faint scent of what was probably very expensive cologne, he smelled like...
... the woods. Like trees and leaf mold and growing things and rotting things, and since the paper tag on his suitcase suggested he'd just gotten off a plane and then, knowing her brother's aversion to being without wheels, out of a rental car, that wasn't good. It wouldn't have been exactly wonderful if he'd walked the Wood to Calgary because the last thing David needed to do right now was start exhibiting wild talents, but it would have been better than the alternative.
She backed out to arm's length to stare up at him only to find him frowning down at her. "What?"
David shook his head, breaking the light around him into patterns that suggested more than the movement of his hair. "Something's..."
"Allie?"
It was almost funny to watch David's expression change. He wasn't used to people being able to sneak up to him. Although, technically, Joe wasn't people.
"I found the flashlight." He held it up, looking from her to David, brows drawn in. He had to know David was a Gale. The Fey always knew. "Did you get the... you know."
"It's okay, Joe. He knows." Allie touched the overturned sugar bowl with the edge of her shoe. "This is my brother David. David, this is Joe."
"The leprechaun?"
"Yes, the leprechaun," Joe sighed.
"You're tall for a leprechaun."
If Joe had been impressed by David's potential-and most people who could sense it were-that canceled it out. He set the flashlight on the counter and rolled his eyes. "No shit."
David studied him for a long moment; long enough that Joe began to fidget and Allie began to think about interrupting. Then he turned toward her, one dark brow rising. "You gave him a key?"
Joe's right hand jerked forward and down, covering the front pocket on his worn cords. Allie, used to not being able to hide things from David, sighed in turn. "Yes, I gave him a key."
"So you're staying."
Staying? That seemed a little extreme. Although, if Graham had... But he hadn't. "I'm not leaving."
Her turn to be studied. Just as Allie was about to demand an explanation, he said, "I see."
He saw more than she did, and he seldom shared.
"I hate it when you do that."
"I know." He grinned then and stepped past her, holding out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Joe. Welcome to the family."
"Uh, thanks?" Joe glanced over at Allie, looking a little nervous as his fingers disappeared inside David's grip. She didn't blame him. Joe might be tall for a leprechaun, but David was big for a Gale and everything he could become was right there on the surface.
"David!"
He wasn't as big as Michael, though. Allie grinned as David moved Joe carefully out of the way just before Michael charged through the back door and caught him up in a hug. Michael had matched David's six one at sixteen but had still been skinny and muscled like a whippet, the fastest running back in their high school's history. By twenty, at six five, he'd begun to put on bulk and by their graduation, he had the size advantage in every way that mattered. Michael was just Michael as far as Allie was concerned, until times like this when he had his arms wrapped around David's torso and the force of his embrace lifted her big brother's feet off the floor.
"Michael. Tool belt. Ow!"
"Sorry." He backed up a step, smiling so broadly both dimples were as deep as they got. "I thought you weren't going to get here until tomorrow!"
"If I'd arrived tomorrow, you'd have been ready for me."
"Well, if you'd arrived earlier today, you'd have been able to..."
"Michael," Allie growled. "His choice."
"Fine. Whatever." Michael spread his hands, flashing the pale green paint smeared across one palm. "I guess we're not hiding anything. We're not hiding anything are we, Allie?" he asked leaning out around the blockade of David's shoulders.
She was hiding a sorcerer from a dozen Dragon Lords and the aunties, but since she planned on telling David about that, it hardly counted.
"No," she said brightly, "we're not hiding anything."
"Liar," David snorted.
"You can't count things you haven't been told; you just got here. But since you are here..." Allie put one foot on the sugar bowl as it rocked from side to side. "... help."
"There's a better chance of success," David told her, dropping to one knee, "if you have a plan going in."
"Foreshadowing," Allie muttered. When he glanced up at her, she smiled. "What?"
His eyes narrowed.
"There's tongs," she told him. "They're silver.""
"Technically, a monkey's paw is a neutral relic."
"I don't care. It creeps me out, and it's staying in the basement." David stopped so suddenly on the landing that Allie nearly ran into him. "What?" Leaning around, she realized he was staring at the charms. She'd gotten so used to them that she barely saw them anymore.
"Strong protections."
"You think?"
"It's unlikely Gran was this afraid of something."
About to remind David that the aunties didn't so much not know the meaning of the word fear as redefine it for their own uses, Allie traced one of the three charms that locked into the wards and suddenly understood. "Not fear. Gran had no family here to support her. She knew something was coming, and she knew she'd have to face it alone. This... All this..." Allie waved a hand at the door. "... is just a way of filling in the empty spaces. I mean, she might have gone wild, but she was still a Gale."
The force of David's regard drew her attention off the charms and up onto his face. "What?" she sighed.
"You've changed."
"Oh, for..." Allie decided Joe had the right idea with the eye rolling. Gales produced the most self-centered males in the universe. The moment they weren't the center of someone's attention, that someone had to have changed. "Roland said the same thing."
"Did he?" David was wearing his puzzle solving face. "What did he say about these charms."
"Nothing."
"And Charlie?"
"I don't think she noticed them."
"You don't think that's strange?"
"Maybe." Allie shrugged. "It's Charlie."
David considered that for a moment, then nodded. "Fair point. But Roland is all about details. He should have had an opinion. A theory."
"He's not you."
"Clearly."
That sounded so obvious, David had to mean something else. "And?"
"What distracted him enough that he missed all this?"
"Does it matter?"
He made a face Allie didn't recognize and opened the door.
Looking past him, she saw Roland rise, turn...... and charge forward.
The first impact rattled the windows. The second...
Allie threw herself between them, a palm flat on each heaving chest. "Stop it! Now!"
She shouldn't have been able to hold them, not with the amount of horn they were showing, but David backed up a step, breathing heavily through flared nostrils and Roland held his ground, one hand rising to wipe at the blood trickling down from his forehead.
Allie took a deep breath and turned to face her cousin. "What got your sweater vest in a twist?" she demanded.
To her surprise, David answered. "You. Odds are, he's been on the edge of manifesting since he got off the plane."
"That's ridiculous. He's second circle."
"And you're crossing."
Allie spun on one heel to glare at her brother. "I am not."
"Then explain this," he growled, his gesture took in the obvious outline of antlers rising over Roland's head and her position between them.
Her impossible position between them.
Unless she had another cousin hiding in the sofa cushions, something had sent Roland into full-on protective mode in the presence of another male. A more dominant male. Who wasn't a part of the second circle.
"Coming up the stairs, that sounded like..." Michael paused just inside the door, took in the tableau, and said, "Allie, do you need me to get David out of here?"
"What?" Allie glanced between her brother and her cousin, realized the implications, and stepped back, allowing the two men to put some distance between them. And her. "No. We're good."
"Who is he?" David demanded. His nostrils flared, and Allie wondered if he could smell Graham on the upholstery.
"He isn't," Allie told him, managing to include both Roland and Michael in the silent instruction to shut up. "He chose to leave."
"Did he understand..."
"Yes!"
David's eyes narrowed. "What happened?"
"I don't know. He got angry, and then he..."
"Allie."
She paced over to the window, stared down at the street, and prayed for dragons to come roaring out of the setting sun and rescue her.
No dragons appeared.
Stupid dragons.
"I'm not ready to cross."
David snorted. "Apparently, you are. And I need to know..."
"Wait." Hands shoved in her pockets, fingers folded around her phone, she turned to face her brother, her cousin, and Michael. The total lack of other women in the room was just... wrong. "If I'm crossing, then why haven't the aunties been on me about it? Auntie Ruby called this morning and she never mentioned it."
"Auntie Ruby's senile."
"True, but..." Her protest trailed off as she realized the aunties hadn't been phoning. Not for the last couple of days. No questions about Gran. No wondering when she was sending Roland home. No third degree about Graham. Allie pulled out her phone and stared at it. Flipped it open. Hit the third number in her speed dial. It rang once. Almost once.
Her mother skipped the salutations and got right to trying to run her life. "This is a special time, Allie.You're going to need family around you, so if you can't come home, I should fly out there."
"Can we talk about this later, Mom? Busy. Love you. 'Bye." She closed the phone. "They know."
"It's your journey," Roland explained. "If they're going to travel it with you, you have to invite them along."
"You got here yesterday," Allie pointed out. "You could have said something."
"In my own defense, there's a lot more happening here than my reaction to you."
Allie shuddered. Between her mother and her cousin the whole thing sounded too repulsively like those You're a Woman Now booklets they had to read in grade four health class. Allie had been appalled that kind of thing happened to Gales as well and had dragged Katie and Michael off after school to wait outside Charlie's grade six classroom. Charlie'd not only corroborated the information but pointed out that when it stopped happening, a Gale girl became an auntie.
"What happens to the boys?" Allie had asked suspiciously.
Charlie'd shrugged."Us."
"Hang on," Michael raised a hand, claiming the pause. "Graham's not-wasn't-family. How could he tip Allie over before the aunties approved him?"
"No idea. Haven't met him." David's tone suggested that would change ASAP. Allie tried to honor Graham's choice and not dwell on how a visit from her brother would serve him right.
"Roland?"
Roland frowned, winced, and patted at the edges of the swelling as the movement pulled at the injury on his forehead. "He has power, but it barely registers. I thought it was residue from the hexes."
"That would be the hexes from the sorcerer that Allie's hiding from the aunties."
"And from the Dragon Lords as well."
"Dragon Lords?" David looked even less happy. "Michael told me there were dragons."
"Dragon Lords," Roland repeated, heading for the freezer. "All twelve of them. It's a Dragon Lord family reunion right here in Calgary."
"They're interested in the sorcerer's enemy," Allie said hurriedly before David's expression translated into an actual response. "The enemy that's coming through soon from the UnderRealm. Also, they are the sorcerer's enemy. And they don't want us involved any more than the sorcerer does. Can't think why."
"Maybe they've met Auntie Jane," Michael snickered.
"Possible," she admitted, "but too easy. I think we're missing something."
"You're missing a basic sense of self-preservation," Roland muttered, pulling out a bag of frozen peas and pressing it against his forehead. "When the aunties find out..."
"I'll take full responsibility."
"And at least this explains why you and Charlie went along with such a dumbass idea," David pointed out to his cousin. "Crossing to second circle moves Allie into the dominant position."
"What about me?"
"Michael, you've said no to Allie once in your entire life, and I won't have sex with you because I'm gay is more a biological imperative than a bid for independence."
"I also tried to stop that thing with pumpkins at the Halloween football game in senior year."
"Fine. Twice." David sat down and stretched an arm along the top of the sofa. "Now, enough stalling; let's hear it, Allie. All of it. From the top. The sorcerer. The Dragon Lords. The Fey gate. Graham."
"Actually, it starts with Graham..."
"How symmetrical."
She had no idea how he made that sound like a threat.
Somehow, so one of the reasons I'm hiding a sorcerer is so we can change the aunties' opinion of sorcery just in case you go darkside even though I don't think you are but they do sounded scarily stupid when saying it out loud to David.
By the time she finished, the lights were on, Joe had come up from the store and been told to stay, and Michael had started frying sausages for supper.
"... and then Charlie went to get her hair colored, and Joe and I started to put the paw away, and you showed up. That's all of it."
"If the paw bothered you so much, why did you wait so long to get rid of it?"
Allie sighed and emptied her mug. David's questions had turned a relatively simple story into the extended dance version of metaphysical Calgary. "I guess because I kept thinking Gran was going to show up and demand to know what I was doing with her store."
"And now you don't believe she'll be back?"
"And now, I don't care. She had to have seen this coming. Some of it anyway." Crossing to the kitchen, Allie put her mug in the sink and got three sweet potatoes and three Yukon Golds out of the bin. "She left it to me to deal with. I'm dealing with it. Michael, pour the grease off into the other frying pan and we'll use it for the potatoes."
"Allie."
Peeler in one hand, she turned just far enough to see David take a deep breath. "Allie, we destroy sorcerers. We leave visitors from the UnderRealm alone because most of them are either dangerous, or crazy, or both. No offense," he added to Joe.
Joe shrugged, the motion pushing him even farther down into the armchair. "None taken."
"Now, as you're no longer protecting Graham," David continued, rising to his feet, "and this sorcerer could save the world from an impending apocalypse and only convince the aunties he'd done it to gain more power for himself-which, by the way, would probably be the truth-you need to call them."
"David..."
"Don't worry about their reaction. I'm here to help you deal with the fallout."
"No."
"No?"
Allie picked up the cleaver and halved the first potato. "We know whatever's coming is dangerous. We know the sorcerer wants to destroy it. We know the Dragon Lords seldom agree, so we don't know they all want to destroy it. If we leave whatever's coming to the Dragon Lords by calling the aunties in and allowing them to destroy the sorcerer, then the Dragon Lords, no longer focused on a common enemy, could just as easily start fighting among themselves and not stop the sorcerer's enemy."
"The aunties will be here to stop the sorcerer's enemy."
"No." The cleaver went through the potato and into the cutting board with a crack. "We leave visitors from the UnderRealm alone, unless they threaten the family directly. The aunties will just haul us all home."
"And?"
"And I'm not leaving until I find out what happened to Gran."
"Allie..."
"And even if I cross fully over into second circle, which won't happen until someone chooses, I couldn't stop them if they tried to make me. So I'm not calling them. And neither are you. Either of you."
"Allie..."
"And stop saying my name like I'm five years old and I don't know what I'm talking about!" She threw a double handful of diced potatoes into the frying pan and whirled around to face her brother. "You should have chosen, David. You may have too much juice for ritual, but technically, you're still third circle. And I'm not!"
The crack of thunder was probably outside the apartment although the sudden smell of ozone suggested otherwise. The fairy lights around the pillar flared and went out, and the glasses in the cupboard chimed softly.
David snorted and tossed his head. Plaster dust drifted down from two lines gouged in the ceiling.
Allie folded her arms, glowered, and fought the urge to say, Don't make me come over there.
"What's going on?" Joe whispered leaning closer to Roland.
"Metaphysical head butting," Roland muttered, fingers white where he gripped the sofa cushion.
All the hair on her body had lifted-which was, Allie realized in the corner of mind still considering such things, a very creepy feeling-and every instinct urged her to give in. Gale boys got what they wanted. And maybe that was why some of them went bad. Maybe all David needed to stay on the straight and narrow was not to get his way all the damned time!
Brows drawn in, she held his gaze and gave some serious thought to smacking him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.
From his reaction, that may have shown on her face.
He blinked. Took a step back, shook himself, and the corners of his mouth twitched slightly. "All right, fine."
The air between them nearly twanged with the sudden release of tension. As she wondered if punching the air might be a bit over the top, David sighed. "You've made your point, Allie, but that sorcerer needs to be dealt with. Lest we forget, all power corrupts."
"Even yours?"
"If I make the same decisions, yes." This was the brother who'd explained the world to her as she grew up, carefully and objectively. "If he isn't abusing his power yet, he will be."
"So we make a preemptive strike before he's done anything?" She turned back to the stove and took the spatula from Michael's hand. "That hardly seems fair," she pointed out, stirring the potatoes.
She could hear David rolling his eyes. "Protecting innocents..."
"From something he might do? And what happens to those innocents when his enemy comes through and he's not there to stop it and it goes nuts on the city? Huh? What happens then?" She turned down the burner, slid a lid on the pan, and faced her brother, using the spatula for emphasis. "First we make sure it's stopped, then we reassess."
"We reassess?" Now the power struggle was over, it seemed he could poke at her again.
"Don't make fun of me," she sighed, returning part of her attention to the potatoes as Michael slid the sausages in the oven to keep warm. "I didn't exactly have a good day."
His hands closed over her shoulders and she felt the press of his mouth against the top of her head. "I'll deal with Graham Buchanan tomorrow, Allie-cat."
She could have said, no. She could have told him to let it go and he would have. But she didn't.
"It's different for everyone," Roland explained, setting down his fork. "It can happen almost instantly-one day you're third circle, the next day you've met someone and you're second-or it can take months to fully cross. Given Graham's choice, Allie's likely to take a while."
Allie sighed and chased a pea across her plate without much interest in catching it. "Can we not talk about me."
Michael squeezed her knee under the table and turned to Roland. "How did you cross?"
"It's different for men. It's always fast and it's usually tied to choosing."
"But you haven't chosen."
"He procreated," David pointed out dryly.
"So Rayne and Lucy sort of chose you?"
"Well..." Roland's entire face turned pink. "Rayne essentially threw me into a bedroom at her parent's anniversary party and said make baby now."
"Make baby now?" Michael snickered and snagged Allie's last sausage. "What did you say?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Yeah, sure?"
The pink darkened. "Why not? She was on my list, but I knew she'd hooked up with Lucy, and I was ready, but there wasn't anyone I wanted to choose, so we did, and I crossed, and Lyla's wonderful. And there's the added benefit," he added pointedly to David, "that it got the aunties off my back."
"Allie's got their attention currently," David pointed out. "All they know is that she's met a man who isn't family, and that tipped her over-the missing details have to be driving them crazy."
If the day had an upside, that was it. The aunties had driven Allie crazy for as long as she could remember; she was all in favor of getting some of her own back. It didn't even begin to make up for losing Graham-she pushed her plate away-but it helped. In some ways, she'd never felt closer to her grandmother.
"Unusual for it to happen before she presented him for approval, though. Could the sorcerer have set it in motion? He has to like the idea of one of his tied to one of ours."
"It's possible," Roland admitted. "I wasn't here at their first meeting, he may have had an artifact with him."
"Hello!" Allie waved a hand between her brother and her cousin. "I was there, and there was no artifact. We just connected. Okay?" Apparently she'd connected a little more strongly than Graham had but Stanley Kalynchuk had nothing to do with any of it.
"I think it had more to do with the cumulative effect of the power gathering in the city," Roland continued after a moment-during which Allie just knew they'd all been waiting for her to cry. Or throw things. Well, not Joe, he was mostly trying not to attract attention to himself, and not Michael because he knew better, but David and Roland. "There is, in a relatively small area, a sorcerer, twelve Dragon Lords, and an active Fey gate until Allie closed it down. Not to mention Joe's presence in the store plus the other Fey wandering in and out to collect mail."
"Mail?"
"Gran set it up so the Fey with more complex lifestyles use the store as their mailing address," Allie explained.
David turned a raised eyebrow toward Joe. "Complex lifestyles?"
"Uh, well, there's a loireag and a pair of corbae-sisters." He started to look a little panicked as he ticked them off on his fingers, coming up short for the number of boxes. "Some brownies who work in Lower Mount Royal and, you know, Boris."
"Boris?"
Allie refused to look at Michael, refused to think about them speculating on Gran's relationship. "Minotaur."
"Minotaur?" David repeated. "There's a minotaur roaming around cattle country?"
"It sounds so dirty when you say it like that," Michael snickered. Allie punched his arm.
"Only the loireag's been in, though, and she got here before the rest of you. It's like I told Allie..." When Joe glanced her way, she nodded. "... they don't like change and three Gales-four now-that's going to make them right cautious."
"But they will be back?" Roland asked.
"Oh, sure. Eventually."
"Good. From the paperwork I've managed to sort, the mailboxes are one of the more consistent income streams." Roland stood and began gathering the plates. "I, personally, am more concerned with why a sorcerer is interfering in the family matters of Dragon Lords."
David shrugged. "Because he's a sorcerer and power blinds them to their own egos."
"I was hoping for something a little more specific."
"Maybe I should go talk to him."
"Maybe you shouldn't," Allie muttered, heading for the fridge and the rhubarb pie Katie had sent through as soon as Auntie Jane's attempt to control the situation with blueberries had been ditched.
"Does David have to do everything you say now?" Michael wondered, proving he hadn't lost little brother timing by leaning away just as David aimed a swat at the back of his head.
"No. And why shouldn't I go talk to him?"
"Sort of," Allie amended, sticking her tongue out at her brother because sometimes five year olds have the right idea. "And since he's basically an ass, you'll lose your temper and either you'll cream him, which puts us back at we have nothing to stop the Dragon Lords' little bad..."
"Except me."
"You don't even know what it is, so he's still the better chance. Or you'll lose your temper and go to take him out and he'll cream you because he's been living in the office for a while now and probably has all sorts of nasty stuff stored there, or you'll go to take him out and then Graham will try and take you out and you'll flatten him and I don't want you to do that."
"I thought he chose..."
"He did, but..."
"You don't stop loving someone just because they choose differently."
They all turned to look at Michael, who was pulling ice cream out of the freezer. "What?" he asked, closing the freezer door. "I was just thinking that sometimes it sucks to be a Gale girl.You know, with the whole choice thing and all."
Allie reached over and brushed his hair back off his face, but before she could call him on it, her phone rang. Thinking it was weird his hadn't arrived yet, she pulled it out of her pocket, checked the screen, said, "Charlie." And answered it.
"Hey, babe!" Charlie wasn't quite shouting over the background noise. "I've got the perfect thing to take your mind off your woes. The band's playing tonight at The Paddock."
The band? "You've had one rehearsal."
"Good thing I've got more buck than a Brahma, then."
"What?"
"Never mind; the pithy country saying thing's harder than it looks. We start at eight and play a forty-five minute set."
She reached out and lifted Michael's arm to check his watch, so she didn't have to change hands on the phone. "That's in ten minutes!"
"Okay, eight-thirty, but that's my final offer because it's a work night and our keyboard player has to be on the job at six. This is kind of a shake-down flight, a favor to our drummer Curtis because his brother-in-law's cousin owns the bar."
"And he gets a lot of country music fans in on a Wednesday night?"
"Probably not. Which is why I'm calling you. Bring the boys." She paused while something large and metal crashed in the background. "Tell Roland to leave the sweater vest at home."
"Okay, we'll..." Then she remembered. "You have Gran's car."
"Use David's rental."
"How do you know David's here?"
"My mother called. Then your mother called. Then Auntie Meredith called. And then I locked my phone in the trunk for a couple of hours. So you're crossing. Thought so. Congratulations and look at the bright side. If Graham had chosen differently, you'd have probably been knocked up by morning."
"Thanks for putting crushing heartbreak in perspective." She moved the phone away from her mouth. "Charlie's band is playing tonight. She's asking us to be warm bodies."
"Country band," Roland expanded before David could say anything. "Probably country and western."
David looked as close to astounded as Allie'd ever seen him. "Our Charlie? This, I have to see."
"We'll be there."
"I should," Joe began, but Allie raised a hand and cut him off.
"We'll all be there."
Charlie snickered. "Because you said so."
"Pretty much."
"Try that second circle thing on me, Ms. Bossypants, and I'll tie your hair to the bed. Later."
She hung up to find all four men watching her. "What? Joe was just unsure, and the rest of you had every intention of supporting Charlie."
Graham could drive past the store, but he couldn't park the truck. The wheel wouldn't turn, the brakes wouldn't engage, and the gears wouldn't shift. He tried both sides of the road. Same problems. He suspected that the door wouldn't open if he tried to throw himself out. Which he was not planning to do. There were limits to how far he'd let the hollow feeling in his gut take him.
He didn't know if the problem had been caused by the choice he'd so foolishly made or the direct order from his boss to stay away from both the store and Alysha Gale, but the result was the same.
The odds were better it was something to do with the freaky way the Gale family had gone all or nothing on him. His boss expected to be obeyed; he wouldn't bother wasting time and energy on a tag, not with the Dragon Lords watching for him.
He wasn't personally concerned with the Dragon Lords. They knew about him, they had his scent, but they'd also proved to be as terrified of little old ladies interfering as everyone else.
Pointless to peer at his forehead in the rearview mirror, searching for Allie's mark; he could no more see it than he could the glyphs under his shirt. Pointless, but he looked anyway.
On his third run up to the store, heading west, heading home before the evening passed from disappointing to pathetic, he saw the door open and a crowd of people come out. Allie, Joe, and Roland he recognized. The very tall young man was probably Michael, but he couldn't identify the dark-haired man in the heavy brown leather jacket. If he wanted to know what was going on, questioning the leprechaun would still be his best bet, but it looked like Allie had decided to keep the changeling close.
No way he'd been replaced already. Even Gale girls didn't work that fast.
Did they?
He moved over to the curb lane, cruising through parking spaces empty with the street's businesses closed for the evening, and slowed as far as the compulsion allowed.
The unknown man was a man of power. Business, political, metaphysical; exactly what kind of power it was impossible to tell, but Graham had spent too many years working for Stanley Kalynchuk not to recognize the attitude that came with power when he saw it. What he didn't see was any kind of loverlike interaction between this guy and Allie.
All five of them piled into a gray sedan, clearly a rental, the unknown man driving and the probable Michael riding shotgun. An illegal U-turn pointed them back into the city.
Graham let a car and a truck get between them, then he followed.
When he saw them pull over and park in front of a good ol'boy kind of bar, he managed to make a last-minute turn down a side street before he passed them and gave himself away. An immediate left took him down the ubiquitous alley along the back of the buildings. No surprise, the bar had a small parking lot in behind. In it, the lime-green Beetle was obvious among the pickup trucks.
Charlie, the cousin, was a musician.
The Beetle out back and family and friends pulling up out front seemed to suggest she was playing tonight.
He could walk in and pretend he just happened to be out for a drink. From the outside, it certainly looked like a place a guy would go to drown his sorrow after he inadvertently set off a magic ritual that royally screwed over his love life.
Except, he'd been told explicitly not to go near Allie.
And maybe he didn't want to talk to her when she was surrounded by three other men-one a man of power, one a Gale, one fucking huge-and a full-blood Fey.
So maybe he'd just park and sit here and wait for Charlie to come out.
"You knew she was a Gale when you started seeing her."
She hadn't sounded entirely unsympathetic.
The inside of The Paddock was pretty much what the outside had promised-a not very large, not very well lit room that smelled a lot like beer with a faint overlay of damp denim. The bar, a scarred wooden slab complete with an elderly woman precariously perched on a stool and glaring into her drink, filled most of the wall by the door. There was a dartboard tucked into the front corner by the left wall, a row of booths against the right wall, a scattering of tables, a small dance floor, and a stage tucked into the far left corner just barely large enough for the four musicians setting up on it.
"When she said red," Roland muttered beside her.
Allie took another look at the stage. Charlie's hair blazed under the stage lights. "Wow, that's very..."
"Charlie," Michael finished, pushing two tables together in the middle of the room.
"I was going to say scarlet," Allie admitted, claiming a chair, "but Charlie works."
There were two other groups of people at the tables, thirteen all together and clearly there for the band, as well as four people in one booth and two in another who were just as clearly there for the beer.
Charlie looked up as they sat down, waved, set her guitar on a stand, and made her way over to them. The jeans and the cowboy boots were country, but Allie wasn't so sure about the Joss Whedon is my master now! T-shirt. She ruffled Michael's hair in passing, kissed Roland and David, looked speculatively enough at Joe that Allie had to grab his arm to keep him from bolting, and then cupped Allie's face between her hands.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." It only hurt when she breathed or blinked or... Allie couldn't think of anything else that started with "b" except bleed and she wasn't going there.
"Really? Because I've got some great hurtin' songs lined up."
"And emo-country's supposed to help?"
"They tell me it's cathartic." Charlie shrugged, kissed her, and released her. "Although since most of the solutions seem to be drinking yourself to death, I wouldn't consider them instructive."
"Do you know enough country songs to make up a play list," David wondered.
"Darlin', I have been listening to nothing but country since I arrived."
"And how long ago was that?"
"This is me, sweet cheeks. I could boogie till the cows come home."
David glanced around. It looked like he expected those cows to appear. "And when does that happen?"
"Nine forty-five. Like I told Allie, it's a work night." She waved an answer to the call from the stage... "And speaking of work..."... turned on one bootheel... "Like them? I bought them this afternoon."... and headed back to the front of the bar.
The music was better than Allie'd expected.
"That's the beer," Michael explained when she leaned close and yelled her opinion into his ear.
"I've only had half of one."
Dimples flashed. "Just think how much better it'll sound when you finish!"
"I could call in a favor from the local Horsemen and get the guy investigated." David tossed back the last of his whiskey and set the glass down with a definitive thud. "He publishes a tabloid, that's suspicious activity right there."
Allie rolled her eyes, reached across the table and smacked her brother in the arm. "Let it go, David!"
Considering that he'd spent hours in concealment at all times of the year while waiting for targets to appear, sitting in his truck out back of a bar in May wasn't particularly arduous. He'd long ago learned how to slide into a semi-meditative state that disconnected the waiting from the actual time spent.
He roused when the back door of The Paddock opened and checked the time. Twenty-three minutes made it unlikely that the skinny, pale-haired man who stepped out into the parking lot was part of the band. When he moved away from the door and fumbled out a pack of cigarettes, his reasons for leaving the bar became clear.
Graham sighed, rubbed a hand over his face pushing his hair back, and wondered what the hell he was doing. His orders had been clear. If he'd been able to park at the store, would he have rung the bell? Gone in?
Would he have been asked in?
Probably not.
Moot point on disobeying, then.
He'd never even considered disobeying a direct order until Allie.
"Less than a fucking week," he muttered as the skinny, pale-haired guy blew out a long stream of smoke while staring up at the sky.
The smoke dissipated almost instantly, caught in a gust of wind.
Wind?
Up until right this moment, the night had been uncommonly still.
Pulling his Glock from the hidden compartment in the glove box, Graham tucked it into the back of his jeans, and got out of the truck just in time to hear the sound of heavy wings beating at the night. The sound should have faded into the distance. It didn't. It stopped suddenly.
"Did you fucking hear that, man?" The smoker gestured, the lit end of his cigarette drawing lines against the darkness. "It sounded like the world's sails were freakin' luffing."
There were a lot of guys from the east coast working in Alberta. This one sounded well lubricated.
"What the fuck was it?"
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Graham muttered. Just this morning-it only felt like a week ago-a Dragon Lord had dropped by the store. To talk. To be told how it was supposed to behave while in a city with Gales.
The bar was full of Gales.
Three confirmed Gales and a leprechaun and a man of power. Full enough.
It could be at the bar to talk some more over drinks and stale pretzels.
Supporting the bands Gales were in could be part of their expected behavior.
Hell, maybe Dragon Lords liked country music.
And that was the kicker: Dragon Lords.
The wings had almost been in sync. Almost, not quite.
He'd heard two for certain, possibly three.
Allie felt them before she saw them. Felt the sizzle along the back of her neck, felt the air currents in the room shift to accommodate them. When she turned, all three of them were staring. Eyes nearly as brilliant a blue as Graham's, golden hair brushing his shoulders and skin tanned golden brown. Eyes a glittering copper, dark hair cropped short, and skin like burnished bronze. The third gave her a moment to look, then settled dark glasses back over eyes as red as his hair. Against skin skim milk pale, the lenses looked too dark to see through.
The clich��d black jeans, biker boots, and leather jackets over T-shirts that matched their eyes detracted a bit from the effect.
"Oh, that's disturbingly gay," Michael smirked. "They look like the chorus line from Villains on Broadway. What?" he asked when Allie turned toward him. "I wondered what you were looking at."
David reached out and turned his head back toward the stage. "She's looking at something very dangerous," he said quietly. "When the shit hits the fan, I want you under the table."
Michael shot the area in question a dubious glance. "I don't think I'll fit under the table."
"Try. Allie..."
"Hey, I'm not picking a fight with three Dragon Lords. They'll have to start it."
"I don't think that'll be a problem."
If Ryan was the youngest, then these were the next three up, banding together as protection against older brothers and the indulged younger. Adjusted for swagger, they had the same elegance of movement as Adam. The same certainty of strength. The same awareness of their power.
The prickly instability that came from being near the bottom of the pecking order, that was new.
They had something to prove, and Allie would have hated to face them on her own.
Good thing she wasn't on her own.
It didn't matter that she hadn't finished crossing, it only mattered that she was the dominant female. She settled more securely into herself, feeling for the family connections. Roland would anchor, Charlie would direct, David would use. They had no one from first circle with them, but hopefully, with David in the fight, it wouldn't last long enough to matter.
And David would appreciate a chance to hit something.
She reached out just far enough to make sure Charlie was aware of what was happening, then she waited.
Bootheels rang against the scuffed hardwood floor as the Dragon Lords advanced.
Allie rolled her eyes. With the band giving all they had to a Blue Rodeo cover, they had to be amplifying the sound for effect. Trying to psych her out.
"This city is not yours, Gale girl."
The heat of his hand went through hoodie and T-shirt, intending to burn when it reached her shoulder. She didn't let it.
Turned.
Stared up at Red Eyes, flanked by his brothers, and sighed. "Nonsmok ing establishment."
"What?"
Allie gestured at the two thin streams of smoke coming from his nose. "You're not allowed to smoke inside."
His lip curled. Given that his jaw was essentially human, he'd managed to fit in an impressive number of very sharp looking teeth. "And you are not funny." She could smell her hoodie scorching. "What conceit allows you to believe you can tell Princes of the UnderRealm how to behave?"
"You're not in the UnderRealm."
"That makes little difference to us."
"It should."
"Why? Because you say so? Support your claim, Gale girl."
"Or?"
Even with the glasses on, she could tell he blinked. "Or?"
"Or what? You've made an implied threat; I'd like to hear the specifics."
Blue Eyes and Copper Eyes exchanged a glance that eloquently said, "This isn't going quite the way we'd imagined."
Red Eyes smiled. "Or we will burn this bar down with everyone in it."
"That's pretty specific," Allie admitted.
And three things happened almost simultaneously.
Charlie began to play an entirely different song.
David stood up and said, "Get your hand off my sister."
Allie spilled the dregs of her beer, sketched a quick charm with the liquid on the table, slapped one hand down in the middle of it, and reached for Roland with the other.
Then she opened herself up to the available power.
As it surged up and through her, Red Eye swore and snatched his hand back. Charlie's song caught the power and shaped it and fed it to David, a continuous stream he didn't have to think about or conserve; all he had to do was use it.
"It's like the rest of us know where the key to the gun cabinet is kept, but David's always got a loaded gun in his hand," Allie'd explained to Michael way back when the family'd first started to worry about David. "But he can fire all his bullets..."
"Rounds."
"Shut up... and then he has to reload. If he's connected to a ritual, the bullets are unlimited. If the ritual is directed toward him, suddenly he's not holding a metaphorical pistol, it's a rifle."
"But I thought your family didn't like guns?"
"Do you even know what metaphorical means?"
Blue Eyes flew backward and slammed down on the table in one of the occupied booths. The occupants, clearly veterans of many a bar fight, snatched their drinks out of the way and looked unimpressed. Copper Eyes hit the ceiling and then the floor in quick succession. Red Eyes opened his mouth and roared out a geyser of flame.
Someone screamed.
The flame folded back on him. Ignited two chairs.
Allie reached for Michael, wrapping him in protections.
David put the chairs out. Caught Copper Eyes as he scrabbled to his feet and smacked him back down again. Ducked under the swipe of Red Eyes' claws and used that momentum to spin him in place. Flicked enough power at Blue Eyes to knock his feet out from under him and slam him into the table again.
Wait a minute? Claws?
"David! They're changing!"
They'd be stronger in their true forms. Not to mention one hell of a lot bigger.
Allie wasn't sure when, but Roland had moved to stand behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist. She leaned back into his strength and opened herself further.
Charlie had the whole band playing along.
David sketched a circle in the air. It flared out and in again, enclosing all three Dragon Lords in Gale power.
Blue Eyes staggered to his feet, one of the men in the booth helping him out with a kick in the ass. Copper Eyes stood slowly, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. Red Eyes took off his glasses. His eyes were blazing.
Literally.
Allie could feel their combined power beating against the enclosure.
It wasn't going to hold.
This place had to have a back door. She should have just told Michael to run for it the moment the Dragon Lords strutted in through the front.
She reached farther, but even with Roland digging deep, she couldn't get more.
Red Eyes smiled as flame engulfed him.
Just a little farther...
Copper Eyes disappeared in fire.
She knew there was more power out there. If Charlie were closer. If Roland could hold them both.
Blue Eyes laughed and burned.
Then Allie sank into a touch that anchored her farther from her center than she'd ever been. Allowed her to reach farther than she ever had. The power surge brought her up on her toes, grinding back against Roland's body. She could feel Charlie fighting to control it, but they needed more. More family. More than one third circle, one second circle, her and David.
"What scares the old fools most about David is that they have no idea of his limits." Gran's voice in memory.
Allie threw the power to her brother, wild and unshaped and trusted him to control it.
David tossed his head, horns scoring the ceiling, the amount of power he was handling pulling them further into the physical. Into the actual. He raised his hands and closed them into fists.
The power around the Dragon Lords slammed inward.
The fires went out.
David smiled and said, "You have a count of five to get out of here."
Red Eyes stared down at his hands with their very human fingernails in disbelief. "This isn't possible!"
"One."
Blue Eyes ran.
"Two."
Copper Eyes grabbed his brother's shoulder. "Viktor, come on!"
"Two and a half."
Viktor stretched out a hand and his sunglasses slapped up into his palm. "This isn't over, Gale!"
"Three."
"Viktor!"
Viktor snarled but ran for the door.
"Four."
It hit him on the ass on the way out.
Probably Charlie.
Allie let one final pulse spread out over the bar, easing the hysterical and the only mildly impressed alike into sleep; everyone not a Gale, or Michael, or a leprechaun...
"Joe!"
"Full-blood Fey," Roland laughed in her ear as Joe was suddenly sitting at the table again. "No one sees him if he doesn't want them to."
Joe blushed.
"Now that's what I call power chords." Charlie unplugged her guitar and jumped off the stage trailing two broken strings. "Good thing I was using a pick, or I'd have trashed my fingers. What'd you do to my audience?"
"They'll wake up in about five minutes and have forgotten the whole thing."
"A little high-handed," Michael pointed out as he crawled out from under the table, looked down at the stains on his knees and sighed. "I don't even want to know."
"Gale girls become aunties," Roland reminded him. "And it's..."
Michael raised a hand and stopped him. "Told you. Don't want to know."
Allie could feel Roland's arousal; it should have been answered by her own. It wasn't... quite. Part of her felt almost as though it were still somewhere else. The other part-well, that part was on board with seeing things through. As soon as they got somewhere a little more private, they'd finish the ritual.
"David, Charlie can..."
He shook his head. "Lines are too close. Not risking it with you crossing and this much power." He fumbled the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to her. "Take the car. I'll try and be back by morning."
He was at the door, ducking to clear the spreading tines of his rack, when Michael started moving. "I'll go with him."
Allie grabbed his arm and hauled him to a halt. Here and now, the size difference was no difference at all. "We're in a bad neighborhood in a big city. He'll find someone."
"What, a hooker?"
"It has to be a woman, Michael, you know that. Charlie?"
"I'm good for now." Her fingers caressed the full curve of the dreadnought. "When she's plugged in and played that hard, she vibrates."
"Yeah, but..."
"Trust me, Allie-cat..." Her kiss was sweet and wound Allie's responses up tighter. "... I got into the music. Besides, someone needs to be here when this lot wakes up."
"But the Dragon Lords..."
"Won't be back tonight. They've scurried off with their tails between their legs."
"There's nine more," Allie reminded her.
"And you worry too much." Charlie took the keys out of Allie's hand and gave them to Michael. "You drive."
Allie nearly missed the look he shot her, a little preoccupied with Roland's teeth in the edge of her ear. Nearly. "Oh, give me a break, Michael. It's not your first ritual. Joe, we'd all feel better if you slept at the apartment tonight."
"I don't..."
"You won't win, so don't even try," Michael sighed, heading for the door. "And you're riding shotgun. Voice of experience; don't look in the backseat."
Shoulder blades pressed hard against the wall between the men's and women's washroom, Graham opened his eyes, stared up at the grimy stucco on the hall ceiling, and tried to catch his breath. He'd been on his way into the bar when he'd felt...
Allie.
Her touch sank past the surface and wrapped around what it meant to be Graham Buchanan. Were he a thirteen-year-old girl, he'd describe it as a perfect synergy of souls. As he wasn't, the best description he could manage involved a gasped, "Oh, my fucking God!" as his knees nearly gave out, and, about three minutes later, after being caught up in a surge of sensation, a spreading damp spot on the front of his jeans. Only years of experience had kept him from dropping his weapon as his release slammed through him.
The sudden sound of a snare drum crashing to the floor brought him out of his post what-the-hell-just-happened fastest-response-time-of-his-life lassitude, giving him the energy to stagger the final two meters and shove open the door to the bar.
"About time, dude."
The blue-haired woman he'd seen out on Beaconsfield and as he'd left that morning-Cousin Charlie-was now a red-haired woman, although the red was not a shade usually associated with hair. She was up on the stage bending over the drummer who seemed to have fallen off his stool and taken the snare with him as he headed for the floor.
Which was when Graham realized the rest of the band was also on the floor.
And the four groups of bar patrons seemed to be...
The elderly woman slumped over at the bar snarled in a lungful of air and snorted it out, her volume impressive.
He could see neither Gales nor Dragon Lords, but the air stank of sulfur and hot beer.
"Hey! Don't just stand there like a damp bump on a log; give me a hand."
She seemed to be trying to get the drummer back on his stool.
She had the drummer suspended in the air, unfortunately between her and the stool.
Graham tucked his weapon away and stepped over the keyboard player and around behind the drum kit. He stood the stool upright, then held it steady as she settled the drummer down on it.
"I'm Charlie, by the way." She picked up the drummer's sticks and folded his fingers around them. "We were never actually introduced." A charm on both hands held the sticks in place. "You're the moron who made the wrong choice."
"Graham."
"That's what I said." Straightening, she pushed her hair back off her face and headed toward the door he'd just come through. "All right, let's get out of sight before this lot starts waking up and wonders what the hell you're doing on the stage."
Following her seemed like the easiest option. "I'd think my presence would be the least of their concerns."
"They won't ever know they were out."
"Some of them are on the floor."
She flashed a grin over one shoulder as she stepped out into the hall, looking so much like Allie for a moment his chest ached. "Yeah, but they're in the band."
"What happened?" he asked as the door closed behind him.
"We kicked Dragon Lord ass."
"How many?"
"Three. If the eye-to-scale thing holds: blue, copper, and red."
"Trent, Delsin, and Viktor." Kalynchuk had names for them all, although Graham wasn't entirely positive that they weren't names but merely convenient labels. "And, from what I've heard, Viktor's a nasty son of a bitch." He was talking mostly to give himself time to absorb the information that, with even odds, the Gales had beaten three Dragon Lords. Wait... "Who was the other man with Allie?"
"Jealous?"
"No."
"Liar. But don't worry. That was David, her big brother. Oh wait, maybe you should worry, all things considered."
Four Gales. But only two women; that wasn't the way the family worked. Or it wasn't the way his boss thought the family worked.
Charlie waved a hand in front of his face. "Don't zone out on me. I need to know what the hell you were thinking."
"This morning?"
"No, when you got that haircut." Leaning back against the wall, she folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "Yes, this morning."
"I don't want you to go, but if that's your choice, I won't stop you."
"That's my choice."
"I was angry. Allie'd told Roland to keep me in the apartment. I felt..."
"Like you'd been de-balled? Yeah, we get that a lot. Know that we're prone to it going in and realize that's not our intent. And you're not blameless in this, boyo; when she asked, you told her you understood when clearly you didn't."
"Clearly?"
"You're here. And that mess in your pants tells me you're still connected. And that you've been keeping your fluid levels up. Good for you. Hydration's important."
He shifted uncomfortably. "What?"
"When she reached out, she found you. Now that might have had to do with this..." One finger flicked at the charm on his forehead. "... but I doubt it. In fact..." That same finger flicked him again. Harder. "Well, well, well. Isn't that interesting."
"Isn't what interesting?"
"Not my place to say." Her smile had edges. "But that does explain why your touch let her reach so much farther. And considering how much juice she pulled, I can't wait to see what'll happen when you two crazy kids actually get your act together. Doubt that's going to be a ritual my guitar can cover."
"What?"
She sighed. "Just tell me what you're doing lurking around here before I have to get back to three chords and the truth."
"The Dragon Lords..."
"You followed them?"
"No, I was here already. I came to see you."
"Me?"
"I didn't think Allie'd talk to me."
One brow went up. "Good call."
"I thought you might."
"Might talk to you?" Arms folded, she shifted her weight to the other hip. "And tell you what?"
His mouth was dry. He swallowed and wet his lips. "If there was a chance of making another choice."
Her eyes were the exact same shade as Allie's. After a long moment, she sighed again. "If you'd had a chance to talk to Allie tonight-which would probably have happened after David pounded on you for a while-what would you have said?"
"That I... That we could... It isn't as simple as..."
It wasn't simple, that was the problem. Not given what she was and what he did. Wanting her wasn't enough to cut through the tangle.
The other brow rose.
"I don't know," he admitted.
"An honest man." He could see the family resemblance even more strongly when Charlie smiled. "When you figure out what you want to say, I'll make you sure you get a chance to say it." Grabbing his wrist, she pulled a sharpie from her pocket and scrawled a string of numbers on the back of his hand. "If you don't get through at first, keep calling. Sometimes I leave my phone in the freezer. And now..." She cocked her head. "Sounds like people are waking up. I need to get back in there."
"What are you going to tell them?"
"That I went to see a man about a horse." Hand on the door, she turned and grinned. "I'm getting the hang of the cowboy talk."
