The Future Falls (35 page)

“Yeah, you and Jim Croce have made your point. But we're not all going to die.” Pretty sure he'd face-plant if he moved away from the supporting wall, he put everything he had left into his voice. “We'll stop it.”

“You don't know . . .”

“I know us. We stopped an old god, and it had intent. Like you said, this is nothing more than a big rock.”

“That's what I said, didn't I.” A deep breath later, she met his eyes and nodded. “Go us. You look like tired personified.”

“You should see it from this side.” It was too much effort to roll his shoulders and work the growing knots out of his back. Way too much effort to remind his body that his skin shape didn't have flight muscles. “Why don't you look tired?”

She made a grab for the quilt as she stood. “Musician. I'm used to going to bed at dawn. Also, I bleed caffeine. Come on, let's get you to bed before the traffic chopper flies over and we get another note about public nudity.”

“I thought Auntie Carmen dealt with that,” he said allowing Charlie to take his arm and support part of his weight.

“She did. Allie says next time she's sending Auntie Bea.”

“Mean.”

“Little bit.”

“Are you going to tuck me in?” The humming probably meant something. Given the way he stumbled when it stopped, he suspected it was holding him up.

“As much as I admire your tenacity, no. But I will walk you to your room and see that you make it as far as the bed.”

“Good.” Jack bounced off the wall as they went around the hall corner, bounced off the edge of his door, bounced as he landed on his bed. “Ow. I think I found my Flames belt buckle.”

“Dork.”

Since he might have been imagining her kiss against his hair, he didn't open his eyes to check. Burying his face in her scent as she spread her quilt over him, he fought to stay awake long enough to ask, “Did my uncle fly past this mo . . .”

“The dragon lord flew over about half an hour before Jack landed.” Allie passed Charlie a piece of toast. “I'm surprised he didn't notice.”

“Winnipeg and back? He's pretty baked. Plus . . .” Charlie licked at the plum jam dripping down her wrist. “. . . I don't imagine there's much meat on a Siren.” Dropping to the sofa beside Graham, she helped herself to his coffee as he channel surfed. “So, what's new this morning.”

“Report of a sea serpent in Boston Harbor,” he grunted, “but it's all hearsay, no actual evidence. And there's a rumor of a Spurs player with an ass' head.”

“A
call me Bottom
ass' head? Or is he just an ass? Because in professional sports that's not exactly rare.”

“Full midsummer night's dream team.”

“Huh.” Charlie ate the last of her toast and thought about it. Given that the younger members of the Court had borrowed from Tolkien, it wasn't all that surprising their elders borrowed from an older source. “I guess Oberon's a Spurs fan and he's still pissed about them losing the NBA title. Again.”

“An ass head's a little harsh.” Allie sat down on her other side and snuggled up against Charlie's shoulder. “And how do you know so much about basketball.”

“As it happens, that's pretty much all I know about basketball,” Charlie admitted. She caught Graham's hand as he was about to change the channel. “Wait. A giant beanstalk growing at a Staples?”

“At the Staples Center,” Graham corrected. “It's where the Lakers play.”

“Basketball again? Well, that's not obvious or anything.”

“It's like the Courts know there's an asteroid on the way.” Allie shifted, elbow digging into Charlie's side. “But if it's blocked, and since it's unlikely they found a scientist at NASA by way of a bouzouki player, how do they know?”

Charlie could feel Graham's gaze on the side of her head. “Truth,” the
Seether version, began playing, but before Charlie could answer, or decide what exactly she was going to answer, the apartment door opened.

Auntie Gwen was no surprise. That she was followed by Auntie Bea, Auntie Carmen, and Auntie Trisha was. None of them looked happy. Although, Charlie amended silently, Auntie Carmen never looked happy before ten.

“Charlotte.”

Charlie drained Graham's mug. “Auntie Bea.”

“We need to talk.”

S
EATED TOGETHER AT ONE END of the big dining room table, the aunties looked like a tribunal. Truth in advertising, Charlie thought. Standing at the other end of the table, not entirely certain why she'd taken up the position, but fully aware that at least some of the aunties' power could be attributed to force of habit, she gripped the back of a chair hard enough the edges of the wood dug into her palms.

Auntie Bea leaned forward. “You were told not to contact the Courts.”

“How did you . . .” Auntie Gwen's expression answered before Charlie could finish asking. “Of course. Joe.”

“It was obvious the Courts had found out about the asteroid.” Sitting a little separate from the others, Auntie Gwen's position seemed somewhere between sympathy and solidarity. “I asked if he knew how. If it helps, he tried to talk around it.”

“But you kept at him.” She didn't blame Joe.

“The Courts are wreaking havoc, Charlotte.”

“Havoc Lake, north of Thunder Bay?” Charlie forced the fingers of one hand to release the chair and pushed her hair back off her face. “Can't see them doing much damage . . .”

“Enough.” Auntie Bea's eyes flashed black. “Did it not occur to you that this reaction might be the very reason the Courts were not to be consulted? Or did you assume that being Wild negates knowledge gained by those three times your age with three times your experience?”

“Negates? There a reason you're talking like Thor? Specifically, Brannagh's Thor, because I don't remember Whedon's Thor getting to say . . .”

“Charlotte!”

She winced. Magic in a name. “There was a chance the Courts could help.”

“And a certainty they'd react exactly as they did.”

“If you were so certain, maybe you should have mentioned it.”

“If you'd done as you were told,” Auntie Carmen began.

Auntie Bea cut her off. “We don't have to explain ourselves to you.”

“Oh, yeah, because blind obedience is a terrific reason to not make every possible attempt to stop that asteroid.”

“Regardless of the consequences.”

Charlie slapped both hands down on the table. “The end of the world is a pretty fucking big consequence! If the world ends, I want to know I did
everything!
” Auntie Carmen and Auntie Trisha inched their chairs out.

Auntie Bea did not. “The family will survive!”

“Mine won't.” Graham moved to stand by Charlie's side. “I have family who aren't Gales. I may not be able to bridge the gap Jonathon Gale drove between us when he murdered my parents, my sisters, and my brothers, but I don't want my family to die.”

Interesting. Breathing heavily, Charlie straightened, her shoulder brushing Graham's. He usually called his ex-employer by his alias, Stanley Kalynchuk. By using Jonathon Gale, he'd reminded the aunties that the family owed him. Charlie doubted the family would care, but it was a ballsy move.

Drying her hands on a tea towel, the normality of the action adding weight to her words, Allie stood by Charlie's other side. “My father isn't a Gale by blood.”

Auntie Bea waved off Allie's father. “His only sister died childless years ago. He's the end of his line as it usually is with those who marry in.” She shot an accusatory glance at Graham, willing to ignore for the moment that arriving at the seventh son of a seventh son required a lot of uncles.

“My point is,” Allie told her, her voice the voice of a woman who wrangled two-year-old twins twenty-four/seven, “the family no longer exists in isolation. We have connections to the world.”

“A very low percentage of the whole,” Auntie Trisha pointed out, “and roughly the same percentage of the world will survive without our help.”

Auntie Carmen nodded. “If we concentrate on saving the family, the family survives. If we try to save everyone, everyone dies.”

Charlie would have pointed out that was a pretty fucking dismal way of looking at things, but since it was Auntie Carmen, that went without saying. “Am I asking you to try and save everyone? No. I'm telling you that you can't stop
me
from trying.”

Auntie Bea straightened, shoulders squaring, chin rising. “Are you challenging me, Charlotte?”

“We haven't enough time to split our resources,” Auntie Gwen said hurriedly as Allie's hand closed around Charlie's arm. “We need your power on our side, Charlie.”

Oh, sure. It was Charlie when they needed her. “I'm not taking sides!”

“Because you're Wild and unconstrained?” Auntie Bea growled. “Another way of saying irresponsible.”

“If you want Wild,” Charlie began. Allie's grip tightened. Two years of baby lifting had made her a lot stronger than she looked.

“And speaking of Wild, Jack should be here.” Auntie Bea glared around as though she could find him in the shadows. “We're well aware of who actually spoke to the Courts. Where is he?”

“He's sleeping,” Allie answered before Charlie could lie. And she would have lied for Jack. “He flew to Winnipeg and back last night to take care of a Siren.”

“Get him.”

“He's exhausted.”

“And he wouldn't be if he hadn't agreed to contact the Courts for Charlotte.”

“He didn't do it for me,” Charlie said. “We decided together.”

“Together?” Auntie Bea rolled her eyes and the words dripped disdain. “You're thirty, he's seventeen, and he would do anything for you.”

Charlie breathed in. Breathed out. Let nothing at all leak into her voice. “Are you saying I took advantage of him?”

Eyes locked on Auntie Bea, Charlie felt Allie release her and step back, reaching past her to pull Graham away, quieting his protest with a soft, “Not now.”

Auntie Bea laced her fingers together, eyes beginning to darken.

“Bea.” Auntie Gwen's voice barely managed to break the silence. “In this
family, Jack's an adult. He's fully capable of taking responsibility for his own decisions.”

“If he's an adult, he should be here,” Auntie Trisha pointed out a little too emphatically.

Auntie Carmen stood. “I'll go get him.”

Charlie heard Auntie Carmen's clothing rustle as she walked toward the door. Heard the soft sound of her crepe soles against the hardwood. Heard metal move against metal as the door opened. Heard the difference between hardwood and tile as she walked along the hall to Jack's bedroom.

Allie said something, but she wasn't talking to her so Charlie didn't listen. And she didn't look away from Auntie Bea.

Heard another door open. Heard the strong, slow beat of Jack's heart. Heard hers slow to match it. Slow, but pounding so hard she had to clench her fists to contain it.

“I can't wake him,” Auntie Carmen said when she returned. “He's fine, I checked, but he's too deeply asleep to wake. It's a dragon sleep, not a Gale sleep.”

“Wake him,” Auntie Bea said.

“No.” It was as definitive a no as Charlie could make it. A gauntlet of denial thrown at Auntie Bea's feet.

Are you challenging me, Charlotte.

You're fucking right I am.

Auntie Bea flinched as though she'd been struck, as though Charlie's response had physical form. Then she drew in a deep breath and snarled, “You remind me so much of Catherine right now.”

“Do I?”

“She thought she was too big for the family as well.”

Charlie felt Allie's fingertips brush her arm, but she'd started moving before Allie'd reached out and was halfway to the door before she heard her name.

“Let her go,” Auntie Gwen advised as Charlie grabbed her gig bag in one hand, tucked her boots under her arm, and yanked her jacket off its hook. “Let them cool down a little.”

“I do not need to cool down, Gwendolyn. I . . .”

Charlie slammed the door on Auntie Bea. Heard the boys start to cry and winced. Consequences. But Allie and Graham would be fine. Allie anchored
second circle and she'd stood up to the aunties for Charlie's sake before. And if the aunties tried to use either Jack or Graham for leverage, they'd be reminded of who'd sent Jack's mother home. Oh, yeah, Allie could handle the aunties.

But Charlie couldn't stay. Not if she ever wanted to come back.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs to pull her boots on. Glanced at the mirror as she passed to see two golden dragons. With little experience judging the age of dragons, she assumed that the length of the mustaches meant one of the Jacks was significantly older. “If wishes were horses,” she muttered. The mirror's heart was in the right place, but seeing what she couldn't have wasn't helping.

A familiar voice drew her gaze into the store. Elbows on the glass counter, Joe watched Dan do looping tricks with a pair of yoyos. Dan was definitely cleaner than he'd been and looked to be wearing about half the clothes. He glanced up at her, frowned, and said, “Remember the bears, Charlie.”

When Joe turned toward her, she tried for a sympathetic smile. The look on his face suggested she was a little pitchy. “Don't go upstairs for a while.”

He nodded toward the painting of Elvis on black velvet. “You're not the first to be telling me that.”

*   *   *

Charlie stepped out of the ornamental border and dropped down on the teak lounge next to Auntie Catherine's. “You Saw this.”

“Can you think of another reason I'd be sitting by a hotel pool at six in the morning? Alone,” she amended after a moment. She nodded at the glass-topped table between them. “The coffee's yours.”

The cardboard cup had been charmed to stay hot. Fortunately, Charlie could care less about how long ago it had been brewed. “This isn't Vegas. Where are we?”

“Los Angeles. There's a singer/songwriter I enjoy who's playing at the Hotel Cafe on Friday and I dislike changing time zones at the last minute.” Her bracelets chimed softly as she twitched a fold of her batik skirt then chimed significantly louder at a
get on with it
gesture. “So, talk.”

Charlie pulled off the lid and stared at her reflection in the coffee. “Auntie Bea said I was like you, too big for the family. And now I think of it . . .”
She looked up to see Auntie Catherine watching her, wearing what seemed to be an interested expression. “. . . that's a weird way of putting it. Too big?”

“Our circle is larger . . .”

“Oh, dear lord, I feel a Disney song coming on.”

“. . . making the family a subset of the Wild,” Auntie Catherine continued, ignoring her. “Socrates is a cat. All cats are not Socrates.”

Fighting her way out of a sudden flashback to grade eight math, Charlie frowned. “They're Socrates and we're the cat?”

Auntie Catherine sighed and crossed her ankles. She was wearing opalescent silver-gray nail polish the same shade as her hair. “It isn't time for you to be on your own yet,” she said, avoiding the question.

“And yet you're always after me to . . . How did you put it? . . . slip Allie's leash.”

“This isn't about Allie. Go home.”

Because it was, by auntie standards, more of a suggestion than a command, Charlie returned a less than definitive answer. “I can't.”

“You can. I Saw you there.”

“I don't care.” She finished the coffee and crushed the cup. “I'm not going to be tamed by Auntie Bea.”

“On the one hand, good for you.” Bracelets chimed again. “On the other hand, she's frightened. They all are. The asteroid is outside their circles, and they don't want the world to end any more than you do.”

“I doubt that,” Charlie snorted.

“Well, they don't want
their
world to end,” Auntie Catherine acknowledged. “It amounts to much the same thing.”

“There's a lot of people in that qualifier.” She watched dawn tint the ripples in the pool pink and orange. “I'm not ready to stop trying to save them.”

“You've made that quite obvious. If you'd pressed your point, Bea couldn't have stopped you. All four of them working together might have been able to, but I'm not sure they'd have realized that in time. I'm not sure Gwen wouldn't have stepped away in the end.”

“I have never used my voice against the family.”

“Of course you haven't. Isn't that what I just said?”

Her half smile looked entire false. “Did you challenge Auntie Jane? Is that why you left?”

“Don't be ridiculous, Charlotte. I've challenged her authority on numerous occasions, but I've never challenged
her
. I play the long game and my sister is as capable of holding a grudge as my granddaughter. Someday, when I've Seen enough, I'm going to want to go home.”
To die.
For a moment, Auntie Catherine looked old. “But that's me.” The moment passed. “You, however, you need to stop sitting around, watching your ass spread, and feeling sorry for yourself.”