The Future Falls (36 page)

“I'm . . .”

“I still haven't Seen the impact.”

The words dropped between them like pebbles dropped down a well. Charlie listened to the echoes for a while, then she said, “So there's still hope.”

“There's always hope, Charlotte, that's the point of the story.”

“Yeah, well my story's a little more complica . . . Oh, crap!” The lounge rocked back as she stood, scraping against the concrete tiles loudly enough to flush a pair of birds from the shrubbery. “I told Jack I wouldn't leave again without talking to him first.”

One hand raised to shade her eyes, Auntie Catherine grabbed the open edge of Charlie's jacket with the other, her grip strong enough that her fingers dimpled the leather. “I find it interesting that mentioning hope leads you to Jack. And Jack, if anyone, should understand trouble with relatives.”

“I'm betting Auntie Bea has the courtyard staked out, waiting for me to come back.” Charlie refused to be drawn into a discussion of Jack and hope because there wasn't any. Nor was she going to mess up the fragile relationship they'd managed to balance between friendship and the happily ever after they couldn't have by talking about it with Auntie Catherine. “Can you take me through the mirror in his room?”

“Alysha has me blocked. I can't get into Calgary.”

That wasn't a no. “You don't need to. Just point me in the right direction and give me a shove.”

She smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in her skirt. “Alysha will know you're back.”

Still not a no. “I'm not worried about Allie.”

“Given the block, it's possible that the others will feel the way open and once they've pinpointed the location . . .”

“I won't linger.” Charlie took a deep breath and was very, very careful
not to let anything that might possibly be considered coercion leak into her voice. “Please, Auntie Catherine.”

“Why not. I have nothing planned until Friday.”
I want to help, but I'll be damned if I let you see that.

Charlie pretended she didn't hear the subtext. Safer that way.

Tossing her braid over her shoulder, Auntie Catherine stretched, slipped into the Italian leather sandals sitting beside the lounge, and walked to the edge of the pool. “I'll meet you in the Wood.”

Then she stepped into the water.

And disappeared.

“Okay . . .” Charlie picked up her guitar and stepped back into the ornamental border. “. . . that was unexpected.”

“It's a reflective surface, Charlotte.” Auntie Catherine looked wilder in the Wood. And completely dry. “If I can be Seen, I can pass through it.”

“Then you didn't need the viburnum you planted in the courtyard,” Charlie realized.

“I knew that before I got to Calgary.”

“Why were they . . .”

“For you, of course.” The
idiot
was too obvious to qualify as subtext. “Now, let's go reassure your dragon.”

His name. Charlie's voice. Jack snapped from sleep into full consciousness.

“Whoa! Flame down, kiddo.”

“Sorry. I thought . . .” Actually, he didn't know what he'd thought. Suspected he hadn't. Reaching out, he repaired the sleeve of her jacket and the edge of the gig bag. “How long was I out?”

“Not very long. A couple of hours.”

“Okay, that explains why I still feel like I belly flopped off a cliff. Onto gravel.” He shuffled back, using his elbows to squash the pillows into shape behind him. “What's wrong?”

“The aunties are pissed we told the Courts.” She shifted position on the edge of his bed, frowned, and shrugged. “Kind of understandably given the way it turned out. Anyway, Auntie Bea's on the warpath, so I'm not going to be around much for the next little while.”

“If she's trying to . . .”

Hand on his chest, she pushed him back onto his pillows. “She's not. But I might if I stay. They're all on edge because of the asteroid, and since they can't push at it, Auntie Bea's pushing at me.”

The Gales didn't work the way dragons did. If a dragon took out a more powerful dragon, they became the dragon to beat. If Charlie took out Auntie Bea, the Gales would close ranks against one of their own who upset the order of things and the line between Wild and too different to belong was already pretty narrow. “And your impulse control sucks.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

They realized her hand was still resting on his chest at the same time. Jack grabbed for it, but Charlie pulled free.

“. . . I'm using it all for other things.”

“You don't have to.” When her brows rose, he sighed. “Okay, whatever. If you're not going to be around, what're you doing to do?”

“Keep trying to find a way to stop the asteroid. And deal with the mess the Courts are causing.”

“And what am I going to do?”

“Same thing. We'll use Winnipeg as your perimeter. You deal with everything closer than Winnipeg and I'll do damage control farther out.” She cocked her head, obviously listening to something he couldn't hear, and began speaking faster. “You won't be able to reach me for a few days, but only until ritual. If I show up and join in, all will be forgiven.”

Jack still couldn't hear what Charlie heard, but Auntie Bea was close enough now he could catch her scent, even through the closed door. He'd never smelled ozone so strongly. “It's that easy?” he asked. If Charlie was ignoring the threat, he could ignore it. For a while, anyway.

Her answering smile was all stage presence. It looked sincere, but he'd seen it before. “It's ritual, and I can rock the hell out of third circle.”

The bed vibrated when Auntie Bea hit the door. Charlie's charm held but only just. Jack slapped up the grid he used to keep Allie out when the last thing he needed was her being mother-y all over his space. There was a lifetime between thirteen and seventeen and, as they put it in the MidRealm, he had some issues with mothering. “When did you charm my door?”

“Before I woke you up.”

“Charlotte Marie Gale, open the door! Now!”

“She sounds really angry.”

Her smile softened, sliding closer to truth. “I have it on good authority she's afraid but finds anger a more fulfilling emotion.”

That sounded reasonable, he guessed, but worrying about Auntie Bea's anger beat worrying about ritual. Jack didn't want to think about Charlie rocking anything that didn't involve him. He stared past her at the end of the bed, found no answers in the lumps his feet made under the quilt, and finally glanced up at her face, trying to look as though it didn't matter. “Should I warn Cameron? About you being in the ritual?”

Her expression slid under his skin and burned. “No need.”

And Jack remembered he was expected to participate in this ritual as well. “Charlie . . .”

Shaking her head, Charlie stood and shifted the straps of her gig bag. If it looked like she was unsure of what she was denying, he wasn't sure what he was asking so, in a way, they were even. “I've got to go.”

Which was when he realized his room was a little short of greenery. “How?”

“I can tear myself away, trust me.”

“No, I mean . . .” He nodded toward the door. “You can't go down the courtyard. She's waiting right outside.”

“Jack Archibald Gale, you do not want to get in the middle of this, young man!” The door vibrated with the force of Auntie Bea's pronouncement. “And she is the cat's mother!”

Charlie glanced toward the mirror, took three steps sideways, and waved at her reflection. Her reflection waved back, nothing more or less than what it seemed. “Auntie Catherine can't break the surface of the mirror to pull me in. Fucking shit!”

“Allie's barred her.” The quilt slid to the floor as he threw himself out of bed. “She knew that before she sent you to Calgary.”

Charlie whirled to face him. He almost backed up, pushed by the intensity. Almost. “Say that again.”

“She knew that before she sent you to Calgary?”

“She knew she didn't need the viburnum before she got to Calgary.”

“Sure, whatever.” Jack didn't see the connection, but he'd seen Charlie tap out that same complicated rhythm on her thigh lots of times over the last four years, white noise to help her put the pieces together. “Look, I could go
out the window, get bigger and you could jump. We ride off into the sunset. Well, you ride. I fly.”

“Shhh. Thinking.”

“You are reaching the end of my patience, Jack Archibald Gale!” The grid over the door flared orange. The varnish began to bubble.

“Leave him alone, Auntie Bea!”

Allie. Stepping up to defend him. Him, but not Charlie. That was weird.

“He's using sorcery to protect her.”

“Of course he is, he's hers.”

That sounded like . . .

“Even if they
can't
do anything about it.”

...the same stupid shit.

“I thought she was yours,” Auntie Bea sniffed.

He'd never noticed before how completely useless his door was at blocking sound.

“She can pass through any reflective surface.”

It took him a moment before he realized that totally off-topic statement had come from inside his room, then he turned to see Charlie staring at . . .

...a completely innocuous spot on his wall beside his second-season
Continuum
poster. “Uh . . . Charlie?”

“I can do this,” she told him, her brows nearly touching over her nose. “I can. It's nothing more than reaching a bigger audience. No, the same audience, but really juicing the arrangement.”

“What are you talking about?”

The argument in the hall paused; they were listening, too.

“Definitely not bigger.” Charlie's left hand rose up by her shoulder, the fingers curling into familiar patterns. “It's more . . . like singing louder and rounder at the same time. No, like shaping the music with the rests. Caesurae. Fermata.” She focused suddenly on Jack's face and, this time, he couldn't stop himself from stepping back when she grinned. “Birdseye!”

“Don't you mean bull's-eye?”

“Not this time. Say something to me.”

“What?”

“Doesn't matter. Words off the top of your head.”

“Okay, um, I still like you . . .”

The notes she Sang slipped between the words.

“. . . more than I should.”

Alone in his room, he sighed, and opened the door. “She's gone.”

As Auntie Bea brushed past him, Allie pulled out her phone.

“Mama Mia” rang out from the floor, muffled by a fold in the duvet.

“Gone,” he repeated. Then added as Auntie Bea turned, “Archibald? Since when?”

Breathing heavily, Charlie sagged against the trunk of an ash, and tried to pull in all the wandering bits of her. She felt like she'd gone through a screen. Specifically, through the holes in the screen. The screen was fine. She was . . . probably okay. “What the hell was that all about?” she snarled, having found the bit that was pissed off at being abandoned.

“Professional development.” Auntie Catherine stood and twitched her skirt into place. “As Auntie Ruby would say, Charlotte, you're lazier than a pet coon. You'd have never gotten there on your own. You wander the world like a metaphysical hobo, playing your music, allowing my granddaughter to call you to heel in her bed, wallowing in the angst of a perpetually broken heart . . .”

“I am not wallowing!”

Auntie Catherine opened her mouth, closed it again, and nodded. “You're right. You're not wallowing. I apologize. The rest stands. You're capable of so much more than you attempt. You accept your boundaries without ever testing them.”

She felt like she'd been playing three-chord songs her whole life. “You could have told me,” Charlie muttered, stripping off the gig bag before she forgot it wasn't actually a part of her—two arms, two legs, one gig bag holding a guitar and clean underwear.