The Future Falls (46 page)

“Yes.”

“We made ourselves scarce so we wouldn't run into me.”

“Yes.”

“But you ran into you.”

“Dragon Lord. We don't mind.”

“Okay.” They were giant, warm-blooded lizards who flew, breathed fire, and turned into reasonable approximations of human beings; being able to look themselves in the eyes wasn't even on the list of the strangest things about them. “And if I don't take you back?”

“But you do. Because I spoke to me, remember?”

“Trying not to.” She wrapped her fingers around his and tugged on his hand. “I'm feeling a bit predestined here, but let's go.”

“This is the part I don't get,” he began matching her stride, “because you've never been able to . . .”

Charlie hummed a D, for Dragon, and walked them both into the Wood.

“. . . and I'm larger now,” he finished thoughtfully. “This isn't what I expected.”

It was definitively spring in the Wood, where definitively brought to mind Jonathan Coulton's “First of May.”
And speaking of public sex . . .
Without thinking it through, she'd brought Jack to the beech grove where she'd left Auntie Ruby and the god. While one beech grove looked pretty much like another, she recognized it because her guitar—left behind in the heat of the moment—had taken root and grown into a small tree laden with large pendulous yellow blossoms, filling the air with the scent of spilled beer.

“There've been some recent changes.”

His nostrils flared. “I smell . . .”

“That's the tree.”

“I don't mean the beer. We're not alone here. Should we . . .”

Charlie tightened her grip on his hand, and tugged him back beside her when he took a step toward the trees. “No, we really shouldn't.”

“Ah.” Grinning, he met her gaze. “I thought it smelled like family. Not a sing-along then?”

“No.” For the two years Jack had been an adult, Charlie hadn't sung along in ritual. As it were. There'd been family enough at other times that she hadn't missed it, or she hadn't thought she'd missed it, or she'd been lying to herself the entire time. When she pressed her free hand to Jack's very broad chest, his eyes flared gold and a small puff of smoke billowed out of his nose as if he hadn't been able to hold it back. “Jack?”

“It's me.”

It wasn't. But it was. “It may take . . .”

“Immortal. I've got time.” The smoke puffed out again, and he swallowed.
Unless his tells had changed, he was about to ask her a question he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to. She took a deep breath of her own. “Charlie, what happened to the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale?”

Not the question she'd expected. Although not entirely surprising. “Long story.”

The underbrush rustled. Auntie Ruby giggled.

“Okay, short story,” Charlie amended. “I'll tell you later.”

*   *   *

The moment they stepped out of the willows on the riverbank across from the zoo, Charlie's phone rang.

Jack flinched and muttered, “Didn't miss that.”

“Auntie Jane,” Charlie told him, glancing at the screen. She tossed the phone over her shoulder into the river. “Don't want to know.” Didn't want to discuss it. Not until all the loose ends had been neatly tied and clipped. “So this is the day Jack . . . you, disappeared. I woke up and you were gone.”

He hadn't gone yet. She could feel him . . . them . . . in the part of her heart that was his . . . theirs. It made the memory of the loss all the more painful.

“Ow.”

Given the muscle sheathing his arm, no way her punch could have hurt him. “So, go.” It seemed Singing them out of the Wood had roughed up her throat again. And made her eyes water. “Convince yourself to go back to the UnderRealm and learn from the Courts for twenty years.”

“Charlie.”

She was not going to look at him. He could wait for the rest of his immortal life. It looked like that clump of goldenrod wasn't quite dead.
Way to hang on there, goldenrod.

“I have to go because I've already gone.
He
has to go. I don't intend to ever leave you again.”

“You're leaving me right now,” she muttered, actually heard herself, and winced. Heat blooming across her cheeks and up her ears, she turned to face him. “Sorry. That was self-indulgent at best and petulant at worst.”

“What's the difference?”

“Only one of them rhymes with flatulent, but the point is, it's not about
me.” She ran her hand back through her hair and frowned at the amount the breeze gathered up and took away. A quick charm and individual hairs flared in the air like a flock of fireflies—it wasn't a good idea to leave body bits lying around. “Because if it was about me,” she continued as the ash drifted to the ground, “it'd be about a grilled cheese sandwich and a plate of sweet potato fries. Go. Tell yourself what you have to in order to make this work.”

“Are we okay?”

“You and me?”

He cocked his head, a dragon movement translated to skin. “I don't see another you and me standing here, do you?”

“We're . . . Jesus, Jack, don't you think
are we okay
is a little premature? We've been apart for twenty years, we're strangers.”

“Look in my eyes and tell me that.”

“Seriously?”

His hands completely engulfed her shoulders. Charlie wasn't used to feeling petite. It was strange although not entirely unpleasant. “Look in my eyes and tell me we're strangers.”

Closer to his pupils, his eyes were a lighter amber although that might've been only the contrast between the amber and the black. His lashes were as long and thick as she remembered, tipped with gold. In them, she could see the absolute certainty that they were meant to be together. In spite of that, they were not the eyes of a seventeen year old. There were faint lines at the corners, and she could see the top point of the scar. He had history on his face they hadn't shared. “Eye-to-eye, Jack, we're strangers.” Before he could speak, she pressed her palm against his chest and nearly got distracted by the muscle. The steady beat that matched her own pulled her back. “Heart-to-heart, though, we're okay.”

He wrapped his hand around hers, bent his head, and kissed her fingertips. Twenty years in the Courts, she reminded herself as he backed up and changed. What else had they taught him?

Except for the mustaches which were now a good meter and a half long and curled at the ends, his dragon form had changed less visibly than skin. He was still enormous, golden, and powerful—only more so. “While I'm there, I'll stop the petty mischief the Courts have been pulling in the MidRealm.”

“It stopped when Jack, young you, disappeared.”

A great many teeth flashed. “I know.”

Of course he did. That was when he'd been there. In the Courts. With his younger self. “So, after . . .”

Wings spread, he paused.

“. . . where do we meet?”

“I'll find you. I can
always
find you.”

“That'd be kind of stalkery if you weren't a big golden dragon,” she muttered, watching him fly away. Rising up over Calgary. Growing smaller in the distance. She bit her lip until it bled because if she called him back, he'd come.

Heart-to-heart, they were the kind of love song that had drunks crying into their beer.

Charlie considered making the ten-minute walk to the Emporium and grabbing some food, but couldn't remember if she was already there. Didn't matter, she had an errand of her own to run and now, or whenever she currently was, was as good a time as any.

Spring continued to bust out all over the Wood, but at least the giggling had stopped.

Jack watched his younger self rise up into the air in answer to the perceived threat of a passing dragon and remembered being that young. That intense. That certain he'd do anything, sacrifice anything to save the world. Not for the world's sake, but for Charlie. He'd been appallingly easy to manipulate.

Twenty years without her.

Twenty years meant nothing to an immortal, his younger self had told her that over and over, but he'd only lived for seventeen years when he made the choice.

Twenty years had lasted a lifetime.

He pivoted on one wing and headed into the sun, his younger self straining to keep up.

He could still feel the press of Charlie's hand against his chest, even though it had pressed skin not scales.

His younger self hadn't asked him, wouldn't think to ask him, if it would be worth it.

They both knew the answer.

“What the hell have you done to yourself?” Auntie Catherine grabbed Charlie's arm and dragged her into her hotel room.

“I haven't . . .” Charlie stumbled as she was spun around to face a full-length mirror.

“How much weight have you lost?”

It took her a moment to realize it wasn't a magic mirror. Charlie frowned and her reflection frowned with her. She looked like a bobble head, her skull out of proportion, her teeth too big for her face. Fingers shaking, she unzipped her jacket and tugged up her T-shirt. Her ribs looked like a xylophone—two, actually, one on each side—her breasts were hanging loose in the cups of her bra, and she had no idea how her jeans continued to defy gravity given the absence of anything resembling hips. Hip bones, yes. Hips, no. “Like the song says,” she sighed, “no one gets to live consequence free.”

“And what song might that be, Charlotte.”

“Not important, and I'm paraphrasing anyway.” As the T-shirt billowed down into place, she stepped out of the mirror's line of sight and dropped down into the desk chair. And swore.

“Of course it hurts.” Auntie Catherine passed her a pillow. “You have no meat on your ass. You have seconds to convince me not to call Alysha.”

“She's taking your calls now?”

“Charlotte.”

“It's a long story. Or it will be.” Charlie made grabby hands at the cup of coffee Auntie Catherine had just poured, took a long grateful swallow, and started at the beginning. Reconsidered and jumped ahead to Jack disappearing. Paused while Auntie Catherine ordered food.

“I'm not hungry.”

“You've forgotten that you're hungry. Considering how you look, your brain has begun to interpret hunger as the normal way you feel. Go on.”

So she continued and got through babies, ritual, and taking the seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale into the Wood before Auntie Catherine stopped her again.

“You nearly killed yourself to discover Allie and Graham's youngest becomes the god who begat the Gales?”

“Seriously, who says begat?”

“Charlotte.”

“That's what it sounds like.”

Auntie Catherine crossed her legs, studied her pedicure, and said, “I'm less surprised than I suspect I should be. Go on.”

Going on meant Jack. What Jack had done. What Jack was doing. What needed to be done. Charlie got through it, set her empty mug down on the desk, and went into her big finish. “So you need to call me, the me of now and not the me that's here, and tell me, her, you've Seen two bears that look like . . .”

The knock on the door was professionally diffident, but the call of
room service
impossible to ignore.

The smell of the carrot-and-ginger soup pulled Charlie up out of the chair before the cart was entirely in the room. Unable to get around Auntie Catherine to the soup, she ducked under her arm, snatched up a warm cheese bun, and devoured half in one bite.

“If you choke, I won't save you,” Auntie Catherine pointed out. “Slow down.”

“Ms. Gale.” He was an older man, in his forties Charlie guessed, and he held out a bulging manila envelope. “This arrived at the hotel for a Ms. Charlotte Gale in the care of Ms. Catherine Gale and your room number. Front desk had me bring it up.”