The Future Falls (47 page)

“My phone.” Charlie explained after he left, less well tipped than usual, she suspected, if both his and Auntie Catherine's expressions were anything to go by. “I threw it in the river back in Calgary, but it has a shot of the bears on it.”

“The bears I need to call and tell you I've Seen?”

“That's right.” She passed it over.

“Those are memorably ugly bears.”

“Aren't they. You've Seen them after they've been worn out being held by a baby. A single baby. Not twins.”

“And you're telling me this why?”

“Because you actually having that vision, the exact vision I needed, when I needed it, was too much of a coincidence. Yay, time travel.”

“This will never work, Charlotte.”

“It already has worked.” Tongue half out to lick cheesy grease off her
fingers, Charlie frowned. “It has to be the bears, doesn't it? Because if you tell me you've Seen me and older Jack, I might miss the ‘hi I'll be your god tonight' part of the program.”

Auntie Catherine rolled her eyes and passed her a napkin.

*   *   *

Charlie stepped out of the Wood about two meters from Jack's gate. She watched him emerge, watched him change, and watched reluctantly as he clothed himself in gray and purple using stone and the last wild asters of fall. She felt his heart beat faster when he spotted her and hers sped up to match.

“It's done,” he said. “They'll teach me, and they'll make a few trips into the MidRealm to fix some of what they've broken.”

“The ass head?”

With the temperature below freezing, the cloud Jack snorted was half smoke, half water vapor. “It took convincing, he was zero for sixteen on free throws, but, yes, the ass head goes. Once things have been put right, they'll stay home. And speaking of home, I really miss Auntie Mary's apple pie.”

“It's the wear clean underwear charm, adds a certain piquant flavor.”

Charlie wasn't sure if she'd moved or he had, but they were standing so close together the cool October air between them had begun to warm. If she had to trade this Jack for the Jack she sat with on the roof . . . “Damn it! I have to take you further back. Allie has to see you flying over the store.”

“Why . . .”

“Doesn't matter. You've already done it.”

His nostrils flared as they went through the Wood, but she kept him moving.

After dropping him off in the past, Charlie stepped back in and immediately back out again three days later to stand in front of the Emporium and think
“Remember the bears, Charlie.”
at Dan. She was there, in the store, watching Dan do yoyo tricks. If she could've come up with a way to make things easier on herself, on Jack, she'd have thought that also, but she hadn't, so she couldn't. Then back in the Wood and out to pick Jack up by Drumheller where he waited, lounging on the same ridge she'd found him on once before.

Breathing heavily after the climb, she sagged against his side.

“You need to regain your strength.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You asked a great deal of yourself.”

“I had no idea what I was asking of myself.”

“You could've quit once you realized.”

“Forty or four, you still do the show.” She toppled over when he changed, but he caught her before she hit the ground. “Good reflexes.”

“I will never let you fall.”

There were a number of things she thought of replying, but after twenty years navigating the Courts, she figured he was allowed a few definitive prince-like statements. She'd have plenty of time to break him of the habit.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“That's everything, right?”

“Yeah.” He hadn't bothered to dress. A patch of scales glittered in the center of his chest and he rippled when he breathed. He leaned in. She leaned in. Time to see if they had a future . . .

She jerked back. “Oh, crap!”

*   *   *

“And then Jack blew up the asteroid. Are you going to eat that?”

“And then Jack blew up the asteroid?” Allie glared at Charlie as Graham pushed his plate across the table. “We're going to need a little more than that.”

Charlie swallowed a mouthful of pie, sighed, and dug her fork into Graham's untouched piece as she said, “It seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”

“Exploded?”

“First 2007 AG5, then Armageddon.”

Kiren could almost hear Dr. Grayson thinking during the lengthening pause. “Both of them?” he asked finally.

“Both of them,” she confirmed. “Obliterated.”

“I'm not sure obliterated is a scientifically valid observation, Dr. Mehta.”

“Perhaps not, but it's accurate. We're still running the numbers . . .” Phone tucked against her shoulder, Kiren paused to accept a printout from one of the astrogeologists down the hall, both of them ignoring how her hands were shaking. “. . . but it looks like there isn't a piece left out there as big as a basketball.”

“How?”

“No idea. We're showing a massive, unidentifiable energy spike, and then double booms.”

“The Russians? The Japanese? China?”

“Best point of origin we've got, given that we're working around massive amounts of interference from the Aurora Borealis, is somewhere in the upper atmosphere over Alberta.”

“Canada?” Kiren pretended not to hear Dr. Grayson's giggle. It was as much relief as disbelief, and it wasn't as if she hadn't made a few weird sounds herself. “The Canadians don't have that kind of tech. The Canadians are flying fifty-year-old helicopters.”

And keeping them in the air,
Kiren added silently. Points for both engineering and ingenuity.

“My money's on the Chinese,” Dr. Grayson continued. “Or the SpaceX guys. Who knows what they're up to lately, right? Okay.” He took a deep breath, entirely audible over the phone. “Okay. I'll inform the director. I want everything you've got sent to my desk ten minutes ago. Good work, Dr. Mehta, thank you.”

Kiren sent the file as he hung up. Taking a deep breath of her own, she pulled her cell phone out of her desk drawer and flipped through the contact numbers, pausing to stare at one she'd never called. A number with no name, automatically added at 7:43 AM after the night Charlie Gale had spent on her couch. A night she hadn't expected to remember.

Personally, she wouldn't count the Canadians out.

Finger poised over the number, she reconsidered. There was another call she had to make first.

“Come on, really . . . What part of fully operational Dragon Prince slash sorcerer are you not understanding here?” Charlie pushed her empty plate away, angled her chair a little closer to Jack's, and glanced around the table.

As accustomed as the family was to what others might term unusual, the appearance of the new, older Jack had been unexpected. Like the Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup unexpected—not impossible but very, very unlikely. Joe had nearly dropped to his knees and had lost control of his glamour entirely. If Graham had been able to antler up, he would have—a random passerby on the street could've sensed the metaphysical attempt. Edward and Evan had regarded new Jack suspiciously until he changed, then they'd thrown themselves under his wings and into the loops of his tail. Their reaction had gone a long way to defining Allie's, who then considered herself free to have a terrifying freakout about Charlie's weight loss. Although she'd moved to support Joe, Auntie Gwen had been suspiciously quiet.

She'd remained quiet all the way through the severely edited version of Charlie's trip to the future—seventh sons, gods, and Auntie Ruby redacted. Allie, Graham, and even Joe had interrupted, but Auntie Gwen hadn't said a word.

“Twenty years of training in sorcery.”

Until now, Charlie amended.

Hands flat on the table, Auntie Gwen turned a black-on-black gaze toward Jack. “We do not, as a family, allow sorcerers to live. The deal, when we allowed you to remain, was that the moment you stopped using sorcery and became a sorcerer, we would hunt you down like any other Gale male.”

Jack's eyes remained amber, as Human seeming as they ever got. “And you, all twelve of you, meant it sincerely, but it was a justification without substance. I've been a sorcerer, albeit untrained, since I first arrived.”

“True enough.”

“Say what?” Charlie regarded Auntie Gwen's smile and the whites of her eyes with suspicion.

“He's a Dragon Prince and a Gale, Charlotte. That he is also a sorcerer should be the least of our concerns.”

“So that whole we do not as a family allow sorcerers to live?”

“We don't. But times change and I'm very much looking forward to
discussing
the matter of him saving the world with Bea.” Her emphasis suggested that by discussion she meant baked goods at twenty paces.

“Yeah, well, Auntie Bea and I need to work some things out, but I'm not so much worried about her as I am about Auntie Jane. The family response to sorcerers is not a rhetorical response, and you can say times change until
you're blue in the face, but Auntie Jane . . .” Had given her a humbug. One linty candy tossed on the scale shouldn't balance Jack's safety, but Charlie suspected it did. Would.

“Jane . . .” Auntie Gwen picked Evan's shoe out of the butter and handed it to Allie, allowing the name to hang in the air much the way the asteroid had.

Interesting times ahead.

“Is there more pie in the fridge?”

“Gary, are you all right?”

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, murmuring “I'm fine,” over and over into her hair.

“Okay.” And after a minute. “You're squashing me.”

“Sorry.” He took a minute to breath before saying, “That was Kiren.”

“Is
she
all right?”

“She's good. Everything's good.”

“Okay,” Sheryl said again. Gary could tell she had a million questions, and he'd never loved her more when she didn't ask any of them. “I thought you were dealing with the band's sudden lack of a guitarist.”

“Right.” They'd talk later. About leaving home and the world not ending and following dreams regardless. He was amazed at how steady his finger remained as he searched his contact list.