Enchantment Emporium

SEVEN

“But the dragons are searching for the sorcerer, right? So they might have thought Charlie…”

“It doesn’t work that way, Michael. Sorcerers have a power signature for the same reason the store does. The family uses power, we don’t hold it.”

“I know that.”

“Then you know they couldn’t have been targeting Charlie.” Allie glanced toward the bedroom where Charlie was still asleep and snoring. Snoring musically, but definitely snoring. She’d called in the fire and stayed to give a statement before heading home and giving a significantly less edited statement there.

“Yeah, and I also know that your family doesn’t believe in coincidence.”

“I never said it was a coincidence that Charlie was there when the store burned, I just said they weren’t targeting her. Not the same thing.” She opened the fridge door to put the butter away, saw the blueberry pie, and wondered if Auntie Jane thought she was stupid. The thing had more charms than blueberries.

“So if it wasn’t coincidence, what was it?”

“Something else, obviously.” She closed the door a little harder than was necessary.

“Oh, that’s mature, Allie.” Michael’s voice had picked up an edge. “I thought we didn’t keep secrets.”

Sighing, she turned to face him. “We don’t.”

“So tell me what’s going on with the dragons.”

“They’re hunting the sorcerer!”

“Well, they fucking suck at it!” Michael grabbed his tool belt off the arm of the couch and stomped out of the apartment. Gran’s charms kept him from slamming the door but only just. The definitive click of the latch rang in the silent apartment.

Allie frowned. Silent?

“Someone sounds less than gay this morning.” Charlie, in turn, didn’t sound happy about being awake. “And when I say less than gay,” she added, squinting in the spill of light as Allie came into the bedroom, “I mean really fucking cranky. Call Brian. Tell him to come and pick up his boy.”

“It’s not about Brian.” Allie sat on the side of the bed and pushed a bit of indigo hair off Charlie’s face.

“Allie, sweetie, it’s entirely about Brian. One, Michael’s been around family all his life. He doesn’t need that shit explained. Two, the only time you guys ever fight is if there’s a third party involved. And, three, he hasn’t been laid in days, so it’s no wonder he’s cranky. Call Brian.”

“I’m not getting involved in this.”

“As if.”

“Not this time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve got errands to run before I pick up Rol. Go back to sleep.” She bent and kissed Charlie’s forehead to speed the healing of the scorched skin, then slid off the bed.

The mirror showed her holding a crying baby. Allie half thought she saw a lashing tail poke out of the diaper, but Auntie Vera had called to warn her about Auntie Jane’s pie—not the charms, the pastry—and the vitriol distracted her. When she looked again, nothing.

Allie found Joe sitting in the food court in North Hill Center, drinking a coffee and being ignored by a belligerent-looking representative of mall security who clearly did not believe in leprechauns even if they had a Mark’s Work Wearhouse bag and a new dark blue Henley.

“Got a minute?” she asked, sliding into the seat across from him and tracing a charm on the table that had the security guard glaring through her as well.

“Could,” he said carefully. “Why?”

“Did you know there was a sorcerer in the city?”

His eyes widened. “No way, really? Those guys attract trouble like shit attracts flies. You got a sorcerer, and next thing you know you’ve got all kinds of nasty stuff pushing through the cracks trying to take them out.” Jerking his head back, he stared up at the exposed ductwork and the ugly orange light fixtures. “Is that who they’re after, then?”

They were not perched in the ductwork, and Allie only checked to be thorough. “Yes, that’s who they’re after.” She licked dry lips. “It was his guy who threatened you.”

Pale skin blanched. “With the Blessed rounds?”

“Unless there’ve been more threats you haven’t told me about.”

“No.” He rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand, tracing the charm. “This is beyond not good. I mean, if a sorcerer’s pissed at me, I need to be getting out of town. Now.”

“It wasn’t about you, it was about me. About the family. We…” Destroy sorcerers where we find them was more than she wanted to admit to. And not currently accurate anyway. “… don’t get along with sorcerers very well, and you’d just spent time with me. In Gran’s store. But you’re safe now,” she added quickly as Joe jerked away from her. “I talked to him and…”

“You talked to him? To the sorcerer?” Joe’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “About me?”

“No, I talked to his shooter about you, and it won’t happen again.” Seemed like a smart idea to keep the identity of the shooter to herself since Joe and Graham were definitely going to be interacting. “You’re safe, you have my word.” She frowned. “Okay, you’re safe from the shooter, and I’m well aware he’s not the only danger in town.”

The new key on the old brass key chain she’d taken from the store had fallen to the bottom of her messenger bag and it took a moment to rummage it free. She’d barely thought of Joe all day Sunday given the whole sorcerer thing, and Charlie was right. Had been right. Was still right. Given everything that was going down, Joe needed a little more commitment from her. She laid the key chain down between them on the table. “There’s no reason for you to wait outside in the mornings. Or whenever. I’d feel better if you slept in the apartment, even though I don’t know that anyone’s actually after you,” she added hurriedly seeing his expression, “but that’s your choice.”

Joe stared down at the key and then up at her, pale skin paler still, although she hadn’t believed that possible. “Do you know,” he began. Shook his head. Pushed his hair back off his face with fingers that trembled slightly. “Stupid. Of course you know. Put a key in a cradle to keep a baby from being stolen by fairies. Give a key to a changeling, lock him in place. Give him a place. This is more than just a way to open a door. This is… It’s… For me…”

Allie put one finger on the key and pushed it toward him, the tie that linked her to her family throbbing in time to her heartbeat. “I know.”

“Really?” When he looked up, hope made his eyes as Human as she’d ever seen them.

“Yes. Really.” Choosing to live unrooted was one thing; being forced to it was something else again. Allie couldn’t make it right that Joe’s people had used him as currency to buy the few years of amusement a mortal would provide in the UnderRealm, but she could give him a place and people to stand by him. Or occasionally in front of him. Barely breathing, he swallowed once, Adam’s apple rising and falling in the thin column of his throat. Then, finally, he placed his fingertip beside hers and nodded.

“Good.” She glanced at her watch and stood. “I’ve got to get to the airport.” A step away from the table. A step back. “Joe…”

He paused, key halfway to his pocket.

“The sorcerer and I have come to a sort of agreement—mostly involving not doing much of anything to each other—but he did give the order to have you threatened, so if you want to… you know, not, because I didn’t kick his ass, I’d understand.”

Ginger brows drew in so far they almost touched over Joe’s nose. “You could have kicked his ass?”

“By myself? No. But I could have called the aunties in.”

“You still could?”

“Yes, but…”

“You’re playing the long game, then.”

Allie thought about that for a moment. “I guess I am.”

“Then we’re good.” Joe closed his fingers around the key. “More than.”

“Thank you.”

On the way out, Allie took a moment to ask the security guard for directions and sketched a charm on his tie just below the cheap brass tie clip. Moods were easy to adjust, and she saw no reason he should make everyone suffer for his.

Roland’s plane got in on time. He pulled back from her welcoming kiss, gently brushed an eyelash off her cheek, and frowned slightly. “You’ve changed since the last time I saw you.”

Allie snorted. “Rol, last time you saw me was during ritual and you weren’t exactly at your most analytical. And you’re second circle, so it wasn’t like you were paying a lot of attention to me. And it’s only been a week and a half. And you only just got here.”

“All valid arguments, but…”

“Roland!”

They turned together as a tiny, dark-haired woman with a brilliant smile and abundant curves crossed the terminal toward them. She stopped in front of Roland; not so much in front that she was obviously ignoring Allie but enough that it was clear where her attention lay.

“I just wanted to say once again how much fun it was to travel with you and I hope we get a chance to see each other again while you’re in Calgary. You have my number?”

“I do.”

“Good.”

The heat barely masked in her eyes brought Allie forward half a step. Roland started as though he’d actually forgotten she was there.

“Sandra, this is my cousin, Alysha. Allie, Sandra had the seat beside me and we ended up having to share a screen—the plane had the little ones on the seatbacks and hers refused to work.”

“Pleased to met you, Sandra.” Allie smiled, and the other woman blinked. “Thanks for taking care of him for us.”

“My pleasure.” But she sounded uncertain.

“Sorry to cut this short, but airport parking… you know?”

“Yes. Of course.” Frowning slightly, she held out her hand. “Good-bye, Roland.”

Small tanned fingers disappeared inside his. “Good-bye, Sandra.”

Allie smiled again then turned to lead the way out to the car.

After a few steps, Roland fell in beside her. “It wasn’t like that,” he said after a few steps more.

“She wanted it to be.”

“I wouldn’t have called her.”

“Now she won’t mind as much.”

“As much?”

“Hey, you’re still a hunka hunka burning legal love, I couldn’t change that.”

He laughed as they stepped outside. “Like I said, you’ve changed. A week ago, you’d have ignored her.”

“Maybe.” Roland was David’s age, so she might have trusted him not to stray. “But I’m the only family you’ve got out here.”

“Charlie left?”

“No, but Charlie’s… Charlie.”

As the silence extended, Allie couldn’t figure out what Roland needed to think about because it was a family truism that Charlie was Charlie and the rest of them would just have to cope.

Finally, he nodded, said, “True,” somewhat anticlimactically, then added, “the aunties want me to pump you for information. They think you’re hiding something.”

“Do they?”

“They’re certain of it.”

She sighed. “Wait until we get to the car and we can talk.”

“I can’t believe you’re hiding this from the aunties!”

Pedal to the floor, Allie roared onto Deerfoot Trail. “The aunties would only make things worse.”

“That’s not…” He paused, quiet for a moment, one hand gripping the handle built into the dash, knuckles white. “Probably,” he agreed at last. “But that’s not your call.”

“Oh, yes, it is. They sent me out here to deal with things, and I’m dealing.”

“Auntie Catherine left you the store, but you chose to come out here and deal with things, Allie.”

“And I’m dealing.” When Roland opened his mouth to argue, she turned on the radio. When he sighed and reached to turn it off, she grabbed his wrist. “Wait. It’s the local news. I need to hear it.”

“… third fire of the night at Web Wizards on Broadway. Although the fire marshal’s office has yet to issue an official statement, an unidentified source confirms that arson is suspected.”

“Web Wizards,” Allie repeated, sliding the Beetle back into the righthand lane when a hole opened between a transport and an elderly Buick.

Roland turned the radio off as the weather report began. “Allie, we need to discuss you hiding a sorcerer from the aunties.”

“Not now, Rol. I’m thinking. And I’m not hiding him, I’m merely letting him remain hidden.”

“That’s a bad defense.”

“Seriously.” She took her eyes off the road long enough to glare at him. “Thinking.”

Charlie looked up from her guitar as the apartment door opened. “Auntie Meredith called while you were gone, Allie. If I’m still being bounced out of the Wood, they want me to grab a plane and head home so that I can take one of them traveling and they can kick shadow butt. I reminded Auntie Meredith that since the shadow was tied to your song, I was right where it didn’t want me to be and planned on staying. Besides, it took them too damned long to pony up, and I just signed with a band. She told me to quit. I told her you needed me. She asked for what. I said you’d met a guy. That seemed to shut her up although there may have been cackling. Hey, Roland.”

Leaving his suitcase at the end of the sofa, he bent and kissed her. “I see you’re still working the punk look.”

Tucking a strand of indigo hair back behind her ear, Charlie rolled her eyes. “Punk has been over for a long time. I’m thinking of dying it red, though. Red’s hot for country.”

“What country?”

“Not country geographically; country musically. Oh, yeah. Allie…” She twisted to watch Allie cross the apartment. “… Joe showed up. He’s out back helping Michael.”

“And Joe is…?” Roland asked.

“Allie’s leprechaun.”

“He’s not my leprechaun,” Allie protested, heading into the bedroom for her computer.

Charlie’s snort carried clearly though the open door. “You gave him a key; in what way is he not yours?”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t mine,” she muttered as she grabbed the laptop and flipped it open. “I said he wasn’t my leprechaun. I gave him a key, he’s on the edge of family now.”

“The edge at the foot of the rainbow.”

“Let it go, Charlie.” Laptop balanced on one hand as she came back into the main room, Allie frowned down at the screen. “Please tell me girls-withguitars.com isn’t what I… Eww.” It took three tries to hit delete. She didn’t know a lot about guitars but that couldn’t be good for the instrument. “Get your own computer if you’re going to surf for porn!” she snapped, sitting down at one end of the big table and clearing the cache.

Roland wrapped an arm around his backpack as Charlie looked at it speculatively. “Don’t even think about it.”

“I can’t afford a laptop. I have to buy a pickup truck.”

“Because you’re playing country music now?” His right eyebrow rose. His left remained neutral. “It’s not like you to buy into stereotypes.”

“Everyone else in the band has a pickup truck!”

“If everyone else in the band…” Roland frowned. “Uh… Wait, I’ve got it. If everyone else in the band dyed their hair red, would you?”

Charlie snickered. “Way to miss your save, dude. Allie! What’s the anti-country music vehicle?”

“Don’t know, don’t care. Buy a bicycle. Look at this…” When her cousins crowded around, she pointed at the screen. “These are the Calgary Yellow Pages on-line. Nothing comes up for sorcerer, but when I search for wizard, the first three—Appliance Wizard, Blizzard Wizard Heating and Air Conditioning, and Web Wizards—all caught fire last night. The dragons are trying to flush him.”

“Looks like,” Charlie nodded.

Roland turned to stare. “By burning down businesses with the word wizard in the name?”

“Hello! From the UnderRealm,” Charlie reminded him, flicking his ear. “They know less about how the world works than you do.”

“They’ve been sent to find the sorcerer,” Allie interjected before the argument really got going. “They’re supposed to clear him out of the way before his enemy comes through. This suggests they’re running out of time and getting desperate.”

“Desperate dragons,” Roland began.

“… just what we need,” Charlie finished in complete agreement.

Allie scrolled down and tapped a fingernail on the bottom entry. “This is where they’ll be tonight. Wizards Of Electrostatic Painting, Beaconsfield Crescent NW. And I’ll be there waiting for them.”

“Why? They’re not burning down family businesses,” Roland continued when Allie swiveled around to face him. “This has nothing to do with us. My advice is for you is to call the aunties and have them shut the whole thing down—dragons, sorcerer, gate to the UnderRealm.”

“Didn’t she tell you?” Charlie asked.

“Tell me what?”

“Charlie!”

“Allie’s trying to work with this sorcerer, to interject a little gray into the way the aunties think about them.”

“Why?”

“For David.”

Roland frowned, pleating his forehead. Allie could feel Charlie coming up with a comment referencing hamsters and wheels, but before she could spit it out, Roland said, “You think David’s going darkside and that this will help?”

“No, I don’t think David’s going darkside!” She turned to Charlie. “That’s why I didn’t tell him. I knew he’d think that! It’s complicated,” she added turning back to Roland again.

“You think?” Roland muttered.

“It gets better,” Charlie sighed. “Not only does she think this’ll help David, but she’s screwing the sorcerer’s apprentice.”

“Assassin!” Allie snapped.

“Oh, that makes it so much better.” Roland rummaged in a side pocket of his backpack and pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?”

“This isn’t dealing with things, Allie. I’m calling the aunties.”

“No.”

Charlie’s eyes widened as Roland’s thumb froze over the number pad.

“What?”

Allie took a deep breath and stood. “You haven’t chosen, and I’m telling you no.”

He frowned and stared at her like he’d never seen her before. After a long moment, he closed the phone. “I’m going on record as saying I don’t like this.”

The situation. Not that she’d stopped him. She was within his seven-year break and, in the end, Gale boys knew where they stood. “You don’t have to like it, but it’s my decision. And when the dragon—or dragons—make their move tonight, I’ll be there waiting for them.”

“Why?”

Not Roland that time. Charlie. Who shrugged when Allie turned toward her.

“It’s a valid question, sweetie. I’m beside you all the way on the new look at sorcerers thing—David deserves a better shot than he’ll get from the aunties, and Graham obviously pushes your buttons. So yeah, do what you have to, to keep him from being collateral damage—but this?” She sighed and shook her head. “Neither the dragons nor the businesses they’re burning have anything to do with the family. You’d be putting yourself at risk for no good reason. Besides, if they are getting desperate, and not just bored out of their scaly skulls, then it’ll all be over soon anyway. Big bad arrives.” One finger on her right hand flicked up. “The sorcerer deals with it.” A second finger. “Your boy deals with the dragons.” A third finger. “David’s there as backup, so there’s never any actual danger.” A fourth finger. “And when told the story, the aunties admit sorcerers might be useful for something besides extremely high-grade fertilizer even though it was his screw up that started this in the first place.” She stared at her fingers. Waggled them. And said, “I’m seeing a flaw in your plan.”

“Two,” Roland sighed. “The aunties assume that exposing David to a sorcerer is enough to give him ideas, and you’ve actually made the situation worse.”

Charlie folded all but one finger down and flipped it at Roland.

Allie held up a hand and cut off his response. “I’m going out to meet the dragons because I don’t want any more of this city to burn down. And when David is exposed to the sorcerer and doesn’t fall, then the aunties will have to admit he isn’t going to. It’s as simple as that.”

“Simple?” Roland asked, his tone suggesting it was anything but.

“Simple enough,” Allie told him. “I’m living here, and I don’t want the city burning down around my ears.”

“You’re living here for now.”

“It’s burning now!”

“Admit it, Allie, this is just you not coping well with living so far from home!”

“All righty, then,” Charlie broke in before the argument could escalate. “They toasted the first building at midnight last night, so do we assume they’re adding symbolism to their dumbass idea to flush the wizard and meet them at twelve?”

“We’re not…”

“Yes, we are.” When Allie started a second protest, Charlie smacked the back of her head. “This isn’t like the sorcerer. Discretion doesn’t really apply to giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards who very nearly removed my fucking eyebrows, so I’m going with you. In fact, if we’re going to stop them don’t you think you should be calling your boy with the big gun?”

“We’re not stopping them like that.” Allie offered the pronoun as surrender. In all honesty, she’d rather have Charlie with her when facing giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards.

“Okay, how are we stopping them?”

“You’ll have my back; I’m going to talk to them.”

“They talk?”

Allie reached out and pointed at her laptop. “They read the Yellow Pages. On-line.”

The dragons’ next target was as far north as the airport and tucked up close to Nose Hill Natural Environment Park.

“That’s one big park,” Allie murmured as they got out of the car around the corner from the targeted building. So much wilderness in the midst of so many people was an obvious oasis even in the dark—she could feel the weight of all that nothing pressing against her.

Charlie glanced across the median and then across four lanes of 14th Street at the silhouette of the hill against the night sky. “Sacred place on the top,” she said as she settled her guitar strap over her shoulders and tossed the gig bag back in the car.

“Yeah, I got that.” Awareness of the site lapped at the back of her neck, lifting her hair. It was old, used for centuries and abandoned for less than a hundred years; undisturbed by development, it was like a big pushpin keeping the city connected to the UnderRealm. No wonder things were happening here.

“I wonder why the Courts didn’t open the gate up there.”

“Easier to put a gate where there’s already a gate on this side. Nothing up there but, well, a whole lot of nothing.” Allie bounced the car keys on her palm for a moment as she stared into the darkness, then dropped them in her bag and headed for the curb, tossing off a casual, “You, me, and Roland should maybe pay the top of the hill a visit sometime.”

“A visit?” Charlie’s tone evoked bare skin and friction. “We going to be around that long?”

No. Maybe.

Hands shoved in her jacket pockets, Allie stepped over a crack in the sidewalk. Roland could suck a rope. She was coping fine, but she still wasn’t staying one moment longer than it took her to figure out what had happened to Gran. Or until the whole sorcerer beats the greater evil impresses aunties takes the pressure off David thing went down should the Gran question be unexpectedly answered. Well, maybe long enough to finish cataloging the contents of the store and find a cousin willing to take it over. She wasn’t like Charlie, always roaming; she needed family around her, not thousands of miles back east, the distance a constant pull against her heart.

Except she’d given Joe a place.

And she heard herself say, “You just joined a band,” like it was the one thing that mattered.

In step beside her, Charlie shrugged. “And Rol’s just here to dot the legal i’s and cross the legal t’s.”

“Gran used the toss it in a box filing method. He’ll be here for a while.”

“David’ll be here day after tomorrow. I’d be more than happy to visit the hill with him.”

The thought of David’s power opened up on that hill made her snort. “That’ll be the plan in case the dragons don’t show tonight. Take a bottle of steak sauce with you.”

“Aren’t you supposed to use virgins as dragon bait?”

“That’s unicorns.”

“I kind of miss unicorns.”

“Really?”

“No.”

They followed the curve in the road around to the east as an eerie howl from the park vibrated through bone and blood and whipped neighborhood dogs into a frenzy.

“I bet the people around here…” Charlie’s gesture took in the houses they were passing, the blue flicker of televisions showing around the edges of curtains in the few living rooms where the residents were still awake. “… think that’s a coyote.”

Allie nodded in the direction of the nearest hysterically barking dog. “She doesn’t.”

Tucked back from the corner where Beaconsfield Road met Beaconsfield Crescent, Wizards of Electrostatic Painting was set up in a converted garage. It looked like the kind of business that had been built up out of hard work and a dream, and Allie wasn’t going to let it burn. She’d been hoping she could use the parking lot, but as that turned out to be only a narrow strip of pavement along the east side of the building, she frowned out at the t-junction and stepped into the intersection. “You think this’ll be enough room?”

Charlie glanced up at the night sky where nothing blotted out the stars. Yet. “If it isn’t, this is—if possible—an even stupider idea than I thought. What are you going to do about traffic?”

“These houses all have back lanes,” Allie told her returning to the sidewalk and dropping her bag on the narrow strip of dormant grass. “And given the way the roads around here twist and turn, I don’t imagine there’s much through traffic during business hours, let alone at nearly midnight.”

“Good. Because I’m imagining you getting run over by a guy with bad skin and an ugly jacket delivering pizza.”

“Well, stop.”

Hidden by the angle of the roof, Graham peered through the scope and swore under his breath. After they’d cleared the air about fire-breathing not having been mentioned…

“I have no idea what their range is. When it comes to it, you’ll just have to shoot them before they open their mouths.”

… Kalynchuk had insisted nothing about the more mundane fires would draw Allie’s attention. The destruction had occurred nowhere near the one business the Gale family owned in Calgary.

“Even if she hears about the fires,” he snorted, “she’d have no reason to think my enemies are involved and therefore no reason to work out the pattern.”

Something had clearly given her a reason.

Given that, and also given that Allie had walked blithely into the sanctuary of a man she knew would order deadly force to protect himself, he couldn’t say he was surprised to see her here.

He was more than a little curious about what the hell she thought she was going to do.

Allie rubbed some warmth back into her fingers. In spite of sunny days, nights in early May were not exactly balmy and the radio weather forecaster had laughed, kind of high-pitched and guilty sounding, as he mentioned snow. With finger flexibility restored, she dug out the box of only slightly used sidewalk chalk she’d found that afternoon in the store, and pulled out a fat, white cylinder.

“Isn’t that a little big?” Charlie asked as she bent down and started to draw the first of the three charms.

“No.” With the piece of chalk laid on its side, the lines for the charm were about six centimeters wide. “I want them to see it before they burn the building down.”

“Probably for the best; emergency vehicles are a big-ass distraction. You know,” she continued as though imparting the wisdom of the ages, “there’s no actual reason they should listen to you. Please, stop burning the city down. Bite me. Well, okay, then.”

Shuffling backward, Allie dragged the chalk line out into the middle of the road.

“I’ll be convincing.”

“There’s no actual reason why they shouldn’t eat you.”

“Which is why you’re here.”

Over supper, all three Gales and Michael had agreed that being bounced randomly around the globe by a shadowy antagonist beat being dragon chow.

“There’s no proof you can even get into the Wood,” Roland pointed out. “Given the way the shadow stopped you from getting to Allie, it’s entirely possible it won’t let you enter in Allie’s company.”

Michael wrapped his hand around Allie’s wrist as though he could hold her in place. “Charlie?”

“Little Mary Sunshine there doesn’t travel the Wood,” Charlie told him soothingly as Roland snorted around a mouthful of pie. “I do. And I guarantee I can get us both in. After that, who the hell knows, but since the other option is emerging digested from a dragon’s ass, I’m good with a random destination. Allie?”

Allie had admitted that wasn’t really an observation she could disagree with and had spent the rest of the meal ignoring the way Roland’s gaze had kept tracking back to her. At least once, she was certain he’d reached for his phone but brought his hand empty out of his pocket.

“Michael wanted to see the dragons,” Allie said as she finished the last charm.

“Is that what you two were talking about? How’d you convince him not to come?”

Michael was not a Gale boy to be told no and have it stick.

“I reminded him that they flew over the store every morning and all he had to do was go outside and look.”

“And?”

“And then I reminded him of the size of the car and that he’d have to sit in the backseat.”

“Smart. Maybe even smart enough to… Allie.”

“I hear it.”

Wet sheets, flapping in the wind.

Allie scrambled up onto the sidewalk and stood at Charlie’s right, first two fingers of her left hand tucked behind the waistband of her cousin’s jeans. There had to be contact if they were going to go into the Wood together. Although, given what was dropping down into the intersection, the heavy beat of wings stirring up enough wind to snap small branches off the bracketing trees and slam against her like openhanded blows from a giant hand, comfort may have also been a factor.

Son of a fucking bitch, it was landing! They’d never landed in the city before!

Pressing his body down into the asphalt tiles, he slipped his finger through the trigger guard.

It was one thing to know that dragons were big, in the same sort of way space was big, secure in the knowledge it was unlikely the entirety of either would ever have to be faced, and it was another thing entirely to stand and watch a dragon drop out of the night sky. Around fifteen meters from branching horns to the tip of a lashing tail, this particular dragon was ebony and gold, iridescent and beautiful in the way of very, very dangerous things where admiration and terror became easy reactions to confuse.

Sitting up on its haunches, talons gouging the pavement, large enough to completely cover all three charms, it folded its wings with a sound like thunder and stared at the two Gales with enormous dark eyes.

“Holy fuck,” Charlie muttered.

“Yeah.” Allie pushed disheveled hair off her face as she stepped forward.

Jumped back as the dragon burst into flame.

The heat should have melted the asphalt, ignited the trees.

Ignited them.