Enchantment Emporium

NO!

He literally, actually, impossibly felt the world stop as Allie disappeared in the inferno.

Charlie spun away, protecting the wood of her guitar with slightly less flammable flesh.

Holding her breath, hand thrown up to protect her eyes, Allie searched the roaring flames. Trying to see through the fire to the dragon. Trying to…

Between one heartbeat and the next, the flames fell into their own center. Wrapped around themselves. Solidified.

Became a man.

A man?

Not a dragon! It was suddenly very hard to breathe. Not a dragon; a Dragon Lord! The son-of-a-bitch sorcerer could have mentioned that!

A line of white light flashed through the place where the dragon’s head had been and slammed into the side of a house, the impact loud enough to rouse the inhabitants from sleep.

The Dragon Lord raised dark brows over familiar eyes.

An audience, Allie realized, was just what they didn’t need.

Well, not just—but among the top ten.

“Charlie!”

“I know! Hang on…” Her left hand worked the tuning pegs. “… heat’s pulled everything sharp.”

A curtain twitched in a second-floor window.

“Now, Charlie!”

As lullabies went, it wasn’t so much close your eyes and dream sweetly as it was if you kids don’t go to sleep immediately, I will come up there and you will be sorry. By the time the last note faded, there wasn’t so much as a squirrel awake within a five-block radius; the lullaby had bludgeoned every living creature to sleep.

Breath still fast and shallow, Allie peered at the dark starburst against the previously pristine siding, then turned her full attention back to the man in the center of the intersection. “What was that?”

“A Blessed round.” The Dragon Lord’s voice was unsurprisingly deep.

And suddenly it became impossible to breathe at all. She had no idea how much of what raced through her head showed on her face, but the Dragon Lord smiled.

“You’re surprised,” he said. “The one who fired the weapon is not here with you, then. This pleases me. Attempting to lure us into a trap would have been fatally rude.”

The second dragon was green and gold. Allie thought it was smaller, but, with eyes squinted shut against the wind, she was too distracted by what it held against its chest to tell for certain. It took almost everything she had to close her teeth on a clichéd cry of denial.

Graham hadn’t heard the second dragon over the roar of blood in his ears. Hadn’t known it was there until claws closed around him and bones broke as it snatched him off the roof. He hung limp as it landed, weapon trapped between his body and heated emerald scales, conserving his strength, breathing shallowly to keep the shattered ends of ribs from puncturing a lung.

If they made a mistake, he’d be ready.

“He hides behind the mark of sorcery,” the Dragon Lord said calmly, twitching a nonexistent wrinkle out of his suit jacket. “Ryan had to trace the bullet back to find him, and then it was scent alone that gave him away. But look there, he wears your mark as well, Gale girl, which is why he continues to live. You may correct me if I’m wrong, but that seems to indicate eviscerating him would stifle conversation. Oh, yes,” he added, smiling again, “we know what you are.” A nod toward Charlie. “What both of you are. And I know how a Gale girl smells. Tastes.” His eyes gleamed. “Not something I could ever forget. Or ever want to.”

Allie really hoped he meant tastes in as licentious a way as it sounded. “Let him go.”

“As you wish. Ryan.”

The green dragon’s protest sounded distinctly sulky.

The Dragon Lord snorted, blowing lines of white smoke from each nostril. “Because I said so.”

He was ready when the claws loosened. Took up the shock of landing in his knees and hips. Ignored the old pain and the new bright spike of agony in his chest. Brought up his weapon.

“Graham! Don’t!”

The muscles of his hand spasmed as they tried to simultaneously obey two opposing commands.

The smell of sulfur.

Way too many teeth.

Darkness…

Graham collapsed as Allie reached him. She dropped to her knees on the pavement, one hand on his chest, the other reaching up, past the teeth, drawing a fast charm on the dragon’s nose just where the green shaded down into gold. The scales were so hot that the skin on her fingertip blistered.

His roar suddenly more of a strangled croak, the dragon reared back, swiping at his muzzle.

She could hear the other Dragon Lord laughing, but all she could see was the blood bubbling between Graham’s lips as he fought to breathe. There was a stupid vest that was obviously useless when it counted and the stupid clothing he had on under it had too many stupid fasteners or no fasteners at all, so she charmed right through and finally pressed her palm against skin.

“He needs a hospital. Charlie, go get the car!”

“Uh, Allie…”

“Now!” She didn’t know the charms to fix this, but that didn’t stop her from tracing patterns over and over and over the damage.

A scrape of claw against the road.

“I wouldn’t,” the Dragon Lord said.

At first, Allie thought he was talking to Charlie, but the silence stretched and lengthened to be finally broken not by claws but by the metallic jingle of keys and Charlie’s boots pounding out a rhythm into the distance.

As Allie felt Graham’s struggle ease under her touch, she risked a glance over her shoulder.

The green dragon, Ryan, glared down at her from under golden brow ridges, head dipped to sight along the line of his horns. She knew that look. She’d seen Dmitri wear one very like it.

The Dragon Lord stood almost directly behind her. She hadn’t heard him move. He reached out, stroked the back of her cheek with two fingers and, unable to stop herself, she leaned into the touch. As the skin under his caress tightened, he murmured, “We will have the conversation we should have had tonight another time, Gale girl.” A glance past her, down at Graham. “Just a suggestion, but… shorten his leash.” Then he stepped back, and Allie found herself surrounded by fire. Impossible not to brace for pain, although the heat merely baked dry the inside of her nose and mouth, coating her tongue with the taste of sulfur.

Before she could work up enough saliva to swallow, two pairs of enormous eyes stared down at her—the emerald pair narrowed in familiar, adolescent pique, the ebony pair amused. With a backwash that nearly flattened her to the road, the dragons leaped into the air, beating their wings against the night.

“So, a Dragon Lord,” Charlie said as they maneuvered Graham onto the fully reclined passenger seat.

“Dragon Lords,” Allie told her, drawing another charm against Graham’s right leg so she could tuck it more easily into the car. “Ryan, too.”

“Did he change?”

“Did he need to?”

“No, I suppose not.”

She straightened, closed the car door, and turned to her cousin, uncertain of what to say. “Charlie…”

“It’s not a problem, Allie.” Charlie held up Graham’s keys. “These were in his pocket. I’ll take his truck home and let the guys know what’s going on.” Eyes narrowed, she added, “Just a feeling, but I’m guessing his boss didn’t tell you the whole story.”

“Not just his boss. Graham had to have known what they were if he was supposed to be able to kill them.” The keys dug into her palm as she ran around to the driver’s side. “Wake the neighborhood before you go.”

“Yeah, yeah, drive…” Charlie jumped back as the Beetle all but spun around one rear wheel and roared off. “… carefully.”

Revelry lost a little something when played on the guitar.

“They turn into people?”

“They can take the appearance of people,” Charlie amended as she came out of the bedroom in a pair of sweatpants and a faded Barstool Prophets T-shirt. “They’re still dragons.”

“Who look like people?”

“Yes.”

Michael’s eyes gleamed. “That’s pretty cool.”

“That’s very, very dangerous.” Roland looked over at his phone, lying out of reach on a pile of papers on the big table, then over at Charlie.

She shook her head, even though calling in the aunties was beginning to sound like an excellent idea. “No. This is Allie’s show.”

“Because Gran left her the store?” Michael asked, heaving himself up off the end of the sofa bed, crossing to the kitchen, and opening the fridge.

Charlie’s turn to look over at Roland. He frowned and shrugged, unwilling to commit to the suspicions Charlie could see written out in his body language. “Yeah, that’s the main reason,” she said at last.

“But you guys’ll stop her if she does something really stupid, right?” He turned toward them, shoving a broken piece of pie into his mouth and somehow managing to not spit blueberries and pastry as he added, “Because you’re older.”

“Doesn’t exactly work that way,” Charlie told him, sitting down in the spot Michael had vacated, wrapping a hand around Roland’s bare ankle. “You know that.” She stroked the soft skin of his arch with her thumb. “I wish we’d convinced Joe to stay; it’s a lot more dangerous out there than we thought.”

“Joe’s testing that he gets to come and go,” Michael pointed out, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “He’ll stay as soon as he realizes he doesn’t have to.”

Roland nodded. “And he is full-blood Fey. Changeling or not, the Dragon Lords won’t want to start a fight with his people, particularly not if they’re already feeling annoyed about them using the gate.”

“Thanks to Allie, we’re his people now,” Charlie snorted. Frowned. “But you have a point.”

“About?”

“Joe being full-blood Fey.”

At twenty after three, they finally allowed Allie back behind the curtain into examination room one. The emergency room in the Peter Lougheed Centre of the Calgary General Hospital—and wasn’t that a mouthful to choke out—had been nearly empty when they’d arrived and Graham had been seen to immediately.

But only because immediately was as fast as Allie could arrange it.

She’d used information gleaned from Graham’s wallet to fill out as much of the paperwork as possible and lied through her teeth about the rest, tracing tiny charms into the end of every section on the forms. After they’d rolled him away for X-rays and MRIs and whatever else turned out to be needed, she’d sat on one of the ubiquitous orange plastic chairs, chewed on a thumbnail, and concentrated on getting him fixed as quickly as possible. Around two thirty, she’d poured a charm into a paper cup of water and brought it to an elderly drunk because the random shouting of obscenities had become distracting.

He’d fallen asleep, looking vaguely horrified, and Allie’d returned to keeping the medical profession focused.

She did not think about Dragon Lords in the city.

Much.

If the sorcerer’s enemy could use Dragon Lords to hunt for him, who the hell had he pissed off?

When she pushed the curtain aside, Graham was sitting on the edge of the gurney, bare feet braced against the floor, chest wrapped in white, face nearly as pale, uppermost hex mark just barely visible. Her charm blazed under the fluorescent lights.

“Should you be sitting up?”

“Have to get out of here.” He seemed to find the patch of floor tile framed by his knees fascinating. “Two cracked ribs—that’s…” A short struggle to breathe. “… nothing.”

“Not quite nothing.” Allie moved closer, resting her hand on his arm as he tried to rise, her touch enough to hold him in place. “There’s impact damage to your ankles, your right knee’s swollen but functional, and you’ve got moderate to severe bruising over seventy percent of your body—I’m assuming that’s an estimate although for all I know they might have measured. They probably have charts. And that’s just the new stuff—they asked me if you were into extreme sports. Given the number of old injuries they listed, they must assume you kind of suck at it if you are.” She could hear herself babbling and made an effort to stop. “Still, it could have been worse.”

“It was.” Taking her hand in his, he tugged her around into the vee between his legs, lifted his head, and managed to lock his drifting gaze onto her face. “What did you do to me?” he demanded.

“I brought you to the hospital.” She raised her other hand to push the hair back off his face, but he grabbed her wrist, the movement the careful exaggeration of someone fighting painkillers.

“No, before,” he insisted. When Allie shook her head, uncertain of which before he referred to, his eyes narrowed. “Between the pain and breathing blood… a punctured lung… that’s hard to miss. Heard the doctor talking… saw recent scar tissue. No puncture.”

“Oh, that.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, that?”

“I don’t know what I did.” Basic first aid, the kind every Gale girl learned early to tend to fathers and uncles, brothers and cousins, didn’t extend much beyond bruises and minor lacerations at third circle. Immobilizing broken bones in a pinch but better to wait for a first-or-second-circle healing rather than screw it up and have to break the bone again. “Not specifically.”

“Not specifically?” His nostrils flared, once, twice, as he fought the drugs for coherency. “I’m finding your casual use… of that much power just a little…” He frowned as he searched through the haze of painkillers for the word. “… disconcerting.”

“Would you have preferred robes and candles and eldritch symbols and Latin chanting and whatever it is your sorcerer does?” Allie asked. “Because given where we were and who we were with and—oh, yeah, the fact your sorcerer was nowhere around, that wasn’t really an option. And…” Using his loose grip on her wrists, she tugged herself a little closer until her hips pressed hard against the inside of his thighs and she could smell him, just a little, over the pervasive scent of antiseptic. “… there was nothing casual about it. I thought you were going to die.”

“Me, too.” The frown deepened. “I mean, not me. You.”

Allie smiled for the first time since she’d realized what the second Dragon Lord carried and freed her hands so she could cup his face between them. “You thought I was going to die?”

“I did?” The frown unfolded. “I did. Why are you smiling?”

“You did something stupid for me.” Bending forward, she kissed him gently. His lips were dry and sticky against hers and he still tasted just a little of blood. “And speaking of stupid,” she said, backing away, “why didn’t you tell me they weren’t just dragons!”

“Ow!” He let go of one wrist and rubbed the shoulder she’d punched. “Injured here!”

“And way too drugged to feel that. Dragon Lords?”

“Not my information… to give.”

“Who sent them? How many of them are there?”

Graham sighed, reached up and cupped her cheek. His fingers felt cool over the skin the Dragon Lord’s touch had scorched. “Don’t ask me… things I can’t…”

She caught him as he began to tip left. “Come on.” Dropping a kiss on the top of his head, she carefully adjusted the vertical. “Let’s get you dressed enough to get you home.”

“Good thing he’s a bit of a shrimp.”

“Michael.”

“I’m just saying.” Breathing a little heavily, Michael laid Graham down on Allie’s bed and stepped back, rolling his shoulders. “Why bring him here instead of to his own place?”

Allie bent to untie the laces on his right boot. “He’s safer here.”

“From the Dragon Lords?” Roland asked, moving to Graham’s other foot.

“Them, too.”

Leaning against the wall by the door, Charlie shook her head. “You turned off his phone, didn’t you?”

“No.” Feeling the weight of regard from the other three conscious people in the room, Allie straightened and turned, dropping the boot to the floor. “No,” she repeated. “He didn’t have it turned on. I mean, he was on a stake-out; getting a phone call would be stupid.”

“Stupid as shooting at a Dragon Lord?” Charlie asked.

Allie kicked the boot under the bed. “Not quite.”

“He’s been marked.” Dropping the other boot, Roland nodded toward the visible hex—Allie’d gotten Graham’s shirt and jacket on him but hadn’t bothered doing them all them way up. She’d tossed his T-shirt and vest into the backseat. Actually, she’d tossed his vest into the back before she’d gone into the hospital for help—Kevlar being harder than broken ribs to explain. “Can his sorcerer track him using those? Track him here?”

“Through Gran’s protections? Not likely.” Moving around to the side of the bed, Allie unbuckled his belt.

“Does he know where he is?” Roland wondered, grabbing the bottom of his black jeans and tugging as Allie lifted Graham’s hips enough to clear the fabric. “Or did you put him out before mentioning the final destination?”

“Bet she didn’t ask if she could charm him out,” Michael muttered, yawning.

Charlie snorted. “No reason to ask when you know the answer. He’d be all macho and…” She dropped her voice half an octave. “… no puttin’ me ta sleep, little lady, I don’t want to be missing out on the pain.”

“Little lady?”

“It’s four thirty in the morning, I don’t have my best stuff.”

Bending to ease Graham’s arm out of his shirtsleeve, Allie heard Roland sigh. “Allie, does he know you brought him here?”

“I told him.” His skin was warm and a little damp and the bruises were purpling up nicely. She let her fingers rest on the curve of his shoulder. “And he heard me phone Charlie when we left the hospital.”

“Did he understand?” Roland insisted.

“What difference does it make?” she sighed. “This is the only place neither the Dragon Lords nor the sorcerer could get to him.” When she straightened and turned, they were staring at her again. “He took a shot at a Dragon Lord for me. Because he took a shot at a Dragon Lord, they grabbed him. They saw the hex marks. They know the sorcerer is here in Calgary.”

“They knew that,” Charlie reminded her. “They were hunting him.”

“They were hunting for him. Not quite the same thing.”

“Unless the sorcerer was lying about that.”

“He didn’t lie to me,” Allie insisted. “He merely omitted details.”

Roland’s brows nearly disappeared under his hair. “What part of Dragon Lords are merely?”

Charlie watched her thoughtfully as she pulled the covers up from the foot of the bed. “If they’d wanted to get information out of him about the sorcerer, they had their chance tonight and blew it off.”

“Because he’s wearing my mark and we were right there and they didn’t want to start a fight.”

“Why not?” Michael asked. “I mean, I’m glad they didn’t,” he added when both Allie and Charlie turned to glare at him, “but you look at it from their point of view and they could have kicked your ass.”

“My guess is that they don’t want to risk taking damage before the big fight.”

“From the aunties?”

Allie looked into memory and saw Graham hanging in Ryan’s claws. Looked down at him on the bed, wearing only boxers and bandages and bruises, and said, “Them, too.”

“Okay…” Roland sounded as though he believed her. “… so the Dragon Lords would like to get him alone and extract information about the sorcerer. And the sorcerer?”

Lightly smoothing the sheet over Graham’s chest, Allie considered Stanley Kalynchuk. Without meeting him, the aunties would say he was a brutal egotist, corrupted by the power he controlled, destined to abuse it. They’d feel he was significantly more dangerous than the Dragon Lords as he’d chosen his path. As much as she wanted to ease the way for David, Allie was going to go with the aunties on this one. “Like I said, Graham’s safer here.”

“And when he wakes up?” Charlie asked softly. “What happens then?”

Allie shrugged and brushed a strand of hair back off his face. She could hear the layers in Charlie’s question, but she refused to acknowledge them. It had been a long night and all that mattered, here and now, was that Graham hadn’t drowned in his own blood. “I don’t know.”

After a moment, Michael scratched under the waistband of his elderly pajama pants and snickered. “You’re thinking about the padded handcuffs in Gran’s drawer, aren’t you?”

She felt the corners of her mouth twitch up in spite of herself. “Shut up.”

Dragged out of sleep by the ringing of her phone, Allie glared at the clock beside the bed. Seven forty-nine. She’d been asleep for just a little over three hours. Given the aunties, that was more sleep than she’d expected to get.

When she managed to focus on the call display, her eyes widened.

“How did you get this number?”

“Don’t ask stupid questions, Ms. Gale,” Kalynchuk growled. “Is he with you?”

Allie’s lip curled. Or would have had it not stuck to her teeth. She ran her tongue over them and said, “Don’t ask stupid questions, Mr. Kalynchuk.”

Behind her, Graham stirred but didn’t wake. She’d removed the charm when she got into bed, but it seemed the painkillers had been enough to keep him out.

“I want to speak with him.”

“I want to know why you didn’t tell me about the Dragon Lords.”

For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, he didn’t sound exactly apologetic. Or at all apologetic. “I told you as much as you needed to know.”

“Yeah, well…” She yawned. “… they disagree.”

“They?”

“The Dragon Lords.”

“Put Graham on.”

“He’s asleep.”

“Wake him.”

If he’d asked instead of commanded, she might have considered it.

“No.”

His breathing suggested it had been a while since anyone had denied him. “I am a dangerous enemy, Ms. Gale.”

“Interestingly enough, you’re a dangerous friend too.” Yawning, she snapped the phone closed. Since it seemed highly unlikely he could get any angrier at her, she rolled over, curled up against Graham’s side, and went back to sleep.

Michael and Roland both had work of their own to do, so Charlie’d gone down and opened the store. Half expecting to see Joe already in place behind the counter—allowing her to haul ass back upstairs and grab some more shut-eye—she’d been a little annoyed to see the place empty.

Seemed no one wanted to buy crap at ten AM on a Wednesday, so she’d continued her hunt for the artifact producing the autoharp music. With no distractions, it had taken her a surprisingly short time to find it in behind a white china chamber pot. Circa 1915, according to the sticker.

Leaning against the counter, she ran her fingers over the edge of what looked to be an old presentation box for medals or jewelry. Painted gold with a red-and-black crest glued to the center of what had been the lid, the outside gave no indication of the contents. The upper edge and the long edge opposite the hinge had been beaded, allowing the box to stand on one end and be opened like a reliquary. There was no clasp to hold it closed, and when it had fallen off a pile of mildewed postcards and landed behind the chamber pot, it had opened, just a little.

Charlie opened it the rest of the way.

Inside, against plaid padding, were two drawings of young men holding instruments. Not exactly photorealism, one had long hair, one short and they were both wearing what were probably supposed to be kilts made from the same plaid fabric as the padding. Next to the drawings were rolled napkins from an American hotel.

The drawings were signed.

The napkins were sweat-stained.

Whoever had trapped their souls either really hated or really loved Celtic music.

Listening to “The Orange and the Green” being played on autoharp and pennywhistle, Charlie couldn’t decide which.

“I brought…”

She snapped the case closed and came out of the aisle to face Joe, standing just inside the store holding a mug in each hand.

“Oh. It’s you.” He looked down into one of the mugs, then held it out. “Kenny gave me one with milk and no sugar. I guess he knew you’d be here. Where’s Allie?”

“Sleeping. She had a late night.” Charlie and the boys had been able to nap while Allie’d been with Graham at the ER. Not exactly eight hours but better than a slap in the face with a fish. “So,” she asked after a moment spent worshiping the amazing aroma wafting up from the coffee. “Is there a reason why you didn’t mention the dragons are actually Dragon Lords?”

Joe’s eyes widened. “She met…?”

“We met. Might have been nice to have had a heads up.”

“I thought she knew.” He jerked back a step, two spots of color burning high on each cheek. “She said she knew. I swear, she told me she knew! Fuck me, I wouldn’t have not told her if I hadn’t thought she knew. Even before. I wouldn’t have. You have to believe me. You have to…”

“Joe!” As his mouth snapped shut, Charlie sighed. “At the risk of sounding last millennium, don’t have a cow. I believe you.”

He looked startled and she realized he hadn’t expected that. “Why?”

“Why not?” To begin with, he was telling the truth. He had thought Allie’d known. Or he’d convinced himself she’d known, which was close enough for Charlie. She had no trouble at all seeing Allie making assumptions and Joe choosing to go along with them rather than raise the suckage in his life even a little bit more.

A flash of ebony and gold out on the street caught her attention and, frowning, she waved Joe away from the door.

Okay.

Not so much a flash of ebony and gold as a whole freaking sidewalk full of it, framed by Auntie Catherine’s clear-sight charm. In the sunlight, the highlights gleaming off the scales were very nearly aubergine.

Flipping open her phone, she called Roland.

“Hey, get Allie up. We’ve got company.”

The sound of Joe’s mug shattering against the floor almost drowned out Roland’s response.