Enchantment Emporium

“Yeah, well, size matters here too, kid. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Come on.” Giving up on the bush, she headed back inside. “We’re going to need a lot more space.” The poncho came off as the door closed behind them. Leaning up the stairs, she yelled for Michael and Joe. “I need more room,” she told them when they appeared. “We’re heading down the road to the park.”

“In what?” Michael demanded. “Both cars are gone.”

“Graham’s truck.”

“Do you have the keys?”

Charlie snorted. “Please. How long have you known me?” Passing the mirror she flicked a finger against the frame. The reflection showed Jack, a large gold dragon and a relatively small green dragon against a shimmering white background. “Thanks. A little perspective would’ve been more helpful about twenty minutes ago.”

“That music is really lame,” Jack muttered, slouched down in the seat as far as the belt allowed, feet up on the dash.

“Hey!” Charlie smacked his shoulder. “Do not be dissing Emerson Drive.”

“I want to listen to something good!” He reached for the radio, but she was faster.

“Two things,” she said smacking his hand back. “One, if I’m behind the wheel we go by Winchester rules: driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole. And two…” The truck rocked up on two wheels as she took a sharp turn into the Fort Calgary parking lot. “… we’re here.”

Jack’s nose twitched as he got out of the truck. “This is where the Fey gate was, right?”

“Yeah.” Charlie nodded along the path, dragging the misshapen poncho back on over her head. “Right at the entrance to the… Fuck. Hang on.” She pulled her phone from her belt pouch and frowned at the call display. Unknown numbers were not something that showed up on family phones. Raising a hand to hold Jack in place, she moved away from the truck. “Yeah?”

“You have Jack with you. I want to see him. I want to see my son.”

Hadn’t been expecting that. She smiled, and knew he could feel exactly how she meant it. “Fuck you.”

“Do you think you can control him, Charlotte? Keep him from his destiny? No, you can’t. He should be here, with me, embracing all that he is.”

“Embracing a dirt nap if he gets close to you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll face his mother together, he and I.”

“Yeah, like that’s a convincing argument for…”

The roar of the truck engine cut her off. Charlie stood, free hand under the poncho resting on the upper curve of her guitar, and watched Jack peel backward out of the parking lot, wheel around through miraculously empty spots in traffic, and grind gears heading north.

On the other end of the phone, the sorcerer snickered. “I didn’t have to convince you, Gale girl. His kind have remarkable hearing.”

“And they learn fast,” Charlie muttered snapping the phone closed. In retrospect, showing Jack how the truck worked had been a bad idea. “And more importantly,” she growled, heading for the nearest trees, “how did that S.O.B. get my number?”

“I’m a little surprised that worked, actually, but I suppose it’s time something went right for me.” Kalynchuk unwrapped the red hair from around his phone and dropped it back into Graham’s lap. “How fortunate I spotted this protruding over your waistband.”

“Keep your fucking eyes on the road,” Graham snarled. He stuffed Charlie’s hair into his pocket. That’s what he got for grabbing yesterday’s boxers off the floor. When this was over, if he survived, he was definitely doing laundry.

“The freezer’s ringing.” Joe cocked his head and frowned. “I think it’s the theme from Boston Legal.”

Michael crossed the room in six strides, redirecting his pacing into the kitchen. “It’s Roland’s phone. He left it for us.”

“In the freezer?”

“I guess he forgot to take it out of the peas.”

Joe raised a hand. “Don’t want to know.”

“They haven’t been gone long enough for something to go wrong.” One hand digging into the frozen vegetables, he paused and shot Joe a worried glance. “Have they?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you’re…”

“Here with you, aren’t I?” Joe approved of that, actually. He figured that behind Catherine Gale’s wards was currently the safest place in the city. “Just answer the damned phone.”

“It’s me.”

“What?”

“It’s my phone calling. It’s Brian. It has to be.” Michael looked down at the phone, dwarfed by the size of his hand. “What does he want?”

“There’s only one way to find that out, isn’t there?”

“Yeah?”

Joe was starting to understand Allie’s fondness for hitting people on the back of the head. “Answer. The. Damned. Phone.”

Bottom lip between his teeth, Michael snapped it open and raised it to his ear. “Hello?”

It was Brian. From what he’d heard, Joe doubted anyone else could put that look on Michael’s face.

“Where am I?”

Joe wondered if the next question was going to be What are you wearing? And if he should go downstairs to the store.

“Who said to meet you at the park?”

That didn’t sound good. Joe watched the color drain out of Michael’s face.

“What park did she tell you to meet me at?”

She?

“Brian! What park?”

Joe didn’t actually need to hear the answer to that one.