Enchantment Emporium

With barely more than a year between them, Dmitri and Maria wouldn’t be a bad match, but Dmitri was only just finishing high school and it would likely be years before he chose. Still, with so few Gale boys available, attempting to stake an early claim wasn’t an entirely bad idea. By the time Dmitri was ready to settle down, Maria might have discouraged some of her competition.

“Don’t worry about me.” Setting the bowl of cut fruit on the table, ceramic ringing against the wood, Allie reached past it for the sugar. “He was only here because he’s working his way through his list and I haven’t been around much.”

The arch plucked into Maria’s brows rose higher still. “You can’t be on his list.”

“Alysha and Dmitri are as far apart as you and Dmitri,” Auntie Jane pointed out.

“But she’s old!”

“Thank you so much.” Allie didn’t bother watching her tone. It was rhubarb. It was going to be tart anyway. “He’s been eighteen for a month; I may be elderly, but I’m well inside the seven-year break.”

“Well, fine…” Maria poked her finger into a block of shortening. “… you’re on his list; that’s why he wanted to sleep with you. Why did you sleep with him?”

The sudden silence in the kitchen was complete. The only sound, the distant command that Delilah was to get down out of the tree. Immediately.

Allie stared at her cousin. Knew Katie had turned from the sink and was staring as well. Aunt Ruth snorted. Auntie Jane answered for them all. “Turn down a Gale boy?”

Maria’s blush dipped down to tint her cleavage. “Never mind.”

She looked so miserable, Allie took pity on her. “Charlie was here, too.”

Charlie, at nearly twenty-six, was definitely not on Dmitri’s list. Her presence made it clear Allie wasn’t remotely serious about making an actual connection with her young cousin. Charlie, like Gran, was one of those oddities the family threw up every now and then and was, because of what she could do, nearly as indulged as one of the boys. Half the aunties wanted to see if they could breed her ability back into the lines, stabilizing it, while the other half insisted its very instability argued against tying up one of the Gale boys on the attempt. Charlie ignored both halves, and no one doubted, given her talents, that one day she’d go wild.

Allie adored her, embraced the uniqueness the rest of family used but didn’t exactly approve of, and harbored half-formed thoughts about taming the wildness. Next to Michael, she loved Charlie best.

“Where is Charlie?” Aunt Ruth asked as Maria grabbed herself an apron and a rolling pin.

Charlie was the exception to the rule that all Gale girls cooked. Younger members of the family scared still younger members with whispered stories of chocolate cupcakes gone horribly wrong. And when a cupcake went horribly wrong in the Gale family, the word “horribly” was not an exaggeration.

Allie shrugged, hoping it looked like she didn’t care. “I don’t know. She wasn’t there when I got up.”

“Because you wasted all that time wallowing in self-pity. Charlotte has gone to bring Roland home from Cincinnati,” Auntie Jane added before Allie could protest that she hadn’t been wallowing. Exactly. “That fool Kirby sent him out to get a deposition.”

“Sent him to Cincinnati? Right before May Day?” Aunt Ruth rolled her eyes, the expression strengthening her resemblance to her sister although her eyes were clearly a lighter gray.

“Charlotte will have him home in time.”

It was possible Charlie could have him home before he left, but that wasn’t the point. When a Gale said he needed time off, he got it. Given the obsidian gleam in Auntie Jane’s eyes during the discussion, Allie actually felt a little sorry for Roland’s boss. Drawing the ire of the aunties was never smart. Alan Kirby had lived in Darsden East his whole life. He should have known that.

“It’s only Cincinnati,” Maria snorted. “They have an airport, you know. Okay, it’s across the river in Kentucky, which is kind of stupid, but why doesn’t he just fly home for the weekend then fly back?”

“No reason why he should.” Auntie Jane’s tone nearly frosted the windows.

“Dad says no one’s seen Granddad for weeks,” Katie said hurriedly, changing the subject before the mood affected the pies.

For a moment it looked like Auntie Jane would refuse to allow the subject changed, then she snorted. “He’ll be here tomorrow.”

Aunt Ruth frowned, slowly unwrapping another pound of shortening, fingertips dimpling the soft brick. “He’s getting wilder.”

“He’ll be here tomorrow,” Auntie Jane snapped. “We can’t replace him. David’s not ready.”

“For what?”

Allie suddenly found measuring dry ingredients fascinating as her mother returned to the kitchen trailed by a clearly unrepentant Delilah. Auntie Jane was convinced that David was destined to be the next head of the family. Her mother was convinced that Auntie Jane was tottering on the edge of senility. David was too powerful, too independent to be tied so definitively to place.

Too like Granddad had been once? Allie wondered.