Enchantment Emporium

Roland was in 1015, one of the small corner suites. Charlie knew damned well Alan Kirby hadn’t booked a suite. Roland’s boss was, in the words of Auntie Grace, tighter than bark on a tree. But Roland was a Gale; if there were upgrades to be had, he’d have them.

His door was slightly ajar—obviously he’d been expecting her.

“Charlie, hey!” Roland closed his laptop when he spotted her walking the short hall and began shoving paperwork into his backpack. “Thanks for this. I could have gotten a flight home, but getting back here on Sunday would have been a nightmare.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

He paused. Frowned. “I know you hate playing taxi, but…”

“I hate people assuming I’ll play taxi, not the same thing.” As a general rule, she didn’t mind making life easier for the family, but that did not include being on call for those too stupid to read a calendar and needing a quick trip home.

“Then if you don’t mind my asking, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“What? Oh, sorry.” She crossed the room to the desk, boots making next to no noise on the carpet. “Nothing to do with you. Just some guy trying to be all friendly in the elevator.”

Roland winced. “How badly did you damage him?”

“Not that friendly. Just friendly.”

He ducked away from the punch she aimed at his shoulder. “The horror.”

“It wasn’t him.” A bit of laminate was loose on the edge of the desk. She absently charmed it back down. “There’s something funky happening in the Wood.”

“Define funky.”

“Can’t. If I could, I wouldn’t be so…”

“Cranky?”

“Bite me. Three year olds get cranky.” But she couldn’t stop herself from smiling back at him. Damned Gale boys anyway. “You ready?”

“Well, since your arrival establishes precedent that funky, however funky, is safe—almost.” Laptop secured, he stretched, back cracking. “You know, I could have flown down here Monday. The deposition won’t be ready until first thing Tuesday morning—but Alan was adamant I be here for the final court dates.”

“The aunties are pissed.”

“I think that was his intention.”

“To get the aunties pissed?” Charlie asked, wandering into the bathroom to pocket the tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner. “The man has a death wish?”

Roland shrugged as she came back into the sitting room. “They haven’t done anything obvious in a while.”

“So he’s poking at them with a you-shaped stick? Moron. What the hell is that?”

With the ease of a man who’d grown up with five sisters, he deftly avoided her grab and tucked the glittering pink unicorn into the larger of the pack’s outside pockets. “It’s a present for Lyla. I always bring her something when I get back from a trip.”

“Technically, you won’t be back from this trip until next Wednesday.”

“I’ll bring her something else then.” He looked so sweetly besotted talking about his three-year-old daughter that Charlie gave half a thought to jumping him. Sweater vests or not, he was David’s age, only twenty-eight, and while law might have left him a little physically soft around the edges, none of the Gales had been short-shrifted in the looks department. Rayne and Lucy, Lyla’s mothers, certainly wouldn’t care.

“So, how’s your band doing?”

“Which one?” Charlie wondered, opening what turned out to be a fake chest of drawers and finding the television.

“The New Age techno head banging thing I saw you do at that…” When the pause extended, she turned to see him standing, half into his jacket, and frowning. “… club.”

“We broke up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Really?”

“No.”

And so much for doing Roland. Sweet guy, for a lawyer, but his idea of music stopped and started around John Williams and usually involved light sabers. She tossed the TV remote on the sofa and spent a moment making sure her strings were in tune. Her B had a tendency to flatten in the Wood. “If we leave now, we’ll be back before Lyla gets home from school.”

“I’d like that. Thanks.” He slipped his backpack over one shoulder. “Where do we leave from?”

“Across the street from the hotel. There’s a shrubbery in that little park.”

Holding the suite’s door open for her, Roland frowned. “You can get in from a shrubbery?”

“I can.” She patted his cheek as she passed. “Because I’m just that good.”

The shadows dogged their heels all the way home.

“Traveling the Wood is never the same twice,” Auntie Jane scoffed. “And all sorts of things lurk by the path.”

“This was something new,” Charlie insisted.

“What part of never the same twice are you having trouble understanding, Charlotte?”

“But…”

“It’s coming up on May Day,” Auntie Ellen pointed out—unnecessarily as far as Allie was concerned, given that the house already overflowed with family and Uncle Richard had just parked his RV in the yard. “Things are stirring.”

Charlie took a deep breath, visibly holding her temper, and tried again. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“You’ve never seen anything like it?” Auntie Jane sniffed.

“It’s new to your vast experience?” Auntie Ellen sneered.