The Future Falls (15 page)

It had nothing to do with the street person Charlie'd thrust into the protection of the family so he didn't repeat thoughts he shouldn't have heard—not that he
should
hear thoughts at all. No, Allie knew that if something was wrong it could be traced back to her grandmother's call because anything off in the Gale family in the last thirty years could be traced back to her grandmother.

“It was a Wild thing, Allie-cat, don't worry about it. The crazy street people prophecies are being dealt with.”

She anchored second circle. Charlie would have to tell her if she pushed. Allie didn't know if Charlie could lie to her or how she'd be able to tell if Charlie had. She knew she never wanted to doubt her, not the way she doubted her grandmother, so for now she'd let it go.

Jack, who was clearly a part of the Wild need-to-know excuse, still ate like he'd missed his last six meals, but since nothing affected his appetite, that wasn't as reassuring as it might have been. Allie frowned as she studied the side of his face; he felt like resentment and relief and . . . “Are you two keeping secrets?”

“Secrets?” Charlie winked. “You make it sound so dirty, Allie-cat.”

That explained the guilt, Allie reasoned as Jack spit soup across the table. But if it also explained Jack's resentment, it could be . . . She lost track of the thought as the twins shrieked with glee and added to the mess.

“You hiding up here?”

Stretched out on an elderly teak chaise, Charlie watched the pigeons who'd been perched on the edge of the roof take flight, and muttered, “Why would I be hiding from you?”

The matching chaise protested as Jack dropped onto it, but held together. “I didn't ask if you were hiding from me, I just asked if you were hiding.”

“Not hiding. Thinking.”

“Yeah, I could smell the smoke. You're going to get wet.”

She transferred her gaze to the sky. Pure October in Calgary, the clouds they'd watched moving in while they were in the park now hung so low it looked as though she could reach up and touch them. “Please, it's barely spitting.”

“We could go inside. . . .”

“No one's stopping you, princess.” She nodded toward the door.

“Oh, yeah,” Jack snorted. “You're tough.”

The roof deck had been added during the renovation of the apartments; built by Michael so Jack would have a place to land out of Auntie Gwen's direct line of sight. Charlie had no idea how often he used it, but after Allie'd grown too large to maneuver her bulk around the turns of the spiral staircase, she'd found it an excellent place to get a little alone time. She was well aware of the irony of looking for alone time in a place built for Jack.

“So at lunch . . .”

“Come on, you hunt. You've got to understand the whole leaving a false trail thing.”

“With dragons, it's not so much hunting as it's swooping and devouring.”

“What's the difference?”

“Hunting implies a chance of failure.”

“Right.”

“So, what're you thinking about?”

He didn't add,
Us?
Charlie heard it anyway. “Dan.” A raised hand held him silent while she sang out a subtler anti-eavesdropping charm than she usually used.
Piss off, this is private!
occasionally backfired and attracted more attention than it prevented. She hadn't had a chance to tell Jack what Dan had told her in the Wood; not with David able to hear every word. David could keep personal secrets as long as Allie or the aunties didn't ask a direct question, but if there was the slightest chance the family was in danger, he'd raise the alarm without considering that they might need more information. It was part of his function to be crazy overprotective and part of hers as a Wild Power to make an end run around him.

“He could've heard Auntie Catherine?” Jack said thoughtfully when she finished filling him in.

“Millions are going to die? I'm positive that wasn't Auntie Catherine overreacting.”

“Yeah, because the aunties never overreact.”

“The aunties can make
Game of Thrones
look like
Dora the Explorer
, but that's not the point. The point is, out of all the millions of people tossing their thoughts into Dan's head like it was some kind of mental dumpster, how do we find the other person who knows about the asteroid?”

“You don't know it's only one person.” When Charlie turned to glare at him, Jack shrugged. “You think Dan heard one person, but there could be more people Dan didn't hear. He doesn't hear everyone.”

“Stop helping.”

“We should check Dan's Facebook page. He didn't set it up,” Jack continued, before Charlie managed to move past the stunned surprise of her initial response. “It's the bam bam video and reactions. Maybe the person Dan overheard posted a ‘
dude, you know the sky is falling, I know the sky is falling, too'
comment.”

“Yeah . . .” Charlie shook her head. “I bet there's a bunch of those and they're probably as useful as most things on Facebook.”

“How would you know? You're still on MySpace.”

“It's an indie music site now!”

“Uh-huh.” Tipping his head back, Jack let out a short burst of flame. “And now it's snowing.”

“Three flakes hardly count as snow.”

“Four.”

Charlie held out her hand and watched as the fourth flake, grayer than the rest, drifted down onto her palm. “I think that's ash.”

Jack stared down at it. “What did I burn?”

“No idea.” She scrubbed her palm clean against her jeans and wished everything that fell from the sky could be dealt with so easily. “Count the pigeons.”

He snickered instead of protesting; an adult's response not a child's. Not adult enough, unfortunately.

After a moment, Charlie sighed and said, “I suppose I could just go looking for people having random panic attacks. That might narrow it down a bit.” Panic seemed like a reasonable response to believing millions of people only had six months left. “First you panic, then you go a little crazy and do all the things you always . . .”

Her personal soundtrack played the
Jeopardy
theme as the pieces fell into place.

“I'm an idiot.”

She expected a smartass remark. When all she got was silence, she turned to see Jack staring at her, his expression pure dragon.

“You're leaving again.”

“I have to see a man about a bouzouki.” She sang the anti-eavesdropping charm away as she stood—an auntie stumbling over it would lead to an exploration of the entirely incorrect statement that
“In this family we don't keep secrets.”
The aunties kept plenty of secrets. Charlie was just the only non-auntie who could manage it, and reminding them of that never ended well. When she reached the door alone, she assumed Jack planned to stay on the roof. Then she heard the chaise fall over, and he joined her on the stairs.

“Does bouzouki mean you're going to have sex?”

Her boot slid past the last step. The dance across the hall to keep her balance was not one of her more graceful moments. “No. Not sex. Bouzouki means there's no such thing as a coincidence in this family.” Dropping her voice as they moved through the apartment, she told him about the sudden decision of an engineer to lead the life of an itinerant musician.

She'd left her guitar leaning against the wall by the mirror. A glance at her watch, certain it was near four or five, informed her it was only just past two. They'd had a busy morning.

“Take me with you.”

Weren't they past this? “I can't.”

“I know you can't take me through the Wood, but if we flew . . .”

The warm strength of Jack below her, the sky roads open and infinite. Charlie shook her head to dump the overwrought anthem she could feel building. “There's nowhere for you to fly to. I don't know where I'm going until I leave the Wood and get there.”

“Yeah, I get that, but . . .” He stared at the floor for a moment, then squared his shoulders, folded his arms, and looked her in the eye. “Like I said in the park, I don't like it when you're not here.”

Charlie wrapped both hands around the gig bag's straps so she didn't reach out and press her palm against his chest over his heart. When did he grow taller than her? She didn't remember that happening. “If it helps, it's not just you; it's a Gale thing.”

“It's not a Gale thing.”

“Yeah, it is.” Even after four years, there was still a lot about the family he didn't know. Things the rest of them had internalized so thoroughly, they were never mentioned until minor disasters brought them up. If she could make Jack believe that at least part of what he felt was no more than family feelings, that would be best all around. Convince. Not make. Never that. Charlie glanced toward the stairs. “Allie freaks out when I leave because she wants to tuck everyone she cares about close around her and keep them safe. Classic second circle. But don't mention that makes you think of her as a giant chicken because she really doesn't appreciate it.” When Jack didn't share her smile, she let it drop. “David, well, David doesn't exactly freak out, he never did, but he's not happy when his people are outside his sphere of influence. And the aunties freak when I leave because I'm Wild, and they figure sometime I won't come back.”

“You won't.”

“Sure I will.” But she could hear the lie. Charlie had no idea why Auntie Catherine had finally left, had put herself definitively outside the family's influence, but Charlie knew, deep down where she knew the way into the Wood, that someday she, too, would slip the family leash. And after her, Jack.

Who'd filled the hall with smoke.

“Oh, that's mature.” Waving a hand in front of her face, she crossed the hall and opened the back door.

When she turned to face him again, his eyes flashed gold. “It's
not
a Gale thing,” he growled. “You said the aunties would tell me what I felt didn't matter; isn't that what you're doing?”

The mirror usually chose to show Jack as a dragon. Not this time. His shoulders were broad and his arms well muscled—probably from all the flying—and although his nose was still a little big, all the individual parts of his face had begun to match up and settle into an attractive whole. His eyes—his reflection's eyes—were a warm amber and his hair a little paler gold than his scales. A trace of gold glinted along his jaw and his upper lip. His reflection played a set of bongos, two beats on one skin, two on the other.

His heartbeat.

Her heartbeat.

Fingers tight around the straps of her gig bag, Charlie took a deep breath. Fortunately, most of the smoke had dissipated because nothing added to the sincerity of an apology like hacking up a lung. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. But you have to admit, it was pretty indicative of that whole
significantly older than you
problem.”

“I don't have to admit anything and it's your problem.” He was still smoking a little. “You need to get over it.”

She needed to get over him, but as that was unlikely to happen . . .

Given the way his expression changed from challenging to resigned, he'd read that off her face. “What if the bouzouki guy isn't who we're looking for?” he asked, chin rising, challenging her to comment on the abrupt subject change.

Yeah. Like that was going to happen. “Gary used to be an engineer, then all at once, bam, he gave up everything to follow a dream. And he had a secret.”

“And he's the guy because there's no such thing as coincidence in this family.”

“That, too.”

There was a faint smell of scorched fabric as Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “Weren't you leaving?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“You want me to tell Allie you've gone.” His smile showed teeth. “Coward.”

“You betcha.”

*   *   *

In the Wood, Jack's song sounded grumpy but not pained. Allie's sounded fussy but not suspicious. Charlie couldn't hear the bouzouki.

“Seriously?
Now
you decided to be coy?”

She checked her tuning, then played “Boys of Blue Hill,” pausing after each measure to listen. Gary'd played it so beautifully in Baltimore it was clearly a signature piece for him.

Nothing.

She played his love for his wife. His decision to follow his dream. The secret that convinced him he had nothing to lose. The cats; singly and collectively.

And more nothing.

“Well, fuck you. We'll do it the old-fashioned way.”

Charlie stepped out of the Wood at the Forks in Winnipeg and called Dave Clement.

“Gary Ehrlich? Yeah, he gave me a call yesterday. I sent him to Vermont. George Frost's band has a line of gigs at small fall fairs through New England and his bouzouki player broke his wrist teaching parkour in Jersey City. Frost's playing Art on the Street tonight and tomorrow in Carter, Vermont, then I think he's heading into Connecticut. Give me a minute and I'll find the list of where he's heading after that.”