Closing early might not be a bad idea. It was nearly five, and there wouldn’t be any…
The umbrella entered the door first, followed by a dark trench coat and a lot of water. A tanned, long-fingered hand wrestled the umbrella closed, and Allie got her first look at a pair of extraordinarily blue eyes. Not the more common bluish gray but a bright, cerulean blue. A Maxfield Parrish sky-blue.
“Sorry about dripping all over the floor.”
“That’s very blue.”
“Pardon?” His voice was rough. A whiskey voice, Auntie Ruby would call it. Actually, Auntie Ruby was losing it, so she could easily call it a carpet voice, but that was beside the point. It stroked against Allie’s skin like a cat’s tongue, lifting all the hair on the back of her neck.
“All right. I meant, that’s all right. About dripping on the floor.” The remarkably blue eyes were in a pleasant enough face with a straight nose—a bit on the short side—over a longish upper lip and distinctly long chin. Not Brian Mulroney or Jay Leno long, but long. The eyes were tucked under nicely shaped brows on a high forehead tucked in turn under medium brown hair that could use a trim although, to be fair, the storm had destroyed whatever style he might have started the day with. He wasn’t very tall, had maybe two inches on her tops, but then he smiled and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and Allie forgot all about his height.
She was suddenly entirely aware of the bit of pie filling smudged on the front of her sweater. If she’d known he was coming, she’d have changed. Hell, if she’d known he was coming, she’d have baked a cake.
“I’m looking for Alysha Gale.”
“I’m Alysha Gale.”
“You’re Alysha Gale?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not…” He frowned, clearly trying to marshal his thoughts and having a hard time doing it. “… old.”
That was just strange enough, Allie wrestled cognitive thought back on-line. “Excuse me?”
“God, that had to have sounded inane. I promise you, I don’t usually sound inane.” He reached in past the lapels of his dripping trench coat into the inner pocket of a distinctly cheap suit. Although the tie was nice. The narrow stripe across the gray was the same color as his eyes.
“Ms. Gale?”
Cognitive thought hadn’t lasted long. She stared down at the white rectangle of paper. Oh. A business card. “Graham Buchanan?”
“That’s right.”
“And The Western Star?”
“It’s a newspaper. I’m a reporter. For the newspaper. Hang on.” He reached into the inner pocket on his trench coat and pulled out a folded newspaper and passed it over. “It’s last week’s, we’re a weekly and okay, it’s a tabloid, but…” His eyes crinkled again. “It’s a job. That’s uh, me.” One finger tapped the page. He kept his nails very short. “My byline. There.”
“Hauntings on the LRT?”
“Some people saw things in the glass.”
“Actual things?”
“Probably not.”
She liked that he said probably. That he was open to the possibility. That could come in handy later.
“Anyway, I was talking to Catherine Gale last week, about her business, this business, about how it’s mostly made up of odds and ends of people’s lives, trying to convince her there’s a terrific human interest story here…”
Graham Buchanan was a very good liar. If Allie hadn’t been watching his eyes so closely, she’d never have realized it. If he thought there was a story here—and he did—it wasn’t a story about other people’s lives. She had no idea what her grandmother had done to make him suspicious, but—in less than a minute—his willingness to see beyond the expected had gone from being a good thing to a potential problem.
And he worked for a tabloid.
Those idiots would print anything.
This sort of thing never came up at home, and the wild ones, while they sometimes made headlines, they just laughed and moved on, but here and now Allie had neither the safety of home nor the luxury to leave.
“… but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then she told me she’d be leaving, but one of her relatives would be taking it over and I should talk to her. All she gave me was your name. I don’t know why I thought you’d be old.” He shrugged, the movement surprisingly graceful under all his damp layers. “I mean, it was just a name. You’re…”
“Her granddaughter.”
“Of course.”
Thunder.
Lightning.
The lights went out.
When the lights came back on a moment later, he’d moved closer. Not a lot, but the puddle he’d been in the middle of was mostly behind him and Allie doubted the puddle had shifted. If he’d hoped to throw her off by his sudden proximity, then she could definitely count on at least one thing he didn’t know about the Gale girls.
This close, he smelled amazing.
When she smiled, he blinked and shuffled back a step. “I, uh, I dropped in to set up a time we could talk. If you were willing to talk to me, that is. Just because Ms. Gale, your grandmother, thought you would be, doesn’t mean you’d be. Willing. To talk.” He seemed confused by his reaction. This was not a man, Allie concluded, in the habit of losing control.
This close, she could see the faint shadow of stubble along his upper lip and jaw. “We could talk now. I doubt anyone’s going to brave the storm for a mismatched set of silver spoons and a yoyo.”
“A yoyo?”
A nod toward the box on the counter. “They’re our best sellers.”
“Of course.” Cerulean eyes crinkled at the corners, and even though his smile had become a little masklike, it was still a very, very nice smile.
She was going to enjoy finding out what he thought he knew.
As soon as her friends had yelled one final good-bye out the car window and driven safely out of sight, Charlie pulled her guitar from the gig bag, stuffed the gig bag into the duffel bag, and settled the latter on her back. Given that Halifax Stanfield International Airport was thirty-five kilometers from downtown Halifax, and they knew how broke she was, she couldn’t really refuse the ride. Fortunately, airport improvements meant airport construction meant a near total lack of parking so they’d merely dropped her off and kept going. It was why she’d chosen to “fly.” They’d have hung around the train station or bus station, keeping her company until she boarded.
Three quick steps up and over the curb and she was sinking into loose dirt as she slipped between skinny trees newly planted and into the Wood.
Allie’s song was one Charlie’d been following most of her life. She’d followed it out her first time in when she’d very nearly become just another cautionary tale the aunties told about the family oddities.
“Oh, traveling sounds like fun,” they’d say. “But it’s a lot less fun if you’re lost in the Wood and can’t find your way home.”
No argument from her. Lost was definitely a whole fuck of a lot less fun and had involved near panic resolved by projectile vomiting when she’d finally stumbled into Aunt Mary’s kitchen. Allie, home alone finishing a history essay, had cleaned her up, tucked her into bed, and kept the gathering aunties out of the room until Charlie’s parents could come to claim her.
Charlie’d asked later how she’d done it, and Allie, just turned thirteen and all knees and elbows, had spit the end of her braid out of her mouth and shrugged, saying, “I stood in front of the door,” like it was no big deal to hold off a whole flock of the circling buzzards.
Even for Gale girls, the two years between fifteen and thirteen were a bit of a gap, but that had bridged it.
So following Allie’s song should not require the kind of attention she was having to give it to stay on course.
And then a few notes went missing.
Shadows began to gather…
The path began to shift.