“Excuse me?” Charlie touched the old woman gently on the shoulder, hoping her breath didn’t smell liked she’d just puked up her last three meals against the rough bark of what looked like a coconut palm. “Can you tell me where I am?”
The old woman frowned, mahogany skin pleating. “Oh, merveilleux. Un autre Américain touriste perdu.”
Not exactly a hard translation, even with Canadian high school French. “Je ne suis pas Américain. Je suis Canadien. Mais vous avez raison, je suis peu un perdu. Quelle ville est-ce que je suis dedans?”
The frown didn’t change significantly. So much for Canadians being universally loved abroad. “Port-au-Prince.”
“Haiti?”
“Oui. Haiti.” The old woman rolled her eyes, and walked away along the cracked sidewalk, muttering under her breath.
What the hell was she doing in Haiti? The last thing Charlie remembered before the puking was Allie’s song spiraling out of her control and the shadows gathering under the trees. Or maybe shadow, singular. She was pretty sure she’d felt focused intent, and that was new. And terrifying. The aunties could kiss her ass if they didn’t believe her this time.
Carefully setting her guitar down, ignoring the way her fingers trembled, she pulled the duffel bag around and unzipped the small end pocket. Empty.
Not in the duffel bag. Not in the gig bag.
Where the hell was her phone?
FOUR
“I mean, you’ve got to wonder, who’d ever buy one of these in the first place, right?” Graham was smiling as he slid open the back of the case. His fingers were actually over the monkey’s paw when Allie grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand back.
“It’s old,” she said quickly, as his smile slipped. “I’m afraid it’ll fall apart if it’s handled.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known.” But it was interesting that he’d gone straight for the artifact. Was he testing to see if she knew what it was? She wondered what he’d have done if she hadn’t stopped him. How would he have reacted when the severed paw squirmed in his grip? Not that it mattered because she’d have stopped him regardless. Allie had no idea who’d made those first two wishes, had no idea what they’d wished for, but she knew it had ended in horror and regret. It always ended in horror and regret. “If I had a choice, I’d lock it away out of sight.”
“Don’t you have a choice?” That was the reporter asking. Just a little too emphatic for a polite inquiry.
“I don’t think my grandmother would like that much.”
“Ah.” When he nodded, Allie wasted a moment thinking about brushing his hair back off his face. Would it feel as silky sliding through her fingers as it looked? “She’s coming back, then. Is she all right?”
The aunties’ opinion aside, it seemed safest to stick to the party line. “She’s dead.”
His face blanked for a moment before sympathy took over, but she couldn’t tell for certain if his reaction was to the news or the way she’d delivered it. “I didn’t know.” Not exactly the truth but his lies were better hidden than they had been. “It must’ve been sudden.”
He said he’d been talking to her last week. “It was.”
“Forgive me for saying this…” Head dipped slightly, he studied her through the shield of his lashes. “… but you don’t seem too upset.”
“I don’t think I’ve really accepted it yet.” And that, at least, had the benefit of being the absolute truth.
Outside the store, thunder rolled, gentled by distance, and while the rain continued to fall, it was now possible to actually see the other side of the street. The storm had moved east, heading for the prairies.
“Uh, Ms. Gale.”
“Allie.”
“Okay.” He didn’t step away from her smile this time. Good for him. “You’re still holding my wrist.”
Oh.
They were standing close enough that fabric touched—his open suit jacket brushing against her sweater. Close enough shared body heat had warmed the air between them.
His pulse beat strong and fast under her fingertips. A little faster than it should given it was the pulse of an apparently healthy young man just standing and dripping rainwater onto a hardwood floor. Allie suddenly realized she’d actually traced most of a charm onto the smooth skin of his inner wrist without thinking and swiped it clear as she released him, her fingers lingering just a moment longer than necessary. Gale girls took what they wanted…
Down at the other end of the counter, her phone rang. Long distance, but not one of the family rings.
“Are you going to get that?”
He expected her to say no. Which, to be fair, was her intention. She opened her mouth to say, let it ring. What she actually heard herself say was, “I’ll just be a moment.”
Telemarketers did not call Gale phones and she could count the number of non-family members who had the number on the fingers of one hand. When an anonymous voice asked if she’d accept a collect call from Charlie Gale, muscles she didn’t remember tensing relaxed.
“Charlie?” Allie mouthed my cousin at Graham. “Did you lose your phone again?”
“I think I left it in Halifax.”
“Left it? Where are you?”
“Brazil.”
“What are you doing in Brazil?”
“I got pushed out of the Wood. Four times now.”
“Shit.” She turned, her back to the reporter, her body curled protectively around the phone as though she could send that protection through to Charlie. With her free hand, she traced a charm against the countertop, and her voice slid sideways, out of eavesdropping range. “By what?”
“I couldn’t tell. Shadows.” Charlie sighed, bone-deep weariness apparent in the sound. “Well, shadow, singular, probably… I think it was the same fucking thing every time.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m tired and I’m angry and I’ve puked up everything I’ve eaten for the last six years, but yeah, I’m all right. I’m just in Brazil. Rio. I think it’s trying to keep me from you.”
“What?”
“For fucksake, Allie, pay attention. I said, I think…”
“I heard you.” Fear, not for herself but for Charlie, sharpened her tone. “That was an exclamation of surprise, not a request for you to repeat yourself. If you can’t get to me, go home!”
“Oh, stupid me, not to think of that!”
She gentled her tone, pulled Charlie back from the edge. “You tried?”
“I tried. Every time I go in, fucking shadow bounces me out. Doesn’t matter where I’m pointed.”
“Then why do you think it has to do with me?”
“I just… I can hear your song in the way the Wood changes, okay? And yeah, I know that doesn’t make sense to you, but it does to me, so be careful. Don’t trust anyone outside the family. I’m on my way.”
“How…?”
“They have these things called planes.”
“Yeah, but they smell like ass and they make you check your guitar.” Allie could hear Charlie smiling in the silence. “Have you got the cash to…?”
“Credit card. I’m on a flight that’s boarding in about forty-five minutes. It’s going to take a while, though.” She could hear paper rustling and maybe, now she knew what to listen for, a distant security announcement. “It’s Rio to San Paulo to O’Hare to Denver to Calgary. Thirty-six hours and fifty minutes. I’ll get in about six thirty in the morning on Saturday if there’s no delays… except that I’m going through O’Hare, so delays are fucking inevitable.”
The layout of the runways at O’Hare meant that two or three times a day, planes heading east sketched a dark charm on the airport. Had the family needed to fly into Chicago with any regularity, they’d have done something about it. As it was, it was easier to just to avoid the city.
“Wait a minute, O’Hare to Denver to Calgary?” Allie mapped it out against the counter. “That’s going back south before you go north.”
“Beggars and choosers, babe. At least I’ll get caught up on some sleep.”