Wasn’t.
She could feel her connection to Michael. To Charlie. But it was like Graham had suddenly ceased to exist.
“I sent him for shortening, Allie, that’s all.” Auntie Kay reached out a comforting hand, reconsidered, and tucked it back in her apron pocket. “He just went down to the store. He’ll be back any minute.”
“No.” Clutching Graham’s jacket closed, Allie shook her head. “I can’t feel him. I can barely feel the city and I can’t feel him. One minute, everything was fine, the next I’m holding the end of a broken rope!”
“He ran once before.”
Pivoting on one bare heel, she whipped around toward Roland, but Michael slid into her line of sight, hands raised, voice gentle. “Rol’s right, Allie-cat. He did run once before, and you know the aunties can be a bit much for people. Even people who know them. No offense,” he added hurriedly in Auntie Kay’s direction.
“None taken, dear.”
“You don’t understand!” She cast herself out again. David. The aunties. Even the Dragon Lords circling high overhead. No Graham. “If he left the apartment around six twenty, he couldn’t have gone far enough for me not to be able to feel him.”
“Could you feel him the last time he ran?”
“Could I what?” Allie stared at Michael in astonishment. “No, of course not! I didn’t try! What does that have to do with him now?”
“Maybe when he’s with the sorcerer, you can’t feel him. He might have run back to him this morning, Allie. I mean, he’s been with this guy half his life. Hell, between the protecting and the paper, the guy is Graham’s life. Maybe Graham woke up this morning, heat of the moment long past, and realized he couldn’t just walk away.”
“He had walked away.” She was not going to cry.
“And you know this because?” Michael sighed and cupped one hand under her chin and lifted her head. “I hate to say this, but we both know you don’t love exactly rationally.”
“Who does!”
His thumb stroked her cheek. “You’re a little further off the bubble than most.”
“I’m a little…” She’d known him most of his life. He’d been the first boy she’d ever kissed. Thought he was the only boy she’d ever love. And she could see all those years together on his face. “I thought you didn’t know.”
“I’m not an idiot, Allie-cat.”
If he’d known, and never said… “So you’ve been laughing?”
The fox eyes, widened. “Allie, I would never…”
“Patronizing me, then!” The force of the blow, although she didn’t raise a hand against him—had never, would never—sent him flying over the closer of the sofa beds and slamming into the closed bathroom door.
“Yeah, so much for the not an idiot part,” Charlie murmured, taking Allie’s arm. “If Graham’s with the ex-boss, he didn’t go willingly. Come on. Into the bedroom, we’ll put on some clothes, and we’ll set up the search and rescue. Rol…”
“I’m calling.”
“Michael…”
“Michael’s fine. Joe’ll pick him up, Auntie Kay’ll slap a little arnica on the impact points, and he likely won’t even bruise.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“Yeah, you did.” Charlie’s grip moved her back into the bedroom. Twisting and trying to get to Michael only gained her a sore arm. “Oh, no. Until you’ve actually got your brain booted up and working, you’re staying away from the noncombatants. Also, next time I tell you to handcuff your boy to the bed, you should listen to me.”
“You didn’t tell me to handcuff him to the bed.”
“I didn’t? Damn, I meant to.”
“He asked if we were Human,” Allie said softly as she sank down onto the end of the mattress. “He’s been taught to hate everything that isn’t Human. If it’s not Human, it’s nothing. It’s…” She made the shape of gun with her right hand and pulled the trigger.
Charlie stopped rummaging in her drawers, turned to face her. “So you’re half afraid he did fuck off?”
Allie nodded.
“Well, he didn’t.” A pair of clean underwear smacked Allie in the face. “And if you weren’t bent on acting like a bad romance heroine, you’d know the thing between you is real and there’s no fucking way he’d walk.”
“Eaten!”
“By underwear?”
Which was when Allie realized she was staring at a burgundy cotton string bikini. “I forgot about the Dragon Lords! They could have eaten him.”
Charlie sighed and crossed the room to crouch at Allie’s feet. “Okay, one, they didn’t eat him before when the aunties were just a threat, so they’re sure as shit not going to eat him now when we’re overrun with aunties available for immediate retribution. Two, remember how Aunt Judy reacted when Uncle Roger died?”
“I remember.” The pain had drawn Allie home from Toronto and other members of the family home from farther still. The second circle had disappeared into Aunt Judy’s house for five days. First and third had baked a lot of pie.
“You’d know if Graham was dead and eaten, well, that’s pretty fucking dead. Now…” Charlie straightened. “Get dressed. Actually, answer your phone first.” She scooped Allie’s messenger bag off the chair and threw it at her.
“It’s probably Auntie Jane,” Allie muttered, digging through accumulated junk for her phone. Charlie had made her feel both better and worse. Better because it was hard to doubt Charlie’s certainty and worse because she should have been just as certain. When she thought of tomorrow, Graham was there. When she thought of thirty years down the road, Graham was there, too. It was just today she was having a little trouble with. “I’m not sure I’m up to Auntie Jane right… oh, it’s David.”
“So, how is my nephew?” Adam wore a burgundy suit Allie was pretty sure she’d last seen Timothy Hutton wear playing Archie Goodwin for A&E. And, nothing against Timothy Hutton who she thought was getting even more attractive as he got older, but, on Adam, the suit was smoking.
Literally.
Allie stopped a careful distance away, one hand resting on Graham’s truck. He wouldn’t have left without his truck. Not willingly. The contact helped her ignore the remaining doubt. “Jack’s fine.”
The dark eyes glittered as his gaze dipped off her face for a moment. “In the bosom of his family, is he?”
She had just a little too much on her plate this morning to react to a hypersexual, shape-shifting lizard looking at her breasts. “You knew?”
The shrug was equal parts sinuous and unconcerned. “The scent of the blood is unmistakable.”
“So the family business you didn’t want us involved in turns out to be my family’s business as well.”
“I never said it wasn’t.” His tone dared her to challenge him on that, but she honestly didn’t care enough to bother. “You must admit, it would have been much simpler for all concerned had you not become involved.”
“Simpler for everyone but Jack.”
“Death is not particularly complex, Alysha Gale.”
Her thumbnail cutting through the dirt, she sketched a charm on the truck. “Why are you here, Adam?”
He glanced around the alley. “The store was not open; we needed to talk.”
“Why?”
“I saw the man who wears your mark, taken.”
Adam’s smile let her know he’d heard her heart speed up. “Taken?”
“I saw him walking back to you. I saw him stop walking. I saw him disappear into a nothing in the road.”
“A nothing?” The hand not on the truck held her phone, her thumb on the speed dial that would connect her with her brother. If Adam was messing with her, she was going to give David a way to work out more of the energy he still held with a little head butting. “What’s a nothing?”
“A lack of something, Gale girl. There he was.” Adam spread long-fingered hands. “There he wasn’t.”
“Did he go willingly?”
“Away from you? How could he?” His smile was heated but when Allie narrowed her eyes, it cooled. “In all honesty, I saw no coercion, but there are bonds even I cannot see.”