The roar of the truck engine cut her off. Charlie stood, free hand under the poncho resting on the upper curve of her guitar, and watched Jack peel backward out of the parking lot, wheel around through miraculously empty spots in traffic, and grind gears heading north.
On the other end of the phone, the sorcerer snickered. “I didn’t have to convince you, Gale girl. His kind have remarkable hearing.”
“And they learn fast,” Charlie muttered snapping the phone closed. In retrospect, showing Jack how the truck worked had been a bad idea. “And more importantly,” she growled, heading for the nearest trees, “how did that S.O.B. get my number?”
“I’m a little surprised that worked, actually, but I suppose it’s time something went right for me.” Kalynchuk unwrapped the red hair from around his phone and dropped it back into Graham’s lap. “How fortunate I spotted this protruding over your waistband.”
“Keep your fucking eyes on the road,” Graham snarled. He stuffed Charlie’s hair into his pocket. That’s what he got for grabbing yesterday’s boxers off the floor. When this was over, if he survived, he was definitely doing laundry.
“The freezer’s ringing.” Joe cocked his head and frowned. “I think it’s the theme from Boston Legal.”
Michael crossed the room in six strides, redirecting his pacing into the kitchen. “It’s Roland’s phone. He left it for us.”
“In the freezer?”
“I guess he forgot to take it out of the peas.”
Joe raised a hand. “Don’t want to know.”
“They haven’t been gone long enough for something to go wrong.” One hand digging into the frozen vegetables, he paused and shot Joe a worried glance. “Have they?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you’re…”
“Here with you, aren’t I?” Joe approved of that, actually. He figured that behind Catherine Gale’s wards was currently the safest place in the city. “Just answer the damned phone.”
“It’s me.”
“What?”
“It’s my phone calling. It’s Brian. It has to be.” Michael looked down at the phone, dwarfed by the size of his hand. “What does he want?”
“There’s only one way to find that out, isn’t there?”
“Yeah?”
Joe was starting to understand Allie’s fondness for hitting people on the back of the head. “Answer. The. Damned. Phone.”
Bottom lip between his teeth, Michael snapped it open and raised it to his ear. “Hello?”
It was Brian. From what he’d heard, Joe doubted anyone else could put that look on Michael’s face.
“Where am I?”
Joe wondered if the next question was going to be What are you wearing? And if he should go downstairs to the store.
“Who said to meet you at the park?”
That didn’t sound good. Joe watched the color drain out of Michael’s face.
“What park did she tell you to meet me at?”
She?
“Brian! What park?”
Joe didn’t actually need to hear the answer to that one.
“Okay, listen to me, please. Get in a cab and… Brian? Brian! Goddamn it!” He threw the phone across the room. Bounced it off the wall pretty damned close to where Allie’d bounced him. “Lost the signal. These phones don’t lose their fucking signal!”
“Twelve Dragon Lords, two sorcerers, and an emerging apocalypse might be messing with reception,” Joe pointed out. “And he’s right at ground zero.”
“Thanks for that. I’ve got to get to him.”
“Allie wants you to stay here. She’ll take care of him.”
“Yeah, because she’ll have so much free time.” He was shoving his feet into shoes as he spoke and Joe knew there wasn’t a hope of keeping him in the apartment.
“How are you going to get there? It’s halfway across the city.”
“It’s Calgary, not the middle of the tundra,” Michael snapped, yanking open the door. “I’ll flag a cab!”
Joe listened to him pound down the stairs, across the store, and out the front door. He sighed, followed him down, and turned the lock. Michael was nowhere in sight, so he must’ve grabbed a cab pretty much immediately. Seemed like he’d been around the Gales long enough for that kind of thing to rub off.
Eyes away from the shadows at the far end of the store, he rolled a yoyo along the countertop, putting out a finger to stop it just before it rolled out of reach. Allie’d told him to stay and that seemed like a good idea to him.
Besides, there was nothing he could do.
Was there?
Roland pulled the Beetle into the southeast parking lot right behind the bus, David behind them. Allie hadn’t had much choice about who was driving, her blood still burned and the constant roar was nearly deafening. She had to keep reminding herself not to yell over a noise only she could hear.
None of the aunties wore rain gear, but only the aunties who didn’t mind were getting wet.
“This isn’t enough,” she heard David say gesturing at the sky.
“We’ll take care of it when we’re airborne,” Auntie Jane told him.
“Do we have to?” Auntie Meredith sighed. “I haven’t taken down a chopper since 1968.”
“Glory days,” Roland muttered in her ear and Allie snickered as they ran toward the path to the summit.
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing here,” Katie called out following close behind them. “This isn’t a third circle thing.”
“You could always cross over,” Roland threw back.
“Bite me.”
“You’re here to pick up the pieces when it’s over,” Allie shouted, barely able to hear herself over the scream of rage bouncing off the inside of her skull. “Even if this works…”
“Oh, joy, sex in the rain. And if it doesn’t work, you’re talking literally pieces!”
“So call Charlie. Jack can help. And don’t let him eat the aunties. I actually like the kid.”
“Very funny.”
Whistling in the dark, banter in the dark—It all meant the same thing, Allie knew, as they jogged out to a stop on the top of the hill and she had to clutch at Roland’s arm to keep from falling. If she had this to do over, she’d…
Oh, who was she kidding. She’d probably do exactly the same things, and they’d still be standing in wet grass waiting for the world to end. The whole thing, from the moment she’d read Gran’s will, had had a certain inevitability about it.
Up above the cloud cover, something screamed.
Well, not exactly something, Allie admitted silently, gouging a charm in the wet ground with the heel of her shoe. The Dragon Lords were waiting.
And they weren’t going to be waiting long.
“I can’t stop her from breaking free!” Stepping into the center of the charm felt like stepping into the fire. Or quicksand. Or burning quicksand. Becoming as much a part of the hill as Jack’s mother. “She’s too big, and she has too much momentum.”
“You knew that.”
“I’d hoped once we were right on top of her…” Allie let her voice trail off as twelve figures rose out of the woods ringing the top of the hill. They swooped once over the summit, dangling feet an advertisement for sensible shoes—although Auntie Gwen’s Chucks appeared to have skulls painted on them—and then began to fly the circle widdershins. Once. Twice. Three times.
The clouds pushed back, piled higher over the city, thunder boomed and lightning cracked and the rain turned to a deluge. Over the hill, in a perfect circle, the sky all but gleamed, clear and blue.
The blue took Allie a bit by surprise; she kept forgetting it wasn’t the middle of the night.
David stood across from her, grounding the lines from the twelve in the sky, the last of the rain glistening on bare skin. Roland’s arms went around her, hands splayed over her belly, protecting her from the pull. Allie grabbed his wrists and reached for power as the ground erupted.
Jack’s blood had pulled him into Human shape as he emerged.
Jack’s mother had no such incentive.
Shimmering white, she rose and rose and rose. Ten meters. Twenty. Thirty.
As Allie fed power up to the aunties and they wrapped it around her, using the moment of not my world to help snap her back home, the Dragon Lords came out of the clouds.