The Wild Ways (10 page)
Just in case, she checked her gig bag. Guitar tucked safely away, mandolin case piggybacking, small pockets on both cases stuffed with the essentials—nothing matched the image in the mirror where
something
was struggling to get out.
something
was struggling to get out.
“I hope you’re telling me to free the music,” she murmured patting the edge of the frame. “Because if my underwear were any freer, it’d be illegal.”
She had to put her knee to the door to get it open. Given that Auntie Gwen was in the window of the loft, glaring down into the courtyard, it was possible that the weight of her gaze had been holding it closed.
Charlie waved, then laughed delightedly, as Auntie Gwen flipped her off. If they’d wanted her to cross, if that’s what all the
we have to talk
eyebrow waggling had been about, it wasn’t going to happen now. She didn’t look up to see if Jack was standing by his window, he’d only be embarrassed to be caught. There was no reason to look for Allie and Graham because she knew damned well they were watching.
we have to talk
eyebrow waggling had been about, it wasn’t going to happen now. She didn’t look up to see if Jack was standing by his window, he’d only be embarrassed to be caught. There was no reason to look for Allie and Graham because she knew damned well they were watching.
The shrubs leaned toward her, leaves quivering.
“Hang on, kids.” Freeing her guitar, she hung the gig bag on her back then settled the guitar strap over her shoulders and checked the tuning. A flat G had once resulted in a detour through a bed of decorative plantings at the Illinois State Fair and a fast dive for cover while she figured out what had gone wrong. Like many celebrities, the Budweiser Clydesdales were shorter up close. She’d had to throw out her shoes. And socks.
Tuned and ready, Charlie gave her assembled audience her best Ahn-old . . . “Ah’ll be back.” . . . started the melody line that would take her to Mark, and stepped into the shrubbery . . .
. . . and stepped out again in a fringe of trees about a hundred meters from a red-roofed building in the middle of an acre or so of mowed lawn. She could smell the ocean, but given that Cape Breton had more coastline than the interior geography could account for, that didn’t give her much of a clue. Recent rain had stopped, but the cloud cover was still too thick for her to even pick up a direction from the sun.
“Guess we’ll do it the easy way then.” Guitar stowed safely back in the bag, she crossed the wet grass to the sign.
“Celtic Music Interpretive Center. Wednesday Ceilidhs 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM, five dollar admission. July 27th starts the Samhradh Ceol Feill.” Charlie traced a charm over the sign and the letters rearranged. “Ah, Summer Music Festival. Makes sense. And as today is July 27th, the only question remaining is, where’s . . .”
“Chuck! Where the hell did you arrive from? If you hitched over from the airport, I’m going to slap you silly. It’s not the summer of love, baby. Well, not officially anyhow.”
Charlie turned to watch Mark charge down the path toward her, wearing a CIJK-FM T-shirt over a black utility kilt barely held within the bounds of decency by his blue fake fur sporran. He had a set of drumsticks shoved through his hair just above the elastic that held his ponytail.
As soon as he was close enough, he pulled her into an enthusiastic hug, then pushed her back to arm’s length and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve learned to play the fiddle since we talked?”
“Another two waiting for you in the Sydney office? Good news. I haven’t seen much in the way of support from them yet, but this should certainly encourage more active participation in the process.” Leaning back against the butter-soft leather, Amelia glanced down at the papers spread out on the seat beside her. “I’ll be done at the studio by seven, but I expect there’ll be a bit of necessary socializing with the producer to keep his opinion sweet, so there’s no point in me leaving Halifax tonight. I’ll head out in the morning and meet you at the office at eleven. That’ll give you plenty of time to find off-site storage unconnected to the company in case they get desperate enough to try something. Better to be safe than sorry,” she continued before Paul could speak. “I leave the details in your hands.”
She switched her attention to her notes as she hit the disconnect. The moment Two Seventy-five N had taken them public, Paul had done his usual excellent job and put together an inarguable list of facts that supported their position as well as a number of anecdotes that sounded inarguable but had no factual support at all. All she had to do tonight was hit the emotional beats and start swaying the voting public onto their side. Sway the voting public, sway the politicians they voted for.
In a just world, the honorable minister would have gotten his shit together and issued the permits before the application for the well had been thrust into the public eye by a group of environmental extremists. Amelia, well aware the world was far from just, believed in contingency plans.
“Ms. Carlson.” Her driver flicked open the communication hatch. “We’re five minutes out.”
“Thank you, Val.”
The papers, edges parallel, went into her briefcase; she wouldn’t be referring to them again. Paul had provided a printout of the facts, not only clear, concise, and bulleted but available for the station to copy and give to their researchers.
Well,
researcher
, the CBC budget being what it was.
researcher
, the CBC budget being what it was.
She slid her phone into her Italian leather bag. It was starting to look genteelly worn, but then she’d had it made to her specifications right after she’d gone to work for her father and it had rarely left her side since. The craftsman had included enough interior sections and outside pockets that she’d never be caught rummaging about like a north shore granny looking for a lozenge.
Yes, I have an assistant who could handle my minutiae, but I prefer not to waste his talents dealing with the sort of thing that every other woman in the world manages on her own.
The purse told the world that she wasn’t helpless. She was aware of her privilege. She was of the people.
It was a killer shtick.
The car slid into VIP parking under the studio.
Showtime.
Earbuds in, music loud enough to rattle the scales on his tail—if he had a tail right now which he didn’t because it wouldn’t fit in this stupid room and yeah, okay, it didn’t suck that he could let down his guard because he didn’t have to worry about his uncles sneaking up on him—Jack dragged another one of Graham’s old comics out from under the bed and propped it up against his knees. Earlier, he’d tried to make issue seven,
Crisis on Infinite Earths
hover in the air above his eyes and two hours later still wasn’t able to get it down off the ceiling. That was the stupid sort of thing that happened when he actually tried to do sorcery instead of just letting it happen. If Graham saw what had happened to one of his precious comics, he’d be grounded for a month. He wouldn’t have even tried, but he wanted his hands free to deal with a bag of frozen cookies with his name on it.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
hover in the air above his eyes and two hours later still wasn’t able to get it down off the ceiling. That was the stupid sort of thing that happened when he actually tried to do sorcery instead of just letting it happen. If Graham saw what had happened to one of his precious comics, he’d be grounded for a month. He wouldn’t have even tried, but he wanted his hands free to deal with a bag of frozen cookies with his name on it.
After the first time he tried claiming food the way he would have back home, Allie’d put his name on everything he was allowed to eat.
And bought a new freezer.
Those things really stank when they melted.
“Find out who I am here,” he muttered, around a mouthful of gingersnap. “I don’t even know what that means.”
He was a dragon. But no one outside the family was supposed to know that. He was sorcerer, but even some people inside the family weren’t supposed to know that. He was a Gale and that was all about family who weren’t trying to eat him.
That was cool.
Maybe Charlie’d meant he should work on being more of a Gale.
Turned out that Mark’s fiddle player wasn’t missing, just very late, arriving as the band before them took their bows.
“Look, it was an emergency,” he snapped before Mark could actually articulate all the jumping around and hand waving he was doing. “Tanis, my girlfriend, couldn’t find a family heirloom and she’s a little hysterical. I left when her sisters showed up and I’m here, so calm down. Hey.” He waved the hand not holding his instrument. “You must be Charlie. Bomen Deol. You might as well call me Bo, I can’t get Mark to stop, and before you tell me I don’t look like a fiddle player, I’m ethnically Indian. The Romany came out of India, and some of the best fiddle players in the world are Roma, QED.”
Charlie grinned. “You get asked that a lot?”
“You’d be surprised.” He took a deep breath, shook out his shoulders on the exhale, and nodded toward the now empty stage. “Okay. I’m calm. Let’s do this.”
Tim Waters, the keyboard player and the underreaction to Mark’s overreaction since they’d met playing soccer in university, led the way out onto the polished maple half circle, accordion slung around broad shoulders. Shelly Simpson followed, wrestling her upright bass into position before the stage got any more crowded, muscles moving smoothly under the golden freckles covering her bare arms.
“I use the electric a lot of the time,”
she’d told Charlie earlier,
“but this place seemed to cry out for the all-natural sound.”
A few people in the audience cheered when Bo took his place—this was a crowd that appreciated fiddlers.
“I use the electric a lot of the time,”
she’d told Charlie earlier,
“but this place seemed to cry out for the all-natural sound.”
A few people in the audience cheered when Bo took his place—this was a crowd that appreciated fiddlers.
To keep things moving, all the bands used the Center’s drums and keyboards. Mark had a set of sticks in his hands and two more plus a pennywhistle tucked in behind the waistband of his kilt.
“So,” Charlie said as they stepped out of the shadows, “I forgot to ask; this band got a name?”
“
Grinneal!
Scot’s Gaelic for bottom of the sea.” Mark grinned and saluted her with the sticks. “It’s sink or swim time, Chuck!”
Grinneal!
Scot’s Gaelic for bottom of the sea.” Mark grinned and saluted her with the sticks. “It’s sink or swim time, Chuck!”
THREE
T
HE PELTS SMELLED like fish. Paul hadn’t noticed it before, but piled on the backseat of his car, tucked into suit bags that made fine camouflage but terrible filters, the scent was unmistakable. Technically, he supposed they smelled like the ocean, like brine and kelp rotting on the shore, but the signature, the grace note, was definitely fish. And not fish the way he preferred it, filleted almost transparent and lying on a bed of sticky rice next to a serving of sake; this was fish the way he remembered it from meeting his dad at the docks and nearly gagging on the stink rising off glistening piles of guts speckled silver with scales. It stank of barely getting by and wearing his cousin’s hand-me-downs and being expected to never achieve his full potential because if kids like him went to work for Carlson Oil, it sure as hell wasn’t in the office.
HE PELTS SMELLED like fish. Paul hadn’t noticed it before, but piled on the backseat of his car, tucked into suit bags that made fine camouflage but terrible filters, the scent was unmistakable. Technically, he supposed they smelled like the ocean, like brine and kelp rotting on the shore, but the signature, the grace note, was definitely fish. And not fish the way he preferred it, filleted almost transparent and lying on a bed of sticky rice next to a serving of sake; this was fish the way he remembered it from meeting his dad at the docks and nearly gagging on the stink rising off glistening piles of guts speckled silver with scales. It stank of barely getting by and wearing his cousin’s hand-me-downs and being expected to never achieve his full potential because if kids like him went to work for Carlson Oil, it sure as hell wasn’t in the office.
The odor anchored the skins in a pungent reality that removed any lingering disbelief. Why worry about the hard left his worldview had recently taken when his time could be better spent worrying about getting the smell of the docks out of his car. It was the first new car he’d ever owned and he really didn’t want the past he’d worked so hard to shake to take up residence in the upholstery.
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