Tanya Huff - The Enchantment Emporium

Tanya Huff

Contents

Copyright 2009 by Tanya Huff.

All Rights Reserved.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1477.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

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ONE

Shoot the moon was considered to be one of the more dangerous yoyo tricks. Not particularly complicated-nothing like the crossovers of a Texas Star-but a moments inattention and the odds were good that 35.7 grams of hardwood would be impacting painfully off the front curve of the human skull. There were rumors that, back in 37, Canadian and World Champion Joe Young had once bounced a Shoot the Moon and continued to ace the competition with no one the wiser until the next day when the bruise began to develop. She didnt know about that, and she didnt put much trust in rumors, but she did know that when Joe Young died during the war, the sport lost a master.

She executed the trick perfectly.

Pulled a glow-in-the-dark yoyo from the box, turned off the lights in the store, and did it again.

Perfectly.

Pity there was no one around to see.

In a valiant but ultimately futile effort to keep herself amused, she had a yoyo on each hand and was walking

alternate dogs when the shadow finally blocked out the light from the street spilling through the grimy glass of the door. It took her a moment to pull the string off the second finger of her left hand and, in that moment, the metal doorjamb began to groan.

Another moment and it would buckle.

Lips pressed into a thin, irritated line, she shoved both toys more-or-less away and strode over to the door. It wasnt locked, but that was clearly a detail these sorts of late-night visitors never bothered to check.

Yanking it open, she squinted up at the misshapen silhouette and snapped, What took you so long?

This was clearly not the expected response.

Were you planning on getting up any time soon?

Allie pulled the pillow over her head, hoping her mother would consider that answer enough. She was twenty-four years old, unemployed, friendless, and back home with no prospects. As far as she was concerned, she was entitled to stay in bed all day if she felt like it.

The silence, weighted heavily with unspoken advice, ended with a nearly audible eye roll, and the sound of her bedroom door closing.

Good. The last thing she needed right now was the kind of practical, levelheaded analysis of the situation her mother excelled at.

Pillow still over her head, she stretched out her left arm and patted the empty spot in the bed. Charlie was gone.

Given how cool the sheets were, shed probably been gone for a while. Stretching out her right arm, she patted the other side of the bed. Dmitri was gone, too. Face pressed into the bottom sheet that smelled faintly of fabric softener and sex, Allie frowned and tried to remember what day it was.

Her job as a research assistant at the Royal Ontario Museum had ended on Tuesday, the grant money that had paid her having finally run out with no hope of renewal. With almost a months warning, shed been trying to get the last of the Cypriot artifacts into the new cataloging program. The Classical /Hellenistic period-the bulk of the collection-had made it in, but it seemed as though the Cypro-Geometric period never would. She hated leaving things unfinished.

She hated leaving.

Or more specifically-she hated having to leave. Hated the feeling that her life was out of her control.

It wasnt as though shed loved the job-although in all fairness, shed enjoyed rummaging about the back rooms at the museum attempting to bring order out of chaos-it was just that she wasnt finding the old joke about fine arts degrees and would you like fries with that particularly funny these days.

Her Uncle Richard and three cousins had arrived on Wednesday to help pack up her tiny apartment and haul home the stuff she hadnt sold or handed off to other cousins in the city. The family didnt exactly own things communally, but there were cooking pots still being passed around that predated frozen food. Charlie had stayed with her, theyd spent Wednesday night on an air mattress; shed handed the keys in Thursday before theyd crammed the last bits and pieces of her life into the back of a borrowed car and left the city-Charlie complaining all the way home about the mode of transport-so today had to be Friday.

Friday, April 30th.

Which answered that question at least-Dmitri was at school.

Charlie could be anywhere.

Once again, shed been left alone.

Her fingers plucked at the quilt the aunties had made for her, not needing to remove the pillow to find the square centered with a piece of one of Michaels old shirts.

Left alone just like stupid Michael with his stupid perfect boyfriend and his stupid perfect job out in Vancouver had left her alone.

Alysha Catherine Gale! Age had not stopped Auntie Janes voice from carrying clearly up to the second floor. As if age would dare. If you arent out of that bed and downstairs in this kitchen in fifteen minutes, I will make you sorry you were ever born!

No chance Auntie Jane would leave her alone.

And an even smaller chance that every word shed said wasnt to be taken literally.

Sometime in the night, Dmitri had sketched a charm on her right calf. Hed probably thought she wouldnt notice it down there, but then he was young and still incredibly indulged. Eyes rolling, she erased it, smiled fondly at the old charm Charlie had retraced on her shoulder, and stepped out of the shower to find Samson, one of the familys four border collies, drinking out of the toilet.

Dont tell me youve learned to go around the door, she muttered, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him back. She hadnt bothered to stuff the old rusty hook into the equally rusty eye, but the bathroom door was still closed.

Tail slapping into her knees, Samson ignored her.

Allie made it downstairs with twelve and a half seconds to spare, wrapping an elastic band around the end of her hair and tossing the wet braid back over her shoulder. As expected, her mother and Auntie Jane were in the big farmhouse kitchen baking pies, the two of them both working at one end of the old rectangular table. Allie paused on the bottom step.

Gale girls had sisters, that was a given.

There were inevitably four or five girls in the family to every boy.

Her gran, her mothers mother, Auntie Janes youngest sister, had three girls. No boy. That was strange but not unheard of.

Allie had a brother, David. He was four years older and hadnt that set the aunties to talking. Boys were never born first.

She had no sisters.

He got the Gale that should have been spread out over half a dozen girls, Auntie Jane had been heard to sniff, her dark eyes watching David. Whats he going to do with it, thats the question.

This close to ritual, the kitchen should have been full of Gale girls, laughing, talking, making sure the right things went into the pies.