As the sound of her footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs, Jack opened his mouth. Charlie pressed two fingers down against his lips before he could say anything. She moved quickly across the roof, crouched in the doorway where Auntie Gwen had been standing, and brushed her palm across the wood. It looked a little like the motion he used when he fixed a scorch mark. When she straightened, she stroked the open door at hip height. As she turned slowly in place, he saw her eyes flash black, rim to rim. Scales rippled down his spine and his tail lashed once, twice in response to the power she almost never showed. It seemed Auntie Gwen had left charms behind. Two obvious charms, but clearly Charlie thought there was at least one more.

He had no idea how she’d managed to hide a charm when he hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

“How,” Charlie asked as though she were unconcerned about eavesdroppers, “can you choke on your own smoke?”

Unsure if the question was camouflage to hide what she was doing from Auntie Gwen, or if she really wanted to know, Jack crossed the roof and joined her. “It went down the wrong way.”

Arm over her head, she patted the edge of the upper framing, grinned, and flashed him a thumbs up with the other hand. “So you blew it out and then sucked it back in?”

“You’ve choked on spit,” he pointed out. “I’ve seen you.”

“Fair enough.” Head cocked, Charlie listened to nothing Jack could hear for a moment, then nodded. “We’re good. That was the last one.”

“Why would she . . .” To name the aunties was to call them. Not always, but it happened often enough Jack decided to be cautious. “. . . leave charms to overhear when she didn’t want to know?”

“She didn’t say she didn’t want to know, she said she wasn’t going to ask.”

“Why . . . ?”

“You tell me.”

He recognized that tone. It was the same tone his Uncle Adam had used when he’d asked why they didn’t flame the lake and eat the pookah after it floated to the surface. He suspected Charlie’d turned the encounter with Auntie Gwen into a lesson on power dynamics to emphasize the difference in their ages. Jack knew Charlie was older than he was; she just couldn’t seem to understand that he didn’t care. And, for what it was worth, parboiled pookah tasted terrible.

“If she asked what we were hiding and you didn’t tell her,” he said slowly, “she couldn’t let that kind of defiance stand. If she tried to force you to tell her, you’d lie and make her believe it and that would shift the power dynamic enough the other aunties would notice. Then it would be you, well, you and me, against all the aunties.”

“Think we could take them?”