Everyone, physically and digitally, looked at Charlie. Then at Jack. So Charlie looked at Jack, too.

Jack swallowed a mouthful of pie and stacked the empty plate with the others on the floor beside him. “Charlie and I already talked about this, back when we assumed the Wild Powers could stop it. I don’t actually control what I do. Things don’t change because I want them to; they change because I need them to.”

“You need this rock to change, dude.” Carmen reached out and punched him lightly in the shoulder.

“He’s had no training,” Graham reminded them.

“Training.” Auntie Jane leaned in, dark eyes narrowed. “Sorcerers in this family are self-taught.”

“And then killed,” Graham growled.

“But if it were heading right for you?” Heather asked, stretching out and poking Jack in the back with her foot. “If the asteroid was overhead, over your head, and it was clear you’d die in the impact, would you make it disappear? Instinctively.”

“I don’t know. It’d disappear or I would.” Jack shrugged. “I might just return myself to the UnderRealm. I wouldn’t know until it happened.”

“So let’s drop a really big rock on him and see what happens.”

“Not helping, Auntie Bea!” Allie snapped, as Jack began to smoke. “Jack, what about your uncles, the Dragon Lords?”

“My uncles?”

Charlie figured that anyone who hadn’t expected the puff of smoke and had inhaled at the wrong time deserved what they got. How could they not know that Jack’s relationship with his uncles was violent at best and . . . Actually, violent pretty much summed it up.

“My uncles,” Jack repeated, once the coughing had died down, “might be convinced to not hunt the family to extinction should they take refuge in the UnderRealm. Although I’d probably have to kill a couple to get that much out of them,” he added thoughtfully. “Besides, we can’t go to the UnderRealm— Charlie already explained.”

The family turned to look at Charlie. She spread her hands in the universal gesture for well, duh.

“All right, then . . .” Allie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Joe, what about the rest of the UnderRealm?”

With a room full of Gales searching for him—although Auntie Gwen looked right at him, Charlie noted—Joe slowly became visible over by one of the bookcases. “What about the rest of the UnderRealm?”

“The Courts. Can the Courts stop the asteroid?”

Charlie caught Jack’s gaze and opened her mouth to say they’d discussed that, too, but snapped it closed again as Auntie Jane said, “The family does not deal with the Fey.”

No subtext. No undertone. A bald statement of inarguable fact, it smothered every other sound in the room. In all four rooms, Charlie realized.