“Anything can happen in ten days. Maybe even the impossible.” She lifted her feet up onto the lounge and stretched out, Jack radiating heat against her hip. She watched another smoke ring dissipate, a soft gray smudge against a cloudless sky. Watched the stars hide death. Just for the hell of it, she sang one long pure note up into the sky. It slid past the power lines, up over the city’s rooftops, aimed at the star that wasn’t. It was mostly defiance. Although the family had bent a few laws of physics in the past—they’d have bent them half an hour ago had she been in the same province with Auntie Jane—Charlie didn’t expect her voice to . . .

A distant light flickered and began to descend.

“Holy crap.” The lounge creaked and swayed as she jerked up. “I did it!” They weren’t going to die! “It’s coming down! And okay, that’s not great, but if I can bring it down, I can break it up. Break it into pieces small enough they all burn up when they hit the atmosphere. Jack . . .” His arm was warm even through the sleeve of his jean jacket. “. . . look it’s . . .”

“I think it’s a plane.”

“Shit!”

“It’s okay.” He sounded amused so hopefully she hadn’t done anything irreparable. “It’s landing at the airport.”

“You can tell that from here?”

“Yeah, but I’ll go check on it if you like.”

Charlie reached for him as he stood, but only managed to grab the end of his tail. “We will never speak of this.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jack folded his neck nearly in half, lifted a wing, and grinned down at her over his gleaming curve of shoulder. “I’m never going to let you forget it.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHARLIE SLIPPED OUT FROM UNDER ALLIE’S ARM, froze as Graham shifted on her other side, and slid out of bed as he settled. Groping the floor beside the bed, she found a T-shirt and the pair of pajama pants she’d discarded the night before. Bare feet making no sound against the painted floor, clothes in one hand, she shuffled forward until her fingers touched familiar curtains, then she let herself out the French doors and into the apartment.