After a quick check that she remained alone—Baltimore’s aged dead evidently preferred the grave to travel—Charlie took a deep breath and sagged against the smooth bark of the closest birch. The moment she stepped out of the Wood, it had to be business as usual, so it was best she take a moment to regain the joy Gary’s music had given her and to make sure nothing the Shadow had poked was seeping past the Charlie everyone expected to see.

The songs of family and friends wrapped around the bouzouki. Steadying. Comforting. Right up until Jack’s song pushed its way to the foreground.

“Emotional scab picking. You’re a class act, Charlie Gale.” The complex harmonies of Dragon Prince, sorcerer, Gale boy wrapped around her, and in the Wood, where no one would judge, she could . . .

Shit. If Katie’d mentioned the cemetery, Allie would worry.

Worried on top of angry; not good.

Charlie slipped out of the Wood in the enclosed courtyard behind The Enchantment Emporium, the Calgary junk shop Allie had inherited from her grandmother—Charlie’s Auntie Catherine and the oldest of the family’s three Wild Powers. The shrubs in the small center planting were in full bloom even though, given the season, they should’ve been completely dormant. “Okay, that’s weird.”

She twisted around. The lights were on in Auntie Gwen’s loft over the garage, but neither Auntie Gwen nor Joe were in the window, even though both of them would have felt her emerge. Joe wasn’t family, as such, and while he might be a little tall for a Leprechaun, he was fullblood Fey with all the sensitivity and proclivity to angst that included. They had to have known she was the reason for Allie’s mood and Auntie Gwen, at least, wouldn’t want to miss the finale.

“I guess she’s got her hands on his Lucky Charms.”

The rim shot from her backing band was one of its few inarguable perks.

Facing the store again, Charlie noted that no one looked down from the apartment windows either. The lights were on in the kitchen/living room. The twins’ bedroom, the bedroom that used to be Jack’s, was dark.

She didn’t look up at the sky. Didn’t listen for the sound of wings.

The back door was unlocked. As the door could be only be accessed from the courtyard and the only way into the courtyard was through the Wood by way of the shrubbery or through the garage, the door was always unlocked. The last kid to try and break in through the garage had found himself in culinary school. The one before that still hadn’t been found.