No snow this time. No rain, but then there wouldn’t be. It didn’t rain while the Gales were in ritual unless the Gales wanted it to rain. It felt like spring, all damp earth and new growth, but she had no idea how much time had passed. Although this ritual was all about Allie and Graham making one final baby, the final baby, Charlie could feel the rest of the family laying down a harmony track. The seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale would grow up surrounded by cousins his age.

And not only cousins. If the world still existed—don’t look, don’t look, don’t look—he’d have plenty of friends and neighbors his age. For a broad definition of neighbor that lapped against the Rockies to the west, the border to the south, the tundra to the north, and slid over Saskatchewan with nothing to stop it until Manitoba.

As the power of his conception sizzled around her, the surrounding shrubs burst into full leaf and then into flower. It tugged her forward, pooled between her legs, and spread in burning lines of need throughout her body. A distant roar pushed through the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears, and it took a moment before she realized it had to be David, challenging from within his circle of aunties. She had to leave before David fried her where she stood.

But she couldn’t disentangle herself from Allie’s touch. Graham’s touch. Roland. Katie. Rayne. Lucy. She took another step forward.

The attack, when it came, lifted her off her feet. Airborne, she clamped her hands over the strings, forced an A past a dry tongue, and rode it back to . . .

...slam into the trunk of an enormous oak. Charlie grunted at the impact, breath knocked out of her lungs, head ringing. Her guitar thrummed out a sympathetic B flat. Bark crumbling behind her as she slid to the ground, she fought for air, stumbled, and finally sagged back against the tree.

At first she thought the darkness was the fault of the rising bump on the back of her head. After a moment, she realized it had nothing to do with her and everything to do with where David had thrown her. As a rule, she stayed well away from the shadows under the old oaks. From a distance, they looked fake, like blackout curtains hung to simulate shadow. Up close and personal, the shadow became very real with next to no underbrush when she looked down and no glimpse of sky through the nearly solid canopy when she looked up. It smelled like the root cellar back at the old farmhouse, a damp repository of dying vegetables. Worst of all, she could hear running water.