“And I followed it.” She raised a hand before Allie could protest. “I’m not being facetious, Allie-cat. I was supposed to talk to that bouzouki player. I might not have known that for sure when I walked in, but it was hard to miss by the end of the evening.”

“Why?”

“No one called while I was with him.”

“Yes, that’s impressive, but I meant why were you supposed to talk to him?”

“He needed my help. Maybe even my blessing for the road.”

Allie shifted on the sofa, turning to stare at her for a long moment. “Your blessing?” she said at last. The lights flickered again.

“I’m not ruling out this being a setup for some shit still to come, but, yeah, my blessing. In a musical sense. And a couple of phone numbers.”

The noise Allie made in response was almost a growl. “He isn’t family, Charlie, I am, and I needed . . .”

“You wanted,” Charlie cut her off. “Not the same . . . Hang on.” Frowning, she teased out a piece of information that had nearly slipped by. “These new babies? Twins again? Boys?” she asked when Allie nodded.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not something I’d make a mistake about.”

“Because Uncle Arthur is failing to hold just like Uncle Evan did, and when the center of the family is weak, more boys are born to raise the odds of one with strength enough for the job.” There’d been no Hunt called for over thirty years, but the aunties had called for two in the three years since Allie’d transplanted a new branch of the family to Calgary. Charlie swung her feet up onto the coffee table and slumped down against the sofa cushions. In a family that ran five to one, girls over boys, Allie and Graham’s twin sons were already proof of the shifting powers at the center of the family. A second set of twin boys? The aunties would be smug and Uncle Arthur would get at least a year’s reprieve. “Weren’t you going to wait until the boys were older?”

To her surprise, Allie laughed. “Remember back when Graham was an assassin for Jonathon Samuel Gale and he never missed? Well, we just found another way his seventh son of a seventh son thing manifests.”

“Through his dick?”

“Through not missing! Sperm. Egg. Bam. His dick is incidental. Not to me,” she added hurriedly while Charlie cursed that last beer and the two times zones between Baltimore and Calgary that slowed her response, because incidental dicks were comedy gold. “He’s a little freaked about it because he feels like he made some kind of unilateral decision even though I explained, again, the difference between using power—like a Gale—and controlling power—like a sorcerer—and I just talked him down from that, so please don’t tease him about it.”

“Would I?”