“Sure I will.” But she could hear the lie. Charlie had no idea why Auntie Catherine had finally left, had put herself definitively outside the family’s influence, but Charlie knew, deep down where she knew the way into the Wood, that someday she, too, would slip the family leash. And after her, Jack.

Who’d filled the hall with smoke.

“Oh, that’s mature.” Waving a hand in front of her face, she crossed the hall and opened the back door.

When she turned to face him again, his eyes flashed gold. “It’s not a Gale thing,” he growled. “You said the aunties would tell me what I felt didn’t matter; isn’t that what you’re doing?”

The mirror usually chose to show Jack as a dragon. Not this time. His shoulders were broad and his arms well muscled—probably from all the flying—and although his nose was still a little big, all the individual parts of his face had begun to match up and settle into an attractive whole. His eyes—his reflection’s eyes—were a warm amber and his hair a little paler gold than his scales. A trace of gold glinted along his jaw and his upper lip. His reflection played a set of bongos, two beats on one skin, two on the other.

His heartbeat.

Her heartbeat.

Fingers tight around the straps of her gig bag, Charlie took a deep breath. Fortunately, most of the smoke had dissipated because nothing added to the sincerity of an apology like hacking up a lung. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. But you have to admit, it was pretty indicative of that whole significantly older than you problem.”

“I don’t have to admit anything and it’s your problem.” He was still smoking a little. “You need to get over it.”

She needed to get over him, but as that was unlikely to happen . . .

Given the way his expression changed from challenging to resigned, he’d read that off her face. “What if the bouzouki guy isn’t who we’re looking for?” he asked, chin rising, challenging her to comment on the abrupt subject change.

Yeah. Like that was going to happen. “Gary used to be an engineer, then all at once, bam, he gave up everything to follow a dream. And he had a secret.”

“And he’s the guy because there’s no such thing as coincidence in this family.”

“That, too.”

There was a faint smell of scorched fabric as Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “Weren’t you leaving?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“You want me to tell Allie you’ve gone.” His smile showed teeth. “Coward.”

“You betcha.”

*   *   *

In the Wood, Jack’s song sounded grumpy but not pained. Allie’s sounded fussy but not suspicious. Charlie couldn’t hear the bouzouki.

“Seriously? Now you decided to be coy?”