A small part of her attention pointed out that she was standing with her back to the front door and someone was hurrying up the walk. So much for the standing around holding a candy apple scenario. She should’ve charmed the door locked, but it was too late for that.

Without David to pull the power and Allie to feed it to her, she needed time.

If you go down to the woods today . . .

The skin between her shoulder blades crawled as the door opened.

...safer to stay at home.

Fingers grabbed at her gig bag.

Jerking forward, she released the charm.

The house filled with sound—although the charm itself made no noise. The windows shattered.

For every bear that ever was there . . .

The grip on her gig bag fell away and Charlie spun around in time to see a totally innocuous looking old man fall to the floor. A bit of powder blue fuzz clung to the grizzled stubble on his upper lip. He looked Human—although that didn’t mean much, David and Jack both looked Human at least half . . . a quarter of the time.

Her skin had stopped sizzling.

The teddy bears slumped on the sills of broken windows or flung out on the lawn with the glass were no more than grubby, stuffed toys.

While people outside loudly argued about the possibility of a second, larger explosion, Charlie headed for the back door. The kitchen, with its faded linoleum floor and painted plywood cabinets, smelled interesting but she didn’t pause to find out why because she honestly didn’t want to know—many of the aunties’ kitchens had faded linoleum and painted plywood cabinets and interesting smells. In her experience interesting was just a little too general a description to be safe. The bears were free, the rest could be left to the good people of Vermont.

She reached for the back door to the sound of “Footsteps” by the English doom metal band Warning.

A warning about footsteps.

Footsteps?

“Technically, they’re footprints and I don’t think we have to worry about CSI Vermont,” she muttered, glancing back to make sure she hadn’t left a trail. Tucking her hand up into the sleeve of her jacket, she opened the door and slipped outside. Somehow, she managed to get across the yard and back into the cemetery without slicing her boots on pieces of broken glass or leaving too obvious a trail and, fortunately, the loud speculation from the crowd now inside the house and gathered around the old man covered any noise she might have made.

She barely heard her phone ring.

“Well, you’ve been a little busy, haven’t you, Charlotte.” Auntie Jane, however, came through loud and clear.

The fieldstone wall around the cemetery was about hip-high. Charlie planted her ass on a spot free of moss and lichen and swung her legs over. “You felt that?”