Grinning, Charlie followed the song in and around the willows and out of the Wood, humming a countermelody as she stepped out from between two browning verbena and down off a concrete planter. Fortunately, at 9:10, the optometrist behind the planter was closed, and although there were a fair number of people still out on the old, red-brick sidewalks, no one seemed to have noticed her arrival. The surrounding buzz said fairly large city, the traffic told her she was in the US, and the license plates of the passing cars declared specifically for Maryland. To be on the safe side—not that stepping out of a planter was even close to the weirdest thing she’d ever been spotted doing—Charlie sang out a quick charm to erase her arrival from the memory of anyone who might have seen her.

Then “Mama Mia”—from the Abba Gold album, not the Meryl Streep movie version—rang out from the gig bag on Charlie’s back, demanding attention and re-attracting every eye for blocks.

“Family,” she sighed to the couple who stared at her as they passed. The nearer woman nodded in understanding. Slipping her gig bag off her shoulders, she dropped her butt down on the edge of the planter as she rummaged for her phone. She’d tossed it into a washing machine on her way out of the laundromat in Austin after fifteen minutes of her mother complaining about her twin sisters, twenty minutes of Auntie Meredith telling her about the weather in southern Ontario, and five minutes of her sisters declaring it wasn’t their fault—where it remained mercifully undefined. Unfortunately, Gale family phones were hard to lose.

Not so much smart as scary after the aunties finished messing with the basics, these days the phones were handed out to every member of the family as soon as they turned fifteen. Although the general consensus was that the aunties used the phones in ways that would make James Bond shit jealous bricks, no one refused the gift—cheap, reliable cell service was far from the default on the Canadian side of the border.

“Okay, you’ve had three weeks to play around. Come home.”

“You sound stressed, Allie-cat.” Phone clamped between her shoulder and ear, Charlie tucked her guitar safely away and zipped the bag up.

“You know what would make me less stressed? If you came home. I know, I know, you’re Wild—outside the family, beyond the laws . . .”

“Actually, I think that’s Torchwood.”

“Charlie! I have something to tell you.”

“Okay.” Charlie slid her voice into a soothing register, not quite a charm, but intended to calm. “I’m listening. Tell me now.”

“Not over the phone.”