The Wild Ways by Tanya Huff Page B

and Mark had spent the Nova Scotia summer festival circuit in a band called Wylde Chylde. The spelling had made Charlie’s eyeballs ache and the band itself had been a high-energy mix of styles that had never quite jelled. When Wylde Chylde blew apart, Charlie and the bass player had headed for Toronto and the blink-and-you-miss-it punk revival movement while Mark had formed and re-formed the remaining pieces into something closer to east coast traditional. Their friendship had survived time and distance and step dancing. “What’s up?”
    “Aston got bit by a seal.”
    “He what?”
    “He was out in his cousin’s boat, saw a seal swimming by, and reached overboard to pet it.”
    About to poke her finger into a box of plush toys, Charlie reconsidered. “He’s an idiot.”
    “Way to state the obvious, Chuck. Fucking seal bit off two of his fingers. Clearly the stupid fucker isn’t going to be playing much for a while.” Mark seldom swore. He considered it the sign of a weak vocabulary. Things must be bad back east. “We need you.”
    “I’m already in a band.”
    His sigh was deep enough she nearly felt it against her cheek. “Look, Chuck, I wouldn’t ask, but we’ve got five weeks of festival coming up, a good chance of taking top prize, and I know you’ll mesh.You’re at the same e-mail, right? I’ll send you the set list; you’ll be covering guitar and mandolin and you’ve got range enough to sing backup vocals without key changes left, right, and center. You take Aston’s lead; we can change the pronouns on the fly.”
    “I don’t . . .”
    “Think it over, that’s all I’m asking. Okay, that’s not all I’m asking, I’m totally asking you to ditch the band you’re with for us, but you don’t have to tell me right away. What time is it there?”
    She stopped running a die-cast tractor along the edge of the shelf and checked her watch. “Almost ten.”
    “Where the hell are you?”
    “Calgary.”
    “Why? Never mind. Look, get back to me by four, four oh five, four ten maybe your time and we can figure out the best place for us to hook up. We’re in Cape Breton, but you’ll fly into Halifax, right?”
    “Mark, I don’t . . .” He’d hung up.
    Allie was perched on a stool behind the glass counter, the yoyo ledger open in front of her, when Charlie emerged from between the shelves. “So?”
    “So Mark’s guitarist lost two fingers to a seal, and he wants me to head east and finish the festival season with him.”
    “Seals bite?”
    “Apparently.” Charlie waited while Allie recorded the latest sale, put the ledger away, and straightened.
    “Your hair’s blonde.”
    Okay, not what she’d expected. “What?”
    “Your hair . . .” Allie gestured at the top of Charlie’s head. “ . . . is blonde. It was blonde when you woke up this morning.”
    “It was turquoise when I went to sleep,” Charlie muttered pulling an orange plastic hand mirror off a shelf. One of those trick Halloween mirrors, it substituted a skull for her face, but the hair above the empty sockets was definitely her natural ash blonde.
    “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Allie’s tone made the question almost more of a statement.
    Cape Breton seals in Fort McMurray. Then on the news in the coffee shop. Then eating Aston’s fingers. That was three.
    Meet me in Halifax and we’ll talk.
    Okay, four.
    The last thing we need is a Wild Power playing at being domestic.
    Fine, five. But who was counting.
    The buzz under her skin made it hard to stand still.
    “Yeah, I’m leaving.”
    And the buzz stopped.
    Oh, really? she thought, putting the mirror facedown on the shelf. Subtle much?
     
     
     
    The thing was, Dun Good had only made it as far as it had because of Charlie. It wasn’t ego and it wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose, but sometimes she wasn’t as careful as she could’ve been with the music. Charm a set of broad shoulders here, a rounded cleavage there, don’t stay on top of the way