Free The Future Falls by Tanya Huff Page A

son. And Allie’s a Gale. So, seventh son of a seventh son of a seventh son of a Gale. Dragons are all about keeping bloodlines straight.” It was one of the nonlethal ways they reminded him of the aunties.
    â€œI thought there only was one bloodline.”
    â€œSure. Now.” Licking peanut butter off the side of one hand, Jack balanced his two pieces of bread on the other and collapsed onto the end of a sofa. From deep between the cushions, he pulled up two fluff-covered cookies, one infant Iron Man shoe, and finally the remote. He flicked the TV on, hit the mute, and started surfing. He wasn’t ignoring Charlie because she kept leaving and he wasn’t ignoring her because David had as much as told him to. He was seventeen not six. He was channel surfing while eating and besides, even if Charlie was doing that
I’m not watching you even though I’m really watching you
thing she’d started lately, she wasn’t exactly keeping up her side of the conversation.
    When Edward face-planted into the cushion next to him, Jack hauled him up onto the sofa by his diaper. At Edward’s age, unable to defend himself from his uncles’ attacks, he’d never left his mother’s side. So far, no one hadattacked the twins and, given Allie’s reaction to a misunderstanding with a customer when the twins were napping down in the shop, that was a good thing. Graham had to call Michael and find out how to replace a whole section of the floor. Auntie Gwen had replaced the guy’s memory. And his hair. Weirdly, she’d left his eyebrows to grow back on their own.
    Half his attention on the past, and half on Charlie walking scales—musical scales, not his kind—up Evan’s belly, Jack was a little too slow when Edward climbed into his lap and grabbed the remote. “Hey, not for larva!”
    â€œGo!” Edward yelled and threw it across the room. Evan squirmed out from under Charlie’s grip and tottered after it. Instead of bringing it back, he sat down and gnawed on one end.
    So much for surfing.
Calgary Morning Live
started in on the weather and Jack turned his attention back to Charlie.
    â€œYou feed them?” he asked as Edward tried to pick a scale off his arm. He shifted the rest of the way into skin and ignored Edward’s dirty look.
    â€œNot yet.” Charlie leaned back on her arms and stretched her legs out. They were tanned, even though the sun hadn’t been out in Calgary for days. Jack wondered whose boxers she had on and hurriedly patted out a bit of smoldering upholstery on the arm of the sofa, hoping she hadn’t noticed. “But Katie told me if they couldn’t wait until Allie got up, I should give them some dry cereal.”
    â€œThey need more meat,” he muttered.
    â€œThey’re not dragons.”
    â€œDuh. Dragons at that age
are
meat.” He wondered, given the twins had no sense of smell to speak of, if they ever got Charlie and Allie confused. Charlie’s hair was shorter, but nearly the same honey color. “Why’d you stop dyeing it?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour hair. When I first got here, it was all colorful.” Dragons wore their personal colors like warnings. “Now it’s bland and . . .”
    â€œ. . . on the morning drive.”
    They turned together as Evan waved the damp remote, having gnawed the sound on.
    â€œAnd now . . .” The anchor smiled at the camera. “. . . a story about our own local Doomsday Dan.”
    â€œCome on, Evan. Give the remote to Charlie.”
    â€œNo, Cha Cha!”
    â€œWait!” Jack leaned forward and Charlie paused, one hand on the remote, the other holding Evan away from it. “I want to watch this. I know Dan. When he won’t go to a shelter, I make sure he doesn’t freeze.”
    On the television, in a familiar corner of the park by the zoo, a familiar ragged figure faced the