by Nina Berry
Lazar said, “November, maybe you can help him, or see if you can track Orgoli’s movements here somehow. . . .”
“Nope.” November brushed biscuit crumbs off the front of her shirt. “I’m leaving soon to hang out with Siku’s family before the shifter council meeting.”
The table got quiet. Everyone was staring at November.
“What shifter council meeting?” London asked.
“They didn’t tell you?” November showed all her teeth in a malicious grin. “Now isn’t that funny. The North American Council called a big meeting of all available shifters for tomorrow night. They’re going to discuss how they can work together to wipe Ximon and the Tribunal off the face of the earth.”
CHAPTER 8
Everyone started talking at once. Luis and Cordero raised their fists and gleefully shouted, “Down with the Tribunal!” as Arnaldo shushed them. Caleb was on his feet, asking November how she’d heard, and Lazar was doing much the same from his end of the table. London called her a bitch, which only widened November’s smile.
Arnaldo turned to London. “Did you know?”
London’s nose ring was quivering with anger. “No! I stopped talking to my parents weeks ago. They’re the only way I get information like that.” She turned to November again. “I’m a shifter, too, you verminous sneak! So’s Arnaldo! We deserve to know about an all-shifter council meeting, same as anyone.”
“Same as me,” I said.
November dabbed her mouth delicately with the corner of her napkin. “You’re not a shifter, Dez. So thanks for your help with the Tribunal and all, but we can take it from here.”
Blood drained from my face. My chest felt hollow. “What? I’m . . . what?”
“That doesn’t matter, and you know it,” London said, leaning into November. “If it wasn’t for Dez, all the shifter tribes would still be fighting each other. It’s only because of her, and the rest of us, that they’re even considering banding together against the Tribunal.”
“I’m a shifter!” I said, so loudly that everyone else stopped talking and looked at me. “I shift into an animal, just like the rest of you!”
“But you’re not like the rest of us,” November said. Her brown eyes were slits. Behind them lurked a dark and terrible rage. “You’re some creature from another world who’s good at looking and sounding like a shifter. Who thinks she’s smarter and stronger and knows what’s best for everyone. Only you don’t. Because when you’re around, shit hits the fan. When you’re in charge, people die. Siku died. Because of you!”
“That’s not fair,” Arnaldo said.
I took a step back, reeling. “No. Let her talk. Obviously, she’s been thinking like this since it happened.”
“Let me talk?” November let out a scornful laugh. “Try to stop me.”
“Don’t be an idiot, ’Ember,” Caleb’s voice was icy. “Siku was his own man. He knew the risks, same as the rest of us.”
“Siku wouldn’t have blamed Dez,” London said. “He would blame the guy who shot him! And Ximon.”
“Oh, I blame them.” November stood up. “I very much blame them. But I also blame the person who led us right into Ximon’s trap. Siku took care of the guy who shot him before he died. That leaves Ximon and Dez.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Lazar never swore, so even a mild word like “hell” coming out of him was a shock. He normally had a high tolerance for November’s shenanigans, too. But clearly she’d crossed a line. “If you’re looking to get revenge on Dez, reconsider. Now.”
“Look who grew a pair in five minutes.” November smirked. “Don’t worry, Loverboy. I don’t have to do anything to get revenge on Dez. You’re doing it for me by heading off into Othersphere with her and her ex-Loverboy. What a joke! You’ll all be so busy fighting or trying to ignore each other, the monsters over there will have you for lunch.”
“November, why are you being like this?” Arnaldo said. “We’re a team. You’re acting like . . .”
“Like I’ve got half a brain for once.” November pushed her chair back and walked to the hallway where the stairs led down to the dorm rooms. “I gave you guys a chance yesterday. Even after Siku died, I followed Dez like a good little soldier right into Ximon’s house. And guess what? I nearly died. No more chances, Dez. No more death for me. My bags are packed. My brother will be here in half an hour to pick me up. See ya.”
Her footfalls ran lightly down the stairs.
The four-hour drive to Burbank was grimly quiet. Lazar drove faster than he ever had before, while Morfael sat, all long legs and arms, in the shotgun seat. Caleb and London sat behind them, while I curled up in the way back, afraid to be up front. Afraid to let any of them see me.
“You’re not like the rest of us,” November had said. The phrase repeated in a sickening loop in my head.
As we packed up the SUV, London had told me not to take it personally. She said November was crazy with grief, or maybe just plain crazy.
Lazar had stopped me when we were alone in the hallway for a second and formally asked how I was doing. I wanted him to wrap his big strong arms around me. To tell me everything was going to be all right. That I was all right.
But he kept a discernible distance between us, and glanced away quickly when our eyes met. He, too, told me that November was acting out of pain. Then he left me alone.
It was nice of them to try to cheer me up. But I didn’t believe it. November was mourning for Siku, yes. But I had fallen for Ximon’s trap at the particle accelerator. If it wasn’t for me, the group never would have gone there and Siku wouldn’t have died. And yesterday November had nearly died as well, because I’d been an idiot and hadn’t believed Ximon’s story about being possessed.
It was hard to remember a time when I’d ever been right. A time when I’d ever felt anything but disgust and horror at myself.
Morfael gave us instructions dryly in the car: He could hold a window open to Othersphere for us for four hours only. We’d have to come back with Amaris by then or wait another twenty-four hours, when he’d try to open the window again. We left our phones in the car; they’d be useless in Othersphere without towers or satellites to keep time or transmit messages. Caleb and Lazar were wearing watches synchronized to be sure we got back in time. London chose not to wear one, since she’d probably shift as she went through the window. And I could never wear one—they stopped working within a few minutes thanks to my anti-tech-fu.
Normally, the sight of the Lightning Tree would have soothed me. I’d climbed the enormous old oak many times as a kid and visited it nearly every day after I got the back brace. I hadn’t known then that the tree had a powerful shadow connected to an eternal storm in Othersphere. But I’d been drawn to it nonetheless.
Now, in the gray winter light it looked strangely ominous, skeletal. The mostly bare branches cast gnarled, snakelike shadows on the grass before us.
Huge dark clouds had gathered over the Burbank hills. Rain began to pelt down, and the few remaining kids on skateboards scattered off home. Morfael, Caleb, Lazar, London, and I were the only ones in the park. We piled out of the SUV, throwing on our backpacks, moving with urgency, as if any moment we delayed might be the one in which we lost Amaris.
Morfael followed at a slightly slower pace as we jogged forward, dead leaves crunching under our shoes. The three callers—Lazar, Caleb, and Morfael—hummed instinctively as we neared the tree, gold glinting in their irises.
I couldn’t see the eternal storm in the tree’s shadow. But I felt its nearness, a familiar, almost comfortable buzz under my skin. I sped up. The closer I got to the tree, the better I felt.
When I got close, I pushed off the ground to climb up, landing in a comfortable spot where the branches first split, wide as a bumpy lap. I ran my hand over the rough bark, and for a moment I could’ve sworn the branches swayed closer to me, as if in greeting.
Plants had always liked me. With my green thumb I could make just about anything grow, even
in bad soil or the wrong climate. Something to do with my connection to Othersphere, where nature ran rampant and technology did not exist.
I leaned forward against a large branch, wrapping my arms around it, pressing my cheek to the coarse surface, like a starving person who had finally had a meal. Through my skin a nearly undetectable pulse beat. It was the beginning of the music of Othersphere.
“The tree’s vibration changed when Dez climbed onto it,” Lazar said, gazing up at the bare tangle of branches.
“The storm always subsides a bit when she’s near,” Caleb said.
“It knows her well,” Morfael said.
“It does?” I hadn’t known that.
“Line up before the tree,” Morfael said in a voice that cut through the rain and the wind. Thunder crackled in the distance. I dropped down off the tree as the others arranged themselves.
London removed her shoes and socks and handed me her coat, getting ready to shift. “I wish November was here,” she said. “Like the old days.”
“Me, too.” I stuffed her coat into my backpack, guilt stabbing at me again. My earlier reluctance had vanished once I’d touched the Lightning Tree. I couldn’t wait to get into Othersphere, to take action, maybe to forget for a little while just how wrong I had been about everything.
“I’m going to miss Arnaldo and his eyes in the sky.” Caleb looked up at the branches of the tree.
“We’ll need to stay sharp,” Lazar said. “Watch where every footstep lands. You never know what you might be walking into.”
“Will I be forced to shift when I pass through, too?” I asked Morfael, raising my voice over the rain, which was now pounding down.
Morfael’s moonstone eyes still glowed with gold. “You will stay in a similar form. But you will find more variation is possible in all your forms.”
I frowned. “Similar form?”
“Yes,” Morfael said. “You may not recognize yourself. As a shadow walker, your form will be closest to that which the world demands. But as an Amba, you’ll feel the greatest attraction to your tiger form. Use it wisely.”
“Shadow walker?” Lazar stared at me, unsettled.
Caleb was nodding. “That makes total sense.”
London couldn’t have cared less. “Let’s go!”
Lazar had taken the brown rope from Cherry Drive out of London’s backpack. He wrapped the rope around his right arm, holding it in his right hand and held it out to London. She measured out a span of it. Then the air warped around her, and where she had been stood a huge, silver-gray wolf with electric blue eyes. Her pants puddled under her back paws. Her shirt ripped, hanging on her front legs. She took it in her teeth and yanked it free. Then she took the rope in her mouth and offered it to Caleb, who wrapped it around his left hand. I stood next to Lazar, my hand on the haft of the Shadow Blade, completing the semicircle around the knotty trunk of the Lightning Tree.
Morfael stood behind us. “Don’t forget, you must return within four hours, or you will not be able to reenter this world.”
Caleb checked his wristwatch. “Four hours. Does time move at the same rate over there?”
Morfael half smiled. “Close enough. If you’re left in Othersphere, wait twenty-four hours. Then return to this spot, and I’ll try to open the portal again.”
“We’ll try not to miss the four-hour mark,” I said. Surviving there that long would probably be challenge enough.
“Unless we haven’t found Amaris by then,” Lazar said.
“We’ll find her,” Caleb said. “No matter how long it takes.”
London gave a short bark of agreement.
“Enter as soon as the portal appears. Waste no time,” said Morfael. “Take care of each other.”
I looked down the line at Caleb, London, and Lazar, united by the rope, and swore to myself I would not let them down. Not this time.
They were doing much the same, exchanging glances, taking a deep breath. Lazar turned to me, his brown eyes alight with tension and excitement. He smiled, and held out his left hand.
I took it gratefully, pushing worries about Caleb from my mind. Lazar’s hand was warm, thrumming with a tremor I hadn’t felt before, and I wondered if it came from the rope in his other hand.
Then Morfael unleashed a deep note from the back of his throat that nearly knocked me over. The force behind it was palpable. It didn’t waver, growing louder, and I half expected an ocean liner to come steaming up behind us. In my peripheral vision, I saw him point his staff at the tree.
The note changed. A question was being asked. Before me, the tree seemed to waver, like an old film jumping in a projector, and I glimpsed a vast bank of black and gray clouds, churning with rain and lightning.
Then the tree was back. But it was taller, darker. Its branches extended like crooked fingers, reaching for me.
Morfael’s note changed again, running up the scale, and then down to an impossible deepness, something beyond my hearing, but lodged in my bones.
The air in front of us split, the crack widening, growing taller. Blackness roiled on the other side of the fissure, a cloud bank vaster and darker than anything our world had seen. Rain that was not from this world joined the rain falling from our sky. New wind whipped my hair.
I was smiling.
The window extended, and the cloud bank in Othersphere now blotted out the one above. It also hung low, nearly obscuring the sodden, vivid green, knee-high grass at our feet, lashed by the gusts like my hair.
The portal was as wide across as the four of us now, and taller than Caleb. Lazar was braced, jaw set, determined, pushing down his fear. London’s ears were up, her tail high. Her eyes glowed.
Caleb was grinning like a kid. He shielded his eyes with his free hand against the rain and our eyes met.
“Ready?” he asked.
London yipped.
Lazar nodded.
“Let’s go!”
As one we stepped across the line that separated our world from the other.
CHAPTER 9
The air hummed. Rain waltzed around me as lightning flared thirty feet away. The air cracked, punctuated by a blast of pungent ozone. I was drenched in a deep, pulsing melody, which played behind and below the crushed grass at my feet and the warm bluster of wind. The great black bank of fog wove around me like a lullaby.
Welcome.
“Dez?” Lazar squeezed my hand.
I blinked through the torrent. Lazar looked overwhelmed, and worried. Next to him, glowing like a pearl through the whorls of fog, London in her wolf form was bigger than before, her fur coat thicker, her eyes prisms of aquamarine fire. She had dropped the brown rope and Caleb, his coat darker than the vapor around us, was coiling it up, staring at me, smiling slightly.
“I . . .” My voice was different. I felt it moving through the air, connecting and bouncing off of the mist, the grass, and my friends. “Can you feel it?”
“Feel what?” Lazar had to half yell over the howl of the wind.
“Everything. It’s working together.” I struggled to find the right words as Lazar’s puzzlement and concern deepened the line between his eyebrows. “Like an orchestra, or a choir. This place. It’s like a hymn.”
Lazar looked down at London, as if hoping someone else would explain it to him. London cocked her head at me. Caleb’s smile widened; then he looked at the swirling storm around us and shook his head in wonder.
They can’t hear us.
It was not my voice, yet as it spoke in my head, my thoughts coincided with it exactly. I looked around at the swirling fog, the pounding rain, the jabs of lightning briefly illuminating the darkness. As I did so, the downpour abated. The gale became a breeze. Fingers of fog withdrew around us.
It was the storm, itself, speaking to me. Singing inside me.
I have missed us.
I was home.
“Are you okay?” Lazar moved closer, uneasy, wiping rain from his face. “You’re different.”
He was looking up at me.
Back in our world, I was tall, taller than most men, but both Lazar and Caleb topped me by a couple of inches. Not any longer. Not here.
I extended my hand. The long freckled fingers were mine, but more slender, with pointed nails like talons. The arms were mine, too, but thinner, paler, more graceful, like the arms of an alien ballerina. My jacket sleeves ended two inches above my wrists.
My pants were also too short, but they hung around my narrow hips. My sneakers felt loose, the socks sagging around my ankles. And the Shadow Blade was gone. That made a weird kind of sense. If it embodied my connection to Othersphere, then I wouldn’t need it when I was here. That connection was everywhere inside me now.
“My hair . . .” I grabbed a wet lock of my own hair, plastered down the front of my chest by the rain. It was vibrant orange, brighter than the color back home, and striped with black. My new skin pricked with bumps as a chill ran over me. “I look like her, don’t I?”
I saw confirmation in Caleb’s eyes. London yipped. Lazar reached up to touch my cheek, and then suddenly pulled his hand away, as if afraid. “Morfael said your form would stay similar, but it’s . . . different.”
Caleb took a step in, pulling London with him, so that we could speak more easily over the wind. “Did the rain let up because of you?” he asked me.
“I think so,” I said. “I’m connected to the storm. To everything. It’s amazing.”
London sniffed at me suspiciously; then as if she’d confirmed it was really me, she barked and bumped her nose against my leg. Impatience bounced out of her.
“We better get going,” I said, placing my hand on her silver-white head, now higher than my waist.
Caleb was humming. Gold flooded his eyes, and he stopped abruptly, eyebrows arching upward.
“What?” Lazar asked sharply.
Caleb’s eyes were still glowing like golden lamps. “It only takes a second here, the barest murmur of sound is magnified incredibly. Try it. Try to find Amaris.”