“Mr. Summers stopped by around two and explained himself to Mom. Apparently the fire was a Blout attack. No offense, Fern, but I still don’t want Mom dating him, since he’s a vampire. It’s too complicated, you know? Call me old-fashioned, but vampires should stick to dating other vampires.” Sam stopped talking as he moved to the window and stuck his head out to see who was at the door.
“It’s Chief Quagmire.”
The Commander’s stern voice drifted up to the window.
“I’m not shocked at the hour, Chief Quagmire. I’m shocked that you have the audacity to show up here after the spineless, immoral way you behaved!”
Chief Quagmire’s voice was more muffled. He was responding to Mrs. McAllister, but neither twin could hear him.
“What’s he saying, Fern?”
“I can’t tell.” Fern paused. She really couldn’t tell. Her hearing was gone. Sam smiled at his sister.
“Oh, don’t panic, Fern. Mr. Bing said you might have a temporary loss of your powers because you were so close to the Omphalos and Vlad nearly pulled the curse off.”
“So this is what it’s like to be normal,” Fern said, feeling her face for dramatic effect.
“Oh, you’ll never be normal, Freaky Fern. Not even for a day.” Sam smiled at his sister. “But we still like you anyway.” When she smiled back, it pleased him. Mr. Bing hadn’t lied. Fern was going to be okay.
The Commander’s voice carried through the window again. “There’s nothing in the world you can tell me that won’t make me hate every fiber of your being for putting Fern in danger,” Mrs. McAllister shouted at Chief Quagmire. “Fern’s not joining your Alliance. She’s got her own alliance right here in this house! Leave and never come back! You may not suck blood, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a parasite.”
The door slammed.
Fern grimaced, wondering if the Commander had succeeded in waking every neighbor they had on La Limonar. According to Sam, half of them were vampires anyway, so it probably didn’t much matter.
“So you told the Commander everything? Even what happened at New Tartarus?” Fern said to Sam as he moved away from the window and sat back in Fern’s desk chair.
“You just heard her, didn’t you? Would you’ve lied to her?”
“Why did Chief Quagmire say I was a false claim?”
“According to Lindsey’s parents, he thought that Vlad would let his guard down if he heard that you were no longer being protected. He wasn’t trying to get you killed; he thought he was outsmarting Vlad.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He thought Vlad wouldn’t fall for the trap unless he made it known that you were no longer thought of as an Unusual. That’s why he disseminated the false claim memo. The ridiculous thing is, because Vlad ended up getting caught, it makes it seem like his stupid plan worked.”
A soft knocking at the door stopped Fern from answering her brother’s question.
“Do I hear talking in here?” Mrs. McAllister, still stunning in her terry-cloth bathrobe, stuck her head in.
“Sam, I thought I told you to come get me as soon as Fern woke up,” Mrs. McAllister said sternly, though she was unable to stop from smiling at the sight of her conscious daughter.
“Anyway . . . I’m beat,” Sam said. He mouthed Good luck at his sister before heading out of the room and closing the door behind him.
Mrs. McAllister sat on the edge of Fern’s bed, careful not to squish her daughter’s feet. She was still flushed from her heated front lawn discussion with McAllister Enemy Number One, Chief Kenneth Quagmire. Her blue eyes were still capable of penetrating to Fern’s very core, even as tired as they were.
“How are you feeling?” Mrs. McAllister said.
“I’m a little headachy,” Fern said, “but okay.” Fern began to grow nervous about what her mother might say to her. After all, Fern had kept so much from her.
“I have no idea how you must be feeling right now or even what to say,” Mrs. McAllister said. This admission took Fern by surprise. Were adults supposed to admit such things? Fern continued to stare up at the ceiling. “Things have really hit the fan in the past few days, haven’t they?”
“Yeah,” Fern said, touching the Band-Aids that covered the scratches above her left eyebrow.
“I’m so relieved you’re all right,” the Commander said. Her voice was shaky. Fern could hardly believe it.
“You’re not mad that I didn’t tell you the truth about New Tartarus?”
Mrs. McAllister took a deep breath and regained the form in her voice once more.
“I’m disappointed, Fern. I’m disappointed because you must have been going through torture these past few weeks and you kept it from me. But then I realized something. I haven’t been forthright with you either,” she said, inching closer to Fern. “Ever since that day at Kimble & Kimble, in the conference room, I’ve wanted to talk to you, make sure you know how proud I am of you . . . how happy I am to be your mother . . . but I never knew exactly what to say, so I said nothing at all.” Mrs. McAllister put her hands together and folded them in her lap. “I may be a ‘commander,’ but I sure lost touch with my troops.”
Fern gaped.
“What?” the Commander said, smiling coyly. “You thought I didn’t know about your little nickname?” She laughed and smiled all at once. “It’s quite all right. There are worse things children call their mothers. But remember: I’m always listening.”
Fern had never seen this side of her mother before, and although she didn’t know what to expect, she could feel the gap between them slowly start to fill. She remained motionless.
“Phoebe, your mother, and I—well, you don’t know this, but we went to St. Gregory’s together. I was an only child, and so was she. We spent all our time together. She was a lot like you, Fern. She looked a lot like you too. She even had all sorts of problems with her stomach. Phoebe was the best friend I ever had.”
“I saw your initials at Pirate’s Cove . . . with hers,” Fern said, as a lump began to form in her throat, though she didn’t know why.
“Is that still there? Phoebe and I would go there all the time. It’s why I first started taking you there, actually. Phoebe loved that place more than anything. She was just like you.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It was her idea to carve our initials into the cliff. She was always doing impulsive things like that. I guess you could call her a rebel. In fact, she caused the first ever Emergency Conference at St. Gregory’s. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
“What did she do?” Fern asked, enraptured.
“Well, a boy named Roger Webster had humiliated me. We were in eighth grade at the time, and he made up an awful rumor about me—something so awful, so terrible, I was in tears for weeks. Phoebe, being the fireplug she was, was not about to let that go on. One day she marched right up to him and demanded he take it back and tell everyone that it wasn’t true. He didn’t, of course.
“So the next day at recess, Phoebe cornered him in the boys’ bathroom. Roger came running out, minutes later, covered in every vile substance you’d find in a bathroom, screaming and carrying on. Phoebe was spotless. It became a big deal; Phoebe’s father was called in and she was nearly expelled—except for one thing: no one could figure out how she’d done it. How could she have gotten sewage all over Roger without getting any of it on herself? Of course, Roger claimed she had brought a bucket in with her, but no bucket was ever found anywhere near the bathroom. She never told me and I’d always wondered. The day Mr. Summers’s house caught on fire, it all became clear to me.”
“She was a Poseidon too?” Fern sat up on her bed, though it made her head ache even worse.
“Call it what you want, but she had your special talent for moving liquid. In this case, disgusting liquid,” the Commander said, shaking her head with amusement.
“Vlad told me that Phoebe was a Blout.”
“Well, maybe she was. After she moved up north, I can’t
be sure about what she was up to. Maybe she fell in with some bad people, Fern, and it’s possible, for a while, that she was in a very dark place. But I never saw that side of her. She was an extraordinary person and an extraordinary friend. That’s what counts.”
Fern was unable to let go of the subject.
“So you don’t know what happened to her?”
“No, I don’t,” Mrs. McAllister said.
“But what does that make me?”
“Even more extraordinary,” the Commander said sympathetically.
“What if I become evil like Vlad?”
“You’ll never be like him. People choose to be like that.”
“What if all of a sudden I start sucking people’s blood? Am I a Rollen or am I really a Blout?” Fern asked.
“You’re a McAllister,” the Commander said. She paused.
“Blouts, Rollens, Hermes, Poseidons, Otherworldlies—who knows what any of those words really mean, anyway? They’re just words. You know what? Vampires are just as guilty as Normals. Everything has got to have a label attached to it. There are some things that can’t be categorized.”
Both the Commander and Fern let smiles creep across their faces. Fern had a thousand questions she still wanted to ask. Was her mother a true Blout? Why did she change? Why did she move up north? Fern realized that the questions she most wanted answered were the ones furthest out of reach.
After a long pause, the Commander continued. “I’m not going to pretend to know what it’s like to be you, with the prophecy and your special talents and all this Unusual Otherworldly business. But you saved lives today. Special powers or not, you stood up to someone when you could have done otherwise and you did it all on your own with no help, using your own inner strength.” Mrs. McAllister had an earnest look on her face as she turned to Fern and looked her daughter in the eye. “Fern, I’m so very proud of you. Each day that passes, I grow more and more thankful that Phoebe chose me. To be able to watch you grow up in front of my eyes, well, it’s a privilege.”
Fern’s eyes pooled.
The Commander breathed a sigh of relief. She had finally said to Fern what she’d wanted to. Fern noticed the shoe box on her mother’s lap for the first time. Mrs. McAllister picked up the shoe box.
“This shoe box has almost every letter Phoebe and I wrote to each other. Like I said, I lost touch with her near the end, but I want you to have it, Fern. I don’t know how to make things right; I can only express how sorry I am for keeping your past from you.” Mrs. McAllister held out the shoe box. Fern reached forward and took it, handling it gingerly, as if it were a ticking time bomb.
“You might be bored to tears. They’re all about our daily lives, checking in and all that. But they’re yours to keep.”
“Thank you,” Fern said.
“You must be exhausted.”
“Not too much. I slept a whole day straight,” Fern said.
“Sure, but I doubt saving the world from evil is easy work.” Mrs. McAllister let out puzzled laughter. “Now there’s a sentence no mother has probably ever said to her daughter before.” Mrs. McAllister got up and gave Fern a dry kiss on the forehead. “I guess they don’t call you Unusual for nothing,” she said with a half smile. “I hate to bring this up, but Headmaster Mooney called about scheduling your second Saturday school.”
“Oh no,” Fern said, realizing that she only had a month in which to complete both.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. We had a talk and he’ll give you an extension to serve it, but do try not to make him upset again. I don’t know how long I can use scare tactics with him.”
“Okay,” Fern said, glad that her mother had talked to Headmaster Mooney. She may have recently found her own inner strength, but even her inner strength had its limits. Just weeks ago, Fern had served her first Saturday school and the word Otherworldly wasn’t yet a part of her vocabulary. Fern marveled at how much had happened since then. Mrs. McAllister got up to leave.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for the letters.”
“Good night, Fern.”
“Good night,” Fern replied.
Mrs. McAllister closed the door behind her.
Fern opened the shoe box and took out the first letter, which was wrinkled and brittle to the touch. She folded it out in front of her. Her eyes stared at the first line: Dear Phoebe.
Her eyes drooped and her head felt heavy. She put the letter back in the shoe box and closed the lid.
Fern no longer wanted to be alone.
Creeping down the hall, avoiding the spots where the floor squeaked under the carpet, she slipped into Sam’s room. He was already fast asleep, exhausted after spending a full day awake, waiting for Fern to regain consciousness. His noisy breathing was enough. Fern curled up on the floor at the foot of her brother’s bed and closed her eyes. Byron, keeping watch as ever, told Fern “Good night” as he lay down next to her.
She would read the letters tomorrow.
Although Fern fell fast asleep, leaving behind the worries and troubles of the last few days, for many, the workday was just starting. Hiding in the shadows of the McAllister’s large jacaranda tree, Mr. Joseph Bing, having transmorphed into a wild parrot once again, stood watch on a low hanging branch. He was tired, but he would stay there as long as necessary to make sure Fern was completely safe. Five blocks away, on the other side of Ortega Highway, May and Mike Lin sat at their kitchen table, hard at work drafting an internal memo entitled “The First Confirmed Case: Fern McAllister and the Unusual Eleven.” The memo was to be disseminated to every member of the Alliance Assembly in the morning. A few miles away, in his office just around the corner from Mission San Juan Capistrano, Mr. Alistair Kimble pored over the detailed educational plans he was drawing up, running through every single potential danger Fern would face in the coming weeks, months, and years.
Meanwhile, in a makeshift crisis center down the road, Chief Kenneth Quagmire was calling to order an emergency meeting with members of the Assembly, who were deciding what kind of facility could possibly hope to contain someone as dangerous as Vlad, once he thawed out. Many people had grave concerns. After all, the Reformatory had never housed a criminal as powerful as Vlad. Despite the challenge, Chief Quagmire was basking in the positive publicity Vlad’s capture had brought to his office. In fact, Kenneth Quagmire had never been more popular with his Rollen constituency.
At exactly the same time, fifty miles to the south and half a mile underground, Chuffy Merced III, first assistant to the chief of the Vampire Alliance, had just received the good news from Telemus. Smiling to himself, he hobbled over to the cupboard in his drab room and poured himself a dark red drink from his secret bottle, toasting the news that his friend Fern McAllister had saved the day after all.
I’m fortunate to have been surrounded by remarkable people as I wrote The Otherworldlies. In particular, I would like to thank, first and foremost, John and Clare Kogler, the best cheerleaders a girl could ask for; Kristy Cole and Leigh Meredith for being huge nerds and reading draft after draft; Bradford Lyman for being an ideal sounding board; Marnie Podos for providing the soundtrack; Bob and Janice Wilhelm and Mike and Charlene Immell for their unwavering support; Lisa Hart for her skill with a camera; Fred Hargadon for his general incorrigibility; Sarah Sevier for stepping in; Clare Hutton, my tireless editor; and Anne Coxon, whom I could hear whispering in my ear while I wrote.
About the Author
JENNIFER ANNE KOGLER is also the author of RUBY TUESDAY, which started as her senior thesis at Princeton University. Born and raised in California, she is the youngest sibling to six brothers and a sister and currently attends Stanford Law School.
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Also by Jennifer Anne Kogler
Ruby Tuesday
Credits
Jacket art © 2008 by Margaret Malandruccolo/MergeLeft Reps
Jacket design by
Jennifer Heuer
Copyright
The Otherworldlies
Copyright © 2008 by Jennifer Anne Kogler
Epigraph from The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer, copyright © 1961, renewed 1989 by Norton Juster; illustrations copyright © 1961, renewed 1989 by Jules Feiffer. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
Quotes from Lord of the Flies by William Golding, copyright 1954, renewed © 1982 by William Gerald Golding. Used by permission of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-06-073959-1 (trade bdg.) — ISBN 978-0-06-073960-7 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2011 ISBN: 9780061903816
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