My body was wrong. I was pretending to be human, fully human. I was trying so hard, but why lie? I could be different. I could be better. I was so limited by trying to be only one thing. Imagine how much better I could be if I just let go.
Yes, the memory of my father whispered. Stop cowering. If you hate me, stand up and fight.
We fought him, we killed him, and he just came back again, my mother whispered in quiet horror. Don’t make our mistake, baby.
I gasped and tried to resist the magic sweeping over me. My free hand found Grim, my first dog, the puppy who never really grew up, and I clung to him. I didn’t think to let go of Yejun. How could I? I was helping, wasn’t I? I clung to that, too.
Brynn wrenched our hands apart, panting, her eyes blazing as she shouted, “She’s crying, you idiot.”
I scrubbed at my face and reached after Yejun. “What? No, I wasn’t,” and added hastily, “Did you get anything?”
Yejun glanced at Brynn, then at me. “She was changing,” he said, stepping back out of my reach.
My heart sank. I bit my lip. I didn’t want to talk about that even enough to deny it. “Did you contact Jen?”
Slowly, he shook his head. “I thought I did, at first. There was a link. It was like something opened. It still feels kind of open.”
Brynn looked up in the sky. “Yeah, about that.”
The storm-lit clouds were lower and darker than they had been when Yejun took my hand. They moved rapidly, tendrils curling across the sky like the hair of an angry sky goddess. The buildings near us weren’t tall, only two or three stories, but beyond them loomed skyscrapers and a huge clocktower. All of them were dim and dingy, except for one, which had three glowing windows at the top.
I frowned and rubbed my eyes. “Has that always been there?”
“I don’t think so.” Yejun pulled out his sunglasses and looked at them, then shook his head and put them away again. “I want to get a closer look, but the path to the camera bag is that way.” He pointed in a line perpendicular to the illuminated skyscraper.
I took a deep breath, steadying myself. I could feel my magic settling back into the back of my mind. My dogs were still with me. I hadn’t actually turned into a monstrosity. And Yejun still had a trail to follow. So what if some mysterious tower glowed like a lighthouse? So what if Amber had left us? We’d find the Wild Hunt’s home and get the Horn and save the day and then I’d go back to my father’s house again and I wouldn’t have to worry anymore what the likes of Yejun and Brynn thought of me. I’d have my dogs. That would be enough.
“Okay,” I said. “We don’t have time to explore and I don’t trust this city. That light makes me think of an anglerfish, anyhow. So let’s just follow your trail to the Horn’s trail and get this done.”
Instantly, Brynn said, “All right.”
But Yejun was slower in agreeing. He looked at me carefully and I wondered if, having been so close to my magic, he was now wary of traveling beside me.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “But for now we have to work together. Even if the scent trail I was originally following is in this city, it would take me too long to find it on my own.”
“Of course,” he said, his voice touched with snow. Then he added, “You are the strangest girl I’ve ever had the luck to meet. Don’t apologize, it’s annoying.” And without giving me a chance to respond, he snapped his fingers in an invitation to Grim and set out in the direction he’d pointed.
Grim gave me a cheerful look and an encouraging wag of his tail, then galloped after Yejun. I told myself that I only cared so much because Grim was so fond of him. Grim thought he was great. Hilarious, friendly, fun.
But Grim didn’t notice his smile like I did.
“You don’t have to just put up with it if somebody’s bothering you,” Brynn told me. “You certainly don’t have to apologize. My sister would flip—” and she cut herself off and shook her head.
“I fight back sometimes,” I offered, moving after Yejun and silently instructing Nod to keep a nose out for Amber.
“That’s not actually reassuring.” Brynn frowned at the bruises on her hands and caught up with me. “I mean, what do all the people you’re not willing to fight back against, even just with words, have in common?”
I wondered uneasily what she knew, what Tia had told her about me. My steps slowed down until she passed me and turned back inquisitively. But I didn’t want to walk with her anymore. I desperately wished I was alone, that Tia hadn’t saddled me with a companion, that I didn’t need Yejun’s help getting back to the trail we’d left behind.
I shrugged and looked away while Heart went and nudged Brynn to keep her moving. Disappointment in her voice, Brynn said, “Well, y’know, think about it?” She patted Heart on the head and caught up with Yejun instead.
That was good. The two of them could be friends. They were both human. This adventure wasn’t an act of charity for them; it was ultimately self-preservation. And I was going back to my father’s house after this. It was the only home I had. And going home again without any lingering relationships was going to be the best thing I could do. My father didn’t want me to have any friends who were girls, but he was all too eager to see me interested in a boy. He’d destroy either of them, one way or another.
I looked around, trying to chase away my thoughts. At an intersection, we passed a tall pole with twisted metal struts at the top. It was the only thing I’d seen so far that looked like it had been purposefully damaged, as if a street sign had been torn away. There were other signs over the storefronts, faded and illegible. Nod went to sniff around an ornate, unlit streetlight. No dogs, although he did detect the faded scent of some kind of engine. I tried to concentrate on that, on whether or not it was interesting. But a sheet of light raced across the sky and made the reflections of the streetlight writhe in the dark-glassed windows of the empty buildings.
I remembered the moving stain in the hallway. But I knew it was the lightning, just a reflection. I hoped it was just a reflection. Out of the corner of my eye, I kept seeing my father, like he was watching me from the other side of the glass. I could hear him complaining about how I made him sick with my moping. I made myself sick. I didn’t want to be here, feeling things I didn’t dare feel, but I didn’t know where I’d rather be. Sometimes, I didn’t want to be anywhere. Other times, it was worse than that. There were times when I wanted to be at my father’s house, where things were awful but at least I understood them. And there were times when I wanted to just tear things apart.
It was so easy to get angry, especially when I was alone.
Lightning flashed again, crawling through the sky to wreath one of the skyscrapers in a net of light. There was no thunder. There was never any thunder, not since I’d woken up here. No thunder, no rain.
But I did hear a violin. It started me out of my horrible thoughts. With an effort, I dragged the mental manhole cover over the oubliette of my hopes. Then I cursed. “Do you hear that?”
Brynn and Yejun both stopped. “What?” asked Brynn.
“Music. Violin music.”
“Oh. Oh, no,” said Yejun. He started walking again, a whole lot faster. Brynn had to skip every few steps to keep up, and I jogged ahead of them. The sidewalk was in better repair here and the buildings were less dingy. Apparently even weird cities on the far side of the Backworld had slums. The windows of the buildings flashed like black holes.
“I hear horses,” said Brynn, her voice shrill.
“I don’t. I hear engines,” Yejun said grimly.
“Yes, those. Behind us,” said Brynn.
I felt a twist in my stomach as Yejun did something.
“Don’t!” I said sharply. “Don’t, I can’t take it right now.”
He stopped whatever he was doing without saying anything, and his silence was another kind of pressure. I could hear the engines behind us, too. Motorcycle engines, distant. Moving perpendicular to us, I thought. They weren’t coming up behind us, which w
as the important part.
Then Nod growled and darted into an alley. His growl became a snapping snarl and Amber yelped. “What? No! Stop it, you pest!”
I stopped. Yejun did, too, leaning against another streetlight and closing his eyes. Brynn tried to join me and I went toward the alley instead. “Amber?”
A moment later, she backed out, herded by Nod and his deep snarl. His head was lowered and his ears flattened, and I thought it was pretty clear even to somebody not in his head that he was really, really angry at her for running away.
“Please at least tell me you did something about Ye’s bleeding,” she said weakly, glancing between me and Nod.
I looked back at Yejun, and the untreated cut on his forehead and the gore on the back of his hands. “Uh, nope.”
“Oh god, I hate you all,” she moaned. She started to hum, then covered her face with her hands and looked away.
“It’s not like we have a first aid kit. Or even clean water,” I pointed out.
“I have a kit in my camera bag,” offered Brynn. “If we ever find it.”
Amber tried to get past Nod back into her alley, but not hard enough to actually succeed. “Can’t your dogs lick him clean or something? Shoo, Nod.”
“Ew,” said Yejun. “These scabs are wholesome and healing. I don’t want a dog developing a taste for my blood.”
“You’d rather I did?” Amber turned a flat stare on Yejun, like a snake watching prey.
“I thought you already had one,” said Yejun as he yawned. “Why don’t you let her run away again?” he added to me. “Don’t we have enough to worry about?”
Amber made a pathetic effort to dodge around Nod. He lunged and tore her skirt. She wailed, “I’m hungry.”
As in response, my stomach growled emptily. Yejun gave me a frosty look, as if I’d done it on purpose. “I know I smell delicious, but I am not for eating.”
“Ugh,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I wouldn’t dream of it. No matter what my—no matter what. I’d starve first.”
He looked taken aback. “Oh. Well, I am delicious. But if Blondie goes for me, I’m going to tie her in a knot. She’s more trouble than we need right now.”
I listened to the faint music coming from one direction, and the roaring elsewhere in the city, thinking about where else Amber could be. A single engine sounds different in a vast empty city. The urban jungle needs the roar of engines, lots of engines, like a green jungle needs birdsong. You learn to tune out the endless roar of highways so that you can’t even imagine the lack of noise unless you’re far from roads. That solitary distant roar meant trouble.
I wondered for a moment if it was the thunder the silent lightning was missing, escaped to rumble around the city independently. My skin tingled in the unceasing flashes of lightning and I wished it would rain. Rain would solve a lot of problems right now. I looked back at Amber again, at the way she scowled at the ground and crushed her skirt between her fingers.
“Yeah,” I said to Yejun slowly. “But...” I didn’t say that I couldn’t help wondering about her. About what it was like to be her. About whether she’d eventually lose her veneer of humanity and start lashing out. I wanted to see that when it happened, although I couldn’t tell if it would satisfy me or make me cry.
Yejun shook his head, disgusted. “She followed you home once and now you feel like you have to keep her.”
“It’s a popular strategy,” I admitted, tilting my head toward Brynn in acknowledgment of her own efforts in that field. “But not home. She’d be toast at my house.” I frowned. “You know something about this city, Amber. And it wasn’t friendly to take your secrets and run away. Spill.”
“See how friendly you are when you know you’re just one angry thought away from being nothing more than a picture in a yearbook.” Amber pushed her blond hair behind an ear and kept her gaze on Nod. “This city is creepy. Especially if you go into the buildings. Don’t go into the buildings. And you know how there’s signs written in a different language everywhere? Well, it’s an alien language no matter what language you read.”
I sighed. “I could have guessed all that myself.” I looked her over. Her hair was still perfect, even though her clothing was torn and she looked gaunt and feral. “Who likes the idea of her behind us thinking about how hungry she is? Not me. But maybe we can do something. Nod, keep an eye on her. Bring her in when I say.”
“Bring me in? Bring me in?!” demanded Amber, her voice rising in pitch. “What am I, the Hamburger Bandit?”
“Constable Nod is just going to mosey down to the bar,” Yejun told her brightly. “But don’t get any ideas, Wild Amber.”
I shifted uncomfortably and started walking away, down the sidewalk. The light banter reminded me of the kids I knew in junior high, the ones who would spend half their time bickering, but you never saw them apart. I didn’t know how to do that.
“Hey, wait up,” called Brynn as she realized I was prepared to leave her behind. Yejun fell into step beside me, slowing his long stride.
“Where are you going?” he inquired casually.
I stopped, confused. “Toward the music, I guess. Which direction should I be going?”
“Oh, you were going the right way. I just didn’t know if you knew. Toward the music, eh?” He tilted his head. “I think I hear it. Y’know, I always kind of liked strings. My little brother is in the school orchestra. This is spookier than the stuff he plays, though.”
“Well, it is Halloween,” Brynn told him as she fell in on my other side, walking so fast that she was almost jogging.
I sped up again. I didn’t want to walk with them. I didn’t want to feel like I was part of their crowd at school. I liked them too much.
I turned a corner, at a tall building with a sequence of unreadable signs running down the side. It looked like a shop for invisible ghosts, buying invisible things. The street sign here was unmutilated, with ornate and unreadable calligraphy.
The new street went a few blocks, then widened out into a plaza paved with pearl-grey stone. It was large enough for eight lanes of traffic, but there’d never been any motor traffic here. No pedestrians, either. The stone was rough, with a tooth that Heart and Grim could feel on the pads of their feet. A central column of multi-colored stone rose ten feet into the air and spilled water out of several holes into a huge basin set into the paving, bordered by rose-tinted marble. A large and unreadable stone sign declared the fountain to be whatever it was, and another sign, made of metal, requested or warned of something else. And beside the fountain, one booted foot on the basin’s edge, stood the Fiddler.
Once again, he played with his eyes closed, and once again my dogs went to be his audience. But I wasn’t in the mood to listen, or even be polite. “Oh god, it’s him again.”
The Fiddler ignored me. Maybe he couldn’t hear me. Maybe to his ears, he was still in the forest where we’d arrived. Counting my blessings, I circled around him to approach the fountain from the opposite direction.
Yejun moved past me. “It’s here!” On the other side of the fountain was Brynn’s camera bag.
Brynn dashed past both of us to scoop up her bag. Or at least she tried to. When she pulled on it, it didn’t budge, which was so unexpected that she lost her balance and sprawled on the ground.
“What the heck?” she complained.
“My bad, sorry.” Yejun waggled his fingers and my stomach quivered. Only a quiver, not a lurch. The bag came away from the ground with a click. Then he asked, “So is the trail still here?”
I rolled my eyes toward the Fiddler, then sat on the ground and closed my eyes. The dogs spread out at my request, and together we explored the area around the bag. “Yes. It’s different. Not nearly as broad or strong. But it’s there.” I opened my eyes again.
“Great,” said Yejun, and flipped Brynn something glittering. “You might as well take that. It looks kind of like a lens.”
Brynn caught and examined the glittering thing. “What is it?”
“The moon,” said Yejun, a little too casually as he looked at me from the corner of his eye. I looked down, because I didn’t know what he expected me to say.
“I wonder what it does to pictures,” mumbled Brynn. “Oh, here!”
A metal box inscribed with a red cross skidded across the paving stones to bump up against my foot. I stared down at it.
“You know, I kind of expected we’d make it back to the forest again when we found the bag. But this isn’t a forest,” said Yejun, looking around. “I mean, even if you really stretch the definition. I wonder, if the forest was just some kind of dream, what those red leaves meant.”
“Blood,” said Amber sharply, stalking out from between two buildings on the edge of the plaza. “Clean him up now, or tell your dog to stop bothering me.” Nod slunk along behind her, still growling under his breath.
As I picked up the first aid kit, the Fiddler’s song finished in a burst of angry noise. I froze warily. Then I moved to peer around the curve of the fountain, ignoring Amber’s little whimper of frustration.
The Fiddler sat on the fountain wall, his head in his hands, the very picture of dejection. Grim and Heart both darted past me to go comfort him, because they had no sense of perspective.
Faced with two canine heads shoved into his lap, the Fiddler brought his hands down on their ears and looked up at me. “Oh, it’s you. Am I causing you problems again?”
I hesitated. Earlier I wanted to tear into him for the crazy way he’d presented the trail he’d unearthed. But at least he’d tried. “Not really. I didn’t expect to see you again, though. Uh, have you moved from where we met before?”
“AT,” whined Amber behind me. “No, leave me alone, dog,”
The Fiddler looked around. “Yes, I think so?” He seemed puzzled by my question and I dropped it.
“I take it you didn’t find the song you were looking for?”
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 15