Claws (9780545469678) (4 page)

“Who did you speak to?” she asked. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said absently. “I need to talk to your mother. Go back to bed.”

He went into the master bedroom at the back of the trailer. A few moments later, she heard the murmur of her parents' voices through the walls, but couldn't make out what they were saying. She didn't want to know. Obviously whatever her dad had thought he could do in the forest hadn't worked out, and that meant they were going to be stuck here for who knew how long. Until she got eaten by one of the neighbors? Maybe then they'd care.

“I wish
I
could just not care,” Emma said as she sat down on the bed.

Jack opened his eye. “Then don't.”

“Maybe you just don't care because everyone wants to kill you.” Emma sighed.

“Caring about things is a trap,” Jack said. His tail swished angrily. “If you care too much, you can't ever really be free because you won't give up the thing you care about.”

Emma was too tired to think about this.

“What am I supposed to do? I can't just stop caring about my family. And I don't want to.”

“If this sister of yours cared about you, she wouldn't have left, you know. What has caring for her gotten you?” He was quiet for a moment, then sidled up to her and leaned against her arm. “I like it here. But it's not going to be any fun if you're so miserable all the time.” He began to purr. “So maybe I can help you find her. That's what human friends do, right? Help each other? Like you helped me by letting me stay here and bringing me something to eat.”

“Help me find her how?” Emma said cautiously.

“Cat magic.”

“I thought you said —”

“Not mine. Yours.”

“What?” Emma laughed, but Jack just blinked at her. He was being serious, she realized. “But I'm not a cat. How can I have cat magic?”

“It's been known to happen. Not very often, but there are cat stories about humans with cat magic. You just have to trust me.” He wiggled his backside for a moment as if he was about to pounce on something, then settled down. “This plan solves both our problems. You get cat magic; the pride stops hunting me. Then we can do whatever you want. We can find your sister and bring her back. Or you can turn her into a mouse. Or just forget about her. But we wouldn't have to hide in this trailer. We could go anywhere. Do anything. You wouldn't have to be scared anymore.”

“But . . .” Emma didn't know what to say. She swallowed, trying to ignore the fluttery feeling in her stomach. The feeling that maybe she could fix things. Was this how her dad felt every time he came up with some new plan to find Helena? But he was her dad, she thought. He was supposed to take care of things. She was just a kid.

Everything was happening too quickly. A day ago she'd never even talked to a crag before, and now here was a cat telling her she could have magic. And magic wasn't just talking cats and Mr. Simbi. It was hags and dwarves and a forest full of things that even CragWiki didn't talk about.

“Cat magic isn't for scared little mice,” Jack said offhandedly. He looked her up and down. “I don't think you look like a mouse, though.”

Emma knew her parents would want her to say no. But what would they do if they had the chance to save Helena? She took a deep breath. “Would it turn me into a cat?”

“It might. Would that be so bad? It's the best thing to be, otherwise cats would just turn themselves into something better.”

Emma frowned. “If I turned into a cat, or grew fur all over, or anything like that, it'd be harder to find Helena.”

“You'll be able to turn yourself into whatever you want once you master the magic,” Jack said. “How long that takes depends on you.”

Emma met his one-eyed gaze, but it was impossible to know what he was thinking. She wasn't sure what to make of him yet, or of half the things he said. But here he was, offering to help her get the one thing she wanted most. Maybe her parents wouldn't even have to know, so if she failed, if she couldn't find Helena, they'd be no worse off. At least she'd be doing something, instead of hoping Helena would come home before they had to eat ketchup for dinner.

If there was a chance, she had to take it.

Even if it meant she might turn into a cat.

Being a cat would be worth it, wouldn't it, if she brought her sister back?

I'm not scared
, Emma told herself.
I'm not a mouse.

But her stomach felt like a lead ball, and her head was light and dizzy. She had to try three times before she could get the words out.

“All right,” she said. “I'll do it.”

“I know.” Jack yawned and stretched, tearing holes in her sheets with his claws. “I could tell you would make a good cat. Your future pride is still hunting for me, so I won't be able to get the Heart's Blood until morning when they're asleep.”

“The what blood?” Emma said.

“You'll see,” Jack purred. “But they're going to be pretty angry with us.”

CRAG FACT OF THE DAY:

“Despite protests from parents,
Gnomebots
remains one of the most popular after-school television shows for its positive portrayal of magic.”

CragWiki.org

E
mma squeezed her eyes tight as the door to her room swung open, flooding the room with dingy light from the hallway. She heard the creak of a footstep, and her mom's voice. “Emma, I have to go into work early, so I need you to —
what is that?
”

Her mom's screech startled Emma awake. She sat bolt upright. “What? What is it?” She automatically checked the walls of her room, expecting to see a giant centipede or a spider. Then she saw that her mom was pointing at Jack. She started breathing again. “You were supposed to hide,” she told the cat.

“Why? It's just your mom,” Jack said. He closed his eye and put his head back down.

“Emma.” Her mom grabbed her arm and pulled her out of bed, dragging her to the doorway. “Do you know this creature?”

“Um. Kind of,” Emma said. “He was living in the trailer before we moved in, and I didn't want to just kick him out. His name is Jack.”

Emma's mom pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, grimacing. These days she mostly just looked tired and sad, but for a moment Emma was reminded of the way her mom used to look every time Helena came home late, or sneaked out of the house, or bought another outfit their mom hated. It looked so normal.

“What were you thinking? You can't just let a strange creature stay in your room. How did he get in here? After yesterday, I can't believe you'd do something so irresponsible!”

“He can talk,” Emma interrupted. “That makes him a person, not a creature.”

Her mom pointed at the door. “He has to go, right now.”

“But he doesn't have anywhere to go,” Emma said. “He doesn't even have any magic, so he's completely harmless. What does it matter if a cat lives with us anyway? It's not like we aren't already surrounded by crags. At least he doesn't want to eat me,
unlike
our new neighbor.”

Her mom was going to ruin everything. If she kicked Jack out, he might not want to give her cat magic. What if he left and didn't come back at all?

For a moment Emma thought of telling her parents what Jack was offering. But they wouldn't understand. They'd say she shouldn't get involved, that it was too dangerous. Her dad might even try to make Jack give
him
cat magic instead. But they wouldn't care about Jack. Her mom was ready to throw him out without even listening.

“I'm sorry if you don't have anywhere to live,” Emma's mom said to Jack, “but this is our home now, so you're just going to have to find somewhere else.”

Jack jumped down from the bed and gazed up at her. He looked small standing by her feet like that. “You humans never think,” he said calmly. “You should be glad it was me Emma found in her room and not something that might have harmed her. How do you expect her to stay safe if you don't have the slightest idea what you're keeping her safe from?” His tail lashed from side to side. “But
I
know. And I can help. So think on that before you leave me to fend for myself without food or a home or magic.”

Emma's mom turned on him, her neck a blotchy red. “You think we can't protect our own daughter? Is that it? Well, I can protect her from
you
, that's for sure. I want you out, do you understand? Or I'll call the police, or animal control, or whatever it takes to get you out of here!”

“But, Mom —”

“Emma, get ready for school. You have ten minutes.”

“I'll go for now,” Jack said. “But you might want to be more careful so this kitten doesn't disappear, too. Human children go missing all the time. There's worse things in the forest than cats, you know.” He bared his sharp teeth in what Emma thought was a grin, then bounded past her mom and vanished down the hall.

Emma's mom stared after him, her mouth open like she wanted to yell at him but had no idea what to yell. Her hands were clenched into fists so tight they shook.

“He doesn't mean it,” Emma said. Though she couldn't help feeling he had a point.

“Emma, I don't want to see that creature on our property again, do you understand? And if you see him somewhere, don't talk to him. I don't trust cats, with or without magic.”

“Can we talk about it later?”

Her mom sighed. “Later he'll be gone. He's not your friend, Emma.”

But Emma didn't believe her. Jack had already been a friend to her. No one else had done anything to help.
He'll be back,
Emma thought.

As soon as her mom went to make sure Jack had actually left the trailer, Emma cleared her things away from the vent and left her bedroom door ajar for him. She found her school backpack, then she pulled a wrinkled T-shirt and jeans from her bag of clothes and got dressed.

Her mom was waiting impatiently by the door in her crisp blue scrubs, stethoscope hanging around her neck. “Come on,” she said. “I can't be late to work again.”

The air outside was cool, but bright orange sunlight filtered through the trees, promising a warm day, hinting of summer, of vacation and sleepovers at her best friend Marie's house, and not getting out of bed until
Gnomebots
came on. Only summer wasn't going to be that way this year.

Emma's mom got into the car and reached over to open the passenger door from the inside. The handle on the outside didn't work anymore.

As they wove through the trailer park, Emma saw more crags leaving for school and work. A beat-up old station wagon drove past their trailer, a dwarf behind the wheel. His long beard was slung back over his shoulder, and a sticker on his bumper read “My Other Car Is a Mine Cart.” A satyr boy ran down the road, backpack swinging wildly. His feet made a quick
clop clop clop
sound. Behind him walked a very thin girl with green skin and long fingers. Emma thought she must be a dryad. There were even a couple of ratters, running quickly on all fours, their long pink tails trailing on the ground behind them.

Everyone knew that there was a crag school around here somewhere, near the forest. It had been a human school once, until the magical forest took over Old Downtown. Emma wondered what they learned there. Probably cool stuff, like magic.

Then her mom pulled out of the trailer park, and the forest disappeared behind the privacy walls of the nearby shops and houses. Years ago, when her parents were still kids in Vietnam, Old Downtown's narrow cobbled streets and colonial townhouses had been the center of the city. But then something happened — no one was really sure what, though humans thought there was some kind of twisted magic involved and blamed the crags, any crags — and a forest had started to grow. Emma's history class had spent most of the fall learning about it.

In only a week, trees that looked like they were a hundred years old covered most of the city. Humans had moved out of Old Downtown, leaving their broken homes behind them. Most of the crags had stayed, living in the forest or in trailer parks and houses around the forest's edge.

Since then, a New Downtown with wide roads and glittering skyscrapers had been built, and modern treeless suburbs on the other side of New Downtown had become home to those humans who could afford to move. Though a few crags worked in New Downtown, the only ones that lived there were the faeries. Of course, no one really thought of them as crags.

Fifteen minutes later, her mom pulled into the drop-off lot in front of Emma's school.

It felt too weird. Like things were still normal, when they weren't at all. “I'll try to be back at three o'clock to pick you up,” her mom said.

It was early — earlier than Emma had ever gotten to school when she used to walk. There were hardly any kids lining up outside. Marie was there, though. She was always panicking about being late for classes, even though she was so smart Emma knew none of the teachers would have cared.