Othermoon (23 page)

Everyone turned and looked at me. With London’s pronouncement, something had clicked
into place. I closed my eyes for a moment in a tiny wordless prayer of thanks of my
own. A silent, crushing weight I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge lifted and I could breathe
again. My friends had come through for me again. Now a jittery anticipation was taking
me over. We were going to do this, and soon.

I opened my eyes. “Okay,” I said. “We need to leave here by ten o’clock tonight, so
we can drive there, do some reconnaissance of the area, and take out the guard they
have in a watchtower and two others directly outside the entrance by one a.m. Lazar
gave us the code and will meet us inside at that time. From there, we find a scientist
and use him or her to get past the hand scanners and into the main computer room.”

“Dibs on the guard in the watchtower,” said Arnaldo, grinning.

“Everyone should study the plans we got from Lazar,” I said. “I’ll make some copies.”

“What if they catch him before we get there?” Amaris said, her voice tight. “He risked
a lot meeting you at the hospital. What if they see him sneaking back in?”

“They could be expecting us.” Caleb stood up, unnervingly tall and forbidding in his
long black coat with the wind ruffling his unruly dark hair. The flames sparked in
the depths of his eyes.

“We still have to go,” said London.

“If he’s not waiting for us behind the first locked door, we’ll know something has
gone terribly wrong,” I said. “Be ready to adjust the plan.”

“But how will we get past all the high-tech locks if he can’t walk us through?” Amaris
shook her head. “November’s good at picking locks with keys, but these are different.
We need Lazar.”

I shot a knowing look at Caleb to find him looking right back at me. Recognition flashed
between us. The Shadow Blade could cut through any metal. Unless the locks were made
of wood, we could get through them. Then, as if we both remembered the state of things
between us at exactly the same moment, we looked away.

“We do need Lazar,” I said. “But if worse comes to worst, I can get us through the
locks. Oh, and one other thing.”

They were all getting to their feet or moving toward the door back into the school.
But I had to tell them now. One more secret would break us, and that would not only
ruin my plan, it would break my heart.

“You probably already suspect this after seeing what was happening to my mom last
night,” I said. “Or maybe Raynard or Caleb already told you.”

I took a deep breath to steady myself and saw, from the corner of my eye, Caleb bow
his head. He knew what I was about to say.

“Tell us what?” asked Arnaldo. “Your mom was channeling something weird, that’s for
sure.”

“The thing that came through her was definitely from Othersphere,” I said. My lips
were trembling.
I could really use Caleb’s steady arm around me now.
“And I’m pretty sure that thing was, or, I guess, she
is
, my biological mother.”

Arnaldo gulped audibly, and Siku let out a sharp but understated “Hunh!” Amaris’s
hand flew up to cover her mouth, and November blinked hard a few times. Caleb looked
at the snow-scuffed flagstones at his feet, his face thoughtful.

Strangely, it was London who was nodding to herself as her eyes scanned me up and
down, as if everything suddenly made sense. “That explains a lot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it doesn’t change anything, not really.”

“That means that you’re from Othersphere,” Arnaldo said, voice full of wonder. “Wow.”

“I think so,” I said. “Yeah. Turns out I’m even weirder than I felt back in high school.”

Siku looked at me, eyes filled with a reckoning. “If you’re from Othersphere, what
happens to you if the Tribunal’s plan works?”

Caleb looked up from the ground at him, suddenly alert. “You mean, if they actually
do shut us off from shadow?” He turned to me. “Would that trap you here? Or would
it . . . ?”

“Send me back there forever.” I finished his sentence, as I had a million times before.
Only this one sent a bone-deep chill through me. “What do you think, Arnaldo?”

“Nobody’s ever come across the veil and stayed so long before. Nobody we know of anyway,”
he said. “There’s no way to know what will happen.”

“So we don’t let it happen,” said London. “It’s simple.”

I smiled at her. I couldn’t help it.

Her frown dissipated, but she fought to keep a remnant of it in place. “I’m not saying
that for your sake,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”

“There are those legends of shadow walkers,” November said. “Hey, Dez, you’re a shadow
walker!”

“Not exactly . . .” I said, again looking over at Caleb automatically. This time he
didn’t return the look.

“She’s like the Loch Ness Monster,” Siku was saying, a slow grin breaking across his
face.

“And Bigfoot,” said November. “And UFOs!”

“No. Arnaldo’s the Unidentified Flying Object,” said Siku. “Because he flies.”

November put her hands on her hips, staring up at him. “Oh, clever. That means you’re
the closest thing we’ve got to Bigfoot.”

Siku crossed his eyes and held his arms out in front of himself, stiff like a zombie.
“I am the Yeti!” He stiff-walked toward her, a low abominable snowman growl coming
from his chest.

She giggled and ran around the fire pit. He chased her, still doing his best Frankenstein’s
monster imitation, and then followed her inside.

“That went better than the last time we found out something new about you,” said Arnaldo.
He patted me on the arm and headed inside too.

Amaris fell in next to London. “What’s that mean?”

London opened the door for her. “Oh, one day last term Dez turned into a cat instead
of a tiger, and we all flipped out. Especially me. . . .”

The door clunked shut behind them. Caleb and I stood there without speaking, not looking
at each other. The last rays of sunlight played across his wind-tossed hair, etching
shadows under his cheekbones, and my whole being ached because I was with him but
could not touch him.

“You got what you wanted,” he said, his tone neutral. “But you usually do.”

His night-black eyes were stormy with sparks of gold. A feather touch of cold hit
my cheek, and white flakes filled the air.

“I didn’t want
this
,” I said, my hand tracing the distance between us.

He looked away, and then up at the cloudy sky, blinking into the snowfall. “You’re
lucky. The moon will be full.”

“I know,” I said. “It rises at midnight, just before we meet Lazar.”

“Of course. You already thought of that.” A reluctant smile bent his lips. “I should
have known.”

I caught his eye. “Are we going to be able to do this thing tonight, together?”

His gaze brushed over me, unreadable. “We have to go in and stop them, even if Lazar
is lying, even if it’s a trap.” His square jaw hardened. “You were right. About that
at least.”

Then he turned and left me as the flurries descended.

CHAPTER 18

I stood there alone for several minutes, staring out at the snowfall in the dying
light of sunset. Perhaps it was the thinness of the veil, the knowledge of my deep
connection to Othersphere, the pending full moon, or the coil of sadness twisting
deep inside me, but I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.

Hoping the cold of the falling flakes would calm me, I wandered down the hill from
the patio, palms and face lifted toward the sky to catch whatever touch of snow I
could.

A large white hare hopped in front of me about twenty feet away, and I froze. It wasn’t
as unnaturally enormous as the rabbit in the snowy forest Caleb had drawn from shadow
for me back in Vegas, but it was quite large and a startling pure white except for
the sharply black tips of its long ears.

Impulsively, I squatted down and held out my hand. The hare lifted its head, black
eyes shining at me as its nose twitched inquisitively. I held my breath as it hopped
toward me on back feet shaped like furry white kayaks. Then the ever-sniffing nose
was touching my fingers.

“Hello,” I said, keeping my voice very quiet.

The hare hopped closer, coming to huddle between my knees, as if using me as shelter
from the wind. Hesitantly, I reached down and stroked its back. The fur was soft,
like liquid against my skin. The hare nosed my fingers, then began grooming itself,
tiny pink tongue wetting its front paws before running them over its long, translucent
ears.

It had to be a dream. Had I fallen asleep and ventured back subconsciously to the
time Caleb had cared enough for me to conjure an enchanted forest from shadow? I lifted
my head and nearly fell over backwards as a huge red-brown elk sporting a chandelier
of antlers trotted over the snow toward me, stopping just a few feet away. Its large
brown eyes glinted as snowflakes decorated the rack above its head.

I stood up slowly, which didn’t seem to disturb the hare, and extended my hand. The
elk eyed me, decided to ignore my gesture, and then lowered its head to rip out a
few pieces of drying grass still poking up through the snow.

Something crunched in the snow behind me. Almost afraid of what I might see, I twisted
at the waist to find a spotted cat with a stumpy tail peeking around the trunk of
a pine tree at me. It was a bobcat, with powerful haunches and white spots on the
back of its ears. It took a few steps toward me, then sat down, yellow eyes aglow
in the twilight, till a flutter above drew its gaze.

A chunky winged form whooshed overhead and came to rest in the branches of the tree
nearest me. A great horned owl folded its wide gray wings, pointed ear tufts shaking
in the breeze, and regarded me with perfectly round golden eyes.

My whole body was aglow with wonder. A music just beyond the edge of hearing connected
me to each of these creatures, just as they were bound to each other, and to the grass,
the trees, and the falling snow.

The rim of the sun dipped below the horizon, and the light in the sky swung from golden
tangerine to fiery orange tipped with indigo and deepest purple. In a few hours, the
moon would rise, and I felt deep in the roiling black center of my being that if I
took one step in the right direction, I would part a curtain in the air and step into
a forest greater and darker than this.

I trembled on that brink, wanting to reach out, to widen the space inside me. I knew
that if I did it, all the rest of my life would fall away. And I was sorely tempted
to move beyond all the pain and conflict and judgment. Was this Othersphere—this enveloping
union with everything?

As night fell, a light in the window of the school flicked on, sending a white beam
into the woods. The elk turned his head with weighty majesty in that direction, and
the owl took flight with one silent beat of its wings. The bobcat disappeared behind
a clutch of sagebrush with a flick of its abbreviated tail. Only the snowshoe hare
calmly finished washing its ears before casting a beady glance up at me.

“Not yet,” I said, though the thought wasn’t mine. Was I speaking for the hare, for
myself, or for someone . . . something else?

As if its job was done, the hare bounded off, leaving faint tracks in the snow before
it vanished.

I reentered the school in a daze, my cheeks and fingers wet with melted snow. I’d
glimpsed that feeling before in tiger form, but never so strongly as a human.

At first I barely heard, let alone paid attention to, the voices coming from the kitchen.
Then I heard Siku mutter, in a more annoyed tone than I’d heard from him in ages,
“I told you I’m not hungry. We don’t have a lot of time before we have to go do this
crazy thing.”

A plastic bag rattled, as if someone were digging into it. “I know, I just wanted
to talk to you real quick,” said November. Her voice got low and intimate, and without
my cat-shifter hearing, I never would have caught her next words. “It’s important.”

I paused in my progress toward the stairs down to my room, not wanting to interrupt
by walking past them as they talked. But if I stayed here, I’d be eavesdropping. I
looked behind me.
Should I go back outside for a few minutes?

“Are you okay?” Siku asked, his annoyed tone vanishing to become something warmer
and more intimate than I’d ever heard from him. “You’ve been weird lately. Distant.”

I could hear fingers unwrapping something in plastic. “I know,” November said. “It’s
because I don’t know how to act around you, exactly.”

“What did I do?”

I padded forward as silently as my training allowed. This was clearly a very personal
conversation, and maybe I could sneak past them down the stairs.

“It’s not what you did,” said November. There was a tiny clatter, like a marble rolling
on a floor, and I envisioned her dropping a round hard candy on the kitchen counter
to play with. “It’s what you haven’t done. What you won’t do.”

“What do you mean?” Siku’s bass voice dropped even lower. “I’d do anything for you.”

“You would?” November’s quiet delight gave me goose bumps. “I didn’t know that.”

“You’re hard for me to read,” he said. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”

“Mostly I’m thinking that you’re . . . you know, wonderful. The most wonderful guy
in the world, really,” she said.

“Yeah?” He took a heavy step. I imagined it was toward her.

“Yeah.” Her voice was so small, so vulnerable. “I think I love you, Siku.”

My heart swelled, and my eyes pricked with tears. She’d done it. Brave girl. And as
happy as I was for her, I couldn’t help remembering when Caleb had said those words
to me. It was the most amazing feeling in the world. I would never feel it again.

There was a little silence, during which I forced myself not to inch forward to see
what was happening, though I couldn’t help straining my ears for any clue.

“Get over here,” Siku said, a sly smile in his voice.

November let out a tiny, thrilled squeal, and then another kind of quiet descended.
I heard clothes rustling and Siku whispering, “I love you too.”

I stifled a delighted laugh and bounced gleefully on my toes. Okay, now that they
were safely making out, maybe I could sneak past them. I padded as quietly as I could
toward the stairs, and caught a glimpse of them in the darkened kitchen. Siku’s beefy
arms rendered November’s tiny form nearly invisible, though I could just see her hand
in his hair and one of her legs wrapped around his waist.

A floorboard squeaked beneath me, but neither of them seemed to notice. I slipped
down the stairs without breaking the mood.

I found Morfael in the computer room, his long fingers poking at the keyboard with
surprising speed. “Yes, Desdemona?” he said, not looking away from the monitor.

“We’re going into the Tribunal compound tonight,” I said. “But you probably already
knew that.”

He stopped typing and fixed his pale eyes on me. “Yes. You’ll be taking the Shadow
Blade with you, I presume.”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“Good.” He eased back toward the monitor and started typing again as he spoke. “The
collider is positioned very close to where the nuclear testing took place, so the
veil will be even thinner there than it is here. The urge to shift and for Caleb to
use his powers as a caller—these things will be magnified. You all may find yourselves
more irritable, more violent, closer in personality to your animal forms than usual.
You may also see things which disconcert you.”

As if things won’t be difficult enough
. “Great. Just great. I’m guessing that means my anti-technology aura will be worse
than ever too.”

He paused for a moment to turn his head, a faint smile creasing his thin lips. “Exactly.”

Why does he always look so pleased when he says bad things?
I wasn’t quite sure how to put my next question, so I just asked. “Will you come
with us? We could use a shadow walker like you.”

His spare eyebrows lifted gently, but he said nothing.

“Did you know me over there, or my parents?” I asked. “Do you have any idea why I’m
here
?”

His eyes glimmered under nearly translucent lids. “You are at my school to learn what
I can teach you.”

“Oh, come on!” I fought to keep myself from shouting. His evasiveness was unnerving.
“We’re heading into an underground facility filled with objurers armed with silver.
I might not come back. Don’t you think it’s time for me know who I am?”

“You know who you are.” He resumed typing, fingers like bird beaks pecking at the
keys. “I insist you come back. I’m not done with you.”

“So that means ‘I won’t talk to you about this now, ’ and ‘I’m not coming with you.’
” I heard myself sigh. “This isn’t going to be easy, Morfael.”

“No,” he said. “It will test you to the utmost, but there is something else I must
do.”

“Now?” I didn’t want to whine, but I was getting close to it.

“Yes. I must go.” He finished typing with a flourish, and then stood up, all bony
angles and dusty black robes. Looking at him now, it was easy to believe he wasn’t
from this world. “Raynard and I will take his truck and leave the SUV to all of you.”

He pushed past me to the hallway. I turned, incredulous. “You’re blowing me off so
you two can have a date night?”

His opal irises slid over to me, and he tapped the floor with his carved staff irritably.
“Your irreverence has its place,” he said. “This is not one of them.”

“Sorry,” I muttered. “But something weird happened just now. I was outside, feeling
pretty crappy, and all these animals came over to me. A hare, and an elk, a bobcat,
and an owl,” I said. “I felt—different. Like I was connected to them, and to everything.”

“The natural world here helps link you to that feeling,” he said.

“But if I were in Othersphere, would I feel that way all the time?”

He considered this. “Othersphere does not contain the blocks to the natural world
that this world does, so that feeling would be more accessible to you there. But you
can overcome the blocks on this side of the veil. That’s part of what you must learn
here.”

“If you walk between worlds but don’t come from any of them, where
do
you come from?” I asked, praying for once he wouldn’t evade me.

He looked mildly amused. “Any other questions?”

“A million!” I said, throwing up my hands. “But go do whatever you have to do. I’m
sure it’s super important.”

“I’m not abandoning you, Desdemona,” he said. “All your life I have worked to help
you, and it gratifies me to see how worthy of that you are.”

My throat tightened with emotion. “Thanks,” I said. “Keep being this nice and you’ll
start to worry me.”

“What you attempt tonight will be more difficult than you imagine, in ways you cannot
foresee,” he said. “But there is little point in worrying.”

I couldn’t help a small, sad laugh. “I should’ve let you go while I was ahead. Wish
us luck.”

He shook his head very slightly. “There is no luck. I wish you learning and love.”

 

We were a little late getting on the road because at first we couldn’t find Siku and
November. They finally emerged from the garage, rumpled, sweaty, and holding hands.
Envy jabbed me. They’d found a couple of hours to be together alone there, the way
Caleb and I had not, and now never would.

The dopey, happy looks on their faces made even London, very tense before heading
off into battle, grin widely. “So, finally, you two?” she said.

“What do you mean, finally?” Siku asked.

“Never mind,” I said. “Find whatever you need, fast. We have to get on the road.”

 

Crammed into the SUV with Caleb driving, we drove for awhile listening to nothing
but November crunching on caramel corn and sucking soda through a straw. The anxiety
of knowing where we were headed didn’t seem to affect her, and it was oddly comforting
to see her chowing down as usual. She was practically on Siku’s lap, seat belts be
damned.

Amaris and London sat together in the very back, heads together over London’s playlist,
sharing earbuds and distracting each other with music talk in low tones. Arnaldo continued
to pore over the plans to the complex, using a tiny flashlight. Our backpacks, with
changes of clothes, binoculars, rope, lock picks, and more snacks, were jammed in
the trunk.

I’d automatically taken the shotgun seat. Then I realized that I was no longer Caleb’s
girlfriend, with no automatic right to that seat, and no reason to sit next to him
everywhere we went. I felt hyperaware of his every movement, keyed into the rhythm
of his breath, trying to guess how he felt sitting next to me now. He seemed restless,
tapping his fingers against the steering wheel and constantly looking in the rearview
mirror to make sure no one was following us.