Othersphere (12 page)

He whirled, furious. “So you could screw my brother less than two months later?”

“Even if I was with Lazar.” Rage poured off me in waves. “Even if I was having sex with him three times a day, what are you going to do about it?”

“You were
just
kissing him, weren't you?” His eyes were on my lips. His face was flushed.

“Yes, I was,” I said. “And I liked it. I loved it! So to hell with . . .”

He grabbed me with hot, hard hands and pulled me closer. He dipped his head, his lips nearing mine. An electric thrill rushed through me. I breathed his airy thunderstorm scent, felt the heat coming off his body, and waited for one eternal second for him to press me against him.

He shoved me away and was gone. A distant dark figure against the moonlit snow.

CHAPTER 7

I woke to someone shaking me, hard. I groaned and blinked, never one to wake quickly, and found myself in bed in the girls' dorm room. Lazar was standing over me, his golden hair ruffled from sleep. It looked like he'd just thrown on a sweatshirt and half buttoned his jeans.

“Dez, it's your mom. She's on the computer, calling for you. She's all right, but she said it's urgent.”

I rolled up, rubbing my eyes. “Okay. Coming.”

He backed out and shut the door behind him. I looked down. I was wearing nothing but a T-shirt and underwear. In the adjoining bed, London was sitting up, and in another, November was holding a pillow over her head, her small hands the only thing visible in the tumble of pillows and blankets.

“You and your mom are pains in the ass,” November said, her voice muffled by pillow.

“Glad you're feeling like yourself again,” I said, pulling on the jeans I'd left in a pile on the floor and shoving my feet into sneakers.

“That makes one of us,” said London, lying back down again.

I hustled down the hallway to the computer room. Lazar was sitting in the glow of the biggest monitor. He looked up. “Here she is, Ms. Grey.” He got up and held the seat out for me stiffly, his face unreadable.

I sat down and scooted the chair in for myself. Lazar left, clicking the door quietly shut behind him.

On the monitor, my mother looked about as awake as I was. Her short brown hair was standing up on one side of her head, her hazel eyes underlined with fatigue. She'd pulled her laptop up onto the bed, so I was looking up at her sitting up against her headboard, surrounded by pillows. “Hi, honey,” she said. Her voice was a little hoarse, as it usually was in the morning. “How are you?”

I shrugged. “Kind of a rough night, Mom. I'll tell you later. What's going on?”

“I had a dream,” she said. “One of
those
dreams, you know. Where something is pulled through this black hole in my heart, and I become someone else?”

I inhaled sharply and nodded. She'd had dreams like that before, and shortly after that she'd been possessed by a person, I guess I could call her a person, from Othersphere. A person who happened to be my biological mother. Her link with Mom was still a bit of a mystery to me. Morfael said they were like one being in their love for me. I had a hard time seeing how a woman in another world who hadn't seen me since I was an infant could love me as much as the woman who raised me. I'd told Mom about her—how she'd named me that strange word, Sarangarel, and how she'd told me to leave this world and come to her in Othersphere. Mom hadn't said much, but I'd been quick to reassure her that no one else could ever be a mother to me.

“It was the same woman,” Mom said. “And she said—I remember the words exactly—‘Her friend's in danger here. Sarangarel must come over now, or all will be lost.' ”

I dropped my head into my hands. Amaris was in danger. When all I wanted to do was crawl somewhere far from otherkin and danger and boys and myself so I could sleep for a thousand years.

“What friend is she talking about, honey?” The frown line between Mom's eyebrows was etched deep.

“Amaris,” I said, and gave her a quick overview of everything that had happened in the last two days. Everything except the part about pissing off Lazar, and then maybe, possibly, nearly getting kissed by an angry Caleb. I was infuriating everyone lately. When I got to the part where Orgoli said I was his daughter, I stuttered and stumbled a little over the words. It was weird to tell Mom. We hadn't talked much about my birth parents, even after my nameless biological mother had showed up. Mom made no comment till I finished.

“You can't trust this woman,” Mom said. “She wants you to come to her, and this sounds like some kind of trap.”

“Maybe,” I said, weary through and through. “But we can't just leave Amaris in another world in the hands of who knows what. Even if it's the cleverest trap in the world, Caleb and Lazar would move the moon to get her back.”

“They could go without you,” Mom said. “You're dating one brother and used to date the other. If you go with them, you'll just come between the brothers even more, ruining any chance they might have for a relationship in the future.”

“No, I know,” I said. “I've thought about that a lot. But because I was born there, I might be able to do things other people can't.”

“Until this thing that claims to be your birth father decides it's time to eat you. Or something worse!”

“He's busy right now on this side of the veil. It might be a good time for us to cross over.”

Mom was quiet a minute. “Do you think he was telling the truth?”

She didn't have to say “the truth about being your birth father.” That was the main thing on her mind. And on mine.

“Morfael will know,” I said.

“Why doesn't that man tell you these things in advance?” Mom punched the pillows behind her, fluffing them up with sharp, angry jabs. “Why do you always have to find things out the hard way? Morfael should go to Othersphere, not you. You're the student, the child. He should be protecting you.”

“He saved me by bringing me to this world,” I said. Mom's bitterness set me on edge. Normally, she had nothing but nice things to say about Morfael. “He made sure you were the one that found me, Mom. And to keep me here, he had to give up being able to go back there.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Her pillow punching was escalating. “But all this mystery and risk gets very tiresome. I must be crazy to trust you to a creature that travels between worlds, a shadow walker. I mean, really! I know I'm a flaky nature-worshipper and all, but I'm starting to think I've graduated from flaky to neglectful.”

“You've trusted me and my judgment, Mom,” I said. “And you should, because I was raised by you.”

“Raised by a flake!” She tapped her finger against her own chest.

I heard my stepfather's soft voice say, “Caroline . . .” He must be right off camera.

Mom looked up, shaking her head at him. “No, Richard! It's about time I put a stop to all these life-threatening shenanigans my daughter gets herself into. It's my own fault for not being stricter. I'm too hippy dippy to be a mother, really.”

“You're a great mom . . .” I started to say.

“About to get greater,” she said. “Desdemona, I need you to come home, to our apartment. I'm pulling you out of that school. Today.”

“What?” Surprise pulled me to the edge of my seat.

“No more baby-eating birth fathers for you, I'm not sorry to say. Pack your bags and get Raynard to drive you to Vegas this afternoon. I'll get your room ready.”

“No,” I said softly.

Mom frowned through the monitor. “What did you say?”

I was a good daughter. I never defied my mother. And she in turn had always trusted me. My gut was twisted into a sickening knot, but I couldn't let her take me out of things now.

“I said no.”

Mom blinked rapidly. I hadn't said no much to her since I was a toddler. Her face got very stern. “Desdemona Grey. You will come home today, or I'll come up there and get you.”

“I still wouldn't come.” I didn't say,
There's no way you can make me.
It sounded juvenile, and she knew it as well as I did.

“What have you become?” Mom's eyes were red with anger and unshed tears. “Defiant, risk taking. Do you have some sort of death wish? I said, come home!”

“I need to know, Mom,” I said. “You're my mother, and that will never change. But I need to know the people who gave birth to me, even if they're awful. To see where I came from, even if it's hell. I'm sorry if that threatens you or scares you. I'm sorry!” For the millionth time in the last couple days, tears were spilling down my cheeks.

“I am your parent!” she said. “My first job is to protect you. I order you to come home now!”

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “But that isn't your choice anymore.”

I stared at her terrified, angry face. I almost told her then that I was coming home. Instead, I cut off the connection. The monitor went blank.

I was sitting on the patio, a light snowfall flickering down from the overcast morning sky when Morfael walked outside. He looked down at me, snowflakes dotting his bony white cheeks and forehead. They didn't seem inclined to melt on his skin.

“How is your mother?” he asked.

“She ordered me to come home,” I said shortly. I wasn't feeling very friendly to anyone right now, particularly Morfael. “She says I shouldn't be taking so many risks. I told her I'm staying anyway, and she's pretty mad. Orgoli is my birth father, isn't he?”

“Yes,” said Morfael, his gaze flickering over my face. “He is my half-brother.”

“Which makes you my uncle.” It came out flat. I felt flat, too. All these revelations should have made me emotional or excited. Instead, I felt nothing. “All this time, we've been relatives.”

I didn't say it, but it hung in the air between us.

He regarded me for a long moment. “If I'd told you that the first night you came to this school? Would that have been better?”

I remembered that first night, how terrifying Morfael had seemed, how strange the other shifter kids and their ways. I'd had enough to digest learning how to be a tiger-shifter. “I guess being told I was a creature from another world rescued by her shadow-walker uncle from her stone-skinned demonic father would have been a bit much to take in,” I said. “Would you have told me?”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “Who knows what would have been? Whether you knew or did not know of our blood kinship, I would have looked after you and cared for you the same.”

I bowed my head, shame battling with anger. Morfael had saved my life and my friends many times now. He didn't talk much, but he was there when it counted. I told my anger to be quiet, but it didn't want to go away.

“So you and Orgoli share a mother,” I said. “She must have been a shadow walker.”

“As was my father,” Morfael said. “Orgoli's father was one of the Amba, or what you might call the tiger spirits of Othersphere.”

“Are they alive? My grandparents?”

Morfael gave one shake of his head. “Orgoli killed them some time ago.”

I digested that for a moment. So it wasn't just his children he liked to murder. “What exactly is an Amba?”

“They are similar to the tiger-shifters that used to exist in this world,” Morfael said, “but less human.”

“More tiger.”

He gave one short nod. “Your mother is Amba.”

“What's her name?” How strange. To ask for your own mother's name.

“Khutulun.” He pronounced the early consonants soft, the vowels like a song.

“Khutulun,” I repeated, less musically. It was just a bunch of sounds, and they didn't make me feel anything.

Morfael considered me. “You are mostly as she, but one-quarter shadow walker. That made it easier for me to move you through the veil and easier for you to live here.”

“Orgoli said that he . . .” I swallowed. It was very weird to think this, let alone to say it. “He ate his other children, and he would have eaten me. Is that normal over there?”

“No.” Morfael's opalescent eyes were clear and cold. “It has been recorded that an Amba king will sometimes eat the infant children of his rivals, especially if he wishes to mate with their mother. That is why many mothers keep their children hidden until they're older. But I have also seen them adopt the children of others and care for them as their own. Orgoli is twisted. As he gained more power, slaying other Amba to gain territory, he began to see even his own children as threats. They and their mothers paid the price.”

I nodded and didn't speak for a moment. I wished Mom was there, or Caleb, or Lazar. Someone I could really talk to. But I'd managed things so badly that all three were now off limits, one way or another.

“That's why you brought me here,” I said. “To save me from him. Why didn't you send me back when Khu . . . when my biological mother asked you to?”

“She thought she had found a safe place for you in her world,” he said. “I disagreed. As you can see, Orgoli has found you even here. But you are better prepared now than you would have been fifteen years ago.”

“Why didn't you raise me yourself?” I looked up at him, so alien in looks, but familiar to me now.
He's my uncle. I'm his niece.
It didn't feel real.

“I considered it.” He leaned on his wooden staff, inscribed with animal forms that seemed to writhe under his hand. He looked tired. “But Orgoli would have found you more easily through me. You were safest with someone who had no connection to otherkin or Othersphere. Someone kind and understanding.”

“Someone who wants to pull me out of your school.”

He nodded. “There are times when it's useful to listen to fear. And times when it isn't.”

I put my hands on my hips. “That is so not helpful. What does it even mean?”

His mouth curved upwards in his version of a smile. I wondered if I ever smiled like that. I didn't think I looked like him, or Orgoli. I hoped not. “It means that when you feel fear, you must exercise your judgment. Good judgment will tell you whether the fear is wise.”

“Well, whether it's good judgment or not, we have to go to Othersphere to get Amaris back.”

Morfael bowed his head at me, in acknowledgment or surrender, I couldn't tell. He was still smiling when he said, “I will help you pierce the veil. We must go to the Lightning Tree.”