Out of This World (9 page)

I have to smile. “Like I'm going to believe that, coming from yet another person who wants something from me?”

“I told you before. There are no strings attached to whatever help I can give you.”

I nod. “Except you're just being more subtle than the others. You've all got an agenda. You figure if you help me, I'll feel obliged to help you when all of this is done.”

He studies me for another long moment, then shrugs.

“We should get some sleep,” he says.

He butts out his cigarette on the stone and puts what's left in his pocket. Then he gets up and goes to his makeshift bed.

I stay where I am, looking up at that big moon in a bigger sky. My thoughts start to drift. When I realize that I'm not thinking of Elzie, but of Marina and what the hell is she doing with someone like Chaingang, I give my head a shake and go to my own bed.

I crouch behind what's left of a wall in the ruins of the building where I've taken shelter, holding a length of rusted pipe that I guess was once part of the plumbing system. There are no ceilings or a roof. The walls that still exist are a mix of brickwork and cement, and rise up at least two storeys with the hint of a third. There's rubble all around me. It was like that as far as I could see before the voices I heard sent me scurrying here for shelter—just abandoned and ruined buildings, and broken-up city streets choked with junked vehicles and brush—everything falling down and reclaimed by nature.

It's all so different from back home—or even from those other times I first crossed over to the otherworld. There's not even a single salty hint of the ocean in the air. It's humid rather than dry. The overcast sky just makes everything seem even more gloomy, especially to someone like me who's used to her So-Cal sunshine.

I'd like to explore a little instead of hiding—try to figure out what happened to this place—except now I can hear the approach of whoever owns those voices. Unlike me, they're not
trying to hide. Their footsteps crunch in the dirt and they're talking away to each other. I hear three, maybe four different voices. I still can't make out what they're saying—I don't even know what language they're speaking.

I haven't dared peek out yet to get a better look, so I don't know if they're human or cousins. I'm hoping for human. I've got a little advantage in terms of strength and speed against a human. But a cousin who can sniff me out? Not so much, though I did pretty good holding my own against that pack of dogs back in the barrio.

Oh, who am I kidding? The only way I escaped in one piece was pure blind luck, and since luck isn't something you can count on, I'll have to play it smart.

Like hiding from strangers until I can figure out if they're friendly or a threat.

The voices are abreast of my hiding place and my heart sinks a little when I get that
ping
of recognition that tells me they're cousins. And if I can sense them, then they must be able to sense me. I swallow hard and tighten my grip on the pipe, ready to come out fighting.

And then … nothing happens.

As the voices start to move away, I finally peek over the wall.

The receding figures are a quartet of tall, human-shaped figures. But I know they're not human.

They wear dusters over jeans and boots, and walk with an easy swing to their steps, black braids bouncing on their backs. I don't see any weapons except for the staff that one of them is using as a walking stick. Something flutters from the top—a tangle of ribbons and bird feathers.

If I were Cory or Auntie Min, I'd be able to tell exactly what their animal shapes are. But I'm not and right now I don't care. Just so long as they keep moving.

Except then one of them stops. He lifts his head and sniffs the air, and I hold my breath until he finally turns away again and catches up with his companions. He says something to them and they all laugh.

I watch until they're out of sight and I can't hear their voices anymore. Then I drop behind the wall again and sit on a stone. I turn to put the wall at my back and come face to face with a man squatting on his haunches not three feet from me.

A wordless
gah
jumps out of my mouth and he puts a finger to his lips. Somehow I manage to remember the cousins that passed by a moment ago, and don't vocalize my surprise any more than that one sound.

I scuttle sideways along the wall, putting more distance between us while I get a good look at him. I lift the pipe, ready to whack him.

The way he snuck up on me is creepy enough, but he's also so
strange
looking: short and bulky, with a wide, dark brown face, a thick matt of long hair and a full beard, both braided with buttons and shells, ribbons and thin tendrils of vines. He's probably not much more than four feet tall, standing up. His raggedy clothes are a collection of muted browns and greens, and look like they came from the discard bin in an alley behind a thrift shop. His feet are dirty and bare.

He regards me with curious eyes, the piercing blue of a husky's. They're cool in a dog. Way too intense in a man. If he even is a man.

“We have to go,” he says.

“What?”

“The hounds. They know you're here. They were just playing with you when they went by—pretending they didn't notice, but how could they not? You reek of an otherworld.”

“Whoa, whoa,” I manage to get out. “Say what?”

Hounds.
That sounds way too much like the guys who jumped me in the park and then chased me here.

He stands up and beckons me to come. “Quick now.”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

I hear the sound of a hunting horn. It's not close, but it's not far, either.

“Suit yourself,” the raggedy man says. “But whatever you decide, make sure it includes running away from here as fast as you can.”

Without another word, he jumps over the wall at the back of the building. The horn sounds again. This time it's answered by another, coming from the opposite direction. Then a third, and a fourth. They're on all sides.

That can't be good.

I'm on my feet and over the wall just in time to see the raggedy man disappear around the corner of a building, the walls still standing covered in vines.

“Hey, wait up!” I call after him.

I put on a burst of Wildling speed, winding my way through the rubble and brush, but he's motoring along at a good clip for all his bulk and it takes me a couple more blocks to catch up to him. When I do, it's only because he's crouched down beside a rusted old car. I'm about to ask what he's doing when I see the dog. I get a momentary glimpse of it, maybe three blocks away, then it's behind some brush and lost from sight again.

“They're closing in on us,” the raggedy man says.

The horns sound again, one answering the other, all around us. They're much closer now. I don't think I was entirely convinced before, but I am now: the men with the long hair and black dusters are definitely hunting us. Maybe with a pack of dogs. Maybe they can turn into dogs.

“How do we get away from them?” I ask my companion.

“We need to be invisible,” he says. “Sight, sound and smell.” He taps his brow. “In here, too.”

I look at him like he just grew a second head. “How are we supposed to do that?”

“The same way you do anything—you will it to happen.”

I shake my head. “I don't have that party trick. How's it even possible?”

“Look away,” he says.

I hesitate.

“Go ahead,” he says. “Trust me in this one little thing.”

He's odd-looking, but since he hasn't seemed threatening so far, I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt and do as he asks. But I'm ready to swing the pipe if he tries anything.

“Now look back,” he says.

His voice comes from the same place, except when I turn back around he's not there anymore. I mean he's
really
not there. I reach out with my free hand, then jump back when I touch his invisible chest.

He reappears like the Cheshire Cat: first a grin, then the rest of him.

“You see?” he says. “It's easy.”

I shake my head. “Falling off a board is easy. That is just impossible.”

“Think of Prince Jayden with his magic cloak,” he says.

I give him a blank look.

“Like in the old story,” he explains. “Remember? He got it from the thrushes to help rescue his sister, Princess Maika, when she was trapped in the Iron Tower.”

“We don't have that story where I come from.”

“Really? That's sad.”

“We have other stories,” I assure him.

The horns sound again.

“What about this cloak?” I add.

“Pretend you're wearing it—or it can be a blanket. It doesn't matter. Just make it whatever's easiest for you to imagine. Wrap it all around you so that no one can see you, or smell you, or even sense you. Use it to block anyone from being aware of you.”

“But I don't
have
a cloak or blanket.”

He sighs and glances down the street before turning back

to me.

“
Imagine
you have one,” he says.

I guess the panic I feel is written on my face because he sighs again.

“I can show you how to do it,” he says, “the way we teach our infants survival skills when they're still too young to understand language.”

That doesn't sound too dangerous. But I still have to ask, “Is it going to hurt?”

Maybe wherever he comes from infants are way tougher than So-Cal teenagers.

“It's more startling than anything else,” he says. He shoots another worried look down the street. “We don't have much time.”

“Okay,” I tell him. “Go for it.”

Please
don't let me regret this. And can I just say how much I wish I had a do-over before I escaped the dogs by coming here in the first place? Make that before I let Ampora chase me out of Papá's house.

The raggedy man reaches out toward my brow with a finger and I flash on Cory doing the same thing with Theo, back on the headland near Tiki Bay.

Oh, God. Is he going to step inside my head, or my dreams, or whatever it was Cory did to Theo?

But then my head fills with a flash of—not exactly light. It's more a momentary rush of information that flares inside me like stepping out of a dark house into the noontime sun. I see how to pull off the trick. I also see a cascade of confusing images that I realize are pieces of my companion's life. It's like watching somebody flip pages in a book, but they flit by so quickly, it's almost like they were never there in the first place.

“Now quickly,” he says in a soft voice. “Disappear.”

I use the new information he stuck in my head and discover that he was right. It
is
like enfolding yourself in an imaginary blanket or a cloak. I imagine a blanket that I pull over me and I guess I go invisible. I know I did everything just like the infodump showed me. Except …

“I can still see my hands,” I say.

“But I can't.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes. Now, on our lives, be still.”

I'm about to ask why, when I hear the soft pad of paws on the other side of the wrecked car. I grip my length of pipe and hold my breath.

The dog is there, standing as high at the shoulder as a wolf. It's the same breed as the pack that came at me in the park.

That reminds me of the one I hit with the chain last night. I hope I didn't kill him.

I get a flash in my head of the surveillance video footage where Josh is killing that ValentiCorp researcher while he's in his Wildling shape, quickly followed by the memory of the torn-up remains of Vincenzo that Josh left in the otherworld.

I don't want to go there. I don't want to be like that.

But today I don't have to fight. The dog looks right at us— no, right through us because his gaze slides away as though we're not even there. He shifts in a blur of movement and the dog becomes one of those tall men in a duster. He pulls a horn from an inside pocket and blows a quick call to his companions.

The sharpness of the sound, coming from so close, startles me. I can feel my imaginary blanket slide a little from my imaginary shoulder and reach up to adjust it. It's only when the man turns in my direction that I realize I forgot I was supposed to imagine the adjustment. Instead I reached with my hand and the movement broke the spell.

His eyes widen in surprise at my sudden appearance and then he grins before lifting the horn again.