Shadows (22 page)

“He works at P&P,” I said, trying not to sound like a teenager being asked personal questions by her mother, and also failing. “We met, um, today at the park.”

There was a little silence as we went through the kitchen door. Casimir hadn’t remotely hinted anything to her about the new cobey or she’d have been all over me with panicky-mom questions. I owed him for that. She thought we were having a standard mother-daughter conversation. It was still better than Hey, who would have guessed Takahiro was a werewolf?

“Casimir told me he’s from Ukovia,” Mom said finally. “His English is very good. He sounds a lot like Val.”

“He’s
heard
of Val,” I blurted out. “He said ‘Valadi Crudon?’ like it was some big deal.”

Mom turned and looked at me. The day before yesterday I’d’ve said it like an accusation. Today I was just frightened. Her husband was an ex-magician who had killed his best friend because his government had told him to. Except that he wasn’t ex-. One of my best friends was a werewolf. I had an invisible humming creature with too many legs and eyes wrapped around my throat. There had been a cobey in the park—the park less than two miles from where we lived. A cobey that Casimir, who had heard of Val, recognized as a cobey. A cobey that I . . .
I
 . . . I looked at my poor algebra book, lying on the kitchen table. You could see the gap the missing pages made, a little black hole against the spine, and the closed cover lay at a slight angle. Mom hadn’t noticed, or she’d’ve gone ballistic—textbooks are
expensive.
But she wouldn’t expect me to be a book mutilator. And how was I going to explain?

Two days ago Mom would have heard the accusation in my voice and shut me out. Two days ago we hadn’t met Hix or seen a werewolf in Val’s shed. Or heard why Val had been exiled. Today she said, “I knew there were things Val hadn’t told me. But there were things I hadn’t told him too; why should he tell me everything? I had even guessed—before last night—that Val was more important in his old life than he wanted to talk about. And I can’t imagine anyone who has moved so far away, and to a new country, wouldn’t have some mixed feelings about what they’ve left behind. Until last night it hadn’t occurred to me that anything he hadn’t told me might be dangerous.”

Mongo, not getting the response he wanted merely leaning against me, was licking my hand. I sat down abruptly on the floor and started petting him fiercely with both hands. He lay down and stretched out to make this easier. His feathering—the long stuff on his neck and belly and legs and tail—needed brushing. His feathering always needed brushing. His eyes said, Don’t stop. Hix flowed down one arm and across Mongo’s ribs. His eyes moved—I guess he could see her better than I could. She curled up under his chin, and he raised his head not only as if he knew exactly where she was, but as if she took up space, which I still wasn’t clear about.

Mom said carefully, “Casimir seemed to think you were a bit special too.” I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything. Mom waited and then added, “Something a little unusual. About a prophecy.”

I exhaled. I reminded myself that us Newworlders
did
believe in coincidence. And that he hadn’t mentioned the cobey so I still owed him. But maybe a little less. “That’s just some dumb folk tale. It’s a
joke.
”

“I don’t think . . .” Mom began, and stopped. I was thinking about my grandmother turning green and scaly. I was thinking about magic winning over science. I was thinking about Takahiro. I had a headache.

“Oh—a
thousand
dead batteries,” I said. “Clare was expecting me—”

“No, she’s not,” said Mom. “I phoned her while I was waiting for you to come home. Whatever happened with Takahiro, I didn’t think you’d make it to the shelter this afternoon.”

“Oh, poor Clare,” I said. “I wonder who—”

“She told me to tell you that she wasn’t surprised, that everything was a hot wire this afternoon, and that she’d already called her brother.”

Clare’s brother was still pretending to be a farmer with a few acres at the other end of what had used to be their family farm, but he earned his living as a legal aide for a family law practice specializing in abused children. They both had the rescue-things gene, speaking of genes. He and Clare shouted at each other a lot but he always came when she needed him. I relaxed as much as I could relax. Which wasn’t very much. I’d much rather have spent the afternoon cleaning kennels because nothing else was happening.

The default position in this household was that you boiled water and made a hot drink. Mom filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She took four mugs out of the cupboard and lined them up on the counter. The kettle began to make that faint far-off hissing noise that means it will produce hot water before you die of thirst (probably). Mom stood staring at the cupboard. There is a long time for thinking thoughts you don’t want to think while you’re waiting for a kettle to boil. She got the milk out of the refrigerator and put a lot of it into a pan. It was going to be hot chocolate then. That meant it was serious.

Well, it
was
serious.

CHAPTER 8

WE HEARD THE SHED DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS—one pair with shoes, one pair without—and then a hand turn the kitchen door handle. Val’s dressing gown went nearly twice around Takahiro but didn’t quite reach his knees. He’d wrapped the belt round and round and tied it in front, like a samurai’s obi. He looked almost as unhappy as he had as a wolf: all curled in on himself like he used to be eight years ago, and it made my heart ache. I wanted to believe that it didn’t make any difference that he might turn into a wolf any time he was stressed out—but it did, you know? It meant he was in danger
all the time.
Which meant that his friends were also in danger all the time. There was no way the niddles
wouldn’t
believe we all knew. I said I didn’t know Takahiro at all. But I did in some ways. I knew that was one of the things he was thinking about right now. Because now some of us did know. No wonder he’d never really finished becoming one of us. We just thought it was because he was half Japanese, and lived in a huge house on the other side of town with a dad who was never home and who none of our parents had ever met. And possibly because he was an arrogant moody stuck-on-himself creepazoid. And here he wasn’t even a real gizmohead. He was just a grind. And a werewolf.

The kitchen was starting to smell of chocolate. It was probably my favorite smell in the whole world, and all I could think of was that we’d just had it last night, and I’d thought last night had been serious-enough-for-an-emergency-hot-chocolate-ration enough
.
I looked down along the floor. There were
gruuaa
everywhere. I could see them more and more easily even when they were hidden by normal furniture-and-people’s-legs shadows. I didn’t know if that was Hix’s influence, or that I’d stopped trying to ignore them—or stopped hating Val—or what. There was a heap of them in the shadows under the table and a coil of them wrapped around and through the bottles in the tall skinny bottle rack between the edge of the cupboard and the refrigerator. There were several more of them winding around Mom’s flour-sugar-coffee-tea canisters at the back of the counter by the sink. (Which contained, of course, two kinds of pasta, rice and dried beans.) I wasn’t going to mention this. Mom was kind of a hygiene freak and I didn’t know if shadow feet could carry germs or not. Hix had moved slightly to between Mongo’s front legs and he was dementedly trying to lick the top of her head. If that was her head.

It was. Her three eyes blinked open to look at me. “Hey, sweetie,” I murmured, which tended to be what I called all friendly critters. All the long-term residents at the shelter knew their name was “sweetie.” Hix’s eyes still glittered but they didn’t look like silverbugs to me any more.

Mom brought the tray with four steaming mugs and a plate of cookies to the table. She picked up her mug and chugged it. “I’d better get going,” she said. “Takahiro, can you stay for supper? I’m stopping by the deli.”

“Buy twice as much as you think you need,” said Val mildly. “Changing is hard work.” Takahiro gave another wild shiver, almost a spasm, looked at Val and away again, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’ll do that,” said Mom. “Er—do you need—er—meat? Our usual from the deli is their tomato and chickpea stew.”

“It’s just calories,” Takahiro muttered to the table. “It doesn’t matter what kind.”

Mom patted Takahiro’s arm and my shoulder, dropped a kiss on the top of Val’s head, and left.

The cookies disappeared in about forty seconds. Val got up and started making sandwiches. “A question, Takahiro,” he said. “May I ask?”

Takahiro, to my surprise, took a moment to answer. “I don’t really know how to say this,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything I
can
tell you.” He flicked another sideways glance at me and fiddled with his mug. “So, yeah.”

Val bowed his head briefly in one of his funny not-from-around-here gestures. “Do you know how your father got you into this country?” said Val.

Takahiro looked up at that. “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, no.
I’ve
wondered about that. At the time I didn’t think anything. Eh . . . My cousins told me, once, when my mom was still alive and the rest of the family hadn’t completely cut us off yet, that I wouldn’t be able to visit my dad in Newworld even if he wanted me to, which he didn’t, because the border police would know I was a ’shifter, and kill me. That was about eleven years ago. I had to have about a million tests before they let me in, including blood work and scans and stuff, and I was kind of waiting for them to kill me.”

“Oh, Taks,” I said.

He looked sort of in my direction but not quite at me, and away again. “It was a long time ago. And then they didn’t kill me after all. So I had to figure out how to stay alive. At the time I just thought they’d missed it somehow, which was almost comforting, you know? It meant I might manage to—pass. It wasn’t till later, when I was older and more suspicious, that I began to wonder. There’s not a lot out there about ’shifters that the ordinary public can access, and I didn’t want anyone tagging me because I was too interested in this weird subject. But I don’t see how
all
the border tech can have missed what I am. There’s a lot about my dad I don’t know,” he added.

“What is your father’s employment?” said Val.

“He buys stuff for museums. He’s an expert on all kinds of stuff. Especially Farworld stuff. So he keeps being called in to make decisions.”

“He travels a great deal,” said Val.

“Yeah. All over the world. Over lots of national borders. Newworld, Oldworld, Farworld, Midworld, the Southworlds. He ought to be so suspect—with a ’shifter son. Who did he pay off—or something—to get me through? Why doesn’t whoever it is have him totally at the end of a hot wire?”

Val finished cutting the sandwiches in halves and put the plate on the table. “We don’t know,” he said. “But the world does not work in some ways we are taught to believe that it works.”

Takahiro grunted. “Dreeping,” he said. “Crap zone.” This was seriously bad language for Taks.

Val sat down, smiling a humorless smile. “It is inevitable at your age—yours and Maggie’s—that you should still be learning how the world works. It is a little embarrassing that I should be learning the same things now. I should not be here with my shadows—”

“Gruuaa,”
I said. “Casimir also called them
gruuaa,
although he’s from Ukovia.”

“Most terms concerning the use of magic are the same throughout the Commonwealth,” said Val. “I fear then that Casimir may be yet another person who is not as the world says he should be. Yes.
Gruuaa.
If there is a Newworld word, I don’t know it. My masters said they were stripping me of my magic and that, naked, the best place for me was Newworld. And so I came here, obedient little
dokdok
that I am.”

“You probably mean clueless drone or dead battery,” I said.

“Dead battery. Yes. Very apt. Except that I am not. But I have no idea how the
gruuaa
managed to protect me both through the lengthy dispossession process in Orzaskan and the intensive examination at the Newworld boundary.”

Val and I each ate half a sandwich so it didn’t look like it was all for Takahiro—and Takahiro ate the rest. You might almost say
wolfed.
Like he couldn’t help himself. There were now a lot of
gruuaa
around Takahiro—looping over his chair, hanging from the picture frames on the wall behind him—and I figured the mob under the table were probably clustering around his feet. The armydar was still going
unh unh unh
so he probably needed them worse than Val or I did.

“Val,” I said. “The
gruuaa.
They, uh—”