“It’s okay.”
“Where do you want to go?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. Maybe I’m making a huge mistake. Maybe I should let them turn me over to the authorities. Maybe I am dangerous.”
She shakes her head and puts a hand on my shoulder. “That’s them talking, not you. You know what’s true. Your truth is all that matters, and you can’t let them put you in a cage. Trust me. I know all about being made to do things I didn’t want to do—things that someone would never choose to do on their own.”
I think of Nanuq’s binding medallion that I broke, how it controlled her and the other dog cousins.
“I guess you do.”
“Come back to my place,” she says. “You can lay low there while you figure out what to do next.”
“Thanks. The one sure thing is, I can’t stay here.”
“Do you have everything you want to take with you?”
I lift my backpack from the end of the bed.
“I wish I could take my board and drum kit,” I say, “but I doubt I’ll have any use for them anymore.”
“We can come back for them,” she says. “There’s not any place they can put them that I can’t get into.”
I don’t suppose there is.
“Can we make a short stop on the way?” I ask.
“Sure. Where to?”
“The backyard of where I used to live when I was a kid. Do you know where that is?”
She nods. “But I thought you and your sister didn’t get along.”
How could she know that? I lift an eyebrow and she shrugs.
“Gossip. Cousins tend to know everything that goes on around them,” she says. “After the two of you got involved with the Riverside Kings, you were on everyone’s radar.”
“I want to say goodbye to my little sisters,” I say.
“Now? You’re not moving out of state or even out of the county tonight. It’s late. Maybe you should try to see them when things calm down a little.”
“But what if my parents fix it so that I can’t ever get near them again? Then they’ll believe whatever they’re told about me. They’ll think I didn’t care about them.”
“There’s no place they can hide them from me.”
“I know.”
I think of what happened to Josh today, and what happened to so many of the Wildlings. Nanuq is still out there, wanting us all dead.
“But,” I add, “Wildlings don’t seem to have much of a life expectancy these days.”
I know she’s going to say something about how the dog clans will keep me safe. I can see it in her eyes. And then I see her change her mind.
“Sure,” she says. “No problem. Here, take my hand.”
I do, and she steps us away into the otherworld. We walk for a while through desert scrub untouched by humans. When we come out again, we’re in the backyard of Papá’s house. I send Ampora a text while Lupe slips into the shadows beyond the back porch’s light. A few moments later I see the kitchen curtain stir and then Ampora comes outside. She stands a couple of feet away, arms crossed across her chest.
“Did you get the text I sent?” she asks. “I meant it.”
“I know you did. Thanks.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m going away and I want to say goodbye to the girls.”
“Going away?” she says. Her gaze flicks around the backyard, trying to pierce the shadows. “With your boyfriend?”
“I’m not seeing Theo anymore.”
And Josh is dead, but I’m not ready to tell her what that really means for me. Not when she thinks he’d been planning to come back to see her.
“I don’t know how smart running away is,” she says, “but at least you’ve still got some sense in you.”
“Theo’s not what you think.”
“No, he’s probably worse.”
“I don’t want to argue with you.”
What I really don’t want is for her to get into another hissy fit and not let me see the girls.
She just looks at me for a long moment, then she finally nods.
“It’s funny,” she says. “For a long time I’ve been kind of hoping you’d get out of my life, but now that you’re going, it actually feels a little weird.”
I don’t say anything. I want to, but I can never tell what will set her off.
“I’ll get the girls,” she says and turns back to the house.
“No way,” Cory says when J-Dog and I return to my crib. “We’re not taking a civilian on what’s probably a suicide mission.”
“Excuse me?” J-Dog says. “Aren’t you the piece of shit who held a gun to my head out back here?” I see the crazy start up in his eyes.
“Bygones,” I say to J-Dog. “Let it go, or don’t come.”
J-Dog scowls. I see him weighing it out, deciding to bury his pride. That’s huge for him and my heart swells a bit, knowing how much he’s got my back. Of course, could be he’s just itching to play with the rocket launcher.
“We aren’t going to rough up some gangbangers,” Cory says. “We’re going after a monster who can move so fast you’ll barely see him before he’s ripping out your throat.”
“Let him try,” J-Dog says.
“I’m telling you, it’ll be over before you even—”
“Shut up,” I say. “The both of you.”
I point a finger at Cory. “You’re coming because you can get me to him.” My finger moves to J-Dog. “And you’re coming because you’re too much of a dumbshit to do the smart thing and stay out of it. But this is my show—everybody got that? When we find Nanuq, it’ll be my finger on the trigger. Sucker owes me and I’m taking him down.”
“Or you’ll die trying,” Cory says, stepping heavy on the cliché.
“Or I’ll die trying,” I agree in all seriousness. “Then you can do whatever the hell you want. Everybody understand?”
Cory shrugs. J-Dog glares at both of us, but finally he nods.
“Okay, then,” I say. “Cory, you heard from those friends of yours?”
“It’s still early.”
I nod. “Then we start walking, right? See what we can find on our own?”
“That’s the plan, such as it is. We can go anytime.”
I sling a sawed-off so that it hangs against my chest—easy to reach. I’ve got a Glock in my waistband. I pick up the rocket launcher. J-Dog’s prepped me on how it works, and it’s ready to rock ’n’ roll. He picks up his own.
“So let’s go,” I say.
Cory puts a hand on my shoulder, the other on J-Dog’s and he walks us out of my crib and into the middle of some desert scrub—what this part of Santa Feliz must have looked like back in the day.
“Fuck me,” J-Dog says, getting his second look at the otherworld, but his first understanding of just how out of his league he is at this moment.
“No thanks,” Cory says and he starts walking across the scrub.
We follow.
I wake to find Tío Goyo sitting cross-legged on the dirt beside me. He’s got an unfamiliar look in his eyes and it takes me a moment to realize that it’s respect.
I sit up and look around. There’s no city hall, no stage, no Santa Feliz. Just dry dirt and dead grass, with the odd island of scrubby trees. I can smell the ocean to the west, see the mountains far to the east. Other than that, the landscape doesn’t change for as far as I can see.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“One world over.”
“And when?”
“You’ve been unconscious for almost five hours.”
Five hours? I’ve been out that long? Though, all things considered, I’m lucky to be around at all.
“That was a good trick you pulled on everyone, back at city hall,” Tío Goyo says.
“I guess. To be honest,” I add, “I wasn’t sure it would work.”
I didn’t plan it. It just came to me as I leapt to intercept the bullet.
The moment of
my second death is seared into my memory: how I let everybody see me in my human shape, shifting into the mountain lion and getting shot, then finally returning to human form. How, in between that last shift from Wildling to human, I used what I’d learned from Tío Goyo—though I had to do it faster than I ever had before. Faster than should have been possible. I shifted to spirit form, but instead of returning my body to the ground, I left it there to die on the stage while I went on into the otherworld. I didn’t know if I’d remain a spirit hawk forever or not, but even that seemed like a better option than dying.
So I remember shifting, and I remember crossing over, but when I tried to draw my body from the ground on the other side, everything snapped to black. Until I woke just now, I had no idea if I’d been able to pull it off or not.
“How did you learn to do that?” Tío Goyo asks.
“I didn’t. But I had to try something. I couldn’t let things go on the way they were.”
“You mean, you weren’t ready to die,” he says.
“No. Well yes, but what I really meant was everybody wanting a piece of me. I needed to just disappear—at least so far as the world was concerned.”
“You were successful in that,” he tells me. “Everybody thinks you’re dead.”
“Even the authorities—the FBI?”
“Especially them. They took your body away with them.”
“Good.”
“But your secret won’t last forever,” Tío Goyo warns me.
“Not among the cousins. It doesn’t matter how careful you are, at some point one of them will catch your scent, and with the way they gossip, it won’t be long before everybody knows.”
“That’s okay. I just need a bit of peace and quiet to figure out what I’m going to do with my life.”
“I can help you with that,” Tío Goyo says. “I had some success when I spoke to Diego Madera.”
“Who’s that?”
“The cousins call him Old Man Puma. He’s the patriarch of the Hierro Madera Mountain Lion Clan and he says he will claim you as part of his clan. He wants you to stay with him for a while in the mountains. He’s been around forever, so he’ll be able to tell you everything you need to know about the cousin part of your nature.”
“That’s perfect,” I say. “When can I go?”
“Right now.”
“I can’t go right now,” I tell him. “I have a few loose ends to tie up.”
“His acceptance of you is a great honour.”
“I understand that. And I really am honoured. But I have some unfinished business to take care of. And I need to tell my mom and best friends that I’m alive. I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks, but I can’t leave them thinking I’m dead.”
I hesitate a moment, then add, “Actually, I’m hoping it’ll be okay to teach my friends what you taught me.”
“You are gifted,” he says. “It will not come so easily to them. They will have to work much harder.”
“I get that. But you don’t mind?”
“No. I will even help if I can.”
“That means a lot—thanks.”
Tío Goyo gives me a hard look. “And is there more unfinished business—with the girl you hoped to rescue, for example?”
“No, I’ve made enough mistakes when it comes to Elzie. If she chooses to remain with Nanuq, there’s nothing that I can do about it.”
He regards me with a shocked expression. “You mean … you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Your assassin. It was her.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, but it still hits me like a punch to the gut. I feel sick that Elzie would actually follow through on this crazy plan—that she would be the one to pull the trigger.
“What happened to her?” I ask.
“She’s been charged with murder and incarcerated, and evidently she’s remorseful. She hasn’t attempted to leave her cell.”
I sigh. I wish she hadn’t had to learn her lesson the hard way, but I can’t invest any more time in Elzie than I already have. It’s over in terms of her, but I still have other business to take care of.
“I’m finished with Elzie,” I say, “but I have to deal with Nanuq. If I don’t, he’s just going to start up again.”
“You think you can kill him?”
“I’ve already got two deaths on my conscience. I don’t want any more. I’m hoping I can talk some reason into him.”
Tío Goyo shakes his head. “Good luck with that.”
“Will you explain the situation to Señor Madera?” I ask.
“The last thing I want to do is offend him.”
Tío Goyo looks over my shoulder. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”
I hadn’t brought up the maps in my head yet, and I never heard anyone approach, but when I turn around, he’s standing right there and my heart feels like it stops dead.
He reminds me of Tío Goyo, except where Tío Goyo gives off no cousin power reading whatsoever, Diego Madera registers right off the charts. I can’t believe I didn’t feel it until now. It must’ve had something to do with my just having regained consciousness, or he somehow dialed his presence down, but if the pings I’m getting now are any indication, I’m back to normal.
Old Man Puma is obviously old and powerful—more so than either Auntie Min or Vincenzo. He’s dressed casually, like the hawk uncle—cowboy boots, jeans, a checked flannel shirt over a white T-shirt—but his hair isn’t dark. It’s a tawny gold, like my fur is in my mountain lion shape. His skin tone is a lighter brown than most of the cousins I’ve met and his eyes are a penetrating green-yellow. His shoulders are broad, his hips lean. His hands, with their thumbs hooked in his belt, are big—like a mountain lion’s paws.
“It’s good to meet you, little nephew,” he says.
“And you, sir,” I manage to get out. “I hope you don’t find me ungrateful—”
He waves one of those big hands as though brushing away something of no consequence. “I expect the members of my clan to be loyal,” he says. “To take responsibility for their actions and to fulfill their obligations. You’ve just proven your worth on all counts. Do what you must, with my blessing and the support of your clan.”
“Wow, just like that?” The words pop out of my mouth before I think about what I’m saying, but Diego only smiles.
“I was here when Coyote played his first trick,” he says. “When Raven stirred his pot and the world was born. I’ve watched the mountains rise and fall; seen oceans drain and the deserts take their place. After all that time, I have no difficulty judging the character of a being. You might be young to your cousin blood, little nephew, and the how and why of your existence is as much of a puzzle to me as it is to you and our friend Goyo, but I can read your worth as easily as I can read sign, and yours has a surety that cannot be mistaken for anything but what it is: noble and just.”
Yeah, I think. He’s one of the old cousins, all right, because they all sure do like to talk like they’re reciting poetry. But I’m learning to dial back the wise-ass comments.
“Thanks,” is all I say.
“Do you know where to find Nanuq?” he asks.
I tap a finger against my temple. “I’ve got something like a GPS in here and it’ll take me right to him.” Then I realize he might not know what I’m talking about. “Um,” I add, “do you know what a GPS—”
“I’m old, not stupid.”
“I didn’t mean—”
The big hand waves that off as well.
“There will be things I can teach you,” he says, “but I’ve no doubt there is much I can learn from you, as well. I appreciate your respectful attitude, but you need to know that I am not one to stand on ceremony.”
“Got it,” I say when I realize he’s waiting for me to respond.
“Now go,” he says. “Fulfill your obligations as befits a member of the Hierro Madera Mountain Lion Clan.” He reaches over and taps my temple with a large finger. “You’ll know where to
find me when you’re done.”
Then he just kind of fades away.
I turn to Tío Goyo with a grin. “Okay, that was so cool. How did he do that?”
“You’ll have to ask him the next time you see him,” Tío Goyo says.
“Maybe I will.” I wait a beat, then ask, “What about you and me? Are you still hoping I’ll go hunt giant parasites with you?”
“You would be a great asset, no question,” he says, “but I see now that you have a different role to play in the story of the world.”
I sigh. “I’m done with destiny.”
“I’m sure you are. But is destiny done with you?”
“Oh, please. Do you know how hokey that sounds?”
He smiles. “I see you’ll go your own way,” he says, “but being who you are, you won’t be able to turn your back on injustice when you see it. You will stop and make things right with diplomacy and compassion.”
I sigh. “Yeah, and then they’ll make me a saint.”
“We will see. Though, if you insist on going after Nanuq, we might not get the opportunity.”
“Don’t be so cynical.”
Tío Goyo shakes his head. “Did you ever hear the story of the young javelina who thought he was a panther?”
I call up the maps in my head and focus on the pulsing dot that’s Nanuq.
“No,” I tell Tío Goyo. “You’ll have to tell it to me when I get back.”
I drop my body back into the ground and then I’m gone, heading deep into the otherworld. I appear in the sky above the campsite where I left Elzie yesterday. Most of the dog cousins are gone, but there are others here. All kinds. I note where each is, especially the two condor brothers.
Nobody takes notice of my sudden appearance except for Nanuq. His gaze immediately lifts, fixing on where I float high above them—though I’m guessing what he sees is a red-tailed hawk.
I drift down to where he’s holding court by a big campfire. He stands up, white braids swinging slowly as his gaze tracks my descent. He’s huge, at least seven feet tall, bulkier than Diego, all of it muscle. He must be even more formidable in animal form. But then, so am I.
When I call up my human body from the ground, I make it bigger to match his size. Cousins scramble out of the way at my sudden appearance, but Nanuq never moves. He doesn’t even blink.