It’s been a long day with way too much to process, but for once my mind’s not running at a mile a minute. I don’t know if I’m just tired from racing up and down the gulch earlier, or if it’s something about this place, but after we’ve eaten I’m content to bunch up my blanket and lean back to watch the sky.
The sunset is amazing—the sky fills with colour from one end of the western horizon to the other. When the sun finally slips away, it gets dark even for my Wildling eyes, but not for long. The sky is impossibly big, the stars spilling across it in a dazzling array. When the moon rises it’s just this side of full and so bright that everything is as clear as day around me. The air’s so clean and sharp it tastes the way I imagine winter would.
“It’s beautiful here,” I say.
Tío Goyo nods. “A night like this is a gift from the Thunders.”
I’m in that in-between moment when you’re not quite awake, but not fully asleep—where if you’re left alone, it could go either way—except then I hear my little sister open my bedroom door.
“Mom!” Molly yells. “Des has a girl in his room!”
I come all the way awake to see Donalita curled up beside me on the bed. She’s outside the covers and I’m under them, but still.
I am so dead.
Donalita’s eyes open. She smiles at me. I can hear my mother coming down the hall. She won’t be smiling at all.
“Get out of here,” I tell Donalita even though there’s no time.
Mom’s pushing the door open.
Donalita winks and rolls off the bed. She lands with a soft thump on the carpet, then disappears under the bed.
“Desmond Wilson!” Mom starts as she bursts in.
Then she stops because what is she going to do? Yell at me because I’m still in bed at seven on a Friday morning? I never get up until the last minute. And it’s obvious there’s no one in the room with me.
But she’s not completely trusting.
“Jeez,” I say. “A little privacy maybe?”
We’ve had discussions before about knocking before coming in, but Mom’s on a mission this morning.
“Do you have a girl in here?” she asks.
“I can honestly say I don’t.”
And I can because Donalita’s one of the animal people. Sometimes she can look like a girl, but she’s not one. For starters, she’s older than everybody in this room combined.
“And I’m not going to find her if I look under the bed?” Mom asks.
Busted.
I sigh as she goes down on one knee to peer underneath.
When she lifts her head again she has a funny look on her face.
“You’re hiding a kitten?” she says.
Molly does that thing where every bit of her starts to tremble with excitement.
“A kitten?” she cries. “Can we keep it, Mom? Can we?”
My heart sinks. Sure, Donalita might look like that in the darkness under the bed. In the poor light it might be easy to mistake a coatimundi for a cat. And yeah, a coati’s not as bad as having a girl, but how am I supposed to explain what I’m doing with one?
Molly’s on her knees beside Mom, reaching under the bed.
Don’t, I want to say.
But when Molly sits up she’s got a kitten in her arms. Sort of. Because I see two things: my sister holding a cute little kitten, but superimposed over the kitten is a kitten-sized Wildling girl that Molly obviously doesn’t see. It’s like the two of them—kitten and coati girl—occupy the same space. I shoot Mom a look, but it’s clear that she only sees a kitten, too.
Mom sits on her heels.
“Why is there a kitten under your bed?” she asks me.
“I, um, found her on my way home?”
Mom’s eyes narrow. “And why are you home? I thought you were staying at Josh’s house last night.”
I can’t stop staring at my sister cuddling a kitten that’s also a tiny Donalita.
“Des?” Mom says.
I drag my gaze back to her. “I was. I mean, that was the plan.
But Josh is still pining over Elzie.”
“I liked that girl,” Mom says.
“Right. Who wouldn’t? She’s great. But sometimes it gets a little old, him mooning over her all the time—especially when he’s the one who broke them up. Last night I just got tired of hearing about it, so I came home.”
“And found the cat along the way.”
“More she found me—but yeah.”
“We’re keeping it, aren’t we, Mom?” Molly asks. “Forever and ever. I’m going to call her Kitty-poo.”
The Donalita part of what she’s holding rolls her eyes and I smile.
“That’s a good name,” I tell Molly, “but we can’t keep her. I need to take her back to the street where I found her and find out who she belongs to.”
Mom gets up off the floor and sits on the edge of the bed. She reaches out and ruffles the fur between Donalita’s ears.
“That’s not true, is it?” Molly asks her.
“I’m afraid so. How would you feel if you lost your kitty and nobody brought her back to you?”
“But I don’t even have a kitty.”
Mom pulls the kitten from Molly’s reluctant arms and plonks her on the bed.
“And you still don’t,” Mom says, shooting me a dirty look as Molly’s eyes well with tears. “Come on, missy,” she tells Molly. “You have to get ready for school. And you,” she adds, looking at me, “better get up right now because you need to find out where that cat lives before you go to school. I’m not having it running around the house scratching the furniture and doing its business everywhere.”
“What kind of business?” Molly wants to know.
“Number one and number two,” I tell her.
She pulls a face and lets Mom lead her out of my bedroom. Mom pauses in the doorway to look back at me.
“I mean it,” she says. “Get that cat back to its proper home today.”
“I will.”
She closes the door and I fall back against the headboard. I can’t believe I got away with that. Donalita returns to her normal size, minus the kitten ghost she seemed to be wearing, and sits cross-legged on the bed beside me.
“How come they couldn’t see you?” I ask.
“Of course they could see me. Did you take a stupid pill when I wasn’t looking?”
“I mean, all that they saw was the kitten. They didn’t see a kitten-sized you laid over the kitten.”
“And you did.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Huh.”
“Dude, what is that supposed to mean?”
She shrugs. “Some people can see through illusions and I guess you’re one of them.”
“Cory said something about that yesterday, except all I saw was him, not some other thing superimposed over him at the same time.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m good at lots of things he isn’t.”
I hold up my hands. “Hey, I wasn’t dissing you.”
“Okay.” Then she grins and adds, “Dude.”
I leave the house carrying Donalita/the kitten, which Donalita thinks is hilarious, but I find kind of creepy and awkward. I’m not sure how to hold her because she’s both a cat and a girl at the same time. I try to adjust for one, and then the other, and I just end up feeling like a klutz.
Before we left I sent Marina a couple of texts, which she never answered, so instead of swinging by her house like I’d usually do, I head for school. I guess she stayed with Chaingang last night, and I’m sorry, but them being together still weirds me out. I don’t care how okay Josh is with it, it’s just wrong on so many levels.
Donalita, or maybe just the kitten part of her, is purring in my arms. She thinks she’s coming to school with me—like that’s going to happen. Can you imagine her running around the halls of Sunny Hill following after me? Detention would be the least of my worries. But I’ve given up arguing with her. As soon as I’m far enough away from home, I plan to drop
this kitten off. The last thing I need is for one of the neighbours to rat me out on animal abandonment to Molly or my mother.
That’s the plan, anyway, but before I get the chance to put it into action, a dark sedan pulls up beside me. The window whispers down and there’s Agent Solana giving me the evil eye.
“Remember last night?” I ask. “You know, when I told you Josh took off—as in, he’s no longer around?”
“I’m here to see you.”
“Seriously, dude?” I say. “Shouldn’t you be out fighting crime somewhere instead of following a nobody like me around?” I bend to look in the window and see that the shotgun seat is empty. “See, even your partner doesn’t approve of you making me your new project now that Josh is gone.”
“Get in the car, Wilson.”
I shake my head. “Not going to happen. I don’t know what your deal is, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“My deal,” he says, “is that you called me last night and when I brought the team in to pick up that shooter on your say-so, we found him in pieces.”
“What?”
“He was dead. Torn apart, just like the others.”
I flash on stepping into the otherworld last night and us finding the remains of the elder that Josh ripped to shreds.
A bit of my breakfast comes up my throat.
“Now get in the car,” Solana says.
I shake my head. “Dude, I never touched the guy.”
But Donalita did. Bloodthirsty Donalita, who thinks the best way to get rid of problem people is to kill them.
I unconsciously tighten my grip on her and her purring changes to a low growl.
But she wouldn’t have done that.
“Car,” Solana says. “Now.” Crap.
“I never called you last night,” I try. “I told you where the guy was when I met you on the beach, but then I just went home.”
“Bullshit.”
“Come on, dude. You really think I killed this guy? You think I’m a Wildling now?”
“I know you’re not.”
Yeah, and how does he know that? But that’s a question for another time.
“So why are you hassling me?” I ask instead.
“Because you know who did kill this guy.”
“I don’t know anything.”
Solana sighs. “Look,” he says. “I could have picked you up at home in front of your mother and family …”
He lets his voice trail off. I wait a beat, then fill the space: “But you didn’t.”
He nods. “As a favour—which I’m quickly regretting.”
“Unless you don’t want your people to know that you met with me last night.”
Something flickers in his eyes and I know I’m on to something.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll come with you. I won’t be saying anything about the dead guy because I don’t know anything. But dude? I’ll be able to talk all day about how you’ve been following Josh around and now you’ve switched your little obsession to me. I’ll tell them about hawk uncles and secret societies and any other damn thing that comes to mind. That what you want?”
He gives me another sigh. “I want this butchery to stop.”
“Yeah, because these same guys running around with snipers’ rifles—that’s not a problem.”
“Of course it is.”
“Then why don’t you go do some actual investigating, and I’ll go to school, and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened.”
His dark gaze settles on me, half warning, half threat. He is so pissed off.
“I know you were involved,” he says.
“Dude, that’s no secret. I called you about the guy. But that’s where my part in the story ends.”
I can tell he doesn’t want to let it go like this, but he is going to back off and we both know it.
“Don’t leave town,” he says.
A dozen responses to that cliché come to mind, but for once I’m smart and I keep my mouth shut.
“Later, dude,” is all I say.
I start to walk away, the back of my neck prickling until he pulls away from the curb and drives off down the street.
I keep on walking. I look down Josh’s street when I’m passing by. The cop cars are still there, yellow tape marking off the yard of the house across the street from his. Half a block later, I duck behind a hedge and put Donalita on the ground. She immediately turns back into a girl.
“I didn’t kill him,” she says. “I promised you I wouldn’t, so I didn’t.”
“I never said you did.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“It’s not an issue, dude. We’re all good.”
She grins. “So what are we going to do now?”
“I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to school and you can’t come.”
“But I want to. And Theo said I’m supposed to guard you.”
“Except I’m not going to need guarding. Nothing’s going to happen to me at school.”
“But—”
“And if Chaingang’s that concerned, he can do it himself.”
She gives me a pout that would do my little sister Molly proud. “You do think I killed that man with the rifle. That’s why you don’t want me to come.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t want you to come because you don’t go to Sunny Hill and I can’t have you hanging around when you’re not even supposed to be there in the first place. It’ll just get us both into trouble.”
“But what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know. What do you usually do?”
“I could change into something very small,” she says, “and then I could just ride around in your pocket. No one would ever know I was there.”
“Dude, I’m not walking around school with a mouse or a lizard in my pocket.”
“Please please please please.”
I shake my head again. “It’s just not going to happen.”
She looks so dejected I almost change my mind. Then she brightens up.
“I know,” she says. “I’ll change into a pebble. You don’t mind carrying a pebble around in your pocket, do you?”
“You can do that?”
“Of course I can, dude. But you’ll have to wake me up when it’s okay for me to be a girl again.”
“A pebble.”
The physics of a human being turning into a rat or a bird is confusing enough for me to get my head around, but this seems off-the-charts impossible.
“Why is that so strange?” she asks.
“Well, it’s just—I mean, come on. A pebble.” That makes me think of something else. “Are you telling me everything’s sentient?”
“Everything has a spirit, silly. How else could it know what it is?”
“I have to tell you, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.”
She shrugs. “It’s just the way things are. Everybody knows that.”
“So you’re going to turn into a pebble.”
“Yes. But you have to remember to wake me up later because when we take shapes like that, we can lose ourselves in them unless there’s someone around to call us back.”
“And all of you can do this?”
“Oh no,” she says. “Only the very smartest and tricksiest
of us.”
“Okay.” It’s not really okay, but every time she explains it to me it gets a little weirder. So I settle for agreeing and ask instead, “So how do you wake up a pebble?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Just tap me against a wall or something.”
“Tap you …”
“Now, hold out your hand, palm up.”
“Wait a minute,” I start, but I do as she says.
Before I can go on she leaps into the air, changing as she does. There’s a confusing flicker of strobing images as the normal-sized girl shifts and becomes something else. A moment later a pebble lands in the palm of my hand. Except with my double vision, I see both a pebble and Donalita curled up like a
baby. I reach out with a finger. All I can feel is the hard surface of the pebble.
So maybe it’s a pebble, but it’s also Donalita, and the whole thing creeps me out. I slide it carefully into my pocket, but keep reaching in to make sure the pebble’s still there. I want to give it a rub with my thumb the way you do with that kind of thing, until I remember that it’s also a tiny Donalita, and somehow, that would just be wrong.
I’m still quietly freaking out about it when I get to school. For a change, I’m happy to be here because at least I’ll be able to talk to Marina about the latest weirdness going on.
Before I can go inside, Bobby White, one of the Ocean Avers, steps in front of me, blocking my way.
“Theo wants a word with you,” he says.
He nods to where Chaingang’s sitting on his usual picnic table under the eucalyptus trees, shades on, shaved head gleaming. Great. Now everybody’s going to think I’m a drug dealer, too.
Two weeks ago I’d have thought it was cool having Chaingang want to talk to me. Now it’s just a pain in the butt. What does Marina even see in him?
But you don’t turn your back on a summons from the big guy.
Chaingang lifts his shades as I walk up and gives me a nod.
“What’s up, bro?” he asks, then he studies me, an odd look in his eyes. “There’s something different about you—like you’re a Wildling and you’re not, all at the same time.”
“That’s because I’ve got Donalita in my pocket.”
“You’ve got—”
“Don’t even ask, dude.”
He lets the shades drop. “Right.”
I stand there for a moment waiting for him to tell me what he wants.
“Some of us have classes to go to,” I say.
I figure that might get me a laugh, but he just nods like I said something profound.
“You heard from Marina?” he asks.
I shake my head. “We usually walk to school together, but when she didn’t answer my texts, I thought she was catching a few waves or … you know …”