“Oh, big hulking suckfest,” said Jill. There was an army truck turning in at the gate, with the cobey unit logo splashed on its side.
“Pretend to ignore them,” I said. “Keep going.”
“They won’t be for us,” said Jill. “Not specifically.”
“I don’t want to find out,” I said. “Remember we’ve lost our gruuaa.”
“Yes,” said Jill. “I’m missing the sparkly shadows.”
The army vehicle had clearly seen us . . . and they wanted us to stop.
“Don’t stop unless they aim a zapper at us,” I said.
“Drog me,” said Jill. We kept rolling down the hill. The army guys didn’t quite want to turn in front of us, maybe because there wasn’t room, maybe because the Mammoth made even an army van nervous. But they went up the hill like someone who was planning on turning around and coming down again in a hurry. We got to the gate and Jill was bumping onto the main road and I was just saying, “You might turn up Rodriguez, they might not see us by the time they—” when there was a terrified scream from Clare, a shriek of overstressed brakes and . . . the sound of a large heavy metal object slamming into a cement post, like the ones that line the shelter driveway.
“Wow,” said Jill, looking in her rear view mirror.
“Did they miss him?” I said.
“What?” said Jill. She looked back at the road in front of her and finished turning. Then she turned again, down Rodriguez. Even the Mammoth knew it was carrying a load: you could feel it settle on the corners. There was the sound of scrambling in the back, but the panting wasn’t any worse. “I don’t think they’ll be following us any time soon,” Jill added.
“Go to the end of the road and stop,” I said.
“What?” said Jill again. “What do you mean, did they miss him?”
Even if some overeager army drone raced down to the gate and looked for us, they wouldn’t be able to see us sitting at the end of Rodriguez. “Just stop,” I said. “Please.”
She stopped. “You can kiss her if you want,” she said. “I won’t mind. And you’ve got a major bag of dog food for chaperone.”
“I—what?” I squeaked. I turned, but somehow I turned the wrong way. I put a hand out—just to steady myself. The dog food was trying to shove me farther into Taks’ arms. I wasn’t entirely sure Jill hadn’t given it a push from her side. My hand was on Taks’ shoulder. His arm tightened. His other hand reached across, smoothed down the back of my head, cupped my chin briefly. And then he kissed me.
Jill opened her door and got out. “I’m going to move those cans,” she said. “The clink, clink, clink is really annoying.”
This was so totally the wrong moment. Not to mention the tactical difficulties. I wound my arms around Taks’ neck (Bella gave the nearer one another lick as it slid past) and kissed him back. I unwrapped one arm so I could pull my fingers slowly through his incredibly thick hair. He moved a little, and slid one hand under me so he could lift me the rest of the way onto his lap. Fortunately the Mammoth had amazing headroom, even if not quite enough for a wolfhound. Taks’ other hand patted leisurely, delicately down my back—I shivered. He pulled me closer to him. I couldn’t get any closer.
Jonesie put his head through the gap between Taks’ headrest and the door. I could see him checking the situation for dog biscuit probability. And then I kind of lost track. I’d kissed a few boys before, but nothing like this. I had a sudden, extremely flustering memory flash of Taks’s long naked back in the bathroom mirror. . . .
There was a soft thud, and purring. Jill was just closing the rear door. I sighed, and let myself sag back a little. Taks let me go. Sitting on his lap made me seem as tall as he was: I never looked straight into his face like this. He smiled. Cheekbones to die for. How could I never have noticed?
“I’m sorry to break it up,” said Jill, “since this is obviously quality time, but if one of those army goons did get as far as to cross the street and look down Rodriguez, they would see us. Is this the him you wanted them to miss?”
I turned away from Taks, but this time I leaned against him quite comfortably. Majid, of course, was sitting in the driver’s seat and the bag of dog food was canted at an angle like an army truck had run into it from the other side. “Yes,” I said. Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.
“Well, he’s our hero,” said Jill, “So I guess it’s okay he’s coming with us, right? Will he eat me if I try and move him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wiping out a cobey truck may have put him in a good mood.” I reluctantly climbed off Taks’ lap, gently pushed Bella’s head out of the way, knelt up on what there was of the seat to lean past the dog food, heaved Majid by a kind of levering process, and spread him over Taks’ and my laps, which he nobly consented to. He purred harder. He was making my teeth rattle. “We’ll go to your place the back way,” said Jill, and started the Mammoth again. It sounded a lot like Majid.
It was at that moment there was a tiny, whispery touch against my forearm. It might have been floating cat hair—Majid was a mighty fur factory, and there was the gang behind us as well—but it wasn’t. It was a gruuaa. A—tiny? Miserable?—gruuaa. It crept up my chest and lay just below my collarbones—and, trust me, it’s not like there’s an enormous shelf there for lying on. But the gruuaa aren’t into gravity much. There was some communication going on with Hix, I thought, and I was pretty sure whatever it was was making me feel tiny and miserable too. Maybe it was just that it was too easy to be expecting bad news. Even Hix’s sweet smell seemed faded and sad.
I laced the fingers of one hand through one of Takahiro’s—the one that wasn’t petting Majid—and he kissed the top of my head. I wanted to be happy, and instead I was more frightened than ever. My old friend and brand-new boyfriend was a werewolf and the army was after him. Us. Probably. And Val . . .
I wished I could talk to the gruuaa. Well, we’d be home soon enough. Too soon. Even draped with unhappy gruuaa (and a bone-shaking megacat) I could still concentrate on Takahiro sitting next to me—sitting next to me so close I could feel him breathing. (The bag of dog food was kind of a romance wrecker, but I could live with it. I could even live with Jonesie trying to catch my eye so he could express outrage at the presence of Majid in the front seat, when he, The Jones, was in the back.) Takahiro . . . sugoi. Super-quadruple sugoi.
A brief vision of Casimir’s grin lit up my mind’s eye. The grin and the dimple. I felt a brief rush of what-might-have-been. But Taks would never mistake me for a magdag whatsit mythic super-gizmo. He was there when Mrs. Fournier hadn’t believed me that I was feeling sick and I threw up all over the floor in seventh-grade science class. He’d been first on the scene in ninth grade when I stumbled and fell spectacularly over the broken paving stone outside the high school office—where I’d been summoned to discuss my failing grade in pre-algebra. I had not only skinned both knees but cracked my forehead on the step, so there was blood everywhere—and Takahiro had been the one to pick up the test paper that had flown out of my book with the big red F on it, across which Mr. Denham had scrawled Even you are not this stupid—and had never once said a thing about it afterward. Takahiro wasn’t ever going to think I was some kind of legendary hero.
Although right at the moment I wished one of us was.
CHAPTER 11
THERE WAS NO REASON FOR OUR HOUSE NOT TO be quiet on a weekday evening but I didn’t like it. I was sure it was the wrong kind of quiet. Val’s last student should have just left. Mom should have just got home—and her car was in the driveway. Ran was maybe home or maybe not yet. But it was always quiet when I came home after school. I only felt so funny because the armydar was scrambling my brains. Or Takahiro was scrambling my . . . whatever.
The gruuaa mobbed me the moment I slid out of the car. Me and Takahiro, but especially me. Some
thing wrong. Something awfully, horribly wrong. Val. Of course. It had to be Val: Val who had brought them here, or who had brought him here. And there still weren’t as many gruuaa as there had been last night, when Val sent most of them with Takahiro—they’d left us at the shelter, and they weren’t here either.
“Maybe you’d better stay with the car,” I said.
“No can do, white girl,” said Jill. I knew that voice. It meant her f-word was telling her stuff, and she wasn’t going to tell me what. “I’ll just roll the windows down a little for our friends.” It was pretty chilly; the Family would be fine. And I was shivering just because of the weather. Just because of the weather. Takahiro held my hand. I had a cape and a hood of gruuaa, and more of them were winding around my feet like cats: they were so urgent and insistent I was almost tripping over them, although there was nothing there to trip over. I waded down the path and opened the front door—and was promptly knocked into Taks, behind me, by a frantic Mongo. He didn’t behave like this: he did enthusiasm, not panic. Nor was he the least bit interested in the car, and he adored other dogs. Majid, I realized, was with us too, and Mongo was even ignoring a cat the size of a wolverine coming into his house.
Mom was sitting curled up at the far end of the sofa, in the dark. The streetlights were coming on outdoors, the curtains were drawn, but she hadn’t turned any lights on. “Mom?” I said. I turned the overhead light on, and she turned her head toward me. Her face was wet with tears. “Mom?”
“They’ve taken him,” she said. “Val. They came and took him away.” Jill slipped past me and went into the kitchen. I heard the kettle banged down on the stove and the little whoosh of the gas lighting. I went and sat by my mother, and took her hands. Several gruuaa climbed up the front of the sofa and pooled in her lap. Mongo pressed up against my leg from the other side and put his nose against her knee.
“Who?” I said. “Where? Where were they taking him?”
She shook her head, but her voice sounded a little stronger when she answered. “The major who was here yesterday—when you were here,” and she nodded at Takahiro, who was sitting beside her on the floor, also wrapped in gruuaa. “Donnelly. He came back with a warrant. He said that Val is . . .” Her voice broke, and the tears began again.
“Mom,” I said. I hated seeing my mother cry. I’d seen her cry after Dad died—but not like this. She’d been shattered by Dad’s death—but she’d also been angry, and full of a blazing energy, determined to protect Ran and me, and keep our crippled family a family. But now she was crying helplessly, exhaustedly, despairingly. It made me feel five years old, and more scared than I’d ever been in my life.
“The warrant says he’s a magician and a spy,” she said softly. “That they know who he really is, and that he only got into this country by some—some trick. They said they were sorry for me, for having been—” She stopped talking, pulled her hands away from mine and put them over her face. I put my arms around her and she laid her head on my shoulder and wept like a little girl.
Jill arrived with a tray. “Coffee with extra sugar,” she said. “And a ham sandwich. Shocky people should eat.” Mom sat up and was beginning to shake her head. “My mom says,” added Jill, although it was exactly what my own mom would say if it had been happening to someone else. Jill picked up the plate and offered it. It was three against one (four, counting Mongo. Five, counting Majid. Even if they were staring at the sandwich rather than Mom). Mom reluctantly took a half, looked at it, and bit into it doubtfully.
Jill’s mom was right (of course). You could see my mom settling down a little. She got through nearly half of her half sandwich before she laid it down. “We’re going to my sister upstate,” she said in what was almost her normal voice. “They’ve taken my husband, why shouldn’t I want to go to my sister for a while?” Even if she is notorious for pro bono work for people accused of magic, I added silently. “There are a lot of people leaving town till they get this cobey rift shut down thoroughly—and turn the armydar off. They’re starting to call it a rift—there’s a rumor that another cobey opened at the north end of town.” The park—and us—were near the southwest end. So it was a series, and it was getting longer. A lot had happened while we were lying low at the shelter. “Tennel & Zeet is closing, and they’ve canceled school for the rest of the week—Val’s last tutorial didn’t bother to show up—the army has decided they want the sheltered buildings for military use.
“I’ve already called Gwenda—her groundline crashed after about a minute, but she’s expecting us. I was just thinking about what we need to take with us when . . . when it all kind of caught up with me.” She took a deep breath. “Takahiro, you should come with us. We can go past your place on our way out of town for whatever you want to bring with you. I’ll talk to Kay. . . . Electric angels, what is that,” she added, having just caught sight of Majid.
“That’s Majid,” I said. “We—er—there are a few more in Jill’s car.”
“Cats?” said Mom, baffled.
“Well, dogs, actually,” I said. “But the gruuaa all left while we were at the shelter—when they took Val, I guess. And Taks said the animals—our ordinary animals help. There are a few gruuaa here, although most of them must have gone with Val. . . . How are you?” I said to Takahiro.
“I’m okay,” he said. He smiled at me. “Don’t worry.”
Mom, who has Mom Instinct and knows me way too well, was distracted from everything—even Val—by Takahiro’s smile. Taks wasn’t a big smiler, ordinarily, and the situation wasn’t exactly a big-smiley one. She turned to look at me pretty hard. “Hmm,” she said. “Jill, your mom called and wanted to know if I knew where you were—the armydar was interfering with the signal for your pocket phone and she couldn’t get hold of you. I’m sorry, I should have told you at once. She called before . . . before . . .” Mom’s voice wavered briefly. “She sounded pretty upset. We’ve got a groundphone in the kitchen.”
Jill jumped up to phone.
“I’ve been trying to phone Ran, tell him to come home, but I can’t raise him either. I guessed you’d be at the shelter—but even Clare’s groundphone is out. I’d’ve started worrying about you too if you hadn’t come home soon.” She tried to smile. Usually she was a really good smiler. Not tonight.
“Drink your coffee,” I said. “It’ll get cold.”
“Eat your sandwich,” said Takahiro from the floor. “Or the invasion force will get it.” Majid was (mostly) in Taks’ lap but his eyes were clearly trained on the sandwich on the coffee table.
There was a muffled yell from the kitchen. “What?”
We all turned toward her, but werewolf reflexes are faster even than Majid’s and Takahiro had the plate over his own head before Majid finished his pounce. Majid disappeared. I hoped this wasn’t the end of a beautiful friendship. Majid, foiled, tended to be cranky.
Jill reappeared at the kitchen door. “They took Arnie. They took Arnie.”
“They—?” I said.
“Major Blow-it-out-your-ass-and-set-fire-to-it,” she said violently. “Donnelly. The same bugsucker who took Val.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mom. Neither did I. Arnie sold drain cleaner and soldering irons and barbecues and birdseed. I could see why they took Val—they were wrong, and I wanted to solder their asses to a barbecue, but I could see how their ugly minds were working. But Arnie?
“They say his mother and grandmother were magicians, and he didn’t have his genes chopped off or whatever it is they do because his grandmom figured how to fake it and then his mom did it for him too.”
Mom and I carefully didn’t look at each other, but Jill was staring at the wall. “And they can’t arrest her because she died. But he’s still got the genes.”
“They can’t mean to do it now?” said Mom, and I could hear her being appalled. “They’ll—they could kill him.”
“Or turn him into a vegeta
ble,” said Jill even more violently. “Magdag, what do we do? Mom’s saying to come home, we’re leaving town too, that if I don’t get back there fast she’ll pack my suitcase for me. I—I don’t even like Arnie all that much. I mean, he’s okay, and he keeps my brothers from killing each other, but—” And she burst into tears.
I bounced off the sofa and put my arms around the second wildly crying woman in half an hour. I loved Jill as much as I loved my own mom. And my hatred for Major Blow-it-out-your-ass was getting kind of out of control. “What do we do?” Jill wept into my shoulder. “What do we do?”
“We go after them,” I said suddenly. “I’m sure the gruuaa will show us where.”
“Good,” said Takahiro, and got to his feet. “I’m coming too.”
I looked at him over Jill’s bent head. I wanted him to come—I wanted really, really badly for him to come. I wanted it even more badly as I began to realize that I meant it, about going after them—going after Val and Arnie. We had no idea where they were, or if they were anywhere near each other. Or who else might be with them.