And just like that, as the memory from class replayed itself, something else swept over her—something from outside herself, from this building. As with the first time she saw it, it was as if it could see her in return. There was something—or someone—inside, ferociously intelligent and strongly expectant.
Get down, she urged herself. Get down and get away. Immediately, she ducked under the cover of the trees and made her way to the culvert by turf-whomping. It didn’t make her feel that much safer, and it wasn’t until she was deep in the depths of the sewer, with only the sounds of trickling water to keep her company, that she felt she might relax.
Jennifer was careful to make sure there were no artificial extensions to this sewer of the sort Otto had created and stuffed full of spiders before he died. Once her reconnaissance satisfied her that she was truly alone, she curled up in the large junction chamber where she had once done battle alongside her mother, slain a mighty sorcerer, and rescued the boys.
“Long ago,” she told the walls that echoed it right back at her.
Otto Saltin had gone to great lengths to trap Jennifer, so that he could make constant use of her blood and pass on her powers to his brethren. It had allowed him to change shape at will, among other things. They had stopped him, Jennifer and her mother, together.
Now it was undone, in a single stroke. Spiders were everywhere, changing shape at will, and doing heaven knew what else. And if they couldn’t breathe fire or camouflage themselves, who cared? They didn’t have to. Otto’s plan had failed, but the outcome he desired had still come to pass.
You fools, he had told them right before he died. You’ve got no idea what’s coming. This is not over.
So he had been right. They had had no idea.
The chill in the room deepened. She got up, found some moist scraps of wood, gathered them together, and sneezed a small fire for herself.
A day or so, she told herself as she began to doze in front of it. I’ll stay here a day or so, and then head to Eveningstar. It’s a bit closer to here than the farm, so it’s not quite as risky.
For the next few hours, she took her mind off her worsening situation by taking burnt embers out of the fire and sketching with them on the cobblestones. She drew a dragon—Ned Brownfoot, she decided as she filled in a tortoise under his wing claw. She drew her parents under a moon elm in Crescent Valley. She drew Wendy Blacktooth—the glimpse she had seen of the woman in a hospital bed, with a faint smile on her face. Then she drew her mother and father again, this time lying together with her in her grandfather’s farmhouse the first night she had turned into a dragon.
She was just about to search the sewers for more firewood to burn into memories on the floor when she heard footsteps from the tunnel where she had entered. With her wing poised to squelch the fire, she tried to decide if it was better to be a dragon, or a girl, when the eight-legged authorities showed up to drag her away…
“Jennifer?” It was Skip.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Jennifer called back. He was a welcome sight, not least because he didn’t have an army of spider-people with him.
She shifted shape back into a girl to hug him, but it was brief—she still only had her underwear on, and he coughed in embarrassment until she changed back.
“I can. Erm. Lend you my jacket.”
“It’s okay.” She felt her blue scales turn scarlet. “I’m warm enough like this. No sense in you getting cold when you don’t have to. Besides, didn’t you bring extra clothes for me?”
His look told her immediately he had not. Her embarrassment turned quickly to frustration.
“Geez, Skip…”
“How was I supposed to know you would be naked when I found you?” he asked with a shrill, defensive tone.
“They videotaped me, Skip. I went out in the middle of the school gym and screamed at a crowd in my panties and bra, and the audio-visual team captured the whole thing on transferable, digital media! After they found out I was a dragon, they probably had the whole thing on the six o’clock news! And the Internet! Didn’t they?!”
“Yeah,” he muttered at the cobblestones by his feet. “You were on the news. And, um, there’s a video clip some guys from school are passing around via e-mail.”
“And did I have any clothes on?”
He looked up with a defeated expression. “Well, you had your…your underthingies on, I guess…”
“And now here comes the million-dollar question, Skip: Was I modeling lingerie and sporting a duffel bag capable of storing an extra outfit…or was I running for my life?!”
When he started to chuckle, she felt the steam pouring out of her nostrils. “Skip, I swear, this is not funny. People are trying to kill me. How can I get around town, or go anywhere, if my choices for disguise are (a) dragon or (b) underage porn star?”
“I’m sorry,” he said without much regret. “I was really laughing at how dumb I guess I was…”
“You were pretty dumb,” she snapped.
This yanked him into worse humor. “Shit, Jennifer, I’m sorry I didn’t think of every tiny little detail, with police crawling all over my aunt’s house looking for you. It took an awful lot to slip out unnoticed. If my aunt or Mr. Slider wakes up and finds I’m not home, they’ll know I’m with you. So I can’t stay very long.”
“What a shame.” She immediately regretted saying it, but there was no way she was going to apologize without a shirt on.
“Yeah. What’s your plan now? You blew your secret, so you can’t investigate anything at school. And people are probably going to be suspicious of me and my family for a while, since we took you in.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “So what you’re really asking is, when am I going to leave town, so I’m no trouble anymore.”
“That’s not what I’m asking. And you can’t go to Eveningstar anyway.”
“Why not?”
“I did some computer research while my aunt and Mr. Slider were occupied with the authorities,” he explained as he pulled a short stack of papers out from underneath his jacket. “Eveningstar was destroyed fifty years ago, and then werachnids rebuilt it. Here’s a few research articles, and some shots of city hall and stuff.”
She flipped through the pages he had hastily printed out. It wasn’t ironclad proof that her parents didn’t live there, but it sure looked bad. The architecture of the town’s main buildings was distressingly similar to the strange houses throughout Pinegrove; they had all been built in the last fifty years, after a “civil unrest” not unlike the one that had taken place at Alexandria.
“Jennifer, it’s not safe for you to go anywhere,” he told her when she handed back the papers. “You need to keep low. This is a good place; I was kinda figuring you’d end up here, since we both know about it. But you should put the fire out, and keep your dragon shape in case you need to fight your way out…”
“I’ll go to Crescent Valley.”
“What? No, Jennifer, I told you: It’s not safe right now. Wait a few days, maybe a couple of weeks. It’ll take a while for them to give up and assume you’ve just flown somewhere far away. And even after that, an awful lot of sharp eyes will be looking to the skies for dragons. You’ve stirred up an awful lot of fear and anger.”
“Fear and anger?” She almost choked on the words. “Gosh, Skip, I hope I haven’t hurt anyone’s feelings! I mean, how rude of me. You all go through the trouble of obliterating an entire universe, and I’m not polite enough to thank you all properly. I guess I—”
“You know I didn’t mean it that way. I meant, werachnids are terrified of dragons. We always have been. Jennifer, this whole mess may not have been my idea, but you have to admit we had no choice.”
His words slapped her like ice water. “No choice?”
“Jennifer, we were losing the war.”
“War?!”
His patient expression crumbled. “Yes, war, Jennifer! You may not have seen it from your cozy vantage point, but werachnids have been fighting for our lives. My father’s attack on Eveningstar cost both sides heavily. Dragons regrouped in places like Crescent Valley. We didn’t have that option. Do you have any idea how few of us were left, Jennifer?”
She chewed her forked tongue with narrowing eyes. “Apparently not few enough.”
“We were on the brink of extinction! Whoever did this was trying to save an entire species!”
“At the cost of two other species.”
“I’m not saying I agree with them,” he insisted. He was sweating with the effort of explanation. “But, Jennifer, when the order came down to my aunt and me to prepare, I have to admit I was interested to see what it would be like.”
“Yes. Well. Now you know. And so do I. It’s a freaking nightmare, can we agree on that?”
“It’s not what I expected—”
“Then let’s change it back. Right? We said we’d do that? Whatever happened to that idea, Skip? You asked me what the plan was. I’m telling you: The plan is to change things back. Are you in or not?”
His body deflated like a balloon. “Jennifer, you don’t understand. Even together, we’re not even close to a match for this kind of power—”
“Two of us together have a better chance than me on my own. Which I guess is all I’ve got now. Thanks a lot, Skip. Don’t you think you’d better leave now, so you can go back home and not bring me my clothes again?”
“You’re impossible!” The explosion wasn’t exactly shocking to Jennifer, but it depressed her even more deeply. His mouth curled down into an ugly frown, and his chocolate hair flopped about wildly. “I love you! I saved your life! I came to make sure you’re okay, and to warn you from doing something stupid like going to Eveningstar! And I make a simple suggestion—lay low and hide—and you treat me like the enemy! Why can’t you lay low? Why can’t you hide, and trust me to take care of you?”
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and lay down. “Skip, have you ever heard the tale of the Mordiford Wyvern?”
“The Mordiford—No, I haven’t. What does that have to do—”
“It’s a tale, hundreds of years old. My grandfather used to tell it to me when I was little. A few months after my first morph, he told it to me again and explained what it really meant.”
He bit his lip and tapped his foot, so she continued.
“A little girl who lives by the English town of Mordiford finds a baby wyvern—a dragon, cut off from its parents, alone in the wilderness. She thinks it’s adorable. She can cup it in her hands and it blows puffs of smoke. So she scoops it up off the moss and brings it home. Her parents, terrified of what they see their daughter holding, order her to put it back where she found it and stay away from that part of the forest forever.
“Ashamed at frightening her parents but unwilling to part with this beautiful creature, she carries it back not to the forest, but to a small cave she uses as a secret hideout. For years, she keeps it there as her pet. She brings it food, and sings to it, and tells it what life is like outside of the cave, and swears to it that she’ll always be there for it and protect it from harm. They’ll be best friends, you see: The child and her pet dragon.”
She paused and took him in. He was standing with arms crossed, still tapping his foot, still angry at her.
“Skip, how do you think this story ends? What do you think happens to the Mordiford Wyvern?”
He didn’t answer.
“Do you think it stays in the cave? Do you think it enjoys being this child’s pet? Do you think it likes being told how it will live?”
Still, he stared at her with tight lips.
“Do you honestly think the child is able to protect it, when the town inevitably discovers the creature?”
“I’m not a child,” he finally hissed.
“Then stop acting like one. I’m not your pet, Skip. I don’t want you to keep me in a dark cave and protect me. I want you to help me find my own kind. That’s where I belong. If you’re not going to help me change things back, at least help me get to Crescent Valley.”
He rolled his eyes and gave a snort of disgust. “Crescent Valley. You want to go to Crescent Valley.”
“Yes.”
“After all I’ve done for you.”
“Good grief, Skip! All you’ve done? I need—”
He held his hand up. “Yes, I know. It’s what you need, Jennifer. It’s always about what you need.”
He pulled his jacket off and tossed it to her. “You’d better take this. Because you’re going to need clothes, and I’m not coming back with any. You want to go to Crescent Valley, go. Good luck.”
Somewhere far above, the sound of a police siren wailed, came closer…and then passed back into the distance.
Jennifer let out a deep breath. “You know, Skip, it occurs to me: You’ve already betrayed me once in this sewer. I’d rather not invite a repeat performance.”
Leaving his jacket on the sewer stones, she unfolded her wings and rushed past him, up the sewer shaft, through the large culvert pipe, into the midnight sky, and out of Pinegrove.
There was only one place left to go.
CHAPTER 10
Thursday
Speed is key, Jennifer decided as she blazed a nearly invisible path in the dark, just a few feet over the highway ditch. She didn’t think she would be able to hit ninety miles an hour like her father could—can, she corrected herself—but she was going fast enough to make herself nervous.
Worse than the chance she might hit a stray telephone pole, however, was the chance that the residents of Pinegrove would anticipate her next move and be at the farm to meet her. Since her conversation with Skip, she wasn’t sure how much he would help the authorities find places like the farm. On one hand, she had just insulted him. On the other hand, Skip and authorities didn’t exactly mix…
I don’t need to stay there a long time, she told herself as she dodged under a steel cable. Just long enough to see what happened, and to get to Crescent Valley.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she told herself it would also be nice to be able to get some rest. Who knew when she would get another chance?
By the time she was at the farm, the slim crescent moon had worked its way lower in the starlit sky. Dragon vision was still excellent in the dark (though not quite good enough to avoid a couple of scrapes on the way up), and she saw all she needed to see within moments of approaching the edge of the Scales’s property.