Caleb let out a wordless exclamation of protest, stilling only when I sent him an
imploring look. Why couldn’t he see the opportunity here? It was risky, but with someone
on the inside of the Tribunal, we’d be two steps ahead of Ximon, instead of five steps
behind.
The tiny, painful spark of hope reappeared in Lazar’s face. “They’ve only let me see
a small part of the complex around the accelerator so far. But with a little luck
and some hacking, I could get you a map of the entire complex. And maybe find out
why it was built. . . .”
“It might start to make up for your past,” I said.
He nodded. I studied the line of his throat, the tension in his shoulders, measured
the blinking of his eyelids, and the set of his sensual mouth, so like Caleb’s. He
looked completely sincere. Even the fact that it had taken Amaris to explain his need
for money made sense. Lazar was very proud, raised by Ximon to think of himself as
special, holy. His father was a bishop in their twisted idea of religion, a man they
believed was connected directly to God. To have that illusion stripped away . . .
I couldn’t imagine how angry and confused it had made Lazar. To come to his worst
enemies for money must be beyond humbling.
“Some things can never be forgiven,” said Caleb. “Never mended.”
I looked over at Amaris. “We freed your sister from the Tribunal. What if we could
do that for Lazar, and maybe other objurers too? You know Lazar better than we do,
Amaris. What do you think?”
Amaris gazed back at me with wide brown eyes, the twin of Lazar’s, but crinkled a
bit at the corners with a smile. Her lips lifted up too, hopeful. “I believe him,”
she said. “And if you don’t trust him completely, you can trust me, and trust that
he would never do anything more to harm me. He would never tell our father where this
school is because he knows it would endanger me and end our relationship.”
“I say he’s working for his own selfish ends,” said Caleb. “To get away scot-free
from a life as an assassin for a deranged cult.”
“Which is it, brother?” Lazar asked. “Am I trying to trick you for the benefit of
the Tribunal or so I can get away ‘scot-free’ as you say? It can’t be both.”
“Selfish reasons are trustworthy reasons,” I said. “Lazar, if you want to get away
from the Tribunal, we’ll consider helping you—after you prove yourself and bring us
those plans. I’ll give you the money to start a new life myself.”
“Dez!” Caleb was choking on his rage and disapproval. “How can you do this?”
“He’s not lying,” I said. “And this particle accelerator is a threat like we’ve never
faced before, technology on an unprecedented scale being used against us, to destroy
everyone we know and love. To stop that, I’d make a deal with the devil himself.”
He moved up to me, lowering his voice into his own very intimate nonwhisper that always
set my heart racing. Close in like this, I could smell his warm skin, and a vivid
memory of his hands on my body sent a hot flush over my face. Had that really only
been a few minutes ago?
“I know you want to save him. You want to save everyone. But you’re putting everyone
in danger,” he said. “All of our friends in there, Morfael, Raynard . . .”
I took his hands in mine and leaned my forehead against his, as he had with me once
when I was in tiger form. “They’re already in worse danger than a simple Tribunal
attack on the school,” I said. “I get why you hate him. But this is bigger than our
grievances from the past. It’s worth the risk. I need you to trust me.”
We breathed each other’s breath for a moment, eyes locked across a space of only a
few inches, and for a moment we were one again. “Okay,” he said. “For now. We let
him go and bring the plans back. But if he takes one wrong step . . .” He lifted his
head and raised his voice so Lazar could hear. “If he makes one move I don’t like,
we end this thing.”
He didn’t say
and Lazar dies,
but the implication was there.
“Did you hear that, Lazar?” I asked. “One foot wrong, and you’re done.”
Lazar’s face had closed down again as he watched us, like curtains drawn over a window.
His slightly tip-tilted eyes were cool and calculating. He knew his life was on the
line. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I want those plans in two days.” He opened his mouth to protest,
but I held up a hand. “If Amaris doesn’t get a call from you within forty-eight hours,
the deal is off, and you can expect a visit from us. I want the GPS coordinates of
the entrance to the accelerator now.”
“Very well,” said Lazar, and Amaris scrambled to get a notepad. “Thank you.”
“I still don’t trust you,” I said. “You still have a lot to prove. If I get one whiff
of anyone else coming with you when we meet, if I hear any objurers breathing within
ten miles of here, I’ll rip your throat out and be happy to leave the rest of you
for the vultures.”
He let loose an unexpected laugh, the tension in his shoulders easing. “God help me.
Why do I find your threats comforting?”
“Because threats are all we grew up with,” said Amaris. “It takes awhile to get used
to kindness.”
The smile fell from Lazar’s face. “I’m glad they’re kind to you. You look well.”
“I am,” she said. “But you’d better not mess this up, Lazar.”
“I won’t get another chance.” He smiled at her ruefully, then took her pad and pen
and wrote down a set of numbers. “Here.” He sketched a series of lines underneath
the numbers, holding the paper out for us to see. “Here’s the town of Mercury, just
off 95, right on the edge of the federal lands of the Nevada test site. To get to
us, turn here”—he made an X on the map—“after you pass the Mercury exit. It’s tough
to see, but it’s a tiny track on the right, after two intertwined saguaro cacti. They
actually form an X. Then you dip into a valley, and the entrance is here.” He made
another X, then looked up at Caleb. “But it’s hidden.”
Caleb nodded. “In shadow.”
“Exactly. The illusion we conjure holds for days unless we disturb it. But there’s
also a ventilation shaft here.” He made another X. “That’s how I got out tonight,
and how I’ll get back in. It’s not hidden, but only one, very fit person can get through
it at a time. It leads down into a communal bathroom. But I’ll get you the complete
plans to the place. Soon.” He met my eye.
I kept hold of his gaze, trying to see every angle. “Why now?” I said. “What’s Ximon
done to push you out now?”
He pulled back, handing the paper to Amaris, shaking his head. “It’s been a long time
coming,” he said. “And now I have something to offer in exchange for your . . . help.”
He said the word as if it stung.
He was hiding something, but it was buried deep. Something had pushed him to get away
from his father at last, and although I was curious, its exact nature didn’t matter,
as long as he was truly desperate to leave and the information he gave us was correct.
“Go,” I said. “Take him to his car, Amaris.”
Without another word, Lazar walked around and got into the passenger side of the SUV.
Amaris gave me a quick smile and got in the driver’s side as Caleb and I stepped back.
I took Caleb’s hand. “Thanks,” I said. “I know this isn’t easy.”
“If I didn’t love you so much, he’d be dead,” he said. “I hope you’re right.”
Amaris was doing something inside the car; then she rolled down her window. “Um. You
might need this.” She awkwardly showed us the corner of Caleb’s shirt.
Caleb gave a short, real laugh, and grabbed it from her. “Thanks.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, then realized it sounded like she was warning us.
“Not that I . . . not that it matters. Whatever you want to do . . .” Shaking her
head at her own awkwardness, she rolled up her window, pressed the garage door button,
and started backing up the SUV. Caleb put his shirt back on.
Cold air poured into the garage as the SUV turned around and trundled off down the
dirt road, disappearing between the trees. Caleb and I grabbed our coats and stood
watching them, the silence strange between us, and I realized we’d had our first real
disagreement. He was going along with this only for my sake, and the strain of it
was palpable.
“I guess we should . . .” I gestured toward the hillside, where the door to the school’s
underground complex lay shrouded in bushes and grass.
“Yeah, let me show you where you’ll be sleeping,” he said, and we started walking
side by side as we donned our coats. “We’ll tell the others in the morning?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll tell them and face the wrath and the weirdness, since it was
my idea.”
“Okay,” he said. Then he stopped and turned to me, hands jammed in the pockets of
his long black coat. “I do trust you, Dez,” he said. “You have the ability to see
the big picture sometimes when I don’t, especially when it comes to—to him.” He couldn’t
quite say Lazar’s name. “But I need you to trust my instincts too. We need to approach
this very carefully. Okay?”
I took a step into him, our faces close again. “Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s come
to this. But mostly, I’m sorry we got interrupted.”
He slid his hands up my arms, sending happy chills down my spine. “Me too. There’s
the back of Raynard’s pickup truck . . .” I could tell he was mostly joking, but also
kind of not.
I kissed him, lightly. “Maybe it’s better if my first time is somewhere more comfortable
and romantic than the back of a car or the bed of a truck.”
“You deserve that. Also, it has to be somewhere very, very private.” His voice got
low, sending a thrilling vibration down to my toes. “Because the next time I get you
alone, nobody’s going to stop me.”
He led me through the rough wooden door into a darkened living room I could barely
see, then to a dining area with a kitchen humming to its left.
The sweet, earthy smell of soil faintly permeated the air. The silence all around
me was striking. No wind, rain, or traffic. It was as if the outside world didn’t
exist. The only sound was the faint creak of floorboards as we wound our way down
a spiral staircase to a long hallway.
Caleb pointed out the computer room, the boys’ and girls’ dorm rooms, a general bathroom,
and Morfael’s and Raynard’s rooms at the end of the hall. No lights were shining from
under any of the doors, so we said good night very quietly, and I slipped into the
girls’ room. It was cozy, featuring six beds, a small kitchenette, and a door leading
to a bathroom.
November sat up in bed. “So, did you and Caleb finally do it?”
Oh, God.
No privacy at all in this cursed school. I resorted to London’s favorite sentence.
“Shut up, ’Ember.”
A snort came from London’s bed. “Well said.”
November was snoring lightly by the time Amaris came in a few minutes later. But I
lay for a long time, staring up at the darkness, blood still humming in my veins from
Caleb’s nearness.
What would it have been like? And what happens now?
CHAPTER 8
I awoke alone, blinking up at the intertwining roots in the ceiling above me, trying
to remember where I was.
Oh, right, the new school. Underground.
Light filtered down from an ingenious skylight that used the white lime wash to reflect
natural light down to us.
I was a morning-hater, always the last one to wake, so the others must have gone upstairs.
Hunger bit at my stomach, so I got up, took a lightning-quick shower, and headed out
into the empty hallway.
The faint sounds of clinking dishes and voices filtered down the winding wooden stairs.
I padded toward them, then stopped, looking at the door to the computer room, seized
with an idea. If I was going to do it, now was the time, with no one else around to
stop me or overhear.
I pressed my ear to the computer room door. Dead air.
Excellent.
I opened the door to see five monitors and a corded phone.
I hesitated one more moment, and then knew I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.
I googled Child Protective Services in Arizona and called the office in Phoenix, the
one nearest to Arnaldo’s family home. I left an anonymous message saying that I’d
witnessed the Perez kids out by Alamo Lake being beaten by their father.
I did it fast, not letting myself think about it, then hung up and sat for a minute
feeling a confusing mixture of relief and horror.
No way you can leave those two boys living with an abusive alcoholic.
If they were taken away from their father, would Arnaldo’s brothers be better off
in foster care or a home, surrounded by people who didn’t even know otherkin existed?
I had to believe that was better than getting beaten. And maybe before that happened
we could work out a way for them to come stay at the school, or find a home with a
different family of shifters.
I made my way upstairs for breakfast, marveling at the building that housed our new
school. The walls were made of bales of straw covered in whitewashed plaster, the
floors of wooden planks thrown over more straw, with natural tree limbs used to decorate
and support, capped by a roof made of turf. The bedrooms were on the bottom floor,
dug deeper into the hill. The large living room featured a wood-burning stove and
wide, low arched windows with window seats covered with cushions and books. The view
gave out onto a bristlecone pine forest.
More noises came from the kitchen. I walked over to find Amaris, Arnaldo, November,
London, and Siku blearily preparing breakfast. I paused next to Arnaldo as he waited
by the toaster, and put a hand tentatively on his arm. “Good morning.”
He looked up at me, his face sagging with weariness, and gave me a half-smile. “Hey,”
he said.
Still feeling torn about what I’d done, I found Caleb around the corner in a chair
at the dining table. A few restless locks of black hair hung down over his face as
he gazed into his coffee cup.
I plopped down next to him, leaned in close, and smiled. “Morning.”
Smudges of darkness circled under his eyes, a sign that he hadn’t slept well. But
he smiled back, and took my hand under the table, where no one could see. “Hi.” In
a low voice, he added, “You smell even better than pancakes in the morning.”
I squeezed his hand and forced myself not to plant a giant kiss on him.
Not in front of everyone.
But I wanted to eat him up.
I looked over at Amaris, who was buttering her pancakes. “Should we tell them?”
“Tell us what?” November sucked some syrup off her finger as she set the bottle down.
“You two get married last night?”
“What?” Surprise made my voice swoop up. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’re way too young.”
“It’s only ridiculous to sane people,” said London, pouring herself more coffee. “To
shifters it’s about average.”
I stabbed my fork into a few sausages. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t approve of a tiger-shifter
marrying a caller of shadow at any age, right?”
Siku nodded, setting his plate, piled high with waffles, down on the table. “True.”
“Well, when I said ‘married,’ what I really meant was ‘laid,’ ” said November. “But
now that you mention it, I wonder what kind of crazy babies you guys would produce.
We should ask Morfael, you know. Just in case.”
“Shut up, ’Ember,” Caleb said, his voice sharp as a shot.
November crossed her eyes at him and sat down next to Siku.
An embarrassed flush spread across my cheeks. I cleared my throat. “What happened
is Lazar came by the school last night.”
Arnaldo’s fork clattered to his plate, and London did a spit-take with her coffee.
“It’s my fault,” said Amaris quickly into the horrified silence. “I started talking
to him over the phone a couple of weeks ago because he felt bad about how things ended
between us. Yesterday, he got worried about me and tracked me down by hacking into
my phone.”
“Brilliant,” said November. “We’ve got a healer who can’t heal but instead brings
in stray homicidal maniacs who think we’re demons.”
“Back off,” Caleb said, and the power in his voice was almost threatening, reminding
me of his ability as a caller. The shifters bristled, and the tension level rose.
“She’s admitted she made a mistake. And you’re all still alive.”
London’s ice-blue eyes were glaring. “So you killed him, right? Where’d you bury the
body?”
“We didn’t kill him,” I said. “Caleb wanted to. But I thought we should turn him into
an asset.”
Siku set his glass of orange juice down with a click. “That makes no sense.”
“This is actually good news,” I said. I’d had a lot of sleepless time last night to
think about how to approach this moment. “He’s sick of life with the Tribunal, but
he has no way out. If we help him, he’ll give us all of Ximon’s plans. He’s already
told us they’ve built a particle collider, not far from here.”
“Is that like a big gun or something?” November said through a mouthful of eggs. Shocking
news didn’t touch her appetite.
“Well, it does shoot things,” said Arnaldo. He, the geekiest of us, was the most likely
to understand the science involved. “If it’s a circular collider, it smashes subatomic
particles into each other to break them up into smaller particles for study. But that’s
pretty much all they do. They aren’t dangerous. Well, theoretically, if certain aspects
of string theory are correct, they could create a black hole or fragments of dark
matter.”
November mouthed the words “black hole,” a worry line forming between her brows.
“No danger there,” said Caleb with bite as we all tried to look like we knew what
Arnaldo was talking about.
“Those possibilities were all ruled out before they turned on the Large Hadron Collider
in Europe,” Arnaldo said dismissively. “But what would the Tribunal want with one?”
“And does it have anything to do with their stealing our DNA?” said London.
“Excellent question,” said Arnaldo.
“Whatever they have planned, it’s big,” I said. “It’s taken them years and millions
of dollars to build this thing. And Lazar’s our way in. He’s promised to bring us
the plans to the place and find out everything he can.”
“He won’t tell anyone where the school is,” Amaris said. “He promised.”
“Oh, well, as long as he promised!” London’s voice cut like a fang, and Amaris colored
a deep red. “I know he’s your brother, but he raided our last school and kidnapped
Siku. He’d be happy if every single one of us was dead.”
“Like my mother,” said Caleb, not looking at me.
“No!” Amaris shook her head vehemently. “No, he’s not really like that. You don’t
know all the horrible things our father’s done to him, to make him do those things.
He’s sick of it, like I was. He has to get away or he’ll go crazy.”
“What a load of crap.” London threw her napkin down and stalked out. Amaris looked
crushed.
November poked her next bite with her fork. “I hate to agree with Wolfie, but she’s
right. We probably should have taken Lazar prisoner.”
Siku swallowed a bit of waffle. “Or killed him.”
Caleb shook his head, his eyes not meeting mine. If he had, they probably would’ve
said “I told you so.” The strain that had come from our disagreement last night was
creeping back.
“After what the Tribunal did to my family . . .” Arnaldo’s long fingers closed into
fists. “If I’d been there, I might have done it myself.” Arnaldo wasn’t usually an
angry or violent person; he wanted to be an opera singer. But at that moment, staring
down his long nose, eyes glittering, dark hair pushed back from his furrowed brow,
he was all raptor, ready to swoop down on his prey and strike.
Siku grunted in agreement.
I looked around at all of them, feeling helpless. “But, Arnaldo, you know this particle
collider has to be a big threat, don’t you? We wouldn’t even know it existed if it
weren’t for Lazar.”
Arnaldo narrowed his eyes, thinking. “If they do have a collider, we need to find
out why they built it. But we only have Lazar’s word that it exists at all.”
“I’m sorry.” Amaris was crying. “This is all my fault.” She scraped her chair back
and ran through a door in the back of the kitchen. I caught a glimpse of gym equipment
in the room beyond before the door banged shut.
November waved her fork in the air like a magic wand. “Slamming doors, crying, conflict.
It’s good to be back.”
“We’ll see if he was telling the truth when Lazar brings back the information on the
collider,” I said. “Then you’ll know for sure.”
“London still hasn’t forgiven him for forcing her out of her wolf form,” Arnaldo said.
“Back at the old Tribunal compound.”
“If London smells him anywhere near here, she’ll rip his throat out,” said Siku. “If
I don’t do it first.”
I’d forgotten how closed off shifters could be to new ideas. My friends had rejected
me when I accidentally turned into a cat instead of a tiger because they’d never seen
a shifter with more than one animal form before. It had taken facing a Tribunal attack
to bring us together again. Maybe once they really understood that, in his own way,
Lazar was in as much danger from Ximon as we were, they’d come around.
Or maybe not. I kept pushing the envelope, violating long-held otherkin traditions
out of ignorance or because I believed it was best for all. One day I might go too
far and find myself without friends or allies again. The balance between doing what
I thought was right and maintaining my friendships, even my relationship with Caleb,
was getting trickier.
“I need some air,” I said, pushing myself away from the table.
“This way,” Caleb said, standing up to come with me and pointing at the door Amaris
had gone through. As he followed me through the door, I found some comfort in the
fact that he was coming with me. Maybe he wasn’t happy about what had happened with
Lazar last night, but he still cared. He had to. All the emotion in his touch last
night couldn’t have disappeared overnight because of one disagreement.
The next room was indeed a gym, smaller than at the previous school, with ingenious
showers that used gravity to bring water from a nearby river. Beyond that, we made
our way through a library or study room lit by skylights, full of all the musty old
books and parchments I remembered. The last room was half inside, half out, using
the overhang of the hill to shield us from above, and filled with all kinds of growing
things—from tomatoes like the ones I’d grown at our house in Burbank to bushes of
lavender and a small stand of bristling cacti.
Late morning sun slanted through the surrounding evergreens. There was no sign of
Amaris. She must have taken a walk. Downslope from us, several dozen shaggy red-brown
elk, some as tall as five feet at the shoulder, had wandered into view, their heads
weighed with antlers like coral reefs, pushing aside dead fallen branches with their
prominent noses to find something green and edible in the winter forest. The ground
was not yet covered with white, but the cold cloudy air had the tang of imminent snowfall.
Seeing that we were alone, I tentatively took Caleb’s hand. “Are we okay?” I asked.
He turned, his face softening, and pulled me in for a long kiss.
“You think the elk would mind if I ravished you out here?” he said against my mouth.
I breathed a laugh. “Who cares?”
He slid his hands down my waist, under my shirt, digging his fingers into my flesh,
tracing my ribs. But the freezing air also rushed over me. I shivered.
He pulled back slightly, frowning playfully, and adjusted my shirt to cover me completely.
Then he took off his coat and draped it around my shoulders. “Okay, so maybe inside
is a better idea for that kind of thing.”
I drew the coat around me, and Caleb’s warm, airy scent enfolded me reassuringly.
“Maybe. And I actually do have some stuff to tell you. Yesterday was . . .”
“Crazy. Yeah. Come over here. It’s warmer.”
He guided me to sit on one of the benches around a stone table set next to an outdoor
fire pit, which glowed with live coals that softly warmed the immediate area. A weight
settled on me when I remembered the look on Arnaldo’s face as his father ordered him
out. “I just left an anonymous message with Child Protective Services about Arnaldo’s
father.”
“Wow.” Caleb pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay. But we have to tell Arnaldo.”
“Maybe after he calms down, like, tomorrow?” I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m
all conflicted about it. But we can’t leave those boys alone with that man. . . .”
“No, I get it.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “If it helps his brothers,
it’s worth it. Maybe we can work it so legally Arnaldo’s their guardian or something.”
“Thanks,” I said, still swimming in a tide of uncertainty. “How did I make everything
go wrong so fast?”