Out of This World (28 page)

Tío Benardo steps up to Solana and takes his hand with both of his own.

“It's good to see you again, little brother,” he says. “You're looking as well as Goyo told me you were.”

Then he steps back and nods to Matteson. Matteson gives back a stone face.

“Any word from Cory?” I ask Auntie Min.

She shakes her head. “I understand your worry, but if anyone can find her, it will be Cory. You will just need to be patient.”

“Not exactly my strong suit.”

“Who's Cory?” Matteson asks.

“It's a whole other business,” I tell him before anyone can answer. “We're here about Householder, the ass-wipe congressman.”

Matteson doesn't like to be shut down. No surprise there.

“Sure, but—”

I cut him off, saying, “I just want to go on record to say that saving him seems counterproductive to—well, pretty much everything.”

Matteson gives me a sharp look.

“'Course,” I add, “I've been outvoted on this, so I'll have to go along with saving his sorry ass.”

Auntie Min shakes her head. “You are eloquent as ever, Theo.”

“Somebody
else
want to tell us why we're here?” Matteson asks.

“As Theo says, to prevent the assassination of Congressman Householder,” Auntie Min says.

Matteson nods. “Right, except I thought you'd already stopped the guy behind it.”

“Vincenzo
was
stopped,” Auntie Min tells him, “but he wasn't working alone. We've learned that his brothers are also involved, and that there is someone else behind them—the same unknown entity who has enslaved a number of the Canid Clan.”

Matteson puts up his hand. “Wait a minute,” he says.
“Enslaved?”

I ignore him and look at Auntie Min. “How do we know they didn't
choose
to join Vincenzo's gang?” I ask.

I hear a growl in somebody's chest and realize it's coming from either Ana or Jimmy—the pair that look like Native American twins. So I figure they're dog cousins and now I know why they're so pissed off. Considering what went down back at the clubhouse earlier today, I must be at the top of their shit list.

Lalo—the guy I take for one of the crow men—answers me. “The brands they wear make it clear.”

“Brands?”
Matteson and Solana both repeat at the same time.

“Just gang tats,” I say, to shut them up.

Auntie Min nods. “Some may have chosen to follow this unknown leader, but several others were coerced. We have no
idea how many we face in total. But we do know that Vincenzo and his brothers planned to force Josh to kill the congressman.”

“Where
is
Josh?” Matteson asks.

No one says anything for a long moment. Then Solana clears his throat.

“I've already told him about the otherworld,” he says. Auntie Min shakes her head and sighs. The other cousins seem pissed.

Tío Benardo nods. “A man must trust his partner.”

“Except he's a goddamn Federal agent,” Jimmy the dog man says. “Next thing you know, they'll be trying to put us on reservations while they strip-mine the otherworld.”

“Watch your mouth,” Matteson snaps at him before he glances at Solana, then turns back to Auntie Min. “My partner here already explained how all of this can't go any further than us.” He waits a beat, then adds, “Josh is really in this otherworld?”

She nods.

“What the hell's he doing there?”

“Looking for his ex-girlfriend,” I say, “because Vincenzo was planning to kill her. Josh is hoping to rescue her before Vincenzo's friends find out that he's dead.”

“The kid's got balls,” Matteson says. “I'll give him that.” He returns his attention to Auntie Min. “So why do you need us?”

Lalo answers for her. “Extra security. We can field enough bodies to keep an eye on the crowd,” he says, “but we need you to survey everything behind the scenes.”

Solana nods toward the ring of crow men guarding the bluff. “You're going to stand out like a sore thumb,” he says.

“We won't all be going as five-fingered beings,” Lalo replies.

“Most will watch from the skies and other vantage points. Theo's men will be in the crowd itself, where they'll—”

“You must be kidding me,” Matteson breaks in. “You'd trust crowd control to a bunch of gangbangers? Are you out of your minds?”

“Hey!” J-Dog and I say at the same time.

“You want us or not?” J-Dog adds, obviously pissed. “As though we give a shit about your ass-wipe politician.”

Matteson ignores us both. “And what makes you think we even believe you?” he asks Auntie Min. “For all we know,
you're
the problem and you're just trying to use us to get inside intel.”

“We don't want intel,” Lalo tells him. “We just want your eyes watching out in the places we can't go.”

“Secret Service will take care of that,” Solana says.

Lalo nods. “Yes, and if any of them are in on it? We can't get access to their inner circle to find out. You're FBI. They won't stop you.”

“Why don't we just advise them about the threat?” Matteson asks. “Then they'll up their own security, or maybe even cancel the stupid rally.”

“Sure,” Lalo says. “We'd prefer that it be cancelled. But we've been told that Householder isn't the kind to listen to advice.”

I've heard all of this before, so I tune them out. I can't stop thinking about Marina. I just want to take Auntie Min aside and have her show me how to do the world-walking trick so that I can go find her. But Auntie Min's caught up in this circling conversation and anyway, even if I could get her alone, she probably wouldn't help me.

I look around the headland. The crow men are doing a good job keeping the perimeter safe. They've all got their backs to
us, checking for danger instead of listening to all this bullshit. When I turn back, both Jimmy and Ana are staring daggers at me. If they're dog cousins, I suppose the same rules apply as they do with actual dogs. If you don't want to seem aggressive, you look away.

I lock my gaze on theirs.

None of us have hackles in our human shapes, but if we did, they'd be bristling.

Everything around me fades away: the headland and the crow men guards, the Feds, my brother, the cousins. I don't hear the pound of the waves below or the—let's be polite and call it “conversation” between Matteson and Lalo and the others. Instead, I'm completely focused on the silent exchange I'm having with these dog twins.

You want a piece of me?
I'm telling them.
Bring it on. If you think you've got the balls to—

A slap on the back of my head brings me back to the present.

“Enough!” Auntie Min says. “And that goes for you, too,” she tells the twins. “There's too much at stake here for you fools to indulge yourselves with your petty disputes.”

J-Dog can't repress a snicker. “Shades of Grandma,” he whispers to me.

“Petty?”
Ana says. “You call butchering our brothers
petty
?” Auntie Min shakes her head. “No. But they were hunting Theo. I don't excuse how he dealt with the problem, but I know he did what he felt he had to do.”

“Just like we're going to, right now,” Jimmy says, baring a mouthful of canine teeth and taking a step toward me.

Before he can get any closer, this huge moth starts to manifest above Auntie Min and her face darkens and shakes with anger.

Except for the dog twins and me, all the other cousins take a cautious step back, out of the line of fire. Solana looks like he's about to crap his pants. Matteson's jaw drops and his hand inches toward the holster on his belt. Tío Benardo watches with interest, but doesn't move. J-Dog—bless his twisted little heart—just stands there, arms folded across his chest like he sees this kind of thing every frigging day.

“No,” Auntie Min says, her voice hard. “First, we will finish
this
business and then you can see to your own follies. Or you can leave. But you will
not
disrupt us a moment longer. Is that understood?”

Auntie Min likes to pretend the cousins don't have bosses, but who are we kidding? When she says jump, pretty much everybody asks how high.

The dog twins give quick nods, then hang their heads.

Me, I'm sorry she stopped the bastard. I would have loved to take him and his bitch sister.

Matteson lets his hand fall away from the butt of his gun as the moth vanishes back into Auntie Min.

“What the hell was
that
?” he asks.

“La Mariposa de la Muerte,”
Solana says in a soft voice.

Tío Benardo laughs. “There's no such thing.”

Solana turns to him. “But—”

“You saw her cousin aspect—formidable, to be sure, but nothing more.”

Either
los tíos
have
cojones
bigger than anybody here, or Benardo knows something the rest of us don't.

Auntie Min ignores him. Her hard gaze is now on me. “And you, little mouse,” she says. “You're as much to blame as these dogs. Stop this juvenile behaviour or go.”

“Sure, happy to,” I tell her. “Just show me how to cross over so that I can look for Marina myself.”

She sighs. “I told you. Have patience. You have no idea what it's like. You'd get so lost so quickly that even Cory might not be able to find you.”

“Maybe that's the chance I need to take.”

“Wait one more day,” she says. “Help us with this rally and I swear we'll find her. If Cory doesn't track her down, I'll take you over myself.”

I don't say anything for a long moment. I glance at the dog twins, then look back at Auntie Min. What do I care about that jerk-off congressman or even the other cousins? I owe Auntie Min for helping me out when I first changed, but how much do I owe? When is the slate wiped clean?

“Are we in or out of this dog-and-pony show?” J-Dog asks me.

I raise a hand to shut him up.

“As soon as the rally's over and the congressman is safe,” I say to Auntie Min, “then you'll show me how to cross over?”

“As I said, I'll take you myself,” she says.

“If I don't take care of you first,” Jimmy says.

J-Dog stiffens beside me, but I put my hand out to remind him to cool it. I'd love to put this dog bastard down, but it's not going to happen now.

“Maybe you've got a solid beef with me,” I say to Jimmy, “and maybe you don't. But you get in my way before I can find Marina and I'll cut you down. And then I'll make it my personal business to get rid of every mongrel cousin in a fifty-mile radius, just to drive the point home.”

Jimmy makes another move toward me, but stops when
J-Dog pulls that big handgun of his from out of his belt. The muzzle points right at the dog boy's head and doesn't waver.

“Theo,” Auntie Min begins.

“I'm not starting anything,” I tell her. “But I'm not taking crap from anybody, either.” I motion for J-Dog to put away his gun.

“So we're back on board?” he says.

“I was never not on board,” I tell him. “But if Auntie Min would've shown me how to get to where Marina is, I'd leave this part to the rest of you.”

I turn to Matteson and Solana. “What about you guys?” “Look, no offence,” Matteson begins, but he breaks off when J-Dog laughs. “Something funny?”

J-Dog nods. “Every time somebody says that, they're just setting up to diss you.”

“Yeah, well—”

Solana turns to Matteson. “We
have
to do this,” he says. And just like that old married couple that I imagined them to be a while ago, they look at each other and have this silent conversation. Finally, Matteson nods and looks Auntie Min in the eye.

“Okay,” he says. “We'll keep an eye out for problems on our side. But we're not passing along intel, and if it looks like it's going to impact national security, we'll have no choice but to bring the chief in on it.”

Lalo the crow man nods, then pulls out a roll of paper and opens it up to show a hand-drawn map of the park and the neighbouring blocks.

“Let me show you where our people will be,” he says.

“Josh?” Elzie says when she recognizes me, a big grin spreading across her face.

“
You're
the boss?” I say, hoping against hope that I'm wrong.

Her smile gets wider as she gazes up at me. “Yeah. Cool, huh? We're working on a plan for cleaning up the earth. I'm so happy to see you.”

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. When I was going out with her, we had a lot of talks about the state of the world and the environment, and the reactions of people to Wildlings and cousins. I agreed with her on some points, but never on her extreme ideas about how to solve the world's problems.

Like killing people who happen to get in the way.