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Authors: Charles de Lint

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Lupe looks at me with something like awe and I know it's time to get out of here.

“Okay,” I say. “Let's go see him.”

Marina's still holding my hand. She reaches out to Lupe with her free one, but Lupe shakes her head.

“No, you go ahead,” she says. “Someone like Old Man Puma might be fine when you show up with your mate in tow, but he's not going to want some scraggly barrio dog hanging around.”

“You're no scragglyâ” Marina begins.

“It's cool. We're still tight. Come see me when you're in town.” She nods at me. “Your lion boy here will know how to find meâwherever I am.”

Marina lets go of my hand long enough to give her a hug and then I step us away to the otherworld beach where Des and Donalita are trying to start a fire.

Donalita looks up first, her eyes going wide. A moment later Des is on his feet and running toward us. Once again he grabs me in a big bear hug and wheels me around so that my feet are off the ground. When he sets me back down he holds my shoulders and stares right into my eyes.

“Dude!” he says. “How the hell did you pull that off? I mean you were deadâ
dead
. Seriously. It was ugly.”

“It's a long weird story. What are you doing here?”

“That's a short boring one. The old man was finally going to lay down the law and send me off to military school.”

“Ouch.”

“So I left before that could happen.”

“Do they know where you are?”

He grins. “They so know I'm not in their world anymore.” Then his good humour falters. “But I felt like crap about leaving Molly.”

Marina nods. “I couldn't really tell my little sisters any more than that I was going away for a while.”

“You've gone AWOL, too?” Des asks.

“It was that or MamÃ¡ was going to either put me in a convent or ship me off to the Feds.”

“You want to come down the yellow brick road with us?” I ask him.

“If you're off to see the wizard, dude, I don't want brains or a heart, but I wouldn't mind a little Wildling mojo.”

“I don't know about that,” I say, “but I've got a few hawk uncle tricks I can try to teach you.”

“Excellent.”

“It won't be easy,” I tell him, “but if you work as hard on it as you do your skateboard tricks, you'll get it.”

“Aw, man. I'm going to miss my wheels. And playing music.”

“Maybe you could take up the ukulele,” Marina says with a grin. “They're easy to carry around. And I could play the bongos.”

Des looks at me in mock horror. “Dude, just shoot me now.”

I laugh. This feels good. This feels right. It's going to be hard, separated from our families and the world we knew, but we'll figure it out.

“One thing,
compadres
,” Des says. He puts his arm around Donalita's shoulders. “I'm not flying solo now.”

“Neither are we,” I tell him. “Now let's go see how Old Man Puma reacts when a houseful of teenagers descends upon him.”

The trip back from the otherworld goes a lot faster than going in with Cory did. We're back in the blink of an eye. Josh asks us to swear an oath of secrecy, which is cool with me. I don't want to talk about any of this crap, anyway. J-Dog says if he told anyone, he'd get laughed right out of the Avers.

Josh says he'll be in touch, then he leaves us there in the dirt yard behind the compound. I wonder if bringing us here was deliberate, or if he chose it because we can show up unnoticed. Because this is the place where the dog cousins died. No, where we ambushed them and shot them down.

I glance at J-Dog, but I doubt he's even thought about it since. I don't mention it.

We walk back to the house. As usual, we're met by bass and drums pounding on the sound system. Snoop rappingâold school. Riding on top of it all is a stew of laughter, conversation, shouts.

“Coming in?” J-Dog asks.

I shake my head. “I got no party in me.”

He goes inside, but comes out a few moments later carrying a couple of beers and a joint. He offers me a toke. I shake my
head, but I take the beer. We clink the tops of the bottles against each other.

“That kid Josh,” J-Dog says. “What he had to sayâit hit you hard.”

I nod.

“So you want out of the crew?”

“It's not like you think.”

“Yeah?” he says. “What do I think?”

“That I'm turning my back on you.”

He shakes his head. “Only reason we got this crew is that there's no other option when you come up in the Orchards the way we did. What the hell else are we going to do? But you got a way out, that's golden, bro.”

“You want out, too?”

He laughs. “Hell, no. I like my life just fine. I take what it gives me, you hear what I'm saying?”

“Yeah.”

“You can't worry about what you can't have,” he says.

Marina, I think.

“You make the party with what you've got, bro.”

“I hear you.”

He shakes his head. “But you don't feel me. I get it. The world's gone punk-ass weird on us and I don't even want to think about what you're going through. But you can't keep fishing when the river's dried up. That happens, it's time to move on.”

“I will.”

He slaps my back. “'Course you will. But first you're going to mope around for a while because that's what you do best.”

“Fuck you.”

He grins. “That's better. Tonight I'm partying with the
crewâwhich is what you should be doing, 'cept I know you won't.” He holds up his hands. “Hey. I'm just telling it like it is. Get it out of your system, bro, if that's what you need to do. But tomorrow we go see Grandma, so practice your happy face.”

He goes back inside. I stay where I am and finish my beer. Then I put the bottle down on the porch and head back into my crib to slouch on the sofa. I put my feet on the coffee table and click on the remote. The big screen glows into life with some reality show.

I notice a message on my phone and scroll to the text that came in while we were gone. It's from Ainaâthe girl from the Harley shop.

“I'm still waiting for that story,” she writes.

I know what J-Dog would do, but I put the phone down without sending an answer.

I remember telling Marina that I could change.

Maybe I can. Maybe I should.

The trouble is, when it comes right down to it, I'm not sure where to begin.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My readers, young and not-so-young, have been great enthusiasts for this Wildlings series, and I'm grateful for your tremendous support. I hadn't worked in such a consecutive series format before, and given that I'm a “see what happens next” writer, there were extra challenges because I couldn't go back and change anything in the first two novels, which had already been published. Fortunately, I had several excellent helpers along the way: first and foremost, my wife, MaryAnn Harris, who always catches the small (and large) things that I've missed and adds a few of her own creative ideas into the mix; Lynne Missen and her excellent editorial team at Penguin Canada; and last but not least, my eagle-eyed copy editor, Catherine Dorton, who brilliantly caught all the things that slipped by the rest of us. Thanks to all of you for making the Wildlings series a pleasure to write.

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First published 2014

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