Out of This World (7 page)

Except then I hear voices.

My pulse quickens. I lift my head to read the wind, but it betrays me, sending my scent in the direction of the sound and giving me nothing in return.

Friends or foes?

More of the dog men or possible allies?

Weak as I am, I can't face the dog men right now.

So … risk outweighs hope.

I take a loose rock and scratch a mark on the pavement, then head to the closest side of the road, where I take shelter in the rubble of a building.

We leave the desert world behind. From one step to the next, the red dirt underfoot turns dark and we follow a trail through a thick forest, its canopy so dense that it feels like twilight down here.

As we walk I catch a glimpse of something moving off to our left. My nose tells me it's a deer a moment before I catch a glimpse of its disappearing flanks, white tail bobbing. The mountain lion's hunting instinct wants me to chase after it and grumbles when I stay on the trail with Tío Goyo.

He shoots me a questioning glance, which I ignore.

I haven't particularly noticed the land rising underfoot, but a moment later the trail takes us out of the forest to the top of a broad plateau. There's still vegetation here—tall fir trees, some kind of browning grass, along with lots of big rocks, some flat and the size of a city lot, others rounded.

“This is as good a place as any to camp for the night,” Tío Goyo says.

When he drops his backpack under one of the towering fir trees, I do the same.

“You're sure about this time thing, right?” I say. “I don't want Elzie to get hurt while I'm off camping in the woods with you.”

“I'm sure. But consider this: until we fix the map in your head, you won't be able to find her anyway.”

I don't want to think about that.

I watch as he starts to scoop together pine needles. When I realize he's making himself a mattress, I copy what he's doing, rolling out a blanket on top of the makeshift bed just the way he does. Then we gather wood and he makes a small fire on a flat slab of stone that abuts the nearest of the big rounded rocks. He pulls a frying pan out of his pack and I expect him to make some kind of meal, except he just takes out a couple of foil-wrapped burritos and heats them up. I want to ask where they came from, but decide to live in the moment, letting the delicious flavours explode in my mouth.

It's been a long day with way too much to process, but for once my mind's not running at a mile a minute. I don't know if I'm just tired from racing up and down the gulch earlier, or if it's something about this place, but after we've eaten I'm content to bunch up my blanket and lean back to watch the sky.

The sunset is amazing—the sky fills with colour from one end of the western horizon to the other. When the sun finally slips away, it gets dark even for my Wildling eyes, but not for long. The sky is impossibly big, the stars spilling across it in a dazzling array. When the moon rises it's just this side of full and so bright that everything is as clear as day around me. The air's so clean and sharp it tastes the way I imagine winter would.

“It's beautiful here,” I say.

Tío Goyo nods. “A night like this is a gift from the Thunders.”

I'm in that in-between moment when you're not quite awake, but not fully asleep—where if you're left alone, it could go either way—except then I hear my little sister open my bedroom door.

“Mom!” Molly yells. “Des has a girl in his room!”

I come all the way awake to see Donalita curled up beside me on the bed. She's outside the covers and I'm under them, but still.

I am so dead.

Donalita's eyes open. She smiles at me. I can hear my mother coming down the hall. She won't be smiling at all.

“Get out of here,” I tell Donalita even though there's no time.

Mom's pushing the door open.

Donalita winks and rolls off the bed. She lands with a soft thump on the carpet, then disappears under the bed.

“Desmond Wilson!” Mom starts as she bursts in.

Then she stops because what is she going to do? Yell at me because I'm still in bed at seven on a Friday morning? I never get up until the last minute. And it's obvious there's no one in the room with me.

But she's not completely trusting.

“Jeez,” I say. “A little privacy maybe?”

We've had discussions before about knocking before coming in, but Mom's on a mission this morning.

“Do you have a girl in here?” she asks.

“I can honestly say I don't.”

And I can because Donalita's one of the animal people. Sometimes she can look like a girl, but she's not one. For starters, she's older than everybody in this room combined.

“And I'm not going to find her if I look under the bed?” Mom asks.

Busted.

I sigh as she goes down on one knee to peer underneath.

When she lifts her head again she has a funny look on her face.

“You're hiding a kitten?” she says.

Molly does that thing where every bit of her starts to tremble with excitement.

“A kitten?” she cries. “Can we keep it, Mom? Can we?”

My heart sinks. Sure, Donalita might look like that in the darkness under the bed. In the poor light it might be easy to mistake a coatimundi for a cat. And yeah, a coati's not as bad as having a girl, but how am I supposed to explain what I'm doing with one?

Molly's on her knees beside Mom, reaching under the bed.

Don't, I want to say.

But when Molly sits up she's got a kitten in her arms. Sort of. Because I see two things: my sister holding a cute little kitten, but superimposed over the kitten is a kitten-sized Wildling girl that Molly obviously doesn't see. It's like the two of them—kitten and coati girl—occupy the same space. I shoot Mom a look, but it's clear that she only sees a kitten, too.

Mom sits on her heels.

“Why is there a kitten under your bed?” she asks me.

“I, um, found her on my way home?”

Mom's eyes narrow. “And why are you home? I thought you were staying at Josh's house last night.”

I can't stop staring at my sister cuddling a kitten that's also a tiny Donalita.

“Des?” Mom says.

I drag my gaze back to her. “I was. I mean, that was the plan.

But Josh is still pining over Elzie.”

“I liked that girl,” Mom says.

“Right. Who wouldn't? She's great. But sometimes it gets a little old, him mooning over her all the time—especially when he's the one who broke them up. Last night I just got tired of hearing about it, so I came home.”

“And found the cat along the way.”

“More she found me—but yeah.”

“We're keeping it, aren't we, Mom?” Molly asks. “Forever and ever. I'm going to call her Kitty-poo.”

The Donalita part of what she's holding rolls her eyes and I smile.

“That's a good name,” I tell Molly, “but we can't keep her. I need to take her back to the street where I found her and find out who she belongs to.”

Mom gets up off the floor and sits on the edge of the bed. She reaches out and ruffles the fur between Donalita's ears.

“That's not true, is it?” Molly asks her.

“I'm afraid so. How would you feel if you lost your kitty and nobody brought her back to you?”

“But I don't even have a kitty.”

Mom pulls the kitten from Molly's reluctant arms and plonks her on the bed.

“And you still don't,” Mom says, shooting me a dirty look as Molly's eyes well with tears. “Come on, missy,” she tells Molly. “You have to get ready for school. And you,” she adds, looking at me, “better get up right now because you need to find out where that cat lives before you go to school. I'm not having it running around the house scratching the furniture and doing its business everywhere.”

“What kind of business?” Molly wants to know.

“Number one and number two,” I tell her.

She pulls a face and lets Mom lead her out of my bedroom. Mom pauses in the doorway to look back at me.

“I mean it,” she says. “Get that cat back to its proper home today.”

“I will.”

She closes the door and I fall back against the headboard. I can't believe I got away with that. Donalita returns to her normal size, minus the kitten ghost she seemed to be wearing, and sits cross-legged on the bed beside me.

“How come they couldn't see you?” I ask.

“Of course they could see me. Did you take a stupid pill when I wasn't looking?”

“I mean, all that they saw was the kitten. They didn't see a kitten-sized you laid over the kitten.”

“And you did.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Huh.”

“Dude, what is that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. “Some people can see through illusions and I guess you're one of them.”

“Cory said something about that yesterday, except all I saw was him, not some other thing superimposed over him at the same time.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I'm good at lots of things he isn't.”

I hold up my hands. “Hey, I wasn't dissing you.”

“Okay.” Then she grins and adds,
“Dude.”

I leave the house carrying Donalita/the kitten, which Donalita thinks is hilarious, but I find kind of creepy and awkward. I'm not sure how to hold her because she's both a cat and a girl at the same time. I try to adjust for one, and then the other, and I just end up feeling like a klutz.

Before we left I sent Marina a couple of texts, which she never answered, so instead of swinging by her house like I'd usually do, I head for school. I guess she stayed with Chaingang last night, and I'm sorry, but them being together still weirds me out. I don't care how okay Josh is with it, it's just wrong on so many levels.

Donalita, or maybe just the kitten part of her, is purring in my arms. She thinks she's coming to school with me—like that's going to happen. Can you imagine her running around the halls of Sunny Hill following after me? Detention would be the least of my worries. But I've given up arguing with her. As soon as I'm far enough away from home, I plan to drop this kitten off. The last thing I need is for one of the neighbours to rat me out on animal abandonment to Molly or my mother.

That's the plan, anyway, but before I get the chance to put it into action, a dark sedan pulls up beside me. The window whispers down and there's Agent Solana giving me the evil eye.

“Remember last night?” I ask. “You know, when I told you Josh took off—as in, he's no longer around?”

“I'm here to see you.”

“Seriously, dude?” I say. “Shouldn't you be out fighting crime somewhere instead of following a nobody like me around?” I bend to look in the window and see that the shotgun seat is empty. “See, even your partner doesn't approve of you making me your new project now that Josh is gone.”

“Get in the car, Wilson.”

I shake my head. “Not going to happen. I don't know what your deal is, but I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“My deal,” he says, “is that you called me last night and when I brought the team in to pick up that shooter on your say-so, we found him in pieces.”

“What?”

“He was dead. Torn apart, just like the others.”

I flash on stepping into the otherworld last night and us finding the remains of the elder that Josh ripped to shreds.

A bit of my breakfast comes up my throat.

“Now get in the car,” Solana says.

I shake my head. “Dude, I never touched the guy.”

But Donalita did. Bloodthirsty Donalita, who thinks the best way to get rid of problem people is to kill them.

I unconsciously tighten my grip on her and her purring changes to a low growl.

But she wouldn't have done that.

“Car,” Solana says. “Now.”
Crap.

“I never called you last night,” I try. “I told you where the guy was when I met you on the beach, but then I just went home.”