Still, I’d been loved. Incredibly loved. And that was something I’d never had before. It had changed me. Given me new parts. “Thank you, Dancer,” I whispered as I stepped through the portal.
The small island was as empty as Mac had said it was, with the exception of a new, much smaller mirror that was now suspended in the air next to the enormous one.
I turned in a slow circle as Mac, Barrons, and Ryodan stepped through behind me. The planet that shorted out my powers made me feel sick to my stomach. Bile rose and I swallowed hard. I was here for Shazam. Nothing would interfere with my mission.
I didn’t look at Ryodan. He’d seen me a total mess far too many times lately. I’d been ignoring him and planned to continue doing so for a while.
There, on the grassy island with waves lapping gently at the shore, was my trashcan, battered and rusted, my promise to Shazam spray-painted on the side.
The food I’d tossed through was gone, no doubt pecked clean by birds on the world. The enormous dog bed I’d tossed through was…I hurried over to it and knelt on the ground, inspecting it.
I plucked a long, thick silver whisker from the dark brown faux fur and held it up for the others to see. “He was here!” I exclaimed excitedly.
My excitement evaporated. It was only proof that he’d been here a few months ago, when I’d tossed it in. Which, Shazam’s time, was decades ago.
I surged to my feet, turned my face up to the sun and called, “I see you, Yi-yi. I’m here, Shazam. I’m sorry it took me so long but I promise I’ll never leave you again.”
There was no reply.
I spun in a slow circle thinking maybe he didn’t like seeing three strangers, and frankly, they were three of the strangest people I’d ever known: two ancient, immortal shapeshifters, one Fae queen. Maybe the Nine smelled bad to him. I could understand his reservations. I was downright normal compared to them. “They’re my friends, Shazam. They won’t hurt you. It’s safe to come out.”
Still nothing.
I called for him. I said his name over and over. I crooned and cajoled and finally burst into our theme song. “Shaz the mighty fur-beast lived up in the air…”
When I glanced at Ryodan, his shoulders were shaking and he was doing his best not to laugh.
“I was a teenager,” I said with a scowl. “It’s a great song. The meter works, it rhymes, and the melody is indisputably catchy.”
“I’ll take it over Animaniacs,” he said, quickly turning away to stare out over the lake. His shoulders were still shaking. Bastard was still laughing.
I whirled away and resumed singing.
I spent hours calling him. Talking, bribing, flattering. Trying everything. I’d brought raw fish in my backpack and offered them to the air, waving them around, making a complete ass of myself and inciting a fresh wave of nausea. If he was up there, forcing me to enact such dramatic shenanigans, there was going to be hell to pay.
Finally, I turned to the others and said, “You have to go back home. He may never come out with you on the island.” I refused to believe he wasn’t here. It might take weeks, maybe even months, to convince me of that.
None of them liked the idea.
“I’m not leaving you alone here,” Ryodan said. “I’ll make myself unseen.”
“Shazam won’t be fooled,” I replied irritably. “He’s far more brilliant than you. He’s a hundred times the super you are. He’s evolved beyond anything we’ve ever seen.”
“Why don’t you tell me about him?” Mac invited. “I brought food and blankets in case we needed to spend the night. We’ll eat and you can tell me about your time together.”
In my head, she said, If he’s here, and he’s as sensitive as you told me he was, his feelings are hurt. Hearing you tell us stories about him may coax him down.
I conceded the wisdom of her plan.
Mac made a fire and I discovered I wasn’t the only one who’d brought fish, but hers were on ice in her backpack. She wrapped them in foil and tucked them into the embers to roast. As the aroma filled the air, I dropped down cross-legged by the fire and told Mac how we’d met on Olean, how he’d taught me to freeze-frame better, and the story about the edible planet. I even told her some of the tales I’d not told anyone about the less dangerous jams we’d gotten ourselves into, and how Shazam had rescued me, time and time again. As I reminisced, some of the grief over Dancer that was eating me alive was met by yet more grief as the realization settled in that Shazam really might not have waited or survived.
Did I have to lose everything? Both of them? Was this the harsh life lesson I had to learn now? Did some people just not get an easy life? I would never say it wasn’t a good one but, bloody hell, sometimes I wondered why mine was so rocky all the time!
Eventually my stories made me miss him so keenly that, combined with my fresh, hot grief over Dancer, I did something I’d never done in front of Shazam because he was so vulnerable and prone to manic fits of depression. No matter how bad our circumstances had gotten, I’d never cried.
I did now.
Bloody hell, all I did anymore was cry! It was ridiculous. I despised being this person. Mac started to cry, too, and I looked at her through my tears and said impatiently, “You don’t have anything to cry about. What’s wrong with you?”
“Your pain is mine. When you hurt, I hurt. If someone who truly loves you sees you in pain, they share it.” She tipped her head back, staring up at the air. “And they’d certainly step in to stop it. To comfort you. No matter how much of a pissy mood they were in. They would see that their Yi-yi was devastated and do anything to make her feel better. Even if they didn’t feel like it,” she practically snarled.
The fire exploded in a tower of sparks and was instantly extinguished.
The foil wrapped fish vanished.
Bones tumbled out of the sky, showering down on me, bouncing off my head.
I scrambled to my feet, rubbing at my eyes. “Shazam! Are you there?”
Violet eyes materialized in the sky above me, narrowed to slits. “You said wait. Your expects, bars on my cage. Did you come? No. Not then. Not the next day. Not ever.”
Holy hell, he was here! He was alive!
He vanished.
Another bone exploded out of the sky and bounced off my head. “Ow!” I clapped a hand to it. “Ever is now! I’m sorry. I’ll tell you I’m sorry every day for the rest of my life if it makes you feel better.”
“It will take much more than that,” came the bodiless sniff. “My knots have sprouted an entire civilization of knots that have been reproducing with the ferocity and fertility of a band of mating Ka-lyrras! I’m one big tangle!” came his anguished wail. “And I’m fat.”
“I’ll brush you. You’re not fat. Just come out. Let me see you!”
“Am, too!” he wailed. “You may only see parts of me. The slender ones.” Eyes materialized ten feet above me. “You will leave me again,” he said tearfully.
“I won’t. I’ll never leave you again.” I said something I’d never said before. A thing I’d learned to say with Dancer. “I love you, Shazam. I can’t stand living without you. I missed you so much that I went a little crazy for a time. But I couldn’t come back because the Silver took me back to Dublin—”
“You found your way home, Yi-yi?” he said tremulously. “You did it? You finally made it?”
My heart melted. The happiness in his voice was unmistakable, happy for me, because I’d finally gotten what I’d been seeking for so long. “Yes, and because of that damned infinity of mirrors—”
“Not infinite, tiny red. Four-hundred-thousand seven hundred and sixty-two,” he corrected.
“—I was trying to find a way to mark the correct one from the other side so I could bring you home with me. I’m so sorry, Shazam!”
Suddenly he manifested fully, dropping from the sky to plop fatly on the trashcan. I blinked. Good grief, he really was fat. His furry white belly draped both sides of the trashcan. I made a Jada-face to mask my astonishment
. No way I was hurting his feelings now. He might vanish again.
Behind me, Mac gasped.
“See—she thinks I’m fat!” He shot an accusing glare at Mac.
“That’s not why I gasped,” Mac said, sounding oddly strained.
He thumped the trashcan with a paw and turned an accusing glare on me. “You sent it through empty. What kind of Yi-yi does that? Not a speck of food. Not an ort. Not even a morsel.” He tossed his shaggy head and scowled, then a belch escaped him and a brilliant orange feather floated up into the air. He hastily licked his paw and began scrubbing at his whiskers with an innocent expression.
My eyes narrowed. “Did you eat the tribesmen?”
He swung his great head from side to side in elaborate denial. “Not me.” He belched again and half a blue feather drifted out.
“How many of the tribesmen did you eat?” I demanded.
“You told me not to eat people. I didn’t. Well, maybe I did. But only a few. The rest,” he said, slumping a mound of fatness and foul mood over the rusted can, “decided I was too fat to share an island with.” He shot me a meek, pitiful look. “They went away.” He turned his nose up in a snit. “I have no idea where.”
“Shazam,” I said warningly.
“They took my Yi-yi away from me!” he snarled.
“How many did you eat?”
“They were going to eat me. You would probably prefer I’d let them.” He glared at me, eyes narrowed, nose crinkling. “Then you wouldn’t be bothered with me,” he added in a small voice.
“I’m never bothered by you. I adore you. Answer my question.”
He stood up, back arching into a horseshoe shape with porcupine bristles ridging his spine. “What did you expect?” he said defensively. “I ate them. Okay? I have problems. You know that about me.” He sniffed and tears began to flow. “Now you don’t want me anymore. I should just die. We’re all going to die anyway. What does it matter if I do it now? Who would care?” He flung himself dramatically off the trashcan, rolled midair to land flat on his back on the ground, where he lay like a dead thing, head lolling to the side, paws up in the air.
After a moment he squinted an eye open to make sure I was looking. Then closed it hastily and resumed being dead.
“You ate all of them?” I said incredulously. “The entire civilization? We talked about this. You said you wouldn’t do it again.”
“I was hungry. And bored. There was nothing to do. You said you would be back. You WEREN’T. Your expects. Not bars on my cage anymore.”
“Dani,” Mac said warningly behind me. “You do know what Shazam is, right?”
I shot an inquiring look over my shoulder. “You mean, like, what species?”
Shazam leapt to his feet, instantly alert, and drew up to his full height. “I have no species. I am a singularity.”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Mac said.
I shook my head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Because I belong to no species,” Shazam said tightly. “Don’t listen to her, Yi-yi. She lies.”
“He wouldn’t tell you for good reason. He’s a Hel-Cat,” Mac said.
“Am NOT.” Shazam reared up on his haunches, eyes narrowed to thin slits, and spat and hissed alternately.
Mac said, “They’re nearly extinct. Or more precisely, there’s said to be only one left in all the universes. They’re as mythical as the unicorn.”
“What’s a Hel-Cat? And how do you know what he is?” I said.
“No one knows exactly what they are, or what their true form is. They were legend to the Fae. I saw a picture of one of them in my files. The form he’s adopted is the one they use to lure others close. Highly evolved, they have uncontrollable appetites and were destroyed because they kept wiping out civilizations. They were hunted by every world in every galaxy. They learned to hide in higher dimensions, coming down only to prey. Dani, you made friends with the last remaining Hel-Cat. Hel-Cats don’t make friends. They eat them.”
I looked at Shazam, who was staring at Mac with a venomous gaze. “You will never find me to hunt me, tiny white.”
He vanished.
“Great. Now look what you did,” I snapped. “Legends are always bigger and badder than the real thing. You of all people should know that.” To the air, I said, “No one is going to hunt you, Shazam. I’ll protect you.”
His eyes materialized in front of me. “You will? Promise always?”
“Yes. But you can’t eat people on our world and you can’t wipe out species. We’ll find another way to deal with your appetite.”
“But what if I can’t help myself?” he wailed.
“You can. I’ll teach you. You did great when we were together before. Everything’s easier when you’re not alone. Come on. We’re going home,” I told him firmly.
“Home? Where I can stay forever?” His lips pulled back, revealing sharp fangs and a black-tipped tongue as he turned a suspicious glare on Mac. “She doesn’t want me.”
“Not true,” Mac said. “But there will be rules.” She glanced at Barrons, who raised a brow and shrugged in a silent, What’s one Hel-Cat compared to the things we’ve handled?
“I am NOT a Hel-Cat,” Shazam said with a regal sniff. “I am Shazam. My Yi-yi named me and that is my only name.”
“Shazam,” Mac said, and it was the offer of a truce, of new beginnings. To me, she said, Can you control him?
I nodded and opened my arms. Shazam exploded out of the air and leapt into them at full velocity, taking me back to the ground beneath him, licking my face and biting my hair.
I wrapped my arms around him and held on to his furry, powerful body. He was going to sleep with me tonight and wake me up in the morning. I had someone of my own to love. I would survive the pain of losing Dancer. And one day life would be good again.
“And we’ll have adventures,” he said happily, pouncing my curls.
“Every day,” I told him. “Ew. Tribesman breath!”
“Your pitiful abandonment. My bad breath. You might have packed that can with fish, but no. Another big empty. Like all the other big empties in my life.”
“No big empties anymore.”
“Promise?”
“Swear it.”
He shifted his paws about, accommodating his great belly, then dropped hard on my stomach, evoking a loud whuff from me, and touched his damp nose to mine. “I see you, Yi-yi,” he said, eyes slanted half closed and gleaming.
I thought of Dancer. Of love lost. Of love regained. “I see you, too, Shazam.”
Then he was up and running across the island, and I was off chasing him and laughing.
He pounced my ankles and tripped me and I tumbled to the ground with him on top of me, nipping at my jeans, tugging at my shirt. Beneath a dazzling sun, on the island where I’d lost him along with a part of myself, I found both again.
We played for hours, running and blowing off steam, wading at the lake’s edge, catching silvery minnows, and I was happy to see he’d not eaten all the fish. He’d eaten only his enemy. I understood that. He could control himself. Together, we’d learn smarter ways of living and being.
Much later we sat together watching the waves lap at the shore, Shazam snuggled close to my side, keeping me warm as the temperature dropped.
I’d forgotten all about the others, lost in a time of much-needed joy and abandon.
As stars came out to twinkle in the sky above me, Shazam looked at me and I was suddenly struck by how old his eyes seemed. All playfulness and vulnerability had vanished and I was struck suddenly by how accurately I’d named him after a wise old wizard.
“He’s happy, Yi-yi.”
I went very still. “He, who?”
“The one who danced you into love.”
I stared at him. Then, “How do you know about him?”
“Slipstream. I’m in it. All. I am somewhat…larger than I appear.” His whiskers twitched as if he were vibrating with hidden laughter, then he busied himself poli
shing them with spit-moistened paws. That had long lethal talons. My Hel-Cat.
“Shazam, what are you really?”
He leapt up and was off, racing across the island. Over his shoulder, he called, “Hungry. And ready to go. Hurry, tiny red. Take me home.”
Home.
I knew some truths about that word now.
You weren’t always born into one. But if you were lucky, you found one somewhere along the way. It was a place where you fit and were accepted, where people helped you with your problems and you helped them with theirs. Where you made mistakes and so did they but the love never wavered.
A place where erosions never turned into landslides because you dug one another out. And always would.
Shazam and I stepped into the portal together this time.
The Unseelie King walked to the edge of the Horsehead Nebula, great dark wings trailing behind him, staring but not seeing.
What was it she’d once said to him?
You have so many ambitions. I have but one. To love.
And he’d thought, small.
Human.
Beautiful.
But small.
He’d liked that in his woman, a small lovely ambition. Given that she didn’t have his talents, he could see that was enough for her.
He, however, had from the very first moments of his existence teemed with power, bristled electric, exploded with it. He was a supernova. Creating was his drug, addictive and irresistible. All-consuming.
He’d believed mere emotion could never compete with the power rush of slapping together worlds and watching them evolve. That love could yield no prize that might make it worth turning his back on shaping civilizations and birthing stars, building his Court of Shadows.
He’d been wrong.
When he’d found her on that tiny provincial planet in that tiny three-dimensional universe, she wasn’t the one who needed saving from her flatland existence.
Life was so simple. It always had been.
Be the conductor, forever removed from the orchestra pit.
Or be part of the song.
The Unseelie King turned his face in a general upward direction where if there were something like him standing in the wings waiting for the chance to go a long distance out of the way to return a short distance correctly, it might overhear and take up the reins, as he did what he should have done a small eternity ago.
Feversong: A Fever Novel Page 44
