by Trisha Leigh
Come on, Cadi. If you’re out there, now would be a great time for a magic message about how we can travel with our own powers.
She doesn’t answer. Not that I expected her to, but sometimes it’s still nice to pretend there are still loving Spritans looking out for us.
The sound of snow crunching under boots interrupts our frustration, and we make our way back toward the fence, staying under the cover of the trees until we see Leah. Only she’s not alone.
I recognize the thick blond braid and stop in my tracks. Both Leah’s and Brittany’s faces pale at the sight of Wolf, but right now, I’m more concerned with the fact that Brittany also looks undone at the sight of Pax and I. We’re getting to see a veiled human, to gauge her reaction to us. It looks as though our enchantment is holding, but not as completely as it once did. She doesn’t go all mad, but she doesn’t accept me as readily as she did a few months ago, either.
“Is that a…an animal? A wolf?” Leah’s normally confident tone slips out in a shocked whisper.
I shoot Pax a triumphant look. “See, everyone but you thinks he’s a wolf.”
“He’s a dog—”
A weird, gurgling noise issues from Brittany and cuts off our disagreement. Her light eyes flick from Wolf to Pax to me in a wild circle—a reaction I’ve seen before. “Pax, she’s freaking out.”
Leah’s eyes widen, panic growing. “I’m sorry. I brought her because I hoped you’d fix her, too, so I wouldn’t be alone. I’ll help her, I promise. She won’t be mean the way I was at first when they were still sort of inside me.” Leah’s babbling now, tears running down her cheeks.
As angry as I am that she’s put us in this position, her words reach out and cling to the memories of my old life, to all of the days I would have given anything for a friend. I can’t blame her for this.
Pax and I hold a silent conversation that ends with a shrug on his end. “We have to do something. It won’t hurt, if your friend thinks she can keep Blondie under control.”
I step forward, not unsure or scared the way I was with the Healer or even with Leah, and punch open the gate again. “You have to come out here with us so we can contain her.”
“Outside the boundary?” Leah squeaks.
“Who are you people? What are you doing with an animal? We should tell a Monitor. You could be sick. We could all be sick!” Brittany’s voice rises higher with every word.
“Leah. Now,” I demand softly.
Pax reaches out quickly and wraps a firm arm around Brittany’s waist. She struggles, wheezing as her breath comes in terrified gasps, so I press against her other side and we drag her into the Wilds. Leah keeps up, staying as far away from Wolf as possible.
We manage to get Brittany to the sun-warmed boulders we used earlier as a thinking spot. Pax turns her toward me and I grab her hands, forcing her to make eye contact. I try reaching out for her mind with mine, thinking perhaps if I can feel my way like I can in the Other tunnels, I can simply find the veil and take it down. Like building the wall.
It doesn’t work, so I go back to the tactic we discovered by accident.
Brittany, there’s no need to be scared. You know me. I’m Althea, we were Cellmates last autumn. She stops struggling as fear leaves, replaced by confusion at my voice in her head. That’s right. The Others aren’t what they say. They’ve been controlling everything. Everyone. But not you. Not anymore.
Brittany shakes her head, clouds rolling clear of her vision after several minutes. She still looks confused, and until she speaks I’m scared that it didn’t work, that she’s Broken for good. She stares at Wolf for a moment, then Leah, then Pax, and finally me. It’s not frantic like before, though. It’s more like she’s trying to figure out what to say.
Her voice is shaking when she finds it. “How did this happen? How could I not have known? I feel different. Lighter. More free. But all these years, those pieces of my thoughts that escaped before I could catch them never felt important. Why?”
If only we knew why the human brains don’t recognize the alien presence in their minds and rebel against it. They do, in a way, I guess, but the yearly Purging ceremony takes care of their lingering defiance by emptying the stored-up feelings. “We don’t know. But Leah can fill you in on everything we do know.”
“Like that animals aren’t dangerous?” Her eyes are riveted to Wolf.
“Well, he’s not exactly not dangerous, but he seems to like us okay.” Pax is joking but I shoot him a look, shaking my head.
“What about your cat? Is it crawling with fleas?” Leah interjects.
“Cat?” I follow Leah’s gaze, finding a yellow cat not unlike the one I glimpsed in that Iowa tree. It lazes in the sun several yards away, licking a slim paw while watching us with disinterested eyes. The thing isn’t big enough to frighten me. It’s not like the animal that attacked Wolf—this one is even smaller than a raccoon.
But it’s unsettling, the way that I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before. “That’s not our cat.”
“Can I touch the wolf dog?” Brittany’s plaintive curiosity is a little bothersome, making me wonder if I hurt her somehow. She’s always been kind of a bold girl, though.
Pax and I exchange a wary glance.
“Um, yeah. He likes it when you scratch his ears.”
Wolf stands perfectly still as she approaches, her hand outstretched, palm facing the ground. Brittany’s soft intake of breath at the touch of her skin on his fur delights me, in spite of my worry over her soundness of mind. Leah joins her a moment later, and their awed smiles make the entire trip to Danbury worth it. Not only have we told them the Others are liars, but with Wolf’s presence, we’ve shown them, too.
“You girls should get back. Your hour is almost up.” Regret deepens Pax’s voice.
They step away from Wolf looking enthralled and sad to leave him behind.
Leah reaches into her backpack and hands me several cans of vegetables. “Thank you, Althea. I’ll tell Brittany everything. You can count on us.”
They turn to go, and it makes me sad and a little relieved at the same time. It’s a nice feeling, there being more than two people who know what I am and don’t care. But Leah and Brittany are our responsibility now. We follow and close the gate after they pass back through. Something occurs to me and I call out, causing Leah to turn around.
“Yeah?”
“If you see Lucas…” There are so many things I want Lucas to know, but not a lot that I want to say in front of Pax. Or Leah and Brittany, for that matter. Instead I swallow and force a smile. “Tell him I’ll find him.”
She nods, and Pax and I watch until they disappear.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know.” As usual, Pax’s refusal to lie is a strange comfort.
Honestly, I want to figure out how to leave this place, to get to Portland and find out what happened to little Tommy. Because now, more than ever, I want to focus on finding Lucas.
We’re headed back to the rock we’ve been using as a seat when the yellow cat with the purplish eyes plants itself in our path. Pax and I stop and stare at it. It stares back.
Then it flickers, shifts, stretches…and turns into a boy.
CHAPTER 22.
I scream, stumbling back into Pax. We tangle and fall in a heap in the cold snow. Ringing laughter meets my ears, coming from the tall boy with shoulder-length yellow hair that used to be a cat. His impossibly purple eyes overflow with mirth, infuriating me.
“How did you do that?” I demand.
The boy tries to swallow his laughter, eyes twinkling. “What do you mean? Do what?”
“You were a cat! Right in midair, you changed into”—I gesture from his head to his toes—“you.”
“Did I, now? That’s a strange thing to see. Could be your eyes are playing tricks.”
Pax untangles from me, standing and brushing off his clothes. Now that the initial shock has settled, fear grabs me in a firm grasp. This boy is a
stranger, one with powerful abilities, and we shouldn’t trust him. I slide a worried glance toward Pax, trying to communicate that we need to handle this situation carefully, but his face reflects a curious calm.
He nods at the boy, who grunts in response.
“Do you two know each other?” It finally dawns on me to ask.
A reluctant whoosh of air spills past Pax’s lips. “He’s the one I told you about. Who brought me the bracelet, who helps Ko sometimes with running errands.”
As I study the stranger, no longer frightened but still curious, the memory of not only the cat in Iowa, but the golden bird in the cabin, the strange little lizard in Wyoming—all yellow with purple eyes—clicks into place. “You’ve been spying on us.”
He doesn’t admit to anything, just squints into the sun. “Do you want that help or not?”
“What on Earth are you talking about?”
He rolls his eyes as though I’m asking the dumbest questions in the history of questions. A heavy sigh follows. “About an hour ago? Oh Cadi, help us please we can’t figure this out, wah, wah, wah, blah, blah, et cetera.”
My mouth drops open. “I didn’t say any of that out loud!”
“And you’re not Cadi.” Pax regains his powers of speech in time to save me from smacking the impertinent stranger across the face.
If I could even catch him, which I sense wouldn’t be easy. There’s something inhuman about the way he moves; it’s like watching water in motion. As though he could collapse into droplets on a whim, rearrange his molecules into steam, and float away. Of course, maybe none of that is really that strange, considering he just changed from a cat into a person.
“No. I’m Griffin. Cadi is, shall we say, indisposed, but asked for my help.”
Suspicion tickles my thoughts, scratching a bit like the wrong end of a feather sticking out of a pillow. “How do we know she sent you? You’ve been following us for weeks.”
“Please. I wasn’t following you. More like checking in to see if you’d managed to die yet. It will be a shame if the Spritans’ efforts go to waste.”
His word games make my head hurt, and the callous indifference toward our lives seeps pain into my heart. It’s hard to tell if he really cares about Cadi or Ko, or about what they hope to accomplish. “I’m Althea. This is Pax. But maybe you already know all of that.”
“I do.”
“Can we cut the crap?” Pax snaps. “Tell us how you know about us. And Cadi.”
“Strange, those questions. Here I thought all you wanted was to get to Portland in a hurry.” Griffin acts as though it’s perfectly normal to know what we’ve been discussing for weeks.
He leaps from where he’s standing onto the top of the boulder, landing gracefully on one foot. The jump takes him several feet into the air, heightening my curiosity about what exactly he might be, because he’s definitely not human.
“What are you?” Pax notices the boy’s unusual qualities as well.
“It hurts that you don’t appreciate my human qualities. Really, it does.”
Pax and I creep toward where Griffin has taken a seat. Neither of us speaks, and I for one am determined to wait him out. We’ve only met two kinds of beings who know who we are without being told: Cadi and Ko, and the Others. Griffin resembles a little of both, but with an essence that’s also completely unique.
My conversation with Cadi in the woods last autumn explodes in my memory. About how the Others took females from Sprita to breed with so they could steal their magic genes. And Cadi said the Others had taken species before and after them. Could Griffin be Something Else like us, an example of the Others’ attempt to create the most effective version of themselves?
“Are you part Other?” I ask.
“Well, at least one of you has a brain between your ears. Okay. I’m going to give you a two-minute history lesson and answer three questions. Only three, no more. After that, if you want my help to get to Portland, I’ll take you there. If not, you can continue to try to figure it out on your own. You might, eventually, although I daresay it could take you a while. Do we have a deal?”
It’s not like I’m going to turn down the chance to learn more about this planet. I nod, and after a moment Pax does, too, even though it looks like it pains him to do so. Pax holds his entire body stiff, as though he’s suddenly made out of metal. It won’t surprise me if he creaks when he moves. He seemed unhappy detailing his previous interaction with Griffin, too, so I guess it makes sense that’s he’s not jumping for joy at this appearance.
“Okay. Baby history. I am descended from a race called the Sidhe. Over half of our people left home, a planet called Lionn, thousands of years ago. They made a new home here on Earth, living, well, more or less in harmony with the humans. When the Others arrived almost twenty years ago, we were not susceptible to their mind control and therefore presented the only legitimate threat on this planet. My people were driven to near extinction. Many died off, or reverted to simple life-forms. The Others murdered some, and the very unlucky were enslaved. Once the Others learned of our extraordinary talents, they began to manipulate our genetics.” A self-satisfied, twisted smile flinches across his face. “It did not go as planned.”
Cadi said that, too. That some species hadn’t weathered the genetic probing as well as the Spritans. I wonder if I want to know what happened to the Sidhe. He falls silent, and I think that’s the end of our lesson. It didn’t last two minutes. He owes us more free information before we have to decide what three questions to ask.
“My twin sister and I are the only Sidhe that remain.”
This time he is finished, evidenced by the way he spreads his hands toward us, inviting our questions. I want to ask what a twin sister is, but that seems like a silly thing to waste a question on. Perhaps we’ll learn it another time.
Pax and I try conferring in silence, but there are too many variables and it doesn’t work very well. I give up first. “Okay, we each get one question, then we’ll agree on a third?”
He nods, then goes first without asking. “How did Cadi send you to help us?”
“She heard Red here asking for help. She and Ko have some extra connection to you four because of the protections you carry around, and to my sister and I through magic. Cadi is no longer authorized to go anywhere unescorted, and they’ve got both her and Ko locked in rooms that prevent physical manifestations of magic. She simply asked me to come and take you to Portland. I’m not typically inclined to be helpful, you understand, but I make exceptions when it suits me.”
Griffin gave us more information with that answer than I expected, and it takes me a second to decide what else exactly I want to know. I’m curious what exception he sees in helping Pax and I, but the lure of Earth’s history and the Others’ invasion proves too much to deny, and I settle on my question. “What abilities did the Others hope to glean from your people?”
This time, the smile on Griffin’s lips conveys undiluted pride. “The Sidhe are an ancient race. Far older than the Others and much more powerful. We can change shapes, as you saw, and magic is as natural to us as breathing. Our elders who chose to revert to simple forms became part of the universe’s essence once again in the form of wind, or water, or trees. The Others saw only our magic, particularly the shape-shifting abilities, and wished it for themselves. They can take on alien forms, as they’ve done with their human bodies, but it’s not innate as it is for us.”
“Why didn’t the genetic manipulation work?”
If Griffin notices I’ve asked a third question, he doesn’t say a word. “Our magic is not light and malleable, as it is for the Spritans. The Sidhe are…what is a good word for you to understand? Troublemakers? Our magic is dark and old. Heavy. It cannot be tampered with, and the children born of Other and Sidhe mixtures retained none of the desired Other traits. Especially the ability to control our minds. The Prime Other killed everyone but Greer—that’s my sister—and myself in a furious rage. I’m not sure why he kept us alive, t
o be honest, unless they wish to try again at some point. It’s been years since they’ve been to see us. Perhaps they’ve forgotten we exist.”
I wish they would forget Pax and Lucas and I exist. The difference is that the Others believe Griffin and Greer have nothing they want, and they’re kept locked away where they can’t pose any kind of threat. Perhaps if they caught us, we could make them believe we’re not a threat and they would leave us to rot in a prison.
I think I’d rather be dead.
An endless supply of questions remains. I want to know how he’s standing here talking to us if he and his sister are prisoners. What kind of favor does he owe Cadi? Are she and Ko okay? Does he know where we can find Deshi? How many more half-breeds exist in the Other tunnels besides the Sidhe, the Spritans, and the four of us?
But we only get one more question, and I have no idea which one is more important, or even if any of them matter at all. All of a sudden, I’m exhausted. Like Griffin’s presence has sucked out all my energy.
“If the Others have you and your sister imprisoned, how can you be here?” Pax voices the next inquiry, sounding tired out by this interaction as well.
Griffin hops down, light as a feather. “You already asked your three.”
He’s right, of course. I realize now I’d been silly to think he hadn’t noticed. This is not a boy who misses anything at all.
A couple of feet away, he raises both hands in front of him. He spreads them out wide, tearing a hole in the afternoon air that shimmers and ripples around the outer edge of his…I guess it’s a portal. Griffin glances over his shoulder at us as though this is the most normal event ever, as though he yawned instead of pulling open a gap in the universe.
Pax’s mouth is open, making me realize mine is, too. We don’t get any more questions, though, so we stand and stare until Griffin rolls his eyes again.
