ALSO BY CHARLES DE LINT
Over My Head (Book 2 of the Wildlings series)
Seven Wild Sisters (illustrated by Charles Vess)
The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (illustrated by Charles Vess)
Under My Skin (Book 1 of the Wildlings series)
The Painted Boy
Muse and Reverie (collection)
Eyes Like Leaves
The Mystery of Grace
Dingo
What the Mouse Found (collection)
Woods and Waters Wild (collection)
Little (Grrl) Lost
Promises to Keep
Widdershins
Triskell Tales 2 (collection)
The Hour Before Dawn (collection)
Quicksilver and Shadow (collection)
The Blue Girl
Medicine Road (illustrated by Charles Vess)
Spirits in the Wires
A Circle of Cats (illustrated by Charles Vess)
Tapping the Dream Tree (collection)
Waifs and Strays (collection)
A Handful of Coppers (collection)
The Onion Girl
The Road to Lisdoonvarna
Triskell Tales: 22 Years of Chapbooks (collection)
Forests of the Heart
Moonlight and Vines (collection)
Someplace to Be Flying
Trader
Jack of Kinrowan
The Ivory and the Horn (collection)
Memory and Dream
The Wild Wood
I’ll Be Watching You (as Samuel M. Key)
Into the Green
Dreams Underfoot (collection)
Spiritwalk
From a Whisper to a Scream (as Samuel M. Key)
The Little Country
The Dreaming Place
Angel of Darkness (as Samuel M. Key)
Ghostwood
Drink Down the Moon
The Valley of Thunder
Svaha
Wolf Moon
Greenmantle
Jack, the Giant Killer
Yarrow: An Autumn Tale
Mulengro: A Romany Tale
The Harp of the Grey Rose
Moonheart: A Romance
The Riddle of the Wren
FOR JOHNNY ’S FAIRY DOGMOTHERS, LINDA GARRETT & KATHY HUGHES
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
—Crowfoot saying
A soft wind’s coming in from the ocean as I pick my way from shadow to shadow through the neighbourhood.
Honestly? I’m not expecting to be right. I mean, come on. It’s three in the morning. Nobody’s going to be out here at this time of night. But I’m still careful. The guys from Black Key Securities gunning for Josh aren’t a bunch of kids waiting to beat us up after school. They’re military trained and they already took a shot at us yesterday.
Josh is in the otherworld, and if they saw what was left of Vincenzo, they might not even mess with him. But they don’t have a clue about that, so I’m doing what any good bro would: making sure things are cool over at his mom’s house.
I keep to the shadows, slipping through backyards as I make my way from my house to Josh’s. It’d be just my luck to have Santa Feliz’s finest happen to swing by on a patrol, but I do my best ninja impression and make it all the way to the Evoras’ backyard without raising an alarm. Sidling along the side of their garage, I peer down the street to Josh’s house.
I watch the street and yards, listening to the surf where it breaks against the beach at the far end of the street. There’s no movement, not even a pack rat rustling around in the hedges or up in the dead fronds of the palm trees, no one out except for me. Then I remember where the sniper was hiding when he shot at us in the barrio yesterday. I look up, checking the rooflines.
Still clear. Except if he’s on a roof, he’s not going to pick a house on the same side of the street as Josh’s. He’s going to be on the opposite side.
So I work my way back around the block, still cutting through yards until I’m in a position to see the rooftops across from Josh’s place.
And there the prick is, lying on the flat, tiled roof of the house opposite Josh’s.
Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.
All I can see is his head, but I know from experience that he’s going to be well armed. The big question is, is he here just for Josh, or is Josh’s mom in danger, too?
And what do I do about it?
Okay. It’s not like he’s a Wildling or some kind of superhero. He’s human like me, but no way am I stupid enough to go up against some ex-military guy with a gun.
And then it hits me. If I can break into Josh’s house without his mom catching me or the sniper spotting me, I can steal Josh’s phone, which the FBI are tracking, then go someplace odd enough that the Feds’ll come looking to see what Josh is up to. At that point I fill them in and they can deal with it.
But how to get into the house? If I were the hero from some action flick, I’d blow up a car as a diversion, then slip in and be gone with the phone before anyone was the wiser. Hell, I’d just sneak up on the sniper, beat the crap out of him, then make him lead me to where the rest of the rogue security detail are hiding and take them all out—problem solved.
As if.
I’d even settle for having Agent Solana’s number so I could just call him up right now and hand the mess over to him.
“Whatcha doing?” a girl’s voice asks from directly behind me.
I’m so inside my own head that I almost scream, which, dude, would be uncool on so many levels. I never heard a thing until she spoke. As it is, I bang up against the side of the house where I’m hiding, my heart pounding in my chest.
Some ninja I turn out to be.
I look over my shoulder to find a cute, skinny, sun-browned girl around my own age studying me with an amused look. The worst of my panic starts to die down. She’s sitting on her haunches and dressed for the beach in raggedy cotton pants cut off at mid-calf and a baggy T that says “Life’s a beach.” Her eyes are big in a narrow face surrounded by long dreads that are almost as thick as her slender arms.
I don’t know what she’s doing out here at this time of night, but I suppose she could ask the same of me.
“Dude,” I whisper. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
“Sorry,” she says. But her eyes and her smile say she isn’t.
“Who are you?” I ask, motioning to keep her voice low.
“I’m Donalita, not dude.” she says. “Theo said I should keep an eye on you.”
It takes me a moment to realize who she’s talking about.
“You mean Chaingang?” I ask her.
She nods. “But his real friends call him Theo.”
“Yeah, well, that’s never going to be me. I think I irritate the hell out of him.”
She grins. “Me too, but I call him Theo anyway. Why are you sneaking around in the dark?”
“How long have you been watching me?”
She shrugs. “Only a couple of minutes. You’re very good at sneaking. If I wasn’t me, I’d probably never have noticed you.”
I put that together with her telling me that Chaingang sent her.
“You’re a Wildling, aren’t you?” I say.
“Don’t be silly. I’m much older than that.”
“So you’re one of them—what do you call them—cousins?”
She laughs and says, “I’m me. Why do I have to be something else as well?”
“You need to be quiet,” I remind her.
“I’m very good at that. I’m very good at everything I do.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, that must come in handy.”
“Oh, it does,” she says, either ignoring or oblivious to my sarcasm. “So, what are you doing?”
I ease my head around the corner of the house. The sniper’s still there.
“I’m trying to figure out what to do about him,” I tell her, pointing upward and across the street.
She pushes right up beside me to have a look. Up close she smells really good—fruity with a faint undercurrent of musk. It’s like having a smoothie at the zoo. She grins, her face inches from my own, before she peers around the corner.
“So is he a bad man?” she asks.
“He wants to kill Josh—you know Josh?”
“I don’t know know him, but I know who he is.”
“Yeah, well, that guy’s with those men that kidnapped Josh a few weeks back. They definitely want to hurt him.”
“But Josh went into the otherworld,” she says, “so he’s safe. From them.”
I nod. “Except maybe they’re after his mother, too. Maybe even me and Marina.”
“Do you want to kill him?” she asks.
She has an interesting voice—girlish and throaty all at the same time—so it seems a little weird to hear her ask that so matter-of-factly. And then I start thinking about the torn-up remains of Vincenzo that we found earlier tonight. Josh literally ripped the body to shreds while in his Wildling shape.
“Dude,” I say. “Are you all so bloodthirsty?”
She blinks and gives me a blank look.
“Come on,” I say. “You’ve got to admit it’s a little freaky. You look like a cute little rasta girl”—that gets me another grin—“but you sound like Clint Eastwood doing Dirty Harry.”
“Is that a good or a bad thing?” she asks.
“Depends, I guess. For pretend, it’s kind of hot. For real, it’s kind of scary.”
“But you have to deal with your enemies,” she says.
“Right,” I tell her. “But just killing them is a little too Wild West, dude.”
“Well, what do you want to do with that man?”
I feel a little bad ragging on her, considering how I was just running through different violent scenarios myself. But I don’t roll like that for real.
So I tell her my idea of getting Josh’s phone and letting the Feds handle it.
“I can do that,” she says. “Get the phone, I mean. Where does he keep it?”
“It’ll be in his bedroom,” I tell her. “The room that backs on to the yard on the ocean side. The one on the right if you’re facing the house. But dude, you can’t just—”
I don’t get to finish. One moment the cute rasta girl is there, the next I’m looking at a coatimundi. I swear she gives me a wink from her masked features before she slips by me to scurry across the street.
I suppose I should be worried. The Black Key guys know all about Wildlings. If the sniper spots a coatimundi trying to get into Josh’s house, he’s likely to take a shot at her just out of principle. But as she takes her animal shape all I can think is, that is so cool.
I’m feeling a little shaky as I follow Tío Goyo into the otherworld. I can’t get it out of my head. What I did to Vincenzo. The mess I left behind on the headland.
All those bits and pieces that I tore up used to be an actual living being. It’s worse than when I killed the researcher at ValentiCorp. That was over so quick that I didn’t have time to even think about it. I could put it down to instinct. Defending myself and Rico. A gut-reaction payback for what she’d been doing to those kids. But this …
What kind of a monster am I becoming?
It’s not like Vincenzo left me any choice—not after threatening Mom and Marina and everybody. It’s what I did to his corpse afterward. I can’t reconcile that with who I always thought I was. What kind of a maniac does something like that?
I can’t even imagine Chaingang doing it, and he’s about as hardcore as they come. Yeah, he was a gangbanger, and pretty much the toughest guy I ever hung out with, but there was something noble about him, too. And now Chaingang’s probably dead as well.
I think about Marina, and how she could have ended up with a guy like him. I just can’t imagine them as a couple. Marina has such a sweet, gracious nature. She’s always looking out for other people’s feelings. Chaingang might’ve had his friends’ backs, but his social conscience ended there. Marina hates drugs and violence, so how did they end up together? And where could it possibly have gone? Like her parents were going to let her run around with a biker gang? Like she’d even want to be cruising around town on the back of Chaingang’s Harley while he goes about his business, dealing dope, fighting with the Riverside Kings?
Nothing makes sense anymore.
I should be back home with my friends. Trying to fix my friendship with Marina and consoling her, and just getting past all this crap. Doing whatever it is that Auntie Min thinks I should to make sure nothing bad happens to the other kids who became Wildlings.
And Mom’s going to be worried sick.
Instead, I’m literally in the middle of nowhere with some old guy I don’t know and I’m not entirely sure I can trust, looking for my ex-girlfriend who dumped me. Okay, technically, I dumped her, except Elzie was the one who gave me that either-or choice.
I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing, but with Vincenzo dead, surely Auntie Min can look out for Marina and Des.
Elzie doesn’t have anybody but me, and Vincenzo’s crew are sure to kill her when they find out what I did to him.
Theo pulls over beside the corner groceteria near Papá’s house and kills the engine. I hold on to him for a long moment, arms wrapped around his comforting presence. One of his big hands covers mine and gives them a squeeze. I could stay like this all night, but there’s still so much to do. I give Theo a last reluctant hug, then get off the bike. Theo takes my hands before I can step away, concern plain in his eyes.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.
“It’s just Ampora.”
He smiles. “Who you were ready to beat the crap out of yesterday. She pushes all your buttons, sweetcheeks.”
I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to get a rise out of me. Trying to get me out of myself so that I’ll forget the fact that Josh literally tore a man to pieces before disappearing on us without a word.
“I could call Donalita back,” he says. “I really don’t think those Black Key guys are gunning for Des anyway. I’ll get her to return to my grandma’s and then I can stay and have your back.”
I smile. “Oh, and you showing up is going to put Ampora in such a receptive mood.”
“Yeah, maybe not.”
“Besides, I’m not worried about dealing with Ampora. I’m worried about Josh.”
Theo gives me a slow nod. “I get that. I’m worried, too. But I’m also trying to figure out what changed him. The Josh I first met wasn’t all jacked up with the big cojones like the one I was with yesterday. And then there’s that whole business with Vincenzo. I’d never have thought Josh had that in him.”
I shiver, remembering the awful sight of Vincenzo after he’d been shredded by Josh in his mountain lion shape.
“Anyway,” Theo goes on, “if he can take out Vincenzo that easily, I figure he can take on anybody. So that’s not the problem. I’m more worried about how he’s handling all of this.” Theo taps his temple. “In here.”
“Me too,” I say. “He’s on his own over there, without anyone that he can trust. Plus you know what the elders say about going too deep into the otherworld.”
“He’s not all alone. You saw those other footprints. Somebody took him deeper into the otherworld.”
“Except, is it a good guy or one of Vincenzo’s friends?”
“I hear you. Here’s my take: we can beat ourselves up worrying about it, or we can deal with the problems we’ve got in front of us and trust Josh to handle himself over there.”
“It’s just …”
He pulls me close. “I know,”
he says into my hair. “You’re in mama-bear mode. But there’s nothing we can do.”
I nod when he lets me go. He’s right. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it all together the way he can, but I can at least try.
I take out my phone and text Ampora to meet me in the playground. Theo waits until I get an answer.
“Are you going to need a ride home?” he asks.
I shake my head. “I’ll either stay over at Papá’s, or I’ll need the walk to blow off steam before I have to face the music with Mamá.”
He nods. “I’m just a phone call away.”
We share a last lingering kiss, then he gets on his bike and pulls away while I walk to the playground to meet my sister. I sit on a swing, tapping my foot on the sand. She makes me wait. It’s a full ten minutes before she comes sauntering down the street from her house and drops onto the swing next to mine. I get a twinge in my gut remembering how we played endlessly together when we were kids, just like our little sisters do now.
“So, how’d your meeting go?” she asks, her voice even, which is so much better than the usual vitriol that she reserves for me.
For a moment I don’t know what she’s talking about. Then I remember that I told her about the meeting with some of the Wildling elders, but I didn’t give any details except to tell her that if she came along, it would make things harder on Josh. Now I don’t know what to say.
Do I tell her how this guy Vincenzo crashed the meeting? How he killed Tomás and almost killed Theo? That Theo—who she knows better as Chaingang—is my boyfriend and we’re both Wildlings? That Cory went into Theo’s head and literally pulled him back out of a part of the otherworld called the dreamlands? How Josh tore Vincenzo into pieces in his Wildling shape, then disappeared into those same dreamlands?
She wouldn’t understand any of that. I can barely believe Josh ever told her he’s a Wildling, or that she’s suddenly crushing on him.
“Good,” is all I say. “Thanks for covering for me.”
“I wasn’t just doing it for you,” she says. “How’s Josh? Is he okay?”
“Josh … went away.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
My heart begins to sink as I hear the faint edge of her usual belligerence.