Out of This World

  He says “ask,” but it’s taken more like a command because the crowd immediately breaks up and fades back into the shadows. The last to go are Stacy and Lionel. For a moment she looks as if she’s about to talk to me, but then she drops her gaze again and follows the others.

  Lionel remains rooted to the spot, his face clouded with anger. “We have to make a plan,” he says.

  Canejo shakes his head. “We already have a plan. You will go away because you’re making our guest uncomfortable. She and I will remain here with Thorn to get to know one another.”

  “But—”

  “If you feel the need to be doing something, you might brew us a pot of tea to drink while we await Nanuq’s arrival.”

  Lionel draws back his lips and gives me such a glare that I feel the only thing he really wants to do is bury that mouthful of sharp teeth in my neck. But then he gives Canejo a brief nod and stalks away.

  “You must forgive them,” Canejo says as he ushers me to some couches on the far side of the foyer.

  I’m surprised everything’s so well taken care of in here. Outside, it looks like World War III hit a decade or so ago and it’s all gone downhill since. Inside, we could be in the foyer of some corporate building in my own world—without power, of course, but the polished marble floors are spotless, the couches are firm and clean, and the air smells fresh instead of like old pee, the way it did in the stairwell of the building where Thorn and I ate lunch.

  Thorn drops onto one end of the couch and the whole thing shivers a little from his weight. I take the other corner, leaving room for Canejo, but he opts to sit on the low, wooden coffee table facing both of us. I look past him to the other side of the glass doors and walls, my length of pipe laid across my knees.

  Outside, the condors are as motionless as statues, but the fury in their eyes speaks volumes, while around them more and more dogs arrive. Some take human form, both male and female. They stack brush, then start fires in the piles they’ve made.

  The whole scene is eerie as hell, but if everyone’s sure they’ll stay outside, I suppose I should relax. I lean my pipe against the side of the sofa and ignore the twitch in my hands that wants me to keep holding it.

  “How did you come to find yourself in Dainnan?” Canejo asks.

  I nod toward the dog men. “They chased me here. I thought I was escaping them, but I guess they were just herding me to this place.”

  “They had no choice, you know,” Canejo says.

  I glance over at Thorn and back at Canejo before speaking. “Thorn says that they’re controlled by somebody—one of the condors, I guess. Or this Nanuq guy, if he’s the one that’s carrying around the controller.”

  I pause for a moment, then add, “But you’re not scared of any of them, are you? Not the dogs outside, not Nanuq. Even though everybody else is.”

  Canejo shrugs. “They can’t hurt me. I wasn’t supposed to be in this little prison of theirs. I stumbled upon it when they took some students of mine. But once I was here, they couldn’t let me leave for fear of what I might reveal to other cousins. I’d been looking for a good place to conduct my teachings, so it hasn’t been all bad.”

  “So you can’t get out, either?”

  “There is only one passage out of Dainnan and that’s controlled by whoever holds the token.”

  “You’ve tried to get hold of it?”

  That gets me another shrug, then he says, “I can do my work anywhere, but here, my students need me more than ever.”

  “What work is that?” I ask.

  “I teach my students how to fulfill their potential—to become the best that they can be.”

  I look past him at the condors and the dog cousins. “That doesn’t explain why they’re all scared of you.”

  “They aren’t scared, so much as cautious. I am an old cousin. I wasn’t here when Raven first pulled the world out of that big black pot of his, but it wasn’t much longer after that before Coyote was chasing me through the new world. Young pups like those outside are no match for me—not even with their greater numbers—and I have dealt with the Condor Clan a time or two. They know better than to test me.”

  I imagine Theo here, rolling his eyes, but I believe him. He sounds a lot like Auntie Min.

  “And Nanuq?” I have to ask. “What about him?”

  “He’s Polar Bear Clan. We have never had occasion to physically assess each other.”

  I look again at Thorn sitting quietly on the other end of the couch, then back at Canejo.

  “And you don’t think trapping you in this world is reason enough to take him down? Or at least to try?”

  “I told you. I have—”

  “Your work. Right.”

  It seems the older a cousin is, the harder they are to understand. How can he not be mad at being stuck here? And how can his students reach their potential in such a confined setting? But I decide to let those questions lie. Straight answers from elder cousins are few and far between.

  “So now, little otter”—Canejo leans forward, cupping his chin, elbow on his knee—“tell me how Vincenzo died.”

  Snapped back to the world Tío Goyo brought me to, I sense that the fragile reality of my spirit form is about to dissipate into the air all around me. I forget how magic’s all about belief, focus and will. Instead, I panic and rush toward the ground where I’m somehow able to call up my body from the earth, no worse for wear except for a splitting headache. I lie face down on the ground, grateful to still have fingers to dig into the earth and anchor me. Content to press my cheek against the dirt and weeds.

  It takes me a few moments to regain my composure enough so that I can sit up. The pain between my temples feels like a snare drum that Marina’s using to bang out an energetic drum solo. I shift to my mountain lion shape, then back, and the pain’s gone, the same way that bruises and other hurts are healed by the shift, though now I’m hungry. I try to ignore the hollow feeling in my stomach.

  With my head clear again, I try to figure out what went wrong. Because I was doing so well …

  I take a steadying breath and call up the map in my head. It appears as soon as I think of it, and with it are the maps of the other two worlds I visited, which surprises me. I thought I’d have to work at reclaiming them. I study them from all sides. They’re laid on top of each other, but I can see them together, or separately. It’s like looking at a three-dimensional tic-tac-toe board, only from different perspectives.

  It’s weird and takes a bit of adjustment.

  Once I figure it out, it’s easy to trace the trail of the de Padillas as they moved from world to world.

  So what kicked me out when I got to the third one?

  The only way to find out is to go back and do it all again— only this time, pay close attention to everything around me. I also decide to return to human form once I’ve arrived at each world, which is how I eventually end up standing on the narrow road where I got snapped back to my starting point.

  I don’t move, anticipating a repeat of what happened before. But this time I remain in place. I hear the night sounds of a forest all around me. My map lets me pinpoint where each comes from. A pair of deer. A hunting fox. Innumerable mice, voles and other rodents going about their business. Expanding the map, I locate the village again. Almost everybody is asleep.

  I roll my shoulders to ease my tension.

  Okay. Time to move on.

  I repeat the whole procedure and end up on a slightly larger road. There’s still forest all around me, but the air’s cooler and it’s closer to dawn than it was in the world I just left. The first hint of the rising sun pinks the eastern horizon.

  I follow the de Padillas’ scent trail, staying in human form, until it vanishes between one step and the next. I cast around to be sure—on the road, in the overgrown hedges on either side. But just before I let my body fall from me again, I sense someone approaching.

  I hesitate, caught between wanting to move on and curiosity. My head tells me nothing
of who this stranger might be—only of his approach and that he’s a cousin. His animal shape is a— hummingbird? I can deal with a hummingbird cousin. I’ve got a mountain lion under my skin. I can take a step and be back in the last world I was in. I can drop my body completely and be just a spirit. There’s no need for me to feel anxious at all.

  So I wait for his approach.

  I won’t lie. I’m pissed that I’m not the one going over to find Marina, but I can’t pretend to know her as well as Des. And if that’s what it’s going to take for him and Cory to find her, I’ll step aside. But not for long. And there’ll be hell to pay if they blow it.

  Auntie Min tells me what she wants me to do, then she and her crow boys step away into the otherworld, taking the bodies of the dead with them. A few of the crows are still hanging around in the trees.

  J-Dog makes a finger gun and pretends to shoot at them.

  “Just say the word, bro,” he tells me.

  I don’t bother to answer. I head back to the clubhouse. I can feel the guys checking with J-Dog before they fall in behind me. When we get inside I pop a beer and sit down on a sofa, prop my legs up on a plastic milk crate and wait until everybody’s settled with their beers in hand. Then I tell them what they need to know, about Lenny, and me, and the whole Wildling thing.

  “What kind of Wildling are you?” Shorty wants to know.

  He’s skinny and tall, hair in cornrows, a dagger tat under his left eye. It’s ballpoint blue—a jail tat made with a pin and ink from the cartridge of a pen. He’s got his feet up on the same crate I’m using to rest my own.

  I boot his feet so they fall off the crate. “Doesn’t matter and don’t ask,” I tell him.

  J-Dog chuckles. “Which means he’s some little lame-ass sparrow or lizard or something.”

  Close, but I just shrug. Like I’m going to give them the ammo to rag on me for the next ten years. Soon as they know, I’ll go from Chaingang to Mouseboy. Yeah, not going to happen. But the guys laugh and a tension I hadn’t really registered leaves the room.

  Dekker lifts his beer bottle to get my attention.

  “Yo, bro,” he says. “Why you let that old lady talk trash to you?”

  “Same reason I let my grandma. She deserves the respect.”

  “You don’t always do what your grandma says. If you’d listened to her, you’d never be riding with us.”

  “Some things, nobody else gets to decide for you,” I say.

  “Yeah? So’s your grandma as much of a—”

  J-Dog points a finger at him. “Careful where you’re going with that, homey. She’s my grandma, too.” Then he turns to me. “You serious about this, bro? You jump at that old lady’s word? You going to get into bed with the goddamn po-leece?”

  “It’s not like that. It’s just using the right tools to do the right thing.”

  “Since when do we care about that shit?” Bull asks. He gets his name honestly. He’s not tall, but he’s built like an ox.

  “I’m not asking anybody to step up,” I tell him.

  J-Dog shakes his head. “You don’t get to make that decision.”

  “Yeah, then who—”

  He cuts me off. Turns to the guys.

  “Anybody got more questions?” he asks.

  He looks around at them all, and one by one, each shakes his head.

  “Chaingang’s one of these animal freaks now,” he says, “but he still rides with us—am I right? Once an Ocean Avenue Crip, always.”

  “We’re family,” Shorty says. “A brotherhood.”

  Bull nods. “Nobody walks away and we don’t turn our back on any of us.”

  Shorty smiles. “Even if he is a sparrow.”

  I point a finger at him. “I told you. Don’t even start—”

  “Shut up,” J-Dog says. “It’s settled. Go talk to the Feds. Figure out what you need. Then you come back and tell us, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “End of discussion, bro. You need backup on this?”

  I shake my head.

  “Then get your butt outta here and do what needs to be done.”

  I step outside and call the number that Auntie Min gave me—I guess she got it from Josh or Des, though knowing her, she could have just pulled it out of her ass. It rings once, then I hear Agent Solana’s voice.

  I name a place, then add, “Be there. I’m on my way.”

  I hang up before he can ask his first question.

  I’m waiting at the picnic table on the beach where Donalita first took me to see Cory—man, was that only yesterday? The weather’s nice—warm and sunny, with a light breeze coming in from the ocean, so the usual crowd’s out. Surfers waiting on the swells that they’ll ride in to shore. Dog walkers. Joggers. Families. Kids playing volleyball or just chilling. I get an ache thinking about how Marina would love to be out there on her board.

  I hardly get settled on the bench before a dark sedan pulls into the parking space beside my Harley. I watch the two FBI agents get out and look around themselves, assessing the situation. The lot’s about two-thirds full and between the cars and the people, there’s plenty to check out. They’re studying every vehicle and every person with suspicion. When they see me, they approach from either side, hands under their coats, ready to draw their sidearms at the first hint of danger.

  I stay where I am, palms flat on the table, and wait. The last thing anybody wants is a firestorm on a crowded beach.

  “You know what we do with assholes who yank our chain?” Matteson says when he finally reaches the table.

  He leans on the slats, towering over me. I want to grab his throat and show him exactly who’s the asshole, but I let it ride. For now.

  “No,” I say, keeping my voice mild, “but I’m sure you’re dying to tell me. But if I were you? I’d hear me out before running off at the mouth.”

  Solana is still scanning the beach, the parking lot, like he’s expecting an ambush.

  “Sure, tough guy,” Matteson says. “So start talking before we pull you in.”

  Good luck with that, I want to say. Yeah, it could play out that way. He takes me in, J-Dog’s lawyer will bust me out within the hour. But that won’t get us anywhere.

  So I ignore him. Instead, I turn to Solana and jerk a thumb in his partner’s direction.

  “How much does he know?” I ask.

  “Know about what?” Matteson cuts in.

  “Everything,” Solana says.

  “Is that right?” I say.

  Which begs the question, how much does Solana really know? But hey, not my problem. I’m just the messenger today. The elders want to keep secrets, they should let me know which ones.

  So I lay it out for them with a few edits. I leave out that Josh killed Vincenzo; I just say that we found out the condor dude is dead. I don’t bring up how I had the dog men ambushed— their bodies are gone now, anyway. And I don’t talk about my relationship with Marina.

  Mainly, I deliver Auntie Min’s warning that Congressman Householder—and maybe a bunch of innocent bystanders—is going to end up dead unless we protect him at his damn anti-Wildlings rally this Saturday.

  Matteson sits down on the bench opposite me. “You know what this sounds like, right?” he says. “I mean, how do we know you’re not setting this up to get some intel on the congressman’s schedule?”

  “You don’t. But we both know that asshole never shuts up about his freaking save-the-poor-humans rally. It’s as public as you can get.”

  “So now what?” Matteson asks. “Are we supposed to give you a merit badge, or a get-out-of-jail-free card?”

  I’d like to tell him where to shove his merit badge, but I clamp it down. “You can do whatever you want,” I say. “I just passed along a message.”

  “We can still run you in,” Matteson says.

  I ignore him again and turn my attention to Solana. “Auntie Min thought you might feel that way. She told me to say, ‘Alejandro Maria Solana, I bid you to he
lp this man, by my word and the will of the Halcón Pueblo.’”

  Matteson stares up at Solana. “Your middle name is Maria?”

  Solana ignores him, his gaze steady on my own. “What does she want from me?”

  “Jesus,” Matteson says. “You’re not actually going to listen to this—”

  Solana holds his palm up and Matteson shuts his trap. There’s a long pause, then Solana turns to him and says, “Maybe you should walk away. Right now, while you still can. What you don’t know, they can’t hold you responsible for.”

  Matteson sits up straighter, squaring his shoulders. “That’s what you want? You’d swap your partner for this low-life?”

  “Hey. Sitting right here,” I say. But I might as well be on the moon, for all the attention they’re paying me.

  Solana is shaking his head. “If this goes bad, I don’t want to drag you down with me.”

  “And if it was me, telling you to walk away?” Matteson asks.

  “I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Exactly. If you’re in, I’m in. End of discussion.”

  “Anybody ever tell you two that you’re like an old married couple?” I ask.

  They both look at me.

  “Shut up,” Matteson says.

  He puts his elbows on the table and studies me for a moment. “So Josh up and left,” he says. “Of his own accord.”

  “That’s how the signs read.”

  “His poor mother,” Matteson says. “That lady’s already been put through the mill. You’d think he’d at least say goodbye before screwing off.”

  I guess that means they went to check on her, but I’m not going to ask. Instead I just shrug. “Not my business.”

  “And you say Marina Lopez has gone missing?”

  I nod.

  “She’s not the only one,” Matteson says. “We’ve got missing persons reports on almost a dozen kids in the past few weeks— all of them with some kind of Wildling connection. And don’t even start trying to tell me that you and your friends aren’t Wildlings, too.”