“Hey,” he said in that intimate nonwhisper tone that made my stomach flutter. “Tell me about your mom.”
“She’s fine,” I said, not quite looking him in the eye, and told him what Mom had written about the Tribunal.
“Leave no trace for the unbelievers to find, that’s Ximon’s way,” Caleb said, leaning against the counter. “Where did your mom and Richard go?”
“She didn’t tell me where, in case the e-mail account gets hacked.” I leaned against the opposite counter. Avoiding his gaze meant my eyes had to trace the small veins in his biceps, his smooth brown skin, how his jeans hugged his hips.
“Your mom’s tough,” he said. “I see where you get it.”
“I’m adopted,” I said. “I didn’t inherit . . .”
“You think genes are the only things you can inherit?”
I accidentally looked up and met his smiling gaze. Warmth stole over me. “I guess not,” I said. “She wasn’t tough enough to stop Richard from hiding out and waiting for the Tribunal though.”
“He what?” He leaned forward in surprise. “But they’re okay?”
“Yeah, Ximon and his group didn’t see them, but Mom and Richard watched him arrive with some other guys in a white van. Lazar’s sister Amaris was there too.”
He straightened. “Oh?”
“Mom said she was upset at Lazar’s injuries, but then she laid her hands on him, and seconds later, he sat up, looking fine.”
He leaned back again. “She healed him.”
“She can do that?” I said. “I don’t get it. How does that fit into being an objurer? Can all of them do that?”
“She’s not an objurer or otherkin,” he said. “Once in a generation, a healer is born. Amaris is the youngest in the world. She’s still learning how to harness her ability.”
“Does she acquire the healing from Othersphere? Or is it something else?”
“Healing is much harder than shifting or calling something forth from shadow,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly how it works, but she pulls energy from Othersphere that makes the body whole. My mom had a theory. She said everyone in this world has a shadow double in Othersphere, a doppelganger. Somehow the healer finds the vibration of the healthy body of the double and uses it to create health in someone here.”
I frowned, trying to work that out. “So, she sucks the life out of someone in Othersphere and transfers it to that person’s double in our world.”
“We don’t know what it does to the shadow double,” he said. “We can’t cross over into Othersphere to find out. The Tribunal thinks it’s a blessing from God if one of theirs is born with the ability, and a curse from the devil if it’s one of ours.”
“At least they’re consistent in their inconsistency,” I said.
“Healers are rare, and very valuable. It’s a huge advantage to the Tribunal to have one working for them.”
“Because they can’t heal like shifters can.” An idea struck me. “Is that why we heal when we shift? Are we drawing health or whatever from our shadow double?”
“That’s the theory.” He cracked a half smile. “Smart girl strikes again.”
I didn’t respond, torn between feeling good at his compliment and wanting to know the truth. Truth won. “Who were you talking to on the phone this afternoon?”
“What?” His eyebrows arched. “I wasn’t talking to anyone.”
“I saw you on the phone while you were standing over by Lazar’s Beemer.” I mimicked his earlier stance, hand to ear.
“Oh, then.” He looked away. “It’s not important.”
“You had the phone to your ear,” I said. “That’s not how you play games or access the web.”
“Or listen to messages.” His expression turned stony. “I keep old messages and sometimes I replay them so I can hear my mother’s voice. I told you it’s not important.” He headed for the kitchen door.
The pain in his voice drained all the anger out of me. “I’m sorry,” I said. He kept walking, and I grabbed onto the back of his sweatshirt, making him turn around. “I’m really sorry, Caleb. It’s just . . .” I broke off, unable to figure out how the next part went.
He studied me for a long moment. “Last night,” he said. “You don’t trust me now because of last night.”
“I know you’re lying to me,” I said. “Not necessarily about the phone call today, but about the earlier one, and other times too.”
His hand moved like he was reaching for mine, then pulled back. “I should’ve never let it go so far, but you’re a magnet.”
I cleared my throat. My voice came out very small. “Why can’t we be . . . ?”
“We just can’t,” he said.
“Is there someone else?” I said. The last thing I wanted to hear was “yes,” but at least then I’d know what was going on.
“I told you, it’s complicated,” he said, his voice taking on a firm “no more questions” tone. “Maybe . . .” He stopped himself, then shook his head. “The important thing is that you’re safe here. And maybe they’ll find out something about your birth parents. You need to forget about me. I won’t be here much longer.”
I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. I tried to imagine being here without him, my one friend in this mysterious, lonely new world.
Damn it, I wasn’t going to cry. Not in front of him. I clamped down on the hollow feeling and kept my voice cool. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’ll stay for a little while longer, but this isn’t a school for callers. Morfael’s been more than kind, but I have to earn my own way through the world.”
“He seems to think you’re an asset here, teaching us about technology.”
“It’s charity, and I appreciate it, but I’m not earning my keep,” he said. “And I have things to do.”
“I get it,” I said. Anger circled around the edges of the pain inside me. “You’ve finished leading me on, so it’s time to go.”
His face tightened as I walked past him, out of Morfael’s house and into the dark of the early evening. The other kids were back in the library, researching their papers, but I felt the urge to run, to scream. The cold autumn wind cut through my sweatshirt as I paced past the tree I had climbed earlier, a rising tide of emotion flooding through me. Fur would be warmer. And cat’s eyes would be better for a walk through the woods at night.
I walked to the oak I’d climbed earlier and leaned against it, missing my own tree, the lightning tree, back in Burbank.
Why was shifting so scary? So far it had been safe, and I’d proven I could shift back to human.
Don’t be afraid of yourself.
Maybe I was starting to understand what Mom meant by that. It was easier to pretend I was fine, that I was strong, that nothing hurt me. Facing up to the reality of who I might be was much scarier.
A longing to run through the grass and feel the night air started up like a purr inside me. I wanted to leave the pain of everything behind, even for just a few moments. I pushed through the fear and shifted in a heartbeat, and all the cool scents of the forest washed through me. A breeze ruffled my fur, and I cocked my ears to catch the skittering insects among the leaves.
A small voice in my head worried.
You shouldn’t be able to shift four times in one day.
But I didn’t want to think about that now. Digging my claws into its bark, I climbed up into the rough arms of the oak, just as I had when I was a kid. Cradled there, I felt homesickness and fear of the future overwhelm me. Some of the oak’s dying leaves brushed my whiskers, and I let myself believe I wasn’t alone.
CHAPTER 18
A week passed in a blur of shifting, classes, workouts, meals, and avoiding Caleb. I met Raynard, the burly fifty-ish caretaker who came every other day to do the laundry, mend things, and grumble under his breath. We weren’t exactly introduced. He grunted at me when I said hello as we filed past him hosing down the cave floor one morning. It was hard to picture that schlubby figure getting romantic with anyone, let alone the elegant, alien Morfael.
Morfael’s decision to teach us to use the weapons the Tribunal used against us lead to lessons in gunfire. It made sense to teach the shifters modern warfare, but I had to watch and listen to Caleb when he made us put on gloves and shoot the silver gun we found in Lazar’s BMW. Having him so close made me ache all over. Maybe that’s why I fared the worst on the shooting range, although I also hated the noise and smell of the gun. Even with the gloves on, the silver burned my hands. I couldn’t wait to shift after that to heal my itchy red skin.
The others didn’t have the same level of sensitivity. After some initial fumbling, Arnaldo turned out to be a deadeye and got a little obsessed. During free time he got the key to the gun locker from Morfael and coaxed Siku to throw rocks and bottles so he could shatter them like a skeet shooter. Raynard groused but replenished our supply of bullets two days later with dozens of boxes.
Every morning I woke expecting to find Caleb gone. But he was still there at the end of the week, participating in all the physical exercises, making us rebuild the motorcycle, then teaching us how to drive it. Part of me wished he’d just go away already. I’d never get over him practically living with him like this. In spite of everything, I still couldn’t take my eyes off him whenever he was around. A couple of times as I sat on the bike, his hand brushed mine, showing me how to brake or accelerate. I concentrated so much on keeping my face blank that I kept stalling out the motor. But he persisted until I could at least get the bike going and stop it without falling off.
I found several books on runes in the library, but none of them had a symbol in them like the dark sun on Morfael’s door. I tried to get a good look at his staff, to see if the same rune was carved there. But it never seemed to leave Morfael’s hand. His bony fingers covered up too much to see anything in detail.
November paid special attention to the lesson in which Caleb showed us how locks worked. She became the first to pick a padlock. She did it so well that Caleb challenged her in rapid succession to open the lock on the front door, a briefcase, and the BMW’s trunk. After some initial fumbling, she managed all three. Later she batted her eyelashes at him and asked him to make her some lockpicks of her own. I fought off nauseating pangs of jealousy when he gave them to her the next day.
London kept as quiet as I did during these lessons. But then, she was always quiet. During Morfael’s lectures on plants, animal species, and anatomy, she took detailed notes, and she always got full moons on those quizzes. But she never raised her hand when Morfael asked us a question. Sometimes he’d let the silence hang for minutes, scanning our faces. He seemed to scrutinize her the longest, but she kept her eyes down, pen moving. Once I caught a glimpse of a sketch she left out on her bunk. She had drawn a perfectly proportioned schematic of the musculature of a wolf.
The only classes I did well in were history, botany, and shifting. As quick as November was to shift, she had a hard time resisting when Morfael forced us to change form. I did better.
Caleb tried to talk to me exactly once. He found me alone in the library, researching my history paper. He sat down in the chair across from me, cleared his throat, and said, “Hey.”
I didn’t respond. The yellowing book page in front of me suddenly made no sense, but I kept running my eyes over it.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t leave it like this,” he said, his hands clasped tensely together. “I consider you a friend.”
“Friends are honest with each other,” I said. “I’ve never lied to you. Can you say the same thing?”
He looked down. I pretended to keep reading.
“I would tell you if I could,” he said, his voice very quiet. “You should know that.”
“Why should I believe anything you say?” I asked. It felt horribly good to see the hurt my words brought to his eyes. “Now, this paper about the Javanese chieftain tiger-shifter isn’t going to write itself.”
His jaw clenched. He nodded and got up. My pleasure in hurting him drained away, and the room felt cold without him.
Things got awkward when Morfael told us that Caleb was going to try to force us to shift the other way—from animal into human form.
“That’s what the Tribunal does, not callers of shadow,” said Arnaldo.
“If you can learn to resist the powers of the objurers, you may be able to save yourselves and your families if they come under attack,” said Morfael.
“You’ve brought an objurer into this school,” said Siku, his deep voice rising. “He is one of them!”
“Callers and objurers are two sides of the same coin,” Morfael said, his own powerful voice cutting through Siku’s emotion. “Caleb has training in both calling forth the shadow and in pushing it back to Othersphere. Most callers do not have that opportunity, and you are very fortunate to have him here right now to help you prepare against the Tribunal.”
Siku didn’t dare speak out after that, but he silently refused to participate in the exercise. I wondered if Morfael would force him to shift, but he only ordered him to stay in his cabin for the rest of the day.
The rest of us took our turns, one by one, moving behind the bushes, piling up our clothes, and shifting to animal form. I watched as Caleb concentrated, pointed his hand at London, and hummed, deep and low. I thought of the night I’d been stuck in tiger form, my mother standing over me with a gun. He’d saved me that night, helping me become human. Now I couldn’t even bear to speak to him.
Black vapor shot from Caleb’s fingers and enveloped London’s silver wolf form, barely visible through the greenery. She whined sharply, and the bushes shook. Caleb dropped his hand, looking a bit pale.
“London?” said November. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” came London’s human voice.
As she got dressed, I studied Caleb out of the corner of my eye. After he’d helped me out, he’d suffered a few moments of disorientation. Now Morfael expected him to do it four times in a row. Did Morfael also weaken when he used his powers? Maybe as callers gained experience, they became more immune to the bad effects.
Caleb stood very still, his eyes shut. He didn’t sway or say strange things as he had before, but I could hear a faint hum emanating from him like an appliance on standby. Morfael must’ve given him pointers on how to maintain focus.
November went next and suffered the same fate as London, just as quickly. “This blows,” she said from the bushes. “How are we supposed to fight it?”
I was racking my brain, trying to come up with a plan to do exactly that. Callers and objurers used vibration to manipulate shadow. There had to be something shifters could do to stop them.
My turn. I stripped down where no one could see me and shifted into tiger form. I felt the fear, but I did it anyway. I concentrated on my inner tiger, lashing my tail against the attack about to come.
Caleb’s drone rose into a call, and my body shuddered with it. The pool of darkness within me shrank from the sound, and at the last minute I tried to roar. If Caleb could use vibration to his advantage, maybe so could I. But it was too late. Seconds later I lay on the grass, human, naked, and grateful for the screening shrubbery. I dressed fast, fingers trembling. Being naked in the open like this was mortifying. I wondered about my attempt to roar. Would it have made any difference?
As I passed Arnaldo on his way to take my place, I said, “Try making your own sound.”
He stopped. “What?”
“He’s using sound to make us shift,” I said, keeping my voice down. “If you make your own sound, your own vibration, maybe it’ll mess with his.”
He frowned and kept walking. I sat down on the cold ground next to London, glancing at Caleb’s face. Strain showed between his dark brows, and I could tell how hard he was focusing to keep his breathing even.
With a flapping of long brown wings, Arnaldo the eagle leapt up from behind the hedge and came to rest on the strong branch of a neighboring tree. It sagged and bounced under his weight as he fixed us all with a piercing gaze out of one eye.
“He’s getting cocky,” said November. “He’ll fall for sure. Hey, bird boy!” She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Can’t wait to see how your package likes it when you shift and end up sitting naked on that branch!”
Arnaldo tilted his white feathered head and croaked as Caleb’s humming grew louder. His voice seemed to gather up all the sounds in the world to aid it. Even though the hum wasn’t aimed at me, my body thrummed with it, wanting to follow but not knowing how. As the intensity grew, nearing its peak, Arnaldo opened his cruel beak and screeched out a high, penetrating note, neck thrust forward.
Caleb winced, and the pitch of his call wavered. The eagle cried out again, a blood-freezing scream so strong I could almost see it slicing into Caleb’s resonance, like a knife through a smothering blanket.
The hum ceased. Caleb staggered back, his skin ashen. His eyes widened, glowing with gold shot through the black irises. His face went blank as he stared right at me with a look I didn’t recognize. His legs buckled beneath him.
I was on my feet, moving toward him. As if in slow motion, he fell. All my anger at him fled as I got my arms around him in time to keep the back of his head from striking a rock.
His black eyes were spiraled with gold. It almost made me dizzy to look into them.
“The lost one,” he said, staring at me in awed horror.
“Is he okay?” November was at my side. London approached hesitantly, and Arnaldo flew in to land heavily beside her.
Caleb stared around at all of us, as if he’d never seen us before. “Vermin. Lupine. Raptor,” he said, his voice raw. “Beware. She is not one of you.”
“What the hell?” said November.
“You mean Dez?” said London. Everyone was staring at me.
“Move aside,” said Morfael, his staff jabbing into the hard ground as he approached. “Desdemona, let him go.”
I’d forgotten that my arms were still around Caleb. He felt cold, unfamiliar, and I wanted to press him close until he was warm again. But I lowered his head to the ground and took my arms away. The others moved back, but I stayed there, inches away, in case he needed me.
Caleb gazed up at Morfael, eyes narrowing as if in recognition. “Shadow walker,” he said. “You are the guiltiest of all.”
“Shhh.” Morfael made a hushing noise. I could feel the soothing vibration of it. Caleb’s eyes closed, but his face and body remained tense.
Morfael knelt down next to Caleb and placed the tip of his skeletal finger between his brows. “Return,” he said in the same quiet tone.
Caleb relaxed. Color returned to his face and he opened his eyes. They were once again black as onyx. “Guess I need more practice,” he said, his voice scratchy. I couldn’t help smiling at him in relief.
“Take him to the couch before the fire in my living room,” Morfael said. “Help him.” He turned to go, then stopped next to the eagle. “Well done, Arnaldo.”
London and I helped Caleb walk back to Morfael’s house while November skipped ahead and opened doors for us. Caleb tried to walk on his own, but every few steps he’d start to fall. So we put his arms around our shoulders and propped him up along the way, finally letting him collapse onto the leather sofa before the fire. His eyes closed immediately and he fell asleep.
“He has got the most ridiculous eyelashes,” November said, perching on the arm of the sofa.
“Come on, ’Ember,” said London, moving toward the front door.
“What?” November looked from her to me, then down at Caleb. “Oh, right. Fine.”
The door shut behind them, and I knelt down by Caleb’s side, watching the reassuring rise and fall of his chest.
“He’ll recover after a night of sleep.”
Morfael stood in the doorway, leaning on his staff. A cold breeze blew layers of black clothing against his emaciated frame until he shut the door.
“You made him force four people in a row to shift,” I said, fury sparking out of me. “You endangered him.”
“You think I asked too much,” he said. “But he has grown in strength these last few days. If you and Arnaldo had not been so clever, he would not have succumbed to shadow.”
“Don’t try to blame us.” I got up to face him squarely. “You’re the one who pushed him too hard.”
“There is no fault,” he said. “Being a caller brings certain risks. Caleb knows this. And every time he pushes himself, his strength grows.”
“What happens to him when he goes too far?” I said. “It’s like he loses himself. He says all these things that don’t make any sense.”
“Don’t they?” said Morfael.