“We’ll need you scouting for a perfect place right away. Everyone else should go home until they find it,” said Morfael.
“Maybe Dez could come with us and help too,” Caleb said, casting a hopeful glance at me.
“Desdemona needs to return home, for now,” said Morfael. And I knew he was right, though it hurt to think about being away from Caleb. “After your endeavors this night, she and her family will be safe there for a few months at least, until the Tribunal gets back on its feet in this area.”
“And maybe by then we’ll figure out how to get rid of them all for good,” I said, sounding more hopeful than I felt. It had been a long night.
Nobody hugged Morfael as we left. He wasn’t the type. I figured I’d ask him about the Shadow Blade and other things once he was feeling better.
As we shuffled down the hallway, I saw a small, familiar female figure shoving aside a nurse as she hustled toward me. A bearded man behind her stopped to apologize to the nurse. “Desdemona!” she shouted, waving.
“Mom!”
A second later, she and Richard and I were enveloped in a three-way hug.
“But what are you guys doing here?” I said when I could breathe.
“Well, you e-mailed us that you were going to see Morfael in the Bishop Hospital, and since we weren’t that far away . . .”
“Where have you been?” I was smiling all over.
Mom made a face. “Fresno. We knew you were somewhere in the mountains, and I wanted to be nearby if possible. Not the most exciting town in winter, I must say. But who cares!” She beamed at me. “We’re together again. Now you need to introduce us to everyone. Caleb I recognize, of course. Hi, Caleb.”
Caleb walked over and took her hand, then gave Richard a handshake. I introduced them to London, Arnaldo, Siku, and November. Mom’s eyes got very large and bright as she took them all in.
“Wait now,” she said, stopping dead as we began to walk down the hall again. “I have to meet Morfael. Would you all mind waiting for us? It won’t be a moment.”
They all nodded and said sure. I motioned for Caleb to follow us as Mom took my elbow and walked me into Morfael’s room. Raynard stood up, eyebrows rising.
“This is Raynard, Mom. He helps out around the school.”
Mom shook Raynard’s hand, but her eyes drifted to the bed. She finally got a good look at Morfael lying there, all bones and skin.
Her brow knitted. “I . . . I know you, don’t I?” She released Raynard’s hand and drifted to the side of the bed. “You look so familiar.”
Morfael said nothing, but the corners of his mouth deepened in what might have been a smile.
“You’ve met Morfael?” I asked. That couldn’t be.
Mom squinted, as if something had been triggered. “You were in Russia. That’s where I saw you. At the orphanage where I found Desdemona.”
“What?” I felt like my brain was going to explode. “You met him in Moscow?”
Still Morfael was silent, though his smile grew wider. He waited as Mom’s memories coalesced.
“It was you who told me where to find Dez.” She grabbed his skinny hand, her eyes alight. “I was waiting to meet with the director of the orphanage, but you came in and said to follow you. You took me to a room and Dez was there, in her crib, waiting for me.” Tears welled in Mom’s eyes. “Later on, I met the real director and you were nowhere to be found. But I knew Desdemona had to be mine.”
Morfael, finally, nodded. “I knew you were the one.”
Mom let loose a sob and leaned to rest her forehead against his hand. Morfael’s face softened as he looked down at her.
“Okay,” I said, fighting off the chills that threatened to take over my body. “Time to start telling me what’s going on before I lose it.”
“About sixteen years ago, I was in Tunguska, Siberia, trying to see if there were any tiger-shifters left in the world, and I found you.”
“You found me?” I tried to take in the information calmly, though my brain was rioting.
His pale eyes looked into mine, as if liking what they saw there. “I found you first, and later I made it so the reindeer herder would hear your cries and take you to safety. I ensured that the right woman found you after you were transferred to the orphanage in Moscow.”
“Oh, my God,” I said. Caleb walked up and took my hand as I tried to process everything.
Mom took a hankie from Richard to blow her nose. “Thank you,” she said to Morfael. “Those words are inadequate, but they’re all I have.”
“No, thank you for being exactly the parent Desdemona needed,” he said, then looked at me. “I suspected you might be the last tiger-shifter in this world. And as such the Tribunal would be after you. So I used everything I knew to suppress the signs of shadow in you. When the time was right, I knew you would overcome the barriers I had set.”
“So that’s why you didn’t start shifting until such a late age,” Caleb said. “Morfael was trying to protect you.”
“I—I have a question,” said my mother, half raising her hand as if she were in school. “Why didn’t you place her with other shifters—that’s the correct term, am I right? They at least could have helped her understand who she was. Why pick me? Not that I’m not grateful, of course!”
“The shifter tribes are too insular and filled with fear of outsiders to ever take in a child born to someone they did not know,” Morfael said. “Even so, for the first year after I found Desdemona, I tried to track down the tiger-shifters of Siberia, to see if they would raise her. But I found no trace of them anywhere. The Northeast Asian division of the Tribunal appears to have wiped them out. Eventually I concluded I would have to find a nonshifter to care for her until she was of age to make her own way in the world. As soon as I saw you, I knew you would not try to force her to be something she was not.”
“The Shadow Blade and the brace,” I said. “That was you.”
“In a way,” he said. “When I found you, I also found the Blade and scabbard hidden among your blankets. They were strongly linked to you via shadow in a way I still don’t understand. I kept them to prevent the orphanage from taking them, and I also kept an eye on you, thinking I would give them back to you. Then one day the Blade vanished. Somehow it linked itself to the brace.”
“Maybe because the brace sort of became a part of me too,” I said. “I wore it so much, and the belt fits right where the bruises from the brace used to be.”
“The Blade won’t cut living things, only metal and plastic,” said Caleb. “And when Dez touches metal technology like guns for too long, they stop working. Do you think those two things are related?”
“Probably,” said Morfael. “Silver and other worked metals are antagonistic to shadow. I suspect they do not exist in Othersphere. For some reason, your shadow nature opposes technology, and may have the power to destroy it.”
“But it also makes the tomatoes grow like crazy under your windowsill,” Mom said.
“But then why haven’t cars and computers been blowing up around me for years?” I said. “It’s only started happening since . . .” Then I realized.
“Since you first shifted,” Morfael finished for me. “By suppressing the shadow in you as a child, I made it easier for you to function in this world in many ways.”
Things were coming together. Some of them in a good way, and some of them not. I looked at Morfael. “You suppressed the shadow in me twice,” I said, anger flaring. “The first time I can understand—I was just a baby. But you did it again yesterday.”
“It was necessary,” he said. “You had not yet fully come to understand who and what you are. By cutting you off from it again, I hoped you would fight to find your way back.”
He met my gaze squarely, and in a way he was right. I’d found some kind of peace with everything out there in the desert. But my resentment didn’t soften. “You’ve played puppet master in my life long enough,” I said.
“Desdemona!” said my mother, squeezing my arm.
I ignored her. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful for all you’ve done. But your secret interference stops now, all right?”
His smile irritated me, as if even now I was following a path he’d laid out. “I see that you have indeed found your way back,” he said. “You have nothing further to worry about from me.”
It wasn’t exactly a promise to stop interfering, but I had a feeling it was the best I was going to get from him right now. And he had saved my life in the Siberian woods all those years ago, and brought me to a family where I’d found love and respect.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said. “I’m looking forward to rejoining the school once you’ve found its new home.”
We left after that. The sun had risen, and the other kids were anxious to get on the road so they could see their families.
“Thanks for helping us save Amaris,” I said to Siku when we were all out in the parking lot. Mom and Richard were bringing their car around to get me, and I was putting off having to say good-bye to Caleb as long as I could. He was checking on Amaris.
“I guess maybe some nonshifters are okay,” he said, and I found myself being crushed briefly in a bear hug.
November stood on the bumper of the van to give me a good-bye hug, her head almost level with mine that way. “Try not to take over your humdrum high school while you’re waiting to come back to ours, okay?” she said as London also gave me a swift embrace.
“Whatever you do, don’t listen to November,” said London, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, her eyes sliding over to see November’s reaction. “That’s the first rule for getting through life.”
“Yeah, by all means listen to the death-obsessed moper for advice,” November shot back, crawling into the van.
London followed her in, retorting something I didn’t hear because Arnaldo was standing in front of me. “Thanks,” he said, and handed me the black folder that contained my file, then leaned in and kissed my cheek. “See you soon.”
Richard’s car pulled up. I turned to see Amaris climbing into the passenger seat of the van with Caleb holding the door for her. But he was looking at me.
His long black coat fluttered in the breeze as we walked toward each other slowly, knowing that the sooner we came together, the sooner we would part.
“I’ll call as often as I can,” he said. “I have a feeling Morfael’s going to keep us busy.”
I swallowed, trying not to feel lost. “It’s just till you find a new place for the school, right?”
“And we get the buildings up.” He slid one warm hand around my shoulders, the other at my waist, pulling me closer.
“Try not to be too reckless,” I said, my arms encircling his neck.
“You’re one to talk,” he said. “Try not to shift back to human in front of any other guys while I’m gone.” As my face flushed, he put his lips to my ear and said, in that low nonwhisper of his, “I want you to do that only for me.”
We kissed then, and I lost track of things. The world seemed to spin and catch fire, and I might have fallen, if Caleb’s arms hadn’t been around me.
Eventually my mother called my name, and he pushed himself away from me, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “It’s not a bad drive to Burbank,” he said in a strangled tone.
Something heavy ached inside my chest. “You know where I’ll be,” I said.
He nodded. “Just down the street from the lightning tree.”