Out of This World (25 page)

I shift my attention to Cory. “
You
killed him, dude? Hypocrite much? You're pissed that Chaingang kills a pack of vicious dog cousins who go after him and a whole bunch of us, but it's totally cool for you to go kill this unconscious guy? And before you say it, I
know
he was an asshole assassin. But the cops were going to pick him up. The dude was totally out of the game.”

Cory shakes his head. “I didn't kill him.”

“He didn't,” Donalita agrees. “The snake cousin did it. But he was there.”

“Wait a sec—what snake guy?”

Cory sighs. “Rico.”

It takes me a moment to place the name.

“You mean the dude who was in the lab with Josh?” I ask.

“The one who got his leg cut off?”

Cory nods. “The one who saw a bunch of cousins get dissected to see how they tick. He's been after these Black Key Securities people, taking them down one by one.”

“But the word is, it looks like some wild animal's tearing them apart. A snake can't do that. Wait. How big a snake can he turn into?”

“Just a regular rattler,” Cory says. “He kills them while he's in human form and it's not pretty. At first I didn't know it was him. When I finally did figure it out I tracked him down, but I got there too late. He'd already killed that latest one and disappeared.”

Him saying “killed” brings me crashing back to our own situation.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's split so the same thing doesn't happen to us.”

“Too late,” Donalita says. “Here they come.”

I turn to look where she's pointing and see a half-dozen lean dogs loping steadily in our direction. They're far down the street, bounding over rubble and junked cars, but it won't take them long to reach us.

Tío Goyo sits cross-legged in the dirt a half-dozen yards away, his back against a tree. Busted. So much for working this out on my own.

“I was practicing,” I tell him. “You know—that spirit thing you showed me. I think I'm getting the hang of it.”

“Good.”

He studies me for a long moment, then rises in a smooth motion and starts back to our camp. I follow along, trying to decide how much to tell him.

In the end, I decide to tell him everything because what's he going to do? He gets the fire going and brews us some tea while I talk. By the time he hands me a mug, I'm done.

I sniff the steam coming from the mug, but I can't tell if anything's in there that's not supposed to be. I look over the brim to catch a smirk on his face, like he knows just what I'm thinking.

What the hell. I blow on the surface of the tea and take a sip.

“Why didn't you search for the de Padillas directly?” he asks.

“What do you mean?”

“You followed their trail, which was clever, but you already
know this couple. You should be able to focus on them and go directly to where they are. It's how you'll find your friend.”

“Uh … I didn't realize that.” Great. Something else I have to learn. I figured as soon as I got the GPS map in my head up and running again, the main stumbling block to finding Elzie would be over.

“Don't be so worried,” he says. “Look what you've already accomplished in just a couple of days.”

“I suppose. But what about that hummingbird guy I met? Talk about having a chip on your shoulder.”

Tío Goyo shrugs. “It's most unusual. The Hummingbird Clans are among the most joyful of the animal people. Their kindness and generosity are legend. I've never heard of an aggressive one.”

“I don't know about that. Mom's got a feeder on the porch and they're always dive-bombing each other and trying to drive the other off. They seem pretty aggressive to me.”

“Ordinary birds, perhaps, but I'm talking about cousins.”

“Yeah, well, this cousin was a racist dick looking to pick a fight. I've been called a lot of crap but being an ‘unborn' is a first.”

“Family and clan are important to the cousins,” Tío Goyo says. “The idea of not having either makes them uncomfortable.”

“I
do
have a family. My mom and my grandparents are amazing. If they're not good enough for him, that's his problem.”

“It's also yours,” Tío Goyo says, his voice mild. “At least it will be if you intend to lead the cousins.”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “I'm
not
leading anybody anywhere.”

“Look at it this way,” Tío Goyo goes on as if I hadn't spoken. “For someone from an old clan like Hummingbird, your lack of
an affiliation makes you appear potentially dangerous. Here, in a society without laws or courts, respect, trustworthiness and clan affiliation all serve to keep excesses in check.”

“Hey, I'm not trying to disrespect anyone. All I want to do is find Elzie and get us back to the real world. I don't even want to be here.”

“He couldn't know that. You arrived in his territory without adhering to normal customs, so there was already a sense that something was off. But on a broader cultural level, in circumstances where a member of one clan causes harm to someone in another, the injured party can go to your clan and demand justice. Your clan will then either take your side—if you were in the right—or punish you if you were not. Without affiliation, only the individual can be held responsible, and then problems are solved only by who is stronger. Might is right. It's how despots are born.”

“Okay, but why would he be pissed when I told him my name? The de Padillas and I exchanged names, and they weren't upset. I was just trying to be friendly to him, too—and respectful.”

“Often one fears what one does not understand,” Tío Goyo says. “It seems that some of these older cousins are distrustful of you and your Wildling friends because you are new. They don't necessarily want to pledge friendship and mutual respect—yet, anyway. According to past convention, giving someone your name puts the receiver in the immediate position of either accepting you as a friend, or refusing, which is a major insult and can give you justification to attack them.”

“That's messed up.”

Tío Goyo nods. “I agree. But what do we know? I am only a man, while apparently you are”—he smiles—“an unborn.”

“Well, screw him. It's not like I'll ever see him again.”

“Perhaps not, but you will meet more cousins who will judge you for how you came by your mountain lion aspect. They will either embrace you or hate you. The latter could prove dangerous if you run into a large number of them.”

I kick the dirt beside me. “It's not as though I chose this.” He shrugs. “Neither of us chose the colour of our skin, yet we're still judged by it.”

“Well, I had the last laugh on that jerk. You should have seen his face when I dropped my body and he saw a hawk lifting up into the air. Because he
knew
I had a mountain lion under my skin.”

“I'm sure,” Tío Goyo says, “though you ought to have been discreet about it.”

“Oh, crap. That's one of your uncle secrets, isn't it? And I totally gave it up to him.”

“It's done now.”

In the east the sun's rising. Fat shafts of light slice through the boughs of the ponderosa pines.

“Get a few hours' sleep,” he says. “Then we can go back to finding your friend with clear heads.”

“I'm not tired.”

“You've been up all night.”

“It's weird,” I say. “Every time I call up my body from the earth, it's like I get the perfect version of it. I'm not hungry or thirsty and I'm super alert. It's not the same when I shift back from my mountain lion form. Then I'm always really hungry.”

Tío Goyo nods. “But if you don't sleep, you won't dream, and dreams nourish your spirit in a manner that nothing else can.”

I think about how I've already slept right near him. There's
been so much crap in my life that it wouldn't surprise me if I had a nightmare. Would he go into my brain and kill whatever was in my dream? Would he kill me? I'd rather not take that chance.

I stand up and poke at the fire with a nearby stick. “But I'm not even remotely tired,” I say. “I need to be doing something. Like finding Elzie. Can you teach me about how this focus thing works?”

Tío Goyo sets his empty mug down and rises as well. “All right,” he says. “So the map has returned to your head.”

I nod. “I've got five different ones layered on top of each other right now.”

“And how much of each world do they show?”

“I'm not sure, but I feel like I could let them expand to include as much of each world as I want to see.”

“I don't advise that,” he says. “In fact, it would be best for you to shut all the maps down if you can.”

This is nuts. As soon as I get the GPS working again, he wants me to shut it down. What's with this guy?

“I'd rather not,” I say. “What if I can't get them back?”

“Then we work on that. You'll need them later, perhaps, but not to find your friend.”

I drop the stick into the fire. I feel anxious about doing what he says, but then I remind myself, if I believe the ability is still inside me, it will be. I've already proved that, haven't I?

So I go ahead and close all the maps—even the one for this world we're in. I wait a couple of beats—long enough to hum a few bars of a Bo Diddley riff—then call back the map of the de Padillas' home turf. It comes up in an instant, all the topography
and every living thing in it. I let it expand a little until I can “see” Manuel and Lara, then shut it down again.

“Okay, I'm good,” I tell Tío Goyo. Then I have a thought and give him a curious look. “How do
you
move between the worlds?”

“If I've been in one before, I can simply step into it,” he says. “The same way I assume your friends the de Padillas can.”

“And if you haven't been there before?” “I search with my hawk's eyes—as you did to locate the de Padillas.”

“You mean in your spirit form?”

He nods. “I was going to have you try that today, but you've already taught yourself.”

“So now what?” I ask.

“Try to recall as many memories of your friend as you can. Fill your head with the look of her, the scent, the sound of her voice, but especially whatever it is that you
feel
when you think of her.”

I have to laugh. “You mean confusion?”

His brows go up.

“I'm kind of conflicted with how I feel about her,” I tell him.

“But you still have feelings for her?”

“I …”

Sure, I do. How could I not? I've never been with anybody as wild and sexy as Elzie. The confusing thing is, I have all this longing for Marina, which is so wrong. She's either mourning Chaingang—or with him, if he somehow survived. And even if she hadn't hooked up with Chaingang, I screwed things up between us so badly that she'll never completely trust me again.

“Josh?” Tío Goyo says.

I give him a rueful grin. “I know, I know. In my own head again. Okay, so I think about Elzie and then what?”

“Focus on the need to find her and drop that need into wherever it is that you store your maps.”

“How am I supposed to do that? I don't know where the maps are. You made me shut them down.”

Tío Goyo nods. “All right, why don't we try this: imagine a book in your mind and inside it are all your maps.”

The skepticism I'm feeling must be written all over my face because he adds, “Just try it.”

This is the kind of thing Des is so good at. He can close his eyes and paint a word picture of something he's imagining, which, as you're listening to him, starts to sound so real that you end up seeing it yourself.

So how would Des do this?

I smile. The first thing is, the book would be some big, fat, old leather-bound volume like the one from the credits of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. It'd have embossed gold lettering on the front, in some kind of spooky Gothic font. The title would be … all I can come up with is
Book of Maps
. Des'd have a far better one, only he's not here. But it doesn't matter. I can picture the book now, just kind of floating around inside my head.

All the maps are in there, I tell myself. Maps of all the worlds I've visited so far, as well as every place I haven't been to yet. That book's not just any book. It's my magical GPS atlas and it's always going to be there, as normal to access as it is to shift into my mountain lion shape.

“I think I've got it,” I say.

“You
think
?” Tío Goyo asks.

“No, no. I've definitely got it. So now I just focus on my need to find Elzie and drop it into the book?”

Tío Goyo nods. “Wait!” he adds before I can let my body fall back into the earth. “If you do find her on one of those maps, don't go directly to her. Instead, arrive somewhere nearby, so that you'll be able to scout the area instead of appearing directly in the middle of a situation you might not be able to handle.”