The Silver Moon Elm (31 page)

Jennifer took a step back. “But I’m your daughter…”

“Enough.” The blonde woman raised her sword and came at them.

A quick left from a spindly front claw sent her staggering back.

“You’re cute,” Evangelina croaked. “Let’s play again.”

“Take it easy on her, that’s my mom!”

“Stop,” the woman said while regaining her feet, “calling me ‘Mom.’ ”

“Mom mom mom mom mom this universe sucks and I’ll call you what I want mom mom mom mom mom!”

“Phoebe, attack!”

The newolf, crouched between the woman and Eddie, snarled at Jennifer and Evangelina…but stayed put.

“Mother, she’s not going to attack them. Don’t you remember the legends of wolves who once hunted alongside dragons?”

Phoebe got a swat across the snout for her insubordination. “Those are tall tales, campfire stories! Dammit, dog, if you’re not going to behave—”

“Look.” Jennifer raised her palms and took a cautious step forward. “You’ve given me plenty of reason to fight you. You’ve coldcocked me, tried to get your friends to kill me and my sister, and sicced your wolf on me. But I’m still not going to do it. I’m not going to fight my own mother. Can we just—”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Dammit, look at my face! Can’t you see it? Are you that damn stubborn?! I’m your daughter!”

The woman lowered her sword. “Am I to take it that none of you are going to help me fight this creature and her grotesque friend?”

Nobody moved.

“Fine.” She sheathed the weapon and walked away. “Disobey me, if you want to play with the funny-looking woodland creatures. But keep them away from me, Edward, or I’ll kill you.”

The next couple of hours were harder for Jennifer than just about any she had suffered this past week. After trying multiple times to approach Elise Georges—that was, she learned from Eddie, the woman’s name—Jennifer tired of the increasingly violent reactions and accepted Evangelina’s advice. Instead, she stuck closer to those beaststalkers who still appeared eager to befriend them.

At least, Jennifer told herself while huddled near the campfire with Eddie, Evangelina, Phoebe, and about fifteen others, she hasn’t left completely. Though that’s probably because the dog likes me. In fact, she was scratching the newolf behind the ears right now, just like she used to scratch the smaller black dog with the same name. While she didn’t actually think this was a new incarnation of her favorite border collie–German shepherd mix, she was enjoying the naming coincidence.

“Do you think we should try to talk to her again?” she asked Eddie for the eighth time in three hours.

His shoulders shuddered in a silent laugh. “No.”

“The way she talks to you. It’s awful. I can’t imagine her talking to me like that.”

He shrugged. “It’s the way she is. I know she loves me.”

“People who love you don’t talk to you like that. Do you really believe you’re a disappointment to her? That she’d actually kill you?”

These questions plainly bothered him. “It doesn’t matter, Jennifer-spirit. Mother has made a decision. She will stick to it. If you ask me to follow you, I will follow you. I cannot guarantee you how many others will come. I know Mother will not.”

“That’s not good enough. No offense, but we tried with three. It just doesn’t cut it.” This conflict grated on Jennifer. Thirty beaststalkers! It would be enough, she was sure. And she couldn’t believe that fate would dangle this opportunity so close to her face, and yet deny her. If she was any kind of ambassador between dragons and beaststalkers, she was meant to make this work. But how?

“What did Elise teach you about dragons?” she asked Eddie.

“Not much. What I learned, I learned from my true mother, and others who have since died. Elise’s experience with dragons—she was, as I told you, the last of us to see one alive—was not as friendly as others I heard from. While some dragons seemed to ally with us years ago, others kept fighting. One killed her brother, she told us.”

Jennifer recalled her uncle Michael, the butcher from Virginia she had barely known, but who had made her the weapons she wore today. “So she’s bitter toward all dragons.”

“She killed the last one she saw. Some say that brought bad luck. A few weeks later, werachnids destroyed the town we lived in, and ever since our family has had no real home.”

“So you’ve never had one at all,” Jennifer observed. “And yet, Eddie, you’re…you’re so different.”

“Different? You mean from Mother? I suppose I am.”

That wasn’t what Jennifer had meant, but she let his interpretation stand. “Does Elise lead you all because she’s a doctor, or because she’s the oldest?”

“Doctor?” Eddie snorted. “You say strange things. You call this woman your mother, even though she rejects you. And now you say she can heal.”

“She can’t? I mean, she doesn’t?”

“She’s a warrior, Jennifer-spirit. Aside from putting a quick bandage on a bleeding wound, she has never healed a person in her life.”

Once again, Jennifer’s heart sank. Seeing this rough, incomplete shadow of a woman was worse than seeing her father’s name etched in stone.

Evangelina and Phoebe, both of whom had begun to relax around the campfire, raised their heads at the same time. Jennifer almost laughed at the way they sniffed the air simultaneously.

“Who’s coming?” she asked. But then she heard the sound herself—an engine with an impressive amount of horsepower, being driven at an unsafe speed down the gravel driveway.

Unable to believe anything she was hearing, she leapt into dragon form and sailed over the house. Sure enough, down the driveway came a single car. The top was up, but Jennifer recognized it without any trouble at all.

It was a Ford Mustang. It parked just south of the house, and two figures climbed out to face the gathering beaststalkers.

“Catherine! Andi!”

“I’ve told you,” the young Brandfire told her with a bemused stare while sitting at the campfire between Jennifer and Eddie, “my name is Nakia. And why exactly are we camping outside in November, when we have a perfectly viable house right behind us?”

Jennifer shrugged, just happy to see these two girls here today.

Evangelina was less welcoming. “It has occurred to you, I’m sure,” she told Jennifer with a bored sort of tone, “that the appearance of these two the day after we attack the Quadrivium stronghold is suspicious. Right?”

Jennifer rolled her eyes. “I’m not a moron, sis. But I think we can certainly hear them out. So why are you two here, anyway? And how did you find us?”

“Finding you wasn’t hard,” Nakia answered. “Just about every werachnid knows this is the last place on Earth anyone ever saw a dragon. It’s where The Crown died, and where the Quadrivium drove dragons out of sight forever.”

“Not quite forever,” Evangelina purred.

“As for why we’re here…I’ll let Andi speak for herself, but I’m here because I’m running out of choices. I’m not really welcome in Pinegrove anymore.”

“Not welcome?! Why not?”

“I was seen with you. The night you caused that commotion in the gym. Several werachnids saw me outside, talking with you.”

“So what? They saw you change into your scorpion shape and tell me off. That’s suspicious?”

“It is,” came the reply, “when your grandmother was a dragon, who only had children and grandchildren because she was…forced.”

Jennifer’s jaw dropped. “Raped?”

Nakia nodded without looking anywhere but in the fire. “A few years after she fled Alexandria, she was raped. My grandfather’s name was Motega. He left her a few years later, because he didn’t want to raise a kid who might end up being dragon. She had a hard life, and most people avoided her and my father. He was a werachnid, but it didn’t matter. He finally met my mother—a trampler—and married her despite my grandmother’s objections. She was already ashamed of him and wanted her bloodline to end with him. But they were married, and I was born. This time, it was she who left a while later, for pretty much the same reason my grandfather left my grandmother. And so I got to grow up the same way my father did—ignored and bullied. The fact that I’m arachnid means nothing. Especially now, with you around.”

When Nakia finally looked at Jennifer, it wasn’t necessarily with kindness. “My father’s disowned me. He told me he doesn’t believe that I’m not your friend, that I’m too much like my mother, and that I should get out. I’ve got no place else to live. So I thought I’d come to the only possible place where I might be wanted.”

Jennifer had no clue what to say. The fire crackled on, until Eddie spoke up.

“And you, Andi? Why are you here?”

The small, brown-skinned girl pushed back her magenta streak and then stuffed her hands into her own loose jacket sleeves. “After you left me and my friends in the hallway, I did what I could to save them. Amy and Anne turned out okay once they woke up, and Bobbie’s recovering in the hospital burn ward. But Abigail’s dead.”

“Oh, Andi. I’m sorry.” Jennifer tried hard not to look at Evangelina, who didn’t seem to have a reaction. “I know you did your best.”

“I’m still learning,” Andi explained. “My own upbringing…I never really knew my parents. I was raised in a strange, cold home. Once people saw my talent, they used it. They used me. I became a caretaker. What I wanted, what I needed, made no difference.”

She was rocking back and forth, Jennifer noticed, and her arms were shaking.

“And it was werachnids you grew up with?”

Andi nodded. “I didn’t quite belong, of course. I was different, and I knew I always would be. I will never have a shape like them, never really be accepted by them.”

“And so you started cutting yourself.”

Evangelina’s bold comment startled Andi out of a sort of reverie. The smaller girl appeared fearful for an instant, and then firmly closed her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You cut yourself,” Jennifer added. “Multiple times. I’ve seen the scars myself.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Jennifer recalled her video her middle school teacher had once shown their health class, about girls who hurt themselves. One of the girls interviewed, a cutter who had since stopped, had said something that had stuck in Jennifer’s head.

“You’re trying to get people to know you’re hurting,” she recalled aloud, “and at the same time, it pushes those same people away.”

For the second time that day, Andi gave them a startled look.

Looking at this girl, who seemed so different from the strange world around her, Jennifer thought of Susan Elmsmith. She’s just a regular girl, she told herself. Different from the world around her because she’s not so different. And it hurts. I wonder if Susan would ever cut herself? No, because her hands are so important to her, for sculpture. But then, Andi’s hands are important for music, too, aren’t they?

She suddenly focused on Andi’s sleeves, and the hands working themselves within. “Andi! You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?”

The girl froze, her look utterly unconvincing. “Doing what?”

“You’re cutting yourself!” Jennifer got up, at first quickly and then more slowly, so as not to scare Andi into doing worse. “Please, Andi, you’ve got to stop.”

The girl pointed her face down, concentrating once more on her unseen forearms. “There are times I can’t help myself. I know I don’t belong, Jennifer. I know there’s something wrong. But I don’t know…”

She trailed off. No one said a word. Jennifer looked at her; at Eddie and the other beaststalkers, who were similarly spellbound; at Evangelina, who watched with what appeared to be detached interest; at Nakia, who seemed surprised by this turn of events; and at Phoebe the newolf, who was licking Goodwin’s red and green scales.

So much about this world is different from the last, Jennifer thought as she watched Andi’s suede sleeves undulate as she mutilated her own arms. New music, new buildings, new people. And so much about this world that hasn’t changed at all. People who kill other people. Friends who betray each other. Girls who hurt themselves.

“Andi, please stop.”

The girl’s beautiful brown eyes held Jennifer’s. “You said maybe we could help each other. You said—”

“We can, Andi. We can help each other. Just, please, stop. Please?”

Andi took a deep breath, and another, and then her sleeves separated, releasing a bloodstained steak knife into her lap. “Okay. Yeah. I can stop. If you can make it better, I think I can…”

Jennifer reached over, very slowly and carefully, and pulled the knife out of Andi’s lap. “Thank you, Andi.”

“So what do you think?” she asked Evangelina later inside the house, once they had bandaged Andi’s arms and everyone had settled down to sleep. The two of them were in human form again, relaxing over some hot tea from the beaststalkers’ stores. “Are they telling the truth?”

“Andi definitely cuts herself. You saw that. And her fear has taught her much. Beyond the fear, there is incredible strength in her. She shuts her mind very well.”

“Agreed. And Nakia?”

“Nakia…” Evangelina took a longer sip of the tea, which soothed her voice temporarily. “Almost the opposite of Andi. Her mind was completely open to me, but still nearly unreadable. Too much churning, too many emotions. It reminded me a little of myself, when I first escaped the dimension I was born into. She wants to strike out, wants to punish.”

“Punish us or them?”

Evangelina offered a small, nasty smirk. “Great question.”

“Keep an eye on her for me, sis.”

The other girl began to cough. “Keep an eye on her? Yes, and on this girl Andi, and on Elise Georges, and on Eddie and this whole troop of beaststalkers. And on whoever else manages to show up before we try to take on nearly a hundred full-grown werachnids and the Quadrivium. You keep an eye out, too, sis. For me.”

As the sun lowered in the sky, Jennifer and Eddie were busy compiling a short list of those willing to join them in the return to Pinegrove—less than ten even counting the two of them along with Evangelina, Nakia, and Andi—and devising an uphill plan of attack. Suddenly Jennifer discovered an unexpected weakness in their skills.