Nina Berry - Othersphere

“Families who would happily slaughter our families, given the chance!” London stalked over to stand next to Caleb.

“There are children living there!” Lazar’s voice reverberated with something that filled me with shame. London flinched and looked a little abashed. “Shifters aren’t the only ones with kids. And I wasn’t about to have more innocent blood on my hands—or on yours.”

London was almost hanging her head. November and Arnaldo looked embarrassed, and I felt mortified, though I wasn’t sure what I’d done.

Only Caleb did not look guilty. His mouth twisted into a knowing smirk, his black eyes cold as space. “Your vocal tricks don’t work on me, brother .” His own voice dripped contempt, cutting through the emotions I was feeling like a cauterizing knife.

Lazar clapped a hand over his mouth. His voice, like any caller’s, was a potent weapon to manipulate both shadow and emotion. “Oh, God help me,” he said through his fingers. “I didn’t mean to manipulate anyone. I just wanted you to feel the same way I do about the kids. . . .”

“Bull shit !” Caleb lunged in a blur of black, grabbed his brother by the lapels and threw him backwards onto the couch. “You’re a liar and a killer!”

Lazar fell back onto the cushions, rolled over to get right back on his feet. Caleb moved to follow up, to grab him again.

I got in the way. “Stop it!”

Caleb backed off a step, still coiled and ready to strike. “For all you know, he’s been lying to you the whole time, using his voice to control all of you!”

“All of us?” Arnaldo had gotten up and was standing a few feet away. “Even Morfael?”

London snorted in agreement with Arnaldo. “So, what—we’ve become idiots in your absence?”

Caleb exhaled in exasperation and turned to pace away from me, away from all of us.

“You haven’t been around much lately, Caleb honey,” November said coolly. “No calls, no e-mails, no texts, except to your sis, I guess. It’s like you broke up with all of us when you broke up with Dez. No matter what we’ve been through.” Her voice broke a little as she finished.

Caleb’s shoulders slumped. He turned to her. “I’m sorry, ’Ember. I really am. I’ve thought about you a lot. But when Siku died, I just . . . I couldn’t be here.”

“You ran away because a girl didn’t do what you wanted her to,” November said, no mercy in her voice. “And you didn’t like the competition. It was all about you: your hurt feelings, your breakup. Well, what about us? Not just me, but the group, everyone— us ?” She dusted the crumbs off her hands, and got to her feet, radiating tragic fury. “I know you were on your own a lot before you got to Morfael’s school, but when you came here you made us all think you cared. We faced things together we never could have survived alone. We were more than friends; we were a team.” Her eyes reddened, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t look away. “But I guess nothing lasts forever.”

Caleb swallowed, and for once had no reply. For the first time I realized that our breakup had affected everyone around us. I wasn’t much better than Caleb, too caught up in my own pain to see it in others.

“Fighting isn’t going to bring Amaris back,” London said into the quiet.

“I’ll tell you where the safe houses are,” Lazar said. “But I doubt Ximon’s in any of them.”

“Then we go to the nearest one and force whoever’s there to tell us where he is.” London’s voice was matter of fact.

A droning buzz slashed through her final words. I jumped before realizing it was the alert that someone was calling us via Skype. Lazar had set it up so we would hear it in all the common rooms. The living room had a monitor now, too. Raynard, the school handyman and Morfael’s boyfriend, had helped him install it three weeks before. My mother had called me that way recently.

“Who the hell . . . ?” Arnaldo asked, as the buzzer whined again. “Anyone expecting a call from their parents?”

We were all shaking our heads. Arnaldo walked over to the living room monitor, perched on a side table.

“It could be my mom,” I said. “I hope everything’s okay. . . .”

“Hello?” Arnaldo had picked up the call. A muffled male voice spoke, but the speakers were turned away from the rest of us. Arnaldo shook his head, looking up at us. “He says it’s Ximon.”

“What?”

“No way!”

Everyone stirred, exchanging looks. Arnaldo leaned in closer to the speakers as the voice kept talking. Arnaldo listened, and then pressed a button to mute the voice, his dark eyes wide with disbelief. “He wants to talk to you, Dez.”

I didn’t want to talk to Ximon alone. “Can we put him on the big monitor?” I asked Arnaldo. “So we all can see him.”

“Sure, yeah.” Arnaldo effectively put the call on hold.

Lazar was already up, turning on the fifty-five-inch monitor he’d recently installed on the big blank wall in the living room. We weren’t allowed to watch TV or recreational movies, but it served well when Morfael screened a documentary for a class, or when all five of the shifter council called, usually to castigate me.

Arnaldo pressed two keys, and Ximon appeared, larger than life, on the big monitor. He blinked. The room he sat in was very dark. A light from somewhere higher up, as if at the top of a staircase, caught only the glittering corner of his left eye and the sagging flesh of his cheek. His shoulders, cast in silhouette, were slumped. It was hard to see him clearly, but he didn’t look like the strong, wild, confident man I’d just seen whisk Amaris off to Othersphere.

“Ximon,” I said, taking my seat again next to Lazar on the couch. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“I need your help,” came the familiar voice, strong as always, but carrying a new tremor. It sounded like fear, or weakness, or age.

“That’s not a very funny joke,” I said.

He moved closer to the monitor. I caught sight of his upper lip. It was trembling. “Desdemona, I beg you—hear me out.”

I stared at the half-dark monitor. What the hell was Ximon up to? “Why?”

“Because I am under attack,” he said. “And I won’t survive without you.”

My friends were all staring at him with identical blank looks of incredulity. “What a shame,” I said. “I’d wish you good luck, but you’d know I was lying.”

“The attack on me is the reason my daughter was taken away tonight.” His powerful voice was thick, as if with emotion, perhaps with tears. But Ximon was a powerful caller of shadow, a master with his voice, who could control someone with a single word.

“You’re not making any sense,” I said. “You are the one who took her away tonight.”

He breathed heavily. His body shuddered, as if in pain. “Allow me to explain and there’s a chance we can get her back.”

“ ‘We’ can get her back?” My voice shot high with disbelief. “What game are you playing?”

“It’s no game.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. For a moment we could clearly see his profile, still classically handsome, but adorned now with drooping jowls, his lips thin with anxiety. “I don’t have much time. He could come back any second.”

“He—who?” I frowned over at my friends. November was rolling her eyes.

“You won’t believe me, I know,” he said. “But you will believe that I thought for a long time before placing this call. The fact that I have reached out to you indicates the level of my desperation. My . . . my God has abandoned me.”

“About time,” London whispered.

His overacting was getting on my nerves. “How did you get this number?” I asked.