“Damn. I forgot—the police have your wallet.”
“What? Why?”
“Give me the phone,” he heard his mom say. “Jared, stay where you are. I’ll drive up to get you.”
“No, sweetie,” Mave said quietly. “Maggie, you’re not in any shape to drive. I’ll see if Kota or Hank is free.”
“That’s okay,” Jared said. “I’ll take the bus.”
“Don’t leave Phil’s place!” His mom had grabbed her phone back. “You hear me? Or I’ll reach down your goddamn throat and yank your nuts so high you’ll sing like a motherfucking canary.”
Maybe it still was his universe because that was totally something his mom would say. “Okay, Hallmark.”
She blew her nose. “I thought you were dead, Shithead.”
“Your Shithead is alive.”
“How’d you end up in Kitimat?”
“Jared!” Mave called in the background. “Kota is driving up to get you. He says it should be around sixteen hours.”
“Take my Glock!” his mom shouted. “Ammo’s in the glove compartment.”
“Oh, let’s not bring guns into this,” Mave said.
“David’s not playing around,” his mom said. “And neither am I.”
Jared heard his cousin Kota’s voice rumbling but couldn’t make out the words. Were they all at Mave’s?
“Call us when you get there!” he heard Mave say to Kota.
“Mave gave me some Ativan,” his mom said to Jared. “I’m really dizzy.”
“Here, shh, give the phone to me,” Mave said. “Jared? I’m going to put your mom to bed. We’ve been very worried about you. Call us again in the morning, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Neither of them hung up. Jared could hear her breathing. His mom started crying again, and then the cellphone clicked off. He took a deep, wobbly breath.
Maybe it was a mistake, but he wanted to go back to Mave’s place. The ghosts and spirits were gone, eaten by the thing that had claimed to be his aunt Georgina. His friend Neeka was one of the only magical beings left in his life. And hopefully Huey, the flying head, was still around too. David was his big worry. His mother’s ex needed control, but had given up trying to intimidate his mother, landing on Jared as a stand-in for everything he wanted to do to Maggie. And the possibility that the coy wolves he’d killed had family, friends or allies still around. Jared had no idea what it all meant. But none of it mattered—his mom had cried and she rarely cried. She’d missed him. Maybe she’d be okay with the new Jared.
—
After dinner, they played crib at the kitchen table. His dad reached over and rifled through Jared’s cards. Jared made a face as his dad showed him all the possibilities he’d missed.
“Not enough brainpower,” Jared said.
“Maybe it’s time to hit the hay,” his dad said.
His dad packed up the crib board and put it away. Jared absently listened to the news coming from the TV in the living room.
His dad came back and patted Jared on the shoulder. “The offer to stay here is open.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jared said. “I want to get back to school, though.”
“Maybe you should take a break. Absorb things. Get back on track, you know?”
“I want my life back,” Jared said.
“Your mother is worried about David. Why didn’t you tell anyone he was bothering you?”
Jared was surprised his mother had talked to Phil. “David doesn’t matter anymore. He’s done his worst.”
“Let’s not test that little theory, okay, kiddo?”
Jared hadn’t seen this part of Phil in a long time. Concerned. Focused on something outside himself. Dad-like, instead of kid-like and depending on Jared to fix things. “I won’t.”
“I can’t stop you from staying with Mave,” Phil said. “But you need to realize that you’re putting her in danger too. David will punish you through other people the way he tried to punish your mom that time he broke your ribs.”
“I don’t want to put you in the crosshairs either,” Jared said.
Phil looked down, and then at a point past Jared’s shoulder. “I wish I could take back the last few years.”
Jared shrugged. “It’s all in the past.”
“Don’t get yourself killed.”
Practice makes perfect, a part of his brain said. Snark on autopilot. But there was nothing more he could explain to Phil without sounding certifiable. He’d died five times this last weekend. The thing that called herself Georgina Smith had raised him only to kill him repeatedly and sucked the marrow from his bones, then nibbled on his organs as if they were bonbons. “Mom’s there.”
Phil grimaced. “Yes, that should calm things down.”
—
Jared couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t even shut the lights off. He lay in bed and eventually watched the sun crawl above the mountains. At the cusp of sliding into dreams, he could feel the dust and the heat of the strange world. He could hear the coy wolves dying.
They weren’t even human, he told himself.
But Cedar had died. Cedar, the little kid who morphed into a coy wolf by taking off his human skin. Cedar’s mother had also had a baby girl. Did he kill the baby too? Or was she still in this world, an orphan?
He wasn’t thinking when he did it. Georgina had dislocated his arm, broken his leg and threatened to kill his friends and his family slowly unless he brought her and her family to a pocket universe in his bedroom floor, dolphin world, where they could feast on the inhabitants and leave once they’d eaten everyone. New worlds, new feasts. He’d just wanted to keep his family safe when he’d brought the wolves and Georgina to the world where the apes and fireflies roamed, an airless world where they’d all choked to death. Except for Georgina. He’d had to get away from her without her hitchhiking back with him, and he’d finally managed it. He’d tumbled through dimensions to land in his mom’s old house, in the basement where he’d first discovered how to “travel” with Sarah.
He deserved everything David had to dish. He deserved to be killed again, and again, and again.
He heard his dad and Shirley whisper-arguing in the bedroom beside his. Eventually, one
