Pocket Apocalypse
Page 76

Gabby’s head whipped around so fast I heard the bones in her neck crack. She bared her teeth at Raina in a human parody of a dog’s snarl. Raina’s eyes widened and she took a step back, almost colliding with me. Jett matched her motion, ears going flat.
“Gabrielle?” said Charlotte. “Honey, what’s the matter?”
Bit by bit, Gabby’s snarl faded into a look of wide-eyed dismay. Then, before any of us could gather our wits enough to react, she turned and flung herself from the porch, shoving through the crowd as she fled toward the woods.
“Gabby!” Charlotte jumped after her middle daughter, giving chase. I had to give her this: she was in her late forties at the very least, she was a mother three times over, and based on the speed with which she pursued her fleeing child, I would have been happy to have her represent me in a triathlon. The crowd, which had parted somewhat to let Gabby through, closed again around Charlotte, not to protect the fleeing girl, but because they were all starting to demand answers at once.
Shelby was standing frozen, a horrified expression on her face. I turned toward her, and said the words I most wanted to avoid:
“She’s been exposed.” They were cold, cruel words, and they fell hard into the space between us, seeming to create a chasm that could never be bridged. “The temper, the physiological response—it’s the only thing that fits.”
“She’s my sister,” snapped Shelby.
“That doesn’t make her immune.” It hadn’t made her father immune. It hadn’t made me immune. All any of us could do was roll the dice and take our chances.
“I know where she’s going.”
Shelby and I both turned to Raina. She was still standing where she’d been when Gabby ran, Jett pressed against her legs like the small black dog thought that her new mistress was the only remaining source of safety in a world that had suddenly turned confusing and cruel.
“What’s that?” asked Shelby.
“I don’t think she’s working with Cooper—not voluntarily—and I know where she’s going. The same place she’s always gone when she was scared.” Raina’s expression went hard as she focused on me. “I can take you there, but you have to promise you won’t hurt her.”
“I don’t know if I can promise that,” I said, tracking Charlotte’s progress—or lack thereof—through the crowd. Gabby was gone, leaving nothing but confusion and shouting in her wake. “If she attacks one of us, I’ll have to react accordingly. But I can at least try to make sure she isn’t hurt.”
“If you can’t promise, I can’t take you,” said Raina stubbornly.
Shelby sighed. “And when Mum gets back here? Do you put the same requirement on for her? If Gabby’s been infected, we’re going to need to deal with it, one way or another. If we go now, maybe we can talk her down before Mum makes things worse. She means well, you know she does, but . . .”
“But she’ll pick and pick and agitate the situation.” Raina shook her head. “This is such a mess,” she practically moaned. “I should have seen it. She’s my sister. I should have seen it.”
“We promise,” I said, before the conversation could continue. I lifted the mice down from my shoulder, setting them on the porch railing. They looked up at me with wide, trusting eyes. “When Charlotte comes back, help her,” I instructed. “Let her take you around to sniff out the infection. All right? She is the mother of your newest Priestess. Until I return, obey her as you would my mother. Understand?”
“It Shall Be So!” squeaked one of the mice, while the others shivered in religious ecstasy.
We could deal with the issue of whether I had just deputized Charlotte Tanner as an official Mouse Priestess later. I turned to Raina. “Please,” I said. “Take us to your sister.”
Raina nodded, eyes bright with the tears she wasn’t allowing herself to shed. Then she turned and bolted back into the house, leaving Shelby and me to follow her or be left behind. Jett ran at her heels, ears folded flat against her head and long canine legs eating up the distance with ease.
We ran through the front room and down the hall, until we came to a small, boxy kitchen that hadn’t been included on my earlier tour of the house. There was a door on the far wall, half-blocked with boxes and kitchen detritus. Raina tore into the barricade like a wild thing, raining down cardboard and boxed pasta on Shelby and me, until she wrenched the door open and flung herself through it in turn, vanishing down the back porch steps. Shelby and I exchanged a look before we pursued. We had already come far enough that turning back seemed impossible.
Trees loomed up on the other side of a narrow strip of uncultivated lawn that was half wildflowers and half snarled scrub that snatched at our feet and ankles as we ran. I didn’t recognize any of it, and I didn’t remember enough about the local flora to know if we were charging straight into the Australian equivalent of poison sumac.
If that was the case, the Tanners would no doubt have the Australian equivalent of calamine lotion in their medicine cupboard. I kept running.
Eucalyptus forests are not like evergreen forests in any but the most general of senses. We ran until we could no longer see anything but trees in any direction. The space between trunks remained broad enough to feel like something out of a Hollywood film. It was like we were running through a soundstage, and not an actual wood, and that only made me more uneasy.
“This is ridiculous,” muttered Shelby. She put on a burst of speed, grabbing Raina by her elbow before the younger Tanner girl could vanish into yet another thick copse of trees. “Stop! Raina, just stop, all right?”
Raina stumbled to a halt, turning to glare mulishly at her sister. “You said you wanted to help me. You said.”
“Yes, and we even ran off half-cocked to do it, but where are we even going? We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there are werewolves on the loose!” Shelby let go of Raina’s elbow. “This isn’t a good place to be without a plan.”
Jett leaned against Raina’s leg and whined. I looked at the dog, a sudden, horrible thought occurring to me. She had been with Cooper when I first met her. Who was to say that the sweet little black canine wasn’t a werewolf in waiting?
Bringing it up now wouldn’t do any good. I made a mental note to have Jett checked for lycanthropy as soon as we got back to the mice.