Chapter 9: Yvette

Yvette settled into the other chair. She looked almost like a little kid, sitting upright with her little pink feet propped up on a throw pillow.

“When I was human, I wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy person,” she said. “I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

“Of course not.” After some of the things I’d done to survive when my parents were too strung out on drugs to care for me, I was in no position to judge.

“Okay,” she said. “I used to live at a house for kids who broke the law. My parents dumped me there after I got caught selling eoesu flower at school. It was strict; we all had to go to bed at a certain time and everybody had to do chores, even if you were sick puking your guts out. I hated it there so I’d run away.”

“But I kept getting caught and dragged back. The city guard knew who all the runaways were and they’d break up the parties we’d have in the city park at night. They’d even beat some of the kids if they didn’t go quietly.”

“Then Mrs. Morris, the house matron who was in charge, would lock me in my room. But there was a kid I knew named Azriel who lived in an abandoned warehouse, who showed me how to pick the lock with a hairpin.”

“By the way,” I said. “Where exactly are we?”

“We’re in Kitlo, in the country of Thomdel.”

I gasped. ”I came all that way?”

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Dorien is my native country. I live in a city called Jenelle. That’s all the way across the Sea of Caldrie.”

Yvette’s button eyes widened. “That’s practically on the other side of the world.”

“Addison is definitely going to have another heart attack,” I said.

“Maybe Rufus will sort out this pendant nonsense and send you home before Addison even finds out,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said, but wasn’t counting on it. I’d never be able to live with myself if I caused Addison to get sick again, or worse. “Tell me the rest of your story,” I said, eager to change the subject.

Yvette grinned. “One night, a few of my friends from the city park had a plan to break into this place where some chemists were making raskia. Do you know what that is?”

Of course I knew. It was what killed my father.

In large amounts, raskia is a poison that causes paralysis. You stop being able to speak. Soon after that the rest of your organs shut down and you die. There’s no antidote. At least it happens fairly quick.

If taken in tiny doses, it gives you a euphoric high. People usually put a drop or two on their tongue. Licensed chemists make raskia to sell to infirmaries for medical procedures, to professional executioners for death sentences, and a few others. But unscrupulous chemists will sell it or even mix it with other poisons to whoever is willing to pay.

Addison once told me that victims of raskia poisoning are completely aware of what is happening to them until the very end. And our world had plenty of overdoses. My late father was one of them.

I nodded. “Yeah. Go on.”

“My friends and I hid behind in some trash bins behind the place. The chemists had put the raskia in tiny glass vials to sell them. We were going to get a lot of money to steal them; three-hundred direts a vial. Then we waited for them to lock up for the night.”

“We waited in the bins for almost two hours. Finally, we saw them leave. One of the older boys we were with had a lock picking kit, so it was going to be his job to get us inside. Azriel was there too. I was supposed to be the lookout while the others moved the crates of vials outside to the trash bins.”

“Just as we were moving the first crate out, a bunch of city guards surrounded us, pointing their rifles at us. I saw this other guy standing near a streetlamp, who wasn’t dressed in a guard uniform. He had this weird, glowing baton-type thing. Like a billy club.”

“We all took off running. I booked it down an alley and then I heard someone yell. Stupidly I looked behind me and saw it was the guy with the baton. Suddenly my legs went out from under me because he tripped me with it.”

Yvette sighed, remembering. “He pinned me to the pavement and I thought it was the end of me. I kicked and screamed but he was too strong. There was this intense heat coming from the baton. It felt like it was alive even though it only looked like it was made of this dark colored metal.”

“He pointed the baton at me and I saw it had this gemstone or crystal or something set inside the end of it. That’s what was making it glow.”

“Immediately I knew he was a magic user. And then he got this look on his face, like he knew I just figured it out. And then he said, ‘Enjoy your new life.’”

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“This beam of light blasted out from the crystal in the baton and slammed into my stomach. I couldn’t move. There was this buzzing all over my body and then absolutely the worst pain of my life, waves of it, until I lost consciousness.”

“I woke up. It was hours later because it had gotten lighter out. For a second I thought I might be dead and now I was a ghost. The alley was empty except for a dog barking at me from behind a gate.”

“I scrambled to my feet and ran. I didn’t know what to do or where Azriel or anybody else was from the night before. I don’t even know where I was running to.”

“Then I realized I was really low to the ground and running on four feet instead of two. I didn’t know what the guy with the baton had done to me until I caught glimpse of myself in a basement window.”

“Wow,” I said. “That must have been shocking.”

Shocking? I could have punched myself for making the understatement of the century.

She gave a rueful smile. “To say the least. You know, I never heard them coming, and now I think I know why. The guy who chased me must have kept the guards hidden with a spell, too.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Addison does sound-cloaking spells to hide stuff from me sometimes.”

“I still don’t know how we got caught. I haven’t seen any of them since, but I bet it was one of them who tipped off the city guard and got paid. I doubt I’ll ever find out.”

“That sounds likely,” I said. “But how has it been, being an opossum?”

Yvette shrugged. “It’s been okay, mostly. In the beginning it was tough, finding places to sleep and such. Every time I thought I found a safe place I’d get chased off by a dog or a cat or someone throwing something at me.”

“Finding food was another ordeal, but only at first. I can eat just about anything, but the weirdest part was when I found myself craving bugs. I’d never eaten a bug in my life except for the time a gnat flew into my mouth once and I accidentally swallowed it.”

“How did you get to be here at Rufus’s, though?” I asked, trying not to be queasy at the thought of eating insects.

“Well,” she said, “mainly because I came in through the chimney and he’s been too busy to exterminate me. We usually just leave each other alone. Plus, I’m clean, I don’t smell, and I eat the ticks in his garden of deadly flowers. I think he appreciates it even though he doesn’t say it out loud.”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit, ratty,” Rufus said, as he materialized in front of us, freshly showered and clean-shaven. He was carrying a tray with chicken pie and rolls for dinner. “Here, you two brats need to eat, I suppose. I’d better not find any of your hair on my new chairs, rat.”

My stomach growled. It had been hours since I’d eaten the doughnuts.

Yvette smacked herself in the forehead with her paw. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m a marsupial, not a rat.”

I was surprised at the tone she took with Rufus, but he ignored her.

“Did you make this, Rufus?” I asked, ladling a giant scoopful of pie onto a black dish etched with strange, winged demon creatures. Rufus had a thing for that type of design. It was all over his house, at least what I’d seen. I wondered what the bathroom looked like.

“Of course. My skills extend beyond magic,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Yvette, licking pie gravy from her whiskers, “now that he’s single, he has to fend for himself. No wifey to do the cooking anymore.”

I coughed and choked down a forkful and waited for Rufus to explode.

“She rarely cooked for me and I’m better off without her,” he said. “You should know that.”

He said it with decisive calmness, but I saw the white-knuckled grip on his fork.

“It’s really good.” I wasn’t lying. Rufus was a great cook if the pie was any measure of his talent in the kitchen.

Crumbs fell from Yvette’s mouth as she chewed and mumbled in agreement. Rufus gave a short nod. We ate in silence while I tried not to think about Addison in the hospital, hoping to be on my way before he realized I wasn’t even on the same continent anymore.

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