Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

CHAPTER 11


KELSA’S PULSE THUNDERED IN HER ears. “I must have picked the wrong tree.” She looked into the woods, concealing her expression as her mind raced.

“Most humans can’t sense the leys at all.” The old woman’s voice was thoughtful, and so cold that Kelsa shivered. She couldn’t just deny it, but…
“I was almost certain I felt something, at least once. But I have to admit, the other times it was hard to be sure, and Raven had to confirm I’d done it. Did you feel anything?”
“No.” The warm brown eyes searched her face. Raven had never been good at reading human emotions. Kelsa could only pray his enemies were worse.
“Raven did say some nexuses would be quieter than others,” Kelsa went on. “Maybe you could pick out the right tree?”
“Maybe I could.” The old woman turned and led the way farther up the trail. She stopped five minutes later, at a tree with a sign in front of it: BIG TREE.
Kelsa remembered Raven’s comments about unimaginative human names, and fought down a pang of fear and loneliness.
“All right,” she said with a bright smile. “This time I’ll try harder.”
She pressed her hands against the tree, inhaling deep breaths of the damp air, taking a minute to think. Assuming she succeeded in bluffing her way past this moment, then what? Since Otter Woman hadn’t simply killed Kelsa or stolen the medicine bag while she slept, Kelsa had to conclude the rules still applied. So if the enemies wanted to keep Raven from rejoining her, they’d have to use the tools of this world to hold him, which meant he was probably still in a cell in Deese Lake. How they were keeping him there Kelsa had no idea, but she knew where to start.
And she didn’t dare stall much longer.
“Child of time, watching the ages pass…”
Kelsa repeated the incantation like a prayer, with all her heart in it, then cast a pinch of the precious dust over the tree trunk. This time the lack of response didn’t surprise her. She pasted a hopeful expression on her face and turned to Otter Woman. “Did it work? I thought I felt something that time, but I wasn’t sure.”
The suspicious gaze searched Kelsa’s face once more, then the old woman nodded. “Yes, you got it right that time. The ley is healed and we can move on.”
“Good!” Kelsa tried not to overreact, but it was hard. A human would have realized that she was lying. Otter Woman simply started down the trail toward the road.
Kelsa followed, her gaze darting around for a club-size stick or even a convenient rock, but the wet verdant forest didn’t produce much in the way of weapons. Even if she found something … In their human form shapeshifters had human weaknesses. If Raven had been knocked out when she pushed him into the river, he’d have drowned. Kelsa’s father had been careful to point out that the d-vid version of knocking someone unconscious, where they were out for a few hours and then suffered nothing worse than a headache, was pure fiction. If you hit someone hard enough to knock them out, you stood a good chance of killing them. That might be less true of a shapeshifter, but it was probably more true of someone who wore the body of an elderly woman. Kelsa might be willing to defraud a bank, but murdering an old lady—or even a being who looked like an old lady—wasn’t something she could do.
Then how could she escape? Just running was out. If Otter Woman couldn’t shift into something that could fly, she had friends who could. In human form they had human weaknesses. They got hungry, thirsty, tired. Would they react like a human to human drugs?
By the time they reached the bike, she had a tentative plan.
“Since we’re close to Smithers,” Kelsa said, “would you mind if we went back there and did some shopping? We’re getting low on food, Raven will have to leave his bike gear in a jail cell, and you’re going to need some for yourself before we go much farther. According to the map the next big town is Whitehorse, and that’s too far.”
And going south, to Smithers, would take Kelsa farther away from Alaska. At least this time they were trying to lure her off the path instead of killing her.
If they managed to separate her and Raven permanently, they’d win.
Volunteering to head south again, at least for a short time, was the right move. Otter Woman’s bright gaze was less suspicious now. “That sounds sensible. As long as it won’t delay us too long. You have a world to save, my girl.”
That last sentence was probably the first true thing the old woman had said. Kelsa gave her truth in return.
“Don’t worry about that. I finish what I start. Always.”
***

Raven had said that his enemies hadn’t looked in on this world lately. Kelsa made a mental list of the things she’d need, most of which, praise God, probably hadn’t existed when Otter Woman last dealt with the human race.

Kelsa received confirmation of that theory when they pulled into Smithers after sunset. The old woman stared at the blazing lights and teeming streets of the small city with astonishment, and something very like dismay.
Kelsa smiled grimly. “I hope you’ve got money.”
Otter Woman did, and Kelsa didn’t ask how she’d acquired it. For dinner she dragged her companion into a restaurant with live music. Loud live music. By the time they reached the parking lot, the megastore was open for only two more hours.
There was nothing unusual about the store by Kelsa’s standards, but Otter Woman gazed in fascinated shock at the array of goods for sale. Kelsa loaded the glide cart with clothes, including a set of Otter Woman-size bike gear, before hurrying on to the grocery section.
It might be a while before she had another chance to shop, so she stocked up on camping food, including a careful selection of self-heating soups. Cosmetics were more challenging, but by now the old woman was accustomed to watching Kelsa throw things into the cart.
“Cosmetics?” She was staring at a selection of stick-on face gems. The card she was watching rotated slowly through all the colors of the spectrum. The card next to it flashed alternately silver and midnight blue. “Makeup?”
“And sunblock,” said Kelsa, tossing in the darkest foundation she could find. “To keep me from getting sunburned in these long days. And soap and shampoo.” And small packets of temp hair color, black, and a bottle of clear brown nail polish, because she couldn’t think of a better way to alter her PID.
By the time Kelsa swept into the pharmacy section, Otter Woman was so numb she hardly bothered to ask.
“Vitamins. Also, I have some allergies.”
One packet of capsules looked very much like another, after all.
Kelsa had Otter Woman put on her bike gear in the parking lot while Kelsa unpacked the shopping cart into the bike’s packs. They bulged when she finished, too full for aerodynamics or passenger comfort, but that wouldn’t last long.
The last thing she did before leaving Smithers was to flash charge her bike. “We can’t stay in a hotel,” she told Otter Woman. “Not unless you have an ID card that lets me be here legally. And one for you as well.”
“If Raven was half as smart as he thinks he is, he’d have provided some,” the old woman snapped. “I’m tired. We’ll camp in the first open place outside this noisy city.”
Kelsa didn’t argue. If she was careful, she could make the trip to Deese Lake last a full day.
They both slept late in the morning. Otter Woman presumably because she was tired, and Kelsa because the longer she pretended to sleep the less time she’d have to kill.
First, she had to escape from Otter Woman. After that, her plans were more vague—and even the thought of pursuing those vague plans made her heart pound. It was one thing to lie to her mother, run away from home, even to run the border. It was another thing entirely to break someone out of jail.
The paved road gave her no excuses to slow down, though she managed longish stops for breakfast and lunch, where she demonstrated the use of the self-heating cans.
“They’re convenient,” Otter Woman admitted, finishing the Sow-sodium potato soup. “But it’s not very tasty. I liked peanut butter better.”
It had been the blandest thing Kelsa could find. “You can have peanut butter too.” She held out the jar. “And I’ll open a better can for dinner tonight.”
Once she hit the unpaved road, Kelsa started to take her time.
“Didn’t you go over these bumps faster yesterday?” Otter Woman complained.
“I was trying to get away from Deese Lake as fast as I could,” Kelsa told her. “The last time I came up this road I blew a tire—that’s what got us into trouble in the first place. I don’t dare risk that again.”
They ended up camping on the other side of Gnat Pass, less than ten miles from Deese Lake. It was only six in the evening, and it would still be light for almost four hours, but after two scant meals Kelsa was hungry. “And I don’t want to start biking through the woods, or even over the lake trail, with only a few hours before dusk,” she told the old woman firmly.
Otter Woman shrugged. “I don’t mind stopping here. On a bouncy road, hanging on to that bike of yours is more tiring than riding a horse.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Kelsa said. “I’ve never ridden a horse.”
“Never?”
They chatted as Kelsa fixed dinner—which didn’t take long with crackers and self-heating cans of spicy chili.
She had no idea how the sleeping capsules would taste, but even if the strong flavors of the chili didn’t mask them, Otter Woman probably wouldn’t know the difference.
Her body shielded the cans from the old woman as she popped the tops. She used one of the strong, ecoplastic lids to slice open the capsules and dumped the powdery contents into one of the cans. Two pills was a normal adult dose. Kelsa doubled it, for Otter Woman had to fall deeply asleep. If two were perfectly safe, surely four wouldn’t kill her?
Kelsa was breathing faster as she stirred the chili, mixing the heated contents, mixing in the drug. She handed the old woman the drugged can and a spoon, hoping her smile didn’t look as fake as it felt.
“This isn’t as boring as the one you had for lunch.”
She took a bite herself, watching with what could surely be taken for a hostess’s concern.
The old woman took a spoonful and chewed the chili cautiously.
Kelsa had to remind herself to breathe.
“Spicy.” Otter Woman took another bite. “But not bad. I’m going to start missing fresh food soon, though.” Her spoon dipped into the chili once more.
Kelsa felt as if she were melting with relief. “If it’s too spicy you can mix in some of the crackers. And we’ll have apples for dessert.”
While they ate, they discussed which fruits and vegetables traveled well. As soon as she finished eating, Kelsa yawned. “That rough road really takes it out of you! I’ll set the tent up now.”
Human form, human weaknesses. The old woman yawned in sympathy. And again a few minutes later.
By the time Kelsa had set up the tent and laid out the bedding, the wrinkled eyelids were drifting down.
“My, I’m sleepy. I don’t remember it coming on this fast.”
How long had it been since this being had worn a human form?
“It can,” Kelsa told her. “Especially after a day of exercise in fresh air. I’m certainly ready for bed.”
She pulled off her boots and rolled up in her blanket to prove it, and a moment later the old woman joined her. Less than ten minutes later, the woman’s breathing assumed the deep slow rhythms of sleep.
Kelsa wanted to check her pulse, to make sure the old woman’s heartbeat was still OK, but she didn’t dare touch her. The woman’s breathing showed no sign of distress. It would have to do.
Kelsa rolled out of her blanket, then crawled out of the tent as quietly as she could, taking her boots with her. Otter Woman didn’t stir.
After donning her boots, Kelsa walked the bike away from the tent. The electric motor didn’t make much noise, but that wasn’t the same as no noise. The soft crackle of forest detritus under the tires would register on the woman’s subconscious as a natural sound, but the hum of the bike’s engine might not.
It cost Kelsa a pang to abandon the tent she’d shared with her father, but if that was the price of escape, so be it.
***

It was almost eight p.m. when she pulled the bike into a clearing—only a few miles down the road from her camp, but she didn’t dare get closer to the town until she’d made some changes.

If she was going to stop the tree plague, she had to get Raven out of jail. She wasn’t sure exactly how to do that, but the first step was to get in to see him and find out what was holding him there.
Kelsa had never had to change her appearance to fool the omnipresent cameras of the grid, but she’d listened to other kids talk about how it was done. One thing they all agreed on was that changing race was easier than changing gender.
First she cut her hair. This was the dry side of the mountains, but when the long strands fell away the rest sprang into frizzy curls. Not quite like a black girl’s hair, but not unlike some of the mixies she’d known.
With only her bike’s rearview mirror, tipped to the side for the best possible view, Kelsa went for the modish cut her mother had been urging her to try. She shaped the curling mass into a wedge over one eye, with thin spikes darting down in front of her ears and another deep wedge on the nape of her neck. At least it felt like she’d cut a clean wedge in the back, but she was working by touch at that point and couldn’t be sure.
It did make a difference—her face looked rounder, her cheekbones more prominent. She had to admit, her mother had been right about that.
Darling, you look so cute! Kelsa grimaced, and tried to push the thought of her next conversation with her mother aside. A conversation she dreaded. After this, the police would be looking for her. And the first thing they’d do was call her mother. After this, she couldn’t just go home and pretend nothing had happened.
The thought of a felony on her record, of maybe even going to jail, made Kelsa shudder. Her counselor had warned her about doing things she might regret, and while a judge might accept grief for her father as an excuse for lesser crimes, Kelsa was pretty sure it wouldn’t get her off for jailbreak.
But the alternative was to give up, go home, and watch her planet die. And even if Kelsa could have done that, she couldn’t leave Raven in jail, at the mercy of his enemies. She owed him too much, and she liked him too much for that.
Human or not, he’d become a friend. And friends didn’t leave their friends in jail.
She spread the temp color over her palms and rubbed it into her hair, disarranging the careful style. When she was certain she had completely worked in the glossy black coating, with no brown patches to give her away, Kelsa washed her hands and wiped the smudges off her face and neck.
It would take a few minutes to dry, which meant it was probably time to get Charlie out of the way. Kelsa had been off-soading with her father and some of his friends in the red-rock desert when one of them bent a wheel rim, so she knew this kind of message was sent as text—Sf nothing else, her father’s friend had explained, it gave you some wiggle room if you happened to hit the wrong mechanic.
To: Charlie’s Salvage and Repair
Your page says you do towing. I’ve bent a wheel rim on the jeep road up by Deadwood Lake.Kelsa had to stop and bring up a map to get some plausible coordinates.
Can you come up and haul me in? Everyone’s all right, so there’s no need to report this to traffic cops or anyone. Your rates looked really reasonable. I’d be willing to pay twenty percent more—and throw in a beer—for a discreet tow tonight. We were fishing. You know how it is. She signed it Johnny Phillipini, in case Charlie decided to check the pod’s registration before he came. Her father’s friend said that as long as no one was hurt, most tow drivers were willing to keep quiet about bringing you in, even if you’d had a few too many. After all, tow-truck drivers weren’t legally required to report anything. It was just custom, and customs were open to compromise.
If that was true in Utah, it would certainly be true in the far less security-conscious wilds of Canada. But while a tow-truck driver might be bribed into letting some details slide, the police wouldn’t.
Her hair had dried. Kelsa pulled out her comb and teased the black fuzz back into place. She was opening the foundation when her pod signaled that a text had come in.
To: Phillipini
Can do. Provided no one hurt. Charlie Rigby.Kelsa put down the tube to type in her reply.No one hurt. Honest. Thanks. Johnny.The dark foundation spread smoothly over her face, neck, arms, and the back of her hands. It looked like brown putty, but Kelsa knew that a good foundation soaked in. She picked up the clear brown nail polish and carefully painted a thin coat over the picture on her PID.
Even when she tilted the card toward the descending sunlight, it didn’t make any difference. There was no way the brown-haired, white-skinned girl in the picture could be taken for mixed race. The police would look at an ID card whose owner was visiting a prisoner in their jail. Particularly if they couldn’t run it on the net.
Kelsa wiped off the still-wet polish, and after a moment’s thought poured a small amount of polish into a cup, then squeezed a few drops of temp color out of the bottom of one of the packets and stirred. It certainly got darker.
She painted the mixture over the plastic card and held it up to the light once more. The blue backdrop had turned a sickly green, but there was no standard background color, so that didn’t matter. The severely braided hair looked darker—it could have been black. The skin was darker too, not beautiful mixie gold, but muddy gray. Still, that could have been caused by bad lighting. PID photos were notoriously hideous, anyway.
Kelsa looked into the bike’s mirror. The foundation had sunk into her skin, as advertised. It wasn’t as dark as she’d hoped, but the color was even and looked surprisingly natural. Her mouth and nose weren’t right, but she knew several mixie kids who’d drawn paler skin and Caucasian features out of the genetic lottery. She didn’t look like a white girl anymore, and her PID photo looked more or less like her.
She quickly cleaned up the color packets. She wanted Charlie to get well out of town before the police tried to call him, but she had another task to perform, and she wasn’t sure how long it would take.
After a final check to make sure the dark coating on her PID was dry, Kelsa biked toward town.
Her father had liked taking his bike down small, unnamed roads, so Kelsa knew what she was looking for. Eventually she spotted the double track of an off-pavement service vehicle heading into the hills. It could have been a forest service access road, or even a loggers’ trail, but for once she got lucky. Only half a mile from the pavement, she crested a rise and saw the town’s com tower.
Surrounded by a chainlink fence, with a locked gate.
Kelsa took off her helmet and pulled out the bike’s tool kit. Her conscience might flinch, but if you were planning a jailbreak it was stupid to worry about vandalism. And at least there were no cameras. Places like this relied on seclusion for their security. Seclusion, and the fact that there was no reason for anyone to sabotage a small-town satellite link.
The wire cutters were designed for the bike’s thin electrical wires, and by the time she’d finished cutting a gap in the fence her hands ached. But once she was inside the fence, the screwdriver worked just fine to pry the cover off the master board.
Kelsa had no idea what the blinking lights indicated, what the various wires and circuit boards did. It would be nice to do something clever, to make the damage look like an accident … if she’d been a trained electrician and had the tools she needed and all the time in the world.
If she couldn’t be clever, Kelsa decided, she might as well go for maximum damage. She was committed now.
She ripped out thin plastic circuit boards, leaned them against one of the tower’s metal legs, and stamped on them to break them. Then she cut every wire she could reach. By the time she finished, all the lights were dark. But there was one final test.
Kelsa pulled out her com pod and tried to access the net.
No signal.
Good enough. Now she’d better get out of here before the repair crew arrived. Kelsa reached the paved road in minutes and headed into town, keeping well within the speed limit. There was no way for anyone she passed to know she was a vandal … and planning a jailbreak.
The police station was on the main street, marked with a sign. It was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, even after centuries of independence and almost two centuries after the advent of the automobile.
Kelsa parked her bike in the lot and walked through the front door, like any law-abiding citizen. The police couldn’t know that her heart was hammering against her ribs. There were only a couple of officers on the evening shift, a man and a woman, scowling at a deskcomp. The woman looked up when Kelsa came in.
“Can I help you?” Her soft Canadian accent was more pronounced than most, and she summoned up a smile despite her annoyance. The quivering tension in Kelsa’s belly eased. Cops were human. After Otter Woman, that seemed like a very good thing.
“I’m not sure,” Kelsa told her. “A friend of mine was supposed to meet me today, to do some trail biking, but he never showed up. I know it’s early to report someone missing, and he’s not … it wouldn’t be the first time he missed an appointment. But he usually coms if he’s going to be a whole day late, and I haven’t heard anything. So I thought I’d better see if something happened to him.”
“He was probably just delayed,” the woman said soothingly. “And if our link wasn’t down, I could check the accident reports. But I’m afraid—”
“It’s probably squirrels again,” the man put in. “They gnaw the wires.”
“I can tell you if any of our officers dealt with him,” the woman offered. “What’s his name?”
“He goes by Raven.” Kelsa had anticipated this question and had a story ready. She hoped it didn’t contradict whatever he’d already told them, but the scenario she’d come up with should cover any discrepancies.
The woman’s hands, poised above the keyboard, froze. “Is he a First Nations boy, about seventeen, five foot ten, 155 pounds?”
“Yes,” said Kelsa. “At least, I guess that’s what he weighs. Did something happen to him?”
The difficulty was keeping anxiety out of her expression, not letting some leak in. If Raven had somehow avoided arrest, and just not managed to find her, all of this would be for nothing.
The woman snorted. “You could say that. He’s right here, in a cell in the basement. In jail,” she added, to clear up any doubt.
“But … did he crack up his bike? He’s not much of a drinker. Really.”
“No, nothing like that,” the clerk said. The male cop had drifted over and was listening. “He just blew a tire. But after it was fixed, his girlfriend took off on the bike leaving a two-hundred-dollar repair bill. The garage owner kept hold of him and called us.”
“But why didn’t he just…” Kelsa began artfully. “Oh. Wait. I bet he didn’t have enough cash on him to pay for the repair. Right?”
“He didn’t,” the woman confirmed. Her voice was still friendly, but her gaze was sharp. Kelsa could see both of them comparing her with Charlie’s description of the girlfriend—and not finding a match. When they’d call him to come identify her, he wouldn’t be home.
“He also had no ID and no account cards,” the woman continued. “And he refused to give his real name.”
Kelsa sighed. “He’s such a jerk. But in a way you can’t blame him. If his father found out where he was, he’d be dragged home in a heartbeat. And he really, really doesn’t want that. They know he hasn’t been kidnapped or anything,” she added. “He lets them know he’s OK. But … Well…”
“So what is his name?” the woman asked. Her voice wasn’t so polite now.
“I don’t think I should tell you,” Kelsa said apologetically. “Not if he didn’t. He’s going to be eighteen in eight months, and then it won’t matter nearly as much, but for now … Well, you understand.”
“No,” said the woman. “I don’t. What’s your name, Miss? And may I see some ID, please?”
“Sure.” Kelsa handed over her card. “I’m sorry he made so much trouble for you. He doesn’t mean to, but there are some things he just doesn’t get. He grew up with other people taking care of things like bike repairs.”
The woman looked at her picture, then at her nonfunctional card reader, and sighed. “Kelsa Phillips?”
“That’s right,” Kelsa said. “How much did you say that bill was?”
“Over two hundred dollars,” the male cop put in. “I don’t suppose you’re prepared to pay it?”
“I can’t,” Kelsa told them with real regret. “But he might be willing to let me contact someone who can. Who could take care of all of this, in fact. Can I see him?”
“You can’t contact anyone till the link’s back up.” The woman gave her PID back to her. “But when he wouldn’t tell us his name, we ran his face on a net ID program. We couldn’t find him anywhere.”
“Which should have told you a lot right there,” said Kelsa. “Everybody’s got a picture somewhere in the net. Please, I know it’s late and stuff, but if I could talk to him maybe he can tell me who to get in touch with about this bill. And when they get your link fixed, we could settle it without his father getting involved. Because trust me, that’s the last thing anyone wants.”
She could see they weren’t completely convinced. A runaway rich kid fetching up in a Deese Lake jail was pretty unlikely. On the other hand, abuse was as possible in a rich family as in any other, and a boy who’d rather sit in a cell than give his real name … Choosing between standing up to a powerful wealthy man and returning a teenager to an abusive situation wasn’t a decision any cop wanted to make.
“Talk to him in private,” Kelsa added firmly. “Mikes off.” According to the lawyer vids, any visit to a prisoner would be recorded visually, but private conversations were a civil right. At least they were in the U.S., and surely Canada wasn’t too different.
The two cops looked at each other.
“I don’t see any problem with letting them talk,” the man said at last. “If it gets settled, good. If nothing comes of it, there’s no harm done.”
“Mikes off,” Kelsa insisted.
“Of course, Miss Phillips. That’s standard for prisoner conversations unless we’ve got a warrant.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. Please, call me Kelsa.”
She’d expected an interview room, but the male cop took her down a flight of Sinoleum-covered steps to a linoleum-floored corridor with many doors off it. Two of the doors consisted of steel bars.
Raven lay on a narrow cot, frowning up at the ceiling. He must have been foolish enough to resist, somewhere along the line, because he had a black eye. The fact that he still bore those bruises told Kelsa something was seriously wrong. And if Charlie had done that, she no longer felt bad about sending him into the back country on a call that wasn’t there.
“What are you doing here?” Raven demanded before she could speak. “You haven’t … ah…” He cast the cop who accompanied her a fierce glare.
“No, I haven’t told them who you are,” said Kelsa. “Or who your father is. Though you were an idiot not to carry enough cash to pay your bills!”
Raven opened his mouth and closed it without saying anything.
The cop suppressed a smile. “You can use this.” He pulled a folding chair out of a closet, opening it in front of Raven’s cell door. “And the mikes are off, but I’m obliged to tell you that you’re being visually monitored at all times.” He gestured to the cams at either end of the corridor, and Raven glared up at one corner of his cell. It must be monitored too, but as long as the mikes were off that didn’t matter. Clearly something else prevented him from shapeshifting, or his bruises would be long gone.
Kelsa sat down in front of the barred door. The cop cast a final glace around and went back down the hall.
“Are you all right?” Even if the cop overheard, that question would sound perfectly normal.
“No.” Raven rose from his cot and came to sit, cross-legged, on the other side of the bars. He peered through to make sure the cop was out of earshot before going on in a much lower voice. “All my abilities have been suppressed. Fenesic. It’s one of the few things in this world that can affect us. But if my enemies managed to poison me, they must know exactly where we are! You’ve got to—”
“I’ve got to get you out of here,” Kelsa told him. “Preferably before morning, because that’s the soonest the drug is likely to wear off. It might last longer, but we can’t count on that. What’s this Fenesic stuff, and how could they poison you? We’ve been eating the same food, mostly from sealed packages, and drinking out of the public water supply.”
“Who did you drug? And if they had you, how did you escape?”
“It was Otter Woman,” Kelsa said. “And I was able to escape because, like you, she’s not as smart as she thinks she is. I’ll tell you about it later, but right now we need to get you out of jail! How did you get poisoned?”
“I think it was the perfume,” said Raven. “Remember in that baggage car when we were getting the bike out? Fenesic is one of the best poisons to use on someone in this world, because it’s not only inhaled, it acts slowly and subtly. It won’t wear off for years. Decades if it’s a strong dose, and this was! If I hadn’t been distracted I might have noticed something, but—”
“But we were arguing.” Kelsa pushed guilt aside. “What’s the cure, and how do I get it to you? Bake you a cake with the antidote in it? I’m pretty sure they’ll analyze anything I bring you, and they might have a rule against prisoners getting food from the outside.”
For the first time, Kelsa saw genuine fear in Raven’s eyes.
“Don’t tell me there is no antidote,” she said sharply.
“No, it exists. An inhalant, like Fenesic. But it’s in the sap of a tree that grows only in the Southern Hemisphere, so you couldn’t possibly get it and get back here before I was transferred to some larger facility. And Fenesic … it doesn’t wear off. They could leave me here to die!”
He sounded panicked. Kelsa couldn’t blame him.
“I’ll get you the antidote,” she promised rashly. “Even if it takes years.” Assuming the tree plague didn’t kill the trees he needed before she could reach them. And after years of plague, even if she saved Raven, it might be too late for her planet. Kelsa had no more desire to die than he did, and even less to see her world die with her.
But she was getting ahead of herself, letting his terror infect her.
“Tell me about this tree,” she said. “My father was a botanist who specialized in forests. Maybe there’s a sample of Fenes-whatever in some arboretum, and since I’ve got his com pod I might be able to fake my way in.”
Raven’s face brightened slightly. “It’s found in Australia. It grows very tall, very rapidly, and has long dark green leaves and…”
A few sentences later Kelsa was sure. She began to laugh.
***

Deese Lake was too small to have a megastore; it barely had a grocery store. But like many small-town stores, it stocked a wide variety of goods. It had a very decent selection of herbal and natural medicines, including a big squeeze bottle of eucalyptus chest rub.

Raven had been startled when Kelsa told him that his exotic foreign tree was common in California and other places as well. It probably hadn’t been imported when he was learning words like Jehoshaphat, so the enemies who’d poisoned him wouldn’t have known about it either.
It shocked Kelsa to realize that they were willing to destroy one of their own. Stripping Raven of his powers and landing him in a human prison—and without any way to prove an identity, even in Canada, that’s where he would have ended up—seemed almost as horrific as being kidnapped by a biker gang.
After Kelsa had told him that the scent of eucalyptus wouldn’t be any farther away than the nearest pharmacy, they’d worked out the rest of the plan. The window wells above the cells were barred and screened with wire, but the windows themselves opened four inches to allow the prisoners fresh air. Raven’s had been open when Kelsa arrived.
Having purchased the chest rub and removed the seal, Kelsa opened the fly on her bike pants and zipped the bottle inside. Bike wear was loose enough that it wasn’t too uncomfortable. It was also loose enough to conceal the shape of her body.
This time she parked the bike behind the police station—from the back it could have been a store or a real estate office, almost anything.
She left her helmet on, trying to walk with a manly swagger as she entered the shadowy alley beside the jail. Only one of the barred window wells glowed with light, but Kelsa knew Raven was in the cell closest to the back of the building, anyway.
She turned toward the wall, opening her fly and hunching her shoulders in the characteristic posture—a posture that helped conceal what she was holding from the cameras on the building’s eaves. She flipped up the bottle’s cap with one flick of her thumb and sent fragrant liquid splattering into the window well. Even if someone happened to be watching the security monitors, they would have no way of knowing what that liquid really was, although they might be a bit startled by the capacity of her bladder.
When the bottle was empty, Kelsa zipped it into her pants and strolled back to her bike.
She rode straight out of town, expecting at any moment to hear sirens behind her—though they probably didn’t chase people down with sirens for urinating in a public place.
She was out of Deese Lake in a few minutes, and between the deepening dusk and the rough road it was easy to go slowly enough for Raven to catch up with her. Soon she had to turn on her headlight, and on the potholed surface that slowed her down even more.
How long before the antidote would take effect? Assuming that eucalyptus sap that had been made into a chest rub would work at all.
Eucalyptus might have been imported to this continent, but California was a long way from British Columbia, especially by dirt bike. Kelsa couldn’t afford a plane ticket, and if she transferred money from her mother’s account to her own, this adventure would come to a screeching halt. Because when she refused to come home, her mother would call the Canadian police to bring her home.
Hell, the police would be after Kelsa anyway the moment they noticed that Raven had vanished from their jail. Assuming he could break out of jail. He’d sworn his beak was strong enough to tear that screen, but if he couldn’t…
It was almost two hours later when a big black bird swooped out of the night and through her headlight.
Kelsa stopped the bike. There was still no traffic, and her lights would warn anyone who came around the curve. She pushed up the shield on her helmet.
“Don’t change,” she told Raven, as he assumed his usual perch on her handlebars. “Otter Woman told me the police set up a roadblock somewhere between here and Good Hope Lake. I don’t match the description of the girl who ripped off Charlie, but I don’t want to push my luck. Can you scout ahead and circle back to stop me if you see anything?”
The raucous squawk that answered was completely uninformative. Kelsa grimaced. “One caw for no, two for yes.”
The great wings lifted, almost like a human shrug, feathers rustling. Then he cawed. Twice.
“Thanks.”
The wind from his takeoff caressed her face like cold fingers.
***

He flew ahead of her all night, swinging back occasionally to reassure her. It wasn’t hard to figure out that when he swooped low and flew down the road in front of her that meant go on, and that flying across her path meant stop. He stopped her twice, near creeks both times, where he took a drink and rested on the handlebars for a while. Kelsa took advantage of those brief breaks to relieve herself and down some water or an energy bar.

He didn’t stop her before the town of Good Hope, where the magneto-repellant asphalt resumed and she was able to increase speed, though he did fly back to her less and less often.
The sky was beginning to brighten in the northeast when he swooped across the road a third time.
Kelsa, who really didn’t want to encounter a roadblock now, turned off the pavement, rode through a shallow drainage ditch and into the trees.
The mountains had leveled out here and the forest was dry and thinner, very like the Rockies she’d left so far behind.
She turned the headlight off and waited till Raven flapped down beside her. In the growing light of dawn, the change from bird to man wasn’t quite so horrifying. Was she finally becoming accustomed to it?
“You’re going to need a new set of bike clothes,” she said, reaching into the pack. “My spare jeans will be too short, but it’s better than running around naked, and we can buy you some clothes in the next town.”
“Clothes, yes.” Raven pulled the therma knit she tossed him over his head. Her jeans were too short, and also loose around his narrow waist—a fact Kelsa noted with some annoyance.
“But not biker clothes,” Raven continued. “Do you have any shoes that would … ah, I suppose not. We’ll have to buy them too. Give me the highest-denomination bill you’ve got and I’ll copy it.”
“Why not bike gear?” Kelsa asked, pulling the spare cash he’d given her out of her pocket. “You need something reinforced, in case the bike—”
” We’ll have to leave the bike behind,” Raven told her. “I turned off both the lights and the surveillance in my cell, but the moment someone on the morning shift brings me breakfast, the police will start looking for both of us. And this bike. Could you become a blonde? Or a redhead?”
“No,” said Kelsa. “But the black will wash out. How can we reach Alaska without a bike?”
“By turning right when we hit Highway One—it’s just ahead—then going east about five miles to Watson Lake,” Raven told her.
He wasn’t exactly well dressed as he swung onto the bike behind her, but no one would report them for indecency. And it felt ridiculously good to have him back in his proper place.
Kelsa turned toward the road. “Isn’t Alaska to the west? What’s in Watson Lake that we need to go back for?”
“Trucks.”