Everwild (Skinjacker 2)

Allie felt her borrowed face flush, and she decided that less is more when it came to living-world conversation. She thanked the woman for the hot dog, paid with some cash from her purse, and downed the hot dog in three bites. Then she headed outside to the main event.

The rain!

It drummed against her poncho, teasing her, daring her to pull back her hood, and she did, closing her eyes and turning up her face to receive it. In an instant her hair was drenched, and rivers of rain ran down her cheeks. It was all she remembered it was! She opened her mouth and felt the drops on her tongue, but it still wasn't enough, so she grabbed the poncho, and pulled it off, exposing her flower-print blouse to the rain. She was drenched, she was chilled, and it was wonderful! All caution had been lost in this glorious moment--she didn't care who saw her, or how wet she got. Wanda would not catch her death of cold. She'd be soaked and confused, but in the end, Wanda would have the benefit of that warm fire to dry her off, as she sat beside Sam, the TV-watching dog.

Allie twirled in the rain, laughing, and dizzy... . But then, as the rain began to let up, the guilt began to set in. She had used Wanda to satisfy her own selfish desire. How could she have done that? She had to end this now, and get back to Mikey. Somewhere in her rain dance, she had dropped the poncho, and it had blown to the feet of the gas station attendant, a dozen yards away, who picked it up, and came toward her.

"Looks like you dropped this," he said.

"I'm sorry," Allie said. "I got a little carried away."

"Nothing wrong with that. Not at all, not at all." He handed her back the poncho, smiling a lopsided smile that Allie could swear she'd seen before. "Not from around here, are you?" he asked.

Only now did Allie notice that he was just as wet as she, and didn't seem to care. "Yes, I am," Allie said, figuring that Wanda must live nearby.

His smile got wider. More crooked. "Right, right, but I'm not talking about the fleshie," he said. "I'm talking about you."

Then his hand thrust out and grabbed Allie's wrist-- grabbed it hard. It hurt--maybe more than it should have because it was the first time in a very long time Allie had felt pain. Fleshie? Did he say fleshie? Then that must mean ... She ripped herself from his grasp, and turned to run, but then found herself running right into a drenched man in a business suit--a man with beady eyes colder than the rain. "First a candy bar, then a hot dog," he said. "Always hungry, aren't you!"

All at once Allie knew where she had seen these two before. It wasn't their faces she recognized--because the faces were different--but their presence was the same. This was the old man and the little boy she had run into in the last town. But they had never been a little boy or an old man, any more than she had been the chubby girl eating a snickers bar. They were skinjackers!

The "businessman" pushed her painfully back against the gas pump, jarring loose the nozzle, which clattered to the ground. "Looks like we've finally caught up with Jackin' Jill!"

llie was off skinjacking, wasn't she? She was practicing her unique talent, so why shouldn't Mikey practice his? And if he changed just a little, at least it would prove that he still could do it! It would prove that being Mikey McGill, the all-American Afterlight, was a choice, and not a sentence. So as he waited for Allie at the edge of the small town, he concentrated on his hand, training his thoughts on forcing some new reality upon himself. It didn't matter what the change was, as long as it happened. He concentrated so hard he could swear the sun dimmed slightly in the sky.

And something happened!

As he stared at his fingers, the skin between them began to grow. He watched in building excitement, as the fingers of his right hand became webbed! True, it was only down at the lowest knuckle, but it had happened--and much faster than ever before. This kind of change would take days to cultivate, when he was the McGill. And it occurred to him that perhaps having been nonhuman for so long, had made him more elastic.

All it took was half an hour away from Allie!

It was that thought that brought his euphoria to a sudden end, because as illuminating as the moment was, it also cast a chilling shadow.

Does this mean I'll turn back into a monster if I'm not with her?

Through the space still left between his fingers, he saw Allie, hurrying across the street toward him. The second he saw her, he reflexively hid his hand behind his back. He could have cursed himself for not being more subtle about it.

"We're done here," she said.

"You took way too long!" She shrugged. "Lots of articles to read." Mikey thought he had gotten off easy, until she asked, "Why are you hiding your hand?"

"I'm not." Still he held it behind his back.

Then she got a troubled look in her eye, perhaps thinking about something she had seen or read during her little skinjacking expedition.

"Let's get out of here," she said. "I don't like this place."

Mikey glanced at the horse--and that's when she grabbed his wrist, pulling his right hand into full view. He grimaced, realizing he had been caught red-handed--or web-handed, as it were ... But to his surprise the flaps of skin linking his knuckles were gone.

"Hmmm," said Allie. "Nothing. I guess you were telling the truth."

He folded his fingers over hers, interlocking them. "What reason would I have to lie to you?"

Allie squeezed his fingers tighter and smiled. "You're human now; lying is a favorite human pastime."

As they climbed onto the horse, Mikey decided he must be more human than he thought--because not only had he lied, but he had gotten away with it.

The town soon gave way to countryside, and they came across an old rural route that was no longer a part of the living world. Here, Mikey dug his heels into the horse and the horse took off in a cantor that was so much more efficient, something it couldn't do while plodding through that soft stuff that made up the living world. With Allie so close to him on the horse, Mikey wished he could read her mind, for even with her so close behind him, she felt miles away. He was still frustrated by the time she spent skinjacking, but he knew better than to make an argument of it. Allie was the sharpest, most argument-winning girl he had ever met. He knew she would make a convincing case for why she had every right to skinjack whenever she felt like it, and leave him waiting. After all, it wasn't her fault he couldn't do it.