Everwild (Skinjacker 2)

Unfortunately the boy she was skinjacking had woken up at 7:41. It's amazing what can happen within the span of four minutes.

"It's all right, don't worry--it will all be all right. We'll get you back home."

It was her mother's voice. She was in her mother's arms. They were rocking back and forth. She was out of breath, her vision was blurry, her chest was heaving, and a God-awful wailing sound was coming out of her. Allie's whole body was shivering with the force of her own sobs. What was going on here? Where was she? Who was she?

"I wanna go home," she heard a child's voice say. It was all nasal and stuffy so it came out "I wadda go hobe." Then she realized it was her own mouth speaking those words. All at once it came back to her--she was in the body of a boy she had skinjacked. She was in her parents' home, in her own room. Her mother was holding her, her father was standing nearby, phone in hand.

"I wadda go hobe!" the boy wailed again--he had no idea how he had gotten here. Then Allie realized a moment too late that she wasn't hiding behind his consciousness-- she was out there in the open, right in the middle of his mind. Now that she was awake, the boy knew she was there, and he screamed in terror.

"Who are you?" the boy wailed. "Go away! Go away! Get out of here!" Allie's mother backed off, thinking he was talking to her. "I don't want you here! Get out of me!"

This was a bad situation that was only getting worse. The best Allie could hope for now was damage control. She struggled to seize the boy's body, and send him back to dreamland, but now that he knew she was there, he didn't go easily. He went kicking and screaming all the way, until finally his thoughts fell in upon themselves and he was unconscious.

wasn't the way it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to bring comfort to her parents, not anguish.

--Let me go!-- screamed the cat woman, and Allie refused, taking out all her anger on her. If the woman had only stayed asleep--if she had only stayed quiet, Allie would have talked her way out of this. Things would have gone differently if she didn't have to fight the cat woman for control.

This is your fault!Allie screamed in her thoughts as she ran. You couldn't just let me do this! You couldn't just let it be! They were on a busy street now--a commercial street full of shops restaurants and cars. Plenty of people to skinjack. Allie tried to peel out, disgusted with the cat woman and her body--but she couldn't do it. She tugged and twisted, but it was as if she was glued to the cat woman's frame. She had stayed inside her too long!

--Get out of me!--

I'm trying!

The pain in her back was moving to her chest. It was intense, and it was hard to breathe. She shouldn't have run so fast. Not in this body. It suddenly dawned on her that the cat woman was having a heart attack--Allie had given her a heart attack, and now she was stuck with her in this feeble failing body!

--what have you done to me?-- the cat woman wailed.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.

She stumbled in the front door of a restaurant.

--what have you done?-- Shut up! I'll get us out of this, Allie told her.

The ma卯tre d' looked at her in alarm. "Help me!" she said. It was all she could do to get the words out. "Heart." Restaurants did have emergency kits, didn't they?

The Maitre d' looked like a deer in headlights, then he glanced down at his reservation book as if the solution might be written there. He was useless.

Allie, with pain getting worse by the second, and darkness closing in around her, spied an electrical outlet on the wall. They used electricity to restart a failing heart, right? She grabbed a knife from a table, crumbled to her knees, and shoved the tip of the knife into the socket.

The electric shock sent Allie flying. She seemed to burst apart in all directions, and pull back together a dozen yards away. She fell to the ground and began to sink into the living world. She was herself again, and back in Everlost!

She stood, and turned to the cat woman being helped up to a sitting position. She looked bad, but not as bad as Allie thought she would. A waiter took her pulse, and seemed satisfied. Silverware in a socket wasn't the best way to jumpstart a heart, but at least it had worked.

"She stole me," the cat woman muttered. "She stole me... ."

"Just relax," the waiter said. "You're going to be fine."

Half the people in the restaurant had already dialed 911, and the wail of an approaching ambulance could already be heard. It was out of her hands now, so she soul-surfed out of the restaurant, into a passing car, then another, then another, and didn't stop until she was miles away.

* * * The joy of seeing her mother should have been enough to take away the sting of her reaction. After all, how could her mother react any other way? How could she trust a strange woman who had not only lied to her about her identity, but seemed to know secrets that no one but Allie could have known? Of course she would have been horrified!

But that didn't make it hurt any less. The fact that she had nearly killed a woman barely even registered in Allie's mind. All that mattered to her was home. She still hadn't seen her father--but she knew this craving for home was even deeper than that, because, like skinjacking itself, a little taste of home was not enough. Against all reason, she hungered for it. She needed more than just closure, she needed connection. Coming here was a mistake, but now that she had opened this Pandora's box, it couldn't be closed. The only way to close the lid was to step inside and pull the lid down like the lid of a coffin.

Chapter 27 Skinjacker's Lullaby

That night, Allie fell to what may have been the lowest point of her afterlife when she skinjacked a seven-year-old boy at one in the morning.

It had to be someone lighter and more nimble than her, because the only way into her parents' new home was to climb in through an upstairs window. She didn't know what she would do once she got in, all she knew was that she had to get in, and keep getting in until she could make her parents understand that she was not gone, she was right here, and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.