Wildcat Fireflies Read online

  Also by Amber Kizer

  MERIDIAN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Amber Kizer

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kizer, Amber.

  Wildcat fireflies / by Amber Kizer. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: Meridian.

  Summary: Teenaged Meridian Sozu, a half-human, half-angel link between the living and the dead known as a Fenestra, hits the road with Tens, her love and sworn protector, in hopes of finding another person with Meridian’s ability to help souls transition safely into the afterlife.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89824-2

  [1. Angels—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Death—Fiction.

  4. Good and evil—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.K6745Wi 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010030405

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  To our dearest, Kathy Kraft:

  A WOMAN WHOSE HEART IS BIGGER THAN THE SKY ABOVE US—

  WHOSE SMILE ALWAYS WELCOMES AND WARMS—

  WHOSE EYES TWINKLE WITH THE MISCHIEF OF FAIRY LIGHTS—

  AND WHOSE DETERMINATION IS IMMEASURABLE.

  WHOSE HUG BRINGS TO MIND CREAMY HOT CHOCOLATE, WITH THE

  BONUS OF LITTLE MARSHMALLOWS—

  WHO TAKES CARE OF OUR STOMACHS WITH SOUP AND PIE,

  OUR HEARTS WITH BOWS AND GIRLIE FRILLS,

  OUR SMILES WITH SILLY CARDS AND SILLIER JOKES—

  AND WHO HELPS RETAIL THERAPISTS PRESCRIBE A SPELL AT HELIOS

  FOR HEALING.

  THE WORLD IS BRIGHTER AND MORE BEAUTIFUL WITH YOU IN IT.

  MY WISH FOR YOU IS ENDLESS LAKE-LOUNGING WITH GREAT BOOKS,

  A WARM SUN WITH A COOL BREEZE—

  AND THE SATISFACTION OF KNOWING YOURS IS A LIFE WELL LIVED.

  You filled my world with JOY. You are missed.

  Thank you, Kathy.

  Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some new and strange disguise …

  —Ralph Waldo Emerson,

  “Nominalist and Realist”

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Dunklebarger Rehabilitation Center was not a center by modern definition; more an old drafty mansion converted over generations from family home to funeral home, to sanatorium, and finally an iteration where the old and unwanted were dumped to die. “Guests” transferred there shared the same profile: elderly, no living family, friends awaiting them on the other side, critical-life-taking conditions. Their hourglasses dribbled grains of sand into abundant piles below, coughing up the last bits in spits and spurts. Medicare paid guests’ bills. When possible, the invoices reflected state-of-the-art care, top-of-the-line medication and therapies, even weeks of life beyond when bodies let souls pass. Miraculous or fictitious. Fraudulent, most definitely.

  Life and living were never confused at Dunklebarger. Guests didn’t leave alive. Of course, patients arrived there as a last resort, by design and with fanatical deliberation. Human neglect and greed at work? Perhaps. Or maybe the reality was something else entirely? Maybe the elderly deaths served a purpose, beyond the money, below the surface? Perhaps there was a greater plan that turned the headmistress and the elderly guests into victims of the light-sucking darkness.

  To truly speculate, it must be mentioned that the rehabilitation center also served unfortunates at the other end of the timeline. Children who found themselves unwanted, abandoned, removed for their own good from homes and streets. Children ages six to fifteen from the foster care system were placed at Dunklebarger, which pretended to be a group home. But the children quickly learned to call themselves inmates. To call the center DG, tagged so because Dunklebarger was a mouthful for the smallest kids, though no one remembered the child who stuck it with DG instead of DB. The eldest inmates knew the initials truly stood for Doom and Gloom. Disgusting and Gross. Death and Grief.

  Dunklebarger was a prison for old and young alike. The old were prisoners at the whim of bodies drowning in deterioration, crushing the souls within. The young were prisoners of those in power, battered and tossed about by a system not suited for anything but killing time. Of course, the child welfare system was taxed beyond its budget, time, and human ability. Even in the best of circumstances, it was appallingly easy for kids to get lost in the piles of paperwork. These weren’t the best of circumstances.

  The kids served two purposes for those who profited from the establishment. They brought in income from the state, and they cared for the infirm. Which was why children under six weren’t accepted as residents. Six-year-olds can do a lot of work, and they don’t eat as much as twelve-year-olds. Child or adult, resident or staffer, anyone who questioned, who spoke up, who complained, disappeared quietly. And ignorance doesn’t know to ask certain questions, to notice certain unusual things. Like all the children had one single, solitary social worker. One woman, of indeterminate age, was the sole connection for these kids to a system intended to protect them from the very existence they experienced at DG.

  Someone, something, else manipulated the greed and careless ambition of the headmistress to put handpicked children into the presence of death.

  Juliet Ambrose was approaching the end of her time at Dunklebarger. She remembered nothing from before her arrival there around her sixth birthday. Told by the headmistress that she was unwanted, neglected, and unloved, Juliet accepted abuse while try
ing to save those around her. She knew sixteen-year-olds left Dunklebarger for boarding schools and job training, but she had not yet heard what was planned for her. Now, nearing her supposed sixteenth birthday, even with new companions, Juliet had never felt more alone than she did counting down to February tenth. She dared not ask the headmistress directly about her future.

  Juliet dreamed of city lights and the noises of bustling traffic. The smell of a bakery in the wee hours of the morning, the aroma of Christmas goose, and the texture of sea urchin straight from the ocean. She dreamed of people she felt she’d known since the beginning of time but had never met. She saw faces, and sights, in her sleep that she couldn’t name upon waking. She knew recipes, secret ingredients, and how to make almost anything ever eaten by a guest who died at DG. There were moments when she felt utterly insane, incomplete—as if a crowd lived inside her head. As if she were a chef puppet desperately trying to cook up a tender future full of sweetness and spice and abundance.

  Awake, she dreamed that at sixteen she could take the little ones with her to a safe, warm, free place and burn down DG. Preferably with the headmistress inside. But in the end, she simply hoped to survive the storms waged on the fields and farms of Indiana when late winter collided with early spring. The tornadoes that ripped and gutted, and turned the sky to pea-green mash. The lightning that cracked silos, stirred stampeding cattle, and started fires. The hail that pounded the corn shoots flat and flooded the creeks and rivers.

  With a measly ten minutes to herself, while Mistress ran errands and Nicole minded the other children, Juliet poked her toes into the rushing, laughing waters of the Wildcat Creek gurgling behind DG, tucked her head into her knees, and sobbed.

  Juliet was sure she was in this world alone, but the cavalry was on its way. Everything she knew about her life was about to change.

  From the shadows, side by side, allies beyond time and space and earthly knowing scrutinized and watched her. These unseen eyes belonged one pair to Felis catus, and one pair to Canis lupus.

  There are four kinds of people on this planet, a seasonal four types of souls. Those who die in the summer, when the land is parched and the soul thirsts for slaking. Those deaths that herald bright flashes of autumnal color, transitions like leaves falling toward a winter sleep. The winter deaths belong to those who are contemplative and introspective, the souls that prefer crisp, bare, unfettered change. And those who die in spring are singular in hope; my personal favorite, as spring is the optimistic death. The promise of birth and life resurrected, of faith and belief in tomorrow. This is the outlook of the spring dead. This is my favorite time of year.

  Meridian Laine

  March 21, 1929

  CHAPTER 1

  “Pulloverpulloverpullover!” I screeched as we approached the outskirts of another small town.

  One more bump, one more pothole sitting in this beater truck, and I was going to lose my mind. Tens and I were just past three weeks from leaving the wreckage of Revelation, Colorado, on our Divine-tasked quest to find other Fenestra. More people, girls, like me. More Protectors like Tens. Supposedly, there was one, somewhere in the state of Indiana, who needed our help.

  “Pleasepleaseplease!” Now at the tail end of January, it had been nearly a month since Jasper’s granddaughter brought us the newspaper article about a cat who predicted deaths and a girl called the Grim Reaper.

  It was impossible to think in the bouncing, flouncing truck. I refused to inhale any more hay dust, mud particles, and springs of decades past, not for another second. I heard my brain rolling in circles around the inside of my skull like a Super Ball. “We’ve been driving for lifetimes, Tens. Pull over!” I shouted.

  Unflappable as always, Tens didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Meridian, we’re almost there. It hasn’t been that long today. You’re exagger—”

  I cut him off. “Long enough. I need to stretch. Just for a minute. Here’s good.” I reached for the door handle as we passed a sign proclaiming WELCOME TO CARMEL, INDIANA.

  “Here?” He slowed, but didn’t stop the truck.

  I needed out.

  Right.

  Now.

  “Here.” I leapt out. As Tens parked the truck along the curb, I breathed in warm pre-spring air, huffing and puffing like I’d been running instead of sitting.

  Custos sprang out of the truck bed, disappearing into the shadows. If I glanced around, I knew I’d see her. But knowing she was watching from the periphery was enough for the moment. I hadn’t truly figured out whether she was more than dog, more than wolf. But I suspected.

  Tens unfolded and walked around to the front of the cab, waiting for me like one of the Queen’s guards. I knew that expression. All patience, calm, and deliberation. He used it with wild animals in traps.

  I closed my eyes against the irritation with him I felt bubbling up. “I have a feeling about this place.” I knew it as truth, as soon as the words left my mouth.

  Tens brushed the area with his glance, taking in every detail, assessing our safety in a blink. “Good or bad?”

  Frustrated, I blew out a snort and rubbed my palms on my thighs. Our third day on the road, the newspaper article had mysteriously gone blank, the ink disappearing. Now all we had left was flimsy newsprint and our memories to guide us. I kept expecting another sign. Something I recognized, something that told me we were on the right path. Only nothing presented itself. Each day flowed into the next and failure frayed my edges.

  Where was she? This mysterious girl like me, hunted by the Nocti, needed by the good, by everything that was light, clean and pure. What was she thinking? Was she wishing someone would fall from the sky and tell her she wasn’t a freak? Or did she understand her destiny and feel confident in herself?

  “Meridian? Good or bad feeling?” Tens loped toward me, carefully keeping his distance. I didn’t bite, but I’d been cranky enough lately that I understood his reticence.

  “I don’t know yet.” I turned away, trying to puzzle out the gut feeling twisting me up. “Why don’t you sense it, too? Why can’t you sense her? What good is your gift if we can’t count on it? What if we don’t find her? Are we supposed to drive every road in the state, and the next state, and then … what? Canada? Mexico? I can’t believe we’re supposed to drive around for the rest of our lives eating burgers and sleeping in crappy motels.” We had plenty of money, thanks to Auntie. What we didn’t want to do was grab the interest of authorities—the last thing we needed was a Good Samaritan wanting to rescue a minor from life on the road. Although sixteen and old enough to drop out of high school, I still resembled a barely pubescent girl. I didn’t look a day over fourteen, and Tens’s intimidating nature screamed criminal. Not a good combination for keeping a low profile.

  “You’re tired.” He said this like it explained everything, including my volatile attitude.

  Pissed, I hissed up at him, “Don’t patronize me.” Of course I was tired. We never ceased driving, not for more than a few hours at a time. We’d been to every retirement and nursing home from the southern Indiana border to the middle of the state. I walked in circles, kicking the truck’s tires.

  I craved a bit of balance, stillness for my soul. Direction wasn’t enough on this quest; I wanted a clear purpose. What was the point of sending us out in blind ignorance? Not for the first time I wished for a conversation with the Creators—the rule makers. I wanted one of those comment cards. Fenestras shouldn’t have to operate alone and vastly outmatched by the community of Nocti, who had each other and leaders and clear mandates to destroy and bring suffering. Me—my team? We simply had journeys and lessons and growth. Yee-haw for the good guys.

  Tens sighed and leaned over the hood of the truck. “Fine, you’re not tired. You’re thinking clearly and you’re not wailing like a toddler who didn’t get the lollipop. Tantrum much?” He rested his face in his hand, huffed a breath, and straightened toward me.

  My mouth gaped. Then I choked back an utterly bitchy retort. He was r
ight. He was always right. “Wow. Harsh.”

  “Yeah, sorry. No excuse.” He softly brushed hair off my neck and kneaded the muscles knotted in my shoulders, successfully turning my claws into purrs. “I’m hungry. You have to be hungry. Let’s go in there.” He kissed the top of my head and turned me gently toward the restaurant behind us. He patted my butt flirtatiously, shocking a giggle from my throat.

  A golden sun unfurled its rays on a sign that beckoned us to come inside Helios Tea Room. It seemed like the shop was a once-working farmhouse, now swallowed by the town around it. It sat back from the road and up a set of lopsided concrete steps, with a sloping green lawn dotted with winterized flower beds, metal benches, every type of garden art imaginable. The friendly banana-yellow paint, with glossy white trim, was accented with wind chimes and floral and holiday flags. Garden statuary guarded each step, and ribbons wound around the columns and trees flickered in the breeze.

  I grinned and my irritation vanished. I thought of Auntie; she would have adored this place. I fell in love with the kitschy, easy delight that radiated life. “Auntie loved tea.” My smile grew as I teased Tens. “I bet you’ll enjoy scones. A little cucumber sandwich, perhaps?” I did my best worst British accent and the remaining tension between us melted away like a sugar cube in hot tea.

  Tens tugged my hand. “Come on.”

  I pointed at the calligraphed sign in the window. “Look, they’re hiring. You’d be a cute waiter.”

  Tens snorted and held the door for me. “You know I’d drop stuff.”

  That was me, not him. He had the grace of a leaf floating on a warm breeze. I was the klutz. Unfortunately, my newfound powers to shepherd souls to their happy place didn’t extend to coordination. Alas, any dreams I had of being a prima ballerina were done for. The Swan in Swan Lake would probably stay dead with me in the production.

  Bells of all sizes, from tiny jingle to massive cow, chimed our entrance from hooks on the back of the door. The first thing that enveloped me was the combination of scents: vanilla and cinnamon and warm chocolate with hints of lemon and cherry. As we moved from the front door down a hallway, I walked through pockets of aroma, each one a comforting embrace of all that was good in this upside-down world.