Chapter 5

            “You wait here, I’ll go get our friend. She’s a bit vicious towards strangers, so I’ll recommend staying back behind me.”

            I nodded at Tammi and followed her to another uniformly painted house. It seemed weird, insane, even, that a shapeshifter lived only a couple of blocks from me. Who would have known?

            Tammi went up and swiftly knocked on the door. After a second, it opened. To my surprise, the girl from school, Cali, stood there.

            “Tam? Why are you here? And in human form?” She looked past at me. “And why is he here?” The way she said it was the same way a person would say that piece of junk or those old gym shorts. I took a step back in alarm.

            “You know the issue out west. It’s gotten too far, we need to go. As for the human, he found out. By accident. I would have preferred it if I had just vanished without a trace, like a lot of werecats do, but this is how we’re going.”

            Cali’s expression turned menacing. “You could have acted like you were a migrant, or even just got given an explanation and RUN!”

            “Well, you know how I am! I have to explain myself before killing!”

            I nearly yelled. “Wait- BEFORE killing?!”

            Tammi laughed nervously. “It’s a werecat saying. It means I explain before I actually act.”

            “And that helps me how?”

            Cali growled slightly. “If we have to take him with us, then we might as well get going.” She produced a gold-and-silver marbled wand. It was sudden, as if it  had just appeared out of thin air. I first thought of magic, but it didn’t exist. Or did it? If there was such a thing as werecats, or even enchanted wolves, like Tammi had mentioned, why not wizards?

            We started down the street, with me being the only one with anything even remotely packed. I was going to mention this to them, but I didn’t. If Cali could pull her wand out of nothing, why couldn’t she do the same for supplies?

            “Where are we going?” I finally said.

            Cali and Tammi finally looked at each other.

            “Tell?” The brown-haired girl said.

            “Maybe, will he believe us? And will he desert us?”

            Tammi looked at me. “Will you leave us?”

            I shook my head. “Wherever you two are going, I guess I’m going, too. Where is that?”

            Cali shot Tammi a strong look. “The last place where werecats lived without humans. It’s been ruined since then, but we managed to keep it sacred. Barely. It’s west, far enough to be considered out of our range.”

            “Which means…….”

            Tammi giggled. “We’re going to break some rules in going over there. With my exception. I’m a scout, so I get to run around America, in addition to Great Britain.”

            We walked a long time before anybody spoke again. It was one of those silences where you just can’t talk, no matter how hard you try. I wanted to ask about the importance of Great Britain, what a scout did, where the sacred place was, why we were even going, and how we were going to get there. My head swam with my new knowledge. When we got to the outskirts of downtown New York City, Cali was the first to speak.

            “Umm…do we have to go through the city itself? Or is there an easier way to Jersey?”

            I realized she was talking about New Jersey, on the north side of Manhattan. “We can go around it, then catch a taxi to wherever. My mom uses that when she goes to the airport.”

            Tammi looked at Cali again, then me. “Good, because that’s our first goal. We get to the airport, we can get to the destination.”

Which meant, in all, I was still clueless where we were going.