Free The Last Days by Scott Westerfeld Page A

won’t. It’ll be okay, Pearl. We’ll bring him in when we get back. He’ll come when his mommy calls.” I smiled.

    Her breath caught. My teeth had gotten pointy lately. Certain things kept happening, no matter what Luz did to stop them.

    “I just don’t see how Zombie escaped that whole throwing-things-away bit,” Pearl muttered. “You got rid of your boyfriend, your band, your fexcellent German stereo, and me—but not your stupid cat ?”

    “Not stupid.” I turned Zombie around and looked into his eyes. He knew things. Big things.

    Pearl was being pissy at her phone now. “Crap. It’s past eight-thirty. I don’t suppose there are any taxis around here on Sunday morning?”

    “No taxis ever.” I frowned. “Daddy says they won’t bring him home from work anymore.”

    Pearl swore under her breath, closing her eyes. “I’m going to have to call Elvis, or we’ll be late.” She looked at me, all serious. “Can you try to act normal in front of him?”

    “Of course, Pearl. No need to get all shiny.”

    “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

    I smiled my pointy smile and turned to face my desk. “Watch this. . . .”

    I leaned across to blow out the candle, and smoke poured up, sandalwood turning instantly to the smell of ashes. Reaching out with my free hand, I tugged at one corner of the fabric draped across the mirror, and velvet flowed down onto the desk like water.

    “ Minerva! ” Pearl hissed.

    There was my face, trapped inside the mirror frame, but it didn’t make me scream. I didn’t faint or suddenly want to throw Zombie out the window.

    Luz had put the beast inside me to sleep, and everything was easier now.

    My skin was pale and flawless, glowing softly in the candlelight. Two months uncut, my dark hair flowed raggedly around my features. Cheeks, chin, brow—everything was sharper and finer now, as if my flesh had tightened. When I pulled off my sunglasses, my eyes were radiant and wide, stuck in an expression of bewilderment and wonder.

    Zombie purred softly in my arms.

    “Still pretty,” I whispered. And something more than pretty now.

    I hadn’t told Luz yet that I could do this: look at my own reflection. It would make her too happy, like she was winning. Luz wanted to strip away my new senses, file down my pointy teeth, turn me back into the boring old Minerva.

    But Pearl was going to help me stop that from happening—Pearl and her music. I slipped my glasses back on and, Zombie’s weight shifting in my other arm, lifted the notebooks from the desk. Inside them were secrets, ancient words I’d heard in the worst of my fever. Singing the old mysteries would keep me the way I was: not crazy anymore, but so much more than boring.

    Halfway cured was best.

    Pearl was talking on her phone, wheedling Elvis until he promised not to mention this little trip to her mom.

    When she hung up I pouted. “But I wanted to go on the subway.” Luz had told me never, ever to go down in the earth again. But I could feel it calling me, rumbling underfoot. It wanted me.

    “There’s no time for a train,” shiny Pearl whispered, opening the door. “Come on. And try to be quiet on the stairs.”

    Stairs , I thought happily. Finally, I was headed down, out of this attic prison and down toward the earth. I wanted to go down into basements, into tunnels and chasms and excavations. I wanted to sing my way down to the things waiting there for me.

    “Ah, la musica ,” I whispered. “Here I come.”

11. SOUND DIMENSION

    -ALANA RAY-

    I got there early, just to watch.

    I’d been to the Warehouse plenty of times. It’s an old factory building in Chelsea, hollowed out and loaded up with rehearsal spaces, foam spread across the walls to kill the echoes, forty-eight power plugs in every room. There’s a recording studio in the basement—sixty dollars an hour, one dollar a minute—but it’s full of junk and strictly for the kids.

    I watched the place fill up, random