Chapter 14

I trailed into the mudroom behind my mom, who was lugging two heavy guitar cases at once.

“Please don’t do this.” After a long morning of begging for mercy, my hostage negotiator voice was starting to slip into the whine zone. “There’s a dinosaur stomping around out there, and I need my magic to make things right.”

“You think I want to do this? The whole point of working with Dr. Jacobs was to help you get control of your power.” She set my guitar next to Grandpa John’s in the mudroom closet, shut the door, and locked it tight. “But until we know what’s going on, the Slumber summoning magic is benched.” She shoved the mudroom key in her pocket, and before I could open my mouth, added— “And I’m done talking about it.”

I took a big breath to push back, but anything I could think to say would probably sink me in deeper trouble. And if I got myself grounded for this life and the next, I wouldn’t be much good to the living or the dead.

This sucked.

Mom strode into the kitchen and grabbed her purse.

“I need to find out what the Hemmings think happened last night. And when I get home, I want to see all that junk in the barn organized.” She grabbed her keys off the hook by the door and pointed the car fob at me. “And I mean neat piles, sister.”

“Fine,” I mumbled.

Mom’s eyes flashed lightning. “Excuse me?”

I sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”

*

I kneeled on the cool concrete floor of the barn and pulled up what felt like the ninety-ninth plastic storage bin. “Please don’t be more holiday decorations.” Christmas, Halloween—Grandpa even went hard for Thanksgiving.

We should be hunting that monster right now, Pine said. I wasn’t sure if he meant Tenontosaurus or Crow. Either way, we were on the same page.

“Believe me, that’s all I’m thinking about. But I can’t summon anything without my guitar, and I’ll get my butt handed to me if I walk out there without any magic.” I popped the lid off the bin and found a star-spangled Independence Day wreath inside, sealed away with glow sticks and the biggest, fattest tube firework I’d ever seen. “Again?” I shoved the bin into my decorations pile and pulled up the next one. This box didn’t jingle. Promising. “Come on. Be there.” I lifted the lid.

What are you looking for? Pine asked.

“Grandpa held onto some of Mom’s stuff from when she was little, and I’m pretty sure—” I pulled a baby blanket out of the bin, uncovering a not-quite-rectangular cardboard box. A hibiscus flower was printed on the front. “Hello.”

I opened it. A dusty ukulele sat inside.

Giggling like a supervillain, I lifted the uke out of the bin. The thing was warped to heck from heat and humidity. When I flipped it over, I found the back plastered with peeling Lisa Frank stickers and Sharpie’d with a name. Evie.

How old was Mom when she played this? Eight? Nine?

It’s . . . small, Pine said flatly. He didn’t sound impressed.

I sat crisscross and gave the uke a strum. It sounded like rubber bands. “Beggars can’t be choosers.” In a few twists of the pegs, I managed to tune it up okay. Then I dropped the first string from an A to a G, and when I plucked the ukulele with my slide on, it made a half-decent bluesy sound. This thing wouldn’t win me any Grammys, but it just might do the job.

“Cross your fingers,” I said to Pine.

What are you doing?

“Calling in a friend.” I went over to one of the horse stalls, propped the ukulele up against my stomach, and twanged out a preschool version of Nuke’s song.

A hot wind blew through the barn, and the clay in the horse stable started to shift. 

Nuke’s sharp beak pushed up out of the ground. A long, straight neck sprouted up behind it. His stick limbs and tarp wings popped up like a tent. In less than a minute, I had a whole pterosaur.

He shook the clay off his black-and-white coat and lifted his head, right at my eye level.

For a second, I just stood there, holding the ukulele by the neck and staring at him. “I can’t believe that worked.”

What an ugly bird. Pine sounded disturbed.

“Don’t be mean. He’s a reptile.” I focused on Nuke’s spiky, nervous soulshine and did my best to smooth it down. “Take it easy.”

Moving in closer, I reached out with my free hand and slid my fingers up his hard bill and over his velvety head.

Nuke squinted like a kitty and tipped his head to give me a better angle for scratches.

“Aw, there’s my good boy.” I stroked his long, downy neck and closed my eyes, really settling into his soulshine. Then, just like I’d done with Crow, I pushed another layer deep, into his senses.

And suddenly, I was in his head, looking through his IMAX widescreen vision.

A bumblebee t-shirt and matching yellow scrunchy. A bouncy ponytail. A very familiar face, all slack-jawed surprise.

I was staring at . . . myself.

“Whoa.” Looking at myself from the outside, everything seemed flipped around—left was right, right was left. A dizzy spell rocked me backward.

Pine’s soulshine zinged through my arm and caught the stable door, saving me before I could fall over. Maybe sit down.

“Oog. Maybe.” I broke out of Nuke’s point of view and landed back in my own body. The barfy funhouse feeling lifted almost immediately.

I set the uke aside and backed out of the horse stall, clapping for the pterosaur to follow me to the open barn door. “Hey, cutie. You wanna fly? You wanna help me find the bad dinosaur? Huh?”

Nuke strutted into the summer sun shining into the main aisle. A warm wind blew through the door, and his fuzz fluffed up.

“Yeah, that feels good, huh.” I made a kissy sound to call him over. “You wanna get out there and scout around, don’t ya?”

A lizard darted out from under one of the boxes and scurried across the aisle.

Nuke brought his head down like a hatchet.

“No—” I squeaked.

But it was too late. He snapped the lizard up fast as a rattlesnake strike, threw his head back, and swallowed it whole.

“Ohh.” I peeked from between my fingers. It was probably too late to yell at him to spit the little guy out. “I wish I hadn’t seen that.”

Nuke smacked his beak.

Your mom will love this, Pine said.

“You know what I love?” I said. “Not taking the heat for every dinosaur rampaging around Glen Ro—”

Nuke galloped straight for the open door and sprang off the ground with his extra-long arms. In three windy flaps of his enormous black wings, he was out of the barn and over the house.

I pushed my bangs out of my eyes and watched him power into the sky. From down here, he sort of looked like a vulture.

Better take control before he ended up as tomorrow’s front page. I slipped into his mind just as he leaned into a glide.

The sudden height made my real-life stomach lurch—just for a second, until I remembered my body was safe on the ground.

Nuke floated on air as comfortably as I’d float on my back in a pool. And with every lazy circle he took over the ranch, the Texas heat filling his wings from below lifted us higher, until we hung over the property like a kite.

“Wow,” I whispered.

It was so quiet up here. Through Nuke’s eyes, I looked down on the barn, the ranch house, the overgrown garden out back. And the higher he climbed, the more I could see. A patchwork blanket of crop fields, cow pastures, and green forests, threaded together by creeks, roads, and fences.

This was incredible.

“Who’s grounded now?” I whispered to Mom, wherever she was.

Do you have a plan? Pine said.

“Crow escaped into Dinosaur Valley, and the newspaper said Tenontosaurus was hanging around some cows. So that kind of narrows down the search area.”

I noticed some red-brown specks in the distance, not too far from the Dinosaur Valley forest tree line. So, I used my little finger to tip the very end of Nuke’s wing, and we glided toward the grazing cattle.

“If you were a dinosaur, where would you be?” I asked Pine.

It’s alone and wounded. Probably hidden in the forest. It may come out around sunset.

“That’s a weirdly specific answer.”

I hunt, he said. Or I used to. That last part came out a little sad.

“Oh. Right.” I felt sort of bad, ramming head-first into the fact that he was, well . . . dead.

We’d better circle back to that. Right now, I had to deal with Nuke. This search could take a while, and I still had a whole barn to clean up. Could I just let him cruise on autopilot until he found something?

I beamed the image of the Tenontosaurus bull into Nuke’s little brain.

His reaction was meh. He’d seen those before. Not interested.

Okay. So how could I get him to search for the bull? I needed some way to put a target on its back. Maybe I could pair that image with another idea.

I imagined the bull walking through tall grass, flushing little geckos into the open. I threw in some mice and toads for flavor—a whole variety pack of little critters waiting to be snapped up like free samples at H-E-B.

Nuke’s brain lit up like downtown Dallas. That got his attention. He focused on the ground, scanning for the bull’s zebra-striped saddle patch.

Behold, the art of persuasion.

After a few minutes of supervising, I eased out of his head. His point of view played in the back of my mind like a movie at a house party—I didn’t really have to watch unless something important happened.

So, while Nuke searched for the bull, I finished cleaning out the barn. And as I scooted furniture and hauled horse tack around, I searched for something that might help me poof Crow’s duckbilled demon.

“Whaddaya think?” I gave an old golf club a test swing. “Could this smash a hole in a dinosaur?”

I don’t think you have the strength, Pine said. You’re very small.

“You keep saying that.”

Is it getting through?

I frowned and chunked the putter into my maybe pile, next to a rake and a weed wacker.

Next up was a vintage guitar amp. Fender brand, the size of a footstool, covered in golden-yellow tweed. It was dusty as a headstone and just about as heavy. I guess back when Grandpa got this thing, they built ’em to last.

I probably couldn’t use this to take out Tenontosaurus unless I hung it from a branch and dropped it like a piano, Wile E. Coyote style. Better let it live in the corner with the rest of the outdated furniture.

“Here’s—the—deal,” I grunted, dragging the amp by its leather handle. I heaved it into the corner and flopped onto the floral-print sofa to catch my breath. “When we poofed the bull the first time, its soulshine felt . . . I dunno, free. Just for a second.” I wiped the sweat off the back of my neck. “If we can poof it again and set that soulshine loose, I think I might be able to call it into me before Crow can take it back.”

If you say so, Pine said. I don’t know how it works.

I sighed. “Honestly, I don’t even think Grandpa John would know the rules, here. Magic-stealers, caveman soulshine?” I kicked off my sneakers to let my sock feet breathe. “It’s all new territory.”

For a minute I sat back on the sofa and closed my eyes, letting Nuke’s GoPro flight play in my empty head like a screensaver. Not a bad way to unwind.

Sorry. Pine said. About last night.

I cracked an eye open. “What do you mean?”

With the magic, and your mom. I wanted to help.

“Oh.” I still hadn’t figured out why I couldn’t summon him in front of Mom, but I knew one thing for sure. “It’s not all on you. That’s just how self-taught magic goes. Every time I think I’ve got summoning figured out, it pitches me a curve.”

Although I had to admit, what happened with Pine was weird.

Up to this point, I’d been resurrecting dinosaurs left and right, sometimes not even on purpose. And each one had a song it liked, a song I knew by heart. Nuke’s music took sharp twists and turns. Bitey Face just popped up at the Tractor Store jingle. But Pine . . . I couldn’t figure out what he wanted to hear. “I get the feeling you’re not that into guitar.”

Wood. Strings. I could hear the shrug in his voice. I don’t get it.

“I’ll figure out what to do. Don’t worry.” I picked at a loose thread in the sofa, wondering if I should even bring up what I wanted to say next. “You probably have a lot on your mind right now.”

Pine didn’t say anything.

“I know how it is. You know.” I dangled my hand over the arm of the couch and smoothed my hand over the dusty guitar amp. “To lose somebody.”

I know, he said quietly. Guess he’d lived in my head long enough to pick up some backstory.

“If you need to talk about it . . .” I paused. Was I overstepping? We’d only started talking, what, two days ago? “Well, you’ve got me.” And not much else.

I don’t know what to say, Pine said.

“If I’m being nosy—”

No. He stopped me before I could apologize. I just don’t have the words.

I picked some chipping pink polish off my pinkie nail. You could tell me about them. Your family. For some reason, I’d switched from out loud to thought-speak. It was just us in the barn, but I guess thinking felt more private.

What do you want to hear?

Well, you know my mom. I shrugged. What about your mom?

A white flash, like a lens flare, swallowed my vision.

I sat in the middle of a sunny field of yellow flowers, holding a shard of sharp, glassy rock in one hand and a point of white antler in the other.

No. This wasn’t my body. These were Pine’s hands.

Pine glanced over at a redheaded woman. She sat on a fallen log a few feet away, a much bigger chunk of sharp stone propped against her leg.

She steadied her own piece of antler, calculating the perfect angle. Then, in one quick, decisive strike, she broke a huge flake off the stone, leaving behind a bladed edge.

I expected a loud sound, like a plate cracking. But I didn’t hear a thing.

The woman looked up at Pine, smiled with blue eyes, and held out her stone to show him the perfect razor edge.

I think she was saying something, but her voice seemed sort of far away. Blurred at the edges.

In another white flash, the memory dissolved. I was back on the couch in the barn, surrounded by chirping grasshoppers and the sweet smell of prairie grass.

The memory came and went so fast, I wasn’t even sure if Pine meant for me to see it.

I wish she was— Pine stopped short. It almost sounded like he was going to say he wished she was here. But then he said, I wish we were together. Like he wouldn’t wish a life like this on anyone.

I opened my mouth. I wanted to apologize for bringing him into my world. For separating him from his family. But before I could find the words, Nuke’s open tab in my brain went crazy like a Superbowl touchdown.

“Sorry. Hold on.” I opened his mind and looked through his eyes.

Nuke was gliding high over Dinosaur Valley’s thick forest. The big, bronze bull lumbered far below, following a chalky, dried-up creek bed.

I switched off the pterosaur channel. “Nuke found him.” And I knew that creek. If the bull kept wandering down that ditch, he’d end up behind an orchard not too far from here. Pretty sure they grew pecans or something. “I know where to go. It’s just a few properties away.”

Good, Pine said. But how will you bring it down?

“You mean poof it?” I yanked my shoes back on and ran for the barn door. “I don’t know, but I can’t just—”

I bonked my knee on one of the holiday boxes and knocked the tub over. The 4^th of July wreath and unbroken glowsticks spilled out.

That old rocket firework, thick as a Pringles can, rolled across the aisle. It bumped the toe of my sneaker.

What? Pine asked, like he could sense my latest bad idea churning. What are you thinking?

I picked up the firework and looked up at the sky. “I think I just got a sign from God.”