In Someone Else's Skin Read online

  “Are you okay? Do you need help?” She leaned toward us. “You need a ride?”

  I stared at her open-mouthed for a long second. “You speak English?”

  She frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t know that language.”

  What the hell?

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I glanced over at Coit, who gave me a shrug and muttered to me, “I think there’s some connection between worlds. I understood people in Larkin’s world, too.”

  Larkin. I wondered if someday he’d call my Earth “Lindi’s world.” It sounded like a theme park.

  Anyway, the woman spoke English—or whatever they called it here. I decided just to go with it. I could figure it out later.

  “We were hoping to be headed toward the town.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “You’re going to Capital City?” She looked friendly enough, but I hated to give any more information than I absolutely had to. “Well—”

  “Yes,” Shane cut in smoothly. “We need a ride if you can offer one.”

  The driver looked him up and down, and her grin grew broader. “Sure, come on in.”

  Something about that grin is familiar.

  I shook off the thought as she opened the door wide, revealing a woman who wasn’t human at all.

  Or rather, only the top half of her body was human. The bottom half was coiled around a kind of pole positioned between the two front seats. There was a similar pole in the middle of the back seat.

  That’s why the grin had looked familiar—in the sense of “from the same family.”

  We were looking at another lamia.

  One who was driving a car specifically designed for a snake shifter.

  Somehow, in my frantic desire to get the new lamia infants out harm’s way, I had opened a portal to not just any other dimension—but instead, to a dimension that was apparently full of my kind.

  At least full enough to warrant cars that allowed snake shifters to drive them easily.

  We were on a lamia home world.

  Chapter 3

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  The lamia woman eyed us as she tapped a few buttons and the car started up again, moving smoothly down the road.

  “What gave us away?” Shane managed to convey a friendly smile through the tone of his voice. It was impressive. Then again, I was pretty sure he and the lamia were flirting. He had held open the door for Coit and me to climb into the back seat while he took the front seat next to her.

  “Well, your clothes for one. There’s no way you could shift in those... what are they? Split skirts?”

  She gestured at the blue jeans I wore.

  I glanced at her own clothes. She wore a shirt much like any that I might see on earth in my own dimension, but it was paired with a skirt draped around her lower half.

  Wow. A world geared toward being able to shift. That would be amazing.

  “These are all the rage where we come from,” Coit said. How he managed to do it without a trace of irony, I couldn’t tell.

  We introduced ourselves—first names only, though it wouldn’t matter here.

  “I’m Salara,” the lamia woman said. “And what are the babies’ names?” She gestured at my neck and I realized she would have recognized the infant lamias for what they were from the very beginning.

  “We haven’t given them names yet,” I prevaricated. Not that it wasn’t technically true. We had been far too busy being on the run to think about baby names. “We are gathering our favorite baby names before we decide.” Also not technically a lie.

  “I’ve always thought if I ever have children, I would like to name a girl Eve,” Salara said.

  I had to bite down on the inside of my lip to keep from snickering. Clearly, Eve didn’t carry the same connotations in this world that it did in mine.

  “How far is it to the city?” Shane asked, changing the subject, much to my relief.

  Salara gave him a number in some measurements I didn’t understand. Luckily, she followed it up with, “It shouldn’t take more than half an hour or so to get there, depending on where you want to go.” She frowned a little as she glanced around at all of us again. “Where do you want to go? Are you visiting friends or something?”

  “We’re just tourists,” Shane said. He was really better at lying than I had anticipated.

  Salara made a noncommittal noise and said, “So you’re wanting to go to the Registry Bureau, then?”

  That didn’t sound entirely positive—not in the tone Salara said it in, anyway.

  “At some point, yes.” I tried to remain as vague as possible. “But I’m not sure we have all the information they would need.”

  “You’re traveling without papers, aren’t you?”

  Shit. This was going to be a bigger problem than I had anticipated.

  Not that I’d planned for any of it.

  “How much trouble will we be in if I say yes?” I reached up to gently run my fingers along one of the babies’ bodies. She had started getting antsy the more anxious I got.

  “No trouble at all with me,” Salara said. “I don’t think we should all have to register, anyway. But if any of the Sentinels catch you, you could end up in big trouble.”

  Sentinels. That sounded like military.

  “What happens if we show up to register without the papers?” Shane asked, cutting straight through to the heart of the issue.

  “At best, you’ll get a sympathetic clerk who will cut you a break, give you an ID, and let you go on your way.”

  “And at worst?” Coit asked.

  “At worst, the Sentinel on duty will arrest you, the magistrate will have you imprisoned, and no one will ever see or hear from you again.”

  My stomach dropped. “So either we risk walking around without papers and getting arrested or we risk getting arrested when we go in to get papers. Is that right?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say it’s right. It is, however, what is likely to happen.” Salara shook her head. “Recent attitudes toward immigrants have been awful. I don’t care what side of the continent you’re from. Everyone deserves a chance.” She cut her eyes toward me, then took another look at my two companions. “Even lamia women who like slumming it with humans.”

  “Slumming it?” Coit asked indignantly. “That’s not slumming it. Humans are—”

  “—not the dominant race,” Shane guessed.

  Salara slanted a look at him. “Of course not. I mean, we think of ourselves as a fairly progressive society. But even here, humans are often considered second-class citizens. I hate to say it, but it’s true. You haven’t really gotten away from the kind of bigotry you might have experienced in your own country.”

  So. A lamia-run society with built-in bigotry toward humans, but a liberal political group that wanted to accept humans. That’s what I was getting out of Salara’s conversation.

  I leaned forward from the back seat, hanging onto one of the poles that separated the two seats. “What do you suggest we do?”

  Salara narrowed her eyes at me in the rearview mirror. “If you go to the Bureau and apply for papers, they are going to ask a lot of questions about your relationship with these two men.” Her eyes flicked to the baby resting around my neck, then to the one coiled around my wrist. “And there’s a good chance they’ll want to make sure your babies are in a safe place.”

  “I assume that’s by their definition of ‘safe’?”

  She nodded. “That’s why I stopped to pick you up. If you’re walking into the city, I assume you don’t have the resources you would need to fight the government, right?”

  “Exactly right.” I leaned back against the seat and stared out the window at the green fields rolling by. Apparently, I had jumped us out of one bad situation and quite possibly straight into another.

  Salara was silent, too, as she fiddled with some of the buttons on the dashboard—buttons that apparently allowed her to drive hands-free. Which would, of course, be necessar
y for a snake shifter.

  I might not think much of what I was hearing about the government, but I loved this car.

  “Is there anywhere we can stay without papers?” Coit asked. “Someplace we could maybe find work?”

  Salara chewed on her bottom lip slowly, and the lower half of her body tightened and loosened around the pole she gripped—almost reflectively, as if she were using her whole body to think.

  “Yes. I know some people who will help you,” she said finally, as if having come to some momentous decision.

  “Why?” I asked, suspiciously. I didn’t like to count on luck.

  “It’s what they do. And I haven’t done enough to support immigrants,” Salara said. “I don’t know how you got to this point, but I am willing to help from here on out—at least until you get a little settled.”

  So. We had lucked into hitching a ride with a bleeding-heart liberal snake chick.

  Yeah. I might not like to trust in luck, but apparently, I was about to.

  Soon after, the fields turned to the city outskirts. But it wasn’t quite like any city I was used to. The buildings were long, low, domed shapes—quite literally snaking along the side of the road.

  All the buildings here were shaped like that first barn we had entered. I wondered as we drove into the city and the buildings grew denser, leaving only winding roads between them, if they ever built upwards instead of out.

  I got my answer, more or less, as we drove through what I suspected was downtown—where the buildings were two or three times as tall—but still rounded. The only right angles in the whole place were where the buildings met the ground.

  Coit glanced at the buildings and gave a little shudder, as if they were far too different from anything he was used to for him to be comfortable. Shane, on the other hand, was fascinated, staring at the domes with their circular windows.

  Salara began pointing out landmarks. “That’s the municipal building, where you would be going to get your papers at the Registry Bureau.” She chewed on her bottom lip for a second. “I think we should look into getting you some temporary papers.”

  “That’s a possibility?” I asked.

  At the same moment, Shane asked, “How can we do that?”

  Salara shrugged. “I’ve heard stories. I’m not entirely sure, but the people I know can help us find out.”

  “When you say temporary, do you mean fake?” Coit asked in his usual blunt manner.

  “Probably.” Salara laughed a little. “I’m not used to dealing with illegal aliens. Sorry. But I will do everything I can to help.”

  This was all too much of a coincidence. Had something drawn me to this world, that particular place? Or was it really coincidence that I had landed us in a lamia world where literally the first person who passed on the road would be willing to help us?

  My gut told me there was no accident to it at all, that my magic it had something to do with it.

  If only I knew how to make that magic work on command.

  Then maybe we could go home instead of having to rely on the liberal lamia’s help.

  Chapter 4

  The service roads we drove on were as serpentine as the buildings, twisting around and around. There were no straight angles. Something like roundabouts served instead of intersections, and I quickly lost any sense of direction I might have had.

  I realized that I spent so much time when I was growing up focusing on my human side, trying so desperately to fit into the human world, that I might have lost some of the elements of my snake-brain.

  Or least buried them so deeply that I couldn’t pull them back up instantly.

  These twisty streets left me as befuddled as any human could be.

  But I did realize that we were headed back into the downtown area. “So where are we going?”

  Salara glanced into the round glass that served as rearview mirror. “We are headed to one of the municipal buildings. I have a friend who works there and can probably get you papers, as long as we catch her before she’s done for the day.”

  I nodded and leaned back against the seat I occupied, but her answer didn’t soothe the tiny, niggling doubt in the back of my mind. If we were headed to one of the municipal buildings, why hadn’t we already stopped the first time we drove past it?

  I sat up straight and watched out my window warily.

  If there was something wrong with this situation, I wanted to be ready.

  Daddy always told me not to hitchhike. Maybe I should have followed his advice even more closely when traveling on a foreign planet.

  But if we hadn’t accepted the ride from Salara, we never would have gotten into the city so easily. And Coit was right. We were going to have to have food and water, basic supplies to get us through while I practiced opening a portal back to our own world.

  Salara’s low, sporty car pulled into a garage-like of structure and we snaked our way up to the top floor. She pulled to a stop inside the circular outlines of a parking space.

  “When we get in there,” she said, turning sideways to take all of us in a glance, “it’ll be best if you let me do the talking. I know what needs to be said and how to say to get you what you need.”

  The three of us glanced at each other, but really, what other choice did we have?

  Depending on the kindness of strangers might not be something I was entirely comfortable with—but from the moment my adoptive father had found me, I had been doing exactly that my whole life.

  “I need to make a call first,” Salara announced before popping open her door and sliding out.

  The mobile device she held to her ear was different from those in our world, but it was still recognizable as a phone.

  “This is Salara of Caln Lissa,” I heard her say. “I need to speak to Amalya.”

  She paused for a beat, then said, “I have visitors to introduce her to.” Beat. “Five of them. Three adults. Two juveniles.”

  When she hung up from the call, she waved us all out. We opened the doors and stepped out of the car.

  With the push of a button, the adult lamia shut down her automobile and led us in through a circular door to a long hallway.

  Despite the rounded walls and ceiling that curved outward, the hallway we moved through wasn’t all that different from ones on earth—with the exception of being more ornately decorated. The walls were covered in glittering images, a mosaic of tiles made from some metal I wasn’t entirely certain I recognized.

  Salara took us past several small doors and around the corner, where the hallway dead-ended at a set of giant carved wooden doors

  I skidded to a halt when I realized the door was guarded by two male lamias, both standing more or less at attention. One had a snake’s tail and a human torso. The other had a human body and a viper’s head.

  “This doesn’t feel right.” I began inching backwards.

  “It’s perfectly fine,” Salara said. “The guards are ceremonial. They’re just supposed to make sure anyone who shows up has an appointment.”

  I looked at the two guards, trying to remember that I was the outsider here and my customs were very likely to be different from their own. Especially since everyone here had grown up with other lamias around.

  I glanced from side to side, checking in with Shane and Coit. Shane gave a little nod. Coit simply shrugged, a cheerful grin on his face.

  Something about the whole situation made my stomach hurt and my skin crawl, but I was not alone.

  I reached up with one hand to rest it on the baby lamias, taking comfort in knowing they were safe from werewolves.

  The boy bumped my finger with his head, and they both stayed still.

  Maybe there wasn’t really anything different or dangerous about the guards at this room. Perhaps I was looking for danger where there wasn’t any.

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  As we drew closer to the ornate circular door, I realized it was carved with what looked to be battle scenes. Giant lamias towering over armies amassed below
them.

  I wasn’t entirely certain what that might portend, though it suggested to me that lamias might really have been as vengeful as all the old earth stories had implied. There might have been a real reason for the shifters to destroy all the lamias when they did.

  Everyone I’d talked to had agreed most lamias were dangerous.

  I hoped that this meeting with whoever the official was that Salara knew would help to change that evaluation for me.

  As we drew parallel to the guards and stood waiting right outside the doorway, Salara said, “We’re here to see Amalya. I’m Salara of Clan Lissa.”

  The guard on the left, the one who had a snake’s head but a regular body, tapped in something on the mobile device he held. He waited for a moment, and when it dinged, he said, “She’s expecting you.”

  With a push of a button, the doors opened into a room that was darker than the hallway outside, and I followed Salara in even as I was blinking my eyes and attempting to see more clearly.

  The doors behind us swung closed with a final-sounding thump.

  The enormous room we stepped into was shaped like a viper’s skull. We entered at the bottom, where the room flared out to either side. The walls angled in, narrowing to a point. This room was the culmination of the entire building, I realized. We had walked through the body of the snake and into the head.

  The walls here, like those in the hallway, were slightly rounded and patterned in a tile mosaic, black with metallic shades of the rainbow running through them, iridescent and gorgeous.

  At the front of the room was a dais, and on the dais stood a figure, a lamia in a completely shifted form as big as some of the ones I had used in battles back on my own world. She towered far above us.

  I sucked in an extra breath of air, gasping at her sheer beauty even as my mind cataloged what kind of snake she was.

  Her long coiling body was beautiful shade of gold. But her head was extraordinary, a shiny black with rainbow shades of iridescence chasing each other through it.

  The room had been tiled to match her coloring.