Othersphere by Nina Berry Page A

with his hands again, as if pulling on the reins of the earth below him. The ground shrugged upward.
    I fell. Above me, the ceiling cracked.
    The cage’s roof came completely off most of its supporting posts. One side of it crashed down with a head-splitting clang, right on top of the creature beneath it.
    The shelf November was hanging on flew off the wall and smashed into the shelves below. I lunged, trying to catch her. But she disappeared in a cloud of dust and debris.
    The quaking subsided to a shudder. Lazar and Caleb stirred.
    â€œNovember!” Coughing, I got to my hands and knees and pulled aside a broken shelf. “Where are you?”
    No answering squeak. Oh, no . I didn’t let myself think any further than that. Caleb, close by, stumbled over and helped me lift another shelf. Lazar got to his feet to lend a hand.
    I glanced over my shoulder at the pile of debris that had fallen on the Ximon-thing. Was it dead?
    Was November dead?
    A high-pitched call and a swoop of wings announced Arnaldo’s arrival. He landed on the cracked banister next to the stairs, half of which had crumbled into a pile of wood.
    â€œNovember!”
    I thought I saw a bit of her pink tail under broken shelving and brackets. “Here!” I said, motioning to the others. “Carefully . . .”
    We cleared away the debris on top of that shelf. Then Caleb grabbed an end, Lazar another, and they gently lifted it together.
    November lay there, unmoving, blood spotting her brown fur, a deep gash on her head, nearly severing one of her pale pink ears. My stomach dropped.
    Then I realized she couldn’t be dead. I’d seen what happened when a shifter in animal form was killed. After he died in his bear form, Siku had shifted back to human for the last time.
    I laid two fingers over November’s heart. The beat was rapid but strong. “I can’t tell if anything’s broken.”
    Arnaldo touched her dusty nose with his beak.
    Footsteps upstairs, and London called out from the doorway, “What the hell is going on?”
    â€œNovember’s unconscious,” I said through numb lips. What have I done?
    â€œWhat?!” She started to clatter down the steps.
    â€œThe quake,” Lazar said. “She fell.”
    â€œIt wasn’t a normal quake,” Caleb said. “That thing that’s possessing Ximon did this.”
    The ground stopped moving. It was quiet.
    â€œSo,” said London. She had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, staring at me. “Dez was wrong.”
    I bowed my head and gently stroked November’s whiskers back from her nose. Blood dripped from her mouth.
    I had been horribly wrong. About Ximon faking his possession. About coming here. About everything. I was responsible for this.
    â€œWhere’s that thing now?” London was asking.
    â€œThe cage fell on it,” Lazar said. He was pulling bandages out of his backpack.
    â€œWe need to get November out of here and healed, fast,” Caleb was saying.
    London craned her neck at the fallen silver cage. “Do you think it will go away if Ximon is dead? And if he is dead, how do we track down Amaris?”
    â€œNovember,” I said. It came out raspy. My throat was closed up, dry. “Wake up.”
    Lazar knelt down next to me. His voice was gentle. “Careful how you move her.”
    â€œShe needs to shift in order to heal.” I looked up at both Caleb and Lazar. “Can you guys make her do that?”
    The two brothers shot each other a glance before looking back down at November.
    â€œWe can try,” said Caleb.
    â€œWe’ll try,” said Lazar at the same time.
    A metallic scraping came from the silver cage. We all swiveled to face it. The collapsed roof of thick metal, which must have weighed over a thousand pounds, shifted an inch. Then it heaved upwards in a shower of rubble.
    â€œShit!” London screamed.
    â€œI don’t think I can objure it,”