But he still intended to return, Garrie could hear that much. She opened her eyes all the way to find his face. Hard and beautiful and completely determined. “You want to come back after hours.”
He lifted his chin in affirmation.
“Oh, surely not,” Lucia said. “There will be guards, and locks, and alarm systems...”
“It’s not a bank, Lu.” Drew’s amusement stated his position pretty clearly — all for it.
“Still,” she said, sounding stubborn — the only one of them still standing. No grass stains for Lucia.
“Private tour.” Garrie scrubbed her hands over her face, ended with a tug at that hapless lock behind her ear. “They do them, for groups. I don’t know how much notice they need.”
“Wow, you’ve been reading the brochure.” Drew shredded a dandelion. “Almost like Quinn was here.”
Nothing like if Quinn was here.
“Maybe he can find something about this activity,” Garrie murmured.
Lucia offered up a bittersweet little smile. “I miss him, too. We totally need someone spouting off irrelevant facts at the worst possible moment.”
Maybe we do.
“So, okay,” Drew said, without turning his face away from the sun. Garrie, still feeling the cold burn, full of flush and goosebumps at the same time, was glad enough to stay in the shade. “We’ll come back tonight, then. Late. Way late. But what do we do between now and then?”
“You must be kidding,” Lucia said. “Did you not see my places to shop list?”
“Not on purpo — ow! What’s that for? Reading over your shoulder, or not caring?”
“Both.” Lucia retracted her precision toe and crossed her arms. “The point is, I’m covered. Don’t tell me you didn’t bring classwork, if nothing else. And Garrie, I think... she sleeps.”
Garrie scowled; she prepared to argue. But movement at a distance caught her eye, the Winchester house and grounds a figure-obscuring backdrop as the individual came closer. Even so, the red vest was clear enough. Garrie muttered “Run away.”
Too bad she wasn’t quite ready to get up yet.
Trevarr stood, silent as ever and making of himself a distinctly unwelcoming figure.
The figure resolved into a young woman. She stuck her chin out at an unconvincing angle, her steps a little too close to forced march. She was tall and lanky-thin, with a red tour guide vest and button-down shirt over a narrow torso and hips flared wide by nature and not padding. Her features were just as lean as the rest of her and not much flattered by long, sandy-red hair drawn back in some kind of complicated twist and secured with sticks.
She crossed the sporadically populated parking lot and marched straight to their little oasis. Her gaze drifted upward, her head unconsciously tilting up to follow, as she found Trevarr’s face and obscured eyes. “I need to talk to you.”
Garrie made a grumbling noise. “What do you think?” she asked the others. “Should she go ahead and talk while we don’t listen, or do we pretend we don’t see her?”
“Go ahead and talk,” Drew responded immediately.
“We use that too often,” Lucia protested.
He sat up straighter. “Because it’s so rad, man.”
“Not sure that means what you think it means, these days,” Lucia muttered. “I vote for pretending we don’t see her. Then we can go. I really, really want to go.”
“Hey!” The young woman scowled. “I’m right here. I can hear you just fine.”
“Na-na-na, I hear nothing,” Garrie said. “Someone help me up so we can get a cab.”
“Look,” the young woman said, not without exasperation. “My name is Beth. I’m not here for them. I’m here because...” She floundered for words, her reluctance clear. “The thing is, I’ve been coming to tours here since forever. And I used to see... sometimes I still see...” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, I can always hear them.”
“Congratulations. Why do we care?” Not that Garrie didn’t believe it. She just didn’t count it relevant. Yet.
Beth took a step back as Trevarr drew himself up — as if he needed to be any taller. And he held himself as though he might go for a weapon at any moment.
Something with a blade.
Garrie closed her eyes, briefly hid her face in her hands. What am I even thinking?
But when she looked at him again, she was no less convinced.
Neither was Beth, who held her ground only with obvious effort. “Look,” she said, again. “I heard how you reacted to the house. How things happened in the séance room. It’s a dead giveaway if you don’t scream your lungs out like everyone else, you know. And you —” she pointed at Drew, gaining confidence. “You knew things about the house that even Carolyn doesn’t, and she’s been here longer than any of us!”
Drew assumed an expression of extreme and completely false modesty. “I have a great sense of direction, that’s all.”
“Cool,” Beth said. “That totally explains how you knew which doors went where. Oh, wait. Gee, it doesn’t.”
“But,” Drew said, startled, and then — lame indeed — said, “The DVD —”
“Provides a deliberately unstable view with no context. From that, you reacted faster than Carolyn? Or did you not hear the part where I mentioned how long she’s been doing this?”
Garrie couldn’t keep the amusement from her voice as she straightened her back and crossed her legs, perking up into this conversation. “Maybe he’s been here before.”
Beth made a noise. Pfft.
“What do you want?” Lucia asked, one hand on her hip, head gently cocked — like Garrie, mildly amused.
Trevarr... still not amused. Inexplicably alert.
Beth wisely inched away from him. “You,” she said, boldly eyeing him. “Just look at you. Hiding in the shadows, wearing leather on a day when most of us are peeling off as many layers as we can.”
Garrie thought it was the first time she’d seen him startled — as if no one was supposed to notice those details, or at the least, not mention them. She climbed to her feet, still a little unsteady, but... definitely finding herself again.
Beth turned to her. “And you — you’re the one who feels it most, aren’t you?”
Garrie shrugged. She tugged her shirts down, found her pants askew and straightened those out, too, giving herself a reassuring pat-down. There, there. Everything’s where it was. She resisted the urge to lift her shirts and see if his hand had left an imprint on her skin.
Drew came to his feet behind Garrie, and Beth said, “You. You know, don’t you? All of you probably know. Why they all so unhappy? What can we do about it?”
Garrie didn’t give Drew a chance. “What makes you think they’re unhappy?”
Beth hesitated, and Garrie made a derisive noise in her throat. “We got by the red jacket people twice. What’re the chances they sent a nice young person out here to relate to us?”
“Oh,” Beth said, and she blushed furiously. She had the kind of thin skin that showed it, too, all the way down her throat. “They did not. They don’t even know I’m here!”
Garrie waited. Lucia waited. Drew made a faint sound of protest, and then waited.
Trevarr simply was.
Beth bit her lip, hesitated, flushed again... and then the words tumbled out. “They’re always murmuring,” she said. “Just to themselves, as they wander. No big deal. But lately they’ve been clustering, and now they’re shouting at each other. It’s like all they know how to say is we need help and they say it to each other because they don’t have anyone else to talk to.”
“Until today,” Lucia said, musing to Garrie as if Beth weren’t even there.
“Yeah,” Garrie muttered. “Too bad they went bananas at the opportunity.”
“I’m right!” Beth wrapped her arms around her waist in a self-hug that might have been restraint, might have been reassurance. “I knew it! Finally!”
Drew crowded Garrie’s shoulder. “Finally what?”
> “Oh, come on. People are always coming through with their stage whispers. I see dead people. Looking for attention, trying to impress us. Trying to be more special than thou. That’s what you didn’t do.” Briefly, she hugged herself a little tighter. “That’s when I knew, I think.”
Drew cleared his throat, most ostentatiously. “You know,” he said, trying for casual and failing, “it might help me to talk to Beth. She knows a lot about the house. It could come in handy when we...” He took a glare from Lucia and faltered. “Later, I mean.”
“Sure,” Garrie said, through teeth that were only mildly gritted. “If you think you can keep yourself to Rhonda Rose Rules.”
Beth blinked. “Rhonda Rose Rules?” she said, perhaps just a wee bit wary.
“Friend of mine,” Garrie said. “A very discreet individual.” She shot Drew a look over her shoulder.
Beth pulled back slightly. “In other words, you want to pick my brains, but you won’t give me anything in return.”
“That,” Garrie said without remorse, “is it exactly. Though you haven’t yet told us anything we don’t already know. So go ahead... walk away, if it doesn’t suit you. Or help us, if that’s what you want to do.” She ignored Drew’s dismay. Things were complicated enough already without adding yet another person of uncertain motives and alliance.
Beth scowled at her. “I’m not going to stop asking,” she said. “But I won’t be sneaky about it.”
“Hey,” Drew said, and cleared his throat. “That seems fair, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not about fair,” Garrie shot at him, mainly because he should know better. “But it’s doable. So, I’m Garrie. This is Lucia, Drew, and Mr. Friendly is Trevarr.”
“I can meet you,” Drew said, destroying any illusions of how-casual-are-we.
“I —” Beth started, as if suddenly she wasn’t sure.
“Here,” Drew said. “Or at the hotel — the lobby, I mean. Or somewhere else if that’s what you want.”
“Public, then,” she said, glancing at Trevarr.
“Sure. And I’m pretty sure Trevarr is busy. Doing something... else.”
Trevarr released a breath that Garrie imagined meant you’d better believe it.
“Well, okay then,” Beth said. “I have a car. I can —” She jumped, whirling to look behind herself. Garrie stiffened, crouching slightly as the ground seemed to jerk beneath her.
“Que?” Lucia murmured, clearly not perceiving anything amiss.
“I have no idea.” Garrie didn’t hide the annoyance in her voice. “Dammit, seriously? This is what I do.” It was what she’d always done, with the world’s best mentor in Rhonda Rose. “We have got to get a handle on this before we go back in there.”
“Hey!” Beth whirled with righteous vehemence, her hand flying to cover her ribs. And then cried “Ow!” as she whirled back in the other direction, slapping at some invisible encroachment.
“Ohh-kay,” Lucia said. “That’s not particularly ghostish. I mean, if with direct contact, we’d get some sort of visible-even-to-us manifestation first.”
“I —” Garrie frowned, feeling nothing but an increased pitch to the lingering buzz inside herself. “Lu, I can’t tell.”
Beth squeaked; her decorative hair sticks clattered to the ground, hair itself tumbling thick and free. Her voice rose in pitch. “Can’t you — hey! — stop talking and do something?”
Garrie tossed Lucia a look, not trying to hide how the moment stunned her. Since when had her answer been no?
Drew darted off the curb to stand at Beth’s back with his arms spread defensively. Garrie opened her mouth to say it wouldn’t do any good — once spirits targeted an individual, they weren’t easy to deter. But Beth no longer reacted to the poking and prodding and pinching she’d been receiving, while Drew cried, “Ow, dammit!”
Almost immediately, Beth cried, “Oh! It’s in my hair — !” and started beating at her head with a frantic, mindless panic.
With Garrie still standing there, at a loss. She looked at her hands, she looked at Beth... She burned with humiliation and dared a glance at Trevarr.
Was that regret? So hard to tell, and by the time she realized what she’d seen, it was gone.
Drew turned to Beth as though she was an old friend and pulled her in, tucking her head down and wrapping himself around her as best he could. He flinched as a bright red mark appeared on his cheek, but he didn’t give up his charge. “Do something!”
“Like what?” Garrie shot back, just as frustrated. She pushed at the energies she couldn’t quite grasp, without success. Another red mark bloomed on Drew’s face, and Beth jerked within his protectively circling arms as her vest tore, her cries muffled.
“Ohh,” Lucia breathed, edging off to the side. “I think we should leave. ¡Escapamos!”
Trevarr cursed something under his breath; he yanked something from his duster and it made a snick and clatter, cold metal against metal. A gun sort of noise.
Not on my watch, buddy. I don’t do people and we don’t do GUNS!
Garrie stepped back with one foot, setting her weight, Action Figure Reckoner, whirling to —
Whirling to —
Not whirling at all.
Garrie’s elbow hit unyielding flesh and Trevarr’s arm clamped across her torso. A high piercing whine shivered through the air around Drew and Beth and Garrie struggled only an impotent instant against the inexorable hold. She subsided to watch, wide-eyed, as all of Beth’s very long hair stood on end, drawn up into a vortex of energy. The shrieking escalated, the air shimmied, Beth’s hair rose higher —
Lucia said, “No, really. I’ll just go, and there won’t be so many of us to worry about —” She inched away and then abruptly couldn’t stand it any longer. “What part of run away do you not understand? Ai! ¡Estupido! ¡cerebro de calamar!”
Garrie doubted that Trevarr even heard her. He fumbled one-handed to deal with what just maybe hadn’t been a gun after all. At the most she could tell the flick of his wrist, the way his thumb worked, and the responding metallic slide of sound — she caught a flash of color and burnished silver and sleek curves, and her eye made nothing of it.
Lucia hovered on flight, torn and anxious — but not reacting. Not shredded by high emotion.
How’d that happen?
Because these spirits, whatever they were... they were angry. Furious. Emotions ramped up full force — and yet Lucia hadn’t so much as shed a tear or snarled an out-of-character curse.
“You should go,” Garrie said, tugging ineffectively at Trevarr’s arm — not that anyone heard her over the wail of the razor-edged tones. Trevarr raised his not-gun with sudden expectant emphasis, holding her just a little tighter in the process.
“Whoa!” Drew staggered aside, taking Beth with him. The whining sound fell away to an equally stunning silence; Beth’s hair tumbled down thick and tangled, engulfing them both.
Trevarr jerked quite suddenly backwards, as though someone had let go the other end of a tug-o-war rope. He dragged Garrie with him, and they might even have stayed on their feet if Lucia hadn’t rushed in to help and down they all went. Only Beth and Drew stayed afoot, clinging to the tangible reassurance of each other in the wake of intangible insanity.
Not to mention they could hardly separate cleanly at the moment, given the way Beth’s hair tangled around them.
And yet... silence.
“It’s gone,” Garrie said, as wondering and dazed as the rest of them. She took a deep breath, a clean breath, a breath free of any taint of the weird shimmering energy that had been so focused on Beth.
And there she was, leaning against corded muscle that turned out to be a thigh. She turned to Trevarr with a scowl. “Again? I’m on the ground with you again?”
He seemed lost in some struggle, just enough so Garrie’s annoyance somehow got stuck in her throat and died there. Instead she wanted to reach out and... yeah, and help. Somehow. As if he really ever needed help, this man.
> He does. That’s exactly why he came for you.
Isn’t it?
She rested her hand on his knee — tentative, fingers light on worn leather pants where they met with those idiosyncratic boots — just in case, somehow, he needed not to be quite so alone in the crowd this time. He didn’t look at her, and she didn’t expect it.
Beth scraped hair from her face and tugged it free — rather wildly — from the single button of Drew’s polo shirt. “What did you do?” she asked, also rather wildly. “What did they want?”
Lucia climbed to her feet, regarding the green grass stain on her perfectly rounded bottom with some disdain. “Chica, if they wanted something from Garrie, they would have been messing with Garrie.”
Beth looked blank. “Me? They wanted me?”
Drew put his hands over hers, stilling them, and then took over the task of separating them. Hair caught on the button, hair tangled over his shoulder... he petted it as if it was a living thing, returning it to her. His care with the wind-blown strands didn’t blunt the look he threw at Garrie. “I can’t believe it.” His face still bloomed with welts, pinpricks of blood showing through; they did nothing to blunt his incredulous expression. “You couldn’t do a thing with them!”
“Hey!” She disengaged from Trevarr, pushing off the knee where her hand had been resting. “It’s not like I didn’t tell you. I’ve been telling you. There’s something here...” But she couldn’t bring herself to finish.
Trevarr did it for her, more or less. “This was not yours to do.”
Now that sounded promising. Garrie held a hand out to him, as if he actually needed her help to get up; after some hesitation, he took it — and then climbed to his feet without so much as a tug against her braced arm. “What —” she started to ask him.
But Beth was finally free, if in a state of complete disarray, her voice loud and pitched a little high. “Me? Why?” she asked. “What have I done, other than what I’ve always done here?” Trembling fingers smoothed her torn vest and the shirt beneath it.
“You came to see us,” Lucia said, as if that explained everything. And at the baffled look on Beth’s emotion-flushed face, she acquired a patient expression. “Beth, you can tell us stuff about the house. We asked you to tell us stuff about the house.” She gave the grounds a thoughtful look, eyes narrowed as she gazed off across the worn asphalt. “You know, I don’t think I’d go back there today. “
The Reckoners Page 12
