Trevarr shifted, drawing her eye — and when he spoke, his voice stayed low. “Is the House too much for you?”
She gave him a startled look. “Don’t you even try to second-guess me. If you think anyone else could have handled that ambush today —”
He shook his head — only the slightest of movements, but it silenced her. “Only you. I know that.”
“Do you?” She put her fork down. “Really? Because you certainly don’t seem to trust me.”
He didn’t answer. The knife slid through his steak with unnatural ease.
She leaned closer. “There’s far too much that you know and I don’t. We don’t. Why even ask for our help — why pay our way here, and go through the motions, if you’re going to leave out all the important stuff? You think working blind makes it safer?”
“Yes!” he snapped, so abruptly she froze — and then so did he, in obvious surprise at himself.
She meant to ask why and how, but of course he recovered enough to pin her with that gaze, making it inexorable. Holding it long enough so she had time to realize she’d forgotten to breathe, and that her heartbeat had ratcheted up into the pounding range and her doubt into the stratosphere. What was I thinking? To come here with this man. To challenge him. To trust him.
But just as suddenly she could have sworn she saw regret shadowing his expression. Even as she started to breathe again, she heard that same regret in his quiet words. “Do what you know, Lisa McGarrity. It is enough. It’s what your —” He stopped himself. “It’s what this city needs.”
The doubt passed; the annoyance returned. Was she supposed to have missed that little hesitation? Well, she damned well hadn’t. She licked steak sauce off her thumb and sat back in the chair. Her own eyes might be plain old brown, but they could hold their own when it came to a stare-down. “So you’re not going to tell me about your metal thingies. Or why it affects you so unexpectedly when I push the breezes around, or what you did to me —”
“For you,” he corrected her, with no heat to his voice.
“To and for me in the séance room. When you —” she stopped, realized she was about to say right out loud how that cold heat had warmed every part of her, how it had invigorated her. Woken her.
Yeah, maybe not.
Especially not with her little audience — Lucia and Drew, pretending not to pay attention, as if the phone call utterly absorbed them. Garrie rubbed her palms down her thighs, a soothing gesture — didn’t expect to find the little quiver in the muscle there. Worse yet, when she gave Trevarr a quick glance... she knew he’d seen.
Double-worse, she was pretty sure that was understanding in his expression. So subtle, around pewtered eyes and strong angled lines and beneath shadows from the careless hair framing his brows. She pulled herself together, picking up her fork to drag it along the side of the dessert. Whipped by Chocolate. What had she been thinking, to order a dessert full of innuendo in front of this man?
Garrie realized suddenly that the entire room had fallen silent. If the phone call was still in play, no one was talking.
Awwkwaard.
Lucia made a languid gesture, breaking the silence. “Get a room,” she said, patently bored. She rose from the neatly cleared bed with the emptied silk tote and her neatly packed waist bag and wandered over to the window, pushing the curtains aside. “I wonder if this thing opens,” she murmured.
“Go over into Trevarr’s room and see,” Garrie said, licking her fork clean. If they were going to pretend all was Mayberry-normal, then she was damned well going to eat the chocolate.
Farking well, if that fit the scene better.
Lucia gave her a look that simultaneously meant No way am I going over there and you DID? and then she looked again out the window. “Which way is Winchester house from here, then? Close enough to see?”
Trevarr nodded briefly in a direction that sent Lucia’s gaze to the oblique left. Lucia stiffened; she leaned forward. Something in the posture caught Garrie’s attention, and she left Trevarr and his lingering tension to join Lucia at the window. “What?”
“There!” Lucia said, giving the window glass a sudden stab. “See?”
“Give me a hint — oh. Wow. Damn.” She caught it just out of the corner of her eye — but she was looking right there when it happened again. A fiery disk of flame, spurting into place above the city — spitting giant tongues of white-hot gold and yellow into the faded afternoon sky and then winking out again like some giant godly eye. “Hot damn.”
“You saw it, too,” Lucia said, her voice full of conflicting horror and relief. “I thought maybe it was me...”
Garrie gave her a concerned look. “Aw, Lu — !”
“It’s all crazy!” Lucia gestured broadly to encompass the city. “Drew’s beetles, my goo... the house today and the café and the parking lot... and you know, the feelings tied to that house...” She leaned closer to Garrie, who leaned forward into Lucia’s confidence. “You know how it was, when you found me.”
“Hey,” Garrie said, best girlfriend mode. “It’s been a long, long time since anything like that happened. And you’re a whole lot better at controlling how you take this stuff in. You know where it’s coming from, and you know how to let it roll off.”
“That’s the thing,” Lucia said. “This all feels different. What if it’s getting through to me? What if it’s screwing with my head, and triggering... you know, the unreal things?” She didn’t quite shudder, but Garrie thought it was close.
“It’s been a long time, Lu,” Garrie repeated firmly. “You’d know. If it happened, you’d know. And in this case, it isn’t, so that’s a good...” But she trailed off, realizing what she was saying.
“A good thing? This?” Lucia finished for her, and laughed, if darkly. But not for very long, because Trevarr pushed back the chair and came to stand behind them — close behind them. Lucia inched away, shifting perceptibly toward the window, making Garrie aware that she herself stood completely unperturbed at Trevarr’s presence.
“What’s going on?” Drew asked. A glance showed first-aid detritus spread out over the bed while he fumbled to affix a final Band-Aid to his hand.
“Nothing much,” Garrie said. “Fire in the sky, blah blah blah.”
“Here?” He looked up in panic, his fingers tangled in adhesive strip.
“Nah. Mile or so.”
“Well, that’s okay then.” He pulled the wrecked bandage away, stopped, and gave her a squint. “Isn’t it?”
“You know,” she said, “I suspect not so much.” And then she realized that Trevarr still stood poised behind her in searching mode, and when she looked she found the faintest frown, his eyes narrowed — the pupils constricted to pinpoints.
The sky... too bright for him. And in the squinting, he hadn’t yet found the fire in question. She pointed straight at the little bit of currently quiescent sky, and an instant later —
There. Lucia sucked in a breath; Garrie couldn’t help but do the same. “I take it back,” she said. “That just can’t be good.”
“No,” Trevarr agreed, suspiciously little emotion behind the word. But he should have been surprised. He should have gone oh shit, or something close to it.
But no. He’d seen this before, she’d bet on it.
“Tell me,” she asked him, more than just a little bit pointed. “Anything else we should watch out for?”
“What?” said Lucia, startled and turning to look at them, from Garrie to Trevarr and back again. “What does he know?”
“You talk of me,” he growled, “as though I’m not here.”
“Do we?” Garrie asked.
“We do not,” Lucia said at the same time. Then she stood taller and looked down her nose at Trevarr even though she had to look up to do it. “We know you’re there. We just don’t care. Get used to it.”
“Seriously, dude,” Drew said, the resigned voice of experience. “Just get used to it.” He drifted up to the side as the sky lit up again — a litt
le closer, Garrie thought. A little more fiery.
“Oh, snap,” he said, even though he wasn’t a sixteen-year-old girl. “Can you even imagine the panic out there? And then when word spreads about the beetles and the goo?”
“It’s not going to be pretty,” Garrie agreed. “How long will people pretend things are normal — and when do they pack up their cars, batten down the hatches, and shoot their neighbors by mistake?”
“Outside the restaurant,” Drew said. “They were talking about global warming and seventeen-year cicadas.”
“At the store,” Lucia said. “Environmental incident. Investigation already under way.”
“But no one sees all of this without running scared,” Garrie said.
“Except us,” Drew pointed out.
A low rumble filled the air. Loud enough to instantly cut off all conversation, brief enough so they had no time to kick into gear and hunt the stairwell.
Earthquake.
Wasn’t it?
“Maybe they’d just better pack up and start running at that,” Garrie said grimly.
Trevarr looked out the window, his reactive eyes staring straight into the hot blue.
“They can’t run fast enough,” he said. “They can’t run far enough.”
Oh, snap.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 20
Out Looking For Trouble
Heed the observations of those around you.
— Rhonda Rose
I’m doing it anyway.
— Lisa McGarrity
Sklayne trod the arid nighttime land beside the hotel with Trevarr, disgruntled at the rumblings and stirrings. Most especially disgruntled that he hadn’t had the chance to taste any of the chocolate.
The Garrie and the Lucia person had eaten it all.
For solace, he gave himself permission to dip lightly into being Trevarr... to feel Trevarr’s relief in the darkness, to tip his head back and take in the scents of the stark climate, intensified as it was by the faint excuse of a dew.
Trevarr. His atreyvo. From this habitual connection, Sklayne knew that Trevarr had only a faint remnant of the distresses from the bright otherworldly day, and from the bright energies pushing against the buried places. His hunger was sated as it ever got in this alien place of alien food, and his constant awareness of the Garrie person was buffered by the distance currently between them.
Sklayne had known she would be trouble. He just hadn’t known how much.
“Mow,” he said, winding between Trevarr’s legs. Not affection, no. Just to see if Trevarr was nimble enough, with those lengthy legs, to avoid crashing down.
Trevarr was.
Disappointment.
In the dark night sky above them, tiny fire eyes bloomed and faded. Not as big as the one the Lucia person had first spotted, but scattered far and wide and spitting sparks high over a dry desert. The ground also still rumbled on occasion, but ground rumbles were familiar to these people, and these were apparently not loud enough to cause alarm.
Yet.
Especially since so many still believed the talking head man on the television.
A rare and wonderful manifestation of the aurora borealis! he said.
I’m going to head home and sit in the dark with my camera, the talking head woman responded. What about you, Stan? And the talking head man had gone hearty ho ho, yes indeed!
And then Sklayne, unable to resist any longer, had investigated the television from the inside out, and there had been no more talking head people in the Garrie’s room. Just the Drew person, frowning as he stabbed unresponsive buttons on the remote.
::Aurora borealis,:: Sklayne observed to Trevarr, looking up at that sky. ::Stupid people.::
“Because they believed?” Trevarr hunkered down to regard the sky, a pose he could maintain for hours. Sklayne knew this better than he wanted to, o interesting Trevarr hunkered down in the sweet high meadow until Sklayne’s curiosity had taken him too, too close, freedom no more.
::Stupid people,:: Sklayne repeated, deciding not to think about that.
“They have no choice but to believe,” Trevarr told him. “Nothing in their lives has prepared them for this.”
Keharian fire eyes blooming overhead, reflected energy from stalkers down below.
::Stalkers,:: Sklayne said in scorn, his meaning clear enough. Beings who believed in benign fire eyes would die soon enough. Even if the current eyes were reflections from Kehar, and not stalkers upon this very land. ::Stupid people.::
“We have time.” But Trevarr looked away from the sky down to Sklayne and added reluctant words. “For now.”
::Go to the house,:: Sklayne said. ::Finish this. Then we go home.::
“This place rubs off on you,” Trevarr said, and maybe he even smiled a little. “So many words.”
::Talking heads. Blah blah blah, Stan.::
“You broke them,” Trevarr observed dryly.
::No no no. Coincidence. Accident.::
Trevarr made no response, and Sklayne didn’t have to be Trevarr to know he didn’t believe such babble for a moment.
But Trevarr had other things on his mind, hunkered here in the darkness. “Did the others speak truly of today’s events?”
Sklayne pondered. There was no need to explain his intercession in the stories told by the Drew and Lucia persons; Trevarr had picked out his presence readily enough. But...
::Worse.::
“Nothing in their lives...” Trevarr murmured. As frightened as the two had been, they couldn’t know that the beetles ran in notorious swarms, stripping all life before them. Or that the goo was called eatsll and moved underground on the hunt, oozing up to surround unwary victims.
None of them had any way to recognize how badly the fabric of this place had begun to warp at the hands of the Krevata.
::We should go,:: Sklayne said suddenly. ::Fix this.::
“We will,” Trevarr said. “We wait for the house to close.”
::We should go now.:: Sklayne used their connection to convey the layers of his meaning. Just the two of them. ::They saw us. They fear us. Waiting is too late.::
Trevarr said nothing. He didn’t have to.
::Go now.:: Sklayne wielded his useful cat tail, whapping Trevarr’s shins through his boots. :: Let the Garrie clean up after. Or tell.::
He wasn’t used to hesitation from Trevarr. “I had hoped. Once I had her mettle.”
Sklayne heard the echo of the unspoken regret clearly enough. He whapped the boots again, this time adding sparks. Tickly sparks.
Trevarr send him a gratifying level of annoyance. Good. No longer stuck in his Trevarr self. But not changing his mind, either. “You felt what she did in the house.”
::Small person. Much power. Tasty.::
Tasty to Sklayne. Not to Trevarr. Not to most of Kehar.
Trevarr scowled into the night, the kind of blatant expression he’d learned to hide from a world that feared and blamed and hated him. “If Ghehera feels but a hint of that —”
It didn’t matter that he’d cut his words off in the middle. They both knew the rest of that thought. Sklayne sat beside the boot, tail curled around his front feet but flicking aimlessly. ::The Garrie person is here. Ghehera is there.::
Trevarr made a rude sound. “Little cat. Does she strike you as one who respects such boundaries?”
Sklayne gave the boot a lightning-swift whack, claws out, loud on the stiff leather. “Hssst!” Another whack, for good measure. ::Not cat. Not little!::
Trevarr said nothing while he settled, but Sklayne felt the amusement, and growled a steady physical undertone beneath his direct voice. ::No telling the Garrie? Then go now.::
Sklayne felt Trevarr’s agreement. His ruffled fur smoothed.
Except when Trevarr did speak, he used the wrong words. “Not we. Me.”
Sklayne’s ears flattened. ::We!::
“Curiosity,” Trevarr murmured, “will get you killed.” Not that Sklayne could argue the point. It had, after
all, gotten him bonded. “Sklayne, little cat —”
Indignation burst out all over Sklayne, manifesting violet spikes from his cat-furred self. ::Mighty.::
Trevarr looked away, rubbing his chin in a way that contrived to cover his mouth. As if Sklayne didn’t know there was a smile there. “Mighty. Of course.” But then he went and shook his head. “The Krevata will sense you long before you cross their threshold. No, I will call you when the time is right.”
Sklayne radiated sullen refusal to acknowledge this truth.
His role was to help. To keep Trevarr safer than Trevarr alone could keep himself. Not to keep his distance.
But Trevarr held fast. “I need time to find the Krevata.”
Sklayne offered a derogatory hiss. Trevarr had planned to locate them while the Garrie’s unsuspecting team sorted through the house’s restless spirits, but the level of unrest...
Unexpected. To say the least.
Trevarr said, “I will locate the Krevata portal. Then we will act.”
::Together?:: Sklayne didn’t mean to have a sulk in his voice. It was there nonetheless. ::Not with the Garrie?::
“Garrie —” Trevarr started, and then stopped, flooded with such regret that Sklayne could taste it. A physical ache, a yearning. “She will never truly understand — but she will follow through.”
Sklayne made a grumpy noise. ::You want her.::
He expected silence. He expected a change of subject. He expected —
“Yes,” Trevarr said. Aching. Loudly. “But Ghehera cannot know of her. And she cannot know of Ghehera.”
Nothing to say to that. No matter how long Trevarr had known of the Garrie. Ghehera could never know. Not if the Garrie was to survive.
::Use her,:: Sklayne said, as he had said before. He did not say it sadly, because he did not care and he did not feel such things.
Ever.
“No more than necessary,” Trevarr said, and Sklayne suddenly knew why Trevarr was so willing to change their plans, pushing himself into danger without Sklayne. For the Garrie. For the knowing of her had turned into the meeting of her had turned into the touching of her.
The Reckoners Page 19
