The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

  “I’ll get my phone,” Lucia said.

  “I’ll get a washcloth.” Drew looked again at Garrie’s midriff. “Man,” he muttered as he retreated into the other room. “I didn’t know you had abs.”

  The dispersal gave Garrie a chance to move closer to Trevarr, all unnoticed by anything other than his wary gaze. She pushed aside the disarrayed strands of hair falling past his eyes, leaning in to say so quietly, “If anything happens to them... if I find out later that you could have done something to change it...”

  He made no attempt to evade her tough front. It was bold of her, that challenge — and yet after what they’d been through, after she’d had her hands practically inside his wounded body, it didn’t seem like so much.

  “There is nothing different to be done,” he said. “It is what it is. Quinn’s book is for... after.” He smiled, barely perceptible. “And because you needed him to be part of this.”

  She pulled her hand back as if stung. Because she would never have said he was considerate enough, observant enough... bothered enough... to notice or act on the needs of her friends.

  But he didn’t release her — not a physical hold, but a most palpable one, sitting there and holding her with a deeply tired gaze still silver-bright — and she realized she’d been wrong again.

  Not for them. For her.

  The room phone rang, pealing through their connection.

  She took a step back, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and made her own gaze just as cool as she could, simply because it was the only way to deal with the moment — or with the fact that Trevarr seemed to know her so well when he truly knew her so little.

  “Hey,” Drew said, popping his head back around the door frame as the phone rang again. “You gonna get that? No, I guess not, not with your hands. Good thing I bought all those Band-Aids, huh?” And he tossed a wet washcloth at her, followed close on by her night shirt, and then grabbed the phone himself — if gingerly, with his blistered hand.

  Quite the pair, they were.

  And then he grinned at the buzz of a voice from the handset. Dark amusement, but amusement nonetheless.

  “Stay in the hotel this evening?” he asked, for her obvious benefit — and Lucia’s, as she appeared with her cell. “Well, of course I saw it. Pretty, wasn’t it?” After another moment, he moved the phone away from his mouth just enough to inform them, “They’re calling all the rooms. The aurora is way —” he paused for Lucia to wince, gave a little unconscious nod when she did, “ — phat, but some people are taking it as an excuse to behave badly, so the hotel is advising us to spend the evening here. Free HBO! Free pastries in the lobby!”

  He listened a moment longer, nodding, and made as if to break in but couldn’t — and nodded again, and made blah-blah-blah talking motions with his hand, and finally had the chance to reassure the person on the phone that they’d be staying in for the evening. “Wow,” he said, hanging up the phone. “She’s wired.”

  “Frightened,” Lucia said.

  “And she doesn’t even know about Bob,” Garrie muttered, wiping the wet washcloth over her stomach, down her arms.

  “A Ghost Bob, here?” Drew asked. “And what about Quinn?”

  “Call him,” she suggested. “I want to get his take on things from the outside of this — see what’s being said, what information is leaking out. Not to mention he might be able to shed some light on the latest. You can all catch up at the same time.”

  “And after that?” Drew looked at his watch again. “It’s pretty early, on reckoner time.”

  “Then the reckoners sleep,” Garrie said. “Because reckoner time also starts early tomorrow.” Sleep, except for her. Too much going on this evening, too much roiling around inside of her — conflicting energies, conflicting emotions. The hotel had a workout room. She could run a couple of treadmill miles if nothing else. Something to put her mind into cruise mode, where it had half a chance of figuring out what was going on, and how much it would cost them.

  Because right now... I got nothin’. She worked rather fiercely at her belly button.

  “Easy, chicalet,” Lucia said, arriving in the doorway with her phone, already at work in its menu. “You need that. You might want a piercing one of these days.”

  “Next on my list,” Garrie muttered. She spread her arms in an am I good? gesture and got a moment of complete attention, and then Lucia’s definitive nod. Garrie tossed the washcloth back to Drew and shrugged into her oversized Ghost Riders in the Sky t-shirt, crossing her arms over the ghostly hard-riding cowboys on the front.

  Lucia sent the call out and put the device on speakerphone just as Quinn picked up. “Do you know what time it is here?” he asked without preamble.

  “Reckoner time!” Drew said, utterly without remorse.

  Silence, just for a moment — silence with a wary taste, even through the inadequate little speaker. “Is it all of you?”

  “All of us,” Garrie said, with emphasis on all. No mistaking Trevarr’s presence. “You’ve been watching the news?”

  “Reading between the lines. People really buying that aurora story?”

  “I think they need to buy it,” Garrie said. It helped that no one seemed to be able to get a decent image of the activity, no matter the camera or the photographer. “You find anything on it?”

  “In between looking for information on bugs and goo?”

  “Oh, we’re not done yet,” Garrie told him, more grimly than she meant to. She looked down at her hand, flexing it; the drying slashes and punctures stretched painfully. “There’s a hulk to add to the mix.”

  Definitely a wary silence there. Then, “As in, the Incredible?”

  “Well,” Garrie allowed, “minus the green.”

  Quinn said simply, “Start talking, Garrie.”

  So she did. She left out the light with claws — just too much, that. It sat hard on her with guilt, keeping things from them. Deceiving them. Not just the light with claws, but every little thing she’d noticed about Trevarr and hadn’t told them. Every detail kept to herself.

  And even so, when she finished, there was another momentary silence. Until Quinn finally said, “If nothing else, we’ve got a good pattern of W-T-F in play.”

  “And we don’t know a thing about any of it,” Lucia said, arms crossed to prop the elbow of the hand holding the phone. “Am I right?”

  “Points to you,” Quinn said. “Though I haven’t given up on this book. I’m thinking about taking it to my friend at the museum. Maybe if I can get some context on it —”

  Trevarr froze, and then straightened with alacrity — too much so, to judge by the little grunt that slipped out, and the hand that went to his side. “Don’t.”

  Quinn said mildly, “If it’s contraband or something, it’s not a big deal.”

  Trevarr stared at the phone in a way that made Garrie glad Quinn wasn’t here to see it. “It would be,” he said, “a very big deal.”

  The silence fell hard between them, until Garrie offered, “Maybe not right now, Quinn.” Quinn made a grumping noise that was as close to assent as they’d get. “It’s damned hard to figure out without any translation.”

  Garrie sighed. “So we’re stumped?”

  “So far,” Quinn said. “But I can give you this: prudence with ignorance.”

  As one, they chorused back Garrie’s initial response to Rhonda Rose’s lo those many years ago. “You fake it, you break it!”

  “Seriously,” Quinn said, after Drew had muffled his resulting giggle-snort. “Be careful.”

  Trevarr worked on the buckles to his boot with a wary caution that spoke of his injuries, but he paused long enough to look up at Garrie. “Do what you know. The rest is mine to handle.”

  As if that was supposed to be reassuring, after tonight.

  Quinn said, “That won’t be particularly useful when you’re in the middle of things.” The blame in his voice went straight to Trevarr. “Listen, you. When this gets dicey — and it will �
�� you’d better do your part. You’d better take care of them.”

  “You can be here before morning,” Trevarr said, not without annoyance.

  “But not the books,” Quinn said, clearly frustrated. “Without them, I’m just in the way. At least I know it.”

  Garrie wanted to argue with him — she did argue with him. But she didn’t win, and she finally said her good-byes, tugging somewhat ferociously at her hair.

  Drew ducked out to make his own call and returned to announce, “Beth is picking me up tomorrow morning first thing, so I can get a better read on the activity time line at the house. So far it’s feeling newish.”

  Garrie made a face. “So we meet Drew there tomorrow afternoon, then head back in the evening like we planned for tonight?” She shook her head, eyeing the hotel window. “I dunno, Lu. Whatever’s going on out there doesn’t seem to be taking the night off.”

  “Chicalet,” Lucia said, using her patient voice. “Have you looked at you? Have you looked at him?”

  Garrie looked. At Trevarr’s lingering paleness and pained movement, and at her own torn and shaky hands. The energies and events of the day had scraped her raw from the inside out, and left her questioning what she was and what she could do. “Okay, maybe we need a breather,” she said, hanging her reluctance out there where everyone could see it. “But still.”

  “Really, I only need a head start tomorrow morning,” Drew said. “Why wait for after hours to go in?”

  Lucia said, “I’m certain we could break away from a tour group.”

  Garrie flexed her hand again — another experiment, to see just how hard it would sting and just how much it still shook. She looked at Trevarr, asking without words.

  He said, “There is risk in waiting.”

  “But?” Garrie asked, having learned to read him at least that well.

  He looked as though he wanted to say anything but the words that came next. “But the consequences of failure are permanent.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Drew muttered.

  Garrie scowled at the world in general. “Not tonight, then.”

  Beneath their feet, the hotel shivered with a faint seismic aftershock — and outside, a low moan filled the night. Low enough for whales and elephants to call it a song, but...

  Garrie didn’t think it was singing at all.

  ~~~~~

  Talk, talk, talk.

  Sklayne wanted to snack. He wanted to sip from the wellspring of power at the wall. He wanted to indulge in visual sparkles of delight along the power line.

  But there was no snacking, because of the talk, talk, talk. And then when the Lucia person and the Drew person left to use what remained of their toothpaste and soap before sleep, the Garrie lingered.

  She could tell, Sklayne thought, that Trevarr was still so badly hurt.

  She could tell, too, that he was healing.

  Sklayne thought she was equally bothered by both. A stupid person thing. How could healing not be good? Go away now. Snack time.

  She looked at Trevarr, reaching into one of her many pants pockets to pull out the butter knife. Silver. She dropped it on the bedside table. “You wanna talk about your reaction to this thing? Or about how you’re healing from it? Because let me tell you, if you’ve found a way to use etherea for healing, you might just share.”

  Sklayne sucked himself into a smaller ball, scooting across to the couch away from the treacherous silver. Trevarr... ah, he flinched. He looked, to Sklayne’s eye, a certain amount of uncharacteristically miserable.

  But the Garrie understood well enough. She stared at him for another long moment, and then scooped up the offensive knife. “Get some rest,” she told him, and left — though at the doorway she turned back long enough to scowl. “I’m not going to stop asking.”

  “No,” Trevarr muttered, but only after she was gone — and with a look Sklayne hadn’t seen before. Something between resignation and strange, muted hope.

  He rose to close the adjoining door, quickly pulling off his boots, his pants... draping them over the desk for Sklayne to clean more thoroughly. He pulled on light linen night pants and reached for the light, slipping into a language more familiar to them both. “There will be no bouncing on me during this night.”

  ::I never,:: Sklayne said, with just the right amount of dignity.

  After all, it had been days.

  And he could amuse himself with cleaning the clothes, if this was the way of it, especially as Trevarr’s breathing quickly settled. Already asleep?

  Be sure. Sklayne drifted slowly closer, closer... hovering there, just above Trevarr’s face, there where the breathing tickled and eyelashes rested against cheek. Waiting.

  Trevarr didn’t open his eyes. He barely opened his mouth. But the word was nonetheless implacable. “No.”

  Sklayne returned to the clothes. Amusement through analysis. This, blood. That, plant sap. This other, a small bug in the wrong place at the wrong time, Trevarr landing on his back in the dirt, even sliding a little. All the while, listening next door, and knowing when the Garrie left that room.

  Sklayne slipped into the room in her wake. Nosy. Bored.

  The Lucia person slept, emitting soft waves of leftover emotional energy — a sloughing of the emotions absorbed during the day. Clever body. Sklayne wondered if she even knew. He moved alongside her, studying her face in repose — every angle sleek and perfect, lashes long and sweeping over almond eyes, brows arched, tousled hair shiny. She lay on her side; the sheet draped over the curve of her hip, dipping to her waist.

  Sklayne had spent enough time with Trevarr to know this was what he liked — this and the robust, loud ones. Not the Garrie, short and petite in all ways, boyish hips with many-pocket pants riding low. Short hair with its funny blue streaks, hazel-green eyes lacking any elegant slant, gamine face a little strong in the jaw and cheek.

  Inconsistency from Trevarr. It alarmed him.

  He paused by the Lucia person’s eye and blotted up the glimmer of a tear hovering there, artifact of the cleansing. The Lucia person slept with tissues by her pillow.

  The Drew person simply slept. Sprawled over his two-person bed with careless abandon, his pajama bottoms riding low in a way that would catch much offended scolding from the Lucia person in the morning. Whatever the Drew person saw during the course of the day, whatever histories impressed themselves on him, they did not bother him this night.

  Sklayne suspected that he dreamed of Beth. Strongly suspected. No, certain.

  Sklayne made himself glass cat and settled lightly on the bed where the Garrie should be. Her nightshirt lay carelessly over her pillow, scented of her and of the blood and sweat she hadn’t quite washed off. Sklayne cleaned it for her, an absent chore. He lingered a moment longer, the gentle energies of the Lucia person’s cleansing lapping around his feet, and then felt the lure of the energy outlet from Trevarr’s room and he decided he would see what it was like, being sparkly cat.

  An hour later, a replete, sparkly cat. And so he was alert when the door to the Garrie’s room opened.

  So much Sklayne had learned about this place, in such a short time. He knew electric locks. He knew security chains. He knew the sound of the shower and the even subtler sound when the water temperature warmed in the pipes. Not a long shower, not like the Lucia person. Shampoo, a subdued rich scent. Soap, not the smell it should have been.

  He suddenly regretted his earlier indiscretion with her soap. Surely he could have left her half.

  Maybe a quarter.

  She hesitated when she came to the renewed night shirt — noticing. The material rustled as she donned it. Sklayne crouched by the door, listening. Thinking of the nightmares that weren’t. The connection Trevarr had made with her, whether he’d meant to or not.

  They didn’t take long to infiltrate the Garrie’s sleep. The energy stirred up, riffling his hair up on end. Waking her with a gasp.

  She left the bed, bare feet padding steadily for the adjoining door.
As she hesitated there, Trevarr’s breathing changed. Aware.

  ::Yes,:: Sklayne told him. ::It comes to her.::

  Silence. From the Garrie, hesitating. From Trevarr, waiting.

  ::Doesn’t want to wake you,:: Sklayne said, and then wished he hadn’t.

  Trevarr might get the impression that he cared.

  Trevarr pitched his voice low. “I am awake.”

  The Garrie caught her breath. She pulled the door just enough to show one big dark eye peeking into the dim room. Not knowing that both Sklayne and Trevarr could see her perfectly well.

  Trevarr swung off the bed. He pulled the blanket from the back of the couch and went to the door, pushing it another foot open.

  The Garrie looked up at him; he folded the blanket around her shoulders and guided her into the room, closing the door to its barely ajar position.

  She clutched the blanket and said, somewhat nonsensically, “It’s just —” and couldn’t even finish that.

  Not that she had to. Trevarr said, “It will be quiet here.”

  The Garrie followed him to the couch. Sklayne retreated from Trevarr’s peculiar hurt of wanting and not having — of choosing to not-have, because of how much worse it would be to then leave.

  Sklayne hunched down tight. Not his decision. Not his pain. He told himself so.

  By then Trevarr sat aslant on the couch. The Garrie, so very tired, curled up in the blanket beside him, a small huddle of a person with her power still roiling around — but fast settling. She sighed against his shoulder; she let herself relax.

  Sklayne relaxed with her, his claws kneading in, out, in... his breath rolling over an unvoiced purr. Trevarr, too, slowly settled. His head tipped back against the couch pillow, the one with only the smallest nibble on the corner.

  The Garrie sighed into sleep, just that fast. Her mouth fell slightly open; her hand fell from the blanket to rest on Trevarr’s chest.

  A gentle, feathery touch, sliding over bare skin.

  Trevarr’s eyes flew open; he sucked in a breath.

  Sklayne’s claws popped out, digging into the carpet.

  Relaxed no more.

  ~~~~~~~~~~