Drew bounded into the room. “Garrie!” He said, and then came up short at the sight of the red jackets, and even shorter at the sight of Sklayne. “Hey, isn’t that the cat from the last job?”
“Yeah, it is,” Garrie said. Not cat. Whatever. “You ready? Trevarr is trapped in that house somewhere, along with the last tour group. I need you to get me to them.”
“Got you covered,” Drew said promptly, but he gave the two women a doubtful eye.
“You won’t get in,” the taller woman said, her features particularly pinched and disapproving. “It’s locked.”
“Ladies,” Garrie said, somewhat gently, “Haunted houses are what I do. How often do you think the doors are unlocked when I get there?” And she marched past them, not at all surprised when they gave way for her.
Hold on, Trevarr.
Hold on, San Jose.
Hold on, world. I’m coming...
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 27
Kehar: Truly Not So Long Ago
“That’s a new glyph.”
Nevahn startled at the sound of Trevarr’s voice, spattering deadly silvered paint from his brush. “Klysar’s blood!”
But Nevahn wasn’t the one who would take harm from those tiny splatters. Only the ethereal — or those beings touched by the ethereal.
Like Trevarr.
Nevahn stuffed the brush into its safety cap and wiped his hands with a stained cloth, but still forbore to do that which he so desperately wanted — to throw an arm around his son, now so undeniably grown. Taller than any of them, always leaner than he should be, shoulders always broader than Nevahn expected. Silver strands gleamed faintly through hair barely tamed, the sidelocks drawn back with a rough tie.
Trevarr bore the signs of injury that Nevahn had come to expect, but less so than was often the case. A nearly healed cut on his forehead, an arm supported by the casual tuck of a thumb into the wide belt at Trevarr’s hips.
The belt fastened through a platinum device of Nevahn’s own design, commissioned for Trevarr the year before — a field of swooping lines that held the hint of wing, the suggestion of tooth and claw. The bodily form of the kyrokha in cryptic metal.
Neither man had said much when Nevahn presented the gift — a message of support he hadn’t and still didn’t know how to put into words. But he never saw Trevarr without it.
That, too, was a message, and Nevahn treasured it.
“Not so bad this time?” he asked, nodding to that one visible injury as Trevarr eased the satchel he so often carried from his shoulder.
He knew he’d guessed wrong by the very stillness of Trevarr’s face. But the boy-long-turned-man said only, “They’re giving me a little more time than usual.”
Nevahn knew, then, and his heart was heavy with it. “They didn’t expect you to survive.”
Trevarr acknowledged this with a lift of his chin — and then an unexpected grin, as dangerous as it looked. “I think they’d prefer it if I didn’t.”
Because even Ghehera could not be certain of their hold on this son of his. Raised with love and respect and strength, imbued with the gifts not from Nevahn, but from his father-in-body.
Nevahn didn’t bother to voice what they both knew — that Ghehera now kept Trevarr in reserve for the worst of their work, chasing criminal bounty across territory and worlds. They relied on him to handle what no one else could — but they feared him when he succeeded.
But there was something in that still expression — something unreadable and yet more somber than it might be. “You didn’t expect to survive, either. Not even with the little friend you’ve picked up along the way.”
Trevarr didn’t acknowledge the last, and Nevahn didn’t expect him to. Some things weren’t said out loud regardless of the trust between them.
No one had ever bonded to a Sklar before. Trust his son to have been the first — risking everything in the effort to survive what Ghehera dished out. Nevahn had never seen the creature outright, but he’d had glimpses...
And he’d experienced firsthand the thing’s idiosyncratic curiosity and humor, caught Trevarr in those moments his attention had gone inward and other moments when he’d so blatantly put a stop to certain mischiefs.
Trevarr surprised him by admitting to what Nevahn had guessed, if only with allusion. “We were both taken by surprise. We survived... ” He hesitated, then lifted one shoulder. “An unexpected friend. She may have followed me here from elsewhere.” And then, at Nevahn’s alarmed expression, laughed in rare humor. “My visitor is no longer here, Nevahn-hei. She is safe from those on this world.”
Nevahn tossed his cleanup rag over his tool kit and picked up a curved carving knife. His hands took on a life of their own, as if he was just that casual — smoothing away rough bark of the towering fir without injuring the live tree beneath — the canvas for his next round of glyphs. “Yes,” he said, as if their conversation had never gone astray. “This is a new glyph. I bought the learning of it last season.”
“Krevata,” Trevarr guessed, his voice holding the darkness that boded no one well.
As if Nevahn could hope to keep the truth from him. He nodded shortly. “Ever bolder,” he said, running his hand over exposed wood. “Our harvest goes missing, our tools are broken... our goats found dead.”
“Ghehera does nothing?”
Nevahn’s mouth twisted into a bitter thing. Ghehera was happy enough with the situation, using it as leverage when they chose. Using Solchran’s plight to keep Trevarr in check.
Ghehera could save them. Or it could break them. But it would never completely relieve them of their misbehaving neighbors as long as it found the situation useful.
Trevarr cast a look over the western crest line. His hand tightened over his belt. He said, “No. Not yet.” But he wasn’t speaking to Nevahn.
“By all that bleeds,” Nevahn said fervently, pulling his knife away from a half-carved glyph. “Not ever!”
“There will come a time.”
“No good will ever come of confronting them.” Nevahn spoke firmly, father to son.
Trevarr reached down for the satchel. This visit, no longer than this, was over. “There will come a time,” he said again.
Nevahn, watching his son’s form move upward through the trees until no further glimpse of him showed, knew those words to be true.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 28
Invading Winchester House
Knock gently upon those doors where welcome is uncertain.
— Rhonda Rose
Carry your picks and make your own welcome.
— Lisa McGarrity
Garrie didn’t wait for Sklayne’s help at the locked Winchester House. She pulled a set of picks from her backpack and applied them, using a touch of power to skim the precise metal surfaces and smooth the way.
“Bump it,” Drew suggested. “Where’s your bump key?”
“Medeco,” Garrie said. “Won’t bump.” She applied a little tension to the lock, located the fattest pin, and lifted it out of the way. Lift, repeat. Lift, repeat. Always that energy helping her to visualize, smoothing the very difficult way.
The taller woman, lips more or less permanently compressed, pushed up behind them. “What do you think — ! “
::Sputtering. Most excellent.:: Sklayne stood up on his long springy cat legs, front paws tipping lightly against the Garrie’s leg, to get a closer look at the sputtering.
“It’s all good, thanks,” Garrie said, as if the woman had offered to help. “I’ve just about got — ah. There we are.” She gave the knob a gentle turn.
“But —” the shorter woman regarded her with a different kind of concern. “Are you certain you want to go in there? We consulted with someone earlier today, and now she’s just trapped in there with everyone else.”
Garrie gave Beth a swift, accusing glance. Beth stepped back, warding her off with both hands. “I’m just a drone! I knew nothing!”
“Truth, Garrie,” Drew
said. “The communicator was already inside when we got here. Didn’t seem like there was any point in calling you.” He shrugged, lanky and loose. “She seems okay, but she doesn’t have a direct line. She’s definitely no reckoner.”
The red jacket ladies looked taken aback. “What,” asked the taller one with a particularly pinched look of distaste, “is a reckoner?”
“Come and see,” Garrie said, and led the way into the house.
~~~~~
But the women didn’t come in — not a single foot past the threshold.
Garrie hadn’t really expected it. Nor did she protest when Beth slipped through the door, face full of defiance. Fine. Drew’s new best friend could help herd the trapped tour group out of the hot zone — and unlike even Drew or Lucia, she could at least hear and sometimes glimpse the ghosts.
Drew tried the door after it closed behind them. “Locked,” he said, just a tad grimly. “Or else it just won’t freaking open. Same thing.” He rattled the knob.
“Leave it,” Garrie told him, glancing just closely enough to see energies twining around the jamb. “If we do this right, it’ll be fine by the time we return.”
“Do what, exactly?” Beth said, trying hard not to look frightened and not particularly succeeding.
Garrie barely kept her feet as Sklayne wound between her legs, doing a damned fine impression of a totally real cat. “I’ll let you know what we need when we need it. Until I find Trevarr, we won’t know the root of the trouble here.”
“Trevarr?” Drew’s startlement made him stumble. ““Did I miss that?”
“You were keeping vigil in the bathroom,” Lucia told him. She had the backpack now, full of containment bags; her long, glossy hair stirred in a breeze that shouldn’t have been there.
Garrie kept most of her awareness in the ethereal. “Beth, let’s start along the tour route. I bet we find —”
A breeze caught her attention — strong and angry, dark muddy color threading through it with streaks of lime. Moldy citrus anger, violent fear, pain and longing —
“Garrie?” Beth hesitated in the narrow entry.
“Go ahead,” Lucia said easily. “She’s working. You’ll get used to it. Just watch for that extraordinarily blank expression.”
“I can still hear you,” Garrie muttered, sending a shot of cranky Lucia’s direction. It didn’t help to find Drew smirking.
“This way,” Beth said quickly, a display of quick wisdom as she took the lead and moved on out. Narrow shoulders, held straight; plenty of lanky hip, swaying with her determined strides.
She’s scared, Garrie realized.
Another sign that she was, indeed, no dummy.
Not to mention how swiftly she rocked to a halt when Garrie said, “Oh, ew.”
“What?” Beth said, her voice high and tight. “What?”
“Hey, it’s chill,” Drew said. “Ew isn’t the code for the monster’s gonna eat you.”
Beth cast him a skeptical glance, there in the warm wood-glow of the low hallway. “What exactly is the code for that?”
“Trust me, you’ll know it when you hear it,” Lucia muttered.
Garrie let their words wash over her, eyeing the collection of grimy unpleasantness at the ceiling. “Anything?” she asked Lucia.
Lucia was already on it, just a little too casual with words that didn’t match her slightly thinned voice. “Anger, resentment, blah blah blah.”
Par for the course around here. Garrie used quiet breezes to puff through the middle of the gathering, gently dissipating it. Not any particular spirit, this stain... just the ghostie cobweb of so many angry ghosts in one place.
“It’s safe?” Beth asked, hesitating on forward gear.
“Not a big deal,” Garrie told her. But a step or two later she said, “Well, okay, now we have an audience.”
Boy, did they. Glowering, disapproving ghosts suddenly dogged their every step — a trail of ghosts, from women dressed in Victorian style to a young boy in rough homesteader clothes that could have come from either side of 1900 to a cluster of more recent residents — punk and coiffed and skater dude all.
“We need to come through,” she told them, though she couldn’t help the sensation — here, in this lovingly tended hall with its waxed wood and genteelly flowered wallpaper — that she was indeed intruding on their space, and not the other way around. “You wanted me to come back. I’m here. But I need a little space.”
They moved back in an eerie silence, their breezes uncharacteristically still, their manifestations prickly and distinct.
“Mmm,” Lucia said thoughtfully, reaching for one of the containment bags. “One of them is faking it, chic.”
Garrie sent a little poof of a breeze their way, an ethereal poke. The spirits made way before it with a susurrus that made Beth duck and look wildly around, completely unaware of the small reactive football of spiritual wrath bulleting right through her torso.
“Incoming, Lu!” Garrie spun the breezes fast and hard with a gesture, flipping them around the spirit to condense it even further as Lucia held the gallon baggie open. She shoved the spirit into place with a final flick of the fingers that let Lucia know the spirit had been bagged, and Lucia zipped the closure with an expert slide of her fingers.
“Leave it?” she asked, holding the contained ghost out for inspection — a furious little roil, now incapacitated.
“Leave it,” Garrie confirmed, and raised her brows at the cluster in the hallway. “Anyone else?”
But few spirits crowded them as Beth led them swiftly through the twisting halls, richly appointed rooms, earthquake damage and bizarrely constructed stairs. Only one more reached its limit, too distressed for self-control — it dive bombed at Beth with enough focus to make impact, and Lucia said, “Hey!” and Garrie plucked it from its path, a quick spin of breezes and into the baggie, ziiip and Lucie set it gently to the side.
In the end, nothing out of the ordinary. No indeed, “Huh,” Garrie said as Lucia reached for a tissue. “So far this is all classic ghostie stuff. Nothing unexpected, especially in a ghost trap house.”
“No beetles, in other words,” Drew said, scrubbing a finger down his soul patch smudge.
“You are so reminding me of Shaggy on Scooby-doo,” Garrie told him.
“Shaggy had a goatee,” Drew said, offended.
“Right,” Garrie told him. “What you’ve got is so much better.”
“Nair,” Lucia murmured, a sing-song threat at odds with the gleam of tears on her cheek.
“God,” Beth burst out, ducking a low doorway. “Don’t you people take anything seriously? Do you even care that we’re surrounded by insanely pissed-off ghosts? Who even knows what they’ll do next!”
Lucia dabbed beneath her eye. “Trust me, chica. We care.”
“Spit in the face of danger,” Drew explained. “Bonding before battle.”
Garrie looked over her shoulder, nose wrinkled. “Maybe not so much with the spitting.”
Beth made a sound of frustration and led them around a cramped corner and up to a set of double doors dripping with ethereal cobwebs and ghost poo and dark pools of gleaming ethereal fear and sorrow.
None of which Beth could see, but she frowned anyway. “This is the ballroom. We never close these doors.”
“Yup, that’s our tour group. And whatever’s in there isn’t nearly as cooperative as our escort so far.” She gathered her breezes, spinning them into something with form. “Shields up.”
“Stay close,” Drew translated for Beth, taking her hand. “She’s making a ghost-free zone.”
“It’s not foolproof,” Lucia said, a sharp edge to the warning. “Don’t get cocky.”
“Going in.” Garrie pushed tightly spun energies past the doors, freeing them to the touch of a human hand. “Stay sharp. They’re going to react.”
React turned out to be an understatement. She staggered under the onslaught — gusty, gale force red-black murk slicing citrus shrieking dissonan
ce —
Lucia’s familiar hand on her arm steadied her; Sklayne’s less familiar form pressed against her shin.
“Got it,” she said. Or maybe said it. Meant to say it. Hard to tell sometimes. But she drew breath, steadied herself, and definitely spoke out loud this time. “No worries. We’re good.”
Thick layers of ghosts crammed the room, obscuring the huddle of tourists to Garrie’s inner eye. The tourists set up a general cry of relief as Lucia gasped with dismay, struggling to withstand the intensified spiritual emanations, a hand on Garrie’s arm. A request. Give me a moment.
A shift of posture, and Tour Guide Beth took over to command the huge room — all chandelier light and gleaming woods, parquet floors and walls, intricate crown moldings, ceiling panels and insets. “Please stay calm. We’ll get you out of here.”
“The door’s open!” cried a young voice. “Let’s go!”
“Not yet!” Garrie told them, but a battering chorus of agreement swelled behind those words. Lucia stepped up on one side and Drew on the other, forming a barricade of not very formidable flesh. Garrie shored up her shields, re-centered herself... and sent a warning breeze through the room. Enough for the spirits to notice; not so much as to incite them.
Far too many of them for that.
“I said, hold off,” Beth repeated to the tourists, her voice ringing over the clamor. “When it’s safe to go, we will.”
“It can’t be safe to stay.” That was the group’s guide, vaguely familiar and just as flustered as all her charges. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Beth, but it’s out of control — !”
“Exactly,” Beth said. “That’s why I brought help.”
“Someone’s already tried to help.” A derisive young man stepped out from the pack — several families and several couples and a bewildered singleton clutching a brochure. He gestured toward the gleaming organ, where a mature woman dressed in silks and bangles sat, hands tightly folded on her lap. “She’s been trapped here with the rest of us and all she does is talk about how angry the spirits are!”
“Spirits, schmeerits — anyone can lock a door.” One of the women crossed her arms with defiance, glaring at them all.
The Reckoners Page 27
