Reckoner Redeemed

by Doranna Durgin

  “No?” Garrie made it sound like a guess as she ran a hand through her hair, found it completely bed-head, and attempted a quick finger-fix.

  “Nice try,” Lucia said dryly. “Take this, why don’t you, and we’ll go in and see what we can do with you.” She handed over the cooler and offered Rick a smile. “Probably that big hail storm last night.”

  Garrie remembered her arm. Not that she’d forgotten, but that she’d forgotten the external mess of it. “Broke some glass,” she said, looking down at the wreck of a bandage. “I was standing in the wrong spot.”

  “It did some damage at our place, too.” Lucia sent a quick glance at Garrie to confirm that they were talking about the same thing—and it wasn’t hail. “Quinn’s got broken glass but he’s okay.”

  She hooked a hand through Garrie’s arm, leading the way to the kitchen. With crisp, efficient movements she divested them all of their bags and took Garrie to the sink, ran the edge of a dishtowel under a trickle of water, and took a firm hold of Garrie’s chin. “I brought paint for my room today. To judge by this, you should wear a garbage bag apron while we work.” She scrubbed the towel over Garrie’s cheek with short, vigorous strokes, and then across her upper lip—and then held the towel out so Garrie could see the rust-colored results. “There,” she said, pushing the towel into Garrie’s hand. “It’s a start. Go get the rest of it and I’ll set up some breakfast.”

  Awesome. Trust Sklayne not to mention such details. She gave Rick a pale imitation of a cheery smile. “First impressions are everything.”

  “Second impression,” he said, still looking a bit off his stride.

  “Even better.” Garrie headed for the powder room tucked between the kitchen and the laundry, where she looked at herself and thought oh farking fark. Because of course it was more than just blood over paled skin, it was the exposed shimmer of her skin in the bright entryway and the silvery blue streaks in her hair, permanent reminders of her portal wrangling and somehow all the more obvious when her hair was in this disarray.

  She’d not prepared herself for the dismay heavy inside her chest—the understanding that even here in her own home, she’d have to hide what she was.

  Trevarr was the only one who would truly understand. Could truly understand.

  “I haven’t given up,” she told him, before scowling at her reflection and tackling her face with more than strictly necessary vigor. When she emerged, skin reddened, Lucia had poured horchata over ice, added a cinnamon stick to each clunky glass, and arranged the churros on a plate with a pile of mixed fruit in the center. The whole of it sat on the breakfast bar, where Rick perched on one of the bar stools and reached for a melon slice.

  Lucia had also found Garrie’s battered box of first aid supplies. “Sit,” she said. “We’ll all feel better once that pathetic bandage is changed.”

  Garrie sat, but not without snagging a churro. For once she didn’t feel the driving restlessness to run—whatever the reason, she might as well enjoy that.

  “We met up at Four Hills this morning and Rick followed me out,” Lucia said, deftly cutting through the sloppy bandage. “Which you would know if you’d ever looked at your phone.”

  “Fine,” Garrie said around that first mouthful. “Would I know why?”

  Lucia looked at her from beneath a long sweep of lash. “Just social, chic. I had to paint my room. Rick offered to help.”

  Translation: I wanted to be with him in an emotionally safe place so I suddenly had to paint my room today.

  “Have at it,” Garrie said, not quite successfully hiding the fact that her plans for the day had been far from mundane

  Lucia winced a little, applying a damp cloth to wounds and bloodstains alike, her breath caught on an inhalation as she hunted words.

  “Never mind, Lu,” Garrie told her. “I’ve got house damage to deal with, anyway.”

  Rick stopped chewing to eye her injury. “That looks more like you’ve been shot.” His voice said he knew damned well it hadn’t been glass.

  “It was sort of shrapnelly.” She said it without concern. Maybe he’d believe it, maybe not, but she didn’t owe him explanations.

  “The way that went in and out, you’re lucky it didn’t nick the brachial. Artery, I mean.”

  Yeah. Lucky. Garrie held her arm out so Lucia could wrap a new length of stretchy stuff around it.

  Lucia didn’t look up from her work. “There’s an urgent care clinic up on the crest road. Tell me you’ll go there today.”

  “I’ll go there today,” Garrie said, and when Lucia sent her a skeptical look, she laughed. “It’ll get me out of painting.”

  Rick took a big bite of sugar-and-cinnamon dusted pastry, his expression appropriately worshipful. Once he swallowed, he said, “Actually, I was hoping I could talk to you a bit. Both of you, I mean.”

  Lucia cast him a narrowed and suddenly wary eye. “Did you?” She pressed the end of the sticky wrap in place and busied herself with tidying—gathering and tossing crinkling wrappers, twisting the lid back on the little tube of antibiotics, and sweeping the remaining supplies back into the little first aid tub.

  Garrie shot Rick a clandestine look of warning. You’d better not be using her.

  He responded with a small frown. Hard to read, he was—features handsome and classically Latino, composure so self-contained—so exacting in his posture and fitness, in fact, that Garrie supposed he might be ex-military. He returned her gaze as if surprised to find himself under such an assertive scrutiny—but then, he didn’t really know who she was. Or what she was. He knew only the fictional bumbling, occasionally incoherent hiker who’d been excited about a bear.

  Then Lucia set the tub aside and the moment broke. “Eat,” she said, apparently choosing to pretend that Rick hadn’t suddenly turned official on them. “The churros. What do you think, chic?”

  “The churros?” Garrie looked stupidly down at the pastry in her hand.

  “Robin wants me to look at this new co-op building. She thinks I could do well there with homey desserts and treats.” She gave Garrie a look from the corner of her eye. “But I’d need to use this kitchen. A lot.”

  “Lu,” Garrie said, patiently enough to sound just a little bit impatient, “Mi cosina es tu cosina.” She took a bite and made a blissful face. “I see no downside to this.”

  Rick wiped his hands on a colorful paper napkin. “Lucia,” he said. “I called because I want to spend time with you. But I can’t not care about the people who are missing on that mountain.”

  Lucia stood a little straighter. “I’m certain you don’t mean to imply that resistance to an unexpected breakfast interrogation means that we don’t care.”

  Rick winced, but held fast. “I’m sorry. But I have to ask.”

  Garrie would have crossed her arms, had not the injury warned her against it. “Sure, go for it,” she said, more abruptly than was strictly polite. “But I don’t know what else we can tell you.”

  Rick said, “I don’t know what else you can tell me, either. But you saw something out there, and our guys say it wasn’t a bear.”

  “Then maybe they should figure it out,” Garrie suggested, not kindly. “And maybe you should close the trails until they do.”

  “I need you to help me convince them!” His frustration shone through a little too loudly, and Lucia winced. But she took a deep breath and raised her eyes to pin Rick with a look. Shields up.

  “I’m sorry, chic,” she said, still eyeing him. “I had no idea he would do this.”

  “I didn’t mean—” Rick started, but he lifted his hands in resignation. “No, no. You’re right. I don’t know what good I thought this would do, but I still believe you’re hiding something.”

  Well, he was right, wasn’t he? But telling wouldn’t help anyone. Especially not Lucia. Or Garrie.

  With inevitably perfect timing, Dana-Bob pulled himself out of thin air to lean against the sink, a meanly bitter ethereal air wafting around him. Lucia’s eyes w
idened faintly. Even Rick straightened up a little, a puzzled frown crossing his features. Garrie shot the angry ghost the most meaningful look she dared. Don’t you mess with this.

  He raised an eyebrow that gave her no assurances.

  An unfamiliar melodic electronic warble startled them all—not Lucia’s phone, for once, but Rick’s. Rick muttered a curse and dug into the pocket of his extremely well-fitting old jeans to pull out the device, but his expression changed when he saw the caller ID. He excused himself with a murmur, heading out to take the call in the entry.

  “You.” Garrie glared at Dana-Bob, her voice low and urgent and a little mean. Lucia aptly noted the direction of her gaze and moved several steps aside. “Do not mess with me. I’m in no mood.”

  He smirked. His cycling shirt melted like watercolors, a smear of conflicting colors. “How’s your arm? How are your windows?”

  “What do you know about it?” A throb of alarm rose through her annoyance.

  “What do you think?” he snapped. “I got bored. And that ugliness on the mountain isn’t hard to piss off.” He seemed to gather himself, stepping back into a more solid manifestation. “As long as I’m stuck here, I’m going to find ways to amuse myself. Make of that what you will.”

  And he was gone, leaving Garrie speechless and just a little less certain of herself than she’d been moments earlier.

  “Chic,” Lucia said, accurately divining Dana’s departure, “what?”

  Garrie swore a silent curse. “All these years,” she said. “How long have I been doing this? And I didn’t see that coming.”

  Lucia’s hand mimed a grasping motion and aimed it at Garrie’s sore arm. Talk! Pinch impending!

  Garrie said, “That temper tantrum from the mountain last night? Dana-Bob was behind it. Because he’s bored.”

  “He can do that?” Lucia gathered up pastries with an efficient hand, closing the lid of the plastic storage container with an efficient snap. The fruit into another, this one burped and sealed. “Oh, chicalet, I don’t like this.”

  No kidding.

  “Now I know how Rhonda Rose felt when she first found me,” Garrie said—and at Lucia’s inquisitive look, added, “She tried to hide it from me—and she did a pretty good job. But looking back, I’m pretty sure she spent the first couple of years deciding whether to mentor me or to kill me.”

  “No!” Lucia said. “You don’t mean it!”

  “Actually,” Garrie said, “I’m kinda more certain than ever. Because if Dana doesn’t get his crap together really soon, I’m gonna have to face that same decision.”

  Lucia hesitated, one hand on the refrigerator door. “Before he gets too strong?”

  Garrie gave her the faintest of nods. “And before he really gets bored.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 24

  The Bane of Ghehera

  Rhonda Rose

  Lisa looked back toward her aunt’s house as she wheeled her bicycle from the garage and called out, “Yes, Aunt Joan!”

  Her response to her aunt’s curfew reminder came in an appropriate tone, but from my perspective her expression was less than respectful.

  She flipped the bicycle pedal into position to mount, catching it with her toe. “Don’t even start with me, Rhonda Rose. Curfews and schedules and charts and rules. How am I supposed to get anything done around here?”

  To say that I warmed with satisfaction at this display of dedication to her calling would be an understatement. The changes in Lisa’s life had hardly been easy to absorb. Even as she grieved, she’d moved across town into her aunt’s home and her aunt’s less flexible way of life. Her training had all but stalled, just as she should be stretching her skills and independence.

  Lisa muttered something inaudible, swinging her leg over the bicycle—a youth model, to suit the height she’d never grown into. She jammed on her protective helmet over short, disarrayed hair and snapped the chin piece before pushing off to swoop down her new street. “Here I am going out to exercise. You’d think that would make her happy. I should be a couch potato?”

  That would never happen. It had become significantly clear to both of us that wielding energies often left Lisa jittery, activating her in ways that only physical effort would soothe. Even her teachers had noticed, and waged an ongoing campaign to sign her up for their sports teams.

  In a normal life, she probably would have done just that.

  In this life, however, she was frustrated—and losing her reckoner finesse because of it. “Lisa,” I said, staying alongside her with very little effort, “We’ve spoken of this. It’s a difficult situation, but one with a limited duration.”

  “Three years,” she spat, barely braking as she swooped around a corner and onto the Tramway Bike path. “That’s forever.”

  In the past, she might have called it a lifetime. Her perspective on that term had changed in the past several years, however.

  “I’ve been pondering an option,” I told her, and allowed the ethereal breezes to lift my hair.

  She coasted long enough to cast me a look, then skimmed around the outside of a jogger. “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve been in touch with someone. A woman who, like you, has a certain facility with energies mostly gone unseen.”

  “Is that what we call it now,” Lisa said. “A certain facility.”

  “Lisa.”

  She sighed, her breath coming faster now—that petite and wiry body finally putting forth some real effort as she geared down for a hill. The Tramway Avenue path took her straight north between the edge of the city and the rather abrupt base of the Sandia Mountains. She seldom traversed the entire length of it, usually splitting away to the Bear Canyon Arroyo trail, but she always put the most of her energy into this section, burning away the agitation within.

  After some moments she said, “Sorry, Rhonda Rose. I’m just not very happy right now.”

  I allowed one of my personal breezes to stroke along her cheek in understanding. “If you were to obtain a work permit and assist this woman, you could start on your path to independence now, initiating your progress toward financial security.”

  “Assist her?” Lisa cast me an incredulous look—fairly so, I must admit. “If she has any real mojo, Rhonda Rose, you would have introduced us a long time ago.”

  “The truth of your nature will become clear soon enough. I think it highly likely that we can negotiate a percentage-based commission, in return for which she will serve as a front for you.”

  Lisa rode in silence for a few moments, weaving her way through a modest spate of activity on the path and then waiting at a road crossing where the presence of others made continuing conversation inadvisable.

  As soon as she broke free of that cluster, she cast me a look. “Maybe.”

  But I knew interest when I saw it.

  Together we progressed in silence, turning away from the path and into the Bear Canyon arroyo. There we rode in the company of another man, a post-living individual who frequently forgot to manifest his bicycle, but whose hazy appearance and dreamy expression suggested his time here was growing short. This was not a spirit in need of Lisa’s help, although he acknowledged her pleasantly enough. Soon enough he drew to the side of the trail, where a small gathering of obviously related people clustered together around a grieving woman with a small urn.

  His family.

  Lisa rode on, as did I. These people were doing what they needed, as they needed it, and had things in hand.

  Not so the young woman we approached. She sat on the ground, knees drawn up and shoulders shaking. As Lisa slowed to stop before her, ostensibly to inquire after her wellbeing, the girl looked up with a glare. “It’s not fair!” she said. “Why would they come and spread his ashes here?”

  She was a stunningly beautiful adolescent of Lisa’s age—her skin a toasty brown, her hair long and glossy, and her outfit of a certain exacting quality, perfectly suited to the mid-fall season. But her eyes and the tip of her nose were
red with tears, and her precisely formed features held a weariness unexpected in a person of her age.

  It seemed only natural that Lisa should say, “Because he’s here. They must know that, in their hearts.”

  The girl stilled in a way that indicated Lisa had acquired her complete attention. “You know that?”

  Lisa shrugged in a way that offered affirmation.

  The girl wiped the back of her hand across her cheek and stood. Somehow, her outfit bore no sign of her brief tenure on the ground. She looked down at Lisa— unfolded to her full height, she was a tall and graceful individual—and stuck out her hand. “My name is Lucia Reyes. What’s yours?”

  “Lisa.” Lisa grasped that proffered hand with its manicured nails, wrapping it in her own utilitarian grip—small hand, practical nails, scuffed knuckles. “Lisa McGarrity. But you can call me Garrie.”

  I knew interest when I saw it.

  ~~~~~

  She Sees Dead People

  Rick walked into Garrie’s kitchen with a grim expression, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “That was my supervisor,” he said. “A woman went up to Wolf Spring and didn’t come back. You got your wish—we’re closing that area, and the FBI is on its way. Now, are you a hundred percent sure you don’t have anything you’d like to share?”

  Another one.

  Reckoner fail. Because she’d already done everything she knew how to do. Buying time, hoping to understand...hoping for inspiration.

  Not wanting the responsibility at all. Or anything to do with the FBI.

  “We got those trails closed once,” Garrie snapped at him. “Wasn’t that enough?”

  Lucia wiped the counter and tossed the damp cloth at the sink with resignation. “Oh, just tell him. Then he can write us off and go on his way.”

  Rick looked at her with some intensity. “I’m not here to write you off, Lucia.”