Lucia just laughed.
“It doesn’t matter,” Garrie said, her voice low—for Lucia’s ears, even if Rick happened to hear. “There’ll be others.”
Lucia put on her Spanish princess exterior—the one that protected and impressed at the same time. “You’ll want to tell that supervisor that we’re a dead end, hijo. Because what Garrie saw that day—” she hesitated, then lifted her chin just a little bit more. “It wasn’t a bear. It was a thing.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Garrie muttered. Rick clearly hadn’t expected the thing gambit—for the moment, his features froze in studious neutrality. Garrie had little sympathy for him. “Listen, Rick. I’m sure you checked me out. You probably know I do personal consultations. Now you’re starting to wonder what that means.”
His expression said yes.
“She sees dead people,” Lucia said, her clarity brutal. “And I can feel them. And we have some other friends who can do other things. But mostly it’s Garrie, cleaning up the messes of dead people.”
“I see.” Rick’s tone remained perfectly neutral, his back perfectly straight. “So you’re telling me a ghost is behind the missing hikers.”
“I never said that.” Garrie crossed her arms, annoyed not just with him, but with the whole situation. The counter dug into her spine, and her arm ached at the movement. “It’s more like an entity that wishes it was dead. Or is maybe halfway there. Doesn’t really matter. It’s big, it’s dangerous, it’s eating people, and you’re never going to find any sign of the bodies. So. Go tell your supervisor that, why don’t you? Or even better, tell him we saw a damned bear. But either way, watch your step on that trail.” She didn’t wait for him to respond before turning away, briefly resting a comforting hand on Lucia’s stiff back.
“That’s it? That’s your story?”
“That’s our truth,” Garrie said, just barely turning back to look at him. “So you go do things your way and we’ll keep doing them ours. But remember that warning—because this thing is bigger than I am, and that’s saying a lot. You see yourself out, now, okay?” Because she recognized the rejection on his face, the hint of pity. Lucia would see it, too.
Something inside Garrie grew—that cold burning mix of anger, budding large within her, pushing its way out...showing in her eyes.
Rick held up placating hands. “Okay,” he said. “Wow. Okay.” He ran a hand through thick black hair cut short. “Okay, I’m going. I’m...” He shook his head. “Lucia, I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” she told him, arch princess words.
His footsteps on the tile were loud, all the way to the door. But the latch snicked closed with quiet care, and after a moment his car engine started. Tires on gravel started loud and grew distant.
Lucia took a deep and tremulous breath. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I am so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Garrie said, sharply enough to make Lucia look at her. “Jerks happen.”
She shook her head. “But I didn’t think he was a jerk. I thought...” She said the words in a rush. “I thought he liked me. I thought it was a chance to at least practice dating. To pretend.”
“It wasn’t pretending,” Garrie said, and she tugged Lucia’s long ponytail, completely annoying, and suppressing a little grin as a frown poked through Lucia’s chagrin. “He did like you. Powie, sparks—right from the time you flagged him down in the parking lot. He just got stupid about this, and you know it.”
Lucia heaved a sigh, but now it held more resignation than sorrow. “He should have just told me he needed to ask some more questions. It was my idea to come here when he suggested coffee—it felt smarter, with you here. No wonder he agreed so quickly. All of that and he never did help with the painting!”
“We’ll get it done.” Garrie stretched, shifting back into the day. “After all, we’re all fueled up and ready to go.”
Lucia’s snort was as demure as the rest of her. “That was a dessert breakfast, and you know it. We’ll do something hearty for an early lunch, I think. And we’ll talk more about what happened last night. Now, go call your real estate agent and tell her how the hail storm tore things up around here, and I’ll get the paint.” She smiled, determined to rediscover her happy anticipation as she headed for the door. “Pale silvery gray. It’s going to go so well with those eggplant blinds!”
“We don’t have eggplant blinds!” Garrie called after her. “We don’t have blinds at all!”
Lucia’s voice floated back in through the open door. “Details!”
Garrie could only hope that Rick Soto would leave them out of his details—especially when it came to working with the FBI. Either way, it had just gotten a lot harder to deal with the broken kyrokha.
Three dead.
So far.
~~~~~
Lucia popped the lid on a paint can and picked up a stirring stick. “Robin thinks a little booth to start. A half-space. She says the vendors will be unable to resist. And the customers will make small impulse buys—the trick is to find low cost things that look big.”
“It’d work on me.” Garrie twitched the corner of the drop cloth into place and picked up the trim brush. “Give me some of that paint.”
The stirring stick drooped. “Oh, chic. I know you don’t want to paint today. You looked tired. And your arm must hurt. That was you last night, wasn’t it? Shielding my place until the storm was over?”
“That was me,” Garrie said. She’d already called the real estate agent, who was handling repairs with her counterpart. “Thanks to Dana-Bob. Very little effort for him, big mess for me. He really shouldn’t be thinking that clearly yet.”
Lucia wrinkled her nose, pouring paint into the pan. “Dana-Bob. You know, he reminds me of...well, I guess he doesn’t.”
“Rhonda Rose,” Garrie said. “Except so very not. You’re not the only one to think it.”
Wiping carefully at the paint drip at the lip of the can, Lucia passed it to Garrie and picked up a roller. She said, very very carefully, “Could you have won a fight against Rhonda Rose?”
Garrie snorted. “Rhonda Rose would never be so crude as to engage in a fight. But...I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe not. I can’t let things get that far with this guy.”
Lucia’s mouth flattened, a wry little quirk at the end. “I get the feeling he wants things to get that far.”
“Yeah,” Garrie said, and dipped her brush in the paint. “So do I. Problem is, I’m not a strike first kind of reckoner.” She stood, caught in understanding. “If Rhonda Rose had been a strike first kind of spirit, I wouldn’t be here now.”
“Right.” Lucia gestured with the roller. “Except you were a child—what, five years old? You were a polite child. A nice child. Dana-Bob isn’t any of those things. You’re dripping, chic.”
“Drop cloth,” Garrie said by way of response. She started a bead at the edge of the wooden window sill, concentrating there for long moments, the swish of Lucia’s roller in the background.
Probably she should have been thinking about how any of them could possibly deal with an entity bigger than she was, stronger than she was, and madder than she was. And especially how they could deal with the entity if Dana-Bob was going to rile it up in his attempt to get his own way. Which she needed to do before he, too, got so strong that he couldn’t be managed.
Probably.
She drew the brush lightly over the wall, creating a broad wiggly barrier line between here and there. Between Trevarr and Garrie. A nebulous thing that she didn’t understand and didn’t know how to traverse.
With the very tip of the trim brush, she made a little stick figure and added short hair sticking up everywhere. And then on the other side of the broad wiggly barrier...
Chains.
All while thinking about what had happened the previous night. Not the pissed-off mountain and not Dana-Bob’s instigation, but the moment Sklayne had so casually instructed her on how to locate Lucia.
How to locate anyone she knew
.
The brush retraced the crude image of chains and stilled, and Garrie stopped thinking and started feeling.
The scents of leather and wood smoke. The fine pattern of feathery scales that looked like tattoos but weren’t. His body heat, warmer than her at all times. His voice, the accent distinct and beguiling, the timbre changing—sometimes smooth and deep, sometimes with a feathery rasp. The cold burn of his energies, the intimate sensation of muscle flexing beneath her hands.
But most of, she reveled in the sense of his presence. Not the physical, but the very essence of him. Complex and yet solid, the most solid thing in her life. The awareness that told her he was standing behind her. The breath of relief she released upon feeling him there. The undeniable joy when he’d returned from Kehar at San Jose, back when her heart had known what her mind hadn’t and she’d leaped upon him, wrapping herself around him with a fiercely proprietary grip.
She let it grow inside her, all of it. And then she followed it.
Surprisingly easy. Surprisingly swift.
Surprisingly right there. Through a swirl of rainbow colors over black, through a quick dash of nothing at all, Garrie View gone wild.
Garrie View doing what maybe she could have been doing all along.
Finding him.
The cavern wasn’t vast, but it was far from cozy. Water trickled along the edges; black fog followed it, heavy and crawling like a live thing. The floor had the look of worked stone—nowhere near level, but sections of tool marks and the uneven remnants of stalagmites. The walls bulged with formations—pale folded draperies deposited over a rougher base, blackened flowstone in a waterfall of gleaming beauty. Harsh, angular glyphs traced the shape of a doorway in otherwise seamless rock, their edges wrought with laser precision. One end of the cavern bulged with flowstone—not in limestone grays, but black and purple hues.
And there he was.
Her breath caught; her pulse tripped up into overdrive.
There he was.
Resting against the formation, his legs sprawled long before him, his wrists resting on his stomach and heavily manacled, dark metal glinting with silver glyphs. He looked the same as he ever had, and yet nothing like the man she knew. Old bruises mapped his face but couldn’t hide the underlying weariness there; one arm sat more gingerly than the other, and his torn pant leg revealed the healing injury from that last day in Sedona.
His captors had used that injury against him, Garrie knew that much. Abused it. Abused him, every which way they could. And yet for all of his injuries and weariness, he nonetheless looked robust. He looked as though he’d spent every possible moment inventing exercises to keep himself strong.
That meant they were feeding him well enough. It meant that the night she’d saved him with channeled energies had been an aberration. It meant that so far, they distinctly wanted him alive.
Of course they do. To find ME.
The containment door flared with brief, dark energies before sliding aside. Trevarr’s eyes gleamed silver, but he otherwise failed to react to the entering tumble of squat little toad-like creatures—or to their ministrations, when they uncurled long tongues to clean his wounded leg or ran sticky hands over his pants, his face, and his hair. They offered him no privacy, and no extra care for tender places.
The doorway remained open, but it didn’t remain empty.
It didn’t matter that Garrie had never seen the woman who now stood there. She knew her.
Anjhela, Sklayne had said.
He had not said she was beautiful. Stunning. Her features were cover-model exotic, her eyes tipped, her nose slightly flat, and her lips full. She was clad in unfamiliar leather, her skin an amazing deep chocolate in color and an even more amazing shimmer of the finest scales in texture. Her eyes simmered a golden hue, and her movement...
It was blatantly dangerous. Blatantly sexual.
She told Trevarr, “You should have worked with me. Now it’s just a matter of time.”
“It was only ever a matter of time.” His voice sounded harsh and unused...or maybe overused. Garrie had heard the screams.
“One final chance.” But Anjhela should have been all menace and promise, and she wasn’t. Not even as she lifted her hand, splaying her fingers with the palm out.
A shimmer of darkness coruscated over the hand from fingertip to mid-forearm, and when it cleared, a gauntlet enclosed every inch of that skin—snug, fully articulated, and tipped with long, pointed metal nails. She gave Trevarr a meaningful look. “In gratitude, they would give you to me. Would it be so terrible?”
“No more than when they strip you of the mendihar for your failure.” The harsh note of his voice didn’t improve with use.
She made a derisive noise. “I am far more than any single confession,” she told him. “Whereas your life hinges on these moments.”
“No,” he told her, lifting his eyes to look at her full force, pewter shining unto silver and driving her back a step with the impact. “This has always been the end point for me. From the moment they took me from my village. Ghehera will not suffer me to live, no matter their promises to you.”
She didn’t argue it; she couldn’t keep her golden gaze up to meet his. “So be it,” she said. “I’ve done what I could.”
“You’ve done what you wanted.” He knew her, and he knew her well. No doubt about that.
Anjhela clucked a harsh syllable and the squatty creatures tumbled away in a dark, trailing fog of dull energies. One of them left food within reach, a tray of uncooked vegetables and a barely cooked slab of meat. In their wake, he sat cleaned and to some extent revitalized.
Yes, they still wanted him alive. They hadn’t given up on finding Garrie.
The door closed, latching into place with seamless precision. And then Garrie would have moved closer to Trevarr, but for the way he lifted his gaze. He made no effort to reach for his food or to test his limbs, sitting quietly. But when he looked...
It was at her.
Or not quite at her. Off to the side, as if he had a sense of her presence but no more. “You’re here.”
I’m here, she thought. She cleared her mental throat and took a step sideways to the place in her mind where the babbling resided. I’m here, she repeated, this time in his own tongue with its sharp edges and skimmed consonants and deep throaty moments.
She thought he might not be able to hear. From the brief flash of anger on his face—a face otherwise inscrutable—she wasn’t sure if he had.
“You shouldn’t be,” he said, making it clear enough, his speech patterns subtly different now that he spoke in his own language. “It’s you they want. If they claim you, then this—” he gestured at himself with a shift of chain— “is for nothing.”
Right. As if I can just move merrily onward if you die here. As if they won’t just keep looking for me.
He frowned, and it felt like acknowledgment. She didn’t give him the chance to voice it. They are going to kill you, yes?
He gave her little corner of the cave a steady look. “It would have come to this regardless. They fear me.”
They should fear ME, she thought at him, as fiercely as she could. They should have left us alone.
“Yes,” he murmured. “They should have done that.”
I’m coming for you, she thought at him, trying for exacting clarity. I’ll figure out a way.
Just that fast, he was no longer sitting, but crouching, constrained, his injured leg favored but still taking weight and his eyes blazing. “No! This place is not yours. It is not safe.”
She returned the emphasis right back at him. There’s nothing safe about doing nothing, either, and you know it! We need to be fighting this together!”
He put tension on his chains, leaning against them—testing them with the efficient fervency of a practiced movement. Sweat gathered on his brow; pain gathered at the corners of his eyes. Dark blood trickled down from his wrist and one bare foot slipped against black stone, but the chains didn’t so much as
creak. Garrie’s heart cried for him.
Maybe he heard. He gave up the battle, falling back on one heel, his head bowed as he sucked in air.
Garrie drew her own deep breath, a metaphorical thing. Steadying herself. Trevarr, I’m learning. I’m changed. I think I can come for you. Tell me you’ll fight if I do.
He lifted his head, and the strength lurking in those eyes was beyond anything he’d shown Anjhela. His eyes flashed a brief intensity, and the manacles spat dark sparks, tracing a sizzle along his forearms. “Come for me, then. Come for me, and we will be the bane of Ghehera.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 25
Just Get in Here and Paint
Garrie returned to herself with a sudden and startling clarity. Her bare feet stuck to the plastic drop cloth; her hand clenched stickily around a paint brush handle. “No!” she said, a fury in her voice. “I wasn’t ready!”
Lucia’s slim fingers tugged the brush from her hand. Garrie had the impression that Lucia had been working on this task for some moments, and she opened her eyes to turn that fury on her friend.
“Don’t even go there,” Lucia said. “It wasn’t me. If I’d had any say, you’d have been back ten minutes ago.”
*Me,* Sklayne said, invisibly stropping her ankles with a prickle of static electricity. *The Quinn person comes.*
“Quinn’s here,” Lucia said, without any awareness of Sklayne or his interjections. “Now move out of the way, because I don’t think you want to explain your wall doodling. I don’t want to explain your wall doodling.”
The smear of images remained beside the window. Garrie felt a sullen stubbornness set in. Focusing on those crude brush strokes had taken her to Trevarr, and she needed time to think—
Lucia moved with arch impatience. “You want to tell them what you’re up to? Fine. But do it so you control the conversation.” She pushed past Garrie to ply her roller across the images, obscuring the stick figure and her hair, the chains and the barrier. She shot Garrie a look from beneath gathered brow; for the first time Garrie saw the tear tracks on her face. “They don’t understand, you know. They’ve never understood. Neither did I, I think. But I do now.”
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