Deep River Reckoning_The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

  Garrie frowned at her. "You're a little too put-together to be hanging around. You sure there's nothing I can do for you?"

  "Don't be ridiculous!" the ghost snapped, unexpected intensity pushing a slap of energy out at Garrie. "I have things completely under control."

  "Hey, whatever." She held up her hands, a peace gesture. "So then you have some idea what's going on around here?"

  "I might. But I'm too busy being offended by the idea that I'm held back by some unresolved issue. I happen to be a woman of character and strong will. I certainly don't need you to push me along my way."

  Brittle and reactive, thy name is ghost. "Obviously not. So I'll just get back to work here."

  ::Boring.:: Sklayne's mind voice said. Garrie sent him a little breeze-poke that meant go eat bugs, then.

  Trevarr cast a side glance at her, not the least bit disconcerted by his deafness to her conversation. "Has it seen anything?"

  "Mmm," Garrie said, putting a distracted note in her voice as she did a swift ethereal survey of the area—the usual breezes, stirred by the river; the usual dark spots, ready for a quick cleaning. "You mean our latest Bobbie? I don't think so."

  "Excuse me?" the ghost said. "Did you call me Bobbie? Did you say I haven't seen anything? Do you have no manners at all?"

  "I have them," Garrie said. "But it's a goes-both-ways kind of thing. And all of you are Bob or Bobbie until I learn otherwise. No offense."

  "Offense certainly taken, young woman! My name is Katherine Collupy, and I'll thank you to use it!"

  Garrie snuck a glance at her, still casting over the river area. A few areas of murk...nothing to take down a cyclist. Katherine's hair had taken on a glow, red beyond red. The blood on her face glowed, too. "Sure," Garrie said, as if she hadn't noticed. The sideways approach. "Whatever you want."

  "Don't give me attitude. I'm the dead one here. You're the one who should be dealing with the mess."

  "She's a little cranky," Garrie told Trevarr, a bad stage whisper.

  "Oh, please," Katherine said. "You can't manipulate me. I'm not about to spew my life story or spill my guts about some deep—" She stopped short, looked down at herself.

  "Unfortunate choice of words," Garrie offered.

  "It was a bad accident," Katherine said through her teeth. She turned around and made a smoothing gesture along her torso; when she faced Garrie again, she'd composed her physical appearance but still spoke though gritted teeth. "You had best listen to me. There's poison in this river. You need to take it away. That's what your type does, isn't it?"

  The effect would have been better if she hadn't lost control of her jaws, which moved loopily even as her teeth remained clenched. Garrie pretended not to notice. "More or less. I find solutions for spirits in trouble." She met Trevarr's glance, knew he was thinking the same unspoken words she held in her own mind. Or I get rid of them. "If you know anything about what's happening here—"

  "I know you need to buckle down and clean it up," Katherine said, switching immediately to a supervisory tone. Her appearance smoothed. "Start over here by the bridge."

  But Garrie would only get to the bottom of this one by keeping her nettled. Another glance at Trevarr, another aside. "Cranky and bossy," she said. And to Katherine, "Tell you what—I'll do things my what, my when. From you, I just need information. About the poison—about what's happening because of it."

  But she'd pushed Katherine's buttons hard enough. Too hard. The woman's spirit puffed up big and lumpy, red bleeding everywhere—her eyes hit a quick and alarming strobe cycle, her energies ramping to a quick gusty gale force and battering for release.

  Sklayne said, "Mow!" in his cat voice and ran for it, a rustle of old cottonwood leaves and undergrowth.

  Trevarr turned to her, from alert-at-rest to narrow-eyed alarm—unable to sort through the breezes, but feeling a hint of the turmoil. "Atreya—"

  Garrie threw out the best buffering shield of breezes she could, condensed into a tight shell of a bell shape around them, trying to keep the merest wisp of them from so much as grazing Trevarr—

  And yes. Oh, farking yes.

  Katherine blew up.

  Spiritual effluvia everywhere. Goo. Dripping off the trees, sliming along the ground, sinking into the sluggish water. Glopping through the leaves.

  "Mow!" said Sklayne, quite distantly.

  Oh yeah. Ghost poop.

  4.

  After ghost poop came clean-up. Even shielded. It always got in somewhere.

  Cleaning up together—now, that was a more recent innovation.

  Garrie lay across Trevarr's back on the full-sized bed that didn't quite contain him, still catching her breath. The mattress of Trevarr. The sheets tangled damply around them and the air conditioning pumped cool air across the room—but Garrie was pretty sure the AC hadn't caused the goose bumps roughing the skin beneath her, even if he did prefer baking warmth. She ran an idle finger along the faint pattern of feather scales over his shoulders and down his spine.

  She knew from experience just where else the pattern traced over his skin. She knew, too, that her first assumption—that they were tattoos—was wrong. Totally wrong.

  She considered the marks down his spine—strongest between his shoulders, faded by mid-back—and thoughtfully licked salty skin.

  He stiffened beneath her, growling into the pillow.

  "Uh-huh," she said.

  She should have known better. Just like that, he twisted beneath her, snatching her up. She laughed as he sat up to meet her, fingers furrowing through her waif-short hair—and then just like that, she wasn't laughing at all, but lunging for him.

  Her cell phone chirped.

  "Nooo," she groaned, more or less around Trevarr's mouth. He paid no attention at all—pulling her closer, rolling over her on her back to run one hand down her very bare skin and using the other to jerk her right where he wanted her.

  Phone. Chirped.

  Again.

  Garrie groped for it at the bedside...found it. Held it up to see—

  Quinn.

  Dammit.

  She flipped the phone open. "Hey," she said, much more breathlessly than she'd hoped.

  "Hey," he said. "Got some stuff for you. Katherine and poison both. Which do you want—what was that noise?"

  A sex noise, what do you think?

  "Nothing," she said, just a little squeaky, and then pressed her lips together. She desperately crossed her eyes at Trevarr, startling him into cease fire, and added to it a little ethereal push—the breezes that turned his smokey pewter eyes bright, without crossing the threshold that turned to pain. He hissed through his teeth, stiffening—for the moment, beyond anything but absorbing what she'd sent his way.

  Oh, she was going to pay for this.

  "Talk fast," she told Quinn.

  "What—"

  "Talk fast."

  "Katherine Collupy. Principle from northwest Albuquerque. Tragic car accident, over the bridge. The other driver was unhurt...had been talking on a cell phone."

  "More faster," Garrie said, her voice not the least panicked—uh-huh—as Trevarr started to breathe again, that hunter's look in his eye. She caressed him with another breeze—softer, more targeted. So specifically targeted.

  "Faster. Okay." Puzzled or not, mercifully, he went with it. "About the mystery poison—you know that Hot Valley Asphalt company upstream of Rio Bravo? There're all sorts of nasty solvents in use there—like toluene. That stuff causes vomiting, diarrhea, breathing problems—and color vision loss, how whacked is that? Chronically, it screws up the kidneys, heart, lungs, and nervous system. Brain damage, for sure. Okay, you listening? Because here's the thing."

  "Oh please," Garrie said, as tonelessly as possible while Trevarr closed his eyes and trembled above her, his breath coming through his teeth, his jaw clenched and the muscles of his neck standing out in relief, "tell me the thing."

  "When it comes to toluene, everyone's more concerned about the chronic exposure issues
for humans, and not so much for the environment. Only small amounts are taken up by fish, birds, plants, blah blah blah. And the stuff evaporates so quickly, it doesn't persist. Except—"

  "This better be the thing," Garrie said, as Trevarr's eyes slitted open, pinning her with intent, thumb stroking across her low belly where the cold heat of their mixing energies spun a tightening knot of response. She sucked in a breath.

  "You sure you're—no, never mind. The thing is that concentrated spills do mess with the environment. It's not that the asphalt people have any reason to dump it—they use it. But there's a river access crossover on the levee behind them, and maybe someone just did something stupid, or the stuff got too old—that happens, or—"

  "Got it," Garrie said, watching those bright, dark-rimmed eyes, taking in the rising scent of ashy smoke, knowing she didn't dare feed Trevarr any more of energy, knowing she was so going to pay for these past few moments. "We'll check it—"

  Trevarr took the phone, flipped it shut with a snap, and tossed it away.

  I am so going to pay—

  And she did.

  5.

  In the end, Garrie had to call Quinn back.

  "I told you all this," he'd said.

  "I didn't have a pen handy," she said, and managed to put a shrug in her voice. "Lucia get anything on the Katherine thing?"

  And because Lucia was Lucia—persistent at great cost, alert to the merest thread of ethereal distress—there'd been a yes answer to that. Lingering astonishment, lingering grief—great vulnerability. Nothing of the bossy, acerbic entity who'd accosted them near the river's edge.

  Well, Garrie would have to go back to Katherine. Once she'd figured out a dead cyclist and poisoned river, here at the water's edge.

  Tire marks and gouges in the soft mud said there'd been a vehicle. And then scuff and drag and roll, dirt disturbed everywhere. It wasn't looking good for the asphalt people, no indeed.

  "Let's not get any closer to the water," Garrie said. "If Quinn's right—"

  "No closer," Trevarr agreed.

  ::Not close!:: Sklayne assured them, and indeed he didn't sound it. He also sounded remarkably...

  Smug. Satiated.

  Garrie narrowed her eyes—knew he'd hear her spoken words, even if he did it by picking them out of her head. "Are you stealing electricity from Hot Valley Asphalt?"

  ::Mine now,:: he told her, not a trace of regret. ::I will drink it and make sex noises.::

  "You—!" Garrie sputtered—but not so loudly that she didn't hear the sound of startled amusement from Trevarr, a rarity so great that it offset any amount of Sklayne's trespassing.

  And yet she found Trevarr still well-hidden behind his usual imposing mein—all strong, lean angles and eyes shuttered by the sporty sunglasses that somehow blended perfectly with the leather duster and paneled shirt and those boots. He nodded at the river. "Are we alone?"

  "So far," she told him. "I haven't looked out, yet. I have a..."

  "Bad feeling," he finished for her, and she didn't know if it was because he could read her that well, or if he had his own reaction to this place...or if he'd simply heard her say it too often. When it came to ghosties, he was as blind as any, but as experience had again proven...not insensitive to certain energies.

  ::Sex noises!:: Sklayne declared, satisfaction evident.

  Garrie wrinkled her nose at him—and then forgot about him as an ugly breeze splashed up against her senses.

  "What?" Trevarr stood just a little bit taller, scanning the area around them.

  "Something—" she murmured, not the least bit helpful...automatically turning into the breeze. Nausea rippled through her and burning bright energy, winds torn asunder, pain ripped from within and the howl of a bereft soul— "Dammit," she said. "Stop that!" And then had to offer Trevarr a sheepish look and admit, "Every now and then."

  "Just now," he told her. "Leave then where it was."

  Sheepishness turned to annoyance. "Is it that easy for you?"

  He didn't answer...looked away.

  "That's what I thought." But Garrie swallowed the annoyance. She couldn't and didn't even want to imagine the entirety of his then. Really didn't want to think about the part she'd played in it.

  Didn't want to think about whether he'd ever finally reach his limit. His Garrie limit.

  And didn't have to, because— "There!"

  "Bicycles," Trevarr observed, not that he'd ever seen any such thing before coming here.

  "Not just." Garrie switched to a more focused ethereal view. Ghostie vision. Cyclists, in loud shirts and tight shorts and something else again. "Vile entities," she said. "Accessory of the season." Murky and prickly at the same time, multitudes of them clinging like so many burrs and leaving a vapor trail that vibrated between puce and puke in color. "Oh, man. They are made of ugly."

  "Your poison," he observed.

  She nodded, not taking her eyes from them. "No wonder people are getting sick—are dying." She gathered a hard puff of experimental breeze and aimed it at the entities. If she could pry them loose without exciting them...

  "Of this world," Trevarr said—and not just guessing, but pulling from his duster the sleek otherworldly device that made sense only to him. Half jewelry, half pistol, half detector, half prison. Attuned to energies not naturally found on this particular world, and apparently now showing him nothing.

  "Of this world," she agreed, goosing the clinging entities a little harder. "But I have no idea what they used to be before whatever happened to them happened to them."

  He hesitated a moment, parsing that one. Good English, he had. Native speaker, he was not. "Your plan?"

  The bikers drew level with them, a hundred yards distant. Garrie made a face at the clinging burrs of nastiness. "Looks like I'll have to get their attention after all."

  With a precise finger of a whiplash breeze, she flicked one of them free. "If I'm lucky, they'll take insult and—oh, crap! Oh crap! It's a farking swarm of killer bee ghosties!" Without thinking, she reached out and snagged his arm, yanking. And then staggered, as he remained rooted.

  Didn't matter. She'd staggered right into him—and the closer the better, as she threw out tight, compressed breezes of shielding. Trevarr stiffened—a grunt of pain, always, with that kind of concentrated energy, no more native to him than her language. "Sorry," she said, breathless—unable to help a flinch as the entire flock-swarm-colony-whatever slammed into the stout shielding and momentarily spread thin with the impact. It—they—instantly rebounded to search the shield surface for an opening.

  "You got their attention," he said, less of a question than a statement, the strain evident in his voice.

  She winced. "Sorry, sorry. I didn't think they'd—well. They're mad, all right. I should have brought Lucia—she'd have caught it earlier."

  "Lucia," Trevarr noted, in one of those amazingly perceptive moments for a half-human off-world bounty hunter in exile, "needs no such exposure. It is just as well she had a..." There he stopped a moment, and finally finished, "Baby thing."

  Garrie laughed. Right there in the middle of a nastiness swarm. "Baby shower," she said. "A cousin."

  "Baby thing," Trevarr concluded. He nodded at the air in front of him, as if he could actually see the puce and puke and burr murk. "And now that you have them?"

  Garrie released his arm to straighten her gauzy second shirt and settle her Ghostbusters sports cap more firmly on her head. Beside them, the normally calm river boiled in a subtle, queasy ethereal roll. "Well, I'm not going to be able to talk to them." She bit her lip. "I wish I didn't think I was going to have to go straight to dissolution." Last ditch option, dissolution. Hard and crude and fast, energies dispersed for good. "Besides, with this nastiness aboard...I don't know if dissolution will even work."

  It always works, she told herself. Long-comforting words that were somehow no longer quite as effective in a world that had recently changed so much.

  Even if few people could see it.

&
nbsp; Katherine's voice came sudden, uninvited, and strident. "What are you waiting for?"

  Garrie jerked, creating a chain reaction in Trevarr. Not that he startled or even looked surprised.

  No. He just looked more dangerous.

  "Surely he knows he can't touch me." But Katherine's voice wasn't quite as certain as it might have been.

  "It's okay," Garrie told her. "He knows I can."

  It gave her pause, that. But not much. "I'm not the problem. These things are the problem. Of course they're furious—look what's happened to them!"

  "If we're right," Garrie said, as much to Trevarr as to Katherine, "and these entities are a result of some stupid dumping incident—" she flinched as one of them made a particularly furious dive-and-splat against the shield "—then they weren't human to start with."

  "Does it matter?" Katherine drew herself up, a fine figure of appalled dignity. "Surely you won't withhold your assistance because they're not human?"

  The first trickle of true annoyance flattened Garrie's mouth. "You know, of the two of us, only one of us knows how to do my job. It isn't, in fact, you." She crossed her arms, as if the close call with the infuriated spiritual swarm had been of no consequence. "Katherine Collupy, once a middle school principle. Had a reputation for being a little bit bawdy, doing the right thing, and holding your ground." She smiled at the ghost's evident surprise—the details of her manifestation blurring in and out of focus. "Hey, I've got People." But then she made a face and bowed to innate honesty. "Okay, I've got Person. But he's good."

  "Who I was or wasn't has nothing to do with this," Katherine said, drawing herself up and stabbing a finger at the roiling entities. "You should be dealing with them!"

  "You're here," Garrie said. "That makes you part of this. That and the way you need help just as much as these...whatever they were. One idiot on a cell phone, and your well-ordered, well-controlled life...that was the end of it, wasn't it?"