“I’ll get you,” Lucia said, in lieu of Drew’s already retreating back. “I’m going to see if the café has anything that can be called coffee. Y tu?”
“Don’t think they’ll let us take anything in,” Garrie said absently, eyeing a flicker of darkness easing through a heavily trimmed juniper. “I’ll wait.”
Unexpectedly, Trevarr asked, “Will they have Dr. Pepper?” He pulled a wad of bills from his pocket, tugged one free, and would have handed it to Lucia if she hadn’t laughed.
“This’ll do,” she said, and plucked another bill from his hand. “Be back in a mo.” She turned crisply on her heel, threading her way past the two families who also negotiated their tour-waiting time outside the gift shop.
Garrie eyed the rejected cash. “You were going to give her a hundred for a soda?”
He returned the money to his front pants pocket in pointed silence, which Garrie took to mean yes and I’m not going to talk about it. Instead, he glanced her way. “Is it truly quiet?”
Garrie gravitated toward the shade of a carefully pruned tree, her gaze distracted by the two families lingering in the area. The mothers wrangled the kids — juice boxes, a last smear of sunblock, an admonition to stay together on the tour — while the dads stood together and eyed Trevarr with something approaching disapproval.
Smart dads. Probably imagining the little girls of the group, all grown up and on the arm of someone like Garrie’s new client. Temporary partner. Whatever.
Both men looked to be in their early thirties; both looked to be Silicon Valley types who hadn’t seen a gym in a while. One actually put himself between them and the children, protectiveness written all over his office-pale face.
Well, that’s just stupid. We’re just standing here.
Of course, Garrie was in her usual punk-sprite mode with blue streaks bright in short, untamable hair, and Trevarr was...
What he was. And emanating it without apology.
“Tell me what you see,” Trevarr said, no less a demand than if his voice hadn’t been low and downright pleasant.
It brought out all her hackles. “You,” she informed him, “are not the boss of me.”
How had he moved so fast? Gotten so close? She found herself looking up at him, crick in the neck time, glaring as he said, “For this day, I am. For the next. Until this place is safe again.”
Not! Without even thinking, she planted hands on his chest and shoved. Might as well have been shoving the tree at her back for all the space it gained her. It shook her, and in turn pissed her off. “If that’s what you think, you came to the wrong reckoner!” She pushed again — not expecting success this time, but slapping her hands off his chest for emphasis. “Now back off!”
It was the wrong thing to have done, and she knew it instantly. Wrong not because of Trevarr’s reaction — which, if she interpreted his expression correctly, was one of maddening amusement rather than annoyance — but because the dads noticed, and the dads cared. They exchanged a glance of concern and tacit decision, a we’ll protect you, little lady mantle of manliness.
Except even as the first took a step toward them, Trevarr...
Trevarr laughed.
Laughed.
It was a low sound, easy and truly amused. He reached out to the side of her face, smoothed the spikey place she’d already tugged into her hair, and somehow turned the movement into a touch that glided along her jaw.
Garrie couldn’t have moved if she’d been told that hair was on fire. If she’d been shoved. If she’d been propelled.
But even as his hand withdrew, as she kicked herself for not recovering fast enough to slap it aside, she felt the tension from the family grouping dissolve. A glance showed her that the dads had relaxed — had turned back to their families.
“You,” she said, in barely more than an outraged whisper, “you did that on purpose.”
He regarded her evenly from behind those dark lenses. “I did it for many reasons.”
“Yeah?” She found herself shaking, and then furious to be shaking. Not worth shaking over, redshirt reckoner. What happened the evening before, yes. But here in the bright daytime with no darkside creatures in evidence and all ghosts quiet... no.
With great effort, she kept her voice low. “Well, don’t. Again, I mean. Ever, I mean.”
He tipped his head infinitesimally; she had absolutely no idea what it meant. But the humor was back, and that couldn’t be good. “Tell me,” he said, as if none of it had ever happened. “Is it truly quiet?”
Garrie sighed. This time, when she pushed him away, she did it with request behind a gentler pressure, and this time, he stepped back. “Yes,” she said with a certain resignation. “It’s quiet. Good and truly quiet. Way too... farking... quiet.”
Because here at Winchester House, there should have at least been a drifting spirit or two. Especially given what she’d run into the night before. Garrie opened herself a little more, lifting her face to receive the faintest of ethereal breezes.
Nothing.
On sudden impulse, she gathered a soft breeze of personal power and pushed it at the only potentially responsive being to hand: Trevarr.
He took a startled step back, reaction flickering across his face so quickly that Garrie couldn’t read him, not at all. He closed his eyes — she saw it faintly, behind the sweep of those dark lenses — his mouth tightened, nostrils flaring, jaw briefly clenching.
And then it was gone, and he said flatly, “Don’t.”
But whatever mix of distrust and resentment and intrigue he’d inspired, she hadn’t meant to hurt him. Quick guilt washed over her, the same honest guilt she’d felt the very day Rhonda Rose had swooped down upon her and informed her she’d been causing pain in the ethereal realm with her childhood games.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I was only testing. I thought maybe... I mean, there aren’t any breezes... there aren’t any ghosts. Pretty much anywhere has a ghost or two hanging around, and everywhere has its own currents — and here, they should be everywhere. I just wanted to —”
She stopped herself from babbling, bit her lip to force a moment of silence, and said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I won’t do it again.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” he said shortly, but he didn’t look at her. “What of last night? Do you feel that?”
Garrie made a face. “I’m not that deep,” she said. “And I don’t want to be. If I go there again, it’ll be from the hotel — and this time, we’ll be prepared.”
As if anyone could be prepared for that.
~~~~~
Sklayne prowled the hotel room. Alone. Left behind. No cats. No not-cats.
::Bored.::
Far too small, this room.
Sklayne himself was not a large entity, but he was an entity of large and restless curiosity. The vast desert suited him better than any enclosed space.
And so leaping from lightbulb to lightbulb quickly grew monotonous; employing the precise kinetic energy to burn neatly scripted Keharian letters into the half-finished newspaper crossword puzzle on the Drew person’s bed took far too little time.
Trevarr would be displeased with him for that. But Trevarr shouldn’t have left him here. Trevarr should have known that one room was too small. That two rooms were too small.
That Sklayne, wanting to go home, wary of this impossible quest in this impossibly unfamiliar world, would find himself restless. Looking for things to take his mind off what Blood Honor would do to Trevarr’s people and therefore to Trevarr. Why not do unto Ghehera first? Why not at least simply take the Garrie person by the scruff and use her?
He drifted through the rooms, coming to rest in in the echoing place of stone and water. Here. The bathroom. Most entertaining. Scents and colors in a copious pile, all belonging to the empathic one. Slopped at the edge of the sink, sitting in the torn wrapper, the hard little hotel soap used by the Drew person. Off in the corner, a neat kit from the Garrie person with oooh softly scented soap. ::S
oft, soft, tan with speckles, tickle-scented, purr-making oh soap hug::
Soap no more. Oh.
Maybe the small person wrapped around much power wouldn’t notice.
It was definitely Trevarr’s fault. One room, too small. Two rooms, too small.
Trevarr should have allowed Sklayne to go hunting too.
He’d said there’d be no hunting for any of them this day. Just looking. But Sklayne knew better. And Sklayne should have been there. Helping.
Protecting.
He’d been here the night before, hadn’t he? Felt the cries of the small person wrapped around power? The surge of Trevarr’s alarm-concern-guilt, the bright spark of the startling fizz?
Stupid, the guilt. The small person proved only that Trevarr was right to be here. That he had the right trail. That if he followed it, they could go home.
Stupid, to follow that trail without Sklayne.
But the smaller person would detect him. Trevarr said so; Sklayne knew so. As cat, he could come... except not as cat, because the cat had not been seen to travel and therefore could not be here. This place. This room. With Trevarr.
::Different cat!::
How to pass the time, yes. Thinking different cat.
Sklayne pushed himself out, encompassed the world, shrank back to himself as cat. Poof!
Reddish tawny cat, big with the eyes, long with the legs. Much with the ears. No! The same cat!
::!!::
A rapid twist, turning inside out of self, and he was rekherra Sklayne again, invisible to those not Trevarr and those not wrapped around power.
Think. Different. Cat.
Sklayne pushed himself out...
Again! The same cat! How could he protect? How could he hunt?
“Mow!”
Again...
For Sklayne would protect his hunter.
Oh yes.
Cat or no cat.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 7
Winchester House
Beware that which begs investigation.
— RRose
Oh, hell — head straight for the basement.
— L.M.
No one else arrived for the early mid-week Winchester House tour. At the rising level of child restlessness, the guide — a remarkably compact, early-elderly woman of utter competence — did not delay their departure. With brusque efficiency, she gathered them at the juncture of café and gift shop and launched into her welcome speech.
Garrie paid more attention to the house’s servant entrance across the groomed courtyard than to the guide, so she was caught by surprise when the group shuffled onward, and anticipation jolted down her spine.
Apparently she’d only thought she was being cool about their impending engulfment by the house of ethereal mud and color.
But just outside the gift shop door, they piled to a halt beside a garbage bin. “Juice boxes and drinks here,” the guide told them, eyeing Trevarr’s brimming soda. “Cell phones off, please.” Lucia dropped her insulated coffee cup from two fingers as the families deposited their accumulation of juice boxes and Drew fumbled with his phone, no doubt trying to recall the last time he’d actually turned it off.
Unhurried, Trevarr downed his entire large Dr. Pepper in a series of deep gulps. The oldest boy — all of six, perhaps — watched open-mouthed, drawn forward in his awe. “Mondo!” he said. “Now are you going to burp?”
His father hastily tugged him back into the family group. Trevarr appeared not to take notice — although by now Garrie knew better. He gave the question a moment of thought, and then the slightest shake of his head. “Perhaps later.”
“I should mention,” their guide said, deadpan, “that few of the thirteen bathrooms in the home are currently functional.”
“Ai Dios,” Lucia muttered, for Garrie’s ears only. “I could be shopping. I could be anywhere.”
“Everyone ready?” the guide said, as dryly as only a woman who’s seen everything can be.
Who thinks she’s seen everything. But Garrie didn’t say it out loud. And she didn’t blurt, “Yes! Let’s go!” because the kids were doing that for her.
Across the courtyard they went, another oasis of green with the house looming tall on the other side, all striking brick red shingles and scaled siding, turrets erupting from rooms erupting from towers. The guide stopped at the servant’s entrance for her patter about Sarah Winchester’s need to gather friendly spirits and to appease those killed by the Winchester repeating rifle — and to confuse and evade those bent on malice, all as advised by a nameless Boston medium after the death of her husband. She moved on to the anecdote about Teddy Roosevelt —
“Expect to go in through the servant’s entrance,” Quinn had told them the night before, last-minute research bearing fruit in a late call with everyone tired and gritty-eyed. “No one used the front entrance even when Mrs. Winchester was alive. Not even before she had it boarded up after the 1906 earthquake, which she took as a sign. Frankly, she took everything as a sign. Anyway, even President Roosevelt was told to go around to the side.”
“Did he?” Drew had asked. His cell phone sat in the center of the desk and they sat around it while Trevarr lingered in the doorway between their rooms.
“Not according to the story. Point is, Sarah Winchester ruled that house with her whims while she was alive and she rules it with them now that she’s dead. Everything I’ve heard tells me that her name, her story, is treated with the utmost respect. If you get to asking questions, pretend she’s the queen and you might just strike the right note.”
Drew laughed.
“All right then,” Quinn said, “pretend she’s Trevarr’s mother.”
No one laughed.
— and then the guide opened the narrow, glass-paned door straight into turn-of the century opulence, holding it for the family and Drew and Lucia and Garrie and finally Trevarr, and then —
The door closed behind them.
Instantly, the breezes buffeted around Garrie. Voices assailed her ears and barely realized forms distorted the entrance area. Lucia whimpered, freezing up; Drew made a squeaking noise. The families burbled on ahead in oblivious excitement.
Trevarr’s unexpected hand landed on her shoulder as the guide tsked. “Sensitives. Of course. Take a breath, young people. It will pass.” And off she went, discussing stairs that led straight to ceilings and cupboards that opened into walls and doors that opened into thin air.
Take a breath. Or two, or three...
Because these weren’t the half-expected aggressive, angry spirits from the night before. No, these were distressed, beseeching spirits, battering against her with their pleas for relief. Relief from what, exactly? Under attack? Trapped?
She couldn’t tell.
She’d never felt anything quite like this and she couldn’t —
“Lisa McGarrity.” Trevarr’s hand tightened on her shoulder; his voice rumbled in her ear, the breath of it stirring her hair. Goose bumps shot down along her arms and she anchored on them — on the reality of them. She brought her buffers back up to full, layers of protection closing in around her.
“I’m fine,” she said, too brusque to be truly convincing, but she knocked his hand off her shoulder firmly enough so he straightened, stepping back to give her space. She dipped into Lucia’s fashionable tote to pull out the small pack of tissues that always came with Lucia, and tucked one into her friend’s hand, patting a tear-stained cheek until Lucia blinked. “Wakey-wakey,” she said. “Close it off, Lu. We can do this.”
Lucia blinked. She looked at Garrie; she looked at the tissue. “Ah, caray,” she said. “Am I good?”
Garrie gave her an obvious, squinting, once-over. “It’s good,” she pronounced, finding Lucia’s makeup largely unaffected by the neat tear-trails. “Do the dabbing thing. No one will notice.”
And as Lucia dabbed, Garrie roused Drew. “Hey, history boy. Come on out and play with the rest of us.”
Drew started back into awareness.
“Garrie! Oh my God! This place is stupendous! This is amazing! Do you know how well-preserved it is? How many layers of history? How —”
“Easy, big fella,” Garrie said, but grinned. While she and Lucia fought the grimmer effects of the house’s current situation, Drew had been reveling in the best of it. “If you bounce off the walls, they’re gonna kick you out. And if we don’t catch up, they’re gonna kick us out.”
“Or worse,” Lucia said, and shuddered. “That woman will scold us.”
As a group, they hurried to catch up. The guide smiled knowingly at their arrival, but didn’t acknowledge them out loud, finishing a discussion about imported materials and moving on to a board made of little glass windows, some of which held paper numbers.
“ — and because Mrs. Winchester slept in any one of her forty bedrooms each night, the servants only knew where to find her by this annunciator. These cards would drop, identifying Mrs. Winchester’s location and letting the servants know she was ready for their attention.”
She gave Garrie’s crew just enough of an eye to let them know she expected them to follow along properly now, and moved ahead. “Now, let’s talk about the number thirteen. Thirteen bathrooms, thirteen panes in many of these windows, thirteen ceiling panels in many of the rooms, thirteen fixtures in a custom chandelier, thirteen cupolas, thirteen palms lining the drive... no one really knows what significance Mrs. Winchester found in the number thirteen, but it’s obvious that she did. Keep your eyes open and see if you can spot the thirteens before I point them out...”
Garrie would keep her eyes open, all right. Regular old sight was all she had to work with right now. No matter how Trevarr breathed down her back, his impatience palpable...
Goose bumps. She shivered slightly, murmuring words that sounded childishly petty even as she spoke them: “I don’t trust you, you know that.” She just barely moved her lips, and yet she knew...
He’d hear her.
And he did. He leaned in behind her with an equally quiet response. “I know.” Right in her ear, right there. And the humor in his voice too damned obvious.
She turned on him, keeping her voice down only with great dint of effort. “You’re laughing at me.”
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