“I’m understanding you.” And he looked at her, eyes exposed in this dim light, the sunglasses again tucked away and leaving her vulnerable to that silver gaze. It was enough to hold her there — and for that moment, she had the strangest feeling that he was about to — no, that he had — fingers touching her jaw and cheek and smoothed her wayward hair —
Except he didn’t. Hadn’t.
Confused, she turned away from him — and even as she drew a ragged breath, hunting composure, she realized they’d fallen behind again. She made a sound of annoyance, moving forward in steps that quickly steadied. Back to business.
“You know I’m gonna need to come back here, right?” Up ahead, the guide opened a door that led directly into a wall while the children exclaimed how stoopit it was. “At least once more. I’ll try to take another look around in ghostie view, but the activity here is blindingly chaotic.”
He didn’t respond, and after a moment she decided he wasn’t going to. They moved on to see the storeroom with its rolls of expensive sculpted English wallpaper, uninstalled art glass collection, parquet wood pieces, tiles and mosaics... Victorian times, all piled up in a room. In the gleaming ballroom, she again tried to look at the ethereal layers around her — and closed back up with an audible gasp that echoed so loudly against parquet floors and wood walls that both families stopped their fidgeting and turned to fix her with a single look.
“Hiccups,” she said, and faked another one. “Excuse me.” And of course the children laughed, but the guide fixed her with a wise eye.
As well she might. For Garrie was completely mobbed by spirits. Totally and utterly surrounded. They cried for her and pled for her and clung to her and begged at her, desperately in need. They’d recognized her for what she was the moment she’d set foot in that servant’s door, and now they had no intention of letting her go.
Not that they’d have much choice.
Lucia was in no better shape, strained and overly bright-eyed in the dim original lighting of the house, her smiles growing trembly around the edges.
Lucia would not be coming back.
Drew, on the other hand...
They’d be lucky to keep him away. Kid in a candy store. Kid in a candy store at Disneyland. Kid in a candy store at Disneyland with a pony. Oh yeah.
They navigated an endless set of broad stairs that rose a scant inch or two for each riser, this hallway as short and narrow as the rest of them. Garrie felt perfectly well at home; behind her, Trevarr ducked. Sarah Winchester, it seemed, had been a very small lady, and had built her house to suit.
Fireplaces, chandeliers, bedrooms... all appointed with exquisite taste and the finest of materials, and all a blur as Garrie eased herself open to the thinnest veil of awareness and finally, finally, got some sense of the twisted pain gathering up in this house, the unnatural ethereal vortices, the dead spots and the quicksand she couldn’t help but walk around even when it caused the guide to raise an eyebrow.
And so the guide cast her a meaningful eye as they entered a final gloomy room and closed the door behind them. “You might enjoy this. Only one way into this room, but three ways out — this was Mrs. Winchester’s séance room.”
Dark, low ceilings, no windows, cloak closets with thirteen hooks, an ominous lowering in the air... The guide abruptly stopped smiling, her expression tipping over into uncertainty.
The lights went out.
Of course the lights went out.
“Mommy!” A handful of thin, scared little voices cried out in chorus.
“This isn’t funny,” said one of the Silicon Valley dads, trying to sound firm, definitely sounding annoyed.
Garrie’s crew responded in no uncertain terms. “Ay, mierda!” and “Garrie —” and a deeper rumble that might have been a noise of discontent from Trevarr.
Garrie’s hair stirred slightly. “Oh, crap,” she said, barely audible.
Because this wasn’t just a single entity at work. This was all of them, working in concert.
Spirits don’t work together. They might mingle as had happened in the patio house, but this conglomeration of distinctly independent entities, all working toward the same complex goal...
Never.
The guide spoke up, her voice firm and confident. “I’m sure we’ve just blown a fuse. Someone will fix it within moments.”
“Does this sort of thing happen often?” a dad demanded.
No, Garrie wanted to say. It happens never. Not like this. She felt the sharp edge to the buffeting breezes around them... she knew the cause.
Because we’re almost done. We’re about to leave. They can’t let that happen —
“They’re too desperate,” she whispered, not knowing if Lucia was close enough to hear, if Trevarr would understand. Desperate spirits, desperate measures...
They were about to get ugly. To risk using themselves up rather than release the only one who could help them.
“Get us out of here!” she demanded of the guide. “Get us out now!” Too many years of séance s in this room, too much focus... too much power. She couldn’t let them have their way, whatever it took.
“I assure you,” the guide started, clearly determined to be sensible.
But sensible wasn’t an option right now. First one child screamed, and then another — and the mothers screamed, and the guide screamed, and Drew shouted “Garrie!” and Lucia cried out and Trevarr grunted in surprise, all as a deep roar filled the room, a rush of wind through nonexistent trees and a storm funnel without the storm.
Oh crap, crap, crap, CRAP.
A cyclone of ethereal energy, breezes turned to a gale and staggering them, whipping even Garrie’s short hair into a tangle. Manifesting, in a way the Winchester House spirits had never been able to do. Around and around, herding them, feeling them out, sorting them, tightening down until they huddled together in the center, tightly enough to know the parents had gathered up their wailing children, clutching them near; close enough to know Lucia protected the guide as best she could, that Drew and Trevarr created a barrier to give Garrie working space as Garrie struggled against the spiraling cyclone of power and what if I don’t want space?
Because that’s just what those enraged, desperate spirits had needed. They’d separated Garrie from the others like dogs on unwitting sheep, pushing the others away to leave her alone in the darkness.
The roaring interior wind skipped a beat, sucking the air from the room with an ear-popping gasp. One of the women murmured in what might have been relief — but Garrie knew better. She braced herself just in time, throwing up the hastiest of skin-tight shields as the gale blasted back through the room tenfold strong — only now it circled Garrie and only Garrie, and the power twisting down from wind into threads into twine rebraiding into stoutest fine rope. There in the darkness, it clamped around Garrie and only Garrie, holding her fast.
No moving, no twitching, no thinking, no breathing —
If you won’t stay and help us...
Then stay and join us.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 8
Winchester Séance Room
As the skills are yours, so is the responsibility.
— Rhonda Rose
One is a lonely number.
— Lisa McGarrity
Breathing. It suddenly seemed so important.
Garrie made a mighty effort to take in air, struggling against the stunning power brought to bear by so many distressed and confused spirits at once.
She managed a tremulous squeak.
Lisa McGarrity, Reckoner Extraordinaire: hear her squeak.
She would have smacked her forehead, if only she could have moved at all.
But that squeak of indrawn air... it wasn’t enough. Nor was the next. And her lungs burned and the spirit-storm raged around them and panic edged at her thoughts along with the roar of wind and the overlapping, twisted voices of pain and fury and blame.
It struck her hard and sudden, then — no one else even knows
I’m trapped. They hadn’t heard her painful squeak in the chaotic darkness, not with the spiritual storm and the kids crying and the fathers demanding explanations and the mothers shushing and the guide... the poor guide...
“Fuse!” the woman said, for the first time at an apparent loss for words. “Maintenance plant malfunction! Stay calm!”
Even her crew thought Garrie had handled the situation. Was handling it. Not squeaking for air, with the sounds fading around her and her vision going a weird lighter grey all speckled with dappled red spots...
As the skills are yours... Rhonda Rose used to say so often, pausing so young Lisa could dutifully finish, so is the responsibility.
Right. Meaning no one else would step in. Wouldn’t they just be surprised when the lights came on and Garrie didn’t?
You don’t want to do this, she tried to tell the spirits. I can’t help you this way —
But of course she had no voice, and she had no more energy to reach them — only the spirits holding her upright in their braided winds of power while the storm battered her. Panic sparked through her thoughts, scattering them, leaving her only with the internal scramble to live...
Shields. She’d flung them up. They kept the spirits from shoving breezes through her but not so much from squeezing down on her.
Unless she enlarged them, giving herself space. Literal breathing room.
She scraped up the focus even as the chaos faded into dimming awareness — spinning her personal breezes into an ethereal layer of WD-40 and lifting the skin-tight shields by nothing more than a hair. Air trickled into her nose, a tease of freshness that barely made it to her lungs.
Again. More.
Enough room to suck in the merest gasp of breath, to release it. Sipping air in the merest whispers of success. Sound returned, if just barely. Awareness returned.
So did the understanding that the spirits had rallied. She’d stopped them from killing her, but they hadn’t given up — hadn’t released her. And their resources, while she was trapped this way, were infinitely deeper than her own.
They had all the time in the world, and she had none.
A sudden presence invaded the spirit-carved space, large at her back. A hand landed on her stomach — spanned it, fingers splayed and assuming. Strong hand, long fingers, rough against the paper-thin fabric of her layered shirts and suddenly an anchor to her world.
Trevarr.
He pulled her firmly back to rest against him. The wall of Trevarr. His other hand brushed the side of her head, hovered... made itself at home, fingers resting in her hair and on her temple and just below the curve of her jaw where her pulse beat so wildly. He ducked his head along her other ear, his cheek alongside hers, and above all else she heard — or felt — the strong, solid thump of his heart at her back. Warmth, counteracting the chill. And the low rumble of a voice in her ear, or maybe in her mind. “Use me.”
Do what now? Sound faded, not because it had diminished but because Garrie herself faded.
Trevarr gave her a sudden hard jerk, pulling her in closer, fully supporting her weight as their legs tangled. His voice went deeper, more gravelly. “Take it.”
The sensations swamped her — heat and strength and unfamiliar touch, the burning cold presence of equally unfamiliar energy pressing against her. Never mind the storm raging in the room when this new storm raged more tightly around her, wrapped in leather and feral grace.
Or maybe she’d just been without adequate oxygen for too long, squeaking her way from one breath to the next.
“Garrie.”
As the skills are yours...
And wasn’t this what she’d come here for, after all?
A pane of glass broke somewhere, sending shards whirling past; screams rang out behind her. Trevarr ducked around her, shoulders a living shield, his hair whipping against her face. The muscles of his jaw corded, a startlingly intimate sensation at her ear. At her belly... his touch burned cold.
Use me, he’d said.
She was about to find out what that meant. Desperation allowed her to open for that cold burn; instinct showed her how. Completely alien, that cold-heat energy of his. Poison cloaked in power, for all she knew.
And yet she felt the measured strength of his hands clasped around her, his body curled to protect her... and she thought not. Cold power flushed in through her belly from his touch, sending startlingly intrusive tendrils toward her groin.
“That’s mine,” she snarled with what breath she had left. She pulled hard, redirecting the energy to her torso and chest, wrapping it around her heart and lungs and layering it around her body. Her teeth quite suddenly chattered, her body full of chill electricity hunting for release. Retribution. Simmering fury.
No, she whispered to it. Boundaries. Restraint.
She warmed the power, softening it. Absorbing it into herself.
Power, sliding home.
Satisfaction rumbled at her ear. She grinned, a fierce expression in the darkness, defined at the spot where her cheek met his. Garrie reached for that new energy, shaping a breeze. More than a breeze — a gust, strong enough to smack through the spiritual tantrum of the myriad Winchester House ghosts. She held it to herself, maturing it... and then at just the right moment, sent it away with a flick of her fingers. A warning shot.
The storm stuttered, tumbling from cohesive winds to momentarily fractured strands of power.
Behind her, Trevarr jerked, his pained grunt in her ear, just as affected as the spirits. Garrie winced — but felt a spike of hope at new freedom. Enough to move her arms as well as her hands — even as the spirits regrouped, surging back at her... giving her no choice but to wield that power again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to him, not expecting to be heard.
“Do it,” he growled, words that vibrated down the side of her neck, the hard edge of his accent curling around those two spare words.
Yeah. She took a newly deep breath — damned fine thing, that air — and shaped another gust. No more warnings, not with this bunch. Time to get their respect.
“If you want help,” she said, low words riding the energy she’d gathered, “then be nice.” And flick, a sharp double-handed gesture, a starburst of ethereal power with a Garrie epicenter, hard and strong and make no bones.
Their shock bounced back at her; their vehement ferocity tumbled in on itself.
Trevarr’s fingers spasmed at her belly; his hand closed around her shoulder, his grip bruising hard; suddenly she held him up and not the other way around. His breath gusted in a curse and damned if his knees didn’t just plain buckle —
She whirled into him, grabbing a fistful of his duster, losing it, grabbing at his shirt, finally going for his belt where it wrapped lean hips — all by feel in the darkness, a jumble of mismatching movements as the ghost storm shattered around them.
The unnatural gusts fluttered into silence, a few errant grasps of power shaking the shuttered closet doors before the howl of wind gave way to the howl of children. Parental demands joined in loud accompaniment.
Lucia called out, “Garrie?”
“Not —” Not yet, she would have said, if she hadn’t been startled by the faintest gleam of burnished silver, just a glimpse and then gone — the way a man’s eyes would disappear in the darkness if he turned his head away.
“I see you,” she said, not meaning to. I see you, suddenly so aware of his arm over her shoulder, his wood fire and ash scent now around her, their utter entanglement. She stiffened.
“I think not,” Trevarr said, his words far too casual for the moment. But he couldn’t hide the rasp of his breath, not with darkness, or the tiny spasms of his body — little aftershocks of... of whatever she’d done to him.
Unaccountably, the casual dismissal of what had just passed between them... it peeved her. “I saw —”
“The ghosts,” he reminded her. “Finish with them.”
Lucia’s concerned voice cut through the vocal volume of the tourist familie
s, filled with the strain of holding off the spiritual fury and despair surrounding them. “Garrie?”
“Hang on, Lu... running some clean-up.”
“I don’t have —”
Containment. The baggies. “Don’t need anything. Just hang on.”
“Ay-yi, chicalet, you sure?” Doubt crept into Lucia’s voice, obscured as it was by the guide and parents, the back and forth of we’ve got to get out of here versus the lights will be back on in a moment versus you’ve terrified my kids and then the expected throw-away words about lawyers and court and sue the hell out of you.
Trevarr hissed between clenched teeth, bent over himself — still able to make demands. “Finish this.”
At least the lights were still out. “Are you — ?”
“The ghosts,” he said, and it came through still-gritted teeth.
Okay, dammit.
She stirred the power around just enough so the sullen lingering spirits would know they were being addressed. “You wanted my attention? You got it. You had it all along, if you want to know.”
“Who is she talking to?” one of the mothers asked, breaking off from her attempts to soothe her still-crying children and sounding just a little bit brittle herself.
But Garrie stood a little taller, a little angrier — not particularly interested in explaining herself to the people she’d protected.
I don’t do people.
“Now,” she told the ghosts. “Let’s finish this thing.”
~~~~~
Hotel, so boring.
Sklayne stretched — luxurious, every cat muscle extended, paws spread, claws extruding oh-so-slightly. He turned it into a belly-exposing roll, twisting atop the pillow.
Her pillow.
There, he slowly relaxed. Still absurd. Reveling in it. Replete from the soapy snack, soaking up the scent of the lingering energy here. Tasted like gingie root from his home forest, damp sharp leaves after rain. ::Yesss.::
He rolled his shoulders into the pillow. Just so.
As well he deserved to. Left here, waiting. Some part always tuned to Trevarr, bound as he was. Listening for trouble, listening for interesting.
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