You think. You hope.
But now... no, not the time to dare. So well he knew this bond-partner of his. So many runaways caught since he’d left his trees to join Trevarr.
None quite like this.
He put a paw on top of Trevarr’s hand, claws ever so slightly extruded. Trevarr scowled; his fingers tightened around metal. His eyes — safer now — narrowed. “The Krevata are too entrenched — too many echoes, too much rebound. There will be no direct trail.”
::The dead ones?::
“Tormented,” Trevarr closed grim eyes, tipped his head back... fumbled at the nape of his neck and he pulled away the fastening there, a strange and sniffy black band. “When you can, get the book. Not here — the one they call Quinn.” He waited for Sklayne to mrrp acknowledgment and dropped the fastening on the table, scraping his hair back. The luxury of a stretch for a being who allowed himself none.
Not that Sklayne noticed. Not really. Not with that black band sitting there.
Taunting.
He reached a tentative paw... batted at it. It flipped across the smooth wooden surface; he slapped his paw down on it. O victory!
Trevarr made a noise without looking. Deep in his chest, it was. Sklayne quickly straightened himself, not seeing the band. Not feeling the flex of it or the way his claws had caught its rubbery nature or the deep satisfaction it would bring to snatch it up and sink his teeth into it. No, no, no.
He sat up straight. Attentive. ::And?::
“The Krevata didn’t expect the dead ones to react to Garrie. It panicked them. Made them stupid.”
::Are stupid,:: Sklayne pointed out, quite primly.
The faintest of smiles quirked Trevarr’s mouth. “So they are,” he murmured. He opened his eyes, glanced at Sklayne; tipped his head just so. An invitation.
Sklayne knew it. Knew unspoken the parameters of it. Take a shallow look, but don’t go any farther.
Sklayne did just that, sliding along the connection between them, slipping in deeper — invited, this time, and strictly observing. Through Trevarr’s memory, he saw the café interior — the Garrie person, gone pale and small as unfamiliar energies roiled inside her. The Drew person, eating with impressive gusto. The Lucia person, so very organized. Not so far away, the small young people, bouncing around, staring, being nosy and noisy...
::Small young things. Crunchy snack::
He said it to hear Trevarr’s warning noise, the quiet but unmistakable snort, and bristled happy whiskers when it worked.
In the memory, he felt Trevarr’s unusual awareness of the Garrie person, the touching without touching. The fizzzz. He wanted to feel more of it. Maybe to purr. But Trevarr growled when he tried. Too close. Too raw to touch without creating reaction.
So Sklayne watched the café belch, watched the people react, watched the Garrie person stumble — knew the Krevata to be at the root of it all. Knew things would only get worse. But his paws kneaded wood as Trevarr pulled the Garrie person to her feet and took the weight of her.
Purrrrr.
He stopped himself with a start. Not right! He did not care about the Garrie person. He did not care if lonely Trevarr got to touch the Garrie person.
Pay attention. He watched the dash of exodus to the green spot in the paved area. And then came the new person, nervous and brave and so much with the hair.
Then came again the Krevata.
Sklayne stiffened. He quivered. He crouched. His tail lashed. He couldn’t see the rekherra, since Trevarr hadn’t seen them. But he knew they were there, oh yes.
Prey.
But Trevarr could not gather them, so entangled with the people as they were. Bitter frustration. Failure. Guilt. The rampaging Krevata recognized their danger and fled, leaving the Garrie person and her friends baffled and confused, guessing wildly that something had come for the new Beth person.
They hadn’t known the attack had nothing to do with the Garrie person, and everything to do with Trevarr.
And they still had no idea what was truly at stake.
Although the Garrie person... she dreamed.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 14
Hotel Dreams
Wield an inquisitive nature with care.
— RRose
I want to know, dammit!
— Lisa McGarrity
Air, filling her lungs... but not.
Not the right air...
Not the right energy...
Not the right life...
“Garrie —”
Springy whiskers brushed her face.
Garrie shrieked into motion, flailing around inside the bedspread, pillow flying. A hiss, a spit, a retreating mraowh! and she hit the floor, thinking of hot scented air and tattoos blooming to stark intensity and glowing eyes — inspired, then, to scrabble away until she could gain distance and her feet.
If only she hadn’t run into legs.
“Cat,” she said faintly — as if that was the most important thing about the moment. “I heard —”
Large hands pulled her to her feet beside the bed. She didn’t fail to notice bare toes on the way up, loose leather pants neatly creased where they’d once been folded inside high boots.
Trevarr said, “There is no cat.” He took her head between his hands. Warm, those hands. Warm and dry and cradling her face. “Sha, Garrie,” he said, as if it ought to have made sense. “I want only to see that you are well.”
For an instant, she forgot to breathe.
And then she wrenched herself away. “I did too hear a cat. And I thought that door was locked. You know. From this side.”
“I had concern.” Thick hair shifted with his faint shrug, tiny braids glimmering silver from within darkest brown.
She snorted. “Sure. After this day? No big surprise I’d have weird dreams.” She laughed in short, dark amusement. “Well, I got what I came for, didn’t I? Something. A job where I don’t know the ending. I don’t even know the next piece!”
“Rest,” he told her, as if she hadn’t been trying to do just that. Definitely about to leave.
Garrie snatched his wrists, wrapping her hands around strength and stillness. “Don’t,” she said. “You’re holding back. You know something.”
His gaze met hers directly, implacably. Doubt assailed her — an uncertainty she wasn’t used to feeling. Not safe.
He freed himself from her grip with no effort at all.
She jumped up on the bed, making herself taller — nearly as tall as he was, even if she teetered on the unsteady footing. He instantly steadied her — it seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, big hands warm and low at her waist, thumbs riding the curve of her hip bone.
A hissy little spit came from the adjoining room. What was that? She should have asked, but no sound came from her mouth.
Oh, so not safe.
Neither was pushing him, especially when she knew better. Doing it anyway, because the stakes meant she had to.
She swallowed hard and did it. “Don’t even pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Not answering,” he said, as if feeling the way through the words, “is not the same as not knowing.” This close, his accent drew her attention to the subtly different way he shaped his words. The little off-center scar looked less like an old piercing and more like a healing cut, the center still pink, the ends already silvered and nearly invisible. The significance of it, usually hidden in the shadow of his lip, made clear that the wound had once gone all the way through.
Stop staring.
Garrie fisted her hands on her hips, resting them right on top of his. “What was that metal clicky thing in the parking lot, Trevarr? And what was that mess in the séance room? I trusted you — I took that energy — and now I’m not sure it was such a good idea.”
His grip tightened — painfully so, until he seemed to realize it, easing off. But no, of course he didn’t just answer. He only waited, as if answering wasn’t even under consideration. As if it was en
ough, in this moment, to simply watch her.
“Tell me,” she said, leaning just a little closer. Daring. “What did you do to me? What did you put in my body?”
That broke through to him, although she couldn’t tell if that flash of expression was regret or ire. “I gave,” he said, grinding the words out.
“And I trusted,” she snapped back at him.
“Because you needed,” he shot back at her. “It served you!”
“Because I’m good. I made it work!” She was, suddenly, not very damned far away from his face. Bending over him some, intimidating him not at all. “But it sucked. I need to know what I’m dealing with, and it’s really clear you’re keeping all the good stuff to yourself!” She glared at him from that close quarter, glared her hardest. “You asked me here for a reason, and I can’t get the job done if I don’t know what the job is.”
He didn’t return the glare so much as he went broody, anger coming at her from beneath a lowered brow. “You do know.”
“You’re not that stupid!” she snapped. “How could it possibly be more obvious that I don’t know enough? I’ve never felt anything like what happened on my sweep last night. I couldn’t do a thing with those entities in the parking lot. And I didn’t do a whole lot better this morning, though at least I know what was going on with them — just not why. But you — !” She scowled fiercely. “You know all of those things, don’t you?”
He did. His expression said it, doubling down on itself.
Oh, fine then. She had a temper, too. And she thought better of herself than to work blind. She held out her hand, palm up and demanding. Expecting. “Tickets.”
His grip tightened faintly again.
“You promised,” she told him, her throat far tighter than she’d expected it to be. “Tickets home.”
The cat gave a distinct mow of objection. Trevarr’s gaze caught the diffuse window light in an unexpected flare of brightness. “Don’t.”
She laughed, more bitter than it should have been. “Why not? Just because I’m so desperate for this work?” Okay, truth there. She was. “Sure, when I’m eighty maybe I’ll wonder what my life would have been if I’d stayed. But I’m not stupid and I’m not working blind. I can live with wondering.”
“Can you live with what happens here without you?” A veritable flood of words from he who said so little, his expression gone from brooding to conflicted. Deeply conflicted, in a way that spoke to her far more than his anger. It told her something.
It told her a lot.
It told her about the things left unsaid. It told her of a man with no good choices. Of one who cared and didn’t think he could do anything about it.
But she still jabbed a finger in the vague direction of Winchester House. “By tomorrow, that place’ll be inundated with mediums and ghost whisperers and wannabes. First they’ll deal with the unsettled spirits, and then they’ll see who can be the first to write a book about it.”
“No,” he said. “They won’t.” His accent grew hard and strong. “They can’t. They don’t have —”
“What?” But then she understood. “You? They don’t have you?” She snorted. “Tell me that’s not what you were going to say.”
He snarled something under his breath and moved so quickly she didn’t see it coming — she didn’t even see it happen. His hands closed just above her elbows, jerking her closer.
Panic fluttered a warning with those silvered eyes so very close. A hint of ashy smoke filled her senses; his grip vibrated with tension. There he was, his breath warm on her chin, his lips close enough to brush hers if he so much as spoke and Garrie knew, bone-deep, that if it went beyond that there would be no —
She would be —
Everything would be —
Changed.
There was only one thing to do, hovering there, treading panic as if it was water.
Casual snarky reckoner.
“Still waiting,” she said, and now it was her lips nearly brushing his. All the difference in the world. “Still wondering what it is you did in that house. Still wondering how you did it. And mainly wondering what else you haven’t told me.” She narrowed her eyes, lowered her voice. “And how much it’s going to matter.”
For an instant, he held her tighter yet. Then he closed his eyes. Something in him seemed to shudder, barely perceptible. “Don’t,” he said — and then again, as if he could cut her off. “Don’t.”
But Garrie knew how to be inexorable, too. “Who do you owe, Trevarr? What do you owe him? And why me?”
She could have sworn that was a smile, as darkly wry as it was. Then again, she would have sworn that when he lifted his head and took that deep breath, he was doing more than breathing. He was inhaling.
Her.
Those well-defined nostrils flared slightly; his pupils dilated visibly. His voice, when he finally responded, sounded completely distracted. “A friend spoke of you with much regard, as I have said. And still... there was much she did not anticipate.”
“Right. Amanda.” She was going to be so sorry for skipping the background check, relying on the reference rather than research. So very sorry.
If she reached for it, she could still feel the unfamiliar energy from the séance room. Nothing she’d ever felt before, that. Almost without conscious decision, she allowed herself to taste briefly of it — of him. Like a bitter tea layered over a beguiling hint of sweetness, equally robust and ephemeral. Hard not to take that next sip.
“Be content with not knowing more than you should,” Rhonda Rose had said, many more times than once.
But even as she got that hint of him, full and rich and layered, he stiffened. He shook her quick and hard, his voice full of hoarse smoke. “Mind yourself!”
Too late. Garrie’s reality spun around the axis of Trevarr — the ethereal taste, the very physical presence. The wild howl in the darkness, the hissing-spit of warning, the black fog... the scents of leather and ash, the absurd strength of the arms that held her, a thin, tight braid gleaming silver amongst burnt sienna brown and pewter-edged silver eyes and suddenly she blurted, “Do you have tattoos?”
Tattoos, blooming to the surface, but... not.
“Tattoos,” he repeated, so blankly she knew he’d been taken by surprise.
“Scales. Feathers. Though... not either, really.”
“No tattoos.” He reached for her waist again — about to hoist her off the bed and to the floor. No doubt he’d turn away, then, and become just as impenetrable as ever.
And still, she had questions. Her words tumbled out more quickly than she’d planned. “Earlier you said that I hadn’t hurt you when I pushed... but —” Okay, deep breath here. “Today, at the house...”
He went momentarily distant... completely still. She thought he wouldn’t answer at all — that he’d just swing her off the bed and leave. But his gaze returned to her from that inner space. “That,” he said. “Yes. That hurt.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, very small once more. “But they would have killed me. They might try it again, and if they do —”
“Yes,” he said again, and hesitated, searching her gaze... looking for what, she didn’t know. Finding what... no clue. “So you see. That which I did, I would also do again. If necessary.”
“The difference is, you know what happened to you. You know what happened to me. And I don’t know either.” She jumped off the bed her own damned self, ignoring the trailing feel of his hand at her waist.
Pretending to ignore.
She marched over to the phone, where she stabbed out the number for housekeeping and briefly explained the need for a new comforter, pretending not to notice their skepticism.
She half expected to find Trevarr gone when she turned back to him, but no, there he was. Watching her. She tipped her head back, gave into her aurgh impulse, and scrubbed at her hair with both hands. “Aurgh,” she said, to complete the ritual. “That nap was not enough sleep.”
“You should get more,” T
revarr told her. “It will help the dissonance.”
“No telling when housekeeping will drop by.” Garrie reached for the mini-fridge, pulled out a soda, and popped the top. Dehydrating, that ghost wrangling. As an afterthought, she went digging in her drawer for a granola bar. “Want one?” she asked. “It’s got little marshmallows and everything.”
“This is the real food your Lucia spoke of.”
“No, this is the food we don’t tell her about. I’ll get around to the real food later. So you want one?” She scrutinized him — the angles of his face looked harder, and fatigue had settled around his eyes. The morning had left its mark. “You look like you could use it.”
“The... local fare... isn’t entirely harmonious.”
She laughed, a spurt of sound. “Isn’t what?”
He frowned slightly.
She laughed again. “And here you were all macho with Drew about how the spicy didn’t bother you.”
“Bother? No. It leaves me... wanting.”
Ahh. “Doesn’t stick to your ribs?” Hard muscle, he was. A little too lean... maybe so. “Whatever you’re used to, surely we can find it here. “
A noise filtered out from his room, as if someone had turned on a water faucet and gotten spitting air. Garrie frowned in that direction. “Did you hear — ?”
His expression said he hadn’t.
Garrie scrubbed her hands through her hair again. “Oh, fine.” But it wasn’t. And she hadn’t given up.
But she knew when to triage.
She grabbed the room service menu from the top of the television stand and dresser, stretching to her tiptoes to reach it. “Look,” she said, flipping pages. “Big honkin’ steak. Comes with fries. Comes with veggies. Tell me you eat your veggies?”
“I eat,” Trevarr said, “what it takes to survive.”
She shot him a slanted look. “We’ll skip the grubs and grasshoppers this time around. Whoa, check it out — here’s a dessert called Whipped by Chocolate. Gotta have that. You want one? No, never mind. I’ll just order. If you don’t eat it, I’m sure someone else will.” He just looked at her, so Whipped by Chocolate it was. And two of the big honkin’ steaks.
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