But it turned out that Beth’s bemusement hadn’t been a query over Quinn. She nodded at his hands. “Looks like it got to you, too. That stuff in the parking lot.”
He looked at the crumbs, piled there by the edge of the table. He looked at his hand, about to brush the entire pile off onto the unoccupied booth seat that curved around between them. What the — ? He had his ungainly moments, but he wasn’t a food-fidgeter, generally speaking. Preferred to eat his food, not shred it. “Huh. Guess I wasn’t thinking.”
Understanding settled on her features. Not a pretty face, really... just somehow exactly as it should have been. “I bet you’re not used to seeing Garrie come up empty like that. It sure surprised her.”
He thought of Garrie’s frustration, the instant of helplessness... and then, of course, the renewed determination, because that was Garrie. And he thought of the rest of that day, with the spirits coming on them like a ton of bricks, and the way she’d gone down in the café, and the unexplained things that had so obviously passed between her and Trevarr in the darkness of the séance room. “It was already a pretty big day.”
Her eyes widened — at first he thought he’d gone and spilled something, and he checked himself. Nothing amiss. And by then he’d gotten a glimpse.
... scuttle...
“What — ?” she said.
“Did you see — ?” he asked.
... scuttle...
“Tell me that’s not a roach, right out here in the dining room.” But she lowered her voice to say it, barely audible alto.
He searched the floor; he found nothing. But his peripheral vision registered another scuttling movement, and he kept a soft focus, letting his awareness slide to the outer edges of his vision. Yup. Definitely something moving.
“Don’t try to look at it,” he told Beth. “Look beside it.”
“I see it,” she breathed, stiffening slightly. “I... I think I’m done with lunch.”
Drew’s stomach was made of sterner stuff. He grabbed a prawn, his gaze still roaming the room. Yup, definite activity.
A gasp rose up from a nearby table, and several people pointed. Okay, that triggered his uh-oh alarm. It didn’t surprise him that Beth had seen something — she’d established herself as a sensitive. But your average out-to-luncher?
“Drew,” Beth whispered, her flush fading to paleness, “they’re everywhere.”
And suddenly they were, no need for vision games any longer. An explosion of them burst forth from the seams of the room, scuttling every which direction — a veritable carpet of wiggly, many-legged, thumb-sized entities, hinged carapaces over squat bodies. And they smelled.
Of course they smelled.
Inevitably, someone screamed.
Here we go...
When had he gotten this jaded? Drew snagged another prawn and sucked down the buttery garlic meat of it, watching as a man leaped to his feet, a second man not far behind. Roach-things poured across the carpet; the first man up made is if to stomp them and stopped in horror at the utter futility of it. A woman snatched her purse and fled — and another followed, and another, and soon the restaurant was full of stampeding, screaming —
Drew merely lifted his feet. Beth did likewise, sitting sideways in the booth. “What — ?” she said. Or he thought she said — the rapidly escalating noise level swallowed her words.
He shouted back, “I don’t know!” Quinn might know, but even that was doubtful — there was no such thing as a field guide for darksiders, and these things looked like darksiders, for sure. Connected to the muddle at the Winchester House? Hmmm. Drew reached for another prawn. Don’t panic. Observe. Be ready to report.
Beth had no such intentions. “Let’s get out of here!” She mimed fingers walking to the exit in case he couldn’t hear; her nose wrinkled from the rising stench around them. Rancid butter. Rancid moldy butter. Ugh.
But Drew indicated the crammed exit. They’d go, for sure, but... might as well wait here as anywhere else.
Scuttlers, so thick the floor appeared to writhe. Scuttlers, still pouring out from cracks and crannies, climbing over one another in their hurry to get... wherever. Their black carapaces had an oily gleam, their legs were too numerous, their tiny little heads were nearly hidden in the overhang of the carapace. Bright lime green spots speckled their back ends; a brushy cluster of eyestalks dotted each little head.
An enraged shout rose from behind the bar, followed by the explosive sound of a discharging fire extinguisher.
Drew grabbed another prawn, gaze riveted to the panicked and ear-splitting crowd — and then jumped as something made a strange, barely audible hiss-spit noise, and as Beth let out a little shriek.
Not quite in time.
Drew’s fingers closed over not warm, firm prawn but slick, wiggling darksider.
Drew yelped, flinging the thing away. Not fast enough. His fingers blazed into a fiery pain, the dip of flesh into a living fire. “Yeow! Ow! Ow ow ow!” He flapped his wounded fingers in the air.
Beth twisted over the table, grabbing his hand and grabbing his ice water and plunging the one into the other. Drew managed an inarticulate noise and resisted the urge to snatch his hand back and cradle it, whimpering.
This was no ordinary darksider manifestation.
“Ow,” he muttered, and withdrew his hand to find blisters already forming. Beth recaptured it — more carefully this time — and turned it over so she, too, could see. Her breath hissed through her teeth.
At least, that’s what it looked like; he had no chance of hearing it. But definitely she looked at him with trepidation; definitely she said, “We need to get out of here.”
Drew snatched up his fork and slammed it down into a scuttler heading for Beth’s side of the table. For sure, time to run away. But the floor was covered and the entry-way was still packed, and the people at the back of the crowd were doing a scuttler-flamenco dance as one of the busboys ran up with a fire extinguisher and blasted away at them. Drew flipped one off the toe of his shoe and zeroed in on the emergency exit at the far end of the restaurant.
He nodded at it and shouted, “Run for it?” even as he lifted the fork and stabbed another scuttler.
Beth made a face — fear and disgust and determination, all rolled into one. She stood up on the booth seat as Drew did the same, and then, uncertainly, reached out over the table.
She didn’t have to say hold my hand. Drew knew just the feeling. With a wiggle of his blistered fingers, he gingerly took her hand, finding it soft and warm and careful with its touch.
“Okay,” he said, getting ready — not bothering to shout. She could read his lips on this one, he was pretty sure. “One... two...”
Sklayne disengaged, pulling away from the Drew person. Unlike his unwitting host, he knew exactly what the scuttlers were, and he knew they didn’t belong here.
He knew exactly where they did belong.
And that their presence wasn’t a good thing.
Sklayne pulled in breath and held it, expanding himself. Out of glass cat shape, into self-shape. Condensed self-shape, little Velcro claws everywhere. Faster than the Drew person could even finish counting, he scrolled under the table, clearing his own path and then scrolling himself across the floor.
Crunchy. Infinitely crunchy. Small snacks. Can’t have just one!
And so whether they noticed it or not, Sklayne cleared the way.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 16
Not Really Dreams
Retreat as necessary, regardless of pride.
— RRose
Run away! It does a body good.
— Lisa McGarrity
Garrie dreamed again.
Knowing it was dream — that it was more than a dream. Unable to stop it.
Heat assailed her.
Not the right air...
Not the right energy...
Not the right life...
And somehow so familiar. She knew to be frightened. She knew to be terrified.
<
br /> The darkness only swirled around her. The rustle of feathers... or maybe it was the faint rasp of scales. Close by... brushing past her back. When she whirled, she saw only the black fog, disturbed by passage. Over the pungent scent of foliage, peppery hot, she thought she detected something else. A quick pattering of droplets on leaves whirled her around again; something small and lightweight rustled along the ground, a skittery insect sort of noise. The heat suffocated her senses. Wood smoke?
A cave of furniture, a cot niche with furs, an off-center rug... a trunk with the same flat twisted knot he wore on his belt. A cave of homey comforts and culturally unfamiliar details, scented with spice and suffused with warmth.
She thought she heard something whisper her name. She thought it held longing. She ought to run, she knew that — but run where, in this black fog? She fisted her hands and cried, “Show yourself, then!”
Nothing did, of course. So she muttered, “Oh, fine,” and she reached out for the breezes — so cautiously, needing the reassurance of it, the familiarity.
The security blanket of her own inner strength.
But the instant she reached, the instant she grasped, she opened the doors to a tsunami of otherness. It splashed through her and around her, burning her cold; it tingled through her arms and legs and ran streaks of fiery bold lightning through her fingers and breasts and legs. She thrashed and batted at it, suddenly without any reference for up or down or ground. The black fog carried her; the lightning stroked her.
She snarled back at it, and the snarl sounded like fear.
A whisper in her ear. A solid presence at her side. A touch at her face, a scent surrounding her. A hand on her shoulder. And words, soothing things that came in a familiar voice and accent, but made no sense as they settled in her mind.
Didn’t matter. She leaned into the solidity. She gave a little sob of relief at the fingers smoothing her hair. The darkness receded; she found gravity again, and the soft luxury of the bed beneath her. And then she fell back asleep, dreamless and no longer alone.
~~~~~
Power crackled and popped around Sklayne. The Drew person was safe, the scuttlers in retreat, and Sklayne on his way back to Trevarr. But he hovered in the lines, hesitating on choice: Tell Trevarr now. Or go learn more.
Thinking of Trevarr on the couch. Trevarr asleep. Trevarr worn. Trevarr with the Garrie, growing that protective look Sklayne had seen for blood family but never for another.
Trevarr had known too much of the Garrie before finding her. He’d wanted more of her before even meeting her. The fizzy.
Sklayne thought mistake!, and then quickly decided it would never be said out loud.
Ever.
But the Garrie slept now, too. And Trevarr wanted it that way.
Decision made.
Sklayne wouldn’t interrupt. He’d learn more. He’d follow the faint tug of the Lucia person and bring information back to Trevarr, enough so Trevarr could make decisions of his own without becoming tangled in the Garrie.
He chose his power conduit and raced forward, gathering speed and wicked glee in equal measures until he squirted from a high light fixture, black iron and glass dangling on an iron chain. The light blew with a noisy sputter; Sklayne extruded a lightning-fast claw and hooked himself into the chain, swinging wildly around the fixture until he bled off speed.
She was here. Somewhere. The Lucia person.
A massive collection of store fronts spread out before him — brightly painted brick row houses filling each block and towering high, leaving room for this arching entryway with its formerly functioning lights. People ambled the sidewalk below, pointing and peering and leaning up to item-filled windows, paying no attention to the light fixture with a life of its own.
Sklayne descended.
It was a controlled descent, balancing energies just so, an amorphous cloud of self invisible to those with their human eyes and their round human pupils. Once down, he poured into speed. Following the edge of the buildings, not varying his path for such things as tubs of flowering plants or temporary sidewalk displays. Right over one startled dog; right through a rack of clothes. Around the curving glass corner of one remarkably colorful building — and quite suddenly his sense of the Lucia person grew stronger.
The tug of it drew him onward, squeezing small through the closed crack of a door and big again —
To find himself utterly surrounded by disembodied feet.
A spit, a hiss — Sklayne blew up to encompass the interior, innumerable paws and claws scrambling every which direction. He snatched at composure, pulled himself inward — pulled hard to make it happen at all.
There, suddenly, he was cat. That same cat. There in the middle of an open carpeted space and still surrounded by disembodied feet.
A spit, a hiss, a very feline noise of offense; his tail puffed to twice its normal size and followed him as he scooted for cover, slinking close to the ground. A shadowed nook beneath the hollow stepped displays of farking disembodied feet and he hunkered in a tight crouch, panting neatly through his tidy cat mouth.
“Did you hear that?” asked a light and unfamiliar female voice.
“Must have been something on the store music,” responded another. “Look, I think we’ve got a live one.”
Farking disembodied live feet — !
The Lucia person was here. The Lucia person would know about the feet. They weren’t part of the Winchester House effect; they couldn’t be. No one else seemed to notice them at all. Unless no one else even saw them...
Just not right.
He curled up tightly in the corner beneath the hollow steps, hidden behind a tidy stack of empty boxes and tissue paper. The talking people had moved away; he heard their firm footsteps on the floor, the swish of skirt and leg. He heard their words of greeting — and he heard the Lucia person’s voice in response.
And so he settled in, tucked his paws under, and reached for her.
He went shallow at first — cautious. Uncertain he would have fine control in the presence of the lurking feet. He slipped into place with his inner eyes closed, unwilling to see the room — and its contents — through the Lucia person’s perceptions just yet.
But her thoughts rang loud and clear and happy in his head, blithely unaware of any disgruntled intrusion: Oh... they’re gorgeous!
Sklayne stretched one paw out to knead the carpet, absorbing the delight and enthusiasm. Unexpected. He let the Lucia person’s quick inner calculations ripple past — allowance and budget and low income right now versus opportunity and savings and wantwantwant.
This was a puzzling place.
But he found nothing of fear in her and everything of pleased anticipation. She had no concern over the people who approached her in this place of feet — she even had expectations of their behavior: they would be modestly deferential. They would respond to her requests.
He sank his claws into the carpet. Deeply. He squeezed his eyes closed. Do not fear the feet.
He settled in for a deeper connection. Becoming.
Becoming...
Lucia sighed, most happily. The airy, soaring space of the Taryn Rose store made the perfect setting for their beautifully arranged shoes — some of them perched on little stands, and some of them on fake feet.
She frowned at the odd little stutter of trepidation as she gazed around the store, but it smoothed away and left her to admire the shoes. Craftsmanship, beauty... comfort. ¡Alegría! And one of these lovelies would be in her hands, possibly on her feet, before she left this store.
The two sales associates knew a ready-made sale when they saw one. They listened with attentive interest when she told them she had only the afternoon to shop here in Santana Row. No doubt they recognized her little designer tote, and they were fools if they didn’t see she’d already found Burberry and now wore a sleek little watch with a check-etched band to replace the one she’d carelessly worn on a recent reckoning.
Nothing a petty little angry ghost liked more than
to wreck the delicate workings of a finely crafted watch.
“The Cheval in grey accent?” she asked the sales associates. An older woman and a younger, both impeccably dressed and coiffed, one quite robust and the other in need of calories. “And the Kegan wedge in chocolate. Size seven. I’ll be choosing one or the other.” Heels or practical wedge... decisions...
Not that there was anything less than gorgeous about the suede wedges with their ribbony patent accents. But the Cheval... such a gorgeous vintage style, Victorian boots with cut-outs and contrasting panels, done in suede...
Lucia found herself one of their very comfortable chairs, slipping her feet into luxury — knowing she had little time to make her choice, and enjoying the brisk process just as much as an afternoon of window shopping.
“These,” she said, caressing the Chevals as though they would purr back at her. “These can be made to suit classy or funky.” The sales associates made sounds of approval and delight, as expected.
Lucia slipped back into her own comfortable flats — Barefoot Tess Classics, acquired online for half their retail price because now and then she liked to prove she could — and retired to the register to consult her shopping list. Burberry, watch. Check. Taryn Rose, shoes. Check. Joseph Schmidt Confections, truffles for all. Next.
She pulled out her AmEx, tapping it idly on the counter while she waited, the fingers of her other hand twitching toward the eggplant-colored tissue paper the sales associate put on the counter while making up her purchase bag.
She had an inexplicable urge to... taste... it?
She twined her fingers together in a posture of quiet patience, making it impossible to reach for the paper.
Otherwise, all was pleasingly as it should be. Lucia Reyes, shopping in the afternoon. Choosing purchases with taste and forethought, moving briskly through her plans for the day so she could return in time for a nice dinner and then go out and break into one of San Jose’s historical landmarks to help rid it of spirits gone twisted and harmful. Situation normal.
Situation so suddenly not.
The floor made a squishing sound beneath her feet.
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