Chapter 24
Maybe in Too Deep
Beware the charlatan, for she diminishes what you do.
— Rhonda Rose
Woo-woo lives.
— Lisa McGarrity
Garrie woke stiff and cramped and paradoxically reluctant to move, tucked in under the weight of a heavy arm and kept company by the sound of quiet breathing and the reassuring steady rise and fall of a solid chest beneath her hand.
Then she woke just a little bit further and thought Trevarr!
Suddenly she was quite damned awake, her eyes springing open to reveal an up-close-and-personal expanse of chest, contours smooth in the muted light behind closed curtains.
She didn’t move. She forced herself to breathe evenly as her mind raced with incredulity at herself. At her situation. What was I thinking?
That she’d needed to sleep, that’s what. That the previous night when she’d tried, the dreams had come on her just as hard as before, just as fast — even with miles of elliptical work behind her.
She’d been thinking that Trevarr had already once turned those dreams away with his touch, and could possibly do it again.
And she’d slept. She felt rested. She felt right, and ready to go.
So, quite obviously, did Trevarr. Awake or not. Thin pajama bottoms of an unfamiliar style hid nothing.
Oh, it was so past time to leave.
She slipped out from beneath his arm, managing to drape the blanket over his lap in the process. There. Better already.
But then she lost her momentum — frowning at his torso, wondering whether those faint marks were bruising or weird tracings, if they were what she’d glimpsed in the night when she’d been so intent on saving his life.
Saving his life from what?
Those wounds were now nothing more than thick, tender new scars.
It was too early in the morning to challenge reality again. Definitely too early to face the fact that she’d slept with him, in whatever fashion.
But she’d lingered too long. His eyes opened, his gaze blinking into clarity — and possibly into amusement. Garrie did the only possible thing — she fled, scooting even faster at her own image in the room’s full length mirror — bare legs, nightshirt just barely covering her ass, and her hair —
Oh, God, she’d gone to bed with her hair wet.
Dignified retreat. So very not.
But it wasn’t hard to slip into the next room and out of her nightshirt without waking the others, pulling on a clean pair of crop cargos and a trim sleeveless hoodie over a thin, long-sleeved thermal with a bazillion or so tiny little flowers on it.
No doubt she’d be too warm within the hour. But she was headed outside, and the early air would be cool for a while yet. She wrote a note for the others and left them sleeping as she headed for the parking lot.
She needed another look at that arid scrub where Bob had died and where Trevarr had come so close. And where an ordinary man had somehow morphed into something so powerful and angry, there under the fiery blooms of a northern California desert sky.
For now, the exterior of the hotel felt deserted. The sky, clean and pale at the horizon, still looked washed out compared to Albuquerque’s high-altitude blue. The grounds were studded with live oaks and landscaping, neat and freshly damp from the watering system; the smell of it came strongly to a nose so used to dry.
Somewhere between the pristine close grounds and the overflow lot, desultory bits of trash emerged between the plantings — a bottle sticking out from the fancy tufted grass, a can perched against a parking curb. The fancy grasses changed to clumps of sage, scrub oak and leathery-leaved brush, and the lonely gas station sat an acre away.
But there was nothing to suggest any great drama had happened here less than twelve hours earlier. Birdies singing, insects buzzing around... beautiful, peaceful morning. Ghost coyote playing pounce with an oblivious lizard, clearly puzzled by his lack of success and yet still enjoying the game. A distant haze that might have been a swarm of insects but was more likely a weak darksider incursion, soon to dissipate on its own. A diffuse spirit walked the edge of the distant road, a vague human-like shape of energy without focus... had she been closer, she could have easily directed it toward either coherence or dissipation, whichever it needed.
But not today.
Garrie passed the junction of the two parking lots, where the asphalt turned from black to weathered gray. At the far end, Bob’s camper-topped truck sank lower over its right springs, the tailgate patched with grey over dull red. She moved steadily across the back corner of the lot to the spot where she’d met Trevarr.
A powerful spot, this one — it instantly caught her up in memory. Trembling legs and elusive breath and pounding heart and yes, even his damned laughter —
The twist of breezes warned her. She turned in time to meet Bob head-on, and to beat him to the obvious punch. “Boo!” she said, before he could.
“Geeze, you oughta let a guy have a little fun.” A brief darkness settled on his features to accompany his sulk. “Come back to the scene of the crime? Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.” Garrie made a face at him that settled into a scowl.
Bob just snorted.
She sent him an extra degree of scowl and returned her attention to the scene. There — that area of crushed plant and disturbed dirt. Trevarr had gone down in that spot, struggling with Bob. And over here — that’s where she’d landed when Trevarr had thrown her. Three feet of woody bush with leathery leaves and little red berries and aiee! look at those thorns. She was lucky it had only been her hands. She flexed them — sore and scratched, plastered with first aid strips. Ow.
“Spiny redberry,” Bob said, matter-of-fact.
But there on the ground, there was no blood. Over where Trevarr had fallen and bled so badly, nothing. Where Bob had died... nothing. Not even an indent where the body had been.
“Do you remember?” she asked Bob suddenly. “What was it that drew you to us? That made you so angry?”
“Nothing made me angry,” Bob told her. In the daylight, he had a definite transient air — scruffy hair and face, clothes frayed and over-mended. “I pretty much came that way. I mean, once the thing got into me. But when I saw you...”
He cocked his head, looking at her. “Damn, I wanted your energy. Both of you stood out like big halogen lamps in the night, but his...” Bob made a dismissive gesture. “It seemed familiar somehow. Yours... was new. Exotic.” He stopped, frowning. “I can’t believe I just said that. Any of it. Energies. Woo-woo!”
“Woo-woo lives,” Garrie informed him. But she, too, frowned. Most entities responded to her in some fashion. Some ran, some pleaded, some greeted her with relief — and yes, some of them tried to kill her.
But they knew her. If not her personally, what she was. She was far from exotic.
With a snort of irritation, Garrie let her eyes go to soft focus and extended herself into the local breezes, hunting broad patterns in the immediate area. She found only quiet eddies and soft pools — energies not so much gathered as simply inert.
“Whatcha doing?” Bob spoke right in her ear, nearly startling her back into that spiny porcupine bush thing.
“Don’t do that!” she snapped, driving him back a step. “Were you this rude when you were alive?”
“No,” he said, without rancor. “But I’m experimenting with a new-found sense of freedom.”
Garrie reached into her hoodie pocket and fished out her minimalistic cell phone, hitting the auto-dial. “Don’t experiment on me,” she warned him as her call went through. “Hey, Quinn.”
“It’s the Garrie-phone,” he said. “You must be on your own, because I don’t see Lucia using your clunky stone knives and bearskins tech.”
“Yup,” she said. “We’re an hour behind you — you really think anyone else is awake?”
“Did you really think I was awake?”
“Oh, damn! I’m sorry, I’m just �
��”
“Caught up in this one. You think I couldn’t tell? You’re in deep, aren’t you?”
“Maybe too deep,” she muttered.
“Whoa,” he said. Sheets rustled copiously. “Since when do you talk like that?”
“You haven’t seen this stuff, Quinn. How can I fight something that doesn’t respond to what I do?”
“Geeze, Garrie — !” he said, sounding stunned.
“I know, right? I really thought this was what we all needed — but what have I gotten us into? I just assumed I could deal with this situation, but... I’m kind of wondering.” She hesitated, feeling silly to say it out loud. “I’m kind of wondering if he’s a totally different kind of reckoner — working with different energies, different entities...”
“You’re assuming you can handle me, too,” Bob pointed out, inviting himself into the conversation.
Garrie turned on him. “You,” she said, employing a meaningful finger of doom, “I can handle. Right now. Want to see?”
“No, no no,” Bob said, warding her off with a wave. “No, ma’am. You just go right on assuming.” He took a step back.
“Company?” Quinn asked.
“From last night,” she said, tugging her hair. It’s not like she could make it any worse. “A man died here.” We killed him, actually. Sort of. “We haven’t quite dealt with that.”
“Look, Garrie,” Quinn said, and she heard movement; her mind easily supplied the visual as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “If you weren’t just a little bit arrogant, you couldn’t do any of this. You think we’d follow you if we had any doubts?”
“I think you do have doubts,” she said promptly. “Or you would have come with us, books be damned.”
Silence, filled with his breathing at the phone. “That’s not about competence,” he said finally. “I think you know that. It’s just been... quiet. And... complicated.”
Right. Taken for granted, he’d said. And probably been right.
“Are we good?” she asked him, a sudden impulse.
“What?”
“You and me. Between us. Friends. Are we good?” Because suddenly she didn’t want to go into this day without knowing, and maybe this was why she’d called him all along.
Well, that and hoping he’d managed a miracle overnight, completely absorbed the mystery book, and was packing to join them with a brand new game plan in hand.
Not so likely.
More silence from Quinn, and then, rather warily, “Why do you ask?”
“Just because,” Garrie said. So lame.
“Just because?” He blew out a gusty breath. “Garrie.”
“Quinn. Does it matter why?”
“It’s not a fair question. How am I supposed to say no?”
Her chest tightened. “Just like that. If you want to. Do you?”
Another deep breath, clearly audible against his phone pick-up. She heard the scowl in it. “I don’t,” he said, finally, and just as scowly. “But I don’t like the conversation.”
The tightness melted away. Quinn, annoyed. But not saying no. “Get some coffee,” she told him. “We’ll let you know what’s happening here.”
“You woke me up for this,” he said flatly, disbelief lacing his voice.
Garrie tipped her head back, examined the sky. “Looks that way.”
“Garrie...” That was warning.
“Gotta go, Quinn. I think we’re looking at a big day here.”
“Garrie...” That was pleading.
Wish you were here, Quinn. But that wasn’t going to help him. So she said, “Gotta go have a day, Quinn.”
She thought she heard a growl as she was hanging up.
“Here comes company,” Bob said from behind her. “At what point do we get to me, I have to wonder?”
“When I’m done with this other thing.” Garrie didn’t have to ask who the company was. She felt it within, the tug and movement of the cold burning energy that lingered within her. She closed her eyes — in some respects, giving in to it. In some... gathering strength.
“Pardon me,” Bob said, “but I don’t have a whole lot of confidence that you’ll actually be around after you’re done with this other thing.”
“Hey,” she said sharply, scowling behind her closed eyes. “Keep in mind exactly how you got dead, will you? You know, the part where you tried really hard to kill us?”
“Wasn’t my fault,” Bob muttered. Garrie’s sense of him faded; a retreat, then. She felt a moment’s guilt.
“He was changed,” Trevarr said, coming right up behind her as she’d known he would.
“I’m not turning around,” she told him. “My hair is still not to be seen. And how did you even know I was talking to Bob?”
“He has been interfering with you since he died. He needs to take responsibility for his own fate.”
“I heard that!” Bob cried, faint but clear.
“I don’t think he agrees,” Garrie said. She was half expecting it when Trevarr’s hand hovered at the back of her neck, smoothing down the fine hairs there.
That he would touch her seemed inevitable. That it would stir up those unruly energies...
Her heart pounded against it. Stupid reckoner heart. As if she hadn’t been facing down the unknown since she was a girl.
Trevarr stroked the back of her head, barely touching. Conflicted, as was she. “The chakha seldom invades a thinking being. It finds small predators and enhances them to hunt.”
“Bob would have eaten us?” Gary recoiled at the thought.
“Gross,” Bob muttered distantly, still eavesdropping.
Trevarr’s hand rested lightly at her nape, fingers closing reflexively. “Yes. He was chakha. But Bob was changed before the chakha took him. He was weak to it. Do you follow?”
Changed before... She turned to look at him, eyes narrowed. “You mean the drugs? A thing called chakha could take him over because he was stoned?”
“Does it not work that way with your spirits?”
“People see spirits more readily if they’re stoned.” Dammit, she’d turned to face him after all, hair notwithstanding. She stopped the impulse to clap sore hands over her head... hoping for the best. “So if Bob had been sober, that chakha probably would have skipped him.”
“Yes.” But his face said there was more to it than that, with the worry hidden in those largely unreadable eyes, pupils back to pinpricks, sunglasses hanging in his duster’s top toggle-hole. The hint of an unevenly trimmed forelock softened features she’d once thought hard.
She took a step back, looked at the duster — found no signs of the harsh treatment it had endured last night. No crusted blood. His clothes, too, looked clean unto new, barely showing signs of wear. Even where he’d been stabbed —
She went to him without thinking, grasping at his shirt and pulling it up from beneath his belt, the feel of smooth skin now absurdly familiar. After a moment, he allowed it, lifting his hands away while she tugged the shirt hard enough to shift his stance, finally freeing it. Looking at his back; looking high on his abdomen beneath the curve of his ribs.
Nothing but scars.
Fresh, angry scars... but still only scars. And there, what she hadn’t quite been able to see in the hotel window light — the faint tracery of old tattoos, incompletely removed, running along his sides and flank and disappearing beneath the flat belt leather. She touched them, feather light... following them. Feathers, she thought, or scales, or a little of both.
His skin twitched away from her fingers.
She dropped the shirt. “Why did you come out? I know better than to think you might actually share information.” The morning sun beat down on them; Garrie pushed her hoodie sleeves up and waited.
He winced, ever so faintly. “I needed to see that you were all right.”
She frowned, trying to follow his meaning. “You mean with the chakha? Or no, wait — because we kissed?” She snorted, even if her heart did suddenly do that stupid triple-time
thing. “Forget about it. Seriously. Happens all the time.” Except of course it didn’t. She briefly hid her face in her hands. “Okay. I’m lying. Obviously. I mean, obviously.”
She’d left him not quite following her, which was probably for the best. And there was only one way out of this. Turn the tables. She stepped into him, standing so very close. “How about you?”
It seemed to surprise him. “It doesn’t matter. As long as you —”
“I’m all right,” she said, but the conversation struck her as vaguely familiar. Unsettlingly so. “And it does matter. And... and wait a damned minute. What did you say? What are you saying? We’re having this conversation now, why?”
In her head she heard Quinn’s voice, wary and right to be so, Why do you ask?
Trevarr had come to her for a reason, more than just evasive conversation at the site of the previous night’s violence.
He wanted to go into this day knowing.
And that scared the farking hell out of her.
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 25
Dammit, Trevarr!
Young spirits experiment.
— Rhonda Rose
Go boo yourself.
— Lisa McGarrity
Garrie swerved through the lobby to check the hotel restaurant hours and head up to the room to rejoin Trevarr, roust the others, and grab breakfast while they tried to make some sense of the day.
But when she arrived at the room, she found no sign of Trevarr.
No sign of his satchel, either.
Dammit, Trevarr!
She rousted Lucia and Drew without mercy, prowling through the hotel common areas while they performed quick ablutions, and returning to scowl at the still-empty adjoining room. “Dammit!”
“He’s not a man to miss meals,” Lucia noted, snapping her wallet closed and tucking it inside her waist pack. “Don’t ask me where he packs it away.”
Drew came out of the bathroom still dripping. “Look, I’m meeting Beth for breakfast and then we’re heading for the house. You got this, right?” And then scrubbed his face and hair with a hand towel, smoothed down his chin strip with his fingers, and headed out before Garrie could gather herself to say much of anything about it.
The Reckoners Page 24