“Dammit,” she muttered, and kicked the door to Trevarr’s room hard enough to make her toes ache within her sneakers. “This is not good.”
“Neither is this.” Lucia held her tablet up for Garrie’s viewing pleasure, trickling the volume up on a clip from a San Francisco morning news show with chummy talking heads looking serious together. The screen flashed a blurry, unrecognizable photo, swirls of darkness and light overlaid with what looked like sunspots.
“... best shot of last night’s aurora effect available,” said the woman news-head’s voice over. She went on to express amazement at how the aurora had muddled every photo, and to promise that they would report the cause the moment anyone figured it out.
“In related news,” the male news-head said, looking as though he’d really rather not be reading this particular report, “San Jose residents also called emergency services for a variety of inexplicable events yesterday.” He went on to mention the goo, several Bigfoot sightings, a pterodactyl, a rash of UFO calls, and numerous citizens gone amuck. After all that, the constant trembling earthquakes — the origin of which couldn’t be pinpointed — deserved only passing mention.
“Dammit!” Garrie tugged the hair behind her ear and went to the window, pressing her nose against it. “This is not good.” Especially after that early morning conversation, the wary alarm it had raised in her getting stronger by the moment. “Where is he?”
“Wherever it is he wants to be,” Lucia said. “Chic, I hate to say this, but things are getting tense out there.”
She didn’t mean the living. Garrie well knew it, looking down on the street and the frenetic ethereal activity weaving through an unsuspecting populace. “They’re not even cohesive,” she said. “So many of them look old, and barely holding together — just like at the house. Like someone kicked an anthill of normally quiet spirits and they all came swarming out.”
Lucia shuddered. “It’s bad enough to feel them. I could have done without that image.”
“Barely holding together,” Garrie said again, murmured words against the window. Such a sharp pang of memory those words brought. “I need to move on,” Rhonda Rose had said. “Before it’s too late. Before I’m nothing but a worn-out smear, vulnerable to dissolution from the merest breeze.”
“That’ll never happen,” scorned a younger Garrie, disbelieving her mentor would ever truly leave. Only five years ago, seemed like a lifetime. Leaving Garrie with her highly developed sense of obligation, of persistence. Her need to work on the reckoning.
A need grown desperate, and leading her here.
As the skills are yours...
Thanks a lot, Rhonda Rose.
Garrie wrenched herself back to the hotel room to find Lucia watching her. “You gonna be okay, chic? Because I think I need to run errands before it gets any crazier out there.”
Garrie didn’t try to hide her expression — the one that said but you just went shopping yesterday and you came back with expensive things and goo!
Lucia made a quiet tsking noise. “You used up the rest of the first aid things this morning. And we need containment supplies if we’re going back to that house, and decent road food.”
Garrie made a face, pulling herself away from the window. “Be careful, Lu. I’m just not liking this.”
“Also,” Lucia said, leaning over at the mirror to wet a fingertip and smooth down one perfectly formed brow, “I’m getting some Nair. And when Drew is asleep, that fuzzy malformed thing beneath his lip is going to go away.”
Garrie felt a spear of cheerfulness. “Yes!”
“Also, also,” Lucia said, turning from the mirror to give Garrie the sharpest of looks, “Whatever your Trevarr is doing, we can’t stop him. So unless you want to head to the house early and manage those ghosts from inside another tourist group...” She trailed off with a delicate shudder.
“Point taken,” Garrie said, holding her hands out in a warding gesture. “Go. Shop. I’m going to check the rooms, and then hit the pool for a bazillion laps or so.”
Lucia stood. “I’d tell you not to wear yourself out, but I know it’s pointless. Eat something, at least. Not one of those marshmallow goo bars you call granola.”
Garrie made another face. Busted. Lucia gave her a fingertip wave, somehow inserted her hotel key into the snug curve of the pants pocket over her rump, and slipped out of the room much more quietly than Drew had.
Garrie stood alone for a long moment, feeling the heat of the San Jose summer day beating against the window, feeling adrift — her team separated, Trevarr in the wind and up to who knows what but it’s damned well not good. And what was she going to do, go for a swim and wait for her turn to do something? She moved to glare the doorway of his emptied room — and on sudden impulse, closed her eyes and inhaled, breathing in both the ethereal and the tangible.
She’d been grounded here. She’d slept without the hallucinatory living dreams; she’d slept stupidly happy about the weight of his arm around her shoulders.
The entire room smelled faintly of him, mixed in with the fresh woody spice she’d found on her nightshirt. The window still stood open, leaving the room a little too warm.
He really must have hated that plane.
The ground rumbled; her world tilted a little more than it might have. She found her hands clenched into fists, and realized with some surprise that she was this close to charging out to look for Trevarr. The house, the streets... wherever.
The previous night had just plain changed things. More than an understanding of who he was and what he kept hidden, how deeply he felt or even the stunning honesty in the way he’d touched her. Because as if all that wasn’t enough, how clear had it become that her breezes didn’t find or affect anything but those misbehaving Winchester House ghosts?
Pretty much what he’d said all along, wasn’t it?
She had the impulse to kick the door again, but that hadn’t turned out so well for her toes the first time. She settled for another resounding curse. “Dammit, Trevarr!”
Then she turned away from the room — but not without running her hand along the arm of the couch and giving it a final pat, as if it were some living representative of the feelings she’d contemplated. Comfort and unease and yearning.
But swimming took concentration. It meant staying in her lane even if she was the only one in the little pool, learning the length of the pool, and how deeply she could take the turn. With the world distorted by goggles, her racing thoughts subsumed, and her ears half covered by a swim cap, the rest of the world became muffled into splash and breathe and the occasional choke of misplaced water.
Until she submerged her face to stroke onward and found herself nose to nose with Bob.
Garrie churned straight up out of the water, flailing and choking. “Bob — !” But of course there were lounging sunbathers, and of course they gave her the crazy chick hairy eyeball with which she was so familiar.
“Bug!” she cried, knowing even if they’d heard her clearly the first time, they’d grab at this more sensible explanation. “Great big — !” she snatched at empty water, flinging it off to the side, and then side-stroked to the edge of the pool to collect herself.
“Boy,” Bob said. “You should have seen your face!”
“Thought that was funny, did you?” Garrie smiled most sweetly at him.
“Oh, yeah! This is great!” Oblivious to her ire, he sank back into the water, his clothes and hair unaffected. “This is... I can just stay down here forever! The light reflections, the waves, everything bobbing...”
“No pesky need to breathe,” Garrie muttered, swiping water from her face. She took her goggles off and dunked them, just to be doing something. “You’re not stoned, Bob, you just think you are.”
His head emerged, perfectly dry. “Be nice. I just happen to know something you probably want to hear.”
“About what?” She forced her voice to remain pleasant, hanging on to the edge of the pool with one hand, her goggles in the o
ther. She didn’t say, Want to know what? Is it Lucia? Is it Drew? Tell me! and she didn’t shove him around with the breezes so close to hand.
“About the yowling.”
“Any particular yowling?” Garrie asked, through gritted teeth.
“Did you see that?” Bob asked, staring at the pool.
Garrie quickly checked for breezes, felt nothing but Bob, and returned her glare to him. “No. You want to give me a clue about the yowling? Because there’s a lot going on in this city right now —”
“Yeah, but this was — are you sure you don’t see — ?” He slipped away, down into the water.
“Bob,” Garrie said, grasping for thin patience, “your ghostie games are not helping.” The water swirled in mild disturbance, a series of warm bubbles rising against her leg.
Do bubbles even come in warm?
Another spray of bubbles brushed against her side and popped to the surface, releasing a fetid, tarry scent. Garrie growled, “Ghost Bob, I will send you to your room.” Down at the other end of the pool, a huge roiling glop of air broke at the surface; the stench of it inspired cries of sunbather dismay. An oily substance spread out across the water.
Bob popped to the surface. “Out!” he cried. “Now, now, now!”
Not Bob after all. But if not Bob —
The water at Garrie’s feet warmed to stingingly hot in an instant, bubbles suddenly everywhere, the stench enough to gag her as she propelled herself up, one leg barely over the edge when the bubbles broke her buoyancy. Something grasped at her dangling ankle, winding around and around and around and yanking hard. She lurched; an elbow gave way and smacked against the concrete, numbing her whole arm.
Bob appeared directly in front of her, leaning over the pool. “Come on, get OUT!”
She thrashed in the water, snarling in a battle that no one else seemed to notice because they were all busy gagging and tripping over chairs and stumbling away, eyes streaming against the sharp stench.
The twining appendages wrapped extruded sudden barbs that snagged her ankle — Garrie swore back at them, reaching for her breezes.
Except just like the chakha, she hadn’t felt this thing’s presence. And that meant it wouldn’t feel her breezes. Not so it mattered.
Not before it dragged her down.
She reached deeper, past her fear and fury and into all the things she was running away from at this pool. Her messed up team, her floundering life, her maddening inability to get a handle on events here, the way Trevarr’s unfamiliar energies lingered to poke at her.
The way he’d dammit left her there at the hotel —
Her breezes churned into a gusting gale, snapping through the pool in a great burst of bubbles and stench, a roar so subsonic that her body vibrated and what her remaining vision blurred away.
The appendages whipped back. Garrie popped free to sprawl on the poolside concrete — fresh road rash stinging, her ankle and elbow throbbing madly, and the murky pool boiling wildly behind her. She wiped at tearing eyes, trying to orient. Everyone else gone, all her limbs still attached, the pool settling...
Things getting entirely out of control in this city.
Bob sat where he’d been. “Niiice,” he said. “Too bad you didn’t figure that one out when it might have done me some good.”
Garrie lifted her lip in a snarl.
“And oh — right. I’ve been trying to tell you. That yowling came from your hotel room.”
~~~~~
Sklayne as cat, happy enough.
Sklayne, sipping up energy at the outlet and purring happily to himself, sparks rolling off his body from nape to tail tip in rhythm with his breath, one small piece of his awareness connected to Trevarr at the Winchester House.
Tracking the Krevata.
Sklayne in agony!
Sklayne twisting and rolling on the floor, his insides trying to be outsides, small powerless explosions dotting the air around him. Claws digging into carpet, body slamming into furniture. The bedside lamp fell over; a chair tipped into the work desk. The pain squeezed endless yowls from his cat body and when he tried to release that form to be everything and anything, it clamped around him like a vice.
::Treyyyy!:: Sklayne yowled inwardly as well as outwardly, reaching to complete the bond connection and finding only a blinding sheet of red-washed insanity.
::Treyyyy!! Atreyvo!:: Reaching out any way he could, now, hunting any sign that Trevarr could hear him, feel him. Splayed and panting, half beneath the bed, drowning in panic and confusion and loss. Clinging that way for far too long. Alone.
Atreyvo!
He barely saw the wet feet run into his field of view, strong slender ankles beaded with water stopping short before him.
“Ah,” said the Garrie’s voice, after a long and meaningful pause. “You. Here. I knew it. I just knew it.”
~~~~~
Garrie crouched before the cat — then thought twice, and shut the connecting door before returning to crouch again beside the bed.
She didn’t know where the sandy red creature had been all this time and she didn’t know how Trevarr had gotten it here. She certainly had no idea what had happened to it now, leaving it rumpled and wild-eyed, blood trickling from one ear and its small pink nostrils. It clung to the carpet as though the floor might try to dump it off the world altogether.
“Hey,” she said softly, extending one cautious finger to touch its forehead.
“Mow.” It was a weak reply, uncertain of itself. The cat pushed ever so slightly against her finger in acceptance of her greeting.
“What are you doing here?” she asked it, gently stroking a short path up its forehead. “Why did he even bring you?”
The cat looked directly at her, panting slightly. It flicked its ears back, forward... focusing in on her in a way that gave her just an instant’s warning. Just barely.
And then a small, thin voice in her head said ::I brought myself.::
“Holy farking crap!” Garrie gasped, and fell back on her ass.
The cat flicked an ear again, pulling its whiskers into a brief expression of priss — but whatever caused its miserable state still clung to it, making its every move an obvious effort. ::One of our words.::
“Farking,” Garrie said, if somewhat faintly. “Yes. I like it.”
OhmyGod I’m talking to a cat and ohmyGod it’s talking back oh crap oh crap ohcrap. She stared at it a long moment; it stared back, intelligence obvious in those deep green eyes.
“What are you?” she finally managed, if only in a whisper.
::Sklayne,:: said the creature, straight to her head. Its voice — or thoughts, or whatever — struggling to stay steady. ::I come with Trevarr.::
“Are you... his?”
Ears slanted back flat. ::I am mine.::
For all its dignified offense, its response felt out of true. “Really,” Garrie said, before she’d quite thought it through.
The cat looked back at her, its expression briefly sour. ::Adjusted quickly, holy farking crap.::
She crossed her legs, slightly more dignified than sprawled-on-ass. “Maybe I’m in shock.” She thought about it. “Or maybe this just isn’t that different from talking to ghosts, and I’ve been doing that all my life.”
The cat — Sklayne — gave her a slit-eyed look. As if it deserved more.
“Sorry,” she told it, not terribly repentant. But then it closed its eyes in obvious pain; its claws flexed into the carpet and its tail lashed briefly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked it, leaning forward — reaching out involuntarily, then pulling back at the presumption. “Can I help? Where’s Trevarr — can he help?” She tugged the hair behind her ear, spiky-damp at the ends from the pool, the swim cap left behind somewhere along the way.
::Trevarr... :: it said. The sorrow in that mind-voice got her instant attention, as did the soft yowl.
“What?” She leaned forward, elbows on knees. “What?” Then she covered her face with her hands. “Aiee, I’m maki
ng demands of a cat. A talking cat.”
::Not cat,:: the creature said, offended.
“No kidding.” She gave it her driest look, decided the effort was wasted, and said, “Fine. Whatever. Where’s Trevarr, what’s going on, and are you a boy not-cat or a girl not-cat?”
::Male am I!:: Pink lips drew back for the faintest of hisses. But only until the not-cat named Sklayne added, ::Mostly.::
His tail twitched; a shudder rippled down his back. ::Hard, to do this. Only with Trevarr, the talking. But he... you... :: He seemed to run out of words. Or voice, or possibly both.
“There’s a connection,” Garrie said for him, her voice softening to hesitation. “Since the séance room.”
::Since before,:: Sklayne corrected, making no attempt to elucidate as the sound of him in her mind grew...
Not weaker, but less pure.
“Then tell me the important things,” Garrie told him. “What’s wrong? How can I help? Where’s Trevarr?”
::Help him,:: Sklayne said, distantly enough so Garrie thought she would lose whatever rare thing held them together. She touched his forehead again, stroking gently, and he lifted his drooping head. ::This pain is of Trevarr. Help him.::
“He’s doing this to you?” she blurted, horrified. He stiffened under her touch, a rejection of that thought — and then she truly understood, even more horrified, and it stole her voice and her breath away, leaving her with only a strained whisper.
“Someone’s doing this to him.”
~~~~~
Krevata.
It was the only thing Garrie had gotten from the cat. Not-cat. Whatever. The Krevata (whatever they were) had Trevarr; the Krevata (whatever they were) were hurting Trevarr in some profound fashion that went beyond Garrie’s understanding or her imagination.
They had him at the Winchester House.
The Krevata were beings, not ghosts. Or not quite. Or both.
Whatever. They were the reason Trevarr was here.
And if they weren’t stopped, the destruction wouldn’t limit itself to San Jose.
“But what about the real ghosts?” she’d demanded of Sklayne.
::Yours,:: the little creature had told her, his voice only a thin thread. He’d then demanded to come, assuming she’d immediately charge off to Winchester House.
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