The Reckoners

by Doranna Durgin

  He’d been right, of course.

  “Meet me there,” she’d told Lucia, a quick phone call even as she stripped away the wet bathing suit, dashing around the room in the altogether as she pulled the key card from the shorts she’d earlier tossed aside and snatching up underwear and bra and a paper-thin T-shirt of mottled purples, a form-skimming bodice-vest laced over top and then, of course, the cargos. So many pockets, so very useful. The crop legs left her new scrapes open to the air, both a blessing and a curse.

  Only then did she realize the cat — no, not-cat, whatever that was supposed to mean — had dragged itself to the doorway to watch.

  “Oh, that’s just sick,” she snapped at him. He blinked in owlish innocence, a look not quite supported by his rumpled nature.

  It inspired her to do what she should have done in the first place. She paused as she reached for the little flip-fold jewelry case of dried containment ingredients and narrowed her eyes at the cat, bringing to bear all her ways of perceiving him.

  Blue energies reverberated outside the cat. Pleasant energies, but not without distinct spikes. Living sunspots. Energy lapped at his feet; his whiskers fizzed faintly like endless Fourth of July sparklers.

  So familiar, the look and feel of that energy.

  “You,” she said faintly, remembering the brief wash of a strange breeze the evening they’d arrived here, and then the warmth against her feet as she’d napped in Trevarr’s bed — and most recently of all, the blue moonlight that turned out to have claws. “You!”

  ::Holy farking crap!:: he told her, beyond smug even through their thin connection.

  “Hey, two of those words were already mine.” Garrie snatched up the herb bag, tucked it inside her small canvas backpack, and looked around for anything else Lucia might have left behind.

  Her gaze settled on the new shoes staged carefully on the dresser; she gave Sklayne a sharp look. “That was you in the store. With the goo.”

  ::With the goo,:: he agreed, and surprised her by adding, ::With the beetles.::

  “Drew didn’t say anything about seeing a cat.”

  ::Not-cat,:: he reminded her, and licked his foot in the most possible fastidious cat-like way, holding it poised in mid-air as though he’d just barely stopped himself from wiping it over the top of his head.

  Garrie snorted. “Right.” She opened the backpack wide. “So. You coming?”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 26

  In a Taxi with a Not-Cat

  Discretion will serve you well.

  — Rhonda Rose

  I can’t really explain. Yet. Or, you know. Ever.

  — Lisa McGarrity

  Sklayne in darkness.

  He’d been bundled into a cloth bag and then into a car with a strange driver. Taxi, uncomfortable and too abrupt with every turn and stop and start it made. He curled tighter, trapped as cat, flanks rippling with leftover pain he did well to hide from the Garrie.

  But hide it he would. He’d already felt too clearly her rising spike of panic when she’d realized Trevarr’s peril. The instant attempt to reach out to him, not deliberate and not even knowing.

  She’d failed, of course. That which she and Trevarr had exchanged wasn’t enough to surmount the distance between them.

  Not yet.

  Then she’d thought the worst and panicked, forgetting to breathe there in her bathing suit with her hair spiky and blue and her brown eyes huge, goose bumps on her wet skin and her modest breasts pulling up tight.

  Much person in a small package, fully alarmed, heart open and vulnerable beyond her own realization.

  And she didn’t really even truly know.

  The Krevata, with their grudge. The Krevata, putting Trevarr’s people into disgrace and exile with their manipulations and accusations. Putting village elders into impossible situations, fight-or-die or fight-and-die.

  Now Trevarr’s people, always in danger simply for having Trevarr among them, struggled to survive. And so Trevarr had been told bring back the Krevata or your people pay the price.

  Always this life, for Trevarr. The threat to his people. The bounties he wasn’t meant to survive. Because unlike Sklayne — everything and anything — Trevarr was not all of one thing, not all of the other. Half-blood. Rekherra. Fine to be the one thing; fine to be the other.

  Not to be the both.

  Sklayne had never understood. He still didn’t. He knew that the both was strong; he knew it was fast. So much so that it scared those at Ghehera, who wanted to think they ruled all. Sklayne knew that the both healed from wounds that should have killed — that it had few weaknesses. He knew it was uniquely suited for hunting the bounties across all boundaries.

  He knew it was lonely.

  But the Garrie knew none of that.

  She knew only this world. She knew only ghosts and such small entities that leaked freely across worlds. So she thought not of Krevata and energy portal and worlds collide.

  Instead she thought of Trevarr, hands tense around the backpack. She thought of her friends, her city, her streets; the ground rumbling beneath the taxi wheels as the driver volunteered a sardonic comment about the world coming to an end.

  Oh, the Garrie had no idea.

  Not yet.

  ~~~~~

  Garrie tossed too much money at the taxi driver and ran for the unmanned Winchester House entry where Lucia waited.

  Locks and security weren’t insurmountable at the worst of times, given a set of picks and ethereal finesse, but in this case they needed neither. While Lucia absorbed Garrie’s quick update and pulled first aid supplies from her tote, applying them to the ugly spots on Garrie’s leg, the bag on Garrie’s shoulder grew suddenly lighter... and the gate swung open from the inside, where Sklayne — quite obviously not the average Abyssinian he appeared to be, his telepathic little voice aside — sauntered into the gift shop ahead of them, looking over his shoulder with classic cat smugness.

  “Garrie!” Beth said, stopping short beside a long glass-topped sales counter, her look of distress and dismay out of place among cheerful house-themed merchandise — DVDs and puzzles and wind chimes and Victorian candies. “We’ve been trying to call, but the phones —” She stopped, did something of a double-take. “Wait... we’ve got the place locked down... how — ?”

  Lucia swept past, appropriating counter for her work and slapping down plastic bags, the containment ingredients, and a big squeeze tube of Vaseline. “You don’t really think this is the first place to batten the hatches the wrong way out?”

  “Wrong way..?” Beth struggled to decode the comment, and took a surprised step back. “Did you... is that a cat?”

  “Maybe,” Garrie said. “Where’s Drew?”

  “Hiding in the bathroom for now. Something went down in the house and they’ve been trying to clear it for an hour, but it’s like yesterday... the last group keeps getting trapped, as if the...” Beth shook her head and made herself say it. “As if someone doesn’t want them to leave.”

  “Well, of course they don’t!” Lucia snapped, smacking a hand down on the storage bags. “How much more obvious can it be? Now quit wasting our time and get over here and help me do something useful!”

  “Lu,” Garrie said gently, and plucked a tissue from the decorative box by the cash register, dropping it beside Lucia.

  Lucia hid her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry,” she said, misery seeping through her fingers with her muffled voice. “They caught me off-guard. They’re very strong right now, and so very angry and frightened.” She reached for the tissue without looking.

  “I —” Beth said, quite at a loss. She finally took a deep breath, nodding; her hair bobbed only slightly, more secure today in a complex, clipped twist behind her head. The building shook in a subway train rumble, rattling gift items. “I’d like to help.”

  “Good.” Lucia dropped her hands and tucked the tissue away in her watch band, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright but all else under control. “Here, coa
t these bags — it’s easiest just to put a glop of Vaseline inside and squish it around. But it’s critical that you don’t miss any spots. And I’ll get the herbs and such mixed up, yes?”

  “Sure,” Beth said. “But I should warn you, there’s no telling when my boss might return, or any of the others. And how come that cat isn’t making me sneeze?”

  ::Not cat,:: Sklayne said in a pleased-with-self voice, piping into Garrie’s head.

  “Yes, yes,” she told him, dumping the empty backpack beside Lucia at the counter and trying not to rush them straight through this small talk. They needed the small talk, especially Beth. “If your boss shows up, we’ll handle it. And Sklayne is... special, as cats go. He belongs with Trevarr.” She glanced at Sklayne, daring him to protest that careful wording.

  Sklayne looked up at her with his tail wrapped around his feet, eyes slitted in feline inscrutability, apparently intent on pretending that the tail didn’t twitch in time to the flickering spasm across his flanks. Trevarr.

  At least he’d been good in the taxi. At least he’d stopped shooting off unexpected sparks.

  Beth, squeezing petroleum jelly into a giant-size storage bag, said, “And Trevarr belongs... where?”

  “Ooh,” Lucia muttered. “Zing.”

  Garrie made a face. “Him... I can’t really explain.”

  Not the way he made her feel. Not the cold burning energy that pulsed within her, something wild and needing to be free in the wake of the pool incident. Not what he’d come to mean to her, this man she hardly knew.

  “What’s to explain?” Lucia said, too glibly, grabbing a storage baggie as it threatened to slide off the counter with the vibrations of the building. “Tall, dark, totally hot, totally unexpected, and totally handy to have around if someone goes berserk on you. Who wouldn’t want that around?”

  “Stop it!” Garrie took a stiff half-step toward Lucia, her hands fisted at her side. “He’s trapped in there with them, and he’s been in agony for hours. He’s not a joke. He’s real.”

  Lucia looked at her with mouth half-open, her poise not so much shattered as simply left behind. “Chicalet...” she said finally. “Is it like that? With him? Not safe?”

  Garrie unclenched her fists, looking down at them. She realized that her breathing was choppy, her jaw clenched; she closed her eyes. “It’s... complicated.”

  “Ohh, I don’t think it’s complicated at all.” Lucia had her balance back now, and worked swiftly with the secret herbs and spices.

  Garrie managed a glare. “Don’t be smug.”

  Lucia glanced at her from the containment pieces — and her eyes were big and Latin-tragic and sad. “Hardly that, chicalet. But first we save him, yes?”

  Beth stared back and forth between them with no little fascination. “About that. Do you know what’s happening?”

  Garrie transferred her ire to Sklayne. “I know Trevarr is in there somewhere. I know the ghosts are riled. I know there’s this whole extra thing with some party-crashing Krevata —”

  Lucia gave her a look. Beth gave her a look. Garrie clamped her mouth shut. After a moment, she started again as if for the first time. “No. In fact, I don’t have a clue.”

  “Do you have a plan?” Lucia inquired sweetly.

  A rumbling, cavernous sucking belch sounded from the courtyard between gift shop and mansion. Everyone pretended not to have heard it. Lucia especially, as she took the small bag of mixed herbs and shook it, perhaps a bit more thoroughly than truly necessary. “I had the impression, when you told me to come here instead of the hotel, that you had a plan.”

  Garrie clenched her hands again, down against her thighs. “I’m going to look around,” she said. “And then we’re going in.”

  Lucia froze in mid-motion. “That’s a plan?”

  “I have goals,” Garrie said, rather desperately. “Free the trapped tourists. Get the ghosts under control. We can do that much on the fly — and we can’t get lost with Drew to guide us. They won’t be expecting that.”

  “Okay,” Lucia said. “I’ll give you that much.” She nodded to Beth. “Now open the bags wide. I need to sprinkle the secret herbs and spices into the lining you just made. Yes, like that.” And back to Garrie, “So then we have the house under control and the city stops falling apart around us and the strange darksiders stop getting through?”

  Garrie wasn’t so certain what darksiders even meant any more, but she didn’t say that part out loud. Instead she said, “And then we find Trevarr and we help him do whatever it is that he’s trying to do. Our little friend here is being coy about the details.”

  Sklayne folded his whiskers back. ::Not mine to tell.::

  “Which is exactly why you’re going in there with us, Mr. Meow Mix.”

  Lucia exchanged a wary look with Beth. “Garrie. You talking to that cat?”

  “Yes!” Garrie exclaimed. “Yes, I’m talking to the cat! No, I don’t know what’s going on, except... I’m talking to a cat. We’re playing by new rules, Lucia. Not Rhonda Rose rules, not reckoner rules. Since when do ghosts do what we’ve seen these past few days? Since when do they cause earthquakes?”

  “Or beetles or goo or eyes of fire in the sky...” Lucia murmured, resignation in the line of her shoulders. She didn’t mention the recent cavernous sucking belch. She hardly had to. “You sure this is our thing to do?”

  Garrie snorted. “Who else? The I see dead people kid is all grown up and making other movies now. John Edwards is off the air. I don’t see anyone else standing in line.”

  ::You,:: Sklayne said, suddenly alarmed and right there in her head, louder than he’d been in a while. Too loud. :: We came for you!:: and he stopped, ears flicking nervously, and abruptly blurted, “Mow!”

  “I’m done asking for answers.” Garrie glared at him. “But I’m beginning to think the question is ‘came from where?’”

  “MOW,” said Sklayne.

  “Yeah, and guess what. I watch TV. I know that trick where the radio isn’t really broken.”

  Sklayne fell silent on all counts. From the ceiling above them came the sound of skittery insect legs.

  Lots of them.

  “Oh, hurry,” Beth implored them both. “If we can stop any of this —”

  “Not you,” Garrie said, hassled beyond diplomacy. “Sitting duck, you. Now give me a moment.” She sat down on the spot, crossing her legs. Her hands seemed to expect it when Sklayne walked into her lap and curled up there as though he owned it; they rested lightly on his back, where she could feel his upset much more clearly than she could see it.

  “What is she — ?” Beth asked, impatient stage whisper volume.

  “She’s hurrying,” Lucia said. “Now hold that bag open.”

  ~~~~~

  Garrie took her awareness high and safe, looking down on the house in Garrie view and moving slowly closer.

  She remembered the last time well enough. The foul swamp breezes, the weird slicing citrus... and the noise, the grinding and wailing and dissonant cries. She eyed it all from a safe distance, astonished at how quickly the disturbance had intensified. Vibrant, clashing hues shot through the muddy colors, and the sounds... the sounds...

  “What’s going on here?”

  The woman’s intruding voice, full of irritation and authority, wasn’t exactly the sound she’d expected. But Garrie wasn’t quite ready to let go of her search — not with the wild energy fluttering high against the inside of her ribs, a thing of fear and portent, drawn to life by matching energies in the house.

  Trevarr? She reached out to it — and then stopped short, wary, instinct telling her no.

  Or at least... not quite yet.

  Slowly, she brought herself back to the physical, her seat bones already aching on a floor too hard, Sklayne warm in her lap and giving off tiny tingles of energy.

  “Beth,” said the woman’s voice, “I need an explanation.” Hassled and unhappy and out of patience.

  “I —” Beth said, faltering. But she to
ok an audible breath, finding her determination. “They’re here to help. You know there’s something going on in the house, and it’s getting worse.”

  “Not just the house,” Lucia said, although her voice had an absent tone that meant she was concentrating on the containment bags. “The city.”

  The voice said, “All very good reasons why you’ll have to leave.”

  Garrie climbed to her feet to face two red-jacketed people in the entry of the gift shop. “All very good reasons why we can’t leave. Just think of us as pest control.”

  As Garrie brushed off her butt, the two exchanged glances. One was a tall woman, her Palinesque glasses stern instead of trendy over hard features and her blunt-cut bangs a sad mistake for her face shape; she kept a tight grip on a handheld radio, carrying it like a scepter. The other was a shorter, plumper woman, older and no-nonsense. They each had sensible shoes, slacks with pleats, and blouses without personality.

  The shorter of them looked on in astonishment. “Beth Ann Carlington, did you bring a cat into this building?”

  “He came on his own,” Garrie said.

  “We’re closed,” the tall woman said, most decisively. “If you don’t leave, we’ll have to call —”

  “Oh, go ahead.” Garrie didn’t give it a second thought. “I think they’re plenty busy already.” Not to mention how fast they’d get lost in the mansion if they came looking. “You about done, Lu?”

  “Just about,” Lucia said, still distant with concentration.

  “Good.” Garrie went to the juncture of the gift shop with the café and raised her voice to a polite bellow. “Drew! Gearing up!” And then to the women, she said, “I’m afraid we’re helping whether you want it or not. Someone I care about is in that house, and he’s in trouble. “

  “Understatement,” Lucia muttered, efficiently rolling the containment bags together. “Seriously. These two in a room together? They’re all combustible.” Garrie gave her an incredulous look, but Lucia shrugged it off. “Oh, por fah-VOR, chicalet. I can only pretend to be oblivious for just so long.”