She was about to understand, all right.
Garrie grabbed Trevarr and drew him into her shielded area, wincing at the flare of light in his eyes as her energies swept over him. The ghostly temper built to a fever pitch and she winced at that, too, and knew it to be too late for Quinn. “Quinn!” she shouted, pointlessly at that. “Duck!” And then couldn’t stop herself from doing it for him, covering her head with her arms and turning away.
FURY! RETRIBUTION!
Robin shrieked, an undignified sound of surprise and disgust, and followed it up with a wail. Quinn took the assault in stoic silence — hopefully he’d at least let go of Robin’s resistant hand to duck and cover.
The thick stench of effluvia rolled down the canyon trail. Even within her shields, Garrie swallowed a gag reflex, covering her mouth with her hand.
FURY! FURY! RETRIBUTION!
Fark, they were going to do it again?
“Not on my watch,” Garrie muttered. She yanked breezes in to the shields and threw them out again as winds — an instant shockwave of breezes that blew the entire area temporarily clear of spirits, cutting the tantrum short.
Damn, it felt good to handle that power.
Damn, it felt good!
She tipped her head back to wallow in the sensation, suddenly impatient and imperious, suddenly unwilling to tolerate the ongoing annoyance of Sedona’s pestering ghosts. She breathed in power as easily as she breathed air, the cold burn intensifying along her spine and coiling into exhilarating knots, a twining dragon’s tail invading low in her belly, tightening along her chest —
“Atreya.” A low voice in her ear, hoarse and affected; an arm wrapping around her waist, drawing her in tight.
All part of the moment. All part of the temptation. She drew him, in, too, arching into him, hands reaching back —
He put his teeth on her neck.
Sharp teeth. Some of them pointy.
Garrie froze.
Fark!
“Okay,” she said, her own teeth gritted. “Okay, I’ve got it.”
For now.
“You can let go,” she added, when he hadn’t.
He released her as if surprised to find he’d still been holding on, hands stroking lightly down her sides. He said, “Atreya—”
She said, “I know. I know. You had to stop me. Let’s... Let’s just go see how bad it is.”
She didn’t mention what she’d almost done. How it went against everything she was and everything Rhonda Rose had ever taught her. A childhood of knowing how different she was... of holding that identity tightly to herself, until she met the one being who could mentor her. Teenage years of sacrifice and broken social life and learning that along with her gift came a responsibility that was bigger than anything she’d ever expected. She wouldn’t grow up to be a princess, a firefighter, or an athletic trainer. She was a reckoner, and who knew where that fell in the Myers-Briggs personality continuum.
And she knew that one day she’d woken up and realized that the drive to do this work didn’t come from Rhonda Rose and never had. That it had been there all along — and if it hadn’t, she would have turned into a monster so young, so strong, that instead of mentoring her, Rhonda Rose would have taken steps to remove the threat of her.
Soon after that, Rhonda Rose had gone.
All that sacrifice and dedication, and Garrie had almost just thrown it away for an ethereal head rush.
Because hurting spirits wasn’t what she did.
Stopping them, yes. And protecting them, and resolving their issues, and keeping the hardcopy world safe while she was at it.
She didn’t say any of it. She didn’t need to. She saw that much on Trevarr’s face, tension lingering there.
He knew.
He knew it wasn’t over yet, either.
And so did she.
~~~~~
Sklayne made a strangled, uncatlike noise and darted into the underbrush just as Lucia got a whiff of the very corporeal breeze.
Ghost poop.
Something like ground zero skunk mixed with whatever lived at the back of her boy cousins’ closet and a little bit of the Rio Grande after a sewage spill. Times ten.
Poor Quinn!
Or maybe not so much.
Whatever poor Quinn had told Robin about their team, she hadn’t listened — and he hadn’t listened to her, either. He’d allowed it all to happen, one foot in front of the other until enabling Robin had meant interfering with the team to the point that she’d fired Garrie.
If poor Quinn had been clear with his friend Robin from the start, then Lucia wouldn’t have been sitting in a morass of unhappy spirits, all lingering darkness and cruelty and anger, where Robin had given her such a dismissive and aie, yes! pitying look.
And then Lucia wouldn’t have left them there to their own devices.
But they loved Quinn. So they’d let him work through this. For now.
Lucia sighed, pushed herself off the ground, and brushed herself off. She smiled pleasantly at the hikers approaching from the easy end of the trail, but when they would have turned toward the arch she said, “Oh, I wouldn’t. Not today. Such a mess.”
“A mess?” said the woman half of the pair, not looking much deterred.
“Oh, terrible,” Lucia said. “Not that they let me get close. They’re trying to clean it up. Something about environmental conditions being just right... a giant desert slime mold. Who knew!”
The man half of the pair said, with rightful suspicion, “Giant desert slime mold?”
“And the smell!” Lucia fanned herself. “Can’t you just smell it from here?”
Bless the breeze that picked up, bring along a good whiff.
“My God,” said the woman. “That’s terrible.” She looked at her partner. “Well, it was a pretty walk, but it’s awfully hot. We’ll come back again another day.”
“If the car can take it,” the man muttered, looking over his shoulder at the barely visible Vultee Arch as he turned around.
Lucia waited until they were out of sight and headed back up the bridge trail. She might not be Deanna Troi and she might not be all that Robin was looking for, but she knew enough to know that a whole new ball game came with that stench.
They didn’t notice her approach, but that wasn’t surprising. Not with the —
Wow.
It was everywhere. Effluvia, dripping off the entire bottom length of the sandstone bridge. Draped over rocks in contiguous sheets. Glopping off Quinn’s shoulders. Totally in Robin’s hair.
Lucia felt suddenly better.
“Ghost poop?” Robin was saying. She wiped the gloppy substance from her cheek and flung it to a rock beside her.
Garrie and Trevarr, Lucia was glad to see, were untouched. She gave them a tired smile. “¿Qué huele?” she asked. “What’s up?”
Garrie narrowed her eyes. “That is terrible.”
“Only if you know the literal Spanish,” Lucia averred, pleased with herself again.
Trevarr looked to Garrie, and she muttered, “It’s an idiom. Asks what’s going on, but literally means what smells.”
“Ghost poop?” Robin repeated, still lost in the moment and her voice somehow conveying disbelief and horror and overwhelming disgust all at once.
Quinn, in contrast, sounded resigned. “It’s what they excrete when they’re really, really mad.” He sighed, offering Garrie a look that would have been dry had it not already been so very goopy. “We told you they act up around Garrie sometimes.”
“It’s convenient, really,” Garrie said, and rocked up on her toes and back again, looking somewhat more mischievous than she probably meant to. The silvery blue streaks in her hair... no, those didn’t help. “It brings them out into the open for us.”
“Convenient,” Robin said through her teeth. “I hope it’ll be just as convenient if I throw up now.”
“Be my guest,” Garrie said, and her voice got a little harder. A little more you don’t tug on Superman’s cape. “
There’s not much I can do about things at this point, and you made it clear you don’t even really want me here, so I guess we’ll move on. See you back at the inn, maybe?”
Ooh. Ooh, yes. She would do it, Garrie would. Her tone said as much, holding all the offenses that Robin had inflected so far, and...
Something else.
Something haunting her eyes. The same reason, maybe, that Lucia thought protective when she glanced at Trevarr, even though when she looked closer, she saw only what he was — a man out of place in this ruggedly breathtaking Arizona landscape, out of place in this world.
“Garrie,” Quinn said, and though he started off as though to argue, his gaze slid to Robin and his expression turned to understanding.
Garrie wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
And really, at this point, there wasn’t anything she could do.
Robin sat down on the nearest rock — the movement made a squishing noise — and burst into tears. Sharp, smart, all-together Robin. Big fat noisy tears.
Trevarr tipped his head, his attention going elsewhere for a moment. “Close your eyes,” he advised Quinn and Robin, his words particularly full of accent and mystery. Garrie sent him a sharp look, one that seemed to understand what Lucia didn’t.
“I don’t even have a tissue!” Robin said, a non sequitur wail as she wiped her face in futility.
“It’s not like anyone can tell,” Lucia said smartly. But she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Aie, caray! It just came out!” She dug into her designer waist bag for the tissue she’d so recently used, offering it tentatively from her safe distance. “This is damp, but tears only, I swear—” She stopped herself, not wanting to talk about the tears, and Garrie plucked the tissue from her hand and passed it over to Robin, risking the edges of the ghost poop.
Robin took it most gingerly, and then didn’t even know where to start.
“Close your eyes,” Garrie said, repeating Trevarr’s advice. “Sklayne says he’ll give clean-up a try.”
Robin said, most plaintively, “What does that even mean.”
“Or don’t,” Garrie suggested. “But don’t blame me for what you see.” She glanced at Lucia and after a moment, Lucia, too, closed her eyes.
Sort of.
Because then she opened them again, allowing a mere glimmer of light through thick lashes.
Sklayne appeared at the top of the canyon wall and bounded down the rocks as if his feet didn’t quite touch the ground. When he reached the edges of the gloppy, quivering goo, he sprang high. Lucia gave herself away, gasping in anticipation of that landing — of cat into deep ghost poop.
Except in mid-air, Sklayne twisted, flashed brighter than bright, poofed out into nothingness and recoalesced into a...
Lucia gasped again. She clapped not one but both hands over her mouth.
Bright. Bluish. Floating. Blanket?
The blanket thinned. It spread. It settled over Quinn; it settled over Robin, who startled and squeaked a juicy half-sob. It encompassed the rocks and the dry creek bed and the hillside. It pulsed and shivered and a faint steam rose above it, and when it rose again, the motion looked like a satisfied stretch.
Then it abruptly snapped closed, tumbling away in a ball of condensed motion that suddenly sprang clawed feet from all sides. It rolled off into the brush, picking up speed.
“Now,” Garrie said to Lucia, sounding satisfied, “You know how we cleaned up after that blood and gore business with San Jose Ghost Bob.”
Right. San Jose Ghost Bob. The drifter who’d been possessed by a Keharian chakha and tried to kill Garrie, while quite accidentally very nearly killing Trevarr. Funny how Lucia had never thought to ask what had happened to that body, or to all the blood.
Now maybe she didn’t have to. Not with the hillside shining bright and clean before her, Robin’s face fresh if pale, Quinn standing clear and clean beside her with no signs of exertion from the morning hike, never mind ghost poop.
Right. Not-cat.
Definitely not-cat.
~~~~~
Garrie didn’t give them much time to think about the whole Sklayne clean-up miracle. “Alrighty then,” she told Quinn. “See you back at the hotel.”
“No!” Robin said, jumping to her feet — and stumbling back a step when all eyes turned to her. “I mean — don’t go!”
Garrie gave her a steady look. Arms crossed. Knowing what she was — a small wiry person, less than imposing. No doubt her hair was sticking out in all ways, the blue-silver streaks an oddment in the sun. No doubt Robin with her well-turned outfit and her lush, padded body and her sleek hair hadn’t seen anything in Garrie worth noting at all.
But Garrie knew what she was.
No, said the sardonic voice in her head, nimbly evading her attempts to squash it, you know what you WERE.
Close enough.
“I tried to tell you,” Quinn said, resignation in his voice. “What we are. What she can do. Even without help.”
Robin kept her gaze on Garrie. “You aren’t exactly objective, Quinn. Besides, this is Sedona. Hyperbole is the name of the game. I didn’t realize you weren’t doing it.”
“She still doesn’t get it, you know,” Garrie told Quinn. She shifted in the direction of departure. “She thinks the ghosts left because they were done. She thinks okay, they act up around me, but what’s that really mean? And the clean-up... that wasn’t me at all, which is true. But mainly, she doesn’t want you to leave with me. It’s about controlling the situation, and I’m not controllable. So far, you are.”
And Quinn just looked at Robin, and something that had been alive in his expression all morning quietly faded away.
“Quinn—” But Robin didn’t deny it. Props for that, too.
“Never mind,” he said, struggling a little with the moment. “We’ve had a misunderstanding. It’s my fault.” He took a breath. “I’m here to help, Robin — we all are. But we work as a team, and we work our way. Or we don’t do it.”
Robin shot Garrie a resentful look. “I can’t do this alone.”
Sklayne’s mind voice drifted over the canyon, faint and replete. ::Sad for you.::
Garrie didn’t bother to pass the sentiment along, much as she shared it. “Your choice.”
Robin crossed her arms, purely a defensive gesture. “I can’t be who I’m not. You’re probably not going to like me no matter what.”
“We don’t have to like you and you don’t have to like us,” Garrie said. “It’s about respect. Figure it out, or we’re gone again.”
Quinn released his breath in a gust. “Second chance,” he told Robin. “Keep it in mind. Because even if I stay, I can’t do this alone either.”
Something in her expression must have reassured him, or at least convinced him. Garrie couldn’t see it, but Quinn straightened his shoulders and indicated the rocks around them. “I don’t know if there’s anything left after that bio-hazard clean-up,” he said. “But let’s take another look.”
“Sklayne took only the ghost...” Trevarr hesitated. “Poop.”
No doubt not words he’d ever anticipated saying.
But he headed for the base of the arch, oblivious to the sizzle of the afternoon’s high altitude sun even as everyone else started easing toward shade. As much as he avoided strong light, he cared not about the heat.
After only a few moments on his steamy, power-fogged world, Garrie understood why. Just as she knew his tension had nothing to do with a search around the base of this arch, and everything to do with the Keharian-flavored power eddies she’d felt earlier.
The ones he would explain, as soon as they were alone.
She turned her attention to the ghostie situation. “Okay, he’s doing his thing. I need to do mine. There’s someone I want to talk to.”
“The boss ghost,” Lucia said, nowhere near a guess. She’d felt him in her own way, and just as clearly as Garrie had. “He’s angry, chicalet. Betrayed. He doesn’t want revenge so much as justice... and, I think
, comfort?”
“I think so, too.” Garrie tapped her fingers against her hip pack, pondering whether to lure the ghost or simply tug him back in. “I blew him out of here pretty hard, though.”
“So, give him something,” Lucia said promptly.
“You — what?” Robin asked, incredulously. “What do you give a ghost?”
Garrie’s fingers stilled. “This, Robin, is the part where we don’t stop to explain what you don’t believe we’re doing anyway.”
Quinn shifted uncomfortably as though he might intervene, but took a deep breath and tore his regretful gaze away from Robin. “Ready when you are.”
Garrie ran a quick local sweep. “He’s not close. I’m gonna have to work at it. C’mon, then, Bob... let’s talk, huh? We think you have a story to tell.”
Robin crossed her arms all over again. “What I don’t get is how you think you’re going to prevent another whole ghost poop thing from happening. When he was here before, you couldn’t.”
Lucia gave her an odd look, a frown creasing her brow, mouth opening... words not finding their way out.
“Never mind, Lu,” Garrie said gently, knowing exactly what lay behind that frown. Not couldn’t. Didn’t. Because Robin had driven her away. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
Lucia’s mouth closed. Her eyes sparked with protective resentment, but she let it slide away. “No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
Garrie closed her eyes, went looking. “Here, little ghostie...” She took her perspective up, took it wide. Looked down to discover that she and her crew stood in the center of a sparkling spiritual clearing. Farking yowza. When Sklayne cleaned, he cleaned.
And there was Sklayne himself, an uber-bright ball of presence sitting in the middle of the arch. Digesting.
Down the trail, there were several hikers on the way; another pair headed down through the pass. And there, to the west, huddled in a tiny bubbling wellspring of butterfly color and light...
Yeah. Something that didn’t quite belong.
She sent the new Ghost Bob a gift. A soft breeze, pleasant and comforting. Soothing. A ghostie version of herbal tea and chocolate muffins.
Because, really. Chocolate muffins. Who could resist?
“C’mon,” she murmured. “There’s more where this came from. We got off to a bad start, but I do want to help you.”
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