For the police hadn’t been here yet, overwhelmed as they were by the spate of vandalism and misbehavior in the town — the lerkhet’s turbulent influence, rolling on through Sedona. They didn’t yet know that the store break-in was more than just run of the mill theft, and they hadn’t yet been inside the apartment. They didn’t know that Robin was missing; they didn’t know that her friend and partner was dead.
Once they did, they’d certainly turn their attention to any unusual scenes in the area. Such as a man consoling an extensively emotional woman a block away.
“We have to leave,” Lucia had repeated in a dazed whisper, and had then come back to herself quite sharply. “Huntington knows where Garrie is.” And they’d jumped in the car, fighting tourist traffic to return to the inn.
And still, Huntington’s Sin Nombres had had a head start. So once they’d arrived, and after a sloppy parking job that had taken not two but three spots, Lucia did indeed run for their little split cabin.
“Hey!” Caryn called, jogging in to intercept them and all fresh and folksie in denim shorts and a neat polo shirt with the inn’s logo. “Is everything okay?”
It might have been the evasive look in her eyes, or her guilt and concern sifting through the atmosphere like falling leaves and brushing against Lucia on the way. Lucia couldn’t quite stop the words that popped out of her mouth. “You! Chueca!” Snake in the grass.
“I — what?” Caryn pulled up short, but her indignation was a beat late.
Quinn didn’t slow for explanations. And Caryn simply joined them as they slowed to a jog, coming around the closest cabin to stop short at the sight of their own; Lucia couldn’t help her horrified gasp.
The door hung violently askew; the big picture window was veined with cracks and ready to shatter. No sound came from within.
Caryn looked more stunned than either of them. “What the hell — ?”
But Lucia saw the uncertainty in her eyes. She shot a look at Quinn — watch her — and ran to the cabin, all too aware of the ethereal emotions: the sense of violence, the shock of death. The distress of the Bobbie ghost already in residence nearby.
She’d thought it was enough to prepare her, but —
She made a choking sound and whirled away from the room.
Caryn hesitated; Quinn came up behind her and made a sound of deep dismay.
Lucia didn’t have to look again. She’d always have that memory, that image of the bed upturned and canted across the room, the rest of the furniture tumbled around and their belongings scattered.
And the blood.
Aiee, Dios, the blood.
Caryn made a retching noise and jerked away from Quinn.
He went after her. “What do you know about this?”
“I — no!” But her gaze held guilt in a pasty white face.
Unrelenting, that was Quinn. Information Man. “You tangled with us from the moment we landed here. You have no boundaries, no ethereal etiquette. You want. What the hell did you do?”
“Excuse me.” Feather approached from the office cabin in full Sedona mode — strings of beads and feathers in her thin graying hair, flowing batik outfit in earth tones and turquoise. “I know Caryn offended you when you arrived, but I’m afraid this is going too far. I’m going to have to ask you to — oh — oh, my... oh.” Her step faltered as she recognized the damage; her voice fluttered to a stop, then re-emerged faintly. “What —?”
“What did Huntington promise you?” Quinn asked, still driving at Caryn. “What did he tell you? If the Sin Nombre took Garrie and Trevarr—”
“Took them!” Lucia echoed in horror. Bad enough that one of them might be hurt, might be at the hospital. But if they’d had enough power to take Garrie? And enough strength to take Trevarr?
“Quinn—” she said, hating to. “Someone died here. It was violent and he was angry, and then... terrified.” She closed her eyes, let the feelings settle. “He wasn’t expecting resistance. He was overconfident.” A moment more, and she shook her head, brushing her arms as if she could brush the emotions away. “He regrets that now.”
“I’m calling the police,” Feather said.
“No.” Quinn stepped in her way, carefully keeping his hands to himself. “They can’t begin to handle this.”
“But... Quinn...” Lucia found herself whispering, heartbroken in the moment. “Without Garrie... can we?”
Quinn sounded as grim as she’d ever heard him. “We can call in a tip on Huntington — that we saw him take Robin. That doesn’t mean we stop looking for her. Or Garrie. I don’t know about the lerkhet.”
Caryn, who had been pale enough already, now reached to Feather for support. “What do you mean, take Robin?”
Quinn turned on her. “What did you think would happen when you aligned with that narcissistic freak? That some of his mojo would rub off on you? That you would get the acknowledgment you craved? Reality check — Robin has been kidnapped. Her shop partner is dead.” He stabbed a thumb at the room. “Someone else died here, too. And who knows about my friend!”
“Friends,” Lucia corrected softly. But Quinn hadn’t been in San Jose. Quinn didn’t yet truly understand what Garrie and Trevarr had done together, or how it had changed her — or how Trevarr had so quickly become part of her.
Caryn recoiled against Feather, but instantly mustered some spirit. “That bastard. He said —”
Quinn cut her off short, taking an unfriendly step closer. “We don’t care why you did it. We just want to stop whatever’s happening, and we want to stop it now!”
Feather, very faintly, said, “Caryn. Honey. What is he talking about?”
Caryn turned away from them all. “It’s complicated,” she mumbled. She swiped her hands over her eyes, looking away. “I never meant for this—”
“If your motives had been true ones, my dear, it wouldn’t have,” Feather said sadly. “Are we sure Garrie and Mr. Trevarr haven’t simply left? Fled whoever did this?”
Lucia dared another look in the room. The leather duster still sprawled across the bed and the bed still sprawled across the room. The rugged worn satchel was still tangled around the headboard post. All the blood was still right where it had been. “However they left, it wasn’t by choice.”
Feather slipped a hand in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. Her hand shook, but her voice was admirably firm. “I’m sorry, but if I’m calling the police.”
“Ten minutes,” Quinn said, looking like he desperately wanted to grab the phone. “Give us just ten minutes to grab some stuff.”
“We need containment,” Lucia said slowly, beginning to think proactively again. “For the lerkhet. It’s mixed with our energies now — maybe our stuff will work.”
Quinn glanced at the room. “Can you pull some things together?”
She straightened. She brushed herself off again — arms, shoulders, slender torso. Everywhere the emotions lingered and clung to her. “Quinnie, I am your chica.”
“Oh,” Caryn said, taking a sudden step back from the room. “Oh. Do you feel —?”
“What?” Quinn said, looking around — above, behind... everywhere.
“Oh,” Feather said. “How odd!”
By then Lucia saw it herself, and forgot to breathe.
A sudden bloom of darkness appeared in the room — and within that spun a coalescing rainbow. Black sparks scattered everywhere, clearing out before the color, and Lucia turned away as the brightness grew, and grew, and —
Quinn grabbed her arm, snapping something about getting to safety, but Lucia stayed rooted. “It’s Trevarr’s travel thingie!”
Garrie had spoken of it to her, whispered into the darkness of the shared San Jose hotel room in those days after Trevarr had gone and before he’d returned. Lucia gave Quinn a little shake. “The oskhila!”
Before he could respond, the light faded, leaving behind two human forms. In the background, Feather hyperventilated oh so gently; Caryn muttered a single curse, endlessly repeated.
“Garrie!” Lucia shrieked, an unabashedly girly noise. “Chicalet!”
Garrie, indeed. And behind her, Trevarr — who looked, as ever, ready for anything. Readier. No matter that his shirt hung untucked and his boots weren’t completely buckled and his hair was loose and untidy.
The knife in his hand, that was ready enough. Gleaming an odd shade, as did all his metals, and held with utter conviction. Lucia took a step, putting herself cleanly between Quinn and Trevarr — not liking the wild look, the clear intent, or the leftover violence in his bruised face and the random smears of blood on jaw and neck.
But the moment he saw them, he released all that intent. More a change in focus than any identifiable shift of body, although —
For a startling instant, Lucia thought —
No. That was absurd. There was no faltering there. He was tall and strong and straight. Sunglasses gone, eyes piercing and not —
Not quite right.
She looked again, blinking as something changed — she didn’t know what. Only that his smoky light eyes no longer baffled her.
Garrie looked at them all in vague surprise, orienting to the wrecked room and their presence, her shorts even more wrinkled than they’d been this morning and her shirt nothing Lucia had seen before. More like something Trevarr would wear, with its sturdy and faintly iridescent weave, a deep chocolate brown inset by panels of fine leather at shoulder and waist and the cuffs rolled back to her forearms in a way that made it obvious the sleeves were much too long even if the rest of the shirt seemed tailor-made.
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. She knew Garrie’s wardrobe and this shirt wasn’t from it.
Sklayne sat up between them and shook himself in an ear-popping gesture, his feet tangled up in a large pile of sticky-looking leaves with a quickly spreading pungency. “Mrrup!” he said, and dashed under the overturned bed.
“Hey,” Garrie said, eyeing Feather and especially Caryn, looking cautious overall. “You guys okay?”
“Us!” Quinn laughed, no humor there whatsoever. “You?”
Garrie looked at the room. “Better than them. Dammit. I wish we’d—” She shook her head, stopping herself. “Well, we didn’t. And we didn’t get the lerkhet, either.”
Quinn stepped closer, looking like he wanted to catch her up in a hug but didn’t dare. Looking wrecked. “Robin’s gone,” he said. “Her friend Nancy is dead.” He shook his head, anger settling on his brow. “The police have probably found her by now.”
“I swear,” Caryn moaned. “I had no idea—”
Feather patted Caryn on the shoulder, sympathetic but firm. “And that’s just what you’ll have to tell the police.” She looked at Quinn. “You’ve had your ten minutes, and now I have to make that call—”
POOFPOW
Lucia staggered under an unexpected vertiginous onslaught — a flash of light, the movement of everything and yet nothing at all, the blurring of her reality. She wasn’t even sure if those things had happened only inside her head, or —
“Aunt Feather!” Caryn lunged, catching the older woman as she folded in a graceful faint. Quinn leaped to help her, but Lucia...
Lucia just stared at the cabin room.
No more blood.
Not a drop. Not a splatter. Not a single spray.
The room might be jumbled, but it was jumbled pristine.
“¡Caray!” she said. “Aie farking caray!”
Garrie looked as though she wanted to slap a hand over her face — and then she gave up and did that thing, hiding gamine features. “My life,” she said. “Completely out of control.”
Quinn left Feather in Caryn’s arms. Trevarr, the knife still loosely in his grip, stepped forward to meet him. “We must find your Robin.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. “As soon as fucking possible.” But there was a light in his eye that hadn’t been there before. Hope, maybe.
As Feather sat unsteadily on her own, Caryn flipped her aunt’s phone closed, looking again at the sparkling clean room.
No more trace evidence. No witnesses. No victims. And once the jumble was flipped right-side up and the scatter of belongings dumped back into place — though to be fair, that one dresser with Lucia’s jewelry and makeup was probably just how she’d left it — there would be only the broken door and crack-shot window.
Caryn slipped the phone into Feather’s tunic pocket. “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said. “I want to help make it right.”
“There isn’t any making it right,” Garrie said, and for an instant — in that strange new outfit of hers, she looked every bit as resolute as Trevarr. As sure of herself. “You went over the line when we first met and you said that it would never happen again, that you didn’t know. And then you went right out looking for more. You and Huntington—”
“I’m nothing like him!” Caryn cried.
“You’re exactly like him,” Garrie snapped. “You justified what you did to Trevarr; you found a way to justify going to Huntington. You pointed him at an innocent woman, and now her friend is dead and she’s gone.” She shook her head, the frustration ramping up — a strange dark energy crackling the air around her. Caryn recoiled, and even Lucia took a startled and wary step back. But Garrie took a deep breath and shook her head, and only then did Lucia see that her fingers had become tightly entwined with Trevarr’s free hand.
They all somehow ignored the way the mattress shifted of its own apparent accord, and the stray puff of feathers from beneath. “Look,” Garrie said, turning back to Lucia and Quinn and Trevarr. “Assuming the police aren’t about to descend on us, we need a plan. She —” a nod at Caryn “ — needs to tell us what she knows. It might be enough to track Huntington down. I’ll look too, of course, but Quinn, you might find more about the lerkhet’s location if you look for power outages, a series of freak accidents, a batch of old folks dying—”
Caryn gasped; it earned her a glare, as Garrie turned on her. “Yeah,” she said, and the darkness crackled briefly against Lucia’s sensitized perception. “It’s like that. That’s what you helped.”
Lucia winced. This Garrie had hardened.
And then Garrie said, just like herself, “But I need a shower first. I really do. And I need some under—”
She cut herself off, but too late. Lucia’s eyes widened. She quite suddenly understood.
The shirt.
The dishevelment.
The way Trevarr seemed to be touching Garrie even when he wasn’t.
The changed energies, as little as Lucia could perceive what was actually there.
I need some underwear.
Lucia stepped up into the silence. “We all need some understanding,” she said, so very smooth. “So Caryn talks to Quinnie, yes? And we grab your things and you can shower in the boys’ room.” She suited brusque action to her words, stepping into the bathroom to snag up Garrie’s tidy toiletries kit, sweeping her soap and shampoo into it on the way out. She found the tableau unchanged when she emerged, and she stepped smartly to Garrie’s side, threading her arm through Garrie’s and, again so very smooth, guiding her to the side.
Before Quinn figured it out and ruffled his new common understanding with Trevarr, because men could be like that even when they had no right. Before it became any more obvious. “I’m sure by the time I come back, the bed will be fixed, yes? And then I can grab clean clothes for you.”
Relief suffused Garrie’s features. And yes, her hair had a particular bed-head look to it, the silver-blue streaks gleaming strong. Yes, her cheeks were flushed with more than the heat that had infused this room through the open door. And yes, her silly reluctance to leave Trevarr was going to give it all away, so Lucia shoved the toiletries bag into Garrie’s hands with more than the necessary amount of force.
Garrie blinked at her, big brown gamine eyes in the gamine face beneath the gamine hair. Lucia leaned close. “Come,” she said, under the cover of Feather’s rising protests in the background. “Get cleaned up.” Right. L
ucia Reyes, her daddy’s princess. What did she know? But everything was better after a good shower and clean clothes, so. “Also,” she added, leaning even closer and stepping over what had once been a chair, “you let me know if he ever hurts you. I will break his balls.”
Garrie gave her a startled look — not the words of a princess, oh no — and then cast a glance back at Trevarr. Lucia’s gaze followed, an instinctive thing, and she gasped silently when she discovered Trevarr looking at her — straight at her, meeting her glace as though he had yes, somehow heard her quiet words across the room and over Feather’s fussing.
And if for the first instant she thought oh, caray! with a little thrill of fear, in the second she realized that Trevarr’s darkening gaze said something different altogether.
If I ever hurt her, I will let you.
Chapter 20
Consequences
“To everything, there is consequence.”
— Rhonda Rose
“A big stupid will come back to bite you in the butt.”
— Lisa McGarrity
::It comes.::
— Sklayne
Garrie emerged from the shower on the guy side of the cabin, towel-wrapped and with cleaner body and clearer head. Not to mention a much better idea of what the morning had wrung from her — her own set of bruises, rising to the surface. Tender places, within and without.
Action-Figure Reckoner, indeed.
Lucia waited on Trevarr’s apparently unused bed, filing her nails, one leg crossed over the other and looking as cool and unruffled as ever.
Except when she looked up to meet Garrie’s gaze.
There, in her eyes, all the emotions showed — how baffled she was to find herself in this situation, where they somehow weren’t reckoning ghosts at all. How unsettled her world had become between here and San Jose.
She nodded at the other bed. Quinn’s bed, all rumpled, the covers tangled with half a dozen cords and chargers and gizmos that Garrie had never understood and never would. “I grabbed some clothes.”
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