Kyrokha.
Strong body, smoky presence... pewter eyes. His hair tangled thick and dark with a myriad of tiny braids, barely tamed by the crude clip that drew the sides back. Barely tamed. Just like him.
“You don’t belong here,” she snapped, humiliation bringing the sting of tears. Not just here at her drill room, but also not here at Ghehera, where the Tribunal’s mudbloods endlessly strove to justify their own existence.
“No.” He seemed to find some fleeting humor in it. “But you can.”
“You know nothing.”
He was nominally human in appearance. He didn’t have the faint gleam of burnt-brown scales ripping over his skin, the odd yellow cast in his eye. He, at least, was reviled and feared for the strength of what was within him.
Whereas Anjhela was simply reviled. And if the Ghehera’s Tribunal saw fit to use her, she had nonetheless not yet proven herself fit to be used.
“What I know,” he said, in a voice that seemed unaccustomed to talking, “is that we make our choices. Make yours, and then live with them.”
She stared at the glove. The mendihar. The glove and all it represented. Pain and power.
And pleasure.
Or simply pain, if she failed to bond with it. Pain and the humiliation and rejection to follow.
“You wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think it of you,” he told her. So potent in that doorway, so confident in himself. In what he was. “They don’t waste their time.” He caught her gaze directly, until her skin felt tight and her toes curled with tension. He made sure of it, lingering there and almost...almost...
She didn’t know what. But she wanted it.
He made sure he had her, and then he said, “Neither do I.”
===
Remembered...
===
Anjhela withdrew awareness from the glove, sighing as pleasure ebbed away in the tingles from a kissing tongue. But she maintained control...she always maintained control. Especially as she looked down on Trevarr, knowing that the powerful geas shackles just barely kept him in check.
And that his quiescence was, in its way, only another sign of his strength.
It made the pleasure all the sweeter. It made the scent of the dark blood trickling from his face all the more satisfying. It made the involuntary, reactive gleam of red-rimmed eyes just exactly what she’d wanted to see, and the sound of his halting breath just exactly what she’d wanted to hear.
She leaned close and licked the blood from one cheek with a slow, sure stroke of her deliciously pointed tongue. “Do you remember?” she asked him. “Because, my love...I do.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 3
You Will Never
Rhonda Rose
“Make it live.” Little Lisa McGarrity’s tears turned her face splotchy; her hair stuck out in all directions as it often did.
I assumed my strictest countenance. “Child,” I said, “the bird is dead. It ran into your window and its neck is broken. And even if that were not the case, make it live is not one of the things we do.” I harshened myself further, giving my voice a grinding undertone. “Ever.”
She remained unaffected by both my appearance and my tone. She wiped a small hand across her cheek—naturally she left a smear of dirt behind—and glanced over her shoulder, one of those wary expressions that meant her parents were not in fact terribly distant. “Fine,” she said, with a defiance we would speak about later. Of course, then she managed to take me by surprise, as she so often did. “We don’t.”
Not that her words were the surprise, you understand. But the deep ethereal breath she drew, instantly dimming the balanced energies of this desert yard oasis—yes, that indeed came as a surprise. The cottonwood trees dimmed to grey; the wind stopped rustling in their heart-shaped leaves. The burbling fountain quieted and the herb garden grew instantly parched. Even with all my exacting personal protections, I felt myself sucked dangerously thin.
I did not hesitate; I could not hesitate.
“NO!” I bellowed, my voice gone very cold indeed. With every bit of strength I possessed, I yanked back on the etherea, ripping control from her childish grasp and snapping the energies back into the void she’d created. I made myself large before her small, wiry little form. “Lisa McGarrity, you will never—!”
She made a startled sound and fell back, dropping the bird. Frost briefly limned her brows and her petite features, paling her cheeks; she seemed to stop breathing.
After a moment of stiff stillness, Lisa blinked several times. She scratched an insect bite on her wrist and politely said, “Good morning, Rhonda Rose,” as if she’d just discovered me there.
I sighed heavily, such as a spirit is capable, and understood that my censure had slapped her back several moments in her young life. I rearranged myself in a tidy fashion, obscuring my uncharacteristic disarray. “Good morning, Lisa.”
And once again, Lisa McGarrity continued to live.
For the moment.
~~~~~
Invisible Teeth
“Do you remember—”
Garrie couldn’t quite breathe and didn’t quite know why.
“Do you remember—”
She smelled blood and damp stone and smoky presence, and found herself struggling against the tight grip of grief on her chest and throat. Trevarr, found. And gone again.
...Because, my love...I do...
“Chicalet, what..?” Lucia’s cool hand on her arm, Lucia’s cool voice at her ear. “If you don’t like this house, we’ll just go, right?” But her hand stilled on Garrie’s atypically bare arm. “Garrie, what—”
Garrie heard only the intimately close creak of leather, knew Trevarr to be helpless, restrained and shackled and hurt—
...My love...
Invisible teeth sunk into her hand; she jerked from one world back to the other—from the taste of Trevarr and Kehar to the unfamiliar canyon home that just might become hers. She jumped away from the porch railing to trip over a stout ceramic toad, flailing and off-balance. “Ow—!”
Quinn stepped up to steady her, hands both familiar and impersonal, his fancy smartphone still tucked against his ear.
Garrie didn’t have a fancy smart phone. She barely had a cell phone at all, and her watch was a basic analog model with Tigger bounding through the numbers. The etherea played havoc with electronic fancy.
The etherea, apparently, played havoc with her.
Lucia scowled, and Garrie covered the welling blood from distinctive feline fang marks. “Splinter,” she said for the sake of the woman real estate agent, who was not likely to be calm about an invisible not-cat.
Because, right. She and the crew weren’t in some damp and smoky place. They were here in the wind-blown canyon pass of the mountains, looking at a house that had been on the market way too long for its own good.
The agent made a sympathetic noise about the imaginary splinter. “Is there any part of the house you’d like to see again?”
Garrie looked back at the idiosyncratic home of winding stairs and open spaces, extra rooms and beautiful hand-set tile and stone work. Too big for most individuals, too full of oddball features for most families. “I’d like a few moments to think.”
Lucia cast her a disgruntled look, moving into the lee of the house. “You definitely want to give this some thought.” Doubt hung heavy in her voice, but the real estate agent merely smiled and pulled out her phone, heading inside to duck the scrape of wind.
“Buying a house seems like a big step,” Drew said, leaning on the rail to look out over the little scoop of a valley below them. “A sudden step. Maybe it’s a good time to get away from it all. Give you a chance to consider this kind of decision.”
“I like it,” Quinn said, not giving his casual assertive confidence a second thought and barely moving the phone away from his mouth at that. “Plenty of room for research materials, not so much in the way of fancy electronics to blow up, and for sure no one’ll just drop by when you might
be in the middle of something.”
Garrie peered down at the rutted and winding dirt road, an entry shared only by the one other home at the head of it. An attempt to smooth her short, windblown hair was as pointless as she would have expected. Fall winds in the canyon. Get used to it. “I can get a four-wheel drive.”
Lucia made a wounded noise. A but I live in the city and I want you to always live there too noise.
“Lu.” Garrie looked away from a view made stunning by the overlapping Sandia foothills to a view made more casually stunning by Lucia—long dark hair spilling over one shoulder like a model, perfectly appointed outfit draping her frame like a model, and smooth, delicate features—of course, like a model.
Hurt lived in those dark eyes.
“Hey,” Garrie said. “It’s not just for me. You need a place for retreat, too. Especially with...well, your changes.”
Lucia’s lips thinned on that, a truth she didn’t want to hear. “You can’t make this decision because of me,” she said shortly. “And you can’t make it because of Trevarr. He’s not coming back.”
“Fighting words, Lu,” Quinn said casually, thumbing his phone connection closed and slipping the device back in his pocket. “Robin says hi, by the way. And the news is still blaring about the lost hiker—no sign of him dead or alive—so the spirit Garrie saw yesterday is still in the running to be our guy.”
“We need to look for him again,” Garrie said, letting Lucia’s words hang there.
Lucia wanted things to be as they had always been for their reckoner team—before Garrie had met Trevarr, had healed a rift between worlds, had been the nexus of a vortex in formation. And Lucia wanted things to be as they had been for Lucia.
Garrie couldn’t really blame her. But she couldn’t unchange what had been changed...and she damned sure wasn’t giving up on the half-breed bounty hunter who’d been the catalyst for so many of those changes—and then sacrificed himself for her.
Not yet.
So instead she held her silence, absorbing the peace of this place—glimpsing what she thought was a lingering Bob out in the yard, and grinning when it turned out to be a desert cottontail. Later, when the agent thought them gone, she’d hunt for Bobs and Bobbies, check the local etherea for blackouts and trouble spots.
Because just maybe this place would suit. Not just Garrie, and not just Lucia. Trevarr.
*Me.* Big if tidy forefeet landed lightly above her knee. A rough tongue rasped over her hand; Sklayne’s mind-voice went smaller than its wont, more subdued. *Sklayne.*
Garrie glanced at the suddenly fading pink marks of the bite and thought of the close creak of leather and chains and binding, the sense of Trevarr and the weight of pain.
Real. All of it, real.
At least, until she’d felt that pinch of fang over skin. “Yeah,” she said. “You.”
A faint disturbance of air appeared on the porch railing; Sklayne went solid a moment after that, a startlingly large feline form with long legs and vast tufted ears and not much tail.
“Holy fu—” Drew flailed backward. By the time he recovered, the railing held only one small Abyssinian cat with a smug expression.
Lucia did no more than roll her eyes.
Once, that imperious gesture would have held Drew in check for an entire twenty-four hours. But once Drew had been a young man with bad skin and a soul patch and lanky unkempt hair, just aching to exercise his startlingly precise skills at reading locational history.
This version of Drew vibrated with impatience, and closed his hand roughly around Garrie’s arm. “Garrie, do you even see what this obsession is doing to everyone—”
“Dude,” Quinn said, as much warning as disapproval.
Garrie knocked Drew’s grip away, shoving him back with a hard blow to his bony shoulder. The movement left her standing out in full sun, her bare arms shimmering.
*Respect for the Garrie!* Visible sparks scattered across the planks at Drew’s feet.
Quinn shook his head. “Dunno what you were thinking there, Drew. Things haven’t changed that much.”
“Are you kidding?” Drew regained his balance. “Look at her.” He gestured sharply at Garrie’s hair, where the gleam of silver-blue streaks—once applied from a box of dye—were now simply part of who she was. “Don’t tell me that’s not real. And what about her skin? Maybe you mostly have to squint to see it, but that’s not sparkly makeup. What has he done to her?”
Sklayne made a spitting sound and disappeared again, if not without a flourish of energy that popped Garrie’s ears.
Right along with her temper. “I think you meant to ask what has he done for me?”
“Dude,” Quinn said again, stopping Drew short. He tucked a comforting arm around Lucia’s shoulders as she winced at the intensity of the moment. “Make yourself useful. We came to check out this house. Who better than you—”
Drew held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay—you’re right.” He cast a wary glance at the spot Sklayne had occupied. “I’m still taking things in, I guess.”
As apologies went, it wasn’t much. Garrie let it go for Lucia’s sake—for her own sake. Taking the easy way while she adjusted to the new normal of her own energies. “Will you check it out, then?”
“Sure.” Drew relaxed, shaking his arms loose like an athlete. “If Real Estate Lady gives me the chance.”
Quinn glanced over the railing, along the scattered ponderosa pines clustered near the home. “She’s out front hunting a signal.” He looked at Garrie. “I think she figures she’s got a live one.”
“She does.” Garrie surprised herself with the certainty of it. Quinn lifted a brow, looking down at Lucia.
Garrie crossed the porch to take her hand. “Lu,” she said, “It’ll be all right. Whatever I do—whatever we do—we’ll make sure it’s all right.”
When Lucia straightened, disengaging from Quinn’s arm, it was with a straight back and uplifted chin. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll be fine. The emo vibe just got a little loud.”
“I know,” Garrie said, feeling the chagrin of it. She looked at the dusty shimmer of her own skin in the sun, dulled by an expensive essential oil lotion but not completely repressed. She still took herself by surprise, at that.
“Toads,” Drew said suddenly, opening his eyes in surprise. “Horny toads and spadefoot toads and—” He glanced at the giant toad garden statue squatting on the porch.
“That’s all you got?” Quinn gave him a skeptical look. “Toads?”
Drew shrugged. “If you want deep history, then sure, there’s more. You want to start with the Tijeras Pueblos who first hunted this area, or the Apaches and Comanches who used the canyon to attack anyone who wandered too far from baby Albuquerque in the 1700s? But even in the 1800s, fifteen settler families was a population boom.”
He looked out on the ridge-enclosed valley, a patchwork of multi-acre plots with earth-colored stucco and adobe homes squatting between the thick junipers. Arroyos tore through the earth in parallel downhill streaks, more evident from the intensified growth along their edges than from the dramatic gouges they’d made. “All of these homes are fairly recent. So there’s not much history here, other than the toads.”
Garrie gave him a skeptical look. “That sounds more like a history lecture than one of your readings.”
Drew lifted one shoulder. “I was an archaeology student, Garrie—I worked the Pueblo restoration in the canyon. So I know what I know, right? Besides, it’s not a bad thing as far as the house goes. It’s a one-owner place. It got built, and a while ago they added the solar panels, and in between not very much happened.”
Garrie looked back at the house, thinking of the times Drew had recoiled from a reading with distaste, or casually declined to set foot inside a building. “Right,” she said. “Not a bad thing at all.”
*Solar panels.* Sklayne’s words conveyed wonderment. *Mighty fine snack!*
Garrie took that as a vote in favor of.
; “You’re going for it.” Lucia’s resignation echoed through her voice. She looked through the sliding glass doors to the vast emptiness of the cathedral ceiling space beyond the interior hall and railing. “Well, I want permanent guest dibs.”
“That’s a given,” Garrie said, quietly marveling just a little bit at her certainty. She’d been working since her mid-teens; she’d had an inheritance; she’d invested wisely. She’d been waiting for this, a house along the side of a ridge where she could feel quiet and safe. “If it checks out for me tonight.”
“And,” Lucia said, regaining something of her normal perspicacity, “I want to decorate my room. And help with the rest of it. And make sure you have a schedule that brings you back into the city. I won’t let you become a hermit.”
“Decorate your bedroom, yes,” Garrie said, already wary. Mighty reckoner, made small before Lucia’s shopping prowess. “The rest of it, I don’t think—”
“Pale eggplant window shades,” Lucia said, fully settling back into herself. At Garrie’s sound of alarm, she said, “The insulated cellular shades, of course. See, chicalet, I can be as practical as anyone.”
From somewhere undefined, Sklayne said, *SOLAR. PANELS.* A distinct pause, filled with satiation. *Mighty fine!*
Right. Nothing truly changed at all. As usual, Garrie was entirely in control.
Not so much.
~~~~~
Garrie put an offer on the house before they left the property. And then somehow, the day went on, which meant that afternoon found Garrie and Lucia in the quiet recesses of Garrie’s small city apartment while Garrie pondered her next step in finding George Phelps...and the sensation of cold burning shackles still lingered at her wrists.
Phelps wasn’t the only one she had to find.
“Drew’s different,” Lucia said, lost in her own thoughts. She licked her fingers in the wake of sticky bun goodness—a precise quarter portion—sinking into the pale green stripes of Garrie’s loveseat.
Garrie pulled herself back into the conversation, cross-legged on the floor with the other three-quarters of the bun. “Maybe he just grew up. He went on his own adventure, after all. He has a girlfriend. He even shaved the damned soul patch.”
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