Chapter 17
Everything Changes
Rhonda Rose
Lisa sat not in the enclosed loveliness of her family’s yard but on the roof, a study point I had introduced in preparation for this very moment. For a wiry little thing such as the adolescent Lisa McGarrity, slipping out the loft window and along the clay tiles of this old adobe home was no hardship, if a thing I never would have dared in my living days.
The tiles still radiated the day’s heat, although night was well upon us and her parents slept peacefully not far away. Lisa’s sleeveless pajama set bore darling little flowers that suited her not in the least, and her unruly hair had been caught up in two very temporary short plaits.
She inched to the stove pipe, wrapping her arm around it. The little potbellied stove below provided much of the home’s heat during the winter, but it could hardly anchor her with the security she craved.
Her body, after all, was not the thing about to take flight.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she announced, as if I was unable to perceive that fact on my own.
I knew better than to push her. The trying nature of her youth had done nothing but refine her natural stubbornness, her well-honed sense of self.
“Very well,” I said, smoothing my skirts and observing how the gesture relaxed her. “Then we’ll review the process again.”
Her mouth flattened most unbecomingly. “There’s no point.” Her arm tightened around the stove pipe, making it creak. “I can see ghosts and breezes from right here.” She gestured dramatically to the air. “There’s no reason to go floating around.”
“Of course there is.” Surprise startled the words from me in a more revealing fashion than I intended, earning surprise in return.
Only then did I realize the depth of my error. I’d spent so much time preparing her for this moment, focusing on the process and the experience, that I had in fact never truly discussed the reasons for it.
The necessity of it, yes. But not the why. And Lisa had never been a child for doing things simply because she was told. Lisa wanted the why.
“Tell me, then.” That demand was as inexorable as ever..
In my own cowardice, I had subconsciously avoided this moment. It would reveal so much to her.
“Rhonda Rose?”
At her uncertain query, I realized that my dismay had affected my clarity; hints of the roof showed through my skirts. I firmed myself up. “Let me start at the beginning,” I said.
“Where ever,” she told me.
This earned her a stern look, and quite paradoxically made it easier to begin. “You are aware that I first located you through your propensity to play with the breezes.”
She nodded. She’d always known this fact, although not how close she came to dying that first night.
I settled myself in a way that once might have been drawing a deep breath. “What you may not realize is that I was not local to you at the time.”
“Where were you, then?”
“Elsewhere.” I used the tone of voice that meant we would not be discussing elsewhere at this point, and waited for her to settle on the pertinent question.
She squinched her face in an expression I allowed to pass. “Don’t tell me you felt those little baby breezes all the way from wherever you were.”
Ah, yes. My perceptive protege. “No,” I told her. “And yes. I was in the general area because I had already perceived unusual activity in this area. It drew me.”
She sat with this a moment, releasing the stove pipe to rub at a scab on her knee. “Okay, so you could tell there was something going on, and you came to take a closer look. And the something turned out to be me.”
“Exactly so.” I waited, my silence cue enough for her to continue her train of thought.
She frowned, giving up on the scab to stretch hugely, lying back on the roof to regard the city-washed night sky.
After a moment, she sat up and looked at me with the directness I still found unsettling after so many years of being imperceptible. “Are you the only one who can perceive unusual activity?”
“No,” I said gently. “I am not.”
“What?” She understood the implications immediately. Naturally. “I’m some sort of bullseye, and you never mentioned it?”
“Lisa,” I said, and it was enough. “You have been protected.”
She didn’t like it. She glared mutinously at me. But she used careful words, and it was enough. “So I’m a target for who knows what, and you never mentioned it?”
More gently this time. “You have been protected. But that won’t always be the case. It’s time to prepare for that day.”
Still, the glare. “What’s that got to do with me leaving my perfectly good body to look at things from...” she waved vaguely at the sky, “out there?”
Now I had her attention. Now she had a reason to regard this instruction as important. And so I told her, as simply as I could.
“Your presence will always make its mark, Lisa. The breezes gravitate to you, and with the breezes come the fragmented spirits, the darker entities, and those few who, like me, have a sensibility and purpose. Any of these beings might resent you; any of them might fear you. Given enough of them, they will try to address your presence. And in the interim, they will damage your city. A subtle effect, it is true, but over time...it will matter.” I offered her a reassuring smile as the implication of these truths settled in, bringing distress to her features. “From out there,” I said, and imitated her vague gesture, “you may not only observe such encroachment—you may manage it.”
As she absorbed this, too, I settled more firmly against the roof, folding my hands over one knee. “Or, of course, you can live your life in constant movement, attempting to cloak yourself in utter silence. Never staying in any single place for any amount of time and inevitably leaving a long tail of darkness behind you.”
This matter-of-fact suggestion earned the snort it deserved, if one less ladylike than proper. Lisa tugged firmly on the base of one short plait, dislodging hair to fall alongside her face. “And it’s always been like this,” she said, but didn’t wait for confirmation. She knew. “Okay, fine. Why now, Rhonda Rose? Why wasn’t it important before this?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, as understanding as it was. “You are very nearly a woman, Lisa. Everything changes.”
I should have expected her short and utterly unacceptable curse. But she set herself to learning, and I could not help but turn away with a smile.
When Lisa found herself determined, no entity would stand in her way.
~~~~~
Sized Vaguely Like a Cat
Garrie hiked along the mountain, searching for signs of incursion. Between her maintenance work at the hospitals, parks, and roadside descanso memorials, she jogged and biked familiar trails. While Quinn filled in hours at the bookstore and Lucia convinced her family of her own normality and Robin prepared her relocated store for opening and Drew spread his time between them all, Garrie marked the trails with Secret Recipe Plus—not quite tireless, but as driven as ever.
She evaded the closures, muttering apologies to the rangers who were only trying to protect her from the fictional bear she herself had invented. And with Dana-Bob’s help, she pinpointed two additional attachments and surrounded them with Secret Recipe.
She became steeped with the sense of the Keharian invader—the familiar hints of bitter ash, the unfamiliar depths of anger and tarry, lashing fury.
It wants to go home.
She had no idea how to do that. She suspected that she couldn’t do it at all. Even if she’d had the means, this particular being wasn’t what it had been before the portal activity had swept it into this world.
And now, with the entity looming over the mountain not so very far away, Garrie dumped her sleeping bag on the dark second story porch next to Lucia and said out loud, “There better not be any cat hair inside this thing when I get back.”
Wishful thinking. Sklayne had been gone for so many d
ays that Garrie had begun the process of convincing herself she’d been abandoned.
Dammit. Sklayne was more than a being in his own right—more than someone who knew so much more than she about the things they now faced. He was what remained of Trevarr. Had been.
Now he just felt like a final piece of something else gone.
She looked over the porch railing into the night time woods and said loudly, “Things are changing too much. Stop it. Right now!”
A coyote yipped from an arroyo below, experimented with full-blown song, and fell silent.
“Garrie, you coming? Lucia’s made hot chocolate with horchata!” Drew stuck his head out onto the porch. “This is either going to be the best thing ever, or we’re going to hork our brains out.”
“Yay,” Garrie told him. “Can’t wait for that.”
Dana-Bob appeared against the porch railing, full of dark insouciance. “Noble horking reckoner.”
“Fark yourself,” she said, without any heat.
“Someone else already did that,” he rejoined without hesitation. “The problem is, you got in the middle of it.”
“My bad.” No heat, and no particular apology. Garrie flipped the sleeping bag out and shook it, letting it puff up. Not that he wasn’t right, or that she didn’t regret it. But she couldn’t do anything about it until she cleared out the Keharian invader, and even then she might not be able to fix it.
Except for Rhonda Rose, she’d never seen anything like him. And Rhonda Rose had been her mentor, not the other way around. Rhonda Rose had always been the one in control.
She looked down at the sleeping bags, crossing her arms to pull her sweatshirt closed. Maybe she’d underestimated how far the early fall night temperatures would plunge at this higher altitude.
“Garrie!” Lucia’s voice came from within the house, distant at that. “It’s getting cold!”
She rubbed her hands over her face, tugged gently at the hair behind her ear, and went from the darkness of the porch to the darkness of the house, pounding down a whimsical set of tightly spiraled stairs and emerging in the flickering light of a the kitchen—all tile, sleek counters, cabinets and candlelight.
“Such a surprise,” Robin said, lifting a mug to Garrie, “that the power company messed up the transfer of accounts and left you in the dark.”
“So speaketh the woman currently dealing with utilities in a new store.” Garrie sniffed thoughtfully at the spicy hot chocolate mix in the waiting mug. “You used real chocolate in this, didn’t you? And cinnamon?”
Lucia made a scoffing noise. “You doubt me?”
“Never!” Garrie wrapped her hands around the mug, as grateful for the warmth as for the treat. “We’re still meeting tomorrow up on Eubank, right? An actual job, over at the eldercare place? Robin, if you need to skip it—”
Because Robin’s only apparent role so far was as resident skeptic—even if it did balance Quinn rather nicely once he got going.
“No, it’s fine. I’ve about got things sorted out.” Robin shrugged. “I just hope old Route 66 brings ’em in like it’s supposed to.” She’d bought a spot for Crystal Winds in an old feed store on the verge of the canyon, and shared the building with a series of other like-minded proprietors—handmade goods of soaps, candles, alpaca wool, and wind chimes, while Robin herself had a little bit of all that and Tarot cards to boot.
“It’s a brilliant way to use that old building,” Lucia said. “Especially since Garrie cleared out the bad juju.”
And not a few mice in the process.
Robin didn’t know about the mice. But she knew that Garrie had unofficially cleaned the area, and she glanced Garrie’s way as she dropped a marshmallow into her hot chocolate. “Thanks for that,” she said, wary of the lingering sore point between them. “Especially the discretion. The guy who sells crystals really wants to believe he’s the only one with a juju connection.”
Garrie wrinkled her nose. “He flails.” She took her first blissful swallow of the chocolate concoction. “Ohhh, Lucia. You should take a space in that old farm store and sell your family goodies there.”
Drew slapped a hand over his mouth, narrowly avoiding a chocolate spew, and Garrie glared at him. “Not those kind of goodies, damn it!”
Dana-Bob chose that moment to make an appearance. An actual appearance, as so few of his kind ever did. “So good of you to take my situation seriously.”
Lucia gasped, paling; Robin shrieked and skittered away across the tile floor as Drew fumbled his mug, cursing.
Quinn chose that moment to walk into the kitchen, a heavy box of books in his arms; he assessed the situation with instant accuracy. “Awesome,” he said. “One of Garrie’s Bobs has finally come out to play.”
Dana-Bob spread his arms in professed innocence. “What,” he said. “Not used to seeing us this clearly?”
Garrie took a calm sip from her hot chocolate. “Lucia saw Rhonda Rose a couple of times. Guys, this is Dana-Bob. He went down the night our mountain friend chased me across the city and got caught up in the backwash. He’d like me to fix that.”
“Can you?” Robin asked, squeaking a little as she untangled her feet and kept her spot on the other side of the kitchen.
Garrie shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Drew sniggered, suddenly looking younger than he had since his return. “Dana-Bob. D-B. Get it? D-B as in dead body.” He giggled, only faintly hysterical, and spilled his drink.
Lucia took it from him with narrowed eyes, pointing him at the sink and the lone dish cloth there. Drew moved to clean up with a haste that might have been amusing under other circumstances, but still smirked.
“Might have been funny,” Garrie informed him. “If you hadn’t said it right in front of him.”
Quinn slid his burden onto the offset counter island, both wary and inexorably drawn by Dana-Bob’s presence. “Rhonda Rose was like...this?”
Dana, most definitely a Bob with his muted colors shifted into vibration and his features harshened by a strange internal light, ignored the reckoner team and focused on Garrie. “I helped you locate your invader. Now get the rest of the work done and move on to me.”
Garrie regarded him with a narrow-eyed tilt of her head that caught the others up in a communal pause, a mutual indrawn breath. “No,” she told them. “He’s nothing like Rhonda Rose. For starters, she wasn’t a self-centered asshole.”
“Really?” Dana-Bob’s skin-tight clothes tightened over a suddenly skeletal frame. “Really? That’s what you have to say, after you did this to me?”
“You died,” Garrie snapped. She drew on her breezes, spinning them into a quiet, dense formation—not to shield the living, but to enclose the Bob. “I had nothing to do with that. You died in a bad place at a bad time and it sucks but it doesn’t entitle you to stomp your little ghostie feet. It definitely isn’t an asshole pass.”
“It’s actually all kinds of stupid,” Quinn said. “Do you really want to antagonize her? Besides, we don’t go anywhere unprepared.”
Lucia reached for the shoulder bag slumped beside the giant thermos of hot chocolate. Her cheeks had gone flushed and her eyes were bright, but she showed no other effects from Dana-Bob’s emotive presence. Good job, Lucia. Work those shields. And yes...keep the containment bags close.
Garrie tightened the breezes around Dana-Bob, snugging them down just enough so he could feel it. He shot a glare at her and demanded, “What are you doing?”
“Dana.” Garrie crossed her arms. “Let’s look at this from my point of view. You got in my way. You’re still in my way. You’re interfering with my work and you’re endangering my team—not to mention everyone in this area.”
“I helped you! I saved you!”
“You interrupted my concentration as I approached danger,” Garrie countered. “On purpose.”
Dana-Bob fell silent, as if he hadn’t expected her to notice that particular detail.
Garrie eased off on the breezes—just enough so he’d percei
ve it, not enough to give him freedom. “Look. It’s a complicated situation and right now you don’t come first. It’s okay that you don’t like that. It’s not okay for you to mess with us because you don’t like it. Any of us. Because things could be worse.”
“Right.” Dana’s sullen reaction showed in his muted colors and his washed-out features, but his words came without any edge. “While you all gather for what, some sort of cozy slumber party?”
“A celebration,” Lucia said firmly. “Because this will be Garrie’s house, and we’re friends. And because we’re still alive, and celebrating is part of that.”
Dana made a face but wisely said nothing. Drew plopped the dishcloth in the sink, glanced at Lucia, and retrieved it, wringing it out to drape neatly over the arching spigot. “That sale went through fast.”
Garrie rolled her eyes. “Trust me, the paperwork remains. But they were happy to rent it out until closing.” She glanced at the gleam of candlelight on countertop, the stone tile floor, the smooth wood of the cabinets. “You know, someone might just cook in this kitchen.”
Lucia made a genteel noise of amusement. “Me, I think.”
“You,” Garrie agreed.
“Me,” Robin said. “Oh, can I?”
“Barbecue pit,” Quinn said, in a dibs sort of voice.
Dana sighed, a whistling noise that would have circled the room had Garrie not kept it within the shields. “I’m stuck inside a bad family sitcom crossed with Ghostbusters,” he said. “Can I go now?”
“Up to you,” Garrie said. “If I have to do this again, I’m not going to be so gentle.”
“Point made,” Dana said sourly, and waited while Garrie eased back on the shield, inverting the energies to create a loose and roomy protection around her crew. Dana felt cautiously of the space around him, taking on the brief appearance of a ghost mime.
But not for long. He flexed, growing subtly larger, and looked at Garrie from shark-dead eyes. “Point made for now,” he said. “Because you’re still the one who can help me. If I ever have reason to think that’s changed...”
“Right,” Garrie said. “You’ll release your inner asshole, and I’ll take you down.”
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