Reckoner Redeemed Read online

  Quinn had no such reticence. “Distracted,” he said. “Because of Trevarr. Garrie, we really need to talk about this.”

  Lucia slid casually away from the table and wandered over to the mural wall. Drew ate with purpose. Robin simply waited.

  Garrie sent him a hard look. “No. We don’t.”

  “Fine, then!” Quinn flung his long quarterback’s legs over the side of the picnic bench, stalking off opposite of Lucia and leaving Drew being very, very quiet.

  Robin looked at Garrie. Garrie looked at Robin.

  And then Garrie returned to her breakfast.

  “He’s wrong, you know,” Robin said, more conversationally than seemed possible in the midst of lingering tension. She pretend to contemplate her remaining burrito.

  Garrie hesitated, eyes narrowed, flimsy plastic fork on the way to her mouth.

  Robin said, “When the bad guys in Sedona had me, Quinn wouldn’t have let you stop him from trying to help me. And you wouldn’t have tried to make him.” Then she offered the faintest of eye rolls, raising the burrito for a tidy bite. “Not that I remember anything much about that day.”

  “Just as well,” Garrie muttered, only to stuff a hasty forkful of eggs in her mouth, chewing through a wince of I shouldn’t have said that.

  “It’s okay,” Robin said. “Quinn’s told me. Well, he’s told me enough. Maybe someday I’ll remember, but I doubt it—and that’s okay, too. But I know how much you risked to find me. You had a bigger problem to deal with, and splitting the group left everyone vulnerable, and Trevarr was hurt.” She looked straight at Garrie—but then, she’d always been direct. “I know what no one talks about. If he hadn’t been hurt, maybe he wouldn’t have been taken at all.”

  Maybe...

  Garrie suddenly ached too much for words. She couldn’t chew; she couldn’t swallow. She clapped a hand over her mouth, frozen there...trying to process the physical clutch of emotion.

  Instead she found herself reaching out—a silent cry of despair, an ache so big she couldn’t contain it. Not within herself and not within the confines of this world. Nothing so distinct as a thought, but—

  Pure need.

  And because she was who she was, need turned to energy turned to arrowing speed. A sudden dark awareness, the heady spice of a different air, the thick sensation of a dark fog, the surrounding presence of stone...

  A faint smoky, familiar scent, tanging to cold bitter ash.

  She froze within that burst of grief and longing, hesitating on hope. Hesitating on tangible presence, hesitating on touch. The hard slats of the picnic table bench anchored her in the park, in the city...in the desert.

  But parts of Garrie had long known how to fly. Surely—

  ===

  That faint smoky and familiar scent, that sensation of self, a pattern of breathing, of enduring, of—

  WAKING.

  Darkness surrounded her; pain and weakness engulfed her, pressing in on a body tall and muscled and ineffably male.

  Trevarr.

  Not just Trevarr. Self.

  A startled instant of confusion, a quick surge of hope. Atreya?

  Shards of agony circled his wrists to shoot along his arms, across his shoulders—slamming into the abiding ache of old damage and banding around his chest to force out a grunt of pain.

  But no more sound than that behind the hard slit of his waking eye, only a silent warning snarl Garrie could feel scraping along his throat as though it was her own. Not until his brief surge of strength fell abruptly away, crumbling in the wake of hunger and injury and becoming a blink of acceptance and vulnerability.

  Garrie?

  Garrie choked on a surge of joy. *I’m here,* she said, a blurt of words on impulse—a commitment to hope. *I’m looking for you.*

  Disparate energies solidified with a snap, becoming she and he and them. Only then did he spark briefly into the fullness of himself, surging outward—and instantly stiffening at the quick lash of pain, a spark from wrist to wrist. Manacle to manacle, burning cold heat and a sizzle of menace. Chains for a man of strength and energy and secrets, keeping him within himself.

  But he’d heard her. If he couldn’t reach outward, he could still hear.

  If only she’d had words to offer.

  If only she’d had more to work with than a body repeatedly drained and tortured and failing, a victim of unfettered wrath and an expert hand. Retribution suddenly gone too far, and a body now dying.

  But she had nothing more to work with than shared despair and a scant remaining scrape of determination.

  Something nudged her arm, pushed her shoulder. Garrie’s sense of Trevarr grew suddenly thin and wavering, a tendril of awareness stretched unto breaking.

  Her team was trying to get her back.

  Trying, and succeeding. They wanted her there in the park, eating huevos rancheros and being their reckoner. They had no idea the cost, the betrayal—surely they had no idea—

  Without words, she flung herself away from them and back to Trevarr—doing the only thing she could, upon watching him falter. Dying.

  Make him live. She reached past into her ever-present reserve and pushed her personal breezes out through their connection—

  No. She faltered. Because one didn’t. One couldn’t.

  Or else...

  Or else what, Rhonda Rose?

  Something. She didn’t know. Only that it was so forbidden that she—

  She—

  Dying.

  But not dead yet. Not if she could help it. She regathered herself and pushed past the odd place in her mind, the terror it evoked, the harsh, rapid beat of her heart, and pushed energy out through their connection and straight to the thinnest parts of him.

  Please...

  Please reach him.

  Please save him.

  His startled growl vibrated between them, crossing the unfathomable chasm of their realities. For the first time, she felt the echoing complexity of what her breezes did for him.

  Did to him.

  A brush scrubbing her skin from the wrong side and against the grain—not painful but impossible to withstand, invoking restlessness and inner roaring. A feather stroke of pleasure ran straight down her spine, sparking every possible erogenous response. A bellows-breath of hot air stirring internal coals best left banked, heavy-lidded eyes lifting in query, pewter-bright around vertical cats-eye pupils.

  Awakening.

  ===

  “Garrie! Fark! Get back here—!” A harsh note of panic infused Quinn’s voice, suddenly loud beside her. His hands on her shoulders, his mouth by her ear—a certain assumptive familiarity there even now, years after their brief affair. “Robin, for God’s sake, what happened—”

  “Garrie,” Lucia said from her other side, faint with relief and stress—knowing better than any of them that Garrie was back.

  And then they surrounded her, touching her, offering her water and horchata and coffee and do you need to eat and coaxing and demanding. Garrie, Garrie, Garrie...

  But all she could think of was that familiar flavor of being, that choke of joy, that rush of power and pleasure and pewter eyes.

  Trevarr.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 8

  Sounds like Crunching

  Eventually Garrie had to open her eyes.

  Eventually she had to admit to herself that she was back at the park. At the picnic table.

  Nowhere near Trevarr. A man in a different world, in a terrible place, and a man in great need. Giving him what she could, in ways she’d never done before...that wasn’t enough.

  She lifted her head and found Robin’s appalled and anxious gaze. She blamed herself for what she perceived as Garrie’s distress, that much was evident. She had no way to know what had truly transpired during that wave of grief.

  Garrie managed to say, “It’s not your fault, Robin. Trevarr would have been taken no matter what.”

  She didn’t tell them what had just happened. She couldn’t. Not t
hat she didn’t trust them. But because she thought they would no longer trust her.

  The overwhelming cluster of bodies around her eased away—still worried, but giving her space. Garrie wiped one cheek, then the other; the desert morning air had just about dried them, anyway. “Even if he hadn’t been hurt. He did it for...” Her voice came to a squeaky stop. He did it for me.

  Sklayne—who hadn’t been here moments earlier, hadn’t even been in evidence since the previous evening—butted his head against her arm.

  Okay, she’d officially scared the crap out of all of them.

  “Fark,” she said. “Look, I’m okay. I’m sorry I scared you. I know I was...gone, sort of. But I was never not okay.”

  Except for the parts that weren’t okay at all. But she wasn’t going to mention those, and she wasn’t going to mention exactly where she’d gone or what she’d done.

  Saved him. Using energies transferred across worlds.

  They were her friends, but they didn’t want what she had to tell them. Especially her renewed determination to find Trevarr.

  Robin still eyed her somewhat askance—and just a little too speculatively.

  Robin knew what had triggered Garrie’s little sidestep out of this world’s reality, after all. And Robin was the one Garrie trusted the least, when all was said and done. She’d earned her spot at this table and at Quinn’s side, but she’d paid a big price along the way—one she wouldn’t have paid at all if she hadn’t been so irrevocably focused on what she thought she already knew. If she hadn’t been so unable to accept Garrie on her own terms.

  If she hadn’t blithely gone about things her own way.

  So on the one hand, Garrie could look her straight in the eye and say again, “It’s okay. It wasn’t you.”

  And on the other, Robin was completely correct—her behavior had left Garrie vulnerable, had left Trevarr injured...and now Garrie knew, more profoundly than they could ever guess, just how he still suffered because of it.

  But even if Lucia thrust her drink at Garrie—along with a little sideways look that wasn’t nearly convinced—Robin believed the reassurances. “Good,” she said, sitting back a little.

  Garrie swallowed an unthinking sip of the horchata, taking her mouth by happy surprise. But when she caught Lucia’s eye, her friend hesitated, obvious questions on the verge of being voiced. Where did you go? What just happened?

  Garrie dodged it, taking a deep breath and infusing her words with certainty. “Okay, then. We’re all here. We know there are missing hikers and a thing on the mountain. It’s time for a plan.”

  “Wow,” Drew muttered. “Fake cheer, much?”

  “Seems to be more constructive than kicking shins under the table,” Garrie said, so very sweetly. “What do you think?”

  Drew instantly shifted what was probably meant to be a few surreptitious inches away. “Constructive. Yes. Let’s stick with constructive.”

  “See?” Garrie turned to back to Lucia. “I can do normal.”

  “Normal for you,” Lucia pointed out.

  “Normal for us,” Garrie said firmly.

  “One day,” Quinn said, taking a deeply resigned breath, “we’ll figure out what normal is. For now, a plan would be good.”

  “Plan for what?” Drew asked. “This thing covers the whole mountain, right? Isn’t that a little out of our league?”

  This time Garrie couldn’t keep the darkness from her voice. “Things change.”

  “Not that much.” Drew assumed a reasonable expression that didn’t quite sit well on his features. “We aren’t exactly the Men in Black. I mean, maybe we should just call someone.”

  “We’ve always been able to get around that.” But Quinn looked peevish, as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “It’s never been a whole mountain,” Drew said. “I think we should call the ranger station. Let them know we can help. And get the trails closed!”

  “Oh, yes,” Garrie said, gesturing broadly with the horchata. Lucia ably plucked it to safety. “Let’s just do that. Let’s go to a big governmental agency and announce that—mysteriously!—I know something about two missing hikers. Let’s just see how that goes for me, shall we?”

  “You’ve never hidden what you are,” Quinn pointed out. “Lucia’s family still thinks she’s some delicate emotional flower who does best when she hangs with you, and the archaeology department never had a clue about Drew. The bookstore still thinks I do special research projects on the side. But you? This is what you do, whether people like it or not. It’s why you can buy that house—or ten just like it.”

  “I’ve never hidden?” Garrie stood abruptly and still didn’t manage to tower over him. “I’ve been hiding all my life! My parents never even knew! And do you think I put reckoner on my tax returns? The system is happy enough to ignore my oddball consulting business when I stay out of the way, but what do you think is going to happen if I get loud and proud?”

  “Bad form, Quinnie,” Lucia murmured. Drew put his hands up in a wary gesture of surrender.

  “I think,” Garrie said, barging onward, “that it’ll take two minutes before the forest service brings in the FBI. And I don’t think we’ll get Mulder and Scully, either.”

  “Ooh,” Lucia said, nudging Garrie with her shoulder—trying to break the moment. “Mulder.”

  Quinn stood his ground. “It’s not like you talk much about how things were before we teamed up.”

  “You don’t like it when I do.” Garrie shrugged off Quinn’s quick scowl. “You don’t like that you never met Rhonda Rose, or that Lucia did. You don’t want to hear about the hard stuff.”

  Robin patted Quinn on the hand, leaning over the picnic table. “She’s right, you know.”

  Beneath Quinn’s fair hair, his face took on color. “This isn’t about me.”

  “It shouldn’t be about me, either,” Garrie said, sitting against the edge of the picnic table. “But it farking well will be if we go official.”

  Fur flowed against her arm, sparking prickly energy up her skin. *Bite him?*

  “No, don’t.” She tugged mildly at the hair behind her ear. “Well, maybe bite him just a little.”

  “What? No, hey—” Quinn jerked his gaze around, hunting and not finding Sklayne.

  “Relax.” I think.

  Quinn’s mouth twisted. “Okay, I get it. I think closing the trails is important, but it’s your call.”

  “Yes,” Garrie said. “It is.”

  “Quinnie,” Lucia said softly, absent words as she poked her straw at the bottom of the empty cup, “Do you really think no one noticed something hinky went on in San Jose? Do you really think they can’t link us to it in no seconds flat, if we give them reason to try? You weren’t there, but I was. And Drew.”

  Drew made a strangled noise.

  “And Sedona wasn’t exactly quiet during your visit,” Robin observed.

  Quinn dropped his forehead to the table. “Uncle,” he said. “Uncle, uncle, uncle.” And then, without lifting his head, he raised his muffled voice. “The idiom of saying uncle goes all the way back to the Roman Empire. Patrue, mi Patruissimo!”

  “There,” Lucia said. “All is well with the world. Quinnie is spouting us irrelevant facts.”

  And for the moment, everything was.

  “Okay,” Garrie said, raising her voice just that slightly. “Now. I think we need to go back to the trail. We need to define the extent of the entity, as well as its rate of change. We were there just the other day, right? And I didn’t even begin to perceive it. So either it’s changing fast, or it’s only tied to the mountain in a few places and is mostly hovering.”

  “Like a cloud ceiling,” Quinn said, slipping into problem-solving mode as he sat up straight again.

  “If that’s the case,” Garrie said, “then we’ve got to pinpoint the connections, and then protect the rest of the trails from becoming connections.”

  Lucia fiddled with her horchata straw, pinning Garrie with a sloe-eyed
glance. “And we need to find those hikers.”

  Garrie pushed away a twinge of guilt on their behalf. “If we do this right, the hiker-finding people can find the hikers. This thing knows my touch, now—I need to stay as passive as possible while we’re out there.”

  Robin laughed out loud—and then bit her lip, adjusting the snug bodice of her blouse but hardly looking abashed. “Because you’re so good at passive.”

  Garrie pondered sticking her tongue out. The sensation of energy-prickly fur flowed away from her, and she wondered if she should warn Robin. Or maybe Sklayne had simply gone off to play with a bug.

  Garrie winced, rubbing the edge of her brow. “Well, whatever,” she told Robin. “In this case, that’s how it’s got to be.”

  Lucia gave her a doubtful glance, tiny worry lines between her brows. “You think the Secret Recipe will work?”

  *Not strong enough. Thing of my world,* Sklayne said, reminding Garrie. The air above Robin’s head vibrated slightly, emitting a fine sprinkle of...something, most of which embedded in her kicky new haircut.

  “I know,” Garrie told him, and was rewarded when the others barely blinked. She translated for them. “This thing tastes like Kehar.”

  *Portal,* Sklayne muttered. *Krevata. Broke things. Broke beings.*

  Broken beings. That just couldn’t be good. Not if Keharian entities had come through...possibly even gotten trapped here.

  Could. Not. Be. Good.

  Garrie swallowed the hard, cold impact of it and said, “Remember what that stupid little butter knife did to Trevarr? Because it was silver?”

  Sklayne made a noise that was half shudder, half approval, and half crunch.

  “Silver...” Lucia scrunched up her face. “Colloidal silver?”

  “Don’t you think?” Garrie asked. “We can mix it with the rest of the Secrets, put it in some kind of delivery system...see if we can set borders for our unwelcome beastie.”

  *Sad beastie,* said Sklayne, in a new sprinkle of fine, dark objects over Robin’s head. *Wants to go home. Too broken.*

  Garrie heard something threaded alongside Sklayne’s usual irreverent cheer—a wistful and sorrowing tone.

  Even a not-cat might get homesick.