Rangers of the Rift, Season 1

2

2

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I head to the local Italian joint to carb up. In the foyer, Tad Beasley catches my eye, and I can’t help smoothing down my tank top, cursing the sports bra I’m still wearing. I was too busy thinking about the Waif to change. Runners have precisely zero curves unless you count high arches. Double-A all the way, baby.

Tad reaches my side while the ’rents do their gooey meet-and-greet like they haven’t seen each other in years. Hint: his parents had all of us over for dinner together in Sand Dollar just yesterday.

“Skittles,” Tad breathes in my ear, peppering my skin with goose bumps. He throws an arm around my shoulders and herds me to the table where a troupe of waters is waiting.

Emily “Em” Mars became M&M in middle school until Tad discovered my more colorful weakness. We disentangle. Lillie pads over and scoots into the booth, beckoning me to join her.

“You’re looking a little under the rainbow,” Tad says.

“Walk the track yet?”

He c***s an eyebrow. “In the morning. Why?”

He sits opposite us. Of course, he does. Because it would look totally awkward for us all three to be on the same side, wouldn’t it? My cheeks go a little hot.

I pull a coloring placemat and box of crayons from where the menus are stacked against the wall.

“Remember Scott?” I ask, referring to the guy who introduced me to the Other Side a little too intimately. My first mission after initiation. If it hadn’t been for Tad back then, I might not be in high school right now. “Here, Lillie-girl.” She takes the crayons eagerly. “Something you should See out there,” I tell him.

The slight stress on the word doesn’t slip past him. Tad’s face is slightly gray. His eyes tint from green to blue. His voice is wary: “This isn’t your sector.”

“But it is my job.”

“What does it want?”

“To find her.” I shrug. “Girlfriend, probably.”

“Where?”

“Across the streambed. Before the sprint.” I swallow. Right after the place where I fell. Our parents are making their way across the room along with a disgruntled-looking waiter. Dad has trophies in his eyes.

Tad lowers his voice. “And you’re sure it’s a Waif and not something else?”

I nod but feel uneasy. To be honest, I’m not really sure. I’m out of practice, after all. For the last twelve months since the exercise when I made the call to hold, to wait and see first, kill only once we knew for sure, I’ve been nothing but a tagalong. I join my Praeses only after a Waif has turned and once there’s no question. No room for error.

But that means I’m not doing half my duty. I’m not shepherding souls, only banishing bad guys. It feels wrong.

My Praeses says it’s to keep me safe—keep us all safe. If I go dying on her because I make a bad call, she’ll have to train up another Ranger. People will get hurt. I’m not ready, she says.

My jaw cramps around a scowl.

Today, I only saw the Waif for a second against the birch tree before his spirit slipped back into the Limen. He might be what I think he is: a sad, stranded soul, living in that terrible place between the here and the hereafter. But what if he’s Vagari, having lost all vestiges of humanity, a true creature of the Limen? What if he’s playing me, in the guise of one of the Lost? It’s possible. Rare, but possible. He knows my name. I shudder.

“Look,” Lillie insists, tapping my right shoulder. Her finger grazes the top of my ink like it always does. She can’t help it. Ever since I got the sleeve tattoo six months ago—an elegant Japanese cherry tree curving from wrist to collar bone—she’s been mesmerized by it.

“I want one,” she had whined to Mom, who was surprisingly supportive of my one-off recklessness. She even signed for me. Dad now...that was another story. He’d lit into me. Into both of us. Ruining my life, he’d accused her of. Then again, nothing new there.

“You’re not getting one, Lillie.”

“But Em says—”

“I don’t care what your sister says.”

“It hurts a lot,” I told her seriously.

Lillie’s eyes went wider.

“But it’s so beauuuutiful. It’s about death and life and the cyclical, ephemeral nature of all things,” she parroted.

Mom and I both rolled our eyes simultaneously. I made a mental note to watch what I say too loudly around her.

Now, I take her tracing fingers and give their tips a little kiss as I say to Tad, “It’s my job to be sure about what’s out there.” I look him square in the eye. “It’s a Waif.” Before he can protest, I turn to Lillie, who’s been drawing animals in red and blue. “So pretty! Is it a pony?”

“It’s a wolf and a unicorn.” She frowns. “And it’s scary, not pretty.” A wrinkle depresses the baby skin between her eyebrows.

“I’m sure it is, Lillie-girl. Tad, hand me a straw?”

“They’re having a fight and the wolf is going to win.” Lillie points. “It was in my dream. See?”

Startled, I take another look at her drawing. There are red spots on the blue unicorn. Blood. The wolf isn’t smiling. And those jagged things are teeth. Suddenly, I’m not hungry.

“Lillie, that’s...” I begin.

“One helluva dream,” Tad says, but he’s looking at me.

My sister nods importantly. She folds the paper in regular patterns, making a little origami envelope. She shoves the compact paper rectangle into my hand. “I made it for you.”

After a family hot tub soak and shower, I tell my parents I’ll be in the hotel dining room where the WiFi’s stronger. I cozy up in one of the big leather armchairs with my laptop. The lobby’s fireplace crackles happily. I page through news articles, going back the last few months, then years. Homicides, suicides, missing persons...I read for an hour, getting nowhere.

Several hotel patrons arrive, each ushering in a swell of cold through the open door. I shiver and then gasp as a hand touches my shoulder.

“What the hell?” I say in greeting, though part of me takes to fluttering. Tad stands at my elbow, no shirt, swim trunks poking out from under a wrapped towel. My face is nearly level with his carved hip bones.

“Wasn’t sure you’d be here.” He gives his hair a wet-dog shake.

“Gee, thanks, I needed another shower.”

“There’s my Sour Patch.” He plops into the armchair next to me. “Thought you might go all G.I. Jane on me. Riveting, obituaries are. Anything interesting?” He nods at my laptop.

I snort, then sigh. “I’ve been thinking...I mean, you’re right. This is somebody else’s sector. Where’s the local Ranger? Why hasn’t she done something? Tad, that Waif—”

“Or Vagari.”

“—has been here a long time.” I glare at him. “It’s not a Vagari.”

“But you don’t know that.”

“I’m pretty sure.”

He shrugs. “Your soul,” he quips.

I palm the object nearest me and beam it at his head. He catches Lillie’s origami envelope. I must’ve been toying with it while reading. I don’t remember taking it out of my pocket.

“How do you know,” he asks, “how long it’s been here?”

I stare blankly at the obit feed. In my mind, I’m back in the forest. I can barely see his face. I can only almost hear his voice, desperate, fading. The chill of autumn before sunset on my neck, not the cold of a trapped spirit. Just the coming night. “I couldn’t feel the cold,” I say softly. “He’s being absorbed into the Limen, and he’s almost gone. His voice was—”

“Its,” says Tad angrily.

“What?”

“You keep calling it a he. It’s an it, Emily. This is why you failed the exercise!”

Fury stoppers my voice. He’s right, but I don’t need to be reminded that I’m a lame duck Ranger. I shut my laptop, face burning.

“Goodnight, Tad.”

“Skittles...”

But I turn my back, head down the hall. I don’t need his lecture or apology. I slip inside our darkened hotel room, greeted by soft snores. The Waif must’ve died many years ago to be this far gone. I brush my teeth and curl into bed. And if the local Ranger hasn’t run into him by now, she may never. Which means I’m his last chance.