Rangers of the Rift, Season 1

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5

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Sneaking out is surprisingly easy.

I lie awake, turning the quarter over in my palm. No sign from Jewel. Did my summons work? I wonder where she is. Has the disaster struck? What’s twisting the energies at her grave? For a moment, I’m back in Sand Dollar, crouched under a full moon, swathed in thick salty air, carving my name into a small tombstone at the back of Richardson Cemetery.

This evening, Dad had that not again look on his face when he, Mom, and Lillie pulled up to get me from the graveyard. Mom looked ill. They don’t know about the Ranger gig, but even my Praeses and her special concoctions can’t completely wipe their memories of that morning they came down to the Sand Dollar station. A patrol had found me bruised, bloody, and dead to the world, prostrate over a half-dug grave.

Reflected in the mirror across the room, the clock digits burn green. Lillie jabs me in the shin, mumbles something like “bubbles are coming,” and rolls over. Even if I weren’t juiced with adrenaline, I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep with her karate-kicking away next to me. What’s she fighting? I wonder. Then my thoughts turn darker: What would it be like if I had to shepherd her lost spirit through the Limen and send my baby sister beyond that rippling sheet? My gut twists as the clock ticks down.

11:58. I touch the eagle side of the quarter to my lips, a bit of superstition I picked up in training and can’t shake. Some animal spirits protect those journeying through the Limen, they say.

Midnight. Go time. I slide out of bed, tap my phone light on, and slip into my shoes. I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, but just in case we’re not back before the race, I grab my track uniform. Using the shorts as a sound buffer, I scoop up my parents’ car keys.

Tad meets me in the hallway and hands me a jacket. “Got cold out.”

I start walking. “We’ll try the forest first. Have you Seen anything about our Ranger?”

He shakes his head. “The Waif can’t leave the forest. He must’ve been killed there.”

It is cold outside. I shrug into the jacket and notice the smell, pine needles and brushfire. Muted but definitely Tad. He must be wearing his dad’s. Our breath chugs soft and white into the air.

I snuggle deeper into the coat and inhale his scent.

The lot is bleary, checkered with black emptiness and dirty glow. My parents’ bluish headlights flash twice as I click the doors unlocked.

I take the road toward the high school where the track starts. By silent agreement, we leave the radio off, and there’s only the sound of the tires purring against pavement. I glance at him and feel a strange tightening inside me. If only I were a normal girl and he just a normal guy and we were out on an illicit date instead of a dangerous quest.

Tad stares out his window. “I never understood something.”

“What’s that?”

“Why are souls”—he gropes for the word—“so stupid?”

I bust a laugh.

“No, I’m serious. Look, you and I—we’re smart, aren’t we? I imagine if I died right now, I’d know the hell what the Limen was and that I had to get beyond it.”

I consider this. Tad’s always asking the Big Questions. I ignore them when I can and quash them when I can’t ignore them.

“Can we not talk about this right now?”

He frowns. The expression makes him look older. “I was just thinking, what if we could, I don’t know, make it all stop? We wouldn’t need Rangers. There’d be no Vagari, and maybe—hell, maybe Sight’s teachable. Maybe we could teach people to See into the Limen. See their loved ones when they need to.”

“What about the beyond? Waifs can’t wait around in the Limen forever. We know what happens when they do.”

“Maybe...they can wait around just long enough for everyone to...be at peace?”

I don’t bother telling him how optimistic he sounds. Euphemism for never gonna happen.

We pull into the parking lot at the edge of the track. It’s empty except for a pickup. A bunch of kids lean against it, smoking, drinking, and laughing.

“Souls aren’t stupid,” I say softly.

Out in the cold, I hug myself as I begin the walk up the slope. Grass crackles under my feet, and the wind breaks across my back, dousing me in the smell of Tad’s jacket.

“Waifs are split down the middle,” I continue. “Deep down, they know they’re supposed to let go, be part of something else now. But part of them still thinks they’re alive. The Lost are just...confused.”

We’re at the edge of the forest.

The tingle feels like someone’s pinching the nerves along each vertebra.

Tad’s fingers slip into mine as he glances at me, opens his mouth, then closes it again.

“What?” I ask. The skin of his palm is warm and dry, and the feel of him so close stirs a chemical cocktail swirling through my core. I want to kiss him. The urge comes unbidden and strong.

He squeezes my hand, then drops it. “Nothing.”

I exhale hard like it’s the start of a race, and we head into the forest.

The first sign is the pin flags: they’re shredded and flutter in the light breeze, catching on twists of bare branches. “Damn,” I mutter, bending to pick up a strip by the light of my phone.

“You think it’s already turned?” Tad shines his phone up into the canopy.

“No. This looks accidental.” The turning of a Waif is a slow, complicated process, intermittent and destructive. They don’t realize they’re feeding on the life energy around them until it’s too late, until the hunger consumes them and they gobble up their own soul. But until that happens, there’s fallout as they accidentally possess ensouled beings that happen upon their path. Sometimes only an instant—enough to make a person say something they wouldn’t otherwise and don’t remember saying afterward. Sometimes it’s longer—enough to cause a dog to throw itself against a fence until it’s concussed. No vet can explain its behavior.

Right now, some unwitting victim is lying awake in their bed, trying to figure out what the hell came over them in the forest, when they started attacking the flags, ripping them to pieces and flinging them like confetti.

Waifs don’t realize they’re doing it...and once they do, they are no longer Waifs but Vagari, able to control who and what they possess.

—Emily.—

Tad points even before I spot the silvery outline. With Sight, Tad’s consciousness is always skimming the boundary of the Limen, something I can only do with deep effort, while spending drift energy.

“What’s your name?” I ask the Waif as it nears. The outline shivers and ripples like the white curtain of the beyond.

—I do not...remember.—

Expected this close to turning. I move toward the Waif cautiously, extending a hand. “Where do we find her? Do you know where she is?”

My hand reaches toward the outline and dips into his halting form. It stings for both of us, like icy needles. Everyone knows ghosts produce cold; that chill retreats until finally, right before the end, you have to touch them to feel anything at all. My heart breaks for him. He really is like a light almost extinguished. And when it goes out? Then the real darkness.

—Where is Jewel?— His voice is plaintive, not curious.

“I called her. She’s on her way.” It’s not a lie, just...hopeful.

His voice howls; it sounds like wind passing over a wide-mouthed pipe.

My brows draw tight. “Has she hurt you?” I’ve heard of Rangers going bad, torturing Waifs in their charge, leading them here and there but never where they need to go.

He moans: a tree limb creaking under its own weight.

—Not...hurt.—

“Skittles!” Tad’s voice is sharp, and at once I can smell it. Smoke.

My Waif will be gone in the morning if I don’t find a way to help him. More smoke, thicker now, and above the trees a glow of orange. The forest’s on fire.

Tad pulls on my arm. “We have to get out of here.”

“Is this where they killed you?”

—Me. My family. I can show you.—

From the look of his clothes, he’s been here a few decades. “Was it for money? Do you remember?”

“Em, we have to go now!” Ash floats by me like gnat clouds, catching in my hair and eyelashes.

—We...stopped to help...Dad said it was dangerous for her to be all alone.—

Same old story. It makes me so angry I want to punch something. An innocent do-gooder who stops to help someone broke down on the side of the road, gets ambushed, dragged into the woods, and left for dead. The pain coiling around this Waif makes me wonder if he wasn’t r***d and tortured first.

“Em.”

I jerk out of Tad’s grasp. “I know!” I turn back to the Waif. “I’m sorry.”

—Emily.—

I’m crying, and Tad is pulling me from the forest. My legs won’t operate. It’s like they’re trying to take root. The sound of my name from his ghostly lips screeches in my ears.

A car door slams. A seatbelt clicks around me. The vehicle jerks forward, stops abruptly. Tad’s driver side window lowers. He curses at the kids to get lost, get away from the fire. They’re too high to care, oohing and ahhing at the orange flood. Up goes his window as the car accelerates onto the road.

We pick up speed. The part of my mind still connected to the Waif stretches away from the magnetic pull of the bond between a Ranger and her charge.

My eyes close against the terrible sensation. Then they jolt open.

We’re stopped at the light before the highway onramp. Across the distance, the forest is a creeping red flame—

—and my Waif is outside my door.

“Oh, God,” I whisper from the passenger seat.

Tad’s head whips toward me. “You okay?” And then he Sees him, and Tad’s spine goes rigid.

Waif or Vagari now? “Is it...gold or silver?” I mean the energy at the spirit’s core. Gold for good. Silver for evil.

Tad squints, squeezes his eyes shut, opens them again. “It’s not possible.”

“Gold?” I feel a rush of hope. “Please, tell me—or show me!”

Instantly, I feel the connection at my gut, and now I See.

My skin tingles with relief tinged with dread. The Waif is here, not left behind in the burning forest. His slender shape is flickering like a lightning storm, and deep inside is a grayish shine. Not true silver, but neither purest gold. The only thing I can think is that he’s feeding deeply on the life energy around him but fighting the descent into pure hate with every good, human desire left in him. Only a Vagari can leave the place it was killed.

—Follow,— the spirit says. The voice is worlds different from the trusting, hopeful one I heard just minutes ago. But it’s not Vagari. Not yet. It can’t be, or it’d be trying to possess us. It knows my name.

“Switch with me,” I tell Tad.

He grunts his assent and breaks our connection.

The red light glares. Our doors click open in simul fashion. I’m belting into the driver’s seat as the light turns green. A nod from Tad, and I floor the gas.

Soon, we’re hurtling along the highway, letting the untethered spirit take us wherever it wants us to go.