Rangers of the Rift, Season 1

6

6

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We breach a tunnel of tall pine trees. I don’t have to take the brochure out of my back pocket to know we’re headed to the Calloway.

Tad’s clutching the middle armrest, watching the sliver of trembling grayish light lead our way. We pass two granite pillars, each crowned with the carved snout of a grinning wolf. I’m glad that a Ranger’s vision is incomplete while governing her human body. I see only with the limited scope of one well acquainted with the paranormal. I would hate to have to See all the time what Tad Sees.

“Turn it off,” I tell him. It doesn’t come naturally, but he’s told me keeping his Sight closed can help with the sense of displacement and sometimes even physical nausea that comes with his Sight straddling dimensions. As he’s gotten older, the symptoms have lessened, but he says it’s still draining, like looking at a blue screen too long.

He shakes his head. “You’ll know the second it goes silver.”

The iron gates stand open, dressed in curling vine. Up close, the mansion is smaller than it looked in the brochure—two stories, perhaps four or five bedrooms, a servant’s house off to the side where a chimney is belting smoke. The entryway beckons from a deep arch. The grinning wolf motif completes in a bronze keystone, which we walk beneath to approach the double doors.

From under the arch, the sparse highway traffic is muffled. Vaguely, I hear the siren of an emergency vehicle careen toward the burning forest. The current of orange flame shifts now like an undulating ribbon across the northern horizon.

The spirit turns to look at us.

—Almost.— Voice like a pencil breaking, sharp and unexpected.

The double doors squawk open, and I move into the dim foyer. A low-hanging chandelier glimmers. No cobwebs. The smell inside is of citrus and cinnamon. Welcoming.

At the concierge desk, a mustached man in a battered-looking cream tux is snoozing, chair legs knocked back. The great room is two stories high, hung with portraits, and a cherry-wood railing circles the second floor. On the wall to the right of the concierge hangs a family portrait featuring a mother and father, a teen boy in a starched shirt and tie, and a three- or four-year-old girl in a white dress.

—Almost.—

The Waif sweeps through me, a shock of electricity sucking the strength from my body.

Tad is shaking. “I don’t like this.”

“Just a little further,” I say.

What does it look like? That almost-ruined soul? I let myself drift the barest moment to see what Tad Sees...

A young man, about my age, gazes straight back at me. His impassive face is all skin stretched hungrily over bone, blood vessels black and throbbing with a slow, coagulated pulse. His eyes are empty orbs.

Leave the drift. Now!

I can almost hear my Praeses snapping the command. I yank my consciousness away, but not before—

—Emily.—

The way he says my name has subtly shifted. His voice is now sinuous, slinking inside me. I feel compelled in a deeper way, organ-deep, as if my heart and stomach and pancreas would cut themselves out of my body for him. It hurts. No... And now I feel Tad’s hand clutch mine and yank—“Silver, silver!”—because it’s happened. We’re too late. Waif no longer, this soul is Vagari now, and with the lasso of my name around my neck, he can make me do anything—tap dance and pull my own fingers off while cackling the alphabet backward if he wants.

—Emily was her name too.—

He touches my cheek with hands that have become claws; at each knuckle protrudes a thorn-like talon. If I looked in the mirror, I’d see my face grubby with ash; the searing pain I feel at his touch is entirely internal. His power feeds off me, and I’m compelled to reciprocate. I trace the thorns that track up his bare arm. How have I never seen it? This ugliness can be beautiful...

A clatter startles me, and I feel my guts yanked by the Vagari even as Tad digs his fingers into my wrist. The concierge has crashed his front two chair legs back on the floor, spilling the coffee from his desk. He splutters at us. “H-how long have you been standing—why didn’t you say—what do you want?”

“Tad,” I groan through gritted teeth. The Vagari’s pulling me into drift again; I’m losing consciousness.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” I hear Tad saying politely. “Yes, we’d like a room. Are there—how do I say this—any rooms your customers seem to least prefer?”

I jam my hand into the front pocket of my jeans and rustle the quarter up so the eagle once more faces outward. The Vagari relaxes its grip on what feels like my liver, but only barely.

“Least prefer? Well,” blusters the concierge, “I don’t know what you mean. Our rooms are all five-star quality, I assure you. Look, is she all right? Should I call—”

Jaw clenched, I thrust my hand in my nonexistent cleavage and pull out the coffee grounds, scattering them in an arc between the three of us and the Vagari. The spirit’s confusion is instantaneous. The compulsion lifted, I gasp, my blood surging.

“We’ll take your cheapest,” says Tad.

The man blinks at my immodest performance, oblivious to the creature in our midst. “The suites are a hundred fifty a night—”

“Your cheapest,” I snarl.

“Well, there’s the servant’s house, but—”

A thud and bang. Then a girlish shriek, and now I know I’ve got a serious problem.

“That’s her,” I say to Tad.

“His kid sister.” Tad points at the painting that caught my eye a moment before.

“Crap. She’s turning, too. She must’ve been killed here. They got him in the forest and brought her back here.” I fumble for the holy water, once again at the bottom of my laptop bag.

The concierge’s eyes are wide. He grabs his desk phone, but I leap toward him and pull the cord.

“Who are you?” His voice and mustache quiver.

“Nobody,” I say, and with careful concentration, I drift into the Limen long enough to reach into him where his spirit joins his body: it looks like a jellybean of liquid gold at the core of his being. I touch it gently, and he collapses back onto the desk, asleep.

“Did you just—?” Tad starts, eyes wide.

“We can’t afford the cops right now.” But I’m panting from the effort of pacifying a living spirit. I’ve only done it once before and only with my Praeses by my side. My stomach twists from the danger of it. If I’d gotten it wrong, I could’ve killed him.

But he’s alive. And there’s still work to do.

Behind me, I hear the Vagari sniffing, swaying, and slithering, animal-like, among the decaf grounds. He’ll tire of counting them soon. We have minutes.

I look Tad in the eyes. He glances at the unconscious concierge, then back at me.

“She hasn’t turned yet,” I say.

Tad nods an affirmative. “What do you need?”

“Same as always.”

“I hate it.” His grip on my arm actually hurts. “I hate just standing there.”

Tad’s eyes are lily green when he’s happy and light blue when he’s emotional. Right now, they’re glassy, like a morning sky. For a moment, I think of Emily Mars as Vagari: She would force him to tear those eyes out so she could stare into them forever. I shudder and smile so he knows I’m okay. Then I stride quickly, before I can think of an alternative, toward the source of the ache between my shoulder blades.