pupils were just black spots the size of dust specks in the famously golden brown of his irises, and they veered around, never quite settling on anything. He rubbed the tips of his thumbs against the balls of his index fingers, back and forth, back and forth, as if he was playing a tiny violin, and she could see his pulse practically jumping out of his neck. He certainly wasn’t lying about having a hard time sleeping. Looking at him, she doubted if he’d be able to sleep in a vat of liquid Dream.
“I’m so glad you came,” he said again, looking up at the ceiling, out the windows, down at his tapping feet. “We’ve only been here three months, you know? Had the place built, moved in…It was our dream house, Kymmi and me. My wife, Kym, I mean, and our daughter, Arden. Well, you’ll meet them when Merritt gets back with them.”
“What made you move here?”
“I do a television show, The Monastery? It’s a comedy.”
“Of course.”
“And there’s been talk of a film. For me, I mean, not for the show, so I wouldn’t need to work so much, so I don’t have to stay in Hollywood. We thought, for Arden…not living there might allow her a more normal upbringing. We wanted to be somewhere less crazy, more wholesome. I told my producer I wanted to set up a studio here, film the show from here.”
She hid her amusement by picking up her bag and getting out her notepad and pen. Was he serious? Triumph City was a cesspit. She’d spent the night before examining a murdered prostitute and watching a fatal gang fight.
Then she caught herself. For men like him, Triumph City was more wholesome. He didn’t live in Downside, he didn’t even live in Cross Town or Northside. The white brick monstrosity he and his wife had built sat outside the city limits, out where the streets and houses grew wider and the range of experience grew narrower. What used to be a bustling suburbia and was just now starting to be rebuilt after Haunted Week had decimated the population and driven everyone into the perceived comfort of semi-communal living.
Just the thought of all that empty land outside the walls of the house made her feel she was being watched, not to mention that sitting in the presence of someone speeding into the next dimension was enough to set her twitching. She gripped her pen more tightly and looked up, hoping to ground herself somehow.
She was being watched. A blond woman whose pert nose was as artificial as the deep lavender of her eyes studied Chess from the doorway. The woman’s hair hung in loose porn-star curls around her shoulders, and the snug ivory dress displayed her swelling bosom and an abdomen Chess imagined she could bounce a quarter off of, but there was nothing sexy about her—no spark of warmth or intimacy, no sense that anything of interest hid behind those startling eyes.
“Kymmi, darling,” Roger began, jumping to his feet, “this is Cesaria Putnam, from the Church, she’s come to take care of—”
“I know who she is.” Kym Pyle gave her husband a look that could cut glass. “And don’t sit on the coffee table, please. I’ve asked you before.”
So much for the loving family. Maybe it wasn’t muscle and silicone beneath that soft jersey dress. Maybe it was steel and microchips.
“Sorry, sorry, sweetness. I forgot.”
Kym ignored him, turning the weight of her disapproval onto Chess. For a second Chess saw herself as this woman must: her dyed-black hair with its Bettie Page bangs, her faded red sweater and black jeans, her dusty down-at-heel boots. Nothing. No one of importance, an urchin, someone with no ancestry to speak of. Never mind that Chess deliberately sought to give that impression when she went on a case. It still stung a little.
Then the moment passed. She wasn’t here for a social visit. She was here to bust someone’s ass for defrauding the Church, and she was damned good at her job.
So she met that bitch-queen stare with one of her own and plastered a smile across her face. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Pyle. Why don’t you sit down too? I have a lot of questions.”
Kym raised a sculpted eyebrow but said nothing as she placed herself in one of the armchairs, her legs crossed tidily at the ankles.
They sat for a few minutes listening to Roger grind his teeth before Arden Pyle entered. Chess put her at about fourteen, pretty, with grayish eyes and a sullen air. A shapeless blue sweater covered her from neck to midthigh, with blue jeans below, and her bare toenails were painted black. For some reason the sight made Chess smile.
“Okay,” she said, “so why don’t you all tell me when this started. When did you first see the spirit, or the first spirit? Dates, places, whatever you can remember.”
“There’s no point to any of this,” Arden said, her tone belying the sweetness of her round little face.
“Arden dear, now you let Miss Putnam—”
“There’s no point”—Arden glared at her father—“because I know you’re faking it.”
Not every family situation will be pleasant; not every home is happy. Your job will be to determine whether that displeasure has drifted into dishonesty.
—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin
“Arden!” Kym Pyle’s skin reddened beneath the perfect mask of her makeup. “How dare you say such a thing!”
Roger cast an anxious look in Chess’s general direction—she doubted he would actually be able to focus on anything—and said, “Arden, honey, you know that isn’t true. You’re being very unfair, Mommy and Daddy would never do something like that.”
Arden’s pretty little face scrunched itself into a glower. “Give me a break.”
“Miss Putnam, I assure you we’re not doing anything of the kind. Our daughter has a very active imagination.”
Maybe, maybe not, Chess thought. She’d have to make sure she got a chance to talk to Arden Pyle alone at some point. Not today—they’d be watching her too closely—but at some point. “That’s okay, Roger. Let’s just get back to the question, shall we? When did you first see the entity?”
“This is bullshit,” Arden said. Chess steeled herself for more delaying on the part of her parents, but neither reacted.
Instead, Kym spoke up. “I was in my work room. Embroidery. I’m putting our family tree on a tapestry for that wall.” She nodded to indicate the wall behind Chess, who didn’t turn around.
“I was just finishing my great-grandmother’s name when I realized it was quite cold, despite my sweater. So I got up, planning to call one of the staff members to turn up the heat, and…” Her hands clenched in her lap. “It was a woman. She looked terrified, and I spun around to see if something was behind me, but nothing was. When I turned back around to ask her what she was looking at—I thought maybe she was one of the staff—she was gone.”
“I saw a man,” Roger said. “In one of the guest rooms. I’d gone in there to check and see if we needed anything—we were having some friends stay that weekend—”
Arden snorted.
He ignored her. “—and I thought I’d check the bathroom of the room they’d be staying in, make sure we had shampoo and toothpaste, you know, the things people need. I didn’t see him so much as glimpse him, standing in front of the window—I think it was a man, anyway, taller and broader than a woman—but by the time I realized it wasn’t one of the staff, he’d disappeared.”
“Did you feel anything? Cold, nerves, fear, anything unusual?” Not everyone did, but then not everyone knew that.
“No. Like I said, I assumed he was staff, waiting for me, or taking a few minutes for himself. I don’t mind if they do that, as