went inside.
No, Kym Pyle was not a woman with a lot of inhibitions. The window in the bathroom had no blinds or shades; cold white light spilled over the marble tub and floor and filled the mirror to Chess’s right. In summer it might have been pretty. Now it felt sterile, and hushed like a cemetery.
Something of life was in the room, though. The Spectrometer continued beeping, the high-pitched sound bouncing off the marble until it sounded more like one long continuous whine and Chess’s heart started pounding. Whatever noise her boots made on the shiny floor was lost while she walked this way and that, trying to determine the source of the beeps. Trying to find the ghost. Her shoulders tensed. She was not alone in this room, she knew it. Dead eyes watched her from a place she could not see. Her skin crawled and tingled, her tattoos warming, waiting for it. Whatever it was.
But nothing happened. After a few minutes she started to relax. The Spectrometer’s beeps didn’t have to mean a ghost was present, just that one had been—and there were ways, illegal ways, to fool even the Spectro. She didn’t see how any of those could be used here—there wasn’t much room to hide them—but still…
She shook her head. It was not time to start thinking of this as a real haunting yet. She was spooking herself. A bad move. Time to get going.
It wasn’t until she turned around to leave that she became aware of the smell. It had been there almost from the moment she stepped into the room, but subtle, almost undetectable. The minute she caught it, recognized it, it grew stronger still. Death. Decay. Rotting things, squirming things buried in the earth. Everything foul and wrong hid inside that smell, was caught by it and transmitted to her through it.
She still felt safe enough; even her tattoos had stopped tingling. But the odor remained, wafting through the air like a whisper. She checked the tub drain, wondering if perhaps the scent came from inside, but it was no stronger there than anywhere else.
That left the double sinks below the mirror. Her feet moved as if through mud. The smell was all she could think of, all she could focus on; it blurred her vision, made her ears ring and her head hurt.
The sinks were white, gleaming and pure in the dark green countertop. Chess thought the smell might be stronger there but couldn’t be sure. She was beginning to doubt she would ever breathe fresh air again. The thought of all the bacteria that must be carried in that smell, the thought of plagues and epidemics, made it almost impossible to check the other sink.
She didn’t have to. Movement caught her eye. She turned automatically and saw a cockroach crawling over the lip of the sink, its horrible black body an abomination against the spotless marble. Another appeared, and another. Chess forced herself to take a step closer, being careful to keep her body away from the counter itself, and saw movement in the drain, heard the dry rustle of scabrous exoskeletons rubbing together.
Her fists clenched. A spot of red liquid flew from the drain and landed on the mirror. Her insides twisted as one drop became two, became three, and blood burbled up from the drain, viscous bright blood filled with squirming bodies, rising in the sink.
She didn’t realize she’d been moving until the back of her thigh hit the high, cold side of the tub. For a second she teetered, trying not to fall, unable to take her eyes from the groaning, bubbling sink.
Her hand hit the edge of the tub to brace herself. She would not throw up, would not, could not. This too could be faked. It wasn’t a difficult trick to do. Even the smell of the blood, a coppery tang beneath the stronger odor of decay, could be faked. She’d never seen anything this elaborate on a case before, but she’d never investigated millionaires, either.
“Okay. Okay.” Her own voice soothed her, brought her back into herself. It was time to leave this room. Every cell in her body screamed at her to get out. She’d come back later, examine, investigate. She had the layout of the house down, she had an idea of how the family worked and what their relationships were, it was all she needed.
Her composure thus regained, she strode out of the bathroom with a smile that made her cheeks ache. Church policy for Debunkers: Never, ever indicate you’ve seen anything out of the ordinary or been scared by anything you’ve seen. If they’d staged it, they’d wonder why she hadn’t mentioned it and it would unbalance them. If they hadn’t, mentioning it might sound like an admission.
“Okay,” she said. “I think I have basically everything I need, so I’ll get back to the Church and start writing everything up, and I’ll be in touch soon.”
“Soon? How soon?” Kym did not look pleased.
“Oh, um, tomorrow, maybe, after sunset. We don’t really work on Holy Day, of course.”
Kym frowned. “We’re having a party tomorrow night. Arden won’t be here.”
Yes! Finally, something going right. Her chances of getting into the house would be much easier if there were a lot of people around anyway. And if Arden wasn’t home…
“I haven’t seen Arden’s room yet.” She turned to the girl. “Would you mind showing me before I go? That way you can be there while I look at it, it’s less like an invasion of privacy.”
Arden didn’t look convinced, but led Chess down the hall to the second door on the left—odd, wasn’t it, that her room wasn’t directly opposite her parents’?—and opened it.
Dark curtains on the windows turned the room into a cave. Chess picked her way across the floor, through the colorless, limp shapes of discarded clothing, and pulled the curtains. It only took a second to pop the wire out of the security alarm to disable it, and to unlock the window itself. It might be detected, sure, but it at least increased her odds of getting in easily when she came back later. She palmed the wire as she turned around.
The room was…just a room. Posters of pop stars covered the walls—apparently Arden was not into movie stars, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering what her father did for a living—and clothes and schoolbooks covered every available surface. A sparkly pink cell phone and matching laptop sat on an ornate white desk, which was itself almost hidden by stickers and pictures and scribbled phone numbers.
The rest of the room was dark blue and yellow, a surprising choice, but one Chess imagined Arden hadn’t made herself.
More clothes exploded from the closet, and Chess suspected from the anxious sidelong glances the girl kept giving the half-closed door that she had something hidden in there as well, but there was no point in trying to find out what. Not when she could look the next night with a lot more ease.
She gave Arden’s yellow bathroom a cursory glance—staying well away from the sinks—and made her goodbyes, taking with her Roger Pyle’s business card and a burning desire never to return.
Merritt was nowhere to be seen as she climbed into her car and pulled away from the garage. They’d searched the vehicle—expertly, but she knew they’d done it. She could smell them, sense them, hard hands rifling through her belongings, feeling around beneath her seats.
The wooden gate crept open for her once again and she was gone, speeding down the road, managing to get out of sight of the walls before she had to pull over and take her pills.
Worse still are those who commit the ultimate evil, who bind themselves unto the dead. No good can come of such an act; at the end of it lies only misery.
—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 37
“He could have made the brand, yeah,” she said, as Terrible slid the car up on the curb. The Johnny Cash CD cut off with the ignition, leaving too-loud silence in its wake. “It’s not something ghosts normally do, but it’s possible. Or he could have found it, or—I don’t know. It had to have happened right before she died, but I have no idea why.”
“He brand them dames