Chapter 32
Chapter
Thirty-Two
We ate at the next restaurant down the street and got the call from Frank a few minutes later.
Joe’s body at the funeral home hadn’t been disturbed by anything, except for the birds.
About a hundred of them had landed in the backyard of the home all at once about the time we were clearing his house, and walked around. Then they’d flown off.
None of them were ducks. I asked.
Lunch was surreal, with Max and Claire nattering on about the town, Steve watching me with eyes that seemed a million years older now, and Mrs. Bell murmuring encouraging words at me to eat. I was starving, but also kind of sick to my stomach. I managed.
Claire also informed the group that she had decided I should go professional, and that she’d even picked out an office space for me and my emerging freelance exorcism business.
I’d laughed dismissively. No one else did.
Steve had watched me with solemn, certain eyes.
Max’s expression remained alert and focused, and Mrs. Bell just looked frightened.
Claire simply pulled a folder out of her bag and started discussing logos.
After lunch, Steve drove Claire and me to the lake cottage, and Max once again drove Mrs. Bell.
We went there in part to get Mrs. Bell back to her car, and in part to make sure the place was still standing.
Claire, for all her bravado, was the slowest to get out of the car once we were there, while Steve slammed his door and stared at the cottage angrily.
I looked at the building, trash spilling out over the front lawn, the cardboard covering the large hole in the picture window, trying to see it from their eyes. It wasn’t a good look.
Max moved briskly to the door, Mrs. Bell right behind him. I followed a little more gingerly, Claire at my side. Steve hung back for a few seconds more, then sighed and moved up next to us.
“This is where you got hurt?” Claire asked.
“Yep.”
“And we’re going back in?”
“It should be fine now.”
And it would be, I knew. Some exorcisms took months—years even, Mordechai had told me. But mine hadn’t, not so far. Not Mammon, not Pithius at the club…not my own personal plus one. Palemerious. The name danced over my nerve endings, slipping through my veins.
I shivered. Setting aside all that, from everything I’d read, home infestations were like dust bunnies. Once you got the house thoroughly cleaned, and the house or the land beneath it wasn’t the problem, it was simply a matter of staying vigilant.
When we stepped into the cottage, it was immediately evident that it was done.
The entire place emitted a sense of relief, like a sick person in the first clammy minutes after breaking a fever.
You knew you weren’t out of the woods yet, but you felt like you were surrounded by a new and overly friendly stand of trees.
“My God. This place is creep central.” Claire’s voice was hushed as we walked through the house, checking the same doors, finding the same piles of crap.
Steve didn’t say anything, but he stopped at a point on the floor where blood had been sprayed, his fists opening and closing.
Max and I exchanged a look. He didn’t know about Steve, what he’d endured, and questions burned behind his eyes.
I didn’t know the answers to those questions.
Steve had always been…Steve to me. I didn’t have friends. I didn’t have family, not anymore.
But I had Steve. And Claire too, now.
And Max?
I glanced to where he was standing a little too close to Claire and felt the smile tease at the corner of my mouth. Yeah, probably Max too.
Mrs. Bell was already on the phone again, arranging for help to continue cleaning it. When Max tried to protest, she shooed him away. “I had no idea this place looked this bad inside, Max. None. Least I can do is help fix it.”
Our two cars made it the long way around the lake and back to the Graham house by about four o’clock.
The sky was bright and bold, which boded well for the cleanup at the lake house, but the big house didn’t seem to get the memo about the summer day.
It squatted like an angry toddler in the middle of the clearing, the wind barely skiffing the tops of the trees and not at all touching the grass or bushes around the house.
The whole place looked desolate, though all the cars were lined up neatly, almost precisely along the drive.
“Well, this is nice, at least.” Claire didn’t seem to pick up any angry demon vibes, which I suppose was a good thing. “Nicer than it looked on Google maps at least. And it’s a horse farm, isn’t it?”
“Usually,” I said. “Not right now, though.”
“Oh.” She didn’t bother hiding her disappointment, but she still peered excitedly up at the house as Steve parked the car.
We got out and stood close together while Max parked his vehicle off to the side.
“This place has to be over a hundred years old, though, right? Is it amazing inside? Oh, hold on.”
She returned to the car and snagged a brightly colored overnight bag from the front seat.
I blinked. “You were pretty sure you were going to spend the night.”
She smiled sunnily. “I was! It always pays to be prepared.”
Steve, of course, had brought nothing, but I knew from long experience that Steve needed very little.
I watched my housemate from the corner of my eye as Max played the host once again, the second time in a week, giving the history of the house, the Grahams who lived in it, even mentioning the Bells as the caretakers of the horses.
If he noticed my attention, he gave no indication.
I had so many questions, though. Concerns.
Was his blood back to normal? Was he still dizzy?
Did he know that he’d been drained out by possessed people living in the heart of our city, as if that was a totally normal thing and not absolutely batshit crazy?
Unfortunately, those questions would have to wait.
We walked into the house, and Claire got her first blast of the evil that lurked there.
Sam stood at the top of the steps staring down at us. His pupils were completely dilated, black coins in a too-pale face. He wasn’t blinking. I’d never seen a child so utterly still.
“Hey, Sam,” Max said. “These are a few more friends of mine from the city.”
“She should go. Go! They both should.” His voice was high and thin, a little boy’s voice, but it was inflected with an ugliness that brought us all up short.
Max gave us a nervous smile. “That’s not very polite, Sam.”
“You shouldn’t have brought them here. You shouldn’t have brought anyone here. It’s a bad place!”
“Sam, honey?” an even fainter voice sounded, high above. Grandma Creepy and her sixth sense of Sam. The little boy turned and trudged away from the stairs, and Claire looked at me with big eyes. “Oh my God,” she breathed. “Is he possessed?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her all of it. Not yet.
“Let me show you around,” Max offered. The tour lasted a little longer than mine had, mainly because Claire was obsessed with the bric-a-brac in every room.
At one point, Mrs. Graham drifted in and, noticing Claire’s enthusiasm for the crap the family had collected over the past century, took over the tour.
Max moved back to me, and I was shocked to feel his fingers entwine in mine as he tugged me back a few steps from his mom, Steve, and Claire.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I guess.” I was still bleeding, but…less. “I’m not sure what to do next, though. I feel like it’s going to happen tonight, but why? Why not in the middle of the day, like we did things at the cottage?”
He made a face. “Do you think everyone needs to be here? Right now, we’ve got Sam and Mom, but Emily and Dad aren’t in the house. Grandma is, but she always is, so that’s not saying much.”
“How do you know they’re not in the house?”
“Well, we would have been introduced to Emily by now. She wouldn’t be able to resist saying hello to the newest pretty girl to come to the house.”
Something in his words hit me the wrong way, and I frowned. “What do you mean?”
He looked down at me, startled at the edge in my voice. “Nothing, just that Emily’s never been much one for competition. You managed to escape it—”
“No. Before that. ‘The newest pretty girl to come to the house.’” The phrase resonated with me, cold and sharp.
“Mr. Bell said Carol Ann got possessed right after Emily arrived—she didn’t want a new pretty girl stealing attention.
” I bit my lip, looking ahead to Claire.
“Now we’ve got another one. What if that’s a trigger? ”
Max frowned. “You don’t think Claire’s in any danger, do you? I mean, no one’s been hurt-hurt here.”
“Except the horses.”
He winced. “The horses. That was bad.”
“And Joe.”
“Well, Joe was pretty fucking unhinged to begin with. Claire seems pretty solid.”
“Yeah.” We’d moved to the back porch, and Claire’s bright voice carried back to us.
“Oh! You do have horses!”
Max and I exchanged a look, then hurried out. Mr. Graham stood at the paddock railing, along with Mr. Bell. Sure enough, there was a horse in the paddock. Only one, a sway-back mare that looked a hundred years old.
Mrs. Graham smiled. “Frank just hated there not being horses here. John brought one of the neighbor’s horses by. She’s on her last legs, poor thing, and the other horses are bothering her.”
“Won’t she be lonely?” This question was from Claire, and Mrs. Graham turned an approving smile on her.
“They brought some pals along for her as well. A couple of sheepdogs who’re friendly with John.”
“The horse is going to stay here? Overnight?” Max’s concern was evident. Claire crooked him a worried glance, but his mother stiffened.
“She’s going to stay here. She’ll be fine. John said he’s going to bunk down here for a few nights to make sure she settles in okay and see how things go.”