A Scrying Shame (6 page)

Arie sighed and trudged over to her mother.

“You need to make sure those children aren’t just tossing your boxes every which way. They’re just impossible. I told your father—”

She left before her mother could get a full harangue going and headed inside the house, avoiding the kitchen where Grumpa had retreated. She could hear him muttering about the “herd of buffalo” that had been set loose in his house.

Despite the chaos, the teens were doing a decent job. A trio stood in living room under the blue chunky-glass Lucite orb dangling from the ceiling by a large-linked brass chain. One of the girls looked over at Arie and pointed at it. “I love it!” she squeaked. “It’s a light, right?”

“Yeah.” Arie walked over and felt along the electrical cord that wound around the chain until she found the switch and clicked it on.

“Ooh, it’s so pretty,” the girl cooed.

“Uh huh. Gorgeous.”

A crash at the other end of the house set her heart racing. She hurried down the hall and discovered her father shooing two boys out of her room.

“We’re fine,” her dad said. “Just a little mishap.”

Arie checked to make sure his smile didn’t have the little worry lines that bracketed his mouth whenever he had to initiate soothing-pastor mode. They were absent, and she relaxed.

An hour and a half later, the teens piled back into the church van to follow Norm Kenwick’s truck over to the Stiles’ home in order to stack the odds and ends of furniture that wouldn’t fit in the space Grumpa had allotted her. Evelyn scurried to her car, anxious to beat them to the house. She was still calling out directions even as the van backed down the driveway.

Arie sighed and forced herself to return to the house. Quiet had finally descended. She headed to her room and discovered her father placing knickknacks on the shelves of a curio cabinet that had been temporarily relocated from the guest room to the hall. For a moment, Arie was reminded of Leonard Petranik’s narrow hallway, and she shivered. As she moved around her dad, she accidentally jostled the cabinet and caused several figurines to fall over with a clatter. Arie picked one up. A ceramic boy with enormous round eyes.
Grumpa collected Precious Moments figurines?

The noise brought Grumpa stomping down the hall to them. “Here now! You be careful there. Don’t you have any respect at all? This isn’t going to work out. I can’t have all this commotion. And I’m not going to have you crashing around and destroying my things. You never could—”

“Now, Harlan, let’s just relax,” Ed interposed. “Nothing was broken, and it’s just as much my fault as Arie’s. Neither one of us meant to disrespect your belongings.”

“Oh, really? Well, if we’re talking about disrespect, none of this was my idea, was it? If barging into a man’s home and forcing him to play nursemaid to a—”

“It wasn’t my idea, either,” Arie said. “And, for the record, I’m the one supposed to be watching you.”

“That’s enough, you two,” Ed said. “This is going to help both of you. In fact, I’m sorry to have to point this out, but neither of you has a choice. Instead of snapping at each other, you should be grateful.”

“Grateful?” Grumpa snorted. “Grateful for—”

“Yes. Grateful. Now, we’re going to need to find a new place for this cabinet. It sticks out into the walkway, and it’s going to get bumped again. Do you want it in your bedroom instead?”

“I want it back where it belongs.” Grumpa pointed through the open door of Arie’s new room.

“I understand you don’t like change, but Arie has to have a place for her things, too. How about the den?”

“No, it doesn’t belong there.”

“Harlan—”

“It can stay right here until she gets her own place, and then it can go right back where it belongs. The girl can be careful, can’t she?” Grumpa didn’t wait for an answer before marching back to the kitchen.

Arie sighed. “Dad, I can’t—”

“Honey, this is just temporary. Heaven knows it’s not ideal, but really, what can you do? Not that I would mind, but if this doesn’t work out, you’ll have to move back in with your mother and me. And that means your grandfather would end up in a nursing home. Either that, or he moves in with us, and you find other arrangements. Or, heck! We might all end up living together—one big happy family.”

Father and daughter shuddered.

“Okay, but what about when I’m back on my feet?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. At any rate, with you living here, we’ll have a better understanding of Harlan’s situation. He seems sharp as a tack to me, but your mother’s worried. And he has made some unusual choices lately.”

Arie sighed again, then went into her room to unpack. She wanted to make it as comfortable as possible. She had a feeling she’d be spending a lot of time there.

A few days after she’d settled in with Grumpa, Guts finally called. The job was on the rich side of town. The huge white van with BioClean emblazoned on the side was parked in the lot, letting her know she’d found the right address. As Arie pulled in next to it, she noticed a man walking away from the building. As he crossed in front of her car, their gazes met and held.

Wow
.

The blue of his eyes almost stopped her heart, but it restarted with a bang when he tossed her a wink. He was parked two slots down, and Arie got a nice, long bonus view of his butt while he walked to his car. She snatched her gaze away when he glanced back, but not before he caught her.

She waited until he’d driven off before getting out of her car. She noticed a sleek black pickup with the same logo parked next to the van.
Oh, crap
. The boss was here, and she was loitering in the parking lot, ogling strangers.

She thought about the guy’s wink and decided it had been worth it.

Guts stood next to Grady in the pristine white living room, issuing instructions. Grady had his clipboard out, and was nodding and taking notes. He wore his suit, too, but Guts was keeping it simple with jeans and a navy blue T-shirt with the BioClean logo. Arie hadn’t seen Guts since her interview and wondered if Grady had told him about her weird behavior at the hoarder job.

As she approached the men, Guts was saying, “Took the cops forever to release the scene. I was starting to think we weren’t gonna get the job, but the head of the HOA finally called and gave us the go-ahead.

“Bruno and Stan are gonna hate missing this one, but they’re on another job. So make sure you don’t eff this up. This is the big leagues here. The broad was a famous writer. Made a boatload o’ cash with some girly book”

“Cool,” Arie said. “What did she write?”

“How should I know? You think I got time to read? I got a business to run here.”

Arie decided to fade into the background. She really didn’t want to call attention to herself. Given recent events, she had no idea how she would react to a murder, and she certainly didn’t want to risk having a vision in front of her boss.

As soon as Guts left, Arie started hauling supplies to the apartment while Grady set up a clean zone—an uncontaminated area they could use as a base for supplies and equipment. In a job this “wet,” booties and gloves were changed each time anyone on the crew crossed the barrier. In this case, the wide, square foyer was the obvious choice for the clean zone, and little more needed to be done.

Grady and Guts had done the preliminary inspection. The murder itself had taken place in the victim’s bedroom, but according to Grady, other areas were involved, too. Apparently, the victim had tried barricading herself in the bathroom, but then the attack crossed the hall to the bedroom.

Arie listened carefully as Grady outlined the plan.

“Okay, first we grab and bag. Then we do a preliminary wash down of the walls and exposed surfaces. I’m guessing we’ll have to dump the mattress. After all that, we’ll pull the carpet and see what we got to deal with then.”

“What do you mean?”

“If she bled out on a tile floor, there might be a chance that the underlayment wouldn’t be too bad. But a carpet? No way the underflooring won’t be a mess. This one time? The blood soaked all the way through to the apartment below.” Grady grinned. “That was a pretty good job there. It turned into a two-fer. We got called in to deal with the overflow in the downstairs place.”

Crime scene cleanup had its own special kind of humor.

Arie decided to do a preliminary look-see, so she’d know what to expect. She started with the bathroom. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared, but nevertheless, it was obvious that an attack had occurred there. Bloody footprints and streaks smeared in long swaths across the tiled floor. Arie could tell the victim had attempted to hold the door shut against the intruder. She avoided looking directly at the blood. For now, anyway. She wasn’t sure how she would handle it when she had to, and she didn’t want Grady popping in until she did know.

Following the blood trail, she saw that the attack continued across the hall into the victim’s bedroom. Once a pristine white oasis, the room now looked like an abattoir. Most of the furniture was covered with a fine layer of fingerprint dust. As nearly as Arie could tell, Grady may have gotten his wish about the mattress. It looked as if it had been spared.

Unfortunately, the carpet did not fare as well. Arie swallowed. Grady had said they might have to remove floorboards. How could that much blood come from just one person? That was when Arie made her mistake. She looked at the blood dead on.

A red haze covered her eyes, and utter panic flooded her body and soul. She grabbed the edge of a nearby dresser to steady herself.

As before, the blood shimmered with an almost painful radiance. Arie tried to take a deep breath, but her lungs would only cooperate with short, raspy pants.

Fear—no, panic—scattered her thoughts.
Lossst.
The thought intruded like a knife into her skull.
So lost. Where am I?
Good question. Not hell, Arie decided. But definitely not the place Arie had visited during her own time on the Other Side.
Lossst.
She sensed the voice coming from a place of confusion and despair. Arie felt it trying to take over her mind. There was an unearthly wailing and an endless stretching of time. A low, moaning chorus filled her ears.

“Holy, holy, holy.”

It took a minute for Arie to understand why Grady didn’t burst through the door. She wasn’t hearing with her ears but with her mind.

She began to hyperventilate. The white flash exploded in her head. Then . . .

Frenzied movement. A knife arcing through the air. Hands—a man’s hands—clutching at my throat. They grip like a vise, fingernails digging into the soft flesh of my throat. The pressure . . . closing around my neck . . . the red haze deepens.

Flash.

“Holy, holy, holy.”

Flash.

Head bowed, his honey-blond hair hides his face. He slips the ring on my finger. Thank goodness I’ve just had a manicure. I reach with my other hand to stroke his hair.

The engagement ring—an exquisite solitaire-cut diamond so large it weighs my hand down—sparkles like sunlight reflecting off a crystal-clear lake.

Church bells pealed so loudly that Arie instinctively flinched. She choked on the mingled scents of roses and lily-of-the-valley, so thick she could taste them.

Flash.

Hands clutch my throat. Pressure . . . building . . . the dark is coming.

Flash.

A voice thundered,
“The blood cries to Me.”
Arie stumbled to her knees, grabbing at her ears, even though the sound was internal.

Flash.

My old Raggedy Ann doll is in her place on the shelf next to the journal: cracked red leather, a silver lock and clasp. And a key—dull, though, and too large to fit the diary’s tiny lock. Rags. Keep it safe.

Flash.

The bathroom is filthy, of course. The tub’s loaded with dirty dishes, pots, and pans, just like it always is. They shut the water off ages ago. I’m filthy. I turn to the sink. It’s just as dirty. I’m not supposed to use the jug of water for bathing; it’s for drinking. But I have no choice. I’ll never make it out of this dump if I let myself—my outside self—look as nasty as I really am. I refuse to look in the mirror. There’s nothing there I want to see, anyway. I open the medicine cabinet, as much to avoid the mirror as to get the mouthwash I have stashed inside. Cockroaches scatter, as chaotic as my thoughts. I slam the cabinet door shut. And there I am—almost a woman, blond, green-eyed.

Flash.

A wash of bleach filled Arie’s nostrils, so real she choked, and her eyes watered. A two-inch stack of typed papers sits on the desk in front of me. The black ink nestles against the white background like a million spiders on a web. My book, and it’s finally finished. It’s going to be even better than before.

Flash.

The diary again. The smell of bleach lingers.

“What the hell are you doing now?”

Grady’s voice pierced through the red haze that enveloped Arie. She gasped, almost as grateful for the fresh air as she had been during Grady’s initiation test back at Leonard’s house.

Grady stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had. He crossed his arms and waited.

Arie stood and gave herself a mental shake. “I, uh, I was just . . .”

“Listen,” Grady said. “It’s just another job. You can’t let what happened here get to you. Don’t start imagining things. That’s what’s getting Rich into trouble. Imagining things. He’s letting it into his head, and that’s a bad scene.”

“What’s going on with Rich?”
Maybe he had some weird psychic power, too?
“I thought he was Guts’s go-to guy.”

“He is. He’s been with Guts since the beginning. But look at his life now. His wife took the kids and left him a year ago. Moved back to Utah with her family, and now he never sees the kids. He used to be on the bowling league, went to church, you know? He had a
life
. Now all he does is wash his hands a hundred times a day and run around disinfecting his house. Cleans all the time. He’s got this sweet Corvette he’s been working on for years, and now he won’t even go near it.”