“Have you been sleeping there?”
The Pyles exchanged glances—even Arden, who hadn’t spoken a word throughout the tour.
“We just haven’t been sleeping at night,” Kym said. “In any of the rooms.”
“Arden stays with a friend some nights,” Roger added. “And Kym and I stay in the living room.”
Chess nodded. She could probably use a warding spell to keep them off the top floor while she investigated up there, but it would make things more difficult. If she could even figure out a way in.
They headed back up the hall toward the master suite, the last room on the right. Chess had expected grandeur. She hadn’t expected the bed to be quite so bargelike, a slab of mattress covered with silk sheets. She definitely hadn’t expected to see hanging over it an enormous painting of a naked Kym. Was this what Arden meant when she said her mother liked to show off her body?
She certainly seemed to be enjoying it. Lying on her side on what looked like a fur rug—how original—with one hand demurely not quite covering the pale curls between her legs and the other thrown back behind her head. A lovely piece of work, Chess had to admit, but still…No wonder Arden was so grumpy, having to compare her own developing figure to the best body money could buy.
That was one problem she herself hadn’t had to deal with. Of course, in her case it would have been an improvement to be worried about how she measured up to the naked women she saw, rather than worrying about what they planned to do to her or make her do to them that time, but…
“The night you were attacked in here,” she said, “what exactly happened?”
“It was dark.” Roger looked as though he might have been coming down a bit; his eyes weren’t quite so glassy. “I don’t remember falling asleep or even waking up. Just…just hearing it, movements in the room, and Kymmi screaming, and I couldn’t seem to feel my hands…and it laughed and screamed.” His eyelids fluttered, blinking back tears. Chess reminded herself the man was a professional actor. “It was terrible.”
Kym herself was silent. Chess made a mental note to search for her private financial records. The file contained statements from several accounts, but they were all joint accounts. If Kym was looking for a good way to end the marriage and get as much money as she could, faking a haunting could be an effective, if roundabout and chancy, way to do it.
It was also a very public way, one that could end Roger Pyle’s career.
She studied the rest of the room in a slow, careful sweep while the Spectrometer beeped quietly from its new holster around her waist. Two dressers, two bedside tables with ornate handles on the bottom doors. Everything in the room had a twin, a mirror image of itself. How imaginative of Kym. If she hadn’t married whom she married, Chess thought, she probably would have been one of those women who hung plaster ducks on the walls and collected painted plates.
The Spectrometer found a steady beat while Chess paced the floor, speeding up by the bed, slowing down by the window, finally beeping faster outside a closed door on the right-hand wall. She glanced up.
“Bathroom,” Roger said.
Chess 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
