Stacia Kane: Home

That feeling was a hell of a lot better than food. But for some reason he’d been insisting of late that she eat, which was sweet and made her feel special while at the same time annoyed and wishing he’d quit paying so much damn attention. Being taken care of was…confusing. Weird. Not always comfortable.

She’d known telling him she loved him would mean giving up some privacy. She just didn’t think it would entail so many reminders of that sacrifice, that it might mean having to answer for things like how much she ate and slept. That he would watch those things. Care about them. She’d never realized it meant she’d become responsible for things.

But she didn’t argue, didn’t mention any of that. Instead, she smiled at him. It was practically impossible to look at him without smiling, so that was easy.

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go get something to eat.”

Mrs. Solomon—Margaret Solomon, née Margaret James—stood in her doorway wearing some sort of dashiki-thing, her long rust-colored hair hanging almost to her stomach.

Her feet were bare, her face innocent of make-up. A cloud of sandalwood incense smoke drifted out around her in an annoying hippie fog.

“But we don’t have a ghost,” she said. She started to fold her arms across her rather considerable chest then apparently thought better of it. “I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time.”

Liar. “I appreciate that. But I’m going to have to come in and investigate anyway.”

“You can’t—”

Chess already had her hand on the paper; as Mrs. Solomon started to speak, she pulled it from the folder she carried and held it out. “This is an Order of Relinquishment, which certifies that I have the right to enter this home anytime, for any reason, with or without your approval.”

Two more sheets. “This is an Order of Non-Culpability, which says anything I may damage in the course of the investigation isn’t my responsibility to repair or replace. And this one is an Order of Domain, which says you must leave these premises at any time I ask and stay away until I permit your return. All of these Orders are subject to my discretion, and failure to obey any of them is grounds for a prison sentence.” Mrs. Solomon examined the papers. Her hand shook ever so slightly, a faint twitch that made Chess’s eyebrows rise. Nervous? Good.

“Now. Will you step aside and allow me to continue my investigation, or do I need to order you out and call the Squad?”

Mrs. Solomon stepped a foot or so to her right. “Come in, Miss…?”

“Putnam. It’s right there on that form. Thank you.” The sandalwood smell got worse when Chess stepped over the threshold onto the woven raffia mat on the floor; patchouli joined in when Mrs. Solomon moved. Ugh. Both of those scents were…well, suspicious, actually. Yes, they were very popular ones among the wheat-germ-and-whole-grain crowd, but they were also strong enough to mask a lot of other scents. If the Solomons had summoned a ghost into their house—and they had, Chess knew they had—they would have used some sort of incense or burned some sort of herbs. For that matter, if they were harboring a ghost they might want or need to keep something burning all or most of the time.

Though why in the hell anyone would want to harbor a ghost Chess had no idea. Why?

Because they liked taunting themselves with death, liked seeing how far they could push it before they actually did die? Because they hated themselves and wanted to die but couldn’t bring themselves to—

The thoughts stopped there. Ghosts and drugs were not the same thing.

Right?

“My husband isn’t home at the moment.” Nerves were obviously getting the better of Mrs. Solomon. The Orders Chess had given her still shook in her hands; when she changed her grip she left soft damp spots where her fingers had been. “He’s at the store.

He owns a store—Earth’s Blessings? Organic foods, farmed sustainably? You know, people say we don’t need to worry about the environment anymore because the population is so much smaller, but they’re so wrong, it’s still incredibly important, don’t you think?”

“Sure.” Whatever. The rat skull and spine were gone, Chess noticed. Damn, she would have liked to touch the piece, to see if it had been used recently in a Summoning. She still could, but that would require either asking about it or conducting a full search with Mrs. Solomon standing there, which she didn’t want to do. Better to come back that night with her Hand of Glory to put the Solomons into enchanted sleep so she could do a really thorough search. Without having to listen to Mrs. Solomon babble, barely pausing.

“…And people are really starting to catch on, I think, one day we’ll convince everyone, we just have to raise our voices together in joy, you know, and make sure people know how beautiful life can be if they just let it.” Chess resisted the urge to roll her eyes and headed for the window on the far wall, the one visible from the Brents’ landing. Sure enough, a thin layer of salt covered the sill.

Salt, and a few runes scratched into the wood. The window at the front of the room facing the street was similarly covered. Chess reached out, let her hand rest just over them to feel the faint tickle of energy on her skin.

“Isn’t it something, that stuff on the sills? It was like that when we moved in, we have no idea where it came from, but Doug—that’s my husband, Doug—said they were probably protections of some kind, and we poured salt on them to neutralize them just them case.”

Another lie. Was the woman really so naïve that she didn’t realize Chess knew she and her husband were the house’s first residents ever?

“Why didn’t you call the Church?”

“I’m sorry?”

Yeah, sure she was. Chess looked up, met Mrs. Solomon’s earnest brown eyes. “Why didn’t you call the Church? When you found the runes here, I mean. Someone would have come out and helped you.”

“Oh. Oh, right, well, we just didn’t think of it, we didn’t want to bother anyone, you know, it didn’t seem important, really.”

She didn’t ask if they were in fact important, or what they meant, or even if Chess recognized them. Chess hadn’t expected her to.

Next they wandered into the kitchen, decorated in a horrible mustardy color with brightly painted clay masks and woven baskets dotting the walls. Magic in the room, definitely. If Chess hadn’t felt it sliding under her clothes, reaching out to tickle the back of her neck, the louder, more frantic tone of Mrs. Solomon’s voice would have told her: “You know, we don’t know anything about those things, we just want to live our lives, you know, and give something back to the earth and society, we want to contribute, that’s what we’re all here for, to learn and to teach.”

“You’ve never had any sort of problems? Discomfort? Prickling feelings on the back of your neck or your arms? Sudden chills? The feeling someone is watching you?”

“No. Nothing like that. We, wouldn’t we know if we had a ghost? And we’d want to report it, wouldn’t we, so we could get a settlement?”

“Some people use ghosts as weapons.” The runes: now that she could see them more clearly she picked out Egam and Bonro. Ghost runes, summoning runes. Spirit home runes, used to bind a spirit to a particular place. Big surprise. “Or to gain power.”

“Why would we want that, we don’t want that, we’re not that kind of people.” Chess just looked at her. What did it feel like to be that innocent, that trusting?

Everyone was that kind of people; it wasn’t even a kind of people, it was just people.

And Mrs. Solomon, for all her “I love everyone, life is beautiful la la la” shit, was no different from anyone else. She obviously wanted something badly enough to break the law, and whatever she wanted was obviously something that benefitted no one but herself. Something that could very well be harmful to everyone else.