I walked closer to the body and paused before taking three steps back. I did not need to see it again. It reminded me of bodies pulled from rivers, the skin slipping away from gooey, almost soapy tissue beneath.
Avoiding the wet spots, my bio-suited feetshushingon carpet that puffed with dust, I moved to the wide double Frenchdoors and partially opened the closed shades that covered the multipaned windows. Beyond the doors was a pea-gravel drive. I pretended to study the view, though that was more to give myself time to process what I had seen than to look out. Beyond the glass-paned doors I could see part of the barn, a large watering trough, the horse walking machine, and a length of four-board white-wood post-and-rail fencing. There was also what looked like a swimming pool with a horse in it, and two young girls standing on the cement edge, attending it.
The horses had a swimming pool. I shook my head.
Five teenage girls were sitting on top of the fence, watching the house. I made a mental note to get their names, get the names of everyone in or near the house in the last two days since Stella Mae got home from her tour.
With my stomach back under control, I closed the blinds and rejoined T. Laine, who was still standing near the body. It looked as if it had been dead for days, maybe lying in a steam room. She was wearing a three-quarter-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and was lying facedown, her hands under her torso as if she had tried to catch herself when she collapsed. The flesh I could see was at the neck, jaw, one elbow, the bottoms of her bare feet, and her dried crinkled hair. The body was swollen, stretched, dark with lividity, the skin bubbly under the surface. I couldn’t see her face and I was glad of that.
I took one last look at the body and turned away, sucked on the mint. Tried not to breathe. Tried not to see the body on the back of my eyelids every time I blinked.
Pointing at the tape outline and the wet carpet, T. Laine said, “The housekeeper was there. Sound booths and production room are this way.”
Breathing through the handkerchief in my mask, I followed her to the side and saw two tiny booths, not much bigger than my new shower at home, with a single metal chair, microphones, music stands, and headphones. A third room was larger, with a drum set and an electronic keyboard inside. Across from them was a room with a computer and a board with switches, sliders, and knobs, like I had seen on TV, except smaller and more compact.
Reading my mind, T. Laine said, “Brand-new soundboard with all the electronic bells and whistles, installed while Stellawas on tour. The bath was upgraded too—Carrera marble all the way. The carpet in this entire lower level is spanking new, created specifically for deadening sound.”
“It’s awful dusty.”
“No. It’s disintegrating.”
“Oh. Okay.” I thought about the site and how much we didn’t know. “So people were in here while she was gone? Doing construction?”
“Yes. Dozens. They finished two weeks ago. I’m trying to get a list and find out if any of the construction crew are sick or missing, if anyone was a practitioner of some kind of arcane arts. The other body and the tour swag are in here.”
I still didn’t understand what swag was, but I followed T. Laine to the open door of a storage room, where she put out an arm to block my way. The stench that boiled out was worse than that in the main studio area. “The deputies got still shots, which I’ve uploaded to the case file, but we don’t need to spend time in there unnecessarily, even with the null pens.”
“Oh,” I said again. I managed to swallow my tongue back into place and not embarrass myself by vomiting like a probie. “Yes. I see why.”
From the entrance I could see rusty metal racks with a few electronic gadgets on them, a rack of small speakers printed with a guitar and Stella’s name in a fancy font, a few hats and belt buckles with the same logo. On the far side of the room were a stack of flattened empty boxes and three half-empty boxes, each marked with shipping labels. In the middle of the floor was one large box filled with T-shirts. Except for the T-shirt box, the room had a depleted feel, as if the band had sold all the goodies that might have been stored here before the tour.
I forced my eyes down to the dead woman on the floor. She was on her side beside the T-shirt box, the wordsMerry Promotionsprinted on the sides. One hand was draped up over the box edge, holding a handful of shirts. She was wearing a short-sleeved dress and the arm I could see appeared to be covered with small greenish soap bubbles spread across the muscles. The bones in her green-fleshed hand were exposed where she still gripped a handful of shirts, though the shirts seemed fine, not rotted. Her face was awful. Her mouth was pulled away from her teeth, her gums blackened. Her eyes were whited out,like small boiled eggs, but leaking greenish bubbles. Her legs looked damp and pale and were lined with reddish lividity on top and much darker purplish lividity below, where gravity had pulled the blood down.
“I wish I could try a reversedhedgeworking around the bodies,” T. Laine said, “but the Knoxville covens are still not answering my calls and I can’t do much alone.”
While some of the witches were not averse to helping us, the leaders of the Knoxville covens were no longer agreeable to helping PsyLED. Not that I blamed them. I asked, “What would happen to the bodies if we got them into the null room at HQ?”
“I don’t know. I did toss a null pen into the cooler with the one DB we got out of here. If there’s anything left inside when the transport vehicle gets to UTMC, we’ll try sending the others.” She considered and added, “If the transport vehicle makes it.”
A finger on the body twitched. It was not an indication of life or zombification. I knew that. It was still creepy and gross. And the smell was suddenly worse, overpowering the mentholated salve on the handkerchief. “You think the vehicle will be affected by the energies?” I asked, pressing the mask and the hankie inside it around my lower face. Which was doing nothing at all against the rot stench. I sucked on the mint, but my mouth was coated by the stink in the air.
“It’s possible. The carpet under the bodies is rotted through. The bottom of that box is showing signs of disintegration. The piano’s finish is crackling and the lid over the strings, or whatever you call it, is split. The guitars closest to this room are falling apart.”
I glanced back and saw the destruction I hadn’t detected until she mentioned it. One guitar body had separated from the neck and was hanging by the strings. There were half a dozen guitars hanging near it, all showing signs of dry rot. The percussion equipment was dull and powdery looking. I remembered the RVs out back. The purpose of the band and crew lunch had been to unpack the tour gear. That probably meant there were more instruments and equipment out there. “Did you say the deputies got photos of the room earlier?”
“Yeah.” T. Laine’s jaw tightened. “The piano and the guitars looked fine when they arrived. Come on. Let’s get out of here. Even with null pens we’ve been in here long enough.”
As we walked back upstairs, a tension I hadn’t noticed fell away from my shoulders. I guessed it was death energies pushing on me, but it didn’t feel like witch magic. It felt scratchy and cold and odd, but not in a way I could put words to.
On the landing, we changed out of the blue unis and put the contaminated gear into the disposal bins for crime scene workup. I returned the null pen to T. Laine and tucked the handkerchief into my pocket for later use. I crunched the mint and let the flavor flood my dry mouth.
As we climbed the last steps, T. Laine asked, “You glad to be out of the office and away from the search for the Blood Tarot deck?”
“Until I got a whiff a this place, I was. Now, not so much.” I pulled my jacket lapel out and took a sniff. “I don’t think I’ll ever get the smell out of these clothes. I might have to burn ’em and that goes against the grain for a ch— for me.” I’d almost said “for a churchwoman,” but I wasn’t one a them anymore. “But yeah. I’m happy to stop the Blood Tarot search for a while. Don’t tell JoJo, but it’s boring.”
JoJo Jones, the special agent who sent me here, was the unit’s second in command and our highly prized former hacker. Or not-so-former, sometimes. JoJo loved research better than anything else in life.
The Blood Tarot was one of three black magic tarot decks known to be in existence and it had been missing since our last big case, possibly destroyed. Possibly not. We hadn’t been able to prove either possibility, and it was too powerful an object to be forgotten, out there, somewhere, tempting someone to use it. I wasn’t having any luck locating it in a pawnshop, on the Internet, on the dark web, or on the magical black market.
