"Don't let these f.u.c.kers get you down, Deem," Winn said. "That's what they want."

"I'll be OK," she said. "It's just a little jarring. I didn't think they'd go there. But they're really capable of anything, aren't they?"

"You saw what they did to Claude," Winn said. "What makes you think they won't do that to you?"

They arrived at Carma's and she welcomed them in with open arms. "Awan with you?" she asked.

"No," Winn said as she released him from a hug. "His mother is having surgery today."

"Oh, I didn't know," Carma said. She grabbed Winn's upper arm right at the bicep and gave him a squeeze. "You don't need his permission to come 'round, either of you! You can stop by anytime. I was thinking I might see you last night, Deem." She pulled Winn by the bicep into the house.

"I was planning to," Deem said, "but we had something come up, and I had to meet Awan in Vegas. We're having some trouble with a shaman that we need to do some research on later today."

"Does this have anything to do with the skinwalker epidemic?" Carma asked as they walked down the hallway to the sitting area with the view of the back yard. "Sit down and I'll get you something to drink."

Deem fell into the soft chair she'd enjoyed at their last visit, and looked out over Carma's backyard. I suppose it's Lyman's back yard, too, she thought. In the daytime she had a better view of the trees and bushes, and the beautiful lawn. The hill rising behind the yard made it all seem so private. There were occasional outcroppings of red rock on the hill, giving it an interesting range of color. Set against the deep green of the lawn and the trees, it looked beautiful.

Carma returned with a Diet c.o.ke for Deem and an iced tea for Winn. "Now tell me about this shaman," she said, taking an iced tea for herself and joining them in the sitting room.

Deem relayed the story of the skinrunner and how they'd managed to neutralize him. When she mentioned the blood river, Carma's eyes went wide and she interrupted Deem.

"Oh, you didn't!" she shrieked. "Tell me you didn't!"

"Didn't what?" Deem said, confused.

"Tell me you did not walk into that awful place," Carma said.

"The blood river?" Deem asked.

"Yes," Carma said. "You didn't go in, did you?"

"I stuck my hand in it," Deem said. "And my feet."

"Oh no," Carma said, shooting up out of her chair. She began to wring her hands. "Well, Awan didn't know. He thought he was helping you. He should have talked to me first." She disappeared into another room.

Deem looked at Winn. "What the f.u.c.k?" she mouthed to him. He shrugged and took a sip of his iced tea, looking in the direction Carma had gone. "I don't know!" he mouthed back.

"Here," they heard Carma say before she entered the room. "Here!" She had a book in her hand, and she handed something to Deem in the other. Deem opened her hand and Carma dropped three small, round yellow b.a.l.l.s in her hand. They looked like peas.

"Eat them!" Carma said. She opened the book and began reading from it, chanting in a strange language. Deem was beginning to feel freaked out, and she turned to look at Winn. He gave her another shrug, and she turned back to look at Carma, her face in the book, struggling to p.r.o.nounce the words. Carma looked up, and saw the peas still in Deem's hand.

"You have to eat them while I'm saying it, dear," Carla said. "Or it won't work."

"What are they?" Deem asked. "What are you doing?"

"Cleansing you," Carma said. "You may have washed the blood from your hands and feet, but you're still tainted by it. Not all of it comes off by washing. Go on, they won't hurt you."

Deem popped the peas into her mouth. They were hard and she had to bite down on them with her molars for them to pop. Once she had them chewed down small enough, she swallowed them and chased them with a gulp of Diet c.o.ke.

Carma continued chanting, watching as she drank. She completed the chant and closed the book, then returned to her seat next to Winn.

"Now promise me you'll not go near the place again," she said, looking pleadingly at Deem.

"We needed to," Deem said. "It was the only way to deal with the skinrunner."

"There's other ways, Awan just didn't know," Carma said. "The other blood rivers are fine, but that one is polluted."

"Its mutation is what made the ghost corporeal," Deem said. "That's why it worked. Because of the radiation."

"But what else does it do?" Carma asked. "What else is different about it?"

"I don't know," Deem said. "We were just operating off what Awan said."

"He didn't know," Carma said. "Just promise me you won't go there, again. Will you do that?"

"I suppose," Deem said.

"Sure," Winn said. "We have no reason to go back."

"And I want you to keep an eye on that hand," Carma said. "Which hand was it?"

"My hand?" Deem asked. "You mean the one I put in the blood river?"

"Yes," Carma said. "Was it your left, or your right?"

"My right," Deem said, holding it up.

"I want you to wrap it in a brown paper bag every night for the next week," Carma said, looking stern. "Spray the bag with a mixture of distilled water, Epsom salts, ground thyme, and a drop of rabbit urine. Do you have a little bit of rabbit urine at home?"

Deem saw Winn successfully control a spit-take of his tea.

"No," Deem said calmly, "I don't have any rabbit urine at home."

"Well, I'll give you some before you go," Carma said, leaning back in her seat. "It won't work at all if you don't use the rabbit pee. Now tell me about the letter you received."

Deem was dumbfounded. Carma moved from one thing to the next at breakneck speed. Further, Deem hadn't mentioned anything about the letter to her. She can read minds, Deem thought.

"You've been thinking about it since you got here," Carma said. "That and the windshield and the mindwalls. Start with the letter. What was it?"

"Bishop's Court," Deem said. "Excommunication."

"Delicious!" Carma said. "For who?"

"Me."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" Carma said, rising from her chair and extending her arms to Deem. Deem stood up and let Carma hug her. "Congratulations, my dear."

"Thanks, but I'm afraid it will not be a congratulatory thing for my mother."

"She doesn't know it yet," Carma said, "because she's brainwashed. But when she comes around, she'll realize it was the best thing for you."

"That might take a long time," Deem said, dropping back into her chair.

"Is your mother one of those Okazaki kind of sisters or is she more a jello and funeral potatoes kind of sister?"

"The latter," Deem said.

"Well, then yes, it might take a while," Carma said. "But you rest a.s.sured, my dear, it will all work out for the best." Carma's head drifted to the right, staring out the large windows. "I remember my excommunication just like it was yesterday. I sat in that Bishop's Court, looking at all those old white men staring back at me, accusing me of immorality, and I could sense that most of them were imagining the act, picturing me as their partner! I knew right then and there it was all bulls.h.i.t please pardon my language and I felt the spirit of the Lord wash over me, the Holy Ghost filling me with the most wonderful sense of calm and peace, and I knew I knew, I tell you that everything was going to be alright and that the right thing was happening. They didn't want me around them, and I didn't want them around me. And there hasn't been a day since that I haven't been happier and more full of joy and peace than any day before that, let me a.s.sure you."

"Did you join another religion?" Deem asked.

"Opiate of the ma.s.ses, my dear," Carma said. "You don't need religion to be full of joy and peace. I found it usually just gets in the way of the joy and the peace. Now, about the blood on your windshield last night. Winn?"

"Huh?" Winn said. He'd been tuning out the joy and peace stuff.

"Your windshield last night?"

"Oh," Winn said. "Someone killed a dog, drained its blood onto the windshield. They wrote the words 'suffer' and 'atone' in the blood."

"Do you know what it means?" Deem asked Carma.

"Yes, well, context is everything," Carma said, shaking her head. "They're messages. The 'atone' is a disgustingly literal reminder of 'blood atonement.'"

"You accused Dayton of that!" Winn said to Deem. "Remember?"

"I was just trying to upset him," Deem said. "I didn't think he'd actually do it. That was before he had Claude killed, of course."

"What exactly is it?" Winn asked.

"Blood atonement is a doctrine that was popular with Brigham Young," Carma began. "The idea was that some sins you might commit were so grievous, the blood of Jesus Christ couldn't atone for them, so your own blood had to be shed if you were to receive forgiveness for them. Murder was one of the sins that required blood atonement. More sins were added to the list as it became convenient, to scare and control people. Apostacy, mixing of races, things Brigham didn't like. They did away with the concept recently, but the idea of it lingered on in these parts. When the state executed Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, he said he wanted the firing squad because of his Mormon heritage. Supposedly it's only valid if blood is shed and spilled on the ground. Doesn't count if you're hanged or die of lethal injection. So it's still around, even to this day. That's why all the throat slitting."

"I've lived here for twenty eight years and this is the first I'm hearing of it," Winn said.

"Well, they don't teach it in history cla.s.s, my dear," Carma said. "It's a part of history they'd rather forget."

"What about the word 'suffer?'" Deem asked. "I a.s.sume they mean us. Are they saying Winn and I should suffer by atoning with our blood?"

"Not exactly," Carma said. "It's more subtle than that. I think, in this context, 'suffer' refers to the penalty for the old blood oaths, in the temple. After making each oath, they'd agree to a penalty that went with the oath. You're familiar with the penalties; slitting the throat. Disembowelment. The penalties were to keep the oath secret, and the person was agreeing to have the penalty executed upon themselves if they ever divulged it. The words they would use were, 'rather than do so, I would suffer my life to be taken.'"

"You've got to be kidding," Winn said.

"They did away with the penalties in the ceremonies in 1990," Carma said, "but there's plenty of older people who remember them, who said those words. Just like blood atonement, they linger on. And all those people believe those penalties were the word of G.o.d, so they take them seriously. When the crazies and the religious freaks get involved, watch out cross a line where they think you've broken an oath, and they're happy to execute the penalties on you. Remember the Lafferty boys? Slit that poor woman's throat from ear to ear, and her fifteen-month-old baby, too. Blood atonement for failing to follow a blood oath. Execution of the penalties."

"But Winn and I haven't taken any oaths," Deem said. "That I know of."

"Never went through the temple?" Carla asked. "Either of you?"

"No," Deem said.

"I'm not Mormon," Winn said. "Never was."

"Then I think the messages on your windshield were really intended for others," Carma said. "You were meant to relay them. Which you've just done, so they were intended for us, I guess. For me and Lyman. And any others they think are helping you. It's a reminder that they'll execute the penalties on us, just like they did on Claude."

"So Claude had taken oaths?" Deem asked.

"He had," Carma said. "He was Mormon, way back before he apostatized. Took those old oaths and penalties right there in the St. George temple. And he took other oaths, too, the secret oaths that people like Dayton take. Oaths you take when you join a secret group."

"Claude was a member of the secret council?" Winn asked, surprised.

"He was," Carma said, "a long time ago. When he apostatized, he lost his church membership and his church calling, and that kicked him out of the council by definition. But the oaths transcend the membership, they all know that. When he decided to talk to you about the council, he violated his oaths of secrecy. That's why they executed the penalty on him."

"You knew Claude?" Deem asked.

"I did," Carma said. "And he knew Lyman. Lyman considered him an ally."

"If Claude had been part of the council, he must have been gifted," Deem said. "He told me he wasn't."

"Well," Carma said, "he wasn't being completely honest with you. He was gifted, back in the day. Not a lot, mind you, but he had it. It left him, for some reason, over the years. I think from lack of use, but who knows, it might have been the radiation."

Deem sat in silence, letting what Carma had told her sink in. Things ran much more deeply than she had imagined.

"When we're done with the shaman," Deem said, "I'll have some time to come back and start reading the doc.u.ments in the boxes we brought the other night. I was thinking it might be a good idea to scan them, digitize them, so we have a copy."

"Oh, that is a good idea!" Carma said. "Run each one right through a scanner after you read it! Smart child."

"Would you mind if I brought in a scanner and my laptop so I could do that?"

"Not at all!" Carma said. "Of course you may. Aren't you the polite child asking in advance and all! Oh, I could just eat you up, you're so cute!"

Deem smiled awkwardly. Sometimes Carma said the strangest things.

"It might take a while to go through them," Deem said. "I hope you don't mind."

"You take as long as you want," Carma said, rising from her chair. "That can is empty, let me get you another." She held her arm out to Deem, waiting for Deem to hand her the Diet c.o.ke can. Deem pa.s.sed it to her and she walked out of the room.

"That stuff about the penalties," Winn said, "is freaking me out."

"When this is over," Deem said, "I'm going to do some serious research. Utah history, that kind of thing. I wasn't paying much attention to history in high school."

Carma returned to the room with a replacement Diet c.o.ke, which she handed to Deem.

"How long have you been excommunicated?" Deem asked her.

"Must have been thirty years ago," Carma said. "It was just after I was sealed to Lyman, so yes, that would be about thirty years."

"You and Lyman are married?" Deem asked.