"And this time the father did not show up at all, but one of your ghosts did. I'm pretty sure it was the one from that murder-suicide scene you were thinking about."

"Trudy?" Sadie asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

"It wasn't a woman," Maeva said, dragging again on her smoke. "It was a man. He called himself Grant."

"What?!" Sadie shrieked.

She was on her feet now and nearly dropped the phone. In her attempt to catch it she knocked the remaining papers to the floor, where they scattered. She shook her head hard and reclaimed her sense of skepticism.

"Okay, this sounds too convenient. Like maybe you did some research and somehow found out about my dead brother and then found out about the murder-suicide scene I just finished. All just to make money off me."

"That's bulls.h.i.t," Maeva spat angrily. "Why is it that you expect me to believe in you and your abilities, but you feel you don't have to reciprocate? Do you honestly believe you're the only person on earth cursed with supernatural abilities?"

Well, yeah, up until this point I'd been happily living my life in denial, thank you very much.

Sadie managed to rethink her position and relented ever so slightly.

"Fine. Let's say for argument's sake you're telling the truth. What the h.e.l.l do you want me to do about Grant's visit to you? He never even tried to contact me. I don't have any control over these spirits or, apparently, who they contact." And because the last bit sounded a tad like jealousy, she added, "And I really don't care who Grant contacts."

"Here's my theory on that. He killed himself and I think suicide victims probably go straight over to that next dimension. You seem to get spirits talking to you before they move on, but I'm betting you don't get many suicides that are chatty, right? Not even your own brother."

Sadie didn't speak.

"We could work together," Maeva suggested. "I have a plan that might work, but we'd have to do it as a team."

"Yeah, nut and nuttier."

"Are you in or out?"

Sadie bit the corner of her lip.

"I'm in, on one condition. After this is all said and done, you have to try and contact Brian for me."

11.

Sadie figured that mopping up body parts and easing spirits into the next dimension was her calling. The reality of death, its effects and remnants, were so much a part of her everyday life that she was rarely rattled. However, as she slunk in the shadows at the back of the Toth house in the dead of night, she suddenly knew fear and all its cousins.

"Hurry up," Maeva hissed.

"I am hurrying," Sadie whispered back.

They'd parked more than a block away because Sadie didn't want neighbors to see her parking at the house. They reached the backyard and jogged diagonally across, their shapes mostly hidden in the shadows of the tall cedars. The rain was coming down in torrents, and Sadie's feet made sucking noises in the spongy moss-mixed gra.s.s.

"Ewww!" Maeva cried suddenly.

"What?" Sadie froze in place and furtively glanced around.

"I think I stepped on a slug."

Sadie grumbled something about making Maeva eat a slug, then continued her quick-walk to the back door. She fumbled around in the dark to find the dead-bolt slot, and when she finally got the door open, she ushered Maeva inside, then quickly closed and locked the door behind them. Maeva reached to flick on the lights.

"No," Sadie hissed. "I told you, no lights. Sylvia Toth already thinks I'm a thief. She may have told the neighbors to call the cops if they see me around the house."

"And yet you still have her key," Maeva pointed out.

"Actually, the police took my key at the station. This is a copy. I always make a duplicate because sometimes Zack and I work separately, or the restoration company needs to get into the property when I'm not available. It makes things easier."

"Uh-huh," Maeva said. "Admit it-you were coming back here with or without me."

"No way. I am so done with this place," Sadie whispered.

"Unless Mrs. Toth has the place bugged, you can probably speak up." Maeva chuckled, her own voice just above a whisper.

"I don't feel very good sneaking in here," Sadie admitted, her tone growing only slightly louder.

"We'll be quick. Show me where Grant died and we'll get started."

Sadie brought Maeva through the solid wood door that separated the kitchen from the living room. Thankfully, the heavy drapes were shut tight. n.o.body looking toward the house would be able to see two women lurking inside.

Sadie watched Maeva pull a pack of matches and a thick black pillar candle from her oversized purse. She lit the candle, then placed it in the center of the large granite coffee table.

"I'll attempt to summon him to this spot. Most spirits are more receptive at their point of departure," Maeva said. "Your being here also should help."

"I don't see how," Sadie said. "I told you that Grant never appeared to me. Trudy was the only one I saw."

"And I told you that I think that's because you don't connect with them once they've moved on. You won't need to communicate with him. That's my job. The place of a person's death is charged with their energy, yet you only see their physical presence before they move on to the next plane. I, on the other hand, can make contact with them only afterward. Between the two of us, we cover all bases." She smiled.

"Right. Cue the Twilight Zone music."

"Maybe Grant's spirit guide helped him over before he was ready. That happens, you know, and that's why spirits like to contact me."

"This conversation is giving me a headache."

Sadie had happily made her way through life without ever knowing about things like spirit guides, and she wasn't sure she wanted to gain this knowledge now. It seemed as though it was tempting fate.

The candle flickered and long shadows fell along the walls, adding an eerie feel to the old house.

"Have you always been able to contact the dead?" Sadie asked just to break the silence.

"Yes. I thought everyone else could, too. My parents dragged me off to a psychiatrist at five years of age when I insisted ghosts were real. The doctor tried to cure me."

"What happened?"

"I got tired of going to sessions, so I learned to lie. Eventually everyone was convinced I just had weird dreams. Then I discovered a distant relative who also had weird dreams." She laughed.

"I used to wish I was only dreaming," Sadie said. "And when I started doing trauma cleaning I thought it would be short-term. A way to heal after Brian. I figured I'd do it for a few months, then go back to teaching elementary school. I knew I was helping other families in this job, but I didn't enjoy it enough to want to turn myself into a social pariah. When the dead began showing themselves to me and I made my peace with that, well, it gave me a reason to keep doing what I do. A purpose beyond the fact that I now make twice what I used to teaching school."

Maeva nodded. "With me, I don't actually get to see their presence. They can be dead a very long time and sometimes I can still make contact. A family once asked me to contact their grandfather, and I had no luck, but their great-great grandmother had a lot to say. Mostly, I feel obligated to be their messenger."

They shared a quiet moment of realization that they were on the same side before the heebie-jeebies reminded Sadie they needed to move on.

"Okay, so now what do we do? You've lit a candle-and it smells great, by the way," Sadie said.

"It's vanilla."

"Any significance to that?"

"It reminds me of home baking, without the calories."

"What else do we do?"

"We wait."

"That's it? We just camp out and hope Grant likes the smell of vanilla, too?"

"Pretty much."

"How do we know if he does show?"

"It's hard to say. Some spirits announce themselves in an obvious way, and others are a quiet whisper that I need to concentrate on. In case he's the quiet type, I should try and make contact."

Maeva sat down cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table and began humming to herself. Reluctantly, Sadie joined her in the sitting, but not the humming.

Twenty or thirty minutes went by, and whatever it was that Maeva expected to happen didn't.

"I'm not getting anything. Zip. Nada," Maeva admitted. She got to her feet, stretched, and dusted off the back of her pants.

"I guess we tried," Sadie said, glad to be able to stand up, since her a.s.s had begun to fall asleep on the hardwood floor.

"You know, I really thought that being here, where he died, would encourage Grant to show himself. If he had issues to resolve, I thought this would be the place to do it." She shook her head from side to side. "I hate to say it, but maybe you were right. Maybe it wasn't even Grant Toth who showed up at my seance last night. I was sure it was, but I've been wrong before."

"You said that you felt a connection to Trudy when he visited."

She shrugged. "Maybe that was a leftover vibe from your visit. Although the spirit did call himself Grant-but who knows?" She waved a hand to encompa.s.s the Toth house.

"Did you get a vibe from him...like a feeling that he'd killed himself?"

"Yeah, but unfortunately, there's probably been more than one man named Grant who ate lead. Probably even more than one in greater Seattle. Too many souls choose to jump ship before it docks."

"And I've got the calluses on my hands to prove it," Sadie murmured.

Sadie felt herself warming up to Maeva. There was something to be said for being able to have a conversation about the dead with someone who knew the ropes, so to speak. Sadie felt almost envious. Maeva had taken on the same execrable calling, but she embraced it publicly instead of cowering behind a cloak of secrecy or, in Sadie's case, a hazmat suit.

They headed out the back door, the same way they had come in, and walked silently through the heavy rain down the back alley. They turned up the next street and stopped where Maeva had parked her Mazda behind Sadie's car.

Maeva pressed the pad on her key chain to unlock her car, then abruptly stopped.

"Oh no," she said, slapping her forehead with the heel of her hand.

"What?" Sadie asked, but it dawned on her at the same time. "The candle! You left it on the coffee table, didn't you?"

"Sorry. It's totally my fault. Give me the keys and I'll go back for it." She held out her hand.

"No, I should be the one to go. The Toth house is kind of my responsibility."

"I'll come with you."

"There's no sense in both of us going."

"Do we really need to get the candle? I buy them in bulk."

"If Mrs. Toth notices it, I could be up a creek," Sadie said, already turning away and running in the direction they'd come.

Sadie ducked back into the dark alley. The hood of her jacket blew off her head as the winds picked up, and her hair became immediately drenched from the downpour. She broke into a run. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning now, and exhaustion would slow her if she let it. She just wanted to get the d.a.m.n candle and get her a.s.s back home to bed.

The rain tapered to a stop just as she crept across the sodden backyard again. She let herself in the house through the back door and wiped her feet on the mat before she cut silently through the kitchen and entered the living room.

Her breathing was hard and labored.

Man, I'm out of shape. Can't run two blocks without panting like I've run a marathon.

But it wasn't that thought that caused her to abruptly halt where she stood. Every breath that left her lips appeared in a puff of white. The room was cold. Freezing.

The rain that dripped off Sadie's soaked body, puddled, then instantly froze into a sheet of black ice at her feet. She shivered as a drop of rain at her temple crystallized and iced over on her face.

"Holy s.h.i.t."

Every fiber of her being told her to bolt, but she swallowed her fear and forced her feet forward to the center of the room, where the candle sat waiting expectantly in the middle of the granite coffee table. Every breath that left her mouth hung in the air like frozen mist. She tasted fear in the back of her throat and her heart jack hammered painfully.

When she reached the coffee table, she extended a trembling hand for the candle. Before her fingers even made contact, it leapt off the table, hung momentarily suspended in midair, then flew across the room and crashed against the bookshelves.

"Oh maaaan," Sadie whined, jumping back. "Grant, is that you?" Her voice came out as a squeak. "Look, I'm new to this, okay? Well, not new to talking to the dead, but new to talking to the real dead-um, never mind. It's kind of hard to explain." She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, fighting for control. "I'm just going to treat you as if I can see you," she said, speaking more to herself than to the cold room. "I'm guessing you have unfinished business to discuss, but, quite frankly, I'm not sure I can help you. Maybe I should go back and get Maeva. She's better at this kind of stuff, I'm sure."

Sadie turned to walk back the way she'd come, but the heavy oak kitchen door slammed shut with such force that the entire room shook.

A whimper escaped her throat.

"You're freaking me out," she said, realizing that was the understatement of the year.

"Okay, so you don't want me to get Maeva. That's cool. You know I helped Trudy, right? She was at peace when I saw her last."