Iron Kissed (Mercy Thompson #3)(20)
Author: Patricia Briggs

They must have been meeting here and sending out their mailings. That’s why there had been so many people in O’Donnell’s house.

Thoughtfully, I padded into the living room. I think I’d seen so much blood the night before that it wasn’t the first thing that struck me, though it was splattered around with impressive abandon.

The first thing I noticed was that, under the blood and death, I caught a familiar scent that was out of place in this room. Something smelled like the forest fae’s home. The second thing I noticed was that whatever it was, it packed a tremendous magical punch.

Finding it, though, was more problematical. It was like playing "Find the Thimble" with my nose and the strength of the magic to tell me if I was hot or cold. Finally I stopped in front of a sturdy gray walking stick tucked into the corner behind the front door, next to another taller and intricately carved stick, which smelled of nothing more interesting than polyurethane.

When I first looked at the stick, it appeared unremarkable and plain, though clearly old. Then I realized that the metal cap wasn’t stainless steel: it was silver, and very faintly I could see that something was etched into the metal. But it was dark in the room and even my night eyes have limits.

It might as well have had "A Clue" painted in fluorescent orange down the side. I thought long and hard about taking it, but decided it was unlikely to go anyplace, having survived O’Donnell’s murderer and the police.

It smelled of wood smoke and pipe tobacco: O’Donnell had stolen it from the forest fae’s home.

I left it alone and began quartering the living room.

Built-in bookshelves lined the room, mostly full of DVDs and VHS tapes. One whole bookshelf was devoted to the kind of men’s magazines that people read "for the articles" and argue about art versus  p**n ography. The magazines on the bottom shelf had given up any pretense of art – judging by the photos on the covers.

Another bookcase had doors that closed over the bottom half. The open shelves at the top were mostly empty except for a few chunks of…rocks. I recognized a good-sized chunk of amethyst and a particularly fine quartz crystal. O’Donnell collected rocks.

There was an open case for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sitting on top of the DVD player under the TV. How could someone like O’Donnell be a Dick Van Dyke fan? I wondered if he’d had a chance to finish watching it before he died.

I think it was because I felt that moment of sorrow that I heard the creak of a board giving way beneath the weight of the house’s dead occupant.

Other people, people who are completely, mundanely human, see ghosts, too. Maybe not as often – or in broad daylight – but they do see them. Since there had been no ghosts at the death sites in the reservation, I’d unconsciously assumed that there would be none here as well. I’d been wrong.

O’Donnell’s shade walked into the living room from the hallway. As some ghosts do, he grew clearer in bits and pieces as I focused on him. I could see the stitching on his jeans, but his face was a faded blur.

I whined, but he walked by me without a glance.

There are a very few ghosts who can interact with the living, as much a person as they had been in life. I got caught once talking to a ghost without realizing that’s what he was until my mother asked me whom I was talking to.

Other ghosts repeat the habits of a lifetime. Sometimes they react, too, though I usually can’t talk to them. There is a place near where I was raised where the ghost of a rancher goes out every morning to throw hay to cows who are half a century gone. Sometimes he saw me and waved or nodded his head as he would have responded to anyone who’d approached him in life. But if I tried to converse with him, he’d just go about his business as if I weren’t there at all.

The third kind are the ones born in moments of trauma. They relive their deaths until they fade away. Some dissipate in a few days and others are still dying each day even centuries later.

O’Donnell didn’t see me standing in front of him so he wasn’t the first, most useful kind of ghost.

All I could do was watch as he walked to the shelves that held the rocks and touched something on the top shelf. It clicked against the fake wood shelf. He stood there for a moment, his fingers petting whatever he touched, his whole body focused on that small item.

For a moment I was disappointed. If he was just repeating something he’d done every day, I wouldn’t learn anything from him.

Then he jerked upright, responding, I thought, to a sound I could not hear and he walked briskly to the front door. I heard the door open with his motions, but the door, more real than the apparition, stayed closed.

This was not a habitual ghost. I settled in, prepared to watch O’Donnell die.

He knew the person at the door. He seemed impatient with him, but after a moment of talk, he took a step back in invitation. I couldn’t see the person who came in – he wasn’t dead – or hear anything except the creaks and groans of the floorboards as they remembered what had happened here.

Following O’Donnell’s attention, I watched the path of the murderer as he walked rapidly to a place in front of the bookcase. O’Donnell’s body language became increasingly hostile. I saw his chest move forcefully and he made a cutting gesture with one hand before storming over to confront his visitor.

Something grabbed him around the neck and shoulder. I could almost make out the shape of the murderer’s hand against the paleness of O’Donnell’s form. It looked human to me. But before I could get a good look, whoever it was proved that they were not human at all.

It was so fast. One moment O’Donnell was whole and the next his body was on the floor, jerking and dancing, and his head was rolling across the floor in a lopsided, spinning gyre that ended not a foot from where I stood. For the first time, I saw O’Donnell’s face clearly. His eyes were becoming unfocused, but his mouth moved, forming a word he no longer had breath to say. Anger, not fear, dominated his expression, as if he hadn’t had time to realize what had happened.

I’m not a terrific lip reader, but I could tell what he’d tried to say.

Mine.

I stayed where I was and shook for minutes after O’Donnell’s specter faded. It wasn’t the first death I’d witnessed – murder is one of those things that tend to produce ghosts. I’d even cut someone’s head off before – that being one of the few ways you can make sure that a vampire will stay dead. But it hadn’t been as violent as this, if only because I’m not strong enough to rip someone’s head off.

Eventually, I remembered that I had things to do before someone realized there was a coyote running free in a crime scene. I put my nose down on the carpet to see what it could tell me.

Distinguishing any scents at all here proved difficult with O’Donnell’s blood soaking into couch cushions, walls, and carpet. I caught a hint of Uncle Mike’s scent in one corner of the room, but it faded quickly, and though I searched the corner for a while, I never caught it again. The Cologne Man had been in the living room, along with O’Donnell, Zee, and Tony. I hadn’t realized Tony had been one of the arresting officers. Someone had been sick just inside the front door, but it had been wiped up and left only a trace.