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My mother and Tom looked at me in bewilderment. “What did you do?” she asked.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“But it stopped as soon as you started to go up the stairs.”
“Coincidence,” I offered, but she looked dubious.
Before she could say anything, though, a clock in the next room tolled the hour. Three a.m.
Three….
Rather than being reassured that the noise had stopped, I was now only more uneasy. While I hadn’t made any real studies on the subject, I knew a few basic facts about demons and possession and that kind of thing.
One supposed calling card of a demonic presence — rather than your garden-variety ghost — was that they tended to be most active between midnight and 3 a.m. Why, exactly, no one knew for sure, although the theory ran that demons liked to do things in threes because it was their way of mocking the Holy Trinity. As I wasn’t Catholic, I couldn’t say for sure whether that particular theory was at all accurate.
“What does it mean that it stopped?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied.
I was way out of my element here.
Then again, I could be jumping to conclusions. Just because the phenomena I’d briefly witnessed sure sounded like the sort of thing that went on during a demonic infestation, that didn’t mean a lot. It could still be bad plumbing…a rat invasion…even a weird quirk of the house’s architecture that caused strange sounds to occur when the wind was blowing from the right direction.
My mother was frowning, but then her expression cleared and she said, “Well, it seems to be gone now. How about some chamomile tea?”
The last thing I wanted was to sit down and pretend like none of this had happened. However, I’d driven all the way over here, and I supposed it would be a good idea to hang around for a bit and see if the noises started up again.
“Sure,” I said, and we all trooped into the kitchen.
It was big enough that it had a nook at one end with a round table and a set of Windsor chairs. On a sunny morning, the spot was probably the perfect place to sit and drink tea and watch the wind play with the leaves on the trees and ruffle the flower petals on the garden’s blooming plants. As it was, I couldn’t really relax, even though all the lights were blazing and the kitchen, with its shiny stainless appliances and polished soapstone counters, looked like the last place any demon would want to infest.
My mother filled the kettle with some water, and Tom and I sat down at the table. His expression was almost too neutral, which seemed to tell me he was busy processing what had just happened and wasn’t quite ready to comment on any of it.
Fine by me. I certainly wasn’t prepared to tell him and my mother that the source of the disturbance might have been demonic in nature, especially since I couldn’t get any kind of psychic read on the house. That bothered me, because although I certainly didn’t claim to be a ghost whisperer or anything like that, I always could tell when I entered a place that was haunted.
Maybe that particular ability didn’t extend itself to demons.
As she got down a box of chamomile tea from the pantry, my mother’s aura vibrated into existence for just a moment, its usual soothing sea-green now spiked with the pale orange of anxiety. I wished I could do something to relieve that anxiety, but honestly, anything I had to say would probably just make matters worse.
However, since she looked at me after she set down the box of tea, and Tom was also shooting me an expectant glance, I knew I had to say something.
Well, I’d start with the one thing I did know.
“It’s strange,” I said. “I’m not getting any haunted house vibes here at all. I can usually sense ghosts, but I don’t feel anything like that.”
“So, what’s going on?” Tom asked.
“Maybe it really is the plumbing,” I told him. “Or the wind…or mice or rats.”
“Rats?” my mother repeated, sounding horrified. She might have been pretty relaxed about a lot of things, but she’d always kept our apartments immaculate while I was growing up, and the house she shared with Tom always looked as though it was ready for a magazine shoot. Moon in Virgo, so it made sense.
Anyway, I had a feeling she would rather hear that her husband was cheating on her than believe her beautiful new Victorian home was infested with rats. Not that she had anything to worry about on that front; he was utterly devoted to her, and still looked at her as if he couldn’t quite figure out how he’d gotten lucky enough to have such an amazing woman at his side. Then again, it sounded as if his ex-wife was a real piece of work — the kids definitely took after her — so I suppose it wasn’t so odd that he’d be thrilled by being married to my mother after what he’d gone through with Sherry.
“It’s just a theory,” I said quickly. “But you’re having the building inspector out here later this morning to look at the roof leak, right?”
Tom nodded.
“Tell him what you heard — just the facts, I mean, and not that you were thinking it might have been ghosts — and see what he has to say.”
