Eerie

“Yes.”
“And do you suspect possession?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do you believe this entity has control over you or your sister?”
Grant met eyes with Paige.
“I don’t know.”
“I would be happy to meet with both of you. I’m booked up today, but you could come by my office first thing Monday.”
“What’s this priest’s name? The one in Portland?”
“The better course of action would be to have you meet with me first. Then I could make a referral.”
Grant said, “That won’t work for us. I want you to take down our address. It’s Twenty-two Crocket Street in upper Queen Anne—the freestanding brownstone on the corner. Please communicate to this priest in Portland that we need to see him.”
“If this is a true emergency, I could come by myself after I leave the office tonight.”
“Are you equipped to handle something like this, Father?”
A brief pause and then: “Well, it’s not exactly a science, but I’m not the best suited for this type of thing, no.”
“Then don’t come here alone. Give the address to the other priest or don’t do anything.”
“I’ll see what can be done.”
“Thank you.”
Grant gave him his phone number and hung up.
The water was boiling on the stove.
He walked over and lifted the pot off the gas.
“That guy isn’t sending anybody,” Paige said.
“You’re probably right.”
Grant emptied the silk sock filled with fresh coffee grounds into the hot water. He stirred them in with a wooden spoon and topped the pot with its lid.
“You’re looking pale,” Paige said.
Grant nodded. He felt dizzy too, and his headache was becoming impossible to ignore.
“It was a long night. I just need some coffee,” he said.
“Coffee won’t fix this. Should I run through the list of symptoms? I know them pretty well.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’d have to be a pretty bad detective to actually believe that.”
She was right, but he wasn’t ready to give up on the hope that his headache and sour stomach were just the parting gifts from a terrible evening followed by an even worse night’s sleep.
“This is just the beginning. You have no idea how bad it’s about to get.”
Paige walked over to the pot and lifted the lid. Pungent curls of steam made a brief appearance before dissipating. She picked up the wooden spoon and gave the darkening liquid a few stirs.
“I’ve been where you’re at,” she said. “Wanting to hold off. Thinking I could control my own deterioration.”
“I’m not sending another person up there, Paige. If that’s what you’re getting at.”
“But when it was me hurting, that was—”
“Different, yes.” Grant leaned against the counter.
“Because it’s okay as long as I’m the one needing help?” she asked.
“Because my sister was dying.”
She let the spoon clatter to the counter and turned to face him.
“It wants someone else, Grant. Do you think I can’t feel it too? Do you think it won’t bring me to my knees all over again if we hold off? You saw how I looked last night. I’ll be just as bad off, if not worse, in another twelve hours.”
“We can’t keep sending men up there. Who knows where they’re going, what they’re doing, when they leave your brownstone.”
“I don’t like it either. You may not understand, but these men are more than just clients to me.”
“I get that.” More than you know.
“Look, we can put this off now, but there will come a time—I promise you—when you beg me to bring someone over. I don’t want either of us to get to that point.”
Grant circled the island and took a seat on one of the stools. He crossed his arms on the cool tile and let his head fall onto them. Felt like his brain had been submerged in a bucket of ice water. Each thought arrived cut into slices, and as Grant struggled to assemble them, the only thing that surfaced out of his fog was that she was right—he couldn’t hold out forever.
Paige came over to him.
“You know we don’t have a choice,” she said softly. “But there’s a good reason to do it soon.”
“What’s that?” he said without lifting his head.
The room had become thick with the rich aroma of coffee. On any other day, that smell alone would have been sufficient to give Grant a pleasant dopamine pregame in anticipation of the real thing. Now it struck him as flat and unappealing.
“I just thought of it this morning,” she said. “Don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “We have a chance to learn something about that thing that’s living in my room.”
For a brief second, curiosity broke through the mounting pain. Grant heaved his head off the cool comfort of the tile.
“How?”
“It’s kept me a prisoner for two weeks, and I still don’t know anything about it.”
“Because you’re always unconscious when it shows up.”
“And when it’s all over, my client’s gone and I don’t have a clue about what happened. Tonight will be different. We’re going to make a video of the whole thing.”
“With what?”
“My phone. I’ll leave it on the dresser. There’s no reason my client will think to look for it. His mind will be on other things.”
Grant considered this. Concrete visual evidence was exactly what they needed, and not just for themselves, but for any help that eventually showed up. At the very least, it was more of a plan than anything they’d had up until now. But the idea of watching his sister with another man was beyond what he could handle. Listening to them last night had been hard enough.
“That’s good,” he said finally. “We need intel on what we’re dealing with.”
Grant struggled onto his feet, went to the stove.
“Coffee?” he said.
“Please.”
He pulled two mugs down from their hooks underneath the cabinets and slid a coffee filter over the top of each one. Lifting the pot, he poured over the paper, careful to avoid a scalding splash as the grounds collected and the holy, black liquid passed through the paper.
“Smells like coffee,” Paige said.
He carried the warm mugs over to the island.
“This is how the cowboys rolled,” he said, placing one of the cups in front of his sister.
“We even have a whorehouse.”
“Can’t stop yourself, can you?” he asked.
“From what?”
“Pressing every last button you see.”
“You do have a lot of them.”
They drank, not minding the bitter grinds that had escaped the filter.
“Not bad,” Paige said.
“It’ll do in a pinch.”
“We’re in one.”
For just a moment, the simple act of holding the steaming mug made things feel slightly better. A small, familiar thing in the midst of an alien chaos. Their world may have been upended, but he could still make a cup of coffee.
He said, “It might not work, you know. Video might show us nothing.”
“Pessimistic much?”
“I’m not saying we don’t do it. We just can’t hang our hat on one thing. We need to do more.”
“Like what?”
“There was this woman we brought in on a murder case several years ago.”
“You mean like a psychic?”
“No, she got really upset if you called her that. She billed herself as a trance medium, whatever the hell that means. And yes, she’s even weirder than it sounds.”
“Did she help?”
“I don’t know. She seemed to think so, although the case was never solved. I might call her.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re desperate.” He slugged back a big swallow of coffee. “You know, if this were a haunted house movie—”
“It’s not.”
“But if it were, our job would be to find out what happened in this house.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know how some tragic event always precipitates a haunting? Like a murder?”
“I can’t quite believe we’re having this conversation. Those are film tropes, Grant. What’s happening to us is real.”
“Then what do you want to do?”
She stared at him, frustrated. Shook her head finally, said, “I don’t know.”