Iron Kissed

But I'd known the killer was strong. He had, after all, ripped off a man's head.

I left the window to explore the rest of the room more closely. Despite the apparent mess, there wasn't much to look at: three card tables and eleven folding chairs—I glanced at the window and thought that a folding chair, thrown very hard, might break through a window like that.

A metal machine that looked oddly familiar had left a dent in the wall before landing on the ground. I pawed it over and realized it was an old-fashioned mail meter. Someone had been sending out bulk mail from here.

I put my nose down and started to pay attention to what it had been trying to tell me. First, this room was more public than the kitchen or first bedroom, more like the back door and hallway had been.

Most houses have a base scent, mostly a combination of preferred cleaning supplies (or lack thereof) and the body scents of the family who live in it. This room smelled different from the rest of the house. There had been—I looked again at the scattering of chairs—maybe as many as ten or twelve people who came to this room often enough to leave more than a surface scent.

This was good, I thought. Given the way O'Do

I memorized their scents anyway.

I'd done what I could with this room—which left me with only one more. I'd left the living room for last for two reasons. First, if someone were to see me, it would be where the big picture window looked out onto the street in front of the house. Second, even a human's nose could have told them that the living room was where O'Do

I think it was dread of what I'd find in the living room that made me look back into the bedroom, rather than any instinct that I might have missed something.

A coyote, at least this coyote, stands just under two feet at the shoulder. I think that's why I never thought to look up at the pictures on the wall. I'd thought they were only posters; they were the right size and shape, with matching cheap Plexiglas and black plastic frames. The room was dark, too, darker than the kitchen because the moon was on the other side of the house. But from the doorway I got a good look at the framed pictures.

They were indeed posters, very interesting posters for a security guard who worked for the BFA.

The first showed a child dressed in a fluffy Easter Sunday dress sitting on a marble bench in a gardenlike setting. Her hair was pale and curly. She was looking at the flower in her hand. Her face was round with a button nose and rosebud lips. Bold letters across the top of the poster said: PROTECT THE CHILDREN. Across the bottom, in smaller letters, the poster a

Like the John Lauren Society, Bright Future was an anti-fae group. It was a lot smaller organization than the JLS and catered to a different income bracket. Members of the JLS tended to be like Ms. Ryan, the relatively wealthy and educated. The JLS held banquets and golf tournaments to raise money. Bright Future held rallies that mostly resembled the old-fashioned tent revival meetings where the faithful would be entertained and preached at, then passed a hat.

The other posters were similar to the first, though the dates were different. Three of them were for meetings held in the Tri-Cities, but one was in Spokane. They were slick, and professionally laid out. Stock posters, I thought, printed at the headquarters without dates and places, which could be added later in Sharpie black.

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

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'Do

It smelled of wood smoke and pipe tobacco: O'Do

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 pornography. 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'Do

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'Do

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'Do

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.