A Scrying Shame by Donna White Glaser Read Free Book Online Page A

pink—tub, sink, all the tile. Even the toilet is pink. And do you realize I have to share it with Grumpa?”
    “Holy crap,” Chandra said. “You have to share a bathroom? That seems, like, medieval. Can’t you use the guest bathroom?”
    “There is only one bathroom in the entire house. One. And Grumpa has his Aqua Velva and his shaving stuff scattered all over the place. And get this, Chan. He leaves his denture goop and the glass he sticks his teeth into at night right there on the counter.”
    Chandra’s groan rattled through the cell phone.
    “All night long,” Arie continued in a horrified voice. “If I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, they’re going to be there, smiling at me.”
    “I’m on my way, and I’m bringing sustenance.”
    Arie clicked off and rested her head against the siding. She didn’t even care if there was bird poop on it.
    “Yoo hoo!” Evelyn called from the side of the truck. “What are you doing over there? We need you. No time for breaks.”
    Arie sighed and trudged over to her mother.
    “You need to make sure those children aren’t just tossing your boxes every which way. They’re just impossible. I told your father—”
    She left before her mother could get a full harangue going and headed inside the house, avoiding the kitchen where Grumpa had retreated. She could hear him muttering about the “herd of buffalo” that had been set loose in his house.
    Despite the chaos, the teens were doing a decent job. A trio stood in living room under the blue chunky-glass Lucite orb dangling from the ceiling by a large-linked brass chain. One of the girls looked over at Arie and pointed at it. “I love it!” she squeaked. “It’s a light, right?”
    “Yeah.” Arie walked over and felt along the electrical cord that wound around the chain until she found the switch and clicked it on.
    “Ooh, it’s so pretty,” the girl cooed.
    “Uh huh. Gorgeous.”
    A crash at the other end of the house set her heart racing. She hurried down the hall and discovered her father shooing two boys out of her room.
    “We’re fine,” her dad said. “Just a little mishap.”
    Arie checked to make sure his smile didn’t have the little worry lines that bracketed his mouth whenever he had to initiate soothing-pastor mode. They were absent, and she relaxed.
    An hour and a half later, the teens piled back into the church van to follow Norm Kenwick’s truck over to the Stiles’ home in order to stack the odds and ends of furniture that wouldn’t fit in the space Grumpa had allotted her. Evelyn scurried to her car, anxious to beat them to the house. She was still calling out directions even as the van backed down the driveway.
    Arie sighed and forced herself to return to the house. Quiet had finally descended. She headed to her room and discovered her father placing knickknacks on the shelves of a curio cabinet that had been temporarily relocated from the guest room to the hall. For a moment, Arie was reminded of Leonard Petranik’s narrow hallway, and she shivered. As she moved around her dad, she accidentally jostled the cabinet and caused several figurines to fall over with a clatter. Arie picked one up. A ceramic boy with enormous round eyes. Grumpa collected Precious Moments figurines?
    The noise brought Grumpa stomping down the hall to them. “Here now! You be careful there. Don’t you have any respect at all? This isn’t going to work out. I can’t have all this commotion. And I’m not going to have you crashing around and destroying my things. You never could—”
    “Now, Harlan, let’s just relax,” Ed interposed. “Nothing was broken, and it’s just as much my fault as Arie’s. Neither one of us meant to disrespect your belongings.”
    “Oh, really? Well, if we’re talking about disrespect, none of this was my idea, was it? If barging into a man’s home and forcing him to play nursemaid to a—”
    “It wasn’t my idea, either,” Arie said. “And,