to make soup? As I followed the voices and the footsteps, the smell became stronger, and when I finally reached the master bedroom, the source revealed itself.
Three women stood around the room with Addie, all of them gray-haired and draped in layers of baggy clothing that looked like it might have been made from old curtains or maybe lampshades. Their wrists jangled with metal bracelets, they wore slippers that they might have stolen from Aladdin himself, and they were holding smoking sticks in the air and chanting. Addie stood at the edge of their small circle, wringing her hands and looking worried. The sight of her looking so upset made me feel upset, but it was also a little confusing to find this scene—and even Addie didn’t look like she knew exactly what was going on here.
“Uh . . .” I wasn’t sure exactly what was happening, and I was less sure how to interrupt it to get an explanation.
“Michael,” Addie said, spotting me. “Hi.” Her face slipped into a glowing smile before quickly turning wary.
“Um. Hi?” I glanced at the three women, who still had their eyes closed and were ignoring me with a tenacity I’d only witnessed previously in my ex-wife.
“They’re cleansing,” Addie said, gesturing at the women.
This was unlike any scrubbing technique I’d seen before and I greatly preferred the scent of lemons or even bleach to whatever this pungent smoky smell was.
“I brought some Lysol from the store,” I said. “Would that work better?”
“Young man, do you mind?” One of the women snapped, turning to glare at me.
“I’m not sure. I might mind. What exactly are you doing?”
The woman sighed and looked at Addie before explaining to me, in the same tone she might use with a repeatedly disobedient puppy, “We are cleansing the house.”
I had an inkling what this was about, based on the chanting and the skeptical look on Addie’s face. I’d seen movies about witches before. “Of?”
“Spirits, of course,” the woman said. “But now you’ve interrupted and we’ll have to begin again. I honestly don’t know if this will be effective at this point.” She looked pretty exasperated, so I figured it might be best to just let her and nutty buddies finish up. I motioned to Addie and she followed me out into the hallway.
“What’s going on?”
“They confirmed that the house is haunted. We’re trying to clear it of spirits.” She sounded like she believed in this about as much as I did.
“With burning sticks and fashion from the seventies?”
“They’re smudging sage.” Addie crossed her arms defensively.
“A proven technique for making the house smell funny, for sure.”
“And for cleansing negative energy.”
I watched her face, looking for any sign that she actually believed this would work. Her manner was defensive, but her face made me think she wasn’t buying into it. Her intelligent eyes looked tired, a little glazed. “How’s it going so far?”
“I don’t know. They’ve been here for hours.” She dropped her arms and looked up from beneath dark lashes. “I didn’t know what else to do, Michael. I went to Mom’s but she told me she didn’t need me this morning, so I came back up here. I was trying to clean the bathroom upstairs when that screaming noise echoed through the house. It scared me to death. I called my mom from the driveway, and she sent these ladies over. They’re proven spirit whisperers from Center County.”
This felt like one more part of the feud, except Lottie wouldn’t have pranked her own daughter just to get me, would she? “How does Lottie know about spirit cleansing?”
“I think she found them on the internet, actually. But they were on that Ghost Hunters show. They’re legit.”
One of the women took this opportunity to raise her warbling chanting to an impressively high note, causing me to cringe. They were legitimately kooky, that was for sure. “Are you paying these people?”
Addie nodded, looking sheepish.
“A lot?”
She raised a shoulder. “I mean, I don’t really know what the going rate is for this kind of service. I was desperate, Michael. I can’t stay here and be terrified all the time!”
I didn’t believe for one second that brewing potions and waving a stinky stick around the house would stop whatever was making the screaming noises, but if it made Addie feel better about staying in the house, I guessed it wouldn’t hurt.
“Fine,” I said, resigned to whatever it was the crazy ladies were doing in there. “Hey, do you know anything about my store? About a