Page 146 of The King of Crows (The Diviners 4)

Doc shrugged and followed, his hands in his pockets. “Don’t wanna be a coward.”

“Am I the only one here with a lick of common sense?” Alma complained, but she hurried after. She wasn’t about to stay behind alone.

“Look.” Ling noted the stripes etched into the funeral home’s wooden door, an echo of the screen’s patterning. “Looks almost like a burn.”

“It’s like what I saw on the side of the bank,” Alma whispered.

“And in the storm cellar,” Jericho said.

“You didn’t say anything about that,” Ling said.

Sergeant Leonard. In the cellar. Sergeant Leonard, making Jericho feel crazy. “It might’ve just been a stain,” he said.

Inside, the foyer was the soft dark of perpetual dusk. A bereavement book lay open on a marble-topped chest. A white ribbon dangled from the book’s center crease. Halfway down the page, the names stopped.

“There’s nothing since this date three weeks ago,” Ling said.

“So… nobody’s died since then?” Alma said hopefully.

The light they’d seen from the street bled through the inset windows of the closed chapel doors and onto the burgundy rug of the foyer. The windows were stained glass, impossible to see through.

“I’ll go in first,” Jericho said.

“I’m not going to give you an argument,” Ling said.

Jericho pushed through the doors. The chapel was heavy with shadows. The light was coming from a room in the back and off to the right. Up front, a casket bedecked in rotted floral wreaths rested on a bench.

Alma whispered to Ling, “I don’t care if we have to walk all the way to our next show, I am not passing that.”

“I’m with Alma,” Doc said. “This doesn’t feel right.”

Jericho marched forward. He rested his hand on the lid of the closed casket, then licked his lips, nervous. “Okay. On the count of three.”

Alma whispered. “Don’t you dare!”

“One…”

Ling nodded. If something awful lurked inside, how would she get away? “Two,” she said, fighting her fear.

“Three!”

; Ling thought her heart might stop as Jericho threw back the lid. Empty.

“Oh, my Lord,” Alma said, one hand on her heart, the other seeking support from the back of a pew.

Doc pointed to the lighted room off to the right. “I believe that’s the mortuary proper over there. Hey, now, wait a minute! That was not meant as an invitation to go in!” Doc called after Jericho, who had started toward it. He turned to Alma and Ling. “That white boy is strange. Creepy. He’s just plain creepy.”

The acrid smell hit them before they even entered the room. “Somebody making pickles?” Ling asked, wrinkling her nose.

“That’s formaldehyde,” Doc said, putting his handkerchief to his nose. “For preserving the corpse.”

Alma gagged and cupped a hand over her mouth and nose. “That’s formaldehyde?”

“Nope. That is the corpse,” Doc said, nodding at the bloated body laid out on a table.

“How come you know so much about this?” Alma asked, pinching her nostrils.