Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9
Author: Jordan Castillo Price
Date: 2018-01-09 21:07:47+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Occult & Supernatural; Romance; Lgbtq+; Gay; Action & Adventure
Description: Victor Bayne is through with the Chicago PD. Can he handle the FPMP? After years of frustration as a PsyCop, Victor Bayne reports for duty at the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program. As a fledgeling agent, he’s ready to smoke out a few ghosts and be home each night in time for dinner. But is he prepared to add a professional dimension to his romantic partnership with Jacob Marks? Jacob has already established his territory at the FPMP—he’s competent, he’s respected, and he’s pretty much fearless. The last thing Vic wants to do is screw up in front of him. When fellow agents start turning up dea
Publisher: JCP Books

Contents

Book Info

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

About this Story

About The Author

Witness Sample

The PsyCop Series

Book Info

Agent Bayne

PsyCop 9

Jordan Castillo Price

Find more titles at
www.JCPbooks.com

Cover art by Jordan Castillo Price

Agent Bayne: PsyCop 9 © 2018 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN 978-1-935540-96-0

Electronic edition 1.0

Dedication

To Paula Foley Tillen and Bob Tillen, who love cemeteries

Jodie Lobb, who loaned me her name for an FPMP agent
and Della Boynton, who finds dead bodies

Chapter 1

I often wonder what history’s first party was like. I envision a bunch of Neanderthals sitting around the fire, and one of them leaps up and says, “I know, let’s play a bunch of ridiculous games, gorge on unhealthy food, and embarrass someone.” Probably not—they were too busy trying to avoid getting eaten by sabertooth tigers. But whoever invented the concept of the party, I’d love to track down their spirit and give them a piece of my mind. Because if I thought working at the police station with a bunch of no-neck, testosterone-pumped cavemen was bad, I was entirely unprepared for how excruciating my farewell shindig would be.

Oh, I’d been to enough office goodbyes myself. Here’s how they’d usually go down: Betty would cycle through and collect five bucks from everyone, Niedermayer would promise to pay up but never do it, Collins would offer to go get the cake to ensure it didn’t contain lemon, strawberries, pineapple, or any other potential fruit, and Warwick would come in, say a few stiff words, and leave us all to our coffee.

What I hadn’t really paid much attention to was the overall sadness of the whole thing. Not the nostalgia or the heartfelt goodbyes, but the photocopied good luck sign, the haphazard attempt at hanging a few streamers…just the overall tenor of a halfhearted show of camaraderie.

Since the coffee corner was within view of my desk, the drooping, pathetic excuse for a sendoff was lurking in my peripheral vision as I cleaned out my drawers.

Right across the desk, Bob Zigler was soldiering on without me already, and I wasn’t even gone yet. Without a psychic liability to protect, he was free to take on the organization of a big community intervention program our boss had been putting off for months. It involved a mind-numbing array of spreadsheets and a litany of phone calls. Zig had always been your quintessential Chicago detective, with a graying cop mustache and a gait that compensated for the gun at his belt. Back when he’d first been matched with me, he was eager to put a dent in our homicide backlog. Nowadays, he seemed relieved to be wrangling donations for the local after-school program.

When he hung up with a business owner who’d grudgingly pledged ten backpacks and a case of notebooks, I said to him, “So…what’s the deal? In the long term, I mean. If they bring in another Psych, are you still up for the whole PsyCop gig?”

“If there’s another medium lined up, no one’s told me about it.”

“Not a medium—there aren’t enough of us to go around, not that we know of, anyhow. But maybe that’s a good thing. If defense attorneys can blow a case by getting a jury all weirded out about statements coming from dead victims, maybe another type of Psych is the way to go. A good empath, for instance, to help you handle the witnesses. Or a clairvoyant to tell you where to focus.”

“We’ll see,” he said vaguely. And Bob Zigler might be plenty of things, but vague wasn’t one of them. He checked his watch. “Well, it’s noon, might as well head over to the cake.”

I let the matter drop.

A few patrol officers hovered casually nearby with their coffees—it would’ve been seriously uncool for anyone to cut the official cake but me—but there weren’t as many people lingering around as there had been, back when Maurice retired. Maybe the rest were out on patrol. More likely, though, my general lack of popularity was to blame. That shouldn’t have hurt my feelings, of course. I wasn’t a kid getting picked last for kickball. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t unexpectedly disappointed by the turnout.

Betty bustled over from the reception desk and put the cake knife in my hand as a not-so-subtle hint to get on with things. I hacked the cake into a lopsided grid. “We’re sure gonna miss you, Detective.” Betty blinked in confusion, then added, “Well, I guess it’s not Detective anymore, is it? What will we call you now?”

Sergeant Warwick joined us then, and put the awkward conversation out of its misery. “He’s graduating to a federal agency…and that’s all that will be said on the matter.” He glared around at the few coworkers waiting for cake, and they all mumbled and nodded. Warwick was a generation older than me, so maybe that’s why I’ve always thought of him as “old.” Though I supposed nowadays there was more gray in his bristling mustache and heavier jowls threatening to overflow his stiff collar.

“Anyways,” he went on. “We appreciate your service and wish you all the best.”

Were his goodbye speeches always so generic and stilted? Who knows. Maybe it was the best he could do, since he wasn’t allowed to say, “Watch your ass, Bayne. Don’t go getting yourself killed, like my nephew did.” Though I suspected I saw the warning in his eyes.

My soon-to-be ex-coworkers gave a polite clap, and Warwick grabbed a slice of cake, marched back into his office and closed the door. I figured my socializing quota had been met and I was free to make my escape, but then Jeff Raleigh sauntered up with a wrapped gift in his hand and a shit-eating grin on his face.

The nasty smile set off all kinds of internal alarms, but then I realized it was nothing more threatening than the farewell gag gift, yet another time-worn Fifth Precinct tradition. Always something stupid and profoundly useless like a clock with thirteen hours on it, or an aerosol spray that smelled like synthetic fart. I took the box and shook it. Whatever was inside was lightweight, not too big. I was prepared for something lame, so as I peeled open the box and pulled out a wad of material, my first thought was, Cool, a T-shirt. Who can’t use an extra T-shirt? But then I shook it out and got a load of the graphic: Bikini Inspector.

The neckless cavemen around me all chuckled.

It was a gag gift, I reminded myself. Something useless. Something absurd. But the question was, had they given me such a blatantly testosterone-fueled item as their way of inferring I’d never been quite manly enough to measure up? Or was it something deeper, an assertion that they’d always known I was queer, and now they were finally free to make a good dig about it. I looked up and raised an eyebrow.

Warjovsky piped up, “What, you don’t think it’s funny?”

I was a little surprised to be catching shit from him, especially after what we’d seen together in the zombie basement. “How so?”

He laughed easily. “Like you ever go to the beach!”

* * *

Fourteen years. As I gathered my things, I tried, and failed, to think about anything in my life I’d done for fourteen years. School? If I’d been able to finish out my senior year of high school, maybe—thanks to the fact that I had to repeat both fourth and sixth grade. Hockey? A season and a half. Ping-pong? I just signed up for that to get out of football. And while I did play the recorder in band through both of my attempts at fourth grade, I usually just sat in the back and pretended to blow, so that really didn’t count. Relationship? Not even close. Jacob and I had celebrated an anniversary some months back—though we weren’t too clear if it started with the hello-handjob or him moving in a week later—and as relationship longevity went, that struck me as pretty darn impressive.

After fourteen whole years, it seemed like my desk would’ve amassed more stuff. I walked out to my car with the cardboard box in hand. A few good pens I thought would improve my handwriting. Some business cards from people I no longer remembered. Notebooks, mostly blank. A mini magnetic sculpture, still in the box. While I had unearthed a truly amazing collection of paperclips, I’d scored it from Betty’s supply closet, so it hardly seemed fair to keep them. Ditto the scissors, stapler, and most everything else. What kinds of things do normal people cart out of the office on their last day? Plants? Souvenirs? Photos of their friends and family? I didn’t have anything like that, unless the T-shirt counted as a souvenir. But given the fact that every time I saw it I was likely to rehash the discomfort of not being sure if it was really a stab at my manliness, it was hardly a sentimental item. In the end, I took the long way around the parking lot and pitched the whole box into the dumpster, then headed back home.

It was at the cannery that the gravity of the situation really hit me. I was no longer part of the Chicago Police Department. Given that I was none too keen on joining in the first place, you’d think I’d be relieved. But it didn’t feel anywhere near as good as I’d expected. Just strange.

My hand went to my empty holster, then to the breast pocket where the weight of my badge was conspicuously absent. The only thing left from my extended tenure was my paper PsyCop license. I pulled it out and ran my thumb along the edge, which was dull and fuzzy with age. I supposed that small scrap of paper was the weightiest thing of all. I’d never aspired to be a PsyCop, but I’d been good at it. I stuck with it too, until I realized that my collars were walking free, and being good didn’t mean shit. If I was starting to feel maudlin about leaving that career behind, remembering what it was like to find out my efforts amounted to only so much busywork was enough to snap me out of it.

I pulled off my necktie and pulled on an old T-shirt. No Bikini Inspector there, just a few coffee stains. Maybe I should’ve kept that dumb shirt as a reminder of how it felt, after coming out as a teenager, to be back in the closet as an adult. Not that I ever placed much value in letting anyone at work get to know the “real” me. That only invited a world of hurt. But I’d be turning forty soon, and sneaking around the gay elephant in the room had gotten really old.

Plenty of folks in the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program already knew Jacob and I were a couple, and anyone who didn’t could probably lift the idea from our minds. Knowing that I wouldn’t be hiding such a basic, normal, healthy aspect of my life anymore? You’d think I’d feel a weight off my shoulders, but the relief was replaced by the resentment that I’d been carrying a burden all these years.

I went into the kitchen, located a list Jacob had tacked to the refrigerator for me, and began working on dinner. Jacob can assess what’s in the fridge, recall what we’ve got stashed in the cupboards, and put together an actual meal without consulting a written recipe. Me? I needed a clear roadmap to ensure we didn’t end up in a nasty dinner cul-de-sac. And even then, with everything written out, I still mixed up teaspoons and tablespoons more often than not. Good thing he didn’t hook up with me for my culinary ability.

By the time I got the water boiling, Jacob was in the front hall kicking snow off his shoes. He came and joined me in the kitchen, pressed himself up against my back, slipped his arms around my waist, and nuzzled the back of my neck.

I attempted to shrug him off. “We don’t want the water to boil off. Again.”

“I have it on good authority that if you turn that tap over by the sink, you’ll find more.”

Regretfully, I slipped his manhandling and started shoving carrot peels down the disposal. It was a Pavlovian thing, I guess, but the sound of the gears grinding inspired me to talk shop, even though I doubted there was any news that was worthy of the electronic listening devices we had so much fun evading.

“So…do you think we’ll be sharing an office?” I ventured.

Jacob handed me a wooden spoon and pointed me toward the stove. “In the Oversight Division? That’s hard to picture.”

Why not? I’d be overseeing ghosts. Or, more precisely, the lack of.

But, no. That was really a stretch. It was more the desire to ride Jacob’s successful coattails than any actual logic at play. I dumped in the pasta and stirred. Water sloshed over the side of the pot and hissed against the hot burner as if to berate me. Not for my painful attempt at cooking, but the thought that I’d be anywhere near as good at navigating the FPMP as he was. Sure, I saw ghosts. But once those repeaters were taken care of, what more use would I really be?

Jacob, on the other hand, was always so damn confident. Even though, on paper, he was a lowly Non-Psychic—and even though he hadn’t developed much of a grasp on his True Stiff ability—he still walks into the room like he owns the place. And somehow, everyone else is swept along in the tide of his self-assured charisma.

Me…I just do my best to not bring any undue attention my way.

Jacob took the wooden spoon from me and set it on the countertop. When he fit himself against my back and put his arms around me again, I surrendered to the attention, mainly because I was shoved against a countertop. But also because it did feel better having someone to talk to about it.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “The only friend I ever had at the Fifth Precinct was Maurice, and he’s gone now. So why the heck do I feel like I’m gonna miss the joint?”

Jacob didn’t answer. He knows when to let rhetorical questions lie. Instead, he sank his thumbs into the rigid muscles between my shoulder blades and did his best to massage away my worries.

I was so tense, it hurt.

“If ever a position existed that seemed tailor-made for me, it’s the FPMP’s official medium. Even so, I feel like…a fraud.” I laughed bitterly. “Dumb, right?”

Most people I know would say, Everybody feels that way sometimes. But not Jacob. That was a good thing—it meant he wouldn’t lie to spare my feelings, and if there’s anything I hate, it’s the thought of being coddled. Instead, he tried to comfort me by trailing a hot kiss across the nape of my neck. “First day jitters,” he murmured. “It’ll all be okay. Remember, you’re not the first new hire the FPMP’s ever had, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. And I’ve got your back. Always.”

Chapter 2

If I had questions about what the new director of the FPMP had in store for me the next morning, it didn’t appear that I would get to ask them anytime soon. Jacob split off from me just as soon as we parked the car, and I headed toward personnel. My intake was somewhat streamlined, owing to the fact that I had already been photographed and fingerprinted for my previous consulting work. That just left another whopping sheaf of paperwork to sign, a new access badge with a magnetic strip that would allow me to walk around without a babysitter, and…a polygraph.

Now, if somebody at the FPMP wanted to glean some facts about me, they could easily have a telepath peer into my brain. But the thought of the actual test—being hooked up to a series of electrodes and sensors, and having my responses analyzed and engraved on my permanent record—felt way too much like Camp Hell.

The woman administering the test wasn’t particularly scary. In fact, she had kind eyes and she was at least a dozen years younger than me, but certain experiences can’t help but leave a scar. And this one felt surprisingly sensitive.

The young woman looked down at her clipboard and said, “Okay, Victor, if you’ll just have a seat and—”

“No.”

“You really do need to sit down so we can measure your blood pressure and galvanic skin response—”

“No.”

She cocked her head as if she’d never heard the word before. And in this context, maybe she hadn’t.

“I’m not taking a polygraph,” I said, “and it’s not up for debate. If that’s a problem, take it up with the director.”

She turned to her computer and began typing, leaving me to stand there awkwardly. But I’m an old pro at awkward standing. Eventually, she turned back to me and said, “Director Kim has postponed the polygraph.” Did she seem surprised, or was I just feeling smug about having a personal relationship with the boss? “That puts you ahead of schedule, so she’s having you repeat the policy orientation instead.”

A rehashing of FPMP policy wouldn’t exactly be riveting, and even I could remember the salient points, since it amounted to a massive gag order restricting me from telling anyone about what I did. But boredom was fine by me. I’d had enough excitement to last a lifetime.

There was a handful of other new recruits in the conference room. Most of the men and women had the ramrod posture look of ex-military about them, but not all. A Caucasian guy in his forties, with oversized round tortoiseshell glasses and an avid video gamer’s undernourished physique, sat apart from the other fledgeling agents with his arms and legs crossed, and one foot jiggling nervously. When he looked up and met my eye, I felt a spark of recognition, but couldn’t quite place the face. His eyes narrowed in assessment. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he said.

“I was just wondering the same thing.” I sat down beside him. “Ever have business with the Fifth Precinct?”

He squinted harder, then said, “Oh—you’re the PsyCop. Bayne, right?” He held out his hand, and I shook it. “Patrick Barley. I used to work at Mid North Medical.”

As I pumped his hand mechanically up and down, I wondered why absolutely nothing rang a bell, especially with a name like Barley. But then it clicked. The Clinic. He’d handed me how many bottles of Auracel through the reception window, and I never thought of him as having a name other than Nerdy Horn-Rimmed Glasses. “You got new frames,” I said, but before I could add anything even more awkward, a brisk, suited woman from HR marched in, dropped a stack of folders on the table, and positioned herself importantly at a ginormous digital whiteboard.

I haven’t trained for many jobs, but I suspect orientation is pretty much the same anywhere. Time cards, dress codes, and in the case of law enforcement, an additional spiel about where you can and can’t leave your gun. Dress code was no problem. I’d bought ten of the same black suit, two dozen white shirts and a gray striped tie that blended in with all my other boring neckwear. The jackets rode a little funny across my holster and I looked like an undertaker, but the sleeves fit okay, and at least it removed all the decision-making from my morning routine.

I was wondering about the possibility of “casual Fridays” and worrying about what I might wear when I realized that today’s orientation featured something new and different: a briefing about psychic abilities. In the interest of full disclosure, everybody’s talent and level was indicated by a series of symbols on their ID. “Take a look at the M5 on Agent Bayne’s identification,” the HR lady said. “He’ll be making sure we don’t have any unauthorized visitors.”

All eyes in the room turned to me. I wondered if I was expected to say something. Thankfully not. The presenter turned back to her board and began a spiel about various training schedules, and everyone’s attention swung back to her. For such a minor interaction, the feeling it left behind felt odd, and somewhat profound. Sure, there was the “crap, she’s talking about me” sensation, but the ugly sinking feeling I usually get in the pit of my gut when somebody notices me was conspicuously absent. Why? Because for once in my life, it didn’t feel like I was being judged and found sorely lacking.

As I pondered that, I realized Barley was trying to catch my eye. He gave me a single nod. And I returned it.

Approval. I hardly knew what to make of it.

We broke for lunch, and the presenter pulled me aside and told me the director would like to see me. The sense of approval I had felt from the new recruits in general was weird enough; the quiet respect I sensed from her was downright strange.

A male Caucasian dark-suited agent came to escort me to Laura’s office. I’d been thinking of them as being interchangeable, I realized. And that was a big mistake.

Officer “Andy” didn’t have a particularly memorable face, but once you’ve caught someone spying on you, it’s pretty hard to forget them. He looked different in a dark suit than he had in a Chicago PD uniform. There’s a certain barrel-chested swagger that goes with the bulletproof vest and gun belt that didn’t really translate to civilian wear. Without all the gear, Andy looked a lot less bulky—more like a banker than a Fed. His patrol officer’s tan had faded, and in the absence of the uniform hat, his head looked a bit pointy.

One thing hadn’t changed about good old Andy, though. He snuck a weird look at me every time he thought I was ignoring him. This time, though, he decided to break the ice. “You heard of Stargate?”

“I…suppose.”

He got even more uncomfortably intense. “You seen it yourself?”

“I don’t really dedicate much time to TV.”

That seemed to quell the conversation pretty effectively. Though from the corner of my eye, I saw he was still giving me weird looks.

I probably should’ve paid less attention to Andy and more to where we were going. He led me through a weird series of switchbacks and turns until my sense of direction was well and truly compromised. I was about to ask if he couldn’t have just put a bag over my head when we stopped at a door with a promising nameplate: Director Kim.

Andy knocked. An electronic lock clicked open, and we entered.

Back when Con Dreyfuss was director, he’d had a spacious office that looked like something out of a magazine. Unfortunately, that office held more than just expensive furniture and bland oil paintings. Three guys had been gunned down in that room, and they’d each left a nonphysical souvenir behind.

Laura Kim looked pretty much the same as she had when she’d been the Operations Coordinator of the FPMP. Dark fitted suit. Minimal makeup. Phenomenally put together all around—yet vaguely out of place in the low-ceilinged room with only a single window with a view that consisted of a minuscule strip of weeds and a brick wall.

She said, “Thank you, Agent Parsons, that’s all for now.”

I gave “Andy” a small glare as he left, and when the door clicked shut behind him, asked, “What’s with the office?”

“Do you seriously think I could work in a room where dead people were wandering around?” She walked around her desk so we were face to face, perched on the edge, and crossed her arms. “I went through all of Agent Duff’s records, and this section of the floor has never registered any spirit activity.” She cut her eyes to me. “That’s correct, isn’t it? You don’t see anything, right?”

I pulled down some white light and gave the office a more careful look. “All clear.”

Laura’s shoulders sagged. “That’s a relief.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “But just because I need you—and that was never any question—it doesn’t mean you can go around acting like a diva.”

“What?”

“Agent Dreyfuss may have seemed like he was at your beck and call, but not only was he phenomenally good at keeping all his plates spinning without anyone knowing he was running ragged, he had me doing all his behind-the-scenes work. Now, not only did I inherit whatever animosity was stirred up between him and FPMP National, but I’ve got to train someone to take my place. My one consolation was that I wouldn’t have to funnel time and energy into hand-holding a childish and demanding medium. Don’t take that away from me.”

Comparing me to Richie was a low blow. “I’m not generally high-maintenance.”

“Everyone takes a polygraph before we give them full access to the building and hand them a weapon. Even me. You can see the logic in that, can’t you?”

I hadn’t really thought about it that way. “I just figured it was part of the overall violation of my privacy.”

“Look, I’m not happy about taking an annual polygraph, no one is.” Oh great, I had to do it every year? “But it’s not as if the results are posted in the monthly newsletter. Only top-level security has access to the data. I can’t stress how critical it is to make sure we run a tight ship, and we need to ensure that everyone on the team can be trusted. Look, Vic, I always felt like you and I had great rapport. And your service to the Program has been invaluable. Any reasonable accommodation I can make for you, I’m happy to make. But that doesn’t give you free license to take advantage.”

Damn, asking for what I wanted was a hell of a lot more complicated than I’d ever realized it would be. “I’m just not keen on being hooked up to machinery,” I admitted.

“Think of it this way. You’re not the only one who has to take a polygraph to do their job. Most other federal agencies require a polygraph, and plenty of positions in the private sector, too. Frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t take one for the Fifth Precinct.”

Well, I wasn’t. I’d come to find out Warwick had made all kinds of exceptions for me.

“You’ll have access to highly sensitive information and full run of the building. So, yes, it’s crucial you take the polygraph. And if I make an exception for you, it sets a terrible precedent.”

And if she did give me a pass, a loose-lipped telepath could pick up on it, and pretty soon everyone would know that I thought I was too cool for school. Those approving looks would dry up, and I would be no better off than I was at the Fifth.

“Fine. Hook me up.”

She smiled warmly. “I appreciate it. And I hate to cut our meeting short before we have a chance to catch up, but unfortunately, Dr. K was unable to clone me, so I really need to start breaking in my new assistant.” She tapped something into her watch, then said to me, “Your keycard is functional. Do you remember the way to the polygraph suite, or would you like Agent Parsons to escort you?”

“I’ll find my own way. Thanks.”

“And, Vic…I don’t have the time or resources to personally deal with your every last request. If you need something, you’ll have to go through the proper channels. Just like everyone else.”

Ouch.

As I headed back toward the polygraph suite, I tried to recall if I’d ever been called a diva before. Unlikely. Then again, it never occurred to me to ask Sergeant Warwick for any favors—even though it turned out he’d been helping me behind the scenes all along.

Laura might not have time for me like she used to, but she was still my ally. I pondered whether it was random happenstance that put Officer Andy back on my radar, or if she thought she was being helpful by pairing me up with someone from my old precinct. Laura was no mind-reader. She had no way of knowing what a square peg I was, and that any reminder of the department would only make me uneasy.

The fact was, I might as well prepare myself to encounter all kinds of familiar faces. Who knows how many people in my day-to-day life were actually FPMP agents checking up on the highest documented medium?

Since I’d been pondering my place in the world and not my location in the building, I soon realized I was nowhere near the polygraph suite, but Laura’s old command center instead, the lobby outside Con’s office. I found another employee admiring the sweeping desk, and while I did know him, thankfully it wasn’t because he’d been posing as my mailman, accountant or next door neighbor.

Patrick Barley ran his hands reverently across the slick marble countertop, then looked up at me and smiled. Without years of practicing the standard cop face, he was a total open book. “Can you believe it?” he said. “We actually work at the FPMP now. Most people don’t even know the place exists.”

“It’s a step up from your reception window.”

“No kidding—if I heard ‘can I get fries with that’ one more time, who knows what I would’ve done! Operations Coordinator—not gonna lie, it’s a major upgrade for me.”

Patrick was the new Laura? What a relief we’d gotten off on the right foot.

“So,” he said, “where are you headed?”

“Polygraph.”

“I had mine this morning. It was so interesting. Not like you see on TV with the scrolling paper readout—it’s all on the computer—but the stuff they hook up to you is totally old-school.”

I closed my eyes and sighed.

“What, you’re nervous? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Just remember to breathe, and you’ll do great.”

Chapter 3

The notion that someone was capable of taking a polygraph without feeling utterly violated was certainly food for thought, but it didn’t make me any less apprehensive when the tester wrapped a harness around my chest and diaphragm to monitor my respiration. The chest restraints weren’t the only ones. A tight band went around my left arm, and yes, I knew full well it was a blood pressure cuff and not a restraint, but try telling that to my racing heart. Sensors were clipped to the fingertips of my other hand. And even my feet rested on some sort of device. To measure what? I had no idea.

The tester clicked around her screen for a few seconds, then said “Is your blood pressure normally…?”

I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. It didn’t work. Already, sweat was dampening the back of my shirt.

“This really is routine,” she said. “Just breathe, and we’ll have a conversation, and you answer yes or no. Right now we’re getting a baseline. That’s all.”

So she said, and so my rational mind might have believed. But the rest of me was screaming Camp Hell.

“Let’s start with an easy one: Is your name Victor Bayne?”

Yes. At least, I thought it was. Wasn’t it? When I thought back to everyone I knew whose name had been changed, however, I couldn’t be all that sure. “As far as I know,” I said.

“Don’t overthink it.”

“You can see me overthinking it on the monitor?”

“A yes or no response is all I need.”

“Okay. Uh…yes?”

“Right. Let’s keep going. You’re thirty-nine years old?

Was I? Or were my records falsified? “I think so.”

“Yes or no.”

“Yes,” I said glumly.

“Okay, great. You’re doing just fine.” I didn’t need to be a telepath to know she’d just told a whopper of a white lie. “Again, we’re just getting a baseline. And…is today Wednesday?”

“Yes.” Luckily, I answered before I could spin out some weird fantasy in which even the day of the week was questionable.

“And at your last position you were a police detective?”

Was I? Or was I some sort of sick puppet, just going through the motions of collaring people who would later be released?

“Victor? Yes or no.”

“Yes.” My heart was pounding.

So that was just the baseline, and the questioning went on. The sorts of things I would expect: had I ever accepted a bribe, falsified a report, lied under oath…which I probably would have, but thanks to the fact that I’d never needed to testify, I hadn’t been faced with that temptation. I would have lied in a red hot minute to protect my own secrets, but thankfully the yes-or-no responses didn’t require me to elaborate.

“Okay great, you’re doing just fine.” She seriously thought I believed that? Maybe she was the one who needed to be hooked up to the polygraph. “Now we’ll move on to your friends and associates.”

Standard operating procedure in any interrogation. She gave my address and asked if I lived there. I said I did.

“And do you live there alone?”

My heart stuttered as fourteen years of dodging questions about my love life came crashing down. “No.”

“I show Agent Marks also resides at this address. Is that the case?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone else at this address?”

“No.”

It might have been the yes-or-no nature of the questions that she didn’t delve into the nature of our relationship, but, honestly, she didn’t really need to, did she? Two single adult men living together…. My apprehension turned to a queasy but unexpected relief. Because while the Fifth Precinct had been blissfully unaware of my sexuality—either that, or they were trying very hard to pretend they had no idea—here at the FPMP, I was out from day one. No Bikini Inspector T-shirts here. I supposed I could thank Jacob for paving the way and volunteering that info a few months ago. And while the stubborn part of me might have liked to do things in my own way and my own time, the majority of me was profoundly relieved.

She went on to see if I was affiliated with any sort of group, from church to civic organizations to softball teams, but no. Other than work and home, I didn’t have much of a life. There was no family to pump me for information about. As for friends, she touched on Maurice and Zigler, but must not have been privy to Crash, which was just as well. The less info the FPMP had on him, the better.

After a good hour and a half, she’d exhausted her questions, and I’d exhausted my adrenaline. I felt nauseated, worn out, and clammy, and I was thankful when my inquisitor checked her computer and said, “Okay, we’re done here. I’ve activated the magnetic strip on your new ID. Wear it clipped to your chest, and use it to access any secure areas of the building. Or we have lanyards, would you like a lanyard? No? And here’s a license for your wallet when you’re in the field. Report to the range for a marksmanship test the day after tomorrow on your way to HQ and…hold on a sec, I also have a message for you to stop by room 302 before you sign out tonight. Then that should be it for the day.”

Good. Because back at the cannery, there was a long hot shower with my name all over it. And maybe my throat itched for a Seconal, but that clamoring urge would need to be ignored, since I’d made sure there were no Reds to be had. Not because I was worried I’d be polygraphed over my illegal drug use (and seriously, thank God they only asked about the Auracel) but because I didn’t care for the idea of anyone being able to use that dependence to manipulate me.

As I swiped myself in and out of various areas where, before, as a consultant, I’d required a babysitter, I reflected that other than the polygraph, my first day in the official employ of the FPMP hadn’t really been all that bad. No one had puffed up and tried to out-macho me. No one had cowered away from me because of my talent. No one had even crossed themselves while muttering Spook Squad. Heck, the director herself had even claimed the two of us had a “rapport,” which was something I’d never bothered striving for with anyone.

But maybe here…I could.

Maybe I hadn’t tanked the polygraph. Why else would they have given me the IDs? And why else would they be waiting for me at the range to come shoot things?

Third floor. I turned down the wrong hall, found myself in an empty meeting room, scanned briefly for unwelcome nonphysical visitors, then turned around, backtracked, and worked my way toward 302.

Being somewhere that my coworkers didn’t merely tolerate my talent, but admire it, would take some getting used to. The tradeoff was steep, though: an utter lack of privacy. While I did see the logic in keeping tabs on me to make sure an opportune spirit hadn’t stepped in, and my mind was still my own, that didn’t mean I had to like it. But since all my deepest secrets were already splayed open for everyone to see, things would be fine going forward just as long as I kept my nose clean and didn’t invite further scrutiny from….

Internal Affairs.

I stared dumbly at the placard above the magnetic reader while my stomach bottomed out and a new sheen of perspiration erupted on my forehead. Internal Affairs Suite: 300-310. Ten whole rooms to torture and interrogate anyone pathetic enough to fail their polygraph on their first day on the job. As my vision started to tunnel, the door opened and a pair of women in dark suits strode through in the midst of a conversation.

“…but when my husband tried to get him to turn down the TV….” She trailed off, glanced at the keycard in my hand, then stepped aside to hold the door open. “Were you going in?”

Everything is totally normal. “Sure. Thanks.” I hurried through before they could ask why I was drowning in sweat. I found myself in a normal-looking hall and not a dungeon, but I wasn’t about to underestimate the damage that can be done in a normal-looking room. I suddenly regretted not reading my intake forms more carefully. Yes, I’d agreed to let the FPMP monitor me, but what other rights had I ceded? Could they detain me? Reprogram me? Lobotomize me?

When the door to room 302 opened, I nearly jumped out of my skin. And then I realized the man behind it was Jacob.

“They got you too?” I said.

He gave me a look I knew all too well—I saw it whenever I said something that made no sense whatsoever outside my own mind—and then he said, “That depends what you mean by they.”

I tapped the words Internal Affairs on the placard.

Jacob cut his eyes to the words, then back to me. “Let’s not have this discussion in the hall.”

“What difference does it make?” I whispered urgently. “This whole place is bugged. And monitored. And crawling with telepaths. And to top it all off there’s a whole suite of Men in Black with the sole task of invading every last corner of my…um….”

Room 302 was not home to any sort of torture chamber. It was just an office with a broad wooden desk, some filing cabinets, and a computer—beside which was a framed photo. Of Jacob. And me. Looking somewhat stiff in front of his parents’ kitschy Thanksgiving decorations.

As the realization dawned on me that this was Jacob’s office, Jacob’s job, he handed me a wad of tissues to mop the sweat off my face and said, “The sooner you accept that there is no them anymore, the easier it’ll be.”

“Wait—you’re IA? Since when?”

“Since Dreyfuss found out Burke’s murder weapon was FPMP issue. What did you think the Oversight Division was—and, logically, what other department would handle that investigation? You’re acting as if I’ve kept it a secret from you all this…are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

My knee-jerk reaction was to claim to be fine, but I doubted anyone would believe that. He pulled out a chair for me, but instead of sitting, I circled around it. “This was a huge mistake.”

“What was?”

“All of it.” I backed myself against the wall to ward off any potential threat, and scrubbed at my face with my hands. My hairline was even damper than my palms.

Jacob perched on the edge of his desk, calmly projecting both authority and empathy. “It’s just your nerves talking. You didn’t make the decision to come here lightly—we both know it—so don’t jump to any conclusions. Give it some time. Then whatever doesn’t work itself out, whatever concerns you have, we’ll figure out how to deal with them.”

He was good; I almost bought it. But I recognize the tone he takes to defuse a situation that’s about to go nuclear, and he was using that tone on me. “You know what it is?” I said. “I got cocky. Working here as an advisor, dealing with Dreyfuss, I thought I knew the lay of the land. But he’s gone now, jumped ship. And Laura might’ve been privy to all his machinations, but when it comes right down to it, she can’t protect me. I’m too vulnerable here. To think otherwise was pure hubris.”

“We need another signal. One for when I want to kiss you.”

The fact that he was suggesting an expansion of our repertoire without touching the back of my arm meant no one was listening in on us…as far as he knew. At the moment, anyhow. But watching? Great, another reason to feel like my whole life was on display. “Listen,” Jacob said. “you’ve got this. You do.”

“But?”

Jacob sighed. “But the reason I asked HR to send you down was that something came up and I need to stay late. If there was any wiggle room at all….”

I waved away his big-eyed concern-face. “No, I get it. We’ve never had the type of job we can just walk away from when it’s inconvenient, neither of us. I’m a big boy, I’ll manage.”

He tossed me his keys. “I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” I peeled myself off the wall and headed for the door. “Bad enough I’ve got you inventing new hand signals. I’d be really miffed if my presence here reflected badly on you.”

As I made my way back to the cannery, Jacob’s car felt disconcertingly empty without him in it. After my first official day as Agent Bayne, I was a jumble of emotions. Sorting them through might’ve been the adult thing to do, but I was perfectly happy to sweep all my racing thoughts under the carpet where they belonged.

Falling asleep isn’t usually an issue for me—it’s staying asleep that’s the tricky part. But I was still laying there counting ceiling tiles around midnight when Jacob finally got home. He came upstairs, hung up his suit, and climbed into bed beside me.

When I didn’t roll over and ignore him, he reached across me and turned on the reading lamp so we could have the chat we’d both avoided, face to face. I whispered, “I thought I knew what to expect at the FPMP, but now it’s obvious I should’ve looked a little bit harder before I leapt.”

“You’ll figure out the job. But I need to know that we’re okay. I didn’t realize we should’ve had a bigger talk about my position until I saw the look in your eyes.”

“You know I trust you, right?” I pressed my palm over his heart, stroked his chest hair against the grain, then smoothed it back down. “But I’m not the same person I was at Camp Hell, or the police academy, or even at the Fifth Precinct. If you’re IA, your clearance level must be…. Anyway, I have no idea what’s in my permanent record, but whatever it is, I don’t want you mucking through it before I’ve even had a chance to see it myself.”

“I wouldn’t—I can’t. Everything we do in Oversight is under the microscope. We can’t just investigate our coworkers for kicks. If I wanted to pull up the history of someone’s records, I’d need a damn good reason.”

That was a relief. I was mollified. Somewhat. “Change sucks. And even though the Fifth Precinct was basically a sham, at least I knew what to expect there. At the FPMP, everything I thought I knew is being turned upside down.”

“You know me.” Jacob pulled me against him more firmly. “And I know the score. I guarantee that once you learn the ropes, everything will click, and you’ll be happy there.”

Happy? That seemed awfully ambitious. Awkwardly useful, though? I supposed that would be a step up.

Chapter 4

My new approach was to have zero expectations. If I came at the job without any preconceived notions, I couldn’t be blindsided. The next morning, while Jacob headed for Internal Affairs, I reported to Laura Kim—or her old desk, at any rate. Nerdy Horn-Rimmed Glasses was at the helm. I’d really need to start thinking of him as Patrick. Not only were his new glasses big and round, but for all I knew, he could read my mind.

“Just a sec,” he told me as he punched and re-punched some numbers into a very complicated multi-line phone. And while he was distracted, I snuck a look at his badge. Patrick Barley, Operations Coordinator, NP. What a relief—both the fact that I had a handy reminder of his name, and that he wasn’t a telepath.

Patrick punched the keys harder and held his breath, then flinched when a weird tone sang through the lines. He shook his head and hung up. “Nothing’s more discouraging than a steep learning curve,” he said, “especially when you’ve been at the same job as long as you can remember. It’s like everything’s different in a zillion ways I never expected. Hopefully once I figure out the phones I’ll feel a little less overwhelmed. So, how’s it going with you?”

“About as good as can be expected.”

He called up a schedule on the computer and checked it. “Director Kim carved out a half-hour block for you. Wow. Most people don’t get more than ten minutes.” Very carefully, he keyed in a few numbers, held his breath, and with great relief, said, “Agent Bayne is here. Um…hello? Darn it….”

He pushed another button and the phone lit up and started beeping like R2D2 on steroids. While he tried to figure out which button was which, the door to the stairwell opened, and Laura called over from it, “Don’t hit the green one, Patrick, I’ve never figured out what it’s actually supposed to do. You’ll need to unplug it and plug it back in now. And don’t worry, it took me at least three days to stop hanging up on people.” She swung her attention to me. “Let’s get started. We’ve got a lot to go over.”

She led me back to her office, which was actually not that far away. Which didn’t really seem possible…unless we’d just traveled through a wormhole. She keyed us in. When I got a load of the paperwork on her credenza, I saw she wasn’t kidding about the amount of ground we’d need to cover. She said, “I’ve broken down the agency into talents and levels. On-site agents here, off-site here. I’m thinking the NPs will be the best place to start. Do you agree?”

“Hold on, back up a step. Start what?”

“Testing for mediumship potential. If I took anything away from the whole Jennifer Chance experience, it’s that mediums are ticking time bombs just waiting to be possessed.”

“I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call it a…I mean, it would take a really determined, uh….”

“We take great care to ensure our classified information stays classified. It’s hard enough to keep our own people screened. But if God-knows-what can just float right through the door….”

It wasn’t really that easy. Ghosts can latch onto specific people, but unless their emotional attachment to that person is pronounced, they tend to get stuck to the spot where they died. “Possession is pretty rare. The chance of lightning striking twice seems pretty far-fetched.”

She nailed me with a serious look and dropped her voice low. “I reviewed the incidents that led up to FPMP National seizing our research. Richie’s tip-off wasn’t the one that triggered them—he had a reputation for jumping to weird conclusions. But apparently, I also gave them a call. And not just me, but another agent, too.”

“Oh.”

Dreyfuss had made it sound like all I’d need to do was check for activity, walk the rounds, salt the repeaters, then prop my feet on my desk and call it a day.

Guess I wasn’t working for Dreyfuss.

“I’ve checked all the records I could access,” Laura said, “and I didn’t find any incidents of mediums who ranked in any other talent. So chances are, anyone with hidden mediumship potential, on paper, is NP. It’s your responsibility to figure out who’s at risk.”

And here I’d almost been worried I wouldn’t have enough to do.

“Richie’s office has been freshly redecorated, supplies are available if you’d like to perform any ritualized clearing, and if you need any additional equipment or furniture, let Patrick know.

“Okay.”

“As much as it pains me to have anything nonphysical anywhere in the building, I’ve sealed Con’s old office and left it intact. It’s just as he left it after FPMP National came and took his files and his tuner. He mentioned you saw three spirits there—is that right?—so you’ll have access to use them as a tool in your screenings.”

“Okay.”

“Agent Hinds is available for whatever you need—that’s Carl—and a medium from our Indianapolis office has been reassigned to assist you in developing the new mediumship testing protocol.”

“O…kay.” Another medium?

“She’s the one who Jennifer Chance…” Laura shuddered. She couldn’t even bear to say the word possessed. She rallied herself and said, “Agent Davis has eight years in the Program, but you’ve tested higher—not to mention your experience in law enforcement—so I’ve appointed you as the ranking agent on the team. Anything else?”

“Not that I can…think of.”

Laura’s phone blipped, and she hit a button—not the green one. “Go ahead, Patrick.”

“Agent Davis is here,” he said.

“Perfect timing. Buzz her in.” Laura paused a moment, then added, “Type your security code, then top row, third button from the left.”

Good thing I was only expected to write the rulebook on mediumship. If I had to learn that phone system, everyone might as well pack it up and go home.

The agent who joined us was about my age. Caucasian. Auburn hair, probably dyed, and heavy-handed on the makeup and sparkly jewelry. Black-suited, and phenomenally serious. Certain people just have a look about them—you can spot them here and there, at gas stations and in checkout lines—like they fully expect to have a shitty day, and if it hasn’t happened yet, by golly, they’ll make sure they’re disappointed before the sun goes down. This woman was clearly ready for something to piss her off. And when she took a look at me, she got her wish.

“Victor Bayne,” she said, with palpable loathing.

“Do I know you?”

“Heliotrope Station doesn’t ring a bell? Come on, how hard can it be—there were only four of us in the medium track. Or did huffing propellant kill all the important brain cells?”

“Agent Davis,” Laura said calmly, “bear in mind that Agent Bayne is your team leader, and any personal issues you may have shouldn’t affect your professional demeanor.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” she muttered. But I wasn’t paying attention, because I’d assembled and reassembled my reality so many times over the past twenty-four hours, it wouldn’t surprise me to discover there were gaps in my memory where people used to live.

Four mediums. Richie and me, Faun Windsong and….

Holy crap.

Dead Darla had lost some serious weight.

* * *

“This shirt doesn’t make me look fat, does it?”

The top in question was a Hot Topic goth girl number—all limp ruffles and cheap polyester, the sort of thing you could find at any mall back then—with a neckline that plunged halfway down to Dead Darla’s navel. And the way she aimed her cleavage at me, it was obvious the last thing she was showing off was her shirt.

It was a mild autumn day, during my first week at Heliotrope Station. The four mediums, Darla and me, Faun Windsong and Richie, were trooping through the Graceland—not Elvis’ estate, but the cemetery on Clark Street where all the big shot Chicago royalty were buried. The group of us dawdled along behind our group leader, Miss Maxwell. Half my mind was on fending off Darla’s attention, but mostly I was busy scoping out the place for ghosts.

“I love graveyards,” Darla cooed. She couldn’t reach my ear, so she settled for my shoulder. “Don’t you?”

“I guess they’re pretty cool.”

Maxwell herded us all toward a freshly dug grave covered in Astroturf and wilting flowers. In her previous life, Miss Maxwell had been a nun. I tried to envision her in a habit, but between her poofy dark hair and shoulder pads, I couldn’t quite conjure the image. She wasn’t exactly Joan Collins—too gangly, too Midwestern—but since she used to be a nun, she was accustomed to being obeyed. “Come on, people. Don’t straggle. We’re not here for the sightseeing. There’s serious work to be done.”

We gathered around the grave, and Maxwell pulled out a compass and showed us how to find magnetic north. “You turn the compass in your hand until the red needle lines up—see?—and then you know where to set your first ritual candle.”

Richie had been paying about as much attention to the proceedings as I was. Which was to say, he was standing there with his toes pointing toward each other, swinging his arms back and forth and staring at a sparrow perched on a nearby headstone. But when he realized what the compass was, he went still and said, “What does the needle point to?”

“Magnetic north,” Faun Windsong told him. She loved repeating what Maxwell said. Why, I never knew. It wasn’t as if all the brown-nosing would earn her a raise.

Even repeated, I thought, the concept would sail right over Richie’s head. So it surprised me when he said, “Then if you found north and started walking in that direction, eventually you’d get to the North Pole, right?”

Maxwell had always insisted no question is a stupid question, so she gave it some actual thought before she answered, “Eventually, yes. But it would take a very long time.”

“Where do I get a compass?” Richie asked. “Can I have yours?”

“What business do you have at the North Pole,” Darla sneered. “Were you going to try and find Santa?”

“No fair! Miss Maxwell, she’s stealing my idea.”

Maxwell cut in, “All eyes on me, folks. Remember, we’re here to learn, not track down Santa.”

Technically, I was there to enjoy my freedom from the Cook County Medical Health Center and sleep in a private room with three squares a day, but I didn’t want to jinx my good fortune by saying so.

Faun Windsong helped set the candles at the cardinal points. “Now position yourself at the north point of the circle,” Maxwell said, “and clear your mind. Remember, all belief systems are valid. You need to use the approach that makes the most sense to you.”

With a wicked gleam in her eye, Darla made the heavy metal sign of the horns and said, “Hail Satan.”

Maxwell went pale. “Young lady, Satan is nothing to joke about.”

“Who said I was joking?” Darla asked breezily. “If all belief systems are valid, why can’t I worship Satan? That’s what Satanists do, right?”

“Be very careful with forces you don’t fully understand. You’ll endanger your soul.”

“My soul? That’s about as believable as Santa Claus.”

“There’s new science every day supporting the theory that the personality is not merely a function of your brain activity. Death is much more than a ceasing of electrical impulses. The five of us are here because we all have the potential to sense things that are beyond the current scope and understanding of science. Whether or not there is currently empirical evidence of the soul, it would be very reckless of you to endanger yours.”

Darla rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Whatever. But what about Santa?” She made the devil horn sign again, and said, “Hail Santa.”

“This is no laughing matter.” Miss Maxwell shook her head sadly. “I’ll pray for you, Darla. Hopefully that will be enough.”

Chapter 5

Con’s office was exactly how he’d left it when he blew out of town with my best friend and wiped them both off the radar. Throat Bullet—the missing Tribune reporter—went down in a spray of blood. The Russian mobster slumped and puddled by the bathroom door. And the unidentified Triple-Shot reeled from his three silent bullets. Evidently the stasis I’d once put him in had been temporary, because his post-death film loop was now playing at normal speed—bang-bang-bang.

Looking beyond the three familiar ghostly fixtures, I spotted a few more details that were even more chilling. The lockable credenza was open and a spill of wires hung out. A chair was tipped over and a painting had been knocked askew. And that brownish splatter on the wall? I didn’t need to call in forensics to identify it as the old director’s blood.

If FPMP National was willing to rough up Con Dreyfuss, then I’d sure as hell better not get complacent.

Laura Kim had charged Darla and me to come up with an accurate way to assess potential mediumship using the three repeaters, and while it wasn’t my favorite plan, I couldn’t think of anything better. Darla strode through the dead reporter and planted herself in front of Con’s old desk, which looked like someone had thrown a temper tantrum on it. “Is this a crime scene?”

I considered how best to answer. “Not…recently.”

She turned a wire mesh pencil holder right side up and stuck the spilled writing implements back inside. “It’s obvious no one’s been in here for a while. It’s stale and covered in dust. Then, what? It’s haunted?”

“You tell me.”

Her reaction wasn’t quite the snotty eye-roll I was accustomed to, but I could still see the chubby goth chick in the rigid 40ish government employee. “And now you’re testing me.”

“Isn’t that the whole point of you being here?”

Darla shook her head in disgust. “Whatever, Vic. You might intimidate other people, but not me.”

I’d hardly intimidate anyone unless I had my weapon drawn, and even then it was pretty questionable, but I decided not to admit it. Besides, I didn’t currently have a gun. Darla fixed herself in the center of the room, shook out her arms, took a deep, slow breath, and closed her eyes.

I watched. Waited. Held my breath. And the repeaters around her kept right on dying. And just when I thought she’d cast out some vague observation to fish for details, like, I sense an energy, it’s male, her hand floated up toward the Russian mobster and she said, “Can’t tell exactly what happened to this guy, but English wasn’t his first language.”

Wow. I wasn’t the only one who’d picked up some new tricks since Camp Hell.

She opened her eyes, looked at me, and narrowed them again. “So now that I’ve passed your little exam, maybe you’ll deign to tell me why the FPMP dragged me back to this pretentious dump of a city.”

“Look, I can do without the attitude. It’s not like I had anything to do with it. Heck, I didn’t even know you’d be here until just now.”

Darla turned toward the window and looked out onto the rail yard. “I have a life, you know.”

“Then that makes both of us.”

“Maybe I expected too much from Chicago.” With her back to me, it must’ve been easier to speak. “I thought it would be cool—what a major letdown. I wasted two years at Heliotrope Station, and the big job that was supposedly waiting for me afterward never materialized. One day they just shut the doors and turned us all out with nothing but the clothes on our backs, and I ended up waiting tables to pay the bills. No fancy job. No nothing. But at least I was in Chicago, right? Ha. Once I could finally start going out and meeting people, turned out the goth crowd was nothing but a bunch of whiny art school punks.”

I wouldn’t know. After Camp Hell, I’d skipped over the bar scene and gone straight into the police academy.

Darla turned to face me. “All I want is to finish this project and go back home. So, let’s not draw this out any more than we need to.”

“Fine. Help me figure out a way to score mediums, and everyone will be happy.”

Happiness was probably a farfetched goal. Relieved to be rid of each other was more like it. Darla shut down all my suggestions by repeating them back to me in a way that made everything that came out of my mouth sound idiotic, and by the time she’d shot down every last idea, I was more than ready to escape to the lunchroom. Thankfully, she strode off before I could worry about whether she’d try to sit with me. Jacob wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but there was one familiar face in the crowd. I plunked my tray down beside Patrick Barley’s, and sat.

“How’s your project going?” he asked.

I grunted, swallowed down some surprisingly good risotto, then said, “Any luck with your phone?”

“If by luck, you mean nearly locking the Director out of her own office…then yeah, this job and I are a natural fit.”

I looked out over the room. Every time I’d spent the day at FPMP headquarters, it was always with the understanding that it was temporary. A limited time engagement. Do my job, collect my drugs, pass go, and head back to the Fifth Precinct. But not anymore. This was my new reality. And it felt weird.

“I’ve only ever worked one other place,” I admitted.

“Then it’s bound to be a challenge. But at least you psychics have an empirical level and talent to fall back on. You’re not…replaceable.” As we talked, Officer “Andy” passed by our table, and paused to give us both a look. It was brief. And maybe at the Fifth Precinct it wouldn’t have amounted to anything, given the looks I deflected all day long. But here, in the FPMP, where I was just one among many psychics, already I’d become accustomed to people not giving me a second glance.

Once he left the room, Patrick said, “What’s his problem?”

“No idea.” But it felt good for someone other than me to pick up on the attitude.

Overall, lunch was surprisingly companionable. Patrick was deep into an anecdote about how he almost drove to the Clinic that morning and had to perform an elaborate backtrack when I felt eyes on me yet again, and glanced up to see Jacob crossing the room. He caught my eye, gave me a nod, then settled in the corner with the two women from his department.

“My partner works here too,” I said.

Patrick looked over at Jacob’s table. “Oh right, I’ve seen that guy before, he’s picked you up from Mid North Medical.”

“Between work and home, there was the potential we’d see a little too much of each other, if you know what I mean. But it looks like that won’t be an issue.” Apparently, there was enough to do at the FPMP that we wouldn’t be stepping on each other’s toes. And while I hadn’t actively been fretting over it, knowing we wouldn’t be working together directly was actually a relief.

Too bad I couldn’t say as much for the rest of my day. Darla and I spent the afternoon arguing about how to use Con’s office to our best advantage. Since neither of us had any actual ideas, it wasn’t as if there was anything to disagree about. But we managed.

The sight of the three gruesome repeaters made it hard for me to focus on arguing, so we headed back to the office I shared with Carl. It was a simple white room—ideal, really—with stark overhead lighting and a single window with a typically shitty FPMP view of the highway. And now…a flatscreen big enough to entertain a sports bar. It was the same model as the one in HR, but it looked twice as big in my office as it had in the meeting room.

Carl had his back to it, mousing around on his computer. “Did Richie send us a present?” I asked him.

He looked up at me blandly. Guess my humor was wasted on him. But Darla picked up a remote and punched a button, and the massive screen lit up.

While I marveled over the fact that she’d managed to requisition the thing and have it installed in the span of a single lunch hour, she walked up and started poking at the fancy touchscreen. She sketched the general shape of the office in black, criss-crossed the floor with red lines, and said, “If you mark off a grid and then have people guess where the murders took place, even if you don’t use the word ‘murder’, just the act of having a visible grid would predispose them to know that not only is there something to find, but that target exists within one of the coordinates.”

“What’s the alternative? Put them in the room, tell them nothing, and see what happens? That won’t tell us anything.” I wasn’t deliberately trying to shoot her down, but that tactic was too close to my Dead Lady’s Wig incident for comfort.

Darla, of course, thought I was criticizing her. And she’d never taken kindly to criticism. “It would tell us plenty, if you were willing to look beyond your own preconceived ideas of what it means to be a medium.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind.” She crossed her arms and turned away. “Just tell your buddy the Director that I’m completely useless so she’ll cut me from the team, and I can go back home where I belong.”

* * *

By the end of the day, I was just as eager to go home. Since Jacob had to stay late yet again, I treated myself to a dinner of scrambled eggs and microwaved tater tots, then planted myself in front of his massive desktop. The plan was to try and come up with some idea of how to test a medium, so I didn’t come off as a complete dipshit at my new job. It wasn’t so much that I thought the internet could tell me how to do it, but I hoped it might at least shake loose some ideas. By the time Jacob finally rolled in, though, I was elbow deep in videos of people saying words until they didn’t sound like words anymore, and no closer to formulating a plan for the FPMP.

Jacob paused in the doorway, massaged the back of his neck, and said, “I keep meaning to install that app that cuts down the blue light.”

I glanced at the clock. It was well past eleven, and my goal was to go “no screens” by nine. Whoops. “You’ve been putting in awfully long days.”

He shook his head. “Hopefully it’s nothing.”

Vague. But since I was better off not being privy to his IA business—and since we both needed to get our asses to bed if we had any chance of functioning the next day—I didn’t ask.

If there was some kind of award for falling asleep, Jacob would take the first place trophy. No big surprise—he’s always an overachiever. But as his breathing deepened and became more of a snore, I lay awake, fingers interlaced across my sternum, staring at the ceiling and wondering how to solve the testing problem. It wasn’t as if I knew anything about statistics, and there was no accuracy in the tests I’d taken at Camp Hell. And yet, a little part of my brain insisted that if I hadn’t lied like a rug for two solid years, maybe those scores would’ve been somewhat accurate after all.

Or would they?

You could import subjects to test the other types of psychic talents, but since ghosts were more difficult to procure, our little team of mediums got to take more field trips than anyone else at Heliotrope Station. I even had a standing joke about it with Stefan. He’d say, “Bring me back some onion rings.” Or nail polish, or fuzzy handcuffs, or weed, and I’d act like I totally would by asking what color, what size, how many dime bags, or some other dumb detail. Then he’d say, “Surprise me,” and, of course, neither of us would mention it again. Because it wasn’t as if my keepers ever let me off-leash to go shopping—and even if they did, I had zero money to spend—but it was better than making him jealous that I got to leave the compound while he was stuck staring at the same four walls.

It was a balmy spring day, and Miss Maxwell walked us through the scene of a major accident on a rural road just outside city limits. No repeaters had been left behind, no sentient ghosts either. But given the shrine that was collecting alongside the ancient blacktop, with flowers and balloons, photos and stuffed animals, there was nothing else the intersection could possibly be. I was trailing along behind, dragging my feet while Faun Windsong prattled on about auras and energies, when I noticed a crumb of broken safety glass lodged in the sole of my Chucks.

“They were going too fast,” I said aloud.

I didn’t think anyone was paying attention to me, but Miss Maxwell spun around and said, “What was that, Vic?”

I shrugged and looked away. “They were going way too fast.”

Richie gave his stupid heh-heh, while Dead Darla tuned us all out. This was after she realized Stephan and I were an item, so her tuning me out was nothing new—but in this case, she was busy focusing on the shrine. She had her hands on one of the photos, eyes closed, trying desperately to get a read on the victim. Unfortunately, in that case, there was no victim to find. Judging by the look on Miss Maxwell’s face, though, my perfectly logical observation would land on my permanent record. After all the trouble I went through to try and keep my abilities on the down-low, too.

Beside me, Jacob gave a sharp snore, flung an arm across my neck, and sighed in his sleep. I echoed that sigh, because false positives would indeed have to be ruled out.

I gazed up at the tin ceiling. Seeing ghosts was one thing, but discovering potential mediums had me entirely out of my depth.

Chapter 6

Every once in a while, the fact that I’m an obscenely early riser works to my advantage. Driving before rush hour has a chance to take hold is a cinch, as long as I avoid the intersections where the most gruesome repeaters hang out before sunrise. And the fact that I was showered, dressed and caffeinated well before the clock struck six meant that I could grab one of the first slots at the FPMP firing range and get my marksmanship test over with. Maybe I’ve never shot another living being, but apparently the weight of a gun against my ribs was still a comfort. Because I was itching to fill that empty holster.

I signed for my new sidearm with a woman half my height and at least ten years older…who’d clearly be able to kick my ass from here to next week. Agent Jodie Watts was likely ex-military, though my perception might’ve been influenced by the fact that she wore tactical gear and not a standard black suit like my cronies at HQ. She was Caucasian, with short salt-and-pepper hair, untweezed eyebrows, and not a lick of makeup. Lesbian? Maybe. Or maybe just a badass with no interest in prettying herself up for the shooting range.

“So,” she said brusquely. “Ex-cop?”

“How’d you know?”

“You flatfoots all go for the G17s. You’d have more impressive stopping power with the PX4 Storm. The shoulder holster’s a dead giveaway, too. Who’re you supposed to be, Barney Miller?”

She wouldn’t be the first to rib me about the old-school holster, but my fellow cops and I appreciated our reliable Glocks, regardless of how we chose to carry them. Obviously, a higher-caliber weapon would do more damage, but in my opinion, the best gun was the one you knew how to fire. She handed me my FPMP-issue weapon, the same 9mm model I was accustomed to, only a lot less scuffed—then treated me to the newbie tour. From Jacob raving about the place all the time, I knew what to expect. Shooting galleries, simulation rooms, computer analysis. Yeah…it was way better than anything I’d had access to on the force. But as I admired the technology, I pulled down white light and looked with my inner eye, too. No sentient ghosts, not that I could see. And no repeaters, either. That was good. Because I’d hate for anything to startle me while I was blowing holes in targets.

We headed for the standard shooting stalls and waited my turn. I wasn’t exactly nervous—I recertified annually for the force—but I wasn’t eager to undergo the scrutiny, either. I’m weaker than I’d like in the left hand and I overcompensate when I shoot from the hip. I got my bearings. Target. Range. Distinct lack of spirit activity. Nothing was remarkable, other than the guy in the next stall struggling to hit the kill zone on his target. I’m not one to throw stones. My first lesson at the academy, I even managed to miss the target entirely. The shots to my left weren’t just poorly aimed, they were slow too.

Knowing I’d at least do better than that was definitely a confidence boost.

Watts filled me in on each segment of the test—which hand, which position, when I was supposed to reload, and where I should aim. Over the sounds of gunfire and through my protective earphones, she called out the first set. “Three rounds, each hand, fourteen seconds. Shooter ready?”

“Ready.”

Behind my head, the digital stopwatch beeped. I drew, aimed, and fired three times. Switched hands. Repeated. Scanned and holstered.

And so it went. Varying distances, stances and times, and periodic reloads. I put everything else out of my mind and aimed for the body mass. And in the end…well, I wouldn’t take home any marksmanship trophies. But I’d done as well as I had on my last annual qualification at the Fifth.

To say Watts was unimpressed with me would be a gross understatement.

“If your sidearm of choice didn’t tip me off to your last job, your performance would. Qualification standards for the FPMP are 85%. Not 70.”

Uh-oh.

“As a professional courtesy, you’re cleared to carry—with the caveat that you bring your scores up to standard within thirty days. Between now and then, I suggest you sign up for as many training sessions as possible. You’ve got some poor habits to unlearn.”

Story of my life.

“There’s twenty minutes on your current time slot,” Watts told me, “and I’m available to train. If you want to practice, the Program provides the ammo.”

What I wanted was to go grab a bagel, but instead I acted like there was nothing I’d rather do but shoot at that confounding paper man, and with her coaching, took the time to work on my left hand. I don’t think it really helped, but at least I didn’t look like an idiot for turning down the opportunity.

When it was time to make way for the next shooter, I gathered my stuff and headed out—and ran right into Patrick Barley. No wonder the guy in the next stall would be lucky to hit the side of a bus. He was a civilian, carrying his weapon not in a concealed holster, but in its locked case.

“Hey, Vic! Are you heading over to the office? Mind if I hitch a ride?”

Weirdly enough, I decided I wouldn’t mind the company. “Sure. Let me just wash my hands.”

All kinds of crap blows back from a gun when you fire it, from primer to lead to minuscule fragments of metal. And that’s from a single bullet. I’d just emptied several magazines, and I didn’t want my car to smell like a charcoal grill for the rest of the week.

We found a restroom, and Patrick joined me at the next sink as I scrubbed off the stink of the range. “So that was you, right next to me? You’re a really good shot.”

“Evidently not as good as they want me to be.” And I could tell the thirty day window would be a major pain in my ass. Especially with Laura freaking out about those damn repeaters.

He said, “I didn’t realize how heavy a gun can get when you hold it out in front of you like that. And the recoil. I guess there’s really no way to prepare yourself for shooting your first gun.”

Firing handguns was no big deal. It was a motor skill, and it was teachable. Plus, there’d always be someone out there better than you, so you might as well hope they can give you a few pointers. Figuring out mediumship when our experiences differed as much as they did? Now that was a major challenge.

Especially since I was shaping up to be the ultimate authority.

* * *

I must have gone at the problem from every conceivable angle, given how long I turned things over in my mind the night before, waiting for sleep to come, but I came up empty-handed.

“D’you think Laura would be willing to help me brainstorm the whole mediumship test?” I asked Patrick as we pulled into the FPMP underground parking. “She’s one of the smartest people I know. Maybe she’s got a different take on the whole situation.”

“Director Kim?” Patrick gave a low whistle. “She seems awfully busy. Heck, I spend my whole day trying to avoid drawing attention to myself so that she doesn’t have buyer’s remorse about hiring me. But, hey, you know her a lot better than I do.”

“Oh.”

“If there’s anything I can do, though, just ask. I know I’ll never fill The Fixer’s shoes, but whatever’s in my power, I’ll do my best to help.”

Unfortunately, unless there was some newfangled medium detector he could obtain, I couldn’t really think of anything that would further our progress.

If such a thing did exist, however, I suspected Darla would have already requisitioned it. When I got to my office, I found a third desk had joined mine and Carl’s. Of course, Darla needed somewhere to work, but it was the mismatch that threw me. While Carl and I both had plain wooden work surfaces, Darla had chosen some complicated arrangement of black and chrome, with various levels and compartments, and a pneumatic lift to raise the keyboard and monitor up or down. She was currently standing at the station, arranging a very expensive-looking lamp to shine just so. “I don’t know how you can stand the fluorescents,” she said to me.

“Never gave it any thought.” In fact, I’d never even considered that I might have a preference. Probably because I wasn’t used to having any choice.

“So I’ve been thinking,” she said. “We’ll need a control group. And a room without any energy. And we’ll need to keep immaculate records”

She looked at me defiantly, as if she thought I’d voice some objection to that, but I just nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Okay,” she repeated curtly, then turned to her computer and typed. Darla might be a disgruntled government employee, and she might have a chip on her shoulder big enough to fend off anyone dumb enough to cross her path, but she wasn’t stupid. It was clear that her time in the FPMP hadn’t been wasted. I watched her coax suggestions out of Carl, brainstorming variables that would affect potential results. Time of day, time of year, presence or absence of psyactives—all of these things and more can throw off a medium’s game. I couldn’t argue with anything she came up with. Even when she looked at me and asked, “Well, Mr. Level Five? Do you have anything to add?”

Again, I could do without the attitude. But since she had it all covered, there was nothing for me to say.

“Then you might as well see about getting us some subjects to help block out a test run.”

Back when Richie was top medium at the FPMP, it was probably Carl who handled those kinds of details. But given that Carl had a tendency to give me a look over his reading glasses that made me feel like I’d been caught cheating on a math test, I decided it wouldn’t hurt for me to stretch my legs.

Patrick was back at his desk, studying a very complicated manual. I stared at it for a few seconds before I even recognized the diagram as a phone. Then again, I never was much good at following blueprints. My one hazy Christmas memory involved a cheap plastic airplane model glued to the tree in pieces. I asked, “How many NPs do you think Lau—uh, Director Kim—could spare?”

“Whatever you need, just say the word.”

Weird. Apparently, I was patently unused to getting my way. “Let’s start with two.”

“You got it.” Patrick opened a piece of unfamiliar-looking software, did some typing, and hit send. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Join me for lunch?”

He looked surprised, but not as surprised as I felt. Because Zigler had been my built-in lunch buddy, so these were entirely uncharted waters for me. It felt so incredibly awkward to ask, it was a wonder I didn’t just leave it to chance and hope for the best.

“Thanks for the invite, but today’s a no-go.”

My face didn’t just fall. Did it? Shit. I think it might have.

“I’ve got half a dozen errands to run,” he said. “But I’ll take a rain check.”

“Right. Cool. So…I’ll just, uh…I’ll wait for those NPs, then.” I gave him a stilted half-wave—such a dork—then retreated to the sanctity of the elevator.

My heart was palpitating a little. What was up with that? It wasn’t like I was hot for the guy. Totally the opposite. And I didn’t need to stay on his good side to get preferential treatment from Laura. So what difference did it make if he liked me? I wasn’t there to eat and make friends, I was there to spot ghosts and mediums. I headed back to the haunted office to wait for our subjects with Darla.

Our first guinea pig, according to the brief dossier we were given, was a fifteen-year veteran of the FPMP, top of his class at Northern, fluent in German, very good at keeping the servers running, and about as psychic as a doorknob. My plan was to have him walk the grid. Simple, but since I’d seen Laura dodging ghosts, why not? I started him in the far corner. “Go ahead and cross the room,” I said. It must not have been the first time someone at the FPMP had him do something baffling. He strode to the far wall. And brushed right up against Throat Bullet as he did. “Let’s try that again. Slower this time.” He turned, came forward, and walked directly through the repeater.

Darla leaned in and whispered, “Can I see you outside?”

We stepped into the hall, and she said, “You need to act natural. Every time he passes the window, you tense up all over.”

I willed away the impulse to chafe goosebumps off my arms. “Got it. Right.”

“So what’s over there?” she asked.

“A murder.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “Not the foreign guy?”

“No. Different one.”

“Well, I’m surprised the IT guy hasn’t figured that out just by looking at your face. This room is full of cameras, right?”

“Isn’t everything at the FPMP?”

“Then while he’s walking the grid, maybe we don’t need to be in there at all.”

Frankly, if there’s ever a way to achieve my goals without interacting with other people, I’m all for it. We got permission to view the office feed, gave the IT guy instructions to continue walking the room, then retired to our office to watch him on the big screen. He did exactly as he was told, walked back and forth. And while I couldn’t see the repeaters on the screen, I’d spent enough time with them to know where they were—and this guy was just plowing right on through.

“Well, this is a bust,” I said.

Abruptly, Carl stood up and said, “Do you need me? Because I’ve got somewhere to be.”

I glanced at the clock. Five on the nose and he was antsy to leave, and he’d been coming and going all day.

I didn’t feel like I had the luxury to bail just because the clock was displaying some arbitrary number, but for every habit I’d picked up on the force, Carl would have learned a different strategy from playing Richie’s lackey. And I couldn’t imagine Richie staying at work a minute longer than absolutely necessary when there were TV shows to be watched and wings to be consumed. “Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t expect we’ll figure out what’s going on tonight.”

As the door clicked shut behind him, Darla said, “Most people truly are NP, after all. Maybe we shouldn’t expect much.”

Onscreen, the guy strode directly through the spot where Triple Shot took three bullets in a big, grisly pirouette. I sighed. “Maybe not.”

Carl might’ve been in a hurry to make himself scarce, but Darla had nowhere better to be. Ultimately, we tried the same method on five more FPMP employees in all, and none of them broke pattern around the repeaters. Possibly, they were so well-trained that when we asked them to walk, they simply suppressed the urge to avoid the hotspots. But statistically, it was more likely that they felt no evidence of the repeaters at all. Together, we zoned out to the world’s most boring TV show: a lab tech walking back and forth in precise, measured steps. “How could they not feel anything?” I asked.

“Expectation. Social conditioning. A million other reasons. The question is, why do we?”

I closed my eyes and tried to envision a world in which I didn’t see the spectral blood flying. “Maybe as infants we were dropped on our heads.”

“Speak for yourself.”

We went back to the haunted office after our last subject had walked their uneventful grid. Darla paused beside Throat Bullet and went very still.

“He thinks he was set up,” she said. “Whatever that means.”

“Hold on, how do you know that?”

“Earth to Vic. I am a strong level four.”

“I’m not questioning whether or not you know it. I’m asking you how.”

She planted her hands on her hips and faced me. “Because he said so. How do you know he’s there?”

I watched the repeater take yet another bullet to the throat, considered letting on how much I actually saw, then nixed the whole idea. “Just a…strong impression.”

“Well, you know what would impress me?” She looked pointedly at her watch. “Going back to my hotel room, putting my feet up, and letting the FPMP order me the most expensive thing on the room service menu. Unless you’ve got anything more for me, boss, I’m calling it a day.”

Chapter 7

Jacob was home already by the time I pulled up in front of the cannery. Normally I’d make a smart remark about him clocking out on time for once, but frankly, I wasn’t feeling it. Darla heard the repeater? The details she’d given were a hell of a lot more precise than the nebulous, “I sense a presence” horseshit you’d get from a table-rapper out to plunder your wallet. Not only gender and location, but the foreign language bit that even I didn’t know about until I matched the repeater to a photo of a missing Russian spy. I picked up on audio repeaters once in a blue moon, but Darla had hit two out of three without any guidance on my part.

Jacob was sitting at the dining room table staring off into space. Either he was thinking, or an alarming crack had appeared in our masonry. I checked the wall. Looked fine to me…then again, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d stared at something overly long because he was too proud to wear glasses. I even ended up grabbing him a pair of cheaters, which I left on the coffee table in hopes he’d break down and use them. But I supposed those were just for reading, not distance. I hung up my coat and told him, “I have absolutely no idea how to rate a potential medium.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he said blandly. As it registered that he’d given me a patently un-Jacob-like response, he touched my forearm to signal that if we had anything important to say, we’d best say it where random electronic listening devices wouldn’t overhear us. I put my coat back on again, and we headed to the big supermarket.

I’m not sure exactly how much privacy there is in public places. After all, it would be easy enough to bribe or coerce a faceless corporate entity into letting you plant all the bugs you want. But we figured that crowded spots would at least provide some camouflage.

Jacob grabbed a cart and strode to the coffee aisle with great purpose, stepped up to the bulk bins, filled a bag, dumped it into the grinder and hit the button. It was obnoxiously loud…in fact, it was perfect. But before I could start ruminating about mediumship, he brushed his lips against my ear and said, “What do you know about Andy Parsons?”

Other than my immediate and visceral dislike of good old Officer “Andy”?

“Not much,” I admitted. “Why?”

“Someone’s been sending bizarre anti-FPMP manifestos to the press.”

“That can’t be good.” I watched coffee tumbling into the bag. “Possessed?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“And you’re thinking it’s Andy.”

“I’m not sure. We’ve got a guy in the news agency who intercepted it before it got out. He recovered a printed document, someone trying to cover their digital trail by using paper. What they didn’t know was that FPMP printouts are traceable. The printers at headquarters stamp the documents with a watermark that looks like a fleck of toner if you don’t know about it.”

The stream of freshly ground coffee ebbed, and the loud grinding noise slowed, then stopped. I filled another sack with beans, then dumped them into the hopper. As I did, Jacob fit himself against my back and spoke into the tender spot behind my ear. “I traced it to the printer. Parsons shares it with three other agents—and it could be any or all of them. But Parsons went out to lunch today and didn’t come back.”

His words buzzed against my skin and made me tingle in all the right places. I bumped him off me with my shoulder blade and said, “Careful, Mister, or you might cultivate a weird kink we’ll both regret.”

He eased back, marginally. “I was hoping you’d have some insight since you worked with him at the Fifth.”

“Only that he was nowhere near as slick as he thought.” I pulled down another stream of coffee beans so it was ready to go when the current batch was ground. “Let’s say it was him, and not a stowaway ghost. This information is so newsworthy that he was willing to trade his career for it?”

Jacob sighed against the back of my neck. I slipped a hand inside my overcoat to rearrange myself. The grinder stopped, and I poured another sack down the chute. When the noise-cover resumed, Jacob said, “A psychic conspiracy that goes back decades.”

“So, when he asked me about Stargate…I take it he wasn’t talking spaceships.”

“That’s the program officially on the record—it was all part of the arms race of the seventies. The Soviets supposedly had a remote viewer, the US decided they needed to get in on that action. They didn’t realize that all the training in the world couldn’t help someone without the intrinsic clairvoyant ability. The program was a bust—maybe it was just too far ahead of its time. The Army declassified all the particulars, but the things Parsons was hinting at were a lot darker. Not the Army, but the FPMP.”

“I thought F-Pimp wasn’t even a thing until after the Ganzfeld experiments.”

“He alleged the FPMP has been working in the background for nearly half a century, since the Cold War, using genetic manipulation to make super-spies.”

Funny, I could still remember a time when that would’ve sounded like the plot of a comic book, or maybe the raving of a paranoid schizophrenic. Now, I’d be surprised if it didn’t have some basis in truth. Either way, the FPMP gag-order policy was clear, and whoever was telling tales might as well kiss their Lexus goodbye.

Of course, that concern didn’t stop Jacob and me from working off our frustrations together. As soon as we got home, we dropped eight pounds of freshly ground coffee on the kitchen counter and stripped out of our black suits, grappling and kissing and nailing each other with serious eye contact. Jacob is a knockout when he smiles, but his smoldering good looks are even hotter when he’s all intensity and hard-edged focus. I never really wanted to be a telepath, but right then, I wished that the two of us could talk, mind to mind in our own safe cocoon, and no one else privy to the things we needed to share.

Somehow, we made it upstairs and fell into our bed, me on my back and him straddling one leg to flatten me into the mattress. He rubbed his hard-on to life in the crook of my thigh. I fumbled a lube out of the nightstand and gave him a few slippery strokes, and before I knew it, that old familiar hardness was nudging toward my back door. My knees fell open as my whole body went limp, readying itself to be used.

I never was keen to be the guy that just lays there and lets someone else do all the work, but sometimes it seemed like my utter surrender pushed Jacob’s buttons as much as any clever new gyration. He buried himself in me, over and over, merciless and deep. I slipped a hand between us and pumped my dick in time with his thrusts. As one, we labored toward our common goal. And after countless thrusts, we scaled that precarious height, then plunged to our release. Wordlessly. Together.

Maybe sex was mainly a poor substitute for telepathy. Hell, maybe that was the Darwinian reason NPs made up the majority of the population. Connections are easy to take for granted, but knowing that someone within the FPMP had been working against us was a stark reminder of just how much I cherished the trust I shared with Jacob.

I settled against him and reveled in the heavy-limbed sensation of creeping slumber. So elusive lately without the Reds, without Valium, and without the Auracel that would blunt my psychic reflexes. But now, sleep was rolling toward me like a gentle mist, beckoning me into its sweet embrace.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Jacob murmured.

And…there it went. “Hm?”

“If it is Andy Parsons, he might not be working alone. Telepaths who grab detailed thoughts right out of your mind are rare—but they do exist. And a few of them work at the FPMP. That’s why I’m the logical person to keep an eye on internal issues. I only let them know what I want them to know.”

I rolled onto my back and groaned. “So, here’s where I regret working with you….”

“You keep to your investigation and I’ll keep to mine. Two totally separate projects.”

“And even so, now I’m putting your whole investigation at risk.”

“It’s fine. It’ll be okay. Just…try not to think about it.”

Uh huh. I happen to know someone at the FPMP is a turncoat, but I’ll just put that idea right out of my mind. Sure. Easy. No problem.

I focused on the ceiling tiles and began to count. Beside me, Jacob let out a gentle snore.

Chapter 8

I didn’t generally consider myself to have an active inner life…at least until I tried to not-think about something. And then suddenly my mind was Union Station at rush hour. The only good thing about the FPMP being full of telepaths was the fact that they were labeled, though the portly guy on the elevator did catch me eyeballing his security badge.

Empath two.

Weirdly enough, that was a relief. Thanks to Crash, I was totally accustomed to having all the knots inside me on full display. Since I was staring at this guy’s badge, he had no compunctions about checking out mine. “Hey, you’re the new medium!” he said, as I sucked down white light for all I was worth and high-tailed it toward my office. He called after me, “If you need anything….”

He’d better not hold his breath. If I needed anything, I’d go find myself a nice, safe NP.

As I slipped through the office door, I wondered why I’d been thinking about the space as a sanctuary. Yes, it was technically “mine,” and yes, I might be the team leader. But not only were Carl and Darla present at a new group work station in the corner looking at a book together, but a couple of tech guys in navy coveralls on a ladder were busy wiring up a speaker system. And now the only remaining free space was occupied by a gigantic copy machine.

“I thought most places were going toward digital,” I said.

“It’s not just a copier and a printer,” Darla answered loftily, “it’s a high-resolution flatbed scanner. Agent Hinds can scan in these older texts so they’re searchable and tag them with metadata. That is, if it’s okay with you, sir.”

“Fine. And you really don’t need to be so defensive. I’m willing to look at any angle you come up with.”

While Carl was pretending to not notice the tension between us—or perhaps simply not caring—she scowled down at the text for a long moment, then said, “I know what year it is, and I know we’re not kids anymore. You’ve obviously changed. It’s just hard to forget how you used to be.”

I caught a glimpse of her profile, the way the tepid winter daylight from a nearby window glinted off a sparkle in her mascara, and a long-forgotten memory unfurled.

I was a few months shy of twenty-four. Camp Hell still had its original director, Sanchez, at the helm—I knew this because we were on a field trip at the time, and once Sanchez was gone, we never left the building. Miss Maxwell gathered Faun and Richie, Darla and me, at the ponderous office building at the entrance to our most frequent field trip destination: Graceland. It hadn’t quite snowed yet, nothing that stuck around, anyway, and even though the grounds were meticulously maintained, dead leaves had gathered in random drifts, and the wind made a shushing sound as it rasped through the dry foliage.

Maxwell gestured toward the nearest plot and said, “Before you put yourself in a situation where many spirits could be present, it’s important to protect yourself. You all have the St. Anthony medal I gave you last week?”

We all said yes and rolled our eyes, except Richie, who was going through his pockets. Maxwell handed him a new one—one of at least a dozen, by the time they stopped letting us out of our cages.

“Mother Mary will intercede for us and ask St. Anthony for protection. Now, like we practiced, pray with me. Hail Mary, full of grace….”

We all said the words, but not one of us sounded sincere. Faun was into Native American beliefs, Darla and I were both atheists, and Richie couldn’t repeat anything without making it sound like a singsong mashup of random syllables. When we were done, Darla raised her hand and said, “So why do we beg Mary to intercede? Does St. Anthony need an interpreter—and if so, why does Mary speak English, but not him? Or is Mary a control freak who blocks all the messages so they can only go through her?”

Maxwell drew herself up to her full height, and towered over Darla with that flinty don’t fuck with my religion look in her eyes. “You won’t be so blasé when you cross paths with a dangerous spirit. You need to protect yourself. And whether or not you believe in her, Mother Mary still cares about you.”

Faun piped in, “I’ve always liked the way Catholicism acknowledges the female energy,” while Richie listened with his mouth open and no idea whatsoever what we were talking about.

“One more time, folks,” Maxwell said. “With feeling. Hail Mary, full of grace….”

I said the prayer again, slightly louder. Mainly because standing in the entrance was getting old, and I wanted to check out the headstones. Now, looking back, I saw what she was aiming for—to have us pull down the white light and shore up our defenses. But for someone as hardcore Catholic as her, that New-Agey terminology wouldn’t have rung true any more than her prayers rang true for me. I said the words, but they were only that: words. Lucky I didn’t walk out of that cemetery with some pissed off ghost wearing my skin.

Then again, maybe there was precious little spirit activity to worry about. To this day, I’ve simply presumed mediums who hung out in cemeteries were just asking for trouble. But now that I’d seen some dead folks hanging back to help people cross over, I wasn’t so sure graveyards were particularly hazardous. In fact, maybe they were worse for empaths and telepaths, folks who could pick up on the distress of the living. The lingering dead were more likely to haunt the spot where they died and not the plot where they were buried.

Which wasn’t to say the field trip to Graceland was entirely uneventful.

The Palmer monument peeked through the bare winter trees like a Greek temple that had accidentally sprung up on the wrong side of the globe. Faun Windsong was grumbling about conspicuous consumption while Richie wandered off to throw rocks at the ducks in the adjacent lagoon. I ignored both of them and strode around the twin sarcophagi where other, lesser family members had been interred below the marble tiles. At first, I was focused on stepping on the dead rich people’s names, simply because I could. But then I noticed the bolts in the corners of the slabs that looked like they’d been screwed down with giant screwdrivers. I was wondering exactly how difficult it would be to dig up a body, when a pile of dry leaves blown against the foot of the monument stirred, and I realized the movement had nothing to do with the wind.

My vision shifted, and I saw it was a man—not a fancy Chicago mercantile baron, but a homeless guy layered in filthy overcoats. He reached toward me. I flinched and backed away, but thankfully, no one else noticed. They were each absorbed in their own contemplation—even Richie, who’d found a glittery Wham-O Super Ball in the mud and was busy trying to clean it with his shirttail and his spit.

Darla was already edging away from the monument to signal that she was done there, to encourage the rest of us to move on to the next pile of marble. I wandered over to do the same. By then, she and I had forged a delicate truce in which we neither looked at nor spoke to one another, and that was how we both liked it. So she caught me off guard when she swung around and snapped, “Why should I?”

“Why…what?”

“Even if I did have a dollar, I sure as hell wouldn’t give it to you.”

I hadn’t thought anything about it then, just figured she was trying to pick a fight. And now? She was still angry, all these years later. I turned away before she caught me gaping.

My mediumship was off the charts, and yet I’d never noticed that Darla was damn near as accurate as I was? Maybe our antagonism was to blame. If we’d forged the type of bond that encouraged us to share secrets—the bond she’d actually tried to create, before our relationship went to shit—I would have realized that Darla had real ability. Different from mine, in that she heard things rather than seeing them. But potentially just as strong.

“So, listen,” I said, “the way I acted, back when we were….” Before I could fumble through an apology that might only piss her off more, my cellphone buzzed and I checked the number. Con Dreyfuss? No, just his phone number.

I took the call, and found Patrick on the other end. “Hi, Vic. How’s it going?”

“Fine…?”

“Director Kim wants to see you.”

“On my way. Er…which way is it?”

“One floor down, two rights.”

“Great, thanks.”

I could have finished what I’d been trying to express to Darla. After all, it wasn’t exactly a lengthy sentiment. I’m sorry. How hard would it have been? Because I was. During our very first conversation, I could’ve told her I was into guys, but because she was giving me all the inside scoop on Heliotrope Station, I erred too far on the side of caution and kept my mouth shut.

And look how that worked out for me.

I took the elevator down and made a couple of rights, but belatedly realized I’d skipped a hallway and was probably headed toward the opposite end of the building. But then I spotted that odd turn-off and realized I’d magically ended up right where I’d been headed all along.

As I made my approach, I wondered if maybe I should just lay it all on the line with Laura. I had absolutely no idea how to spot another medium unless they had a ghost tumbling out of their ass, and maybe I wasn’t much better than Richie after all. The FPMP could carry on with Darla at the mediumship helm. And me? With my new wardrobe, I’d find a career in the funeral industry.

That might be for the best. Because my attempts to not-think about Jacob’s investigation had been a no-go, too. The two of us just weren’t meant to work together. So, the more I thought about it, the more the whole undertaker gig was actually starting to look pretty good.

I rapped on Laura’s door and she called for me to come in. The electronic lock clicked, and I entered. When she stood up and planted her hands importantly on her desk, my mind forgot how to make niceties and I shifted into damage control mode. “We’ll need more time to work the kinks out of our medium testing—”

“Agent Davis can handle that,” Laura cut in. “Right now, we have a more pressing problem.”

Someone else knocked, Laura buzzed, and in walked Jacob. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him—which is to say, he cocked his head ever so slightly and very nearly broke stride.

“Agent Marks,” Laura said crisply. “I’m assigning Agent Bayne to assist in your investigation.”

Understanding dawned on Jacob’s face a moment before I caught on. He said, “Is it Parsons?”

Laura handed him an address. “It’s a yard waste facility—his body is stuck in the equipment. Agent Bly is on his way to calm everyone down and try and stop it from ending up on YouTube. But the two of you need to get down there immediately,” she looked directly at me, “and see if Andy has anything to say for himself.”

Chapter 9

As we walked to the car, Jacob’s fingertips brushed my forearm to signal me to keep quiet. I was glad enough to have a reprieve from talking. Because when I realized there was now a murder investigation on my plate, I found myself awash in relief. And eagerness. And…dare I say, happiness? Not just because I’d no longer be encountering Officer “Andy” in the john or by the coffee station, either.

Imagine that.

The sprawling site was outside city limits, on an ungainly scrap of land that was part industrial, and part weedy, unintentional forest. Jack Bly and his men hadn’t shut down the entire operation, just the good parts—the section where they’d found the body.

The sheer scale of the vast piles of brush and branches wasn’t apparent until we were walking among them. The machinery had stopped in its tracks when Andy showed up, and it hulked around the perimeter of the scene like a herd of metallic dinosaurs. We couldn’t have asked for better noise cover than Greenwood Disposal. Motors roared in the distance, and the employees lingering around the perimeter looking confused and horrified all had hardcore hearing protection hanging around their necks.

Jacob bent his head to mine and said in my ear, “I didn’t mean for you to get dragged into this. I know homicide was wearing you down.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I admitted. Because if I were to be totally honest, I’d choose walking through a crime scene in the bitter cold to sitting in an office any day.

“Normally I’d presume this meant Andy was the leak,” Jacob said. “But now I’m not so sure.” And really, after everything that went down with Laura and Roger Burke, how could anyone be sure of anything? “What if it was one of his coworkers who shut him up because he was about to expose them?”

“Sad to say, I could see him grabbing the wrong printout and blundering into a giant conspiracy.”

We wrapped up our conversation when Agent Bly came out to meet us, black overcoat flapping in the wind and cold winter sunlight glinting off his shaved scalp. He strode up with grim, broad-shouldered purpose and motioned us over to the big metal machine staked off with crime scene tape. Over the course of my career, I’d encountered corpses in all kinds of places. Vehicles and homes, parks and parking lots. But the ginormous wood chipper? That was a first.

The massive metal contraption consisted of a toothy conveyor belt that drew branches into a big metal housing, then shot them out a tall spout to add them to a pile of wood shavings three stories high.

Jacob jotted a few notes, then said to Bly, “This investigation is sensitive. You can’t discuss it with anyone at headquarters other than Director Kim.”

“Not my first rodeo. I know the drill.” He turned to me and asked, “You knew Agent Parsons?”

Bly was the most sensitive empath I knew…in my current circle of acquaintances, anyhow. Since he’d already be privy to my distinct lack of grief, I didn’t bother sugar-coating my response. “He wasn’t exactly my favorite babysitter.”

“Even so, a word of warning. It’s not pretty.” He walked us over to a set of access stairs and onto the conveyor belt itself. The belt led into a massive, round textured barrel, like a giant’s parmesan grater. And there at the base, where the wheel met the belt, was Andy Parsons. Or what was left of him.

He’d gone in feet first. His body was crushed up to the chest, but his face remained whole. His expression in death was slack. Mouth open, like we’d caught him mid-yawn. Or maybe snoring. Dead faces are disturbing enough. But the blood? Wow. So much blood.

Bly said, “It gets weirder. The chipper was easily strong enough to shred the body in five seconds flat—it can cut through a tree limb thicker than a man’s thigh. But when Parsons’ firearm was crushed, the ammo ignited. One of the workers caught a fragment to the face, damn near lost an eye. And the foreman was quick on the kill switch.”

So, Officer “Andy” managed to shoot a civilian in the head even after he’d died. Talk about taking incompetence to new heights.

Jacob and Bly, however, were supremely competent, and they had scads more experience under their belts from all their years as actual PsyCops. Moving smoothly, they formed a muscular barricade to shield me from prying eyes. “Getting anything?” Jacob asked urgently.

If by anything, he meant the ghost of good ol’ “Andy” charging up and telling me how he’d ended up in a wood chipper, then no. But I hadn’t put any effort into finding the guy just yet. I looked up at the bleak, grayish sky, took a deep, cleansing breath, and opened myself to the white light. Weirdly, it was harder to visualize in the cold light of day, even with all the practice I’d had, but I was familiar enough with my own limits by now to know the intangible process was working. When a glance revealed nothing around the body moving but the dry foliage rattling in the wind, I pulled down some more. Looked again. Still nothing. And then I thought back to the dead homeless guy I’d blundered across at Graceland without even trying.

The ghost’s body hadn’t even been present, but I’d seen him plain as day. So, logically, that spot must’ve been where he’d died.

Carefully avoiding anything that looked like it might once have been a piece of anybody, I climbed onto the giant metal rig and peered down at the corpse. No less gruesome up close than it was from a distance. The chipping mechanism used both pressure and cutting to pulverize the branches into shreds, and the blood had been pushed up into Andy’s head before he bled out, which left his eyeballs scarlet in his rubbery, pale face. Since the top third of Andy Parsons was spattered with his own guts, I couldn’t tell for sure, but I was betting that forensics might still uncover some telltale lividity that indicated he’d died somewhere else and been brought here for disposal.

I looked back at Jacob’s hopeful face and shook my head. “No luck here. We’ll need to track him back to where he bought it.”

Jacob frowned. Unfortunately, if he’d thought working with a medium would solve all his murders and have us home in time for dinner, he could think again.

Chapter 10

I’m not sure what it says about me that the reason I found “Andy’s” death disturbing wasn’t the sight of his mangled corpse, but the worry that I might not be able to do the one thing I was good at and figure out who was responsible for chipping him. We tromped around the site for the rest of the day, but there was precious little to find. No security footage, no suspicious acting staff, no conveniently dropped business cards printed with the killer’s name, number and motive. By the time Jacob made the call for a crew to document the scene and remove the body, the sun was low, the temperature had dropped, and we were all hungry, runny-nosed and shivering. And I’d contributed absolutely nothing.

As I turned toward the parking lot, Bly said to me, “Good thing you’re bringing all those years of homicide experience to the table.” Apparently, I was used to beefy law enforcement types yanking my chain, because my defensiveness spiked, and he added, “Really.”

“Is that supposed to cheer me up?”

“Far be it from me to deny anyone the right to their own feelings. Here’s how I see it. Our abilities might give us an edge, but crimes getting solved in an hour? That only happens on TV.”

Then maybe I was just spoiled. Because I couldn’t even count the number of times a victim pointed the finger at their murderer and let me know in no uncertain terms whodunnit. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the paperwork to catch up.

And then…the perp to walk, scot-free.

Jacob finished briefing the forensics crew, then came and grabbed me. “Let’s check out Parsons’ residence before anyone disturbs it.”

I didn’t need Bly in the car to tell me Jacob was just as frustrated as I was. We drove to Andy’s place in silence, not because we were worried about surveillance, but because we were both busy trying to figure out what was what. The Wrigleyville garden apartment was at the foot of a half-flight of dank concrete stairs littered with windblown food wrappers. The landlord was waiting there at Andy’s door with a freaked out look on his face and a key in his hand. Convenient. Back at headquarters, Patrick must’ve been pretty proud of himself for making that happen.

“Your name?” Jacob asked the guy.

“Lou. Louis. Louis Moring. M-o-r-i-n-g….”

To say Jacob made the guy nervous was the understatement of the day. Moring was sweating harder than me in a polygraph seat. And it was twenty degrees outside with a wind chill of five. I’ve seen Jacob talk to witnesses. He can be calming, he can be reassuring, and he can be downright charming. But not today. After the scene in the wood chipper, he was just plain intimidating. “Andy Parsons was your tenant for how long?”

“Two years? Or is it three?” Moring patted down the front of his greasy sweatshirt. “I didn’t bring his paperwork with me. Do you need to see his lease? I can call my wife, have her bring it over.”

“That’s not necessary at this time. I’ll take down your contact information in case I need it later.”

Moring was so flustered he had to try three times to spit out his own number.

“Mr. Moring,” I butted in, before the poor guy had a stroke. “If you could unlock the door?”

He did. His hand was shaking.

I drew my weapon and slipped inside, checked to make sure no murderers were lurking behind the sofa, then holstered my gun and looked deeper. Aside from Jacob grilling the landlord out in the stairwell, I was alone. I did a quick check of the bedroom and bathroom. Nothing living. I drew down a hefty stream of white light and checked more deeply. Nothing dead.

I attempted a neck roll and massaged the muscles at the base of my skull, which were as taut as a pair of steel cables. Funny how I’d figured I was overqualified for my work at the FPMP. After all, a grown man who believed in Santa was able to do it. But there I was, eager to impress my new boss and desperate to help my partner, and…nothing.

Good, old-fashioned police work would have to suffice. That wasn’t encouraging in the slightest, but at least I’d have a crack at the scene before anyone else tromped through it.

The bachelor pad where Officer “Andy” lived felt like the basement it was, with short windows set up toward the ceiling, wall to wall carpeting installed over concrete, and an overabundance of wood paneling. Ugly? Yes. Clammy? Probably. Dark? Way too shadowy for my liking. But even on an FPMP salary, it was probably the closest a single guy could live to Wrigley Field without another breadwinner in the house.

When Jacob was done taking ten years off Moring’s life, he joined me in the TV room and stood behind me, close, but not touching. “Anything?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“But you’re in his house. Surrounded by all his stuff. You could reach out, contact him.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it.”

“Can’t hurt to ask.” Jacob switched tactics and began a circuit of the room. “No signs of a struggle. But check for other activity—anything that might link him to the media. Scraps of paper in particular. Receipts. Notes.” He opened the kitchen garbage with his penlight and peered in. “Anything like that, bag it.”

“Me? But the chain of custody—”

“I don’t need to convict him, I want to find his killer. There’s a clairvoyant on staff who might be able to use a bit of his writing. And I’d rather not touch anything myself. Who knows what my vibration would do to it?”

The new protocol would definitely take some getting used to. Especially when it amounted to doing whatever it took to get the job done. It might be better to beg for forgiveness than ask permission, but as FPMP agents, apparently we weren’t even expected to say we were sorry.

Unfortunately, our victim wasn’t much of a paper guy. The only receipts were from nearby restaurants, and the single slip of paper stuck to the fridge was a grocery list. Even after a good hour of searching, the apartment only yielded up the following info: Andy Parsons was lactose intolerant. He owned a baseball signed by Sammy Sosa that he kept in a plexi display cube. And he was really behind on his laundry.

“Are you about ready?” Jacob called as I finished checking through Andy’s pockets. The sun had fled hours ago—par for the course for December. But it felt late, and I supposed our fruitless search of the apartment was as good a stopping point as any. I snapped off my latex gloves, pocketed them, and headed toward the doorway where Jacob waited for me. And as I stepped past him to head for the car, I realized he had something tucked under his arm.

“Is that his laptop?”

Jacob answered with a challenging look.

Damn. We were definitely working from an entirely different playbook now.

* * *

When two people are both on the same page, when they want the exact same thing, you’d think they’d feel united. That night, Jacob and me? We were each trapped in our own morass of worry. After the whole Roger Burke murder accusation, Jacob sorely needed to get himself firmly in Laura’s good graces. And me? I’d had a glimpse of what it was like to be not only accepted, but respected. I wasn’t about to blow it and go back to being the joke of the department. And my rapport with Laura Kim had already started to erode. She’d hardly said a dozen words to me lately. No doubt she was busy. But, still.

We went back to the cannery to figure out our game plan and, hopefully, to squeeze in a few hours of sleep. Jacob threw the junk mail in the in-basket we both ignored while I checked to see if I’d sweated through my jacket or if I could wear it again. Miraculously, it had made it through the day unscathed. “There must be some way you can track Parsons,” I said, “right? Aren’t our weapons chipped? He had a gun—we know that because it blew up.”

“We know where the sidearm is now—but there’s no way to track where it’s been.”

“Great. So now what?”

“Searching for his vehicle. It’s a whole process, involving us, the DMV, and a subpoena. But in the meanwhile…?” He looked at me expectantly.

“What?”

“Maybe you have a sense of where he died.”

This pissed me off. I was probably overtired. “I know you pay attention when I talk ghost, so there must be a really good reason that suddenly you think this magical GPS is a thing I do.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Have you ever tried to snap your fingers and end up in Tahiti?”

“It only makes sense to use every resource at my disposal.”

And now I was a resource. For my own boyfriend. I stomped off to the bathroom and got ready for bed. But as the shower rinsed away the fatigue of the day, I had to wonder—what if I could figure out where Andy died? I stepped out of the shower, toweled off, and lit one of the decorative linen-scented candles by the sink. Back in my Camp Hell days, we’d only used pure white candles from liturgical supply houses, blessed by a priest and anointed with holy oil. Now, though, I had a strong suspicion that everyday objects were likely to work just as well.

I stared into the flame, slowed my breathing, cleared my mind, and did my best to chill out. The supply of white light felt infinite, but sometimes it seemed like there was only so much I could hold. And maybe, if I let myself stretch, I could pack in a little bit more. A few more slow breaths, another deliberate attempt to ease my stiff shoulders out of my ears and release everything I’d been clenching. Relax. Relax. Breathe. And drink in that white light raining down from the ether.

Fully charged. Ahh.

It felt good, being hopped up on light. Calm, but alert. Creative. Even powerful. “Okay, Andy, so if you were to die horribly, where would you do it?”

I let my mind range. I daydreamed. I even tried to visualize him meeting his end. Without the cause of death, though, I came up blank. Had he been shot? Bludgeoned? Poisoned? Hard to say until I read the report.

Fine. Cause of death was hardly a negligible detail, but if it was unavailable, I’d work around it. I imagined Andy in his black suit and squirrelly expression, and then I imagined him dying. No specific way, of course. But the feeling of release when the spirit leaves the shell….

I swayed on my feet. My eyes snapped open, and I took a deep, anchoring breath. My heart fluttered in pre-panic. The feeling? Sort of like astral projecting awake on those horse pills Con Dreyfus gave me, without the muscle cramps. And that was one trip I had no intention of revisiting. I blew out the candle and headed toward bed.

Jacob caught up with me at the foot of the stairs. If he got a little charge out of the aftershock of white light that crackled from me to him, he must’ve racked it up to static electricity. He said, “I was just brainstorming. It doesn’t hurt to look at all the options.”

I bumped him companionably with my shoulder and headed up to the bedroom. “I know. And believe me, I’m as invested in figuring out this guy’s story as you are.”

’Cos “Andy” and me? It was personal.

Chapter 11

I’d only been away from the Fifth Precinct for a few days, but funny how sometimes a few days can feel like a lifetime. New gun, new suit, new sense of purpose…who knows what it was that my old coworkers noticed? Not sure, but maybe it was a combination of all of the above. No one sniggered or sneered when I walked by. Not even that jackass, Raleigh.

And Sergeant Warwick? He actually stopped typing when I walked into the room. “I take it this ain’t a social call,” he said. “What’s important enough to merit a face-to-face meeting?”

“Andy Parsons. What can you tell me about him?”

Other than the fact that his neck gets blotchy when he’s mad, Warwick doesn’t have many tells. But I did see him steeling himself with an extra careful breath. “I think you’ll find out more about Parsons from his actual employer.”

“Probably. But I’m asking you.”

He made eye contact, and held it. Maybe it was easier because he was no longer my boss, but I doubted that was the whole reason. All these years, I’d been intimidated by Warwick, and guys like him can smell fear. I wasn’t willing to back down anymore, and he knew it.

“Nothing much to tell,” he admitted. “Kept to himself—I figured he didn’t want anyone to know he was with the feds.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“He worked here how long, and there’s not a damn thing you can tell me about him?”

“Look, smartass, anyone the FPMP told me to hire, I hired. And I did my best not to pay ’em any attention.”

“Anyone? There were more?”

He sighed and shook his head.

“Who?” I demanded.

“I signed away any right to tell you myself. Who can you trust over there, do you even know? If you’ve got questions, go ask your new boss.”

“It’s Jeff Raleigh, isn’t it? I always knew there was something hinky about him—”

“Not Raleigh. They’re all gone now. Why have federal agents waste their time snooping around a precinct where there aren’t any PsyCops?”

Damn.

I’d wasted half my morning at the Fifth and had nothing to show for it, other than the realization that my stint as a public servant had never been a very good fit. And there’d been an edge to Warwick, too. Not because I’d interrupted anything, and not because, for once, I’d stood my ground and said what was on my mind. I was driving past that slippery entrance to the FPMP parking lot when it finally occurred to me that Warwick seemed put out that he no longer had a medium on staff.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say the guy missed me. Still, it was interesting to consider he wasn’t just relieved I was gone.

* * *

Back at headquarters, once I was finally parked and settled, I found a text from Patrick asking me to check in with him. Aside from the fact that I’d been there over a dozen times and still had difficulty finding the damn lot, the FPMP building was starting to feel less disconcerting. Not exactly familiar, but no less strange than the Fifth Precinct that morning. I found Patrick at the helm with a spread of various notebooks and manuals covered in sticky tabs. The guy knew how to power-study.

“Hey, Vic! How’s it going?”

“Fine.” I realized how curt that sounded and decided to try being a little bit more approachable. “Uh…you?”

“Haven’t hung up on anyone yet, but I guess the day’s still young. So, speaking of phones….” He rifled through a few drawers, then said, “Always the last place you look,” pulled something out and set it on the counter. “Director Kim wants to make sure your technology is up to speed.”

Well, that’s never a good sign. I stared at the matte black box like there was a bomb inside, and Patrick made a go-ahead motion. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of the unboxing.”

“Right.” I could tell by the waxy, velvety feel of the paper alone that whatever was inside would be way too fancy for me. It was sealed not with tape or glue, but a pretentious little circular plastic tab. I picked it open with my thumbnail and slid the box open. The jewel inside glinted elegantly, black on black, awkwardly broad and impossibly slim.

“Sweet,” Patrick said reverently. “That’s next year’s model. So, if anyone randomly offers you a big wad of cash for your phone, they’re probably a corporate spy. Do your best to resist, ha ha. Awesome camera, water resistant, shatterproof case, automatic cloud backup, and of course a custom in-house app so the Director can always get ahold of you.” All that and a handy tracking chip too. “Did you want to switch your SIM card, or should I?”

Since I wouldn’t have the faintest idea what that entailed, I dropped my chintzy flip-phone on the desk and said, “Be my guest.”

Patrick pulled out a set of very small screwdrivers and set to work. “I’ll transfer your data—oh wow, that was quick. The new storage capacity will blow you away. It’ll eat through battery life, though, so here’s a wall charger, a car charger, and a couple of backup batteries. But you might not need them if you charge it every night.”

Great. One more thing for me to forget. “Better safe than sorry.”

Patrick might have been newer than me at the FPMP, but he had a natural bent for technology. “Want help getting the facial recognition up and running?”

He was kidding. Right? I stared at him and waited for the har-har-har, but it didn’t come. “Uh…sure.”

He pressed a few things and handed the phone back to me. “Here ya go. Front facing camera is on. Just follow the cues on the screen while the phone learns your, um…you really want to try and look natural while it’s….”

The phone beeped its completion.

“You were kinda scowling there,” Patrick said.

A big “test” button appeared. I gave it a jab. The camera captured my scowl and the home screen appeared. “Looks good enough to me.”

“O…kay. Now just import your contacts and you’ll be all set.”

I gave Patrick the same look that unlocked my phone.

“Here, I got it.” He held out his hand and I passed the thing to him yet again. He poked around for a few seconds and said, “Director Kim is out of date already. That’s my number now.” He changed the name to Patrick and gave it back. “But don’t worry, anything you send my way is still encrypted and secure.”

Which I took to mean that anyone with the right clearance could copy it directly to my permanent record. It was phenomenally naive to think all my personal correspondence wasn’t already there. In defiance, I pulled up Jacob’s contact and composed a text informing him I wanted to suck his cock. Autocorrect changed it to “I want to duck out,” which, eerily, sounded a lot more like me.

“And check out the productivity app on your home screen,” Patrick said. “It’ll really help you focus.”

A small laugh escaped me. I poked the icon to give it an obligatory glance, and a setup routine popped up. I gave it a few more jabs to try to close it, but it was fixated on importing my nonexistent calendar. I groaned and shoved the phone into Patrick’s hand again, and seriously considered asking him to switch everything back to my flip phone. “I don’t have time for this. One of our agents is dead.”

“See, that’s the thing. You’re in reactive mode. And that’s when critical stuff slips through the cracks.” He turned the phone toward me and showed me a simple grid. “Think about tasks as four quadrants. Urgent, not urgent. Important, not important. It’s easy enough to disregard tasks that have no urgency, and clearly don’t matter. Urgent stuff that isn’t really important can be delegated, or skipped entirely. Urgent, important things are impossible to ignore. But it’s the important, ongoing stuff that tends to fall by the wayside, and they’re the tasks that make the biggest impact.” He tapped the intersection between important and not urgent. “Have undiscovered mediums been roaming the halls of the FPMP for years? Apparently so. But even though there’s no obvious urgency attached to screening for them, you’d better believe that solving this issue would be the best way to impress Director Kim.”

* * *

My relationship with Laura Kim was unusual, to say the least. I’d befriended her when she was a glorified secretary. Now she was my boss. She didn’t intimidate me, not like Warwick had, but boy oh boy, was I eager to please her. This desire to prove myself was disturbing. I’d spent my life balking at authority. Now I was filled with the urge to win her over.

It made me profoundly uncomfortable.

If I had any hope of uncovering the FPMP’s mediums, I’d need to be a team player, and that meant making nice with Darla. I’d invite her input, be professional, and let any nasty digs roll off my back. I was prepared to bring my friendliest self to the office when I opened the door and discovered the botanical fairy had visited since the last time I’d seen the place. And she’d been busy.

Big plants in pots lurked in each corner. Dangly plants hung in front of the windows. And random smaller plants were tucked into the bookshelves and cluttering up the filing cabinets.

To say I’m not a fan of plants is putting it mildly. They’re living creatures, they move and change and grow. Bad enough. And then you forget to water them, and they crap down leaves, turn brown, wither, and die. I fought down the urge to exclaim, what the hell? and instead, cautiously said, “So…plants.”

Darla shot me a look from her fancy standing desk. “Numerous studies have shown that the presence of live plants improves air quality, which in turn augments problem-solving and productivity.”

Great. She had Science behind her. “Okay, but don’t they take up a lot of room? I mean, there’s something to be said for minimalism and focus.”

“What do you care?” she said scornfully. “You’re never here.”

I looked to Carl for help. “You spend more time in this office than anyone. What do you think?”

Carl seemed surprised anyone had bothered to ask his opinion. I doubted Richie ever did. He took a look around, considered the lush foliage, then said, “Well, I suppose they do spruce up the place.”

Said the guy who had nothing on his desk but a framed copy of the Serenity Prayer. Then again, if I had worked any amount of time with Richie, I’d need just as much moral support to deal with the things I couldn’t change…without strangling them.

So, I was outnumbered. Fine. Once it was just the two of us again, he could be in charge of watering the damn things.

“How’s the mediumship testing coming along?” I asked Darla.

Somehow, I managed to choose the wrong words, or timing, or inflection, because the question pissed her off. “So that’s how it works around here? You take off and leave me to do all the work, then traipse back in and demand a progress report?”

“Who’s traipsing? I just asked.”

She rolled her eyes, turned to the big touchscreen, and called up a video shot of the haunted office. An agent stood in the corner, walked to the far wall, turned, and walked back. “If we have the subject wear a sensor—that’s the dot taped to her shoulder, right there—then the computer can create a map of her motions.” She tapped a few links, and the picture faded to a wireframe map with a red line trailing through it. “These are a lot easier to watch—especially since we can speed them up, overlay them, and graph their common points. But, to be honest, I’m not sure this will tell us much. I walked the course myself and my pattern looks a lot like Agent Malcolm’s.”

“Hold on, you walked back and forth through the room? Knowing it was full of repeaters?”

“That’s what you call those things, repeaters?” She frowned. “I’ve always thought of them as echoes. Like skipping CDs.”

I nodded. It felt weird to talk about it. Even with someone who hated me. “Or an endless film loop.”

“Why should they stop me from doing my job? Sure, they’re distracting—and the loud ones can get annoying. But it’s not as if they pose any sort of threat.”

I rolled my shoulders to try to calm the gooseflesh prickling across my back. “You sure about that? What if they tried to…?” I waited for her to finish my thought for me. She didn’t. “Y’know,” I said. “Mess you up.”

“They can’t. There’s no consciousness to an echo—it’s nothing more than trapped energy bouncing around.” As she thought the idea through, she grew more and more intense. “Would an untrained medium be spooked into avoiding them? Maybe. But someone like me? I can tell the difference. Mistaking an echo for one of the dead is like thinking you can stop someone from running away by stepping on their shadow.”

By the time the knock interrupted her, she was practically ranting. She turned to glare at the door. Carl, unfazed, got up and answered it. He turned to me and said, “Agent Bly for you.”

“Send him in,” I sighed.

Back in his previous life as John Wembly, Jack Bly was a big, soft guy with an unruly mop of hair and a paper PsyCop card tucked behind his detective’s badge. Now, he was a shaven-headed wall of solid FPMP muscle. He didn’t enjoy pumping iron, not like Jacob did. His workout routine was mandatory—either hit the gym, or be redacted for real when his mysterious past caught up with him.

Generally, I’m not into gym rats, so Bly is nothing like my type. But his fitness regimen was definitely earning him some appreciation from Darla. When he walked in, her mood did such a pronounced 180 that I practically got whiplash.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” she asked. But before I could try, she strode over, thrust out her hand, and said, “I’m Agent Daniels from the Indianapolis office. But you can call me Darla.”

In movies, when a car crash is ready to erupt in a giant orange ball of flame, the action slows down so you can see the explosion in all its glorious detail. When their hands met, I could swear that cinematic slow-mo was happening to me. If Bly didn’t duck out of the way, he’d end up scorched and crispy. Were I a braver man, I’d dive between them, wailing, “Nooo….” But I was paralyzed. Mute. And all I could do was brace for the shock of the blast.

“Jack Bly,” he said easily. “I should mention, I’m a high-level empath.”

Darla fluttered her eyelashes. “And I should mention I’m married. But I appreciate the candor.”

I experienced the sort of lurch you get when you mis-count going down the stairs and hit the floor one step earlier than you expect…but there was no explosion. Hell, not even a hint of smoke. “You’re married?” I blurted out.

“If I thought you had any interest in my actual life,” she replied, “I would have told you.”

Bly said, “I was hoping you could spare Agent Bayne. We need his input on our current investigation.”

“Makes no difference to me,” Darla said, with a pronounced undertone of he’s useless here anyway…and entirely overrated.

Chapter 12

It’s a sorry state of affairs when Jacob’s office is less cluttered than mine. I took a seat with Bly and admired the plant-free expanse of the credenza. Jacob said, “Normally, we’d be investigating Andy Parsons’ family, but he’s single and his parents are vacationing in Costa Rica. I’m looking at the co-workers—the ones with access to the same printer. What if one of them was responsible for the wild accusations and Andy was about to report them? Or what if they were in it together and it went sour? My thought is that we need to get to these agents as soon as possible and interview them. Between the three of us, we could feel them out, see how much they actually know.”

A decent plan. If one of them stuffed that woodchipper, either Bly would catch them feeling guilty, or, if we were really lucky, “Andy” would tag along to the questioning and helpfully point the finger.

Bly agreed. “We can’t let them know they’re being interrogated. Interrogations make everyone defensive, whether or not they’ve done anything wrong. If they have something to hide and we make as if we don’t suspect them, they’ll either feel nervous or relieved. Either way, that’ll be easy to spot among the normal things you’d feel if you got the news that someone died. And we should tell them all at the same time. Make sure no one’s got a chance to collude.”

Jacob considered the idea. “You can read that many people at once?”

Bly smiled, mostly with his eyes. “Not a problem.”

“We can assume they’re not stupid,” Jacob said. “Having the three of us in the room to break the news will raise suspicions. A one-way mirror would do the same.”

“I’ll act as if you and Vic don’t know,” Bly suggested, “and I’m telling everyone at the same time. We can pull it off. They’re two NPs and a low-level precog.”

“It’s still a little weird,” I said. “The setup is too random. Why gather us all in a group to break the news? Unless….” I flashed back to the last officer down at the Fifth. I hadn’t really known her. It was awkward. “We frame it as a grief counseling type situation.”

“That can work,” Jacob said.

Bly added, “There’s some therapist they call when they lose an agent. Bring them in and no one will be any the wiser.”

It was a solid plan. And while I knew I was supposed to be scoping out potential mediums, it seemed pretty damn important to me to check out Andy’s co-workers. Or maybe I just wanted to get away from Darla.

We made all the arrangements, and while Bly went off to escort the grief counselor, Jacob and I headed to the meeting room. Lucky I had him, since it was unlikely I’d be able to pin down the location without an app. It was one tastefully decorated conference room among many, though this one had softer furniture and lower lights. Shortly after we found the place, Andy’s colleagues arrived in a bunch, two Caucasian women—one older, one younger—and a Latino guy with his necktie loosened. The first thing I noticed about them was that they were smiling, like we caught them mid-conversation and whatever they were chatting about had nothing to do with a shredded body.

Jacob leaned over to me and whispered, “We look suspicious. Smile like I just said something nice.”

Jacob might be plenty of things, but “nice” isn’t one of them. I forced my face into the expression, though given how stiff it felt, no doubt it was an epic fail. Jacob smiled back. Not with his eyes.

The older woman turned to us and asked, “Do you two know what this is about? I’m supposed to be prepping for the field.”

“Sorry,” Jacob said. Which, technically, wasn’t “no.”

“I hope it’s a long assignment. Those are always more interesting, you can really sink your teeth into them. Once I was a middle school teacher for an entire term, September to June. You’d be amazed, all the things I learned—or, I suppose, how much I’d managed to forget. I’m unstoppable at Trivial Pursuit now. But good thing I got out of learning that new math.”

Beneath the fake teacher prattling on to Jacob, I was aware of another pair of voices out in the hallway, both male, drawing closer. Hard to mistake Jack Bly for anyone else. But with dawning horror, I realized I knew the other voice, too—a deep, booming voice I’d heard run the gamut from scathing insults, to big, shameless belly laughs, to phenomenally intimate descriptions of exactly how hard he wanted to make me come. The memory was so visceral, when he walked through the door, I did a double-take. I expected him in teased hair and eyeliner, not a flared overcoat and pocket watch.

I felt entirely unprepared.

Then again, would I ever really be ready to face Stefan?

It was as jarring as ever to see how he’d aged. Not because he’d aged badly. Even heavier and graying, he was still handsome to me. It was the sparkle in his eye and the wry twist to the corner of his mouth that had drawn me to him, and the excitement of discovering a kindred spirit among all the institutional washouts I’d known. The longing I felt when I saw him now wasn’t exactly a longing for him, or even what might have been…but the deep and worthless realization that if I’d been a better human being, things wouldn’t have ended quite so horribly wrong.

Bly paused briefly—surprisingly enough, my dismay didn’t knock him right off his feet—but he rolled with the punches, and introduced Stefan as if he’d encountered nothing more than mild curiosity. “Agents Marks, Garcia, Frank, Lipton, and Bayne. This is Steven Russeau.”

Stefan stared at me for just a fraction of a beat, but in that tiny glimpse of vulnerability, it was as if he’d seen a ghost. Our eyes met. My guilt-ridden longing hung there for a moment between us, then curdled into anger over his betrayal. Stefan recovered quickly—more quickly than me—and carried on as if he didn’t know me from Adam. He turned toward the others and shook hands.

“Have we met?” the fake teacher asked as they shook.

“It’s possible. I’ve been consulting for the FPMP for a few years now.”

Before she could pursue the matter, Bly cut in to stop the pleasantries from getting out of hand. “You’ll want to sit down, Veronica, because he’s got some sad news.”

“There is no easy way to put this,” Stefan said with a very convincing display of sympathy. “I’m sorry to tell you that your friend and colleague, Andy Parsons, has passed away.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, which Jacob managed to mimic with little enough lag that he actually seemed surprised. I’m no great actor. I just pinched the bridge of my nose and shook my head. Even though the gesture was all about Stefan, it must’ve looked entirely apropos.

Once the big shock sank in, the guy, Agent Garcia, demanded, “What happened?”

“I’m told it’s part of an ongoing investigation.” Stefan held up a hand in benediction. An elegant gesture. One that seemed to encompass all the world’s suffering and offer a gentle, if somewhat generic, bit of comfort. “Obviously, if you have any information that might be helpful, you’ll want to report it to your superiors. But here, now, take advantage of the opportunity to process the information in a private, supportive atmosphere.”

“I can’t believe it,” the fake teacher said. “I just can’t believe it. He was so young. His whole life ahead of him.”

Then the other woman spoke up, the younger one. She had a downstate twang to her voice that must’ve been accentuated by her shock and grief. “Well, why don’t we all just say what everyone’s thinking? I should have known.”

“Come on, sweetie,” the fake teacher said. “No one is thinking that.”

“How could you not? I had like five dreams before my sister’s freaking parrot died. And I don’t see it coming when the guy on the other side of the cubicle—?” a sob choked off the end of her sentence. She buried her face in her hands, and wept.

Stefan strode over to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. To comfort her, or to push her harder in hopes of making her crack? No idea. It would depend on what Bly had told him to do. But the thought of him tinkering around inside that poor girl’s head made my skin crawl. I stood up and edged to the opposite side of the room to put more distance between him and me, even though I knew that if he wanted to poke a few holes in my emotions, a few feet of air would hardly be an effective buffer.

“It’s frustrating enough to lose someone you’re close to,” Stefan said, “and even worse when there are so many questions. But I’m sure there’s nothing any of you could have done.”

What a performance. If I were a normal person, I’d take it as token words of condolence. But if I’d killed Andy, I’d be squirming in my seat. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Stefan was a master of double-talk.

Fake Teacher was hung up on the “how” of it all. “Was he sick? Was there an accident?”

“I have no details at all,” Stefan said. “I’m so sorry.”

Garcia said, “If this has to do with our job, they’ve got to give us the details. Ongoing investigation or not.”

The three coworkers hadn’t even seen “Andy” half-shredded in the chipper, and even still, emotions ran high. The precog cried harder, while the fake teacher tutted over her and encouraged her to “let it all out,” and the guy snapped, “It’s not your fault, Colleen—what could you have done?”

Jacob had his head down, though in reality, he was watching them carefully for any physical or verbal cues. I gave up all pretense of acting bereaved and simply paced back and forth, back and forth, ticking down the time until I could put Stefan out of my line of sight, and more importantly, out of my mind. Funny thing was, just as soon as I tore my eyes away from Stefan, I found myself staring at him all over again as if I had no control whatsoever where I planted my eyes. And he wasn’t compelling me—not that I would put it past him. But it took a certain amount of focus for him to manage his big come-hither, and he was too occupied trying to look like a compassionate person to have enough spare attention left over to do his thing.

Thankfully, it didn’t take Bly long to get what he needed from the three agents. He stood, buttoned his jacket, and said, “I’ll be sure to keep you all informed just as soon as I have anything substantial. And if any of you need some one-on-one time with Mr. Russeau, I’ll let you have your privacy.”

A brief flash of memory. Me. Stefan. Under the weird afghan at the Camp Hell counselor’s office, laughing nervously because we were all the way naked together for the very first time….

I slammed shut the door on that thought, locked it up tight, and without a single word, strode out of the room.

* * *

“I think Stefan handled that well,” Jacob said.

I stomped the snow off my shoes with extra vigor. Gray snow hunks scattered to the far corners of the cannery’s entryway.

Jacob ignored my discomfort and plowed ahead. “It only makes sense that you’ll run into each other. You’re FPMP now. And it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that he’s a consultant.”

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition,” I said mirthlessly.

“You were the one who suggested the grief counseling tactic.”

“Which you don’t need to remind me. We did it. It’s done. Now let’s move on.”

Jacob waited until I was done punishing the welcome mat, then suggested, “Pizza?”

Pizza is never on the menu unless it’s way too late to make dinner, and I’ve just blown him within an inch of his life. “You don’t need to placate me. I’m not mad at you.”

Jacob hung up his coat. “It would be cliche to say time heals all wounds…especially since yours look like they run pretty deep. But it’s worth mentioning that when you and I started dating, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Crash. I could barely even look at him. And now he’s one of my most trusted friends.”

“Some people are just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said. “You and Crash were friends once to begin with. Stefan and me—we just happened to be in close enough proximity to collide.”

The darkened cannery was no comfort, even once I walked through and turned on every first-floor light. No amount of rearranging the furniture could erase the gap where Lisa’s big blue tent used to be. Why was it that Stefan could keep coming back like a bad penny, but my relationship with Lisa was so easily spent? Jacob lurked around, ostensibly clearing the dining room table, but it doesn’t take more than a couple seconds to throw the junk mail in the recycling and wipe down the tabletop. “I’ll heat up some leftovers. That casserole from my mom is still in there somewhere.”

“Eat what you want. I’m not hungry.”

He sighed heavily. “Vic.”

“I need to think. Just…let me think.”

Referring to my mental process as “thinking” was probably a stretch. It felt more like a broken record, and the part it kept skipping back to was the part where the world sucked, I sucked, and I was an idiot for thinking things would ever get any better.

According to both Stefan and Bly, we couldn’t rule out any of the coworkers. They all exhibited varying levels of distress. So might a potential killer. Agent Garcia was angry—and again, a killer might be angry too. Agent Frank, the crying precog, felt guilty. Because she should have seen the murder coming, or some more nefarious reason? And the fake schoolteacher, Lipton, felt smug. Normally, that would be a red flag for me. But when I took an honest look at my own feelings about Andy’s death, weren’t they tinged with a bit of smugness, too?

I stood there in the middle of the room and cycled through everything I knew about the case, over and over again. When my knees and hips balked about standing, I adjourned to the recliner with the intention of resting my eyes, then woke up at half past three with the lights off and a fleece blanket draped over me. I closed my eyes to see if I might drift off again, but no. I was up for the day, and I’d need massive amounts of coffee to see it through to the end.

I put on a strong pot, found a plate of cheesy chicken casserole covered with Saran Wrap in the fridge and stuck it in the microwave. While it nuked, I considered my options. I couldn’t go back to the Fifth Precinct. And I couldn’t really put up a fuss that my FPMP job was nothing like Dreyfuss had promised. Dreyfuss was gone. And besides, the things Laura wanted me to do absolutely needed to be done.

By the time our alarm clock went off upstairs, I didn’t have any earth-shattering ideas, but I did have a hell of a resolve. Jacob came down gingerly, maybe to avoid waking me, maybe worried that I was still too wound up to even speak to him. He found me standing in the middle of the vast living room, hands on hips, and brimming with purpose. “Even if it kills me,” I said, “I will figure out how Andy ended up in that goddamn chipper.”

Chapter 13

Autocorrect aside, it was a hell of a lot easier to text on my new phone.

You’re probably not up yet…but when you have a minute…I wonder if you can help me talk something through.

Crash’s reply came a few seconds later.

I’m here for ya, sweetcheeks. Haven’t gone to bed yet. It was just after six. Way to make me feel geriatric. Setting up new digs. Knock loud. We’re in back.

A street address appeared. It was blue and underlined, like a computer link, so I tapped it. A map popped up, and a button asking if I wanted directions, too. Wow. No wonder people were always looking at their phones.

I told Jacob, “You mentioning Crash last night got me to thinking, I could use a fresh set of eyes on this whole Andy Parsons thing. Can you spare me at the office for an hour?”

“Whatever you need,” Jacob said. Maybe more carefully than usual. But also relieved that I was no longer trapped in a downward spiral of suckitude.

Tracking down Crash somewhere other than Sticks and Stones was a wakeup call reminding me that I wasn’t the only one who’d been forced in a new direction to avoid being crushed under the relentless wheels of change. The Still Goods Consignment Shop was due west of me, in a working-class neighborhood where every other corner store did burner cellphones and payday loans, the hipsters spoke Polish, and the air was thick with exhaust from the Kennedy Expressway. The storefront looked old. Not abandoned, and not exactly neglected, either. But the brick façade did have a few cracks, and the painted woodwork around the doorway that had once been bright, artsy Victorian detailing was now muted with age and soot. I shielded my eyes against the glare of the rising sun and pressed my face to the window, but the glass was murky, or maybe it was the shop inside.

I rapped on the door. Loud. A cop-knock. Pulled out my weird, overlarge phone and was keying in I’m here when Crash opened the door with a saucy hand-on-hip pose and said, “Long time no see, Agent Bayne. Look at you and your fancy new phone. Bet you hate it.”

“Uh…jury’s still out.”

“Well, don’t just stand there with your thumb on the screen, step into my lair—I’m dying to show you around.”

One foot in the door and I was itching to turn around and leave. Take some junk, cover it in clutter, add a layer of dust, then repeat. Clearly, this was the business plan of Still Goods. “I don’t get it,” I said. “This place looks like it’s been here forever. Did you buy it this way, or what?”

“We don’t own the shop.” His casual use of the word “we” was oddly jarring. It wasn’t so much that I was jealous, more like I’d imprinted on him being a single guy. “I just got a major albatross off my neck, I’m not eager to replace it. Renting is much more my style. No down payment, shared risk. And best of all, the admin’s all handled, and I don’t have to waste my day standing behind a cash register anymore.” He paused, then gave me an uncomfortably lingering look. Up. Down. And up again. “After all, how can we be our glorious butterfly selves if we insist on clinging to our cocoons?”

Whatever that meant. He turned back and led the way without waiting for an answer. Thank God.

We traversed racks of clothes overseen by awkward, chipped mannequins. A room of toys filled with matted stuffed animals and smudged dolls. And a room of furniture grouped in unlikely seating arrangements, every wooden surface covered in yellowed doilies. I lost count of how many stale, overstuffed, shadowy rooms we navigated overall. Five? Maybe six, each one more claustrophobic than the one before. I was damn near ready to chalk up the whole experience as a loss and flee back to my blissfully organized car when we came upon a doorway that glowed a cheerful yellow in the oppressive dimness.

“Back when my sole income came from doing hair, I rented a stall in someone else’s salon. My new arrangement’s pretty much the same. Still Goods handles the admin—believe you me, I’m beyond relieved it’s someone other than me saddled with all the boring parts. And Red and me, we’re free to focus on our collection.”

The room we entered was no less cramped than the rest of the place, though at least, I suspected, it was cleaner. It was maybe a quarter the size of Sticks and Stones, but the vibe was nothing like it. There was a shabbiness to Crash’s old shop that had morphed into something more intentional now, with a depth and richness that I’d never realized was lacking before, in a flow of colorful ornament and twinkling fairy lights. I stood there, rooted to the spot, and tried to orient myself and take it all in. But it was hard to see past the ultrahot guy standing on an old wooden buffet, painting directly on the wall, adding sweeping crimson strokes to the hypnotic purple and green pattern that stretched from one end of the room to the other. He finished the stroke he was painting with an expert flick of the wrist, then turned to me and said, “Hello, Victor, it’s good to see you again.”

“Hey,” I replied lamely. Because somehow, he managed to take a perfectly mundane sentence and imbue it with a sort of gravity that made me feel supremely uncomfortable for checking out his ass. Though, in my defense, his posterior was eye-level with him standing on the furniture.

Crash gestured to the mural in a grand flourish, and I realized it was an elaborate letter-C in the making. “Behold, Curious Curios. Your source for all things metaphysical, antique, and obscure.”

I looked down at a crystal ball on an elaborately twisted mahogany base, and did a triple-take at the steep price. “You’re doing…resale?”

“Sure,” he said, in a voice that implied, Go ahead and think that. “On paper, that’s exactly what we do.”

“Okay. And really?”

“Little bit of this, little bit of that.” Crash dropped his voice into full-tilt flirt mode. “Let’s just say we’re…versatile.” Red gave an unperturbed smile and turned back to his painting. Crash openly admired the view for a moment, then added in a more utilitarian tone, “By which I mean, resale, consignment, hair, house blessings, and whatever else it takes to pay the bills. So what about you? Beefing up on your espionage or what?”

“Not everyone at the FPMP is a spy.” Funny how that just rolled out, whereas I shook my head every time I heard it myself. “Heck, right now, I’m wishing we kept closer tabs on ourselves. Then I’d figure out how one of our agents nearly ended up spread across someone’s flowerbed.”

Crash pulled a pair of threadbare velvet chairs from an adjacent vendor’s room, sat in one, toed off his combat boots and pulled his knees up to his chest. I considered sitting in the other one, but was too keyed up to rest. I paced around it instead.

“If only I could see—” I nearly backpedaled and minimized my actual ghost experience, but why bother? They’d both watched me interact with Miss Mattie. “His ghost wasn’t with the body. Or the apartment. Short of finding the murder scene, I have no idea where to look.”

Crash had stretched out a leg to polish the dust off an old gilt cabinet with the toe of his sock. “When they say people get ‘attached’ to their stuff—is that just an expression? Or does part of them really come along for the ride? ’Cos Red and I have smoked out the vibes from this stuff so many times, I’m buying my incense in bulk. And I don’t even sell piddly little things like incense anymore.”

“His apartment was pretty generic,” I said. “The only thing worth anything was that autographed…baseball.” I pulled out my phone and jabbed out, Andy was big baseball fan…maybe a lead?

Jacob’s reply was fast. Season ticket holder. Check his seat.

Once I memorized the seat number Jacob gave me and pocketed the phone, Crash said, “Want me to walk you through voice-to-text?”

“It’s awfully convenient,” Red said.

I waved the offer away. “Some other time. I’ve gotta go take a look at this new angle.” I charged out the door, and shortly found myself at the top of a stairwell that led to a basement you couldn’t pay me to explore.

Crash, thankfully, was hot on my heels. He plucked at my sleeve and said, “C’mon, Speedy McGee, the door’s this way.”

I followed him through the warren of weird rooms, but whereas before they were closing in on me, now they receded into the background as my brain churned through a tentative plan. Time distorts for the dead. If the Cubs were the highlight of Andy’s life, maybe he wouldn’t realize it was a few months till baseball season. Or maybe he simply wouldn’t care. I was just about to burst out into the street when Crash swerved around me and draped himself dramatically across the exit. “So. Did you get what you came for?”

I took a disoriented step back. “I don’t get it. You’ve got this boyfriend who’s totally…I mean, shit. Why bother flirting?”

“You and I both know that not every pang of attraction leads to the bedroom.” A naughty smile spread across his face as he stepped aside to usher me out the door. I took the opening. At the last second, he leaned in and purred in my ear, “Besides…you’d be bummed if I didn’t acknowledge the Vibe. And I always aim to please.”

Chapter 14

Funny, how baffling other folks’ predilections can feel. Me? I’ve never understood the allure of baseball.

Wrigley Field is one of the oldest parks in the country, and it feels like it. Not in a worn and tattered way, like Still Goods, but a historic way, with statuary and plaques and a hundred years of spilled beer. I took it all in: The winter-killed ivy. The hand-turned scoreboard. The lighting that almost didn’t happen.

When I was a kid, they made a big stink about finally installing electric lights. How they managed to survive as long as they had without night games is a testament to Chicago’s stubbornness. Hopefully Andy Parsons came from that same pigheaded Chicago stock.

Jacob had arranged for a custodian to meet me at the gate and show me around. The rotund guy was white-haired and ruddy with cold. I flashed my new ID card. It felt flimsy compared to the weight of my detective badge, but it did the job.

My guide was obviously curious as to why a federal agent was poking around the seats. If anything, it would be an interesting story to tell his cronies when he clocked out and joined them for a brewski. “Off-season, tours come through at noon and three,” he said, “but there’s no reason for ’em to come up here in the stands.”

“Uh huh.”

“So, is this a ticket scalping thing? I didn’t know the feds cared about stuff like that.”

“I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.” Civilians love hearing stuff like that. Makes them feel like they’re on a TV crime drama. The custodian nodded sagely.

He was slightly more winded than I was from climbing the stairs, which excused us both from making small talk. He led me to Andy’s seat. It looked just like the seats all around it. I made a show of assessing it anyway, even got down on one knee and shone my penlight all around. Nothing. Not even a crumpled napkin or an old wad of gum.

I’m not sure exactly what I thought I’d find. It wasn’t as if someone had lured the guy here, offed him, then dragged him halfway across the city to feed him through some heavy equipment. But the heart wants what it wants, and it wasn’t all that crazy to see if Andy’s extracurricular activities had mattered more to him than his ordinary life as the most obvious FPMP babysitter. If he’d been sitting in this seat when the Cubs finally ended the longest championship drought in sports history, it could very well be the spot in which his ghost dropped anchor.

I opened myself to the white light and tried to pull it down, but frankly, my head hurt from a shitty night’s sleep. Maybe it was too early in the day for ghosts. Maybe I was too tired to perform. Or maybe my big idea was just an overly-optimistic dead end.

I straightened up and knuckled my eyes.

When it was obvious even to a casual observer I hadn’t found what I was looking for, my guide took it upon himself to make the trip worth my while. “You hear about that guy who fell out of the bleachers?” He made the sign of the cross, then pointed to the infield. “Down there, that’s where he landed. Right on his head.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked. Even through the frosty daylight, when I really focused, I saw a flicker that might have been a trick of the light, but probably wasn’t. I watched the spot, counted slowly to thirty, and saw it again. Clearer now. The shape of a man, partially. Just a fragment. Head and shoulders. But at least that was enough to let me know I was “on.”

I headed back to my office and found Darla scrutinizing a very complicated graphic on the giant screen. She glanced at her watch when I came in. I ignored the implied criticism and said, “Lemme run something by you. A violent death might cause a repeater…an echo. But it also might leave behind a full-fledged ghost. What makes the difference?”

“Interesting.” She turned toward me and crossed her arms. “That’s the first intelligent question you’ve ever asked me.”

“I’ll take that to mean you don’t know, either.” I looked at the chart she’d been studying, a tangle of colored lines and points that was as hard to read as my gas bill. “What about this?”

“I’ve asked your lab guy to analyze it in case there’s something I’m missing, but it looks pretty damn random to me. Plus, I think we’d need to walk a lot more people through the course to generate any useful statistics.”

Just what Laura wanted to hear. “We need to do something.”

Darla replied with such a look of utter disdain, my brain hurtled right back to Camp Hell. Not a full-on panic attack flashback, just a memory. But the memory was so intense, it might as well have been.

Camp Hell cafeteria. The early days, before security was tight. Stefan leaning in to whisper in my ear in a tantalizing whiff of Aqua Net and cigarettes. “While I was getting dressed after my physical today, that annoying little doctor left the room to take a call.” He hiked up the hem of his black turtleneck and flashed the top of his stretchy draw-string skull pants. A pilfered KY tube protruded from his waistband. I gawked, and my mouth went dry. “After dessert, let’s go share a soda.”

I couldn’t tell you what was on the dinner menu that fateful night, only that I could barely choke it down over the lump in my throat. Anal was new and uncharted territory for me. Not because I was a late bloomer—I’d been swapping hummers and hand-jobs since I was fourteen—but because I’d never had the privacy.

Or maybe because, up until that point, I’d simply been unwilling to fumble through something so potentially fraught with embarrassment with anybody else. But Stefan? Back then, I would have trusted him with my life.

I was literally shaking by the time he met me in that nasty, rank stairwell. I tried to hide it from him, but obviously he knew how nervous I was. He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and murmured, “It’s okay, I promise,” as he stroked my mohawk stubble. “How about this: you do me.”

It seemed like the less potentially painful option of the two. I agreed, and the two of us set to work attempting to embark on this new and strange frontier. Strange for me, at least. Stefan was nearly eight months older, and judging by how unruffled he was about the whole undertaking, I presume I wasn’t his first. Either that, or he’d had more online access and a better opportunity to figure out what went where.

We sank to our knees, awkwardly, still kissing. But when he realized we were covered in cigarette ashes, he stood back up and brushed them off in disgust…even though he was probably the one who’d left them there. “We should probably stand.”

“Okay.” I unhitched my belt. “So, like, from the back, or…?”

“Why not?” He handed me the KY and said, “Some on you, some on me,” then dropped his ashy skull pants to his knees and turned to grasp the railing. It was industrial, metal, a series of pipes and joints. Thick layers of flaking paint, black on top, green underneath, and below that, rust. I’ll never forget the sight of his hands in cheap silvertone skull rings clutching the chipped rails.

Despite my abject terror over the likelihood that I’d mess everything up, my body was raring to go. It had more to do with hormones than the actual situation. I lubed my own dick—it was like jerking off with hand lotion, an activity where I was already proficient—and then pushed a slippery finger inside him. And that was new. Because any time I’d done that with someone before, it was nothing more than spit and some teasing. But this time, I meant business.

I attempted to prod myself in. It was a no-go. “More KY,” he told me. I picked up the tube and dropped it again. Twice. Somehow, he managed not to sigh. And somehow I kept it up. Eventually I pushed in. Floundered. Slipped out.

“The farther apart you set your feet,” I said, “the more I have to bend my knees.”

“If I don’t get a good stance, you’ll be scraping me off the bottom of the stairwell.” He kicked out of his pants, naked now from the waist down, planted himself more firmly, and said, “Okay, do it.”

There were ashy flecks in the lube. I tried not to think about it. Because I was a badass, and it took more than a little dirt to bother me. Besides, had I really expected to de-virginate myself in a cushy waterbed strewn with rose petals? The filthy, reeking stairwell was definitely more my speed. I got my bearings and shoved in, and he made a sound that was a lot like pain, and somehow between the two of us, we managed to force a rhythm. Once we found that groove…things suddenly got really good.

“God,” I huffed into the back of his neck. “Fuck. I’m gonna….”

“Not yet.”

“So tight.”

“Not yet. Think about something gross.”

I hammered into him harder. “So fucking tight.”

“Pretend you’re banging that fat chick who’s in love with you.”

I snorted out a laugh—and even that wasn’t enough to give me some staying power. Before I knew it, I’d sown my wild oats. Two minutes, tops, and Stefan was barely even hard. Without comment, he scavenged the ash-covered KY from the floor, squeezed the rest of the tube into his hand, and finished himself off. While he put his pants back on, I stood there like an idiot, looking around for something to wipe myself off with. I was grossly unprepared—the story of my life. Everything was grease and ashes. I tucked myself away, squishy and wet, and wiped my hands on my jeans.

“So, uh, that was pretty good. Right? I mean, uh, mostly.”

Stefan replied with a wicked raised eyebrow—one that hinted at the possibility of a repeat performance, though next time, I’d damn well better step up my game—and strode out of the stairwell.

I tagged along behind him. “Next time, I’ll last longer,” I claimed, with a cockiness I absolutely didn’t feel. “It’s been a while since I fucked someone.”

The time was ripe for the comment, A while, as in never? But the dig went undug. Because as we rounded the corner, we found ourselves face to face with none other than…the fat chick. The part about her being in love with me…that was just an expression. Right? I swallowed nervously and said, “Hey, Darla.”

What initially tipped her off, I’ll never know, not without asking, and even I wasn’t dumb enough to tear open that old wound. Darla had looked at me. Looked at Stefan. And then looked down. I remembered the precise moment when her expression shifted and her eyes went hard. It was when she said, “Your pants are inside out,” and her voice was colder than the coils on the pop machine.

Funnily enough, the memory of her voice wasn’t actually the one that chilled me the most. It was the sparkle of triumph in Stefan’s eye.

Chapter 15

Darla turned her back to me and began jabbing at the flatscreen, clearly annoyed. To think, I’d almost asked her opinion about Stefan. Not only would she have bitten my head off, but chewed it up, spat it out, and sworn at it a few times for good measure.

Talk about dodging a bullet.

There was no time to bask in my relief, though. The landline on my desk gave a startling ring and the various lights on it began to flash in a pattern that undoubtedly meant something important. I picked it up cautiously. “Hello?”

“Vic?” It was Laura. “I tried getting hold of you on your cell.”

I pulled out the new phone and glared at the screen. It unlocked. But since I had no idea where to find the mute setting, let alone see if it was on or off, I put it away again. “Sorry, uh…new technology. Still working out the kinks.”

“Are you available to come to my office?”

Sure, if I could find it. “On my way.”

I had to backtrack four times, but I did eventually find Laura Kim’s office on my own. There were file folders on the floor, a tape dispenser too, and she was glaring at a supply cabinet as if it had optical face recognition. “I need you to double check this area.” She indicated the cabinet with a sweep of her hand.

“Okay.” I looked at it. And then I realized how completely unsatisfying that probably was, so I approached, and looked at it harder. Nothing. “Am I looking for anything specific?”

“I feel an…aversion to it. Are you getting anything like that?”

Given that Laura Kim actually was a medium, I shouldn’t be quick to discount her “impressions.” However, Laura was also completely freaked out by her recent psychic categorization, and taking her level of stress and the sensitive nature of her job into consideration, chances were, she was also paranoid. Justifiably so, but still. A false alarm would not surprise me.

But, with the same patience I use when Jacob has me smell the creamer ten times and then swear on a stack of bibles that it hasn’t gone bad, I dutifully drew down some white light, centered myself, and looked.

Nothing.

“All clear.”

I’d given her the most decisive cop-delivery possible, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. “Are you sure? Because I’ve noticed that I’m leaving stuff on my desk rather than putting it away, and that work habit is totally not me.”

“Right.” I gave the cabinet another scan. “Could be that it’s just an awkward height.”

Her eyebrows drew together.

“I can give it a metaphysical once-over just to be sure. I’ll just grab the salt and—”

“Stop right there.” Laura tapped something into her watch and said, “Patrick, I’ll need sacred salt in my office, and….Vic, anything else, incense? Candles?”

“Florida Water, if you have it.”

Of course they had it. They were the FPMP. They knew the heebies and jeebies were really real.

Shortly, Patrick arrived with the props. He carried the ritual items on a tray so as not to contaminate anything, and he set it on Laura’s desk. As he turned to go, he gave me an eyebrow wag that conveyed, Oh my God this is so totally cool.

“Do you need me to leave the room too?” Laura asked.

I considered sending her out, but no. It was better for her to see that mediums should take death with a grain of salt. Literally. Because if you get your head in a rut, ruminating about ghosts and dying and hauntings, you won’t be any good to anyone. “Stay. And…I’ll talk you through the process.”

It went against everything I’d trained myself to do—all the minimizing, obfuscating, and downright lies—to tell someone else what was really going on when I did my thing. I guess all the “sharing” I did with Jacob had worn down my resistance. As the director of the FPMP, Laura might be an awfully risky person to confide in. But she was also too distressed to leave in the dark.

“So first, you center yourself. If you know about chakras, think about them. If you believe in God, pray. Doesn’t really matter which flavor you lean toward. It’s all about the focus.” I drew down the white light, then looked at the room again. Pretty much the same. But I knew myself well enough to know I was juiced up, and if there was anything to be seen, I’d see it.

“Next you take the salt, and you activate it.” I grabbed a stiff pinch and pulled down the white light. The salt lit up to my inner eye. “Some folks insist on using the left hand, some say a prayer. I have no idea why salt holds energy, but it does. I…I see it. So once your salt is ready….”

It would be more dramatic to scatter it, but a lot harder to clean up. I sprinkled it in a neat line, then dusted off my palms.

“Do the same with the Florida Water.” Another pull, and it was activated too. Whether the herbal ingredients held a vibration or the scent just focused my will, I couldn’t say. “It smells like cheap cologne, but it works.” I twisted off the cap, partially blocked the opening with my thumb and shook out just a few drops. Messy, and now my fingers smelled like cloves. I considered telling her a spray bottle actually worked fine, but I suspected that wouldn’t be ritual enough for comfort. “Feel any different now?”

Laura stared hard at the cabinet, and said, “I can’t tell.”

“Yeah. It can be slippery. Plus, your furniture wasn’t haunted to begin with—not that I’m throwing stones. We have our loft blessed every month, whether it needs it or not.” Together, Laura and I gazed at the non-haunted cabinet as I loosened my grip on the light, and allowed it to settle back to its default level. “Nonphysical energy…well, it’s really a thing. And if you’re a medium, somehow, through whatever personal filter you have, you’ll know.”

“Will I? Because it feels like I don’t know anything anymore.”

“Look, I’m willing to throw salt all day long. But you’ll be better off in the long run learning to handle the energy yourself.” Lame, I know. I did sincerely want to help Laura, but the fact was, I couldn’t be with her twenty-four hours a day to keep the spirit world from testing her boundaries.

I was in the elevator when I thought of something that actually could protect her day and night. Faun Windsong’s ugly necklace. All I’d need to do is get hold of…oh. Wait. I pulled out my phone—it really was nice and thin—and sent Crash the message, Do you still have that beaded shaman necklace I gave you?

He texted back, Thanks to the fire, it’s in necklace heaven now. Want me to find you another one?

There wasn’t “another one.” That clump of feathers, beads and twine had been fashioned from sacred Native American relics and a few hundred years of prayer. Never mind.

You sure? I’ve got connections.

Maybe. But so did I. And mine were certified psychics.

I headed back to my office. Carl was standing outside in the hall talking on his phone, and he turned away from me as I passed by in the universal “don’t bother me” signal. Inside, Darla watched the flatscreen as a blocky African American guy in a suit wandered through the haunted office. I sat down at my desk. The chair was too high, but trying to crank it down only made it recline. I woke up my monitor with a jiggle of my mouse. It brought up a password screen. And since I hadn’t the faintest idea what my password might be, I damn near gave up my whole budding idea as worthless. But then I remembered my phone.

Unlocked with a scowl. I tapped an icon I recognized as a browser, and lo and behold, a search bar popped up.

Nice.

I’m not sure how many results Bert Chekotah’s name pulled up, but the very first one was underlined in blue, so I tapped it to send him a message. Something else with a progress wheel opened, and began to play a little electronic sound. And since it would be way too mortifying, even for me, to hand my phone to one of my colleagues and say, “Make it stop,” I sat there and pretended whatever I’d just done was entirely intentional.

After a few seconds, the chimes cut off, but before I could breathe a sigh of relief, Bert Chekotah appeared onscreen. At first, I thought it was just a pixelated selfie, but then it moved. And by the time I realized what I’d done, it said, “Detective Bayne?”

Damn it. Now I’d have to talk to him.

Chapter 16

Bert Chekotah looked just as calm, cool and collected as he had the last time we’d chatted. He looked just as carelessly handsome, too. His black hair was boyishly wind-tousled, his skin was tan, and the few days of wispy beard growth he hadn’t bothered to shave formed a rakish natural goatee.

“The necklace of protection,” I said curtly. “I need to make one.”

“That’s smart. There are spirits all around us—in every living being, yes, but other things too. Rocks and water and all of the natural world. Most of them don’t care about us one way or another. But some of them mean us harm.”

Rocks. Sure. “So how do I go about it? Take apart an old rug and…is it braided? Macrame?”

“There is no pattern for making a personal amulet—you’re not knitting a sweater.”

“Then how did you make the one you gave to Fau…uh…Katrina?”

“It was a process.” Damn it, his answer sucked already. “First, I removed myself from the distractions of day-to-day life to commune with Spirit. I fasted, I drummed, and I prayed. How long? I’m not sure. Days. Maybe a week. When I walk with my ancestors, I see time is a modern construct with no true meaning.”

Funny, I was acutely aware of the passage of time—I wanted to hang up on him five minutes ago. Carl rejoined us and sat beside Darla. I swallowed my natural loathing of Chekotah and settled in to hear what he had to say.

“I searched for materials among the things I owned, items of power I’d collected over decades. I prayed over each piece, and listened for the spirits to tell me how to bind them all together. I sacrificed my most precious possessions, irreplaceable things of great value, filled with history and culture, to rework their power into a circle of protection.”

Fantastic. It took me multiple attempts to re-lace my shoes without getting everything all twisted around. But maybe Crash could source some raveling prayer rugs for me—and maybe Carl would research how to knot them back into something helpful.

Was I learning to delegate…or was I out of my comfort zone and itching to get back to the murder?

“What’s most important,” Chekotah said, “is that the whole time you’re making the amulet, you hold your focus. Your energy as a shaman. That’s what binds the power.”

I sighed.

He said, “Sometimes the best path is rocky.”

“So what I need to do is drop everything, say a bunch of prayers, find some random crap laying around and throw it together. Is that what you’re saying? Wing it? ’Cos that’s what it sounds like. And frankly, I have no idea how you manage to brush up against ghosts as much as you do without ending up as some dead guy’s wetsuit.”

Chekotah had zero reaction to my annoyance. Why should he? That guy was slicker than an ashy tube of KY. I was just a minor intrusion on his charmed life. “Some people claim the body is a just a vessel,” he said, “but it’s more than that. It’s the physical part of you, and your spirit knows it. A ghost might try to claim your body, but it’s like putting on someone else’s shoes. You can force your feet in, but they don’t feel right.”

Like Jennifer Chance’s ghost fingers poking through Richie’s stubby fingertips. I shuddered.

“Matter of fact,” he said, “I do remember the first time I spiritwalked. It wasn’t scary. Confusing, maybe. But not scary. It was my cousin Max’s funeral. He shot himself in the leg cleaning a gun, and bled out before the ambulance showed up. Probably drunk, but who knows? He was a year older than me, seventeen. A quiet kid, the type you don’t really notice but who’s always there in the background. During the wake, I was out back behind my uncle’s garage with our friends, passing around a joint—a sloppy way to lower your defenses—and I was just stoned enough that I didn’t think much of it when Max joined the circle and waited for a toke. But when I tried to pass it to him, he couldn’t take it.

“Everyone else figured the weed just hit me harder than normal. Of course, they talked some shit about it, but pretty soon the subject changed and no one paid it any more attention. But I could still see Max. Standing there, quiet, trying to be part of the group. Just like when he was alive.

“I wanted to believe it was all in my head. Grief playing tricks on me. But later that night, once my mom was passed out by the TV, I went back by Uncle’s place and snuck into the yard. I didn’t think I’d find anything, but there he was, sitting in an old lawn chair. My cousin Max. Looking at me. Sad.

“I said to him, you know you’re dead, right? Not sure why I chose those words—maybe the ancestors were guiding me. He hung his head and looked embarrassed. He didn’t want to believe me, but we’d known each other our whole lives, and he knew I was way smarter than him. We argued about him being dead for a while, but eventually I made him see the truth.

“And then he said, Bert, I’m scared.

“I said, what’s there to be scared of? Looks like the worst already happened.

“Come with me, he begged. Like he always did, when he was too shy to do something by himself. And when it happened, I did it without thinking. I reached for his hand, like I did when we were kids, and everything shifted.

“The world of spirit—you know it? Looks just like our world, but only the shell. You know you’re there ’cos it feels like a dream. I was young and cocky, didn’t know enough to be afraid.

“Even when my cousin pulled back and sank into my body.

“Do you know how lucky I was? Max was lonely and scared and confused, but he wasn’t malicious. If he was, things could’ve been so much worse. Don’t be a dumbass, I told him, and I yanked him back out. I don’t think he even knew what he’d just done. I walked him over to the veil—which was out by the rotten tree stump where we used to throw knives, but not really there. The closer I got, the more everything felt like a dream. Because the world of spirit isn’t like the physical world. Going deeper has nothing to do with location or distance.

“He said he was scared. And I said, whatever’s in there, it’s gotta be better than hanging around your yard forever.

“Come with me? he said.

“And I told him I was right behind him.”

No big shock to hear lying had always come easy to Chekotah, but it wasn’t worth getting in a dig. Not when he was telling me something I could eventually use to figure out my own shit.

After a long silence, he said, “After that, I started hanging out on the reservation. My mom always avoided it—my dad was there with his other family—but I was sixteen, and what could she do to stop me? I told the shaman everything, and he said he would mentor me. A couple years later, the Ganzfeld reports came out, and the rest…? Well, back then, in that first crop of certified Psychs, the sky was the limit. You know how it was.”

Hardly. But I wasn’t about to volunteer anything that personal to the likes of him.

It took a few jabs to hang up, but I managed to do it without video-calling anyone else. It didn’t occur to me that I might not be the only one who didn’t appreciate Chekotah’s ability to end up in the right place at the right time until Darla piped up. “Maybe the sky was the limit for him. My reality was a big glass ceiling.”

I tried to imagine a job where my particular skillset was in high demand, but other than homicide investigator, I came up blank. “You seem to be doing okay.”

“Maybe now. But I waited tables for nearly eight years before I finally caught a break and got a call from the FPMP.”

I suspected her gender didn’t have much to do with it. Back then, any police department with the budget would’ve been thrilled to have a fourth-level medium on the team. The more likely problem would’ve been getting through the physical screening at her old weight—hell, even I’d struggled with the chin-ups—but I was smart enough not to go there. Before I could open my mouth and say something I’d surely regret, a text from Jacob popped up.

Need you in the lab ASAP.

I texted back, On my way.

“That’s my other investigation,” I told everyone. “Gotta go.”

“Sure,” Darla said, “no problem. Carl and I are doing just fine without you.”

Did it count as a passive-aggressive reply when it was dripping with so much sarcasm it practically left a residue behind? Since I knew there wasn’t nearly enough time to get to the bottom of that particular dig, I pretended to take it at face value, and headed off to the section of the FPMP I don’t normally deal with: the underground. Not just a simple basement, but three whole levels of basement.

All the way down to the parking lot, the stairwell, the bulletproof glass doors that made a sucking sound every time they glided open on their hermetically sealed tracks, I drank down white light like an alcoholic during happy hour. There was no broad curve of a grand wooden desk at the lab; anyone who showed up there would know where they were going, and they wouldn’t have time to look at fancy decorating or sip coffee. Just a small desk with an armed security guard who looked like his sense of humor had been surgically removed.

Jacob was waiting at the guard station for me, looking handsome, and official, and full of existential dread. (Okay, so he had a furrow between his brows and the set of his shoulders looked stiff. But I’d learned to speak his body language pretty darn well.) He lit up when he saw me with a quiet sort of relief, and told the guard, “This is Agent Bayne.”

Bored, the guard motioned toward the card reader. I scanned my ID. “Top clearance,” he said. “Go ahead.”

Once we were out of earshot, I asked Jacob, “Whatever we’re doing down here—don’t you have enough clout to make it happen somewhere aboveground?”

“Without alerting a bunch of people to what we’re looking at? No.”

I felt a twinge of recognition. “Are we heading where I think we’re heading?”

“Parsons’ autopsy is done. I figured we should hear the findings together.”

“And just when I hoped I could end my day without a trip to the morgue.” Although I supposed I should be relieved he hadn’t summoned me to the polygraph suite.

We headed into the lab and passed their obsessively labeled supply cabinets, some small windowless offices, and a room that looked to my untrained eye like a bunch of people raking mulch. The latest and greatest in Psych research? It would take a lot more than that to surprise me.

Chapter 17

My official ID carded us into the morgue, which looked different with people in it. Last time I’d seen the place, the entire lab had been cleared, and there was nobody home but the thawed corpse of Jennifer Chance in a chemical bath draped with plastic. Now there was someone scrubbing down a table, and someone looking into a microscope, and someone else dictating notes at a phone. And while they were all covered in protective lab gear and I couldn’t see much, other than their eyes above their surgical masks, they struck me as real people—living people—and that made everything a hell of a lot less creepy.

One of the masked and swaddled lab workers broke away from his computer and came over to join us. When he spoke, I recognized him immediately. Dr. K was the only Russian immigrant I’d met so far at the FPMP.

“Agents. So sorry for your loss. Always sad to lose one of your own.” Sad? It honestly hadn’t occurred to me. I plastered on my blankest cop-face. It was the best I could do. “Now let’s get you covered up so you don’t ruin your nice suits.”

Any protective gear worn in the lab was to prevent contamination of the body, not the workers’ wardrobes. But I didn’t bother calling him out on it and telling him I knew the score, and I hadn’t lasted as long as I had in homicide by being squeamish. I donned the surgical gown, the mask, the hair cover and the gloves. Jacob did the same. And once we were wrapped up good and tight, Dr. K led us across the wide room, to a plastic-covered shape on the far dissection table.

I peered under the plastic. “Looks like you recovered…most of him.”

“The parts that weren’t too far into the machine. We have technicians looking for the rest.” Oh. Now the mulch made a lot more sense. “It will take time. But his organs were intact—mostly—and I can say with pretty good certainty, we found the cause of death. If we have any new findings, I reserve the right to change my mind. But for now?” He picked up a massive file folder and pulled out a bagged and tagged round of ammo. “This entered from the front, passed through the ribcage and the heart, and lodged in the second thoracic vertebra.”

Yeah, I’d have to agree, the murder weapon seemed pretty cut and dried.

“Can I use your restroom?” Jacob asked.

“Sure,” said Dr. K. “Right down that hall.”

I stood there awkwardly with the good doctor while we waited for Jacob, figuring we shouldn’t go over anything too important without him there. “So,” Dr. K said.

“So,” I replied.

“I have some ideas about the tuner,” he said quietly. “Whoever took my notes…they couldn’t erase my brain.”

“Yeah, well, don’t brag about it in mixed company. I’m sure they’ve got their ways.”

“If I do put something together, maybe you could take a look at it and let me know if it works.”

It was really tempting to tell him I still had a GhosTV. Hell, I would love to leave it on his porch, ring the doorbell and run. But it was too dangerous, so instead I just said, “When the time comes, tell Director Kim you need me to check a body. I’m sure she’ll spare me.”

Jacob rejoined us, walking with purpose. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Now, for the interesting part.” Dr. K yanked down the plastic with a certain amount of showmanship. There was “Andy” in all his glory. Very dead. With a Y-incision on his chest, and the top of his pointy head sawed off. Plus some extra attention to the bullet wound to the side of his sternum. “The incision in the entry wound was already present. Whoever shot him tried to retrieve the bullet.”

I cut my eyes to the evidence bag. “I take it they couldn’t.”

“We had to saw into the bone to get it out.”

Jacob checked his phone and said, “Vic, you got this? I need to take a call.”

“Sure.” The word wasn’t even out of my mouth and he was halfway out the door. What was up with him—planting bugs in the lab? If so, he should’ve given me a heads up so I could be more distracting. I turned back to Dr. K and said, “Assailant shoots Parsons, tries to retrieve the ammo, and when that doesn’t work, says screw it and throws him in a chipper. Sound about right? And when someone tries that hard, I’d bet that’s one damning piece of evidence.”

Dr. K nodded. “We’ve made arrangements for Ballistics to prioritize their analysis. But I thought I should let Internal Affairs know…is Agent Marks okay?”

Jacob had ducked around the corner, out of our direct line of sight. But a couple of unfortunately-placed glass doors reflected him like a funhouse mirror. He wasn’t tucking away any new listening devices—at least, I hoped not—and he most certainly wasn’t taking a call. He was leaning up against the wall, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’m fresh from Homicide,” I explained to Dr. K. “But not him.”

“And Agent Parsons was one of ours. I understand.”

He didn’t, though. Not really. Because Agent Parsons might have been “one of ours,” but he was also our prime suspect for an information leak that would bring a bunch of unwanted attention to the FPMP. Strange that my sympathies were with the FPMP when I knew damn well Psychs had undergone all kinds of illicit testing. Maybe because I was worried the fallout would affect people like Laura who weren’t even involved back then, and the guilty parties would be unscathed.

When Jacob rejoined us yet again, Dr. K had more fun facts about Andy’s body. Estimated time of death, an old fracture to his collarbone, and the contents of his stomach. His last meal had been a burger and onion rings washed down with a Diet Coke. We were welcome to see it, if we liked. We took a pass.

On our way back up to the parking lot, I considered asking Jacob if he wanted to stop for a burger and some onion rings on the way home, but I suspected the joke was a little too morbid. We paused at his car, and I said, “I drove, but…you gonna be okay? I could probably leave my car here. You looked a little green, back there.”

He worked his jaw for a couple of seconds, then said, “Just…tell me there’s nothing in my car.”

“Your gym bag’s right there.”

“Vic….”

“For real?” I said. He looked pretty serious. “Okay. Sure.”

I glanced in. Nothing but us tube socks. But since a cursory look wouldn’t be particularly reassuring (and since, lately, he could sense when I was actually manipulating white light) I planted my feet, centered myself, and drew down the power. The car was clean. I even had him pop the trunk. Nothing. “All clear. I promise.” I leaned in and whispered, “Besides, you’re not the one who’s gotta make sure nothing gets inside you without sweet-talking you first. I am.”

Grudgingly, he climbed into his car, and each of us made our separate way home. When I got there, a blenderful of ice was waiting for me, and not because Jacob was making smoothies. I changed into sweats and washed potential morgue cooties from my hands, then joined him at the kitchen counter. He put the blender on low. We burn through fewer of them that way—and, trust me, it’s easily as loud as high is, just a different pitch.

Jacob rearranged the knives in the butcher block a time or two, then said, “You know the way you look when something triggers you about Camp Hell? I always figured it was bad, but now I finally get it in my gut. That plastic in the morgue—that milky, whitish, semi-opaque plastic. I heard it. And then it was like…I could practically feel Jennifer Chance’s dead body squirming in my hands.”

Damn it. All this time with Jacob, I’d been training myself to handle his overzealousness. Not his vulnerability.

“Not only that,” he went on, “but the chemical smell, the chill of the air conditioning, the background sound of the ventilation system whooshing like someone whispering in your ear—”

“Jacob, stop.” I had no idea what to do with his distress. I fit myself against his back and pressed my cheek into the meaty slope of his trapezius. “She’s gone,” I promised. “I felt her go.” Only the highly evolved could pass back through the veil, souls like Miss Mattie, people with a higher calling. But for the ghosts like Chance who were fueled by obsession and vengeance, it was a one-way ticket. “Where she went, there’s no coming back.”

He fed the rest of our ice into the blender, and I held him. I wished there was more I could say. But I’d tried telling Bob Zigler to forget about the moving corpses—it was unlikely a person would see anything quite so fucked up more than once in their life—but as far as I knew, Zig was still meeting with a therapist once a week to try and sleep through the night. Plus, the chances of stumbling across something that would leave a permanent scar did seem perilously high in the FPMP’s employ.

Since I was having no luck finding words, I turned Jacob around in my arms and pressed my mouth to his. If anyone got what it was like to be terrified, it was me. But judging by my total non-reaction in the morgue, in this particular instance, I could be the brave one. I squeezed him hard, and kissed him harder, and he opened his lips to my tongue, because he always did. Maybe the feel of the bio plastic did bring up a strikingly vivid memory. But there were so many more memories he and I shared, together.

I took his face in my hands and said, “This is our home. You’re safe, I’m safe, everyone we love is safe. We’ll keep it that way, you and me. We can do it. I believe in us. Okay?”

He pressed his forehead briefly to mine. “Okay.”

And sure, he was mostly humoring me, but I figured he was pretty good at the “fake it till you make it” game. At least until we were getting ready for bed, and the rustle of the plastic shower curtain nearly sent him into orbit. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see, but his jump startled me so badly, my toothbrush nearly ended up in the toilet.

When I climbed into bed beside him, he was clenched up all over and glaring at the ceiling.

“Twelve tiles across and fourteen up,” I said. “But it doesn’t hurt to count ’em a few more times to be sure.” I pulled up the covers and rolled toward him, facing him on my side, and settled my hand on his chest. My eyes defocused, and I imagined colorful spinning chakras, deep down in his ribcage. They’d be big and ponderous, like the heavy machinery where lawn waste was processed. Difficult to maneuver, but phenomenally powerful.

“No one could have helped me get rid of Jennifer Chance but you,” I told him. “And if I had to do it myself, I would’ve been fucked. So feel good about that, if you can.”

He nodded once. But he didn’t look all that mollified.

I almost suggested he read a few pages to help him doze off, but then I caught a glimpse of his latest drugstore paperback and thought better of it. Even with the title hidden under a box of tissues, the murder house on the cover made it plain that his current read would be a shitty lullaby. He always goes for the most gruesome crap he can find—says he likes the fact that everything works out in the end—but tonight, I suspected he might lose himself in the pages just a little too much.

I hugged myself against him and tried to will my drowsiness into his body. But if there’s a psychic talent capable of making that happen, it’s not part of my repertoire. “We’re safe here,” I reminded him.

He counted a few ceiling tiles, then said, “Maybe here, now. But I’m starting to question how safe we are in this world.”

Jacob was so used to being the strong one. It might seem like I’d revel in the turnabout when he finally got a stiff dose of reality. But no. It actually broke my heart.

Chapter 18

Try as I might, I wasn’t able to force myself to stay awake long enough to give Jacob the reassurance he deserved. I was running on a sleep deficit of gigantic proportions. And when it was time to head off for our next round at the FPMP, not only was he the first out of bed, but he got the coffee brewing while I was still knuckling sleep out of my eyes. I’d like to think that meant I was approaching my workday well-rested, but frankly, I wasn’t much fresher than when I’d gone to bed.

For once, I beat Carl and Darla to the office. But since I was still unclear on my password, I couldn’t fire up my computer. And that big touchscreen? I didn’t even know how to turn it on. Still, I had to do something, and the big stack of textbooks Carl had been digitizing was the only thing I could figure out how to access. I thumbed through one after another, looking for what, I didn’t know. One eventually caught my eye: a brown, cloth-bound book stamped with the title Case Studies.

Boring? Only on the surface. Maybe it was like the aversion-whammy on the FPMP parking lot entrance—something to deflect the attention of the casual observer—or maybe it was just a poor choice of titles. Once I got into it, though, I was fascinated.

Woman in Jacksonville burns her own house down, claims she had to get rid of the old busybody who died there twenty years before.

Top probate attorney admits finding directions to wills and insurance policies and all kinds of secret stashes scrawled on his desk blotter when he wakes up from his frequent benders.

Owner of a cadaver dog admits the animal’s as dumb as a box of rocks, and reveals he’s the one who’s been leading authorities to the bodies.

My officemates arrived sometime while my nose was in the book. I was thoroughly engrossed when a subtle electronic tone sounded and brought me back to present-day reality. I figured it was the inscrutable device in my pocket, but Carl pulled out his cell and went to take the call outside before I did anything embarrassing, like trying to answer a phone that wasn’t even ringing. Darla wouldn’t have noticed anyway. She was hard at work graphing the movements of the mediums in the haunted office and paying no attention to either of us.

I looked back at the book in my hand and realized…maybe we were barking up the wrong tree. All the mediums in the narrative had one thing in common: they were dealing with sentient ghosts, not repeaters. The office we were using as our obstacle course wasn’t really haunted. Yes, there was some residue there. But what if it was too subtle to be sensed by lower level mediums? Maybe it would take an actual ghost to sort everyone out.

“What was the first sentient ghost you encountered?” I said, breaking the silence in the room.

Darla turned and leveled me a look of cool assessment. “Why?”

“Just working on a theory.”

“I don’t actually have a memory of it. I was just a baby.”

“Fine. If you don’t remember—”

I thought she resented the intrusion, so it surprised me when she went on. “I was a vocal toddler. My parents always figured I liked to babble. And then one day a kung fu movie was playing in the background, and I was having the time of my life chatting with the ninjas. In Cantonese. Turned out our house was built on a Nineteenth Century railroad camp, and I hadn’t been talking to myself all that time after all.”

“Wow. Do you still…?”

“Not really. A word here or there. What about you? What was your first?”

The thing that got me committed my senior year of high school was the hideous pile-up with the bloody, wailing victims, but it seemed like my ghost cherry had been popped well before then. The clown in the movie theater? That was the earliest one I could think of. And yet there was something nagging at the edge of my awareness that insisted the clown ghost wasn’t my very first, either. But to say my memory was shoddy was being generous; whole portions of my life are buried deeper than the denizens of Graceland.

I was on the edge of grasping some elusive memory when everything lit up, from the multiline phones on both Carl’s desk and mine, to the giant touchscreen on the wall—which filled itself with the face of Laura Kim, looking down at us as if she was talking into her watch. “Vic, are you there?”

“I am.”

“I need you in the South Stairwell, first floor, right now.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “South Stairwell, so that’s, um,…”

Darla said, “I know where it is.”

“And hurry,” Laura told us.

“Quickest way is through the annex hall,” Darla said. I half-expected her to add a dig about how it wasn’t very surprising I had no idea where I was since I apparently knew nothing about anything—but whatever was going down, it was big enough to swing the focus off my ineptitude, at least for the time being. We hurried over to the South Stairwell, but when we reached the door, we discovered a line of very grim-looking agents blocking our way. No doubt they were all regular people, if you encountered them in their regular lives. They might enjoy baseball, for instance, or kung fu movies. Here, though, in this capacity, they formed an impenetrable wall of highly trained muscle.

But then one of them noticed me and said, “Agent Bayne?” And I saw the smallest glint of awe in his eyes. Or maybe fear. Whichever it was, I suppose the important part was that they let us through.

I wasn’t shocked to find a body at the bottom of the stairwell, though I was somewhat surprised to realize I knew her. “That’s one of Andy Parsons’ co-workers,” I said.

“Colleen Frank.” I thought it was Darla speaking, initially. Then I realized Darla was standing in front of me. And I hadn’t seen her lips move.

I turned and saw Colleen’s ghost standing on the stairs between the first and second floor, hands on railing, with a blob of blood and hair, and probably brain matter, clinging to the rail between her hands. “I was hoping you’d get here before I had to go.”

“You don’t have to take off right away.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s like gravity. It’s like sleeping. It’s like eating another cookie when you swore you’d stop at two. Maybe you can try forcing yourself to stay put, but eventually, you’ll get sucked in.”

I realized, once she said that, if I really thought about it, I could feel the hint of a tug. And when I opened myself to the white light, it was a definite pull. I did my best to get centered so I didn’t drift toward the pull myself. “So what can you tell me?”

“I was pushed.”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. “Any idea who?”

“No, they were behind me. But it was deliberate. I know that for sure.”

“Think,” I said. “Hard. Any unusual gait? Any cologne, any shadows cast?”

“No, nothing.”

“Any detail might turn out to be important, even something you don’t think is significant. If there’s anything at all you can remember, you really need to tell me.”

She rolled her ghostly eyes. “If there were any way to ID them, don’t you think I would have mentioned it? I’m a federal agent, not an IHOP waitress. Swear to God, so sick of men treating me like I’m oblivious. So if you’re done mansplaining what I should have looked at as I was hurtling to my death—”

Murder victims aren’t much use when they’re defensive. Which would make the next question even harder. “Any reason someone would have for killing you?”

“Again…if I knew, don’t you think I would tell you?” She made a wrap-it-up type gesture. “Let’s get this show on the road. I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Are you so sure there’s no motive? Like Andy Parsons?”

“What about Andy?

“Maybe he told you something he shouldn’t have—maybe one of your colleagues was worried you’d talk.”

“About what? The only thing Andy ever told me was how he planned to stack the team in his fantasy baseball league.”

“Nothing about a conspiracy?”

“Hello—I think I’d remember if he said something I actually found interesting.”

“So you know nothing about an incriminating document. One that came from your printer.”

She held up her hands. “I’ve been on assignment since November at the public library. The only printers I deal with are the ones in the computer lab—the one where all the winos go to sleep and watch porn.”

“If that document wasn’t yours, then whose was it? Only four of you shared that device, and one’s already dead.”

“I have no idea. Whoever it belonged to, they didn’t confide in me. Sorry, guy. Guess you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

And with that, she was gone.

When her presence dissipated, and along with it the seductive pull of the veil, I became aware that the spreading pool of blood was now touching my shoe. And that Darla was staring at me, hard.

I exhaled.

Quietly, she said, “I always thought you were faking.”

I let out a mirthless laugh. She looked away and crossed her arms. I said, “I couldn’t even begin to imagine how to fake the shit I see.”

“I know, right?”

Imagine that, me and Dead Darla, having a moment over the cooling corpse of a fellow agent. But before I could figure out how to awkwardly extricate myself without ruining our fragile truce, Darla’s phone buzzed. She answered, rolled her eyes, then put it in my hand. Laura Kim. “Update me, Vic. What’s going on?”

“She didn’t know anything.”

“Her spirit is there? Okay, what do you need? Salt, Florida Water?”

“None of that. She’s moved along.”

“You saw her spirit. You need to clean up that stairwell before it becomes permanent.” She held her hand over the receiver and called, “Patrick? Arrange to have the stairwell locks deactivated. Actually, call a mason, we’ll brick it off.”

“Laura, take a breath,” I said. “It’s not haunted.”

“You’re sure about that? Positive?”

“Totally. And Agent Davis will back me up on that, too.” I looked to Darla and she nodded. “Call in your CSI team. Maybe there’s some kind of evidence in here. But don’t lose any sleep over her ghost. It’s gone and it’s not coming back.”

Chapter 19

I had to stay put while the forensics techs crowded into the stairwell so they could take note of my shoe. I imagine Laura Kim would’ve thrown it away, but I settled for wiping it off with a couple of alcohol swabs. It wasn’t like they were haunted now. Besides, I liked the way they fit.

Weird to think I had ever presumed Laura was the Assassin. All the circumstantial evidence had pointed to her, and even so, it was obvious she didn’t have it in her to take another person’s life. I wasn’t even entirely convinced that the assassin existed, because it seemed exactly like the sort of thing Roger Burke would tell me to mess up my head.

Then again, I couldn’t deny somebody was killing FPMP agents.

When Darla and I got back to the office, Carl was busy at the scanner. “Say, Carl,” she asked, “did you know an agent named Colleen Frank?”

He looked up sharply. “What do you mean, did?”

Shit. Here I thought she’d actually been pretty smooth. A lot slicker than me, anyway. I probably would’ve started out with something really tactful like, Guess who just died?

“There’s been an accident,” Darla said. I almost corrected her, too, but then I realized that she was in that stairwell, same as me. And while I might not know exactly how accurate her reception was, at the very least, she’d heard my end of the conversation. If she was calling the obvious murder an accident, she must’ve had a good reason.

Carl dropped the book he’d been holding. “What happened? Is she—?”

“She fell and…it was quick. She didn’t suffer. I’m really sorry.”

“Excuse me,” he said, and strode out of the office. The door slammed behind him.

I looked at Darla. She looked at me. Before I could figure out what to say, she said, “I don’t know whether your info is classified or not, and I don’t know who’s under investigation and who isn’t. That’s for Internal Affairs to sort out.”

“Why would they be looking at Carl?”

“Not just Carl. They’ll investigate everyone in the building. Good thing we both have an alibi.”

Of course, Carl had nothing to do with it. Okay, he’d left the room abruptly a few minutes before Colleen Frank tipped over that railing. But he was always leaving the room abruptly. Damn, Jacob was gonna have his work cut out for him. I’d need to get to him ASAP and tell him what I knew.

“I’ll deal with IA,” I said. “Can you write up the official report?”

“I could,” she said, as if she wasn’t really sold on the idea. “So, you’re the lead. What do you want it to say?”

“Whatever you think is best. You were there. You know what happened.”

That answer seemed to please her—weird, since whenever I gave actual thought to what I said, it went over like a lead balloon. “Okay, then. I’ll handle it.”

“But make sure you note that I was only asking her the sort of questions any investigator would ask. I wasn’t mansplaining.” Darla sniffed a little laugh, and I insisted, “I wasn’t.”

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

* * *

Jacob was disturbed, to say the least, when I broke the news about Colleen Frank’s death. While he paced back and forth in his office, I sprawled in one of his reasonably comfortable chairs and enjoyed the plant-free ambience. “The two deaths are obviously connected,” he said. “What if the leak was worried about being found out, so they started killing their office mates?”

“Which would mean we’re looking at either Agent Garcia or the fake schoolteacher.” Yeah. That sounded more likely than an assassin.

“Her name is Agent Lipton.” Jacob checked his notes. “Peter Garcia and Veronica Lipton.”

“And if one of them is the leak, the other one had better start sleeping with one eye open.” I thought back to the meeting in which we broke the news of “Andy’s” death to his colleagues. Angry and smug. You’d think psychic empathy would give us more to go on. “Did Bly notice anyone feeling scared during our grief counseling, like they were worried they’d get caught?”

“Not that he mentioned.”

“I think he’ll need to take another look at each of them.”

“As soon as possible,” Jacob agreed. “In fact, I’d rather interview them separately, in case they’re working together.” I realized he was gauging my reaction just a little too closely when he followed that up with, “We should split up. One of us with Bly, the other with Stefan.”

“No.” It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t give a damn.

But Jacob, being Jacob, plowed right on ahead. “It’s the perfect opportunity. We’ll be informing them of another colleague’s death. One of us brings a ‘counselor’ with us to soften the blow, take the tack that we’re concerned for their emotional well-being. The other takes a more physical approach. They all know Bly as an investigator. We make that suspect think we’re worried that they might be next in line.”

“Stefan is not a trained law enforcement officer.” Hell, I wasn’t even sure Stefan was a legitimate human being.

Didn’t matter. Jacob railroaded me anyway. “We need to do it now. Before they collude. Or before they disappear.”

“I’m not talking you out of this. Am I?”

“The longer you argue with me, the more chance we have of losing one of them. Or both.”

One thing I did have time for…a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. On one condition.” Psych-resistant or not, there was no way in hell I was giving my treacherous ex an opportunity to pick Jacob’s brain. “Stefan is with me.”

“Whatever you think is best.” Ha. Said the guy who’d just steamrolled me flatter than an FPMP agent in an industrial wood shredder.

I buzzed Patrick and let him know what I needed. “Let’s see. Agent Garcia.” There was the sound of a keyboard. “Here we go. He’s in the field at the moment—setting up surveillance on ex-agent Richard Duff. Medium. Huh. Did you know him?”

Einstein? Did I ever.

Chapter 20

I got to the Lakewood Manor assisted living facility five minutes early. I aim to get everywhere five minutes early, though in this particular case, I felt nervous and rushed anyway, despite the fact that Stefan had a tendency to show up whenever he was damn well ready. At least he did when we were younger. Who’s to say if the MO was still working for him?

Sad part was, instead of putting together a game plan for what I’d tell Garcia, I was using the camera app on my new phone to make sure my hair looked okay. I had no idea what was up with that. And I didn’t want to know.

While I watched from the lobby, a black town car let out Stefan in front of the building. He adjusted his glasses, small wire-rimmed things with smoky lenses, then strode across a steaming grate in the pavement. The warm air caught the hem of his flared coat and made it billow in the fog.

Leave it to Stefan to look dramatic just walking to the door.

As he mounted the stairs, something reared up deep inside me. A pang. Though what I might be longing for, I had no idea. Not for him. Clearly, I wouldn’t touch him if he was the last man on earth. I yearned for something way more complicated than that. An idea, maybe. The potential of something we might have been, if it weren’t for Camp Hell…or the fact that all along, he’d been blabbing all my carefully guarded secrets to anyone who cared to ask.

He got a load of me and his hazel eyes widened. “So,” he said with overdone briskness. “You’re the agent I’ve been assigned to. You must be thrilled.”

That annoying pang in my gut morphed into something a lot more familiar: anger. “I’ll need you to do some actual work. Think you can handle it?” Laying it on a little thick, I know, especially since Stefan is the last guy you want to insult, unless you’re wearing adult diapers.

But if anything, my annoyance seemed to please him. “By all means, Agent. Just tell me what to do.”

“I’m about to inform someone that his co-worker is dead. You get a read off him, see if he’s feeling anything I need to be worried about.” Even as I said it, I realized how vague the request was. Because strong emotions are difficult to put names to. Wasn’t I just wrestling with a mysterious pang myself? If I heard a colleague died and I thought I was next in line to be rubbed out, I’d feel fear. But wouldn’t I be just as scared if I was responsible, and it seemed like the net was closing in?

Stefan, however, didn’t bat an eyelash. “Fine. Anything else?”

“Yeah. Richie’s here. Don’t be a dick.”

The front desk was expecting us. I didn’t want to blow Garcia’s cover, so I told them I’d need to have a look around the facility before I met with our retired agent. They complied. “You make that woman nervous,” Stefan murmured as we began our circuit of the building. “But only because she thinks you’re after something, and she doesn’t know what it is.”

He got all that? From nervousness? Okay. I tucked that away for future reference and forged ahead.

I don’t necessarily expect a place to be fancy just because it has the word “Manor” in its name. But given that the FPMP had placed Richard Duff in its care—and knowing how they’d always catered to him above and beyond what he actually earned—I wasn’t surprised that the place was actually pretty nice. I don’t like hospitals and homes. Too many institutional sensory details I’d rather not encounter, from ugly green walls, to the whiff of antiseptic, to the metallic clatter of a gurney and the squeak of its wonky wheel. Lakewood Manor didn’t scream out “institution” by its decor. I was no big fan of all the dark wood paneling and brocade, but if you didn’t know better, it looked like a stuffy college library, or maybe a hotel lobby. Stefan fit right in, though I’m sure if it were his place, he’d have some edgier decor. Obscure arthouse film posters. Vintage taxidermy. Homoerotic sculpture.

But who gave a damn what Stefan’s house might look like, anyway?

We found Agent Garcia in the rec room, a ponderous two-story affair with wood on wood on wood—floors, furniture, walls—practically as big as the cannery. And that’s saying a lot. I think they used to bring horse-drawn vehicles through the cannery.

Garcia was up on a ladder, ostensibly reattaching a piece of molding that had finally given way to gravity and time. I wouldn’t have recognized him outside the FPMP if I didn’t know who I was looking for. Agent Peter Garcia fit right in at the FPMP. Black suit. Assertive body language. No-nonsense gaze. But the guy on the ladder looked like just another buff maintenance worker in a baseball cap and well-worn jeans.

“I’d do him,” Stefan said quietly.

Time stuttered.

It wasn’t exactly a flashback. I knew where I was. When I was. But the memory blossomed in all its lurid, technicolor glory, and I experienced a dizzying smack of deja vu.

The repairman. He was practically a kid—at least in my memory—but I supposed I couldn’t have been much older than he was. The HVAC was on the fritz in the sweltering height of summer and a mob of guys in tool belts had been dispatched to make sure the budding psychics didn’t melt. Stefan and I had used the distraction to slip off to the unused stairwell, and we were nearly home free when one of the repairmen rounded the corner and said, “You guys know if there’s, like, an electrical panel down there?”

My thought? He’d look hot in a leather jacket, and not just because it was pushing ninety-five degrees in there, either. But just as soon as the notion popped into my head, I did my best to erase it. In fact, I looked for something about him that was a turn-off. I couldn’t find one. He was big, but not mullet-and-power-lifting big. His skin was clearer than mine. And he had a sort of openness to his expression that had been trained out of me years before. Even his subtle Backstreet Boys vibe was kind of adorable.

Think about something else, I begged myself. Anything else. Because the last thing I wanted to do was piss off Stefan. So I was baffled when, instead of a scathing remark, his reaction was, “I’d do him. How ’bout you?”

Probably a trap. I didn’t trust myself to answer. I shrugged.

Looking back, my response hadn’t actually mattered, had it? Stefan knew full well how I really felt no matter what I did or didn’t consciously think. He pressed his black lips to my ear, and when he spoke, the caress of his words played right down my spine. “Don’t tell me you’re not curious to see if he can fit two dicks in his mouth.” My breath hitched, and he said, “I’ll bet he can.”

Anyhow. Turned out, he could.

Was I really so jaded that I’d forgotten about my first three-way up until that very moment, or was it just a memory I’d rather leave buried? And why haul it out now, other than the fact that Agent Garcia’s butt really did justice to a pair of jeans? Hearing Stefan utter that particular phrase was obviously the trigger. But something else bothered me about the whole thing. Something deeper.

Up on the ladder, Garcia turned to tuck a carpenter’s level into his belt and noticed the two of us standing there. I imagine we were kind of hard to miss, two towering guys in long black coats, given that everyone else there was under five feet tall and over ninety years of age. He climbed down and started across the broad room.

I blotted a sheen of sweat from my brow with the back of my sleeve. I’d always figured, in that first time, Stefan was the instigator. But was he? Was he really? Or had he just been doing his best to salvage a situation where he saw his boyfriend grooving on someone else?

And even more disturbing, what about that kid in the tool belt? Had he actually wanted to get us off? Was he even gay? Or had Stefan just made a phenomenally selfish judgment call and forced him to play along?

Worst of all, that guileless, wide-open expression…had we managed to wipe it off that kid’s face for good?

Just before Agent Garcia was in hearing range, Stefan shot me a ubiquitous raised eyebrow of disgust and said, “What’s your problem? So I find him attractive. Stop clutching your pearls—I might be old, but I’m not dead.”

The whole situation was so completely screwed up, it was practically a relief to switch into work mode and see if Garcia was the one who pushed Colleen Frank down the stairs.

“Can we go somewhere private?” I asked him.

“You got news about Andy? You find out who killed him?”

“Let’s just go somewhere private.”

Garcia cocked his head toward a wood-paneled alcove and the three of us set off toward it together…only to be intercepted by a nurse in very official-looking navy scrubs. “Excuse me,” she called over importantly as she power-walked for all she was worth. “Is there a problem?”

Stefan and Garcia both looked to me to explain. Fantastic. I flashed open my wallet—most likely to the card that was one punch away from a free donut—plastered on my blandest cop-face, and said, “No problem, ma’am,” with as much boredom as I could project. “Just a few routine questions.”

“Because if there’s a problem, I’ll need to know. Pete is a new hire—he’s still on probation—and if he’s making trouble already, personnel is going to hear about it.”

“No, no trouble. I have some questions for him that have nothing to do with this job. That’s all.”

“We screen our applicants as carefully as possible, and even still, people slip through. Do you understand how important it is for our residents to feel like they’re in a safe environment? The least expensive suite starts at twelve thousand dollars a month. We can’t have thugs roaming the halls.”

“Why would you think he’s—?” Ah. Agent Garcia was a little too brown for her liking, so naturally, that made him a criminal. Sure, I might be there to scope out whether or not he’d just pushed his partner down the stairs, but not because he was Mexican.

I don’t generally indulge in revenge. I’m not nearly good enough at thinking three steps ahead. But if I’d had a pad of paper on me, I could’ve given her something to be freaked out about. Such a shame…but then I realized I didn’t need one.

I pulled out my new phone and tapped an icon that looked like a memo. A blank page opened.

“Your name, Ma’am?” I said, with the faintest hint of threat.

“Marcie. Palmer.”

I keyed in something that autocorrected to farcical pomade. Close enough. “And you’ve been working in your current position, how long?”

“Eight years?”

I answered with an overlong stare.

She sheepishly corrected it to, “Seven and a half?”

By the time I asked her a dozen entirely useless questions and keyed in a dozen inscrutable answers, she’d forgotten all about Agent Garcia and become a lot more worried about herself. “Thank you, Ma’am,” I finally said, and she was so relieved to be excused, even I could feel it. And so I couldn’t resist adding with a whiff of threat, “When I have additional questions, I’ll be in touch.”

My badass investigator routine worked—she could hardly wait to get out of there. She power-walked away even faster than she’d originally approached.

“Thanks,” Garcia said. “Hard enough bugging the place with all these old ladies around. Now I got Nurse Ratchet breathing down my neck. So what’s going on with Andy’s investigation?”

Not that I’m any judge of character, but it seemed to me that Garcia wasn’t acting like someone who’d just thrown a colleague down the stairs. Either he was completely unaware of the stairwell incident, or he was a really good actor. Though given that he was an undercover operative…he probably could fake it. “Maybe we should sit,” I said. Once we settled out of earshot of any wandering residents, I put as much compassion into my delivery as I could muster, and said, “There’s no good way to say this. Agent Frank is dead.”

“Colleen?” he gasped. He seemed genuinely dismayed to me. Hopefully Stefan would be able to tell me why. “How?”

“She fell, but…it’s looking like a homicide.

He was up out of his seat, all furious energy, but with great effort he managed to calm himself before attracting undue attention from the blue-haired ladies playing Bridge in the corner. “Did you check out her deadbeat bum of a husband? Because her life insurance policy always seemed a little too—”

“I don’t think it was her husband,” I cut in. “It happened at headquarters.”

“How is that even possible? Is there video surveillance?”

“I don’t have that information yet. It just happened, less than an hour ago, and I’m trying to find out if you’ve got any idea who’d want to…?”

“Not Colleen. No, she was…I can’t think of anyone who’d…not anyone who had access to the secure areas of the building, anyway.”

As an FPMP agent, Colleen Frank had, of course, done surveillance in some high stakes situations. And normally, I’d be keen to check on the lottery winner with the secret precog girlfriend, or the telekinetic who turned out to be yet another hoax. But given that she worked closely with Andy Parsons, and he got clipped and chipped just three days ago, I’d bet my Donut Heaven loyalty card the leaky printer situation was at the heart of it all.

Garcia had his head in his hands, and didn’t seem like he had much to add. Stefan leaned in, touched him gently on the forearm, and said, “You’re in a hazardous line of work. Even so, when you lose one of your own, it’s no less difficult than it would be for anyone else. Always remember, at its heart, grief is an expression of love. And the fact that you feel something so acutely is an indication of the depth of your connection.”

I had to hand it to him—it was a convincing act. If I didn’t know him better, I’d swear he actually felt compassion.

Garcia composed himself quickly. Maybe working undercover helped a person compartmentalize that way. “Who’s lead investigator?”

“Agent Marks,” I said.

“I think of anything, I’ll call him. And anything he can tell me, as a professional courtesy…I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll let him know.”

He started back up the ladder to get back to his listening devices. Stefan and I turned to go.

As we walked away, while the impression was still fresh, I asked, “What did you pick up?”

“That harpy of a nurse was bent out of shape because her husband’s having an affair, so lording her authority over your sexy colleague makes her feel better.”

“Not about her.”

“I know.” He sounded very pleased with himself. “But honestly, it was more than worth the price of admission when you put her in her place. It was amusing to see you acting all official.”

“Glad I could entertain you.”

“Anyway, your guy was into the dead girl. Not sure if he was admiring her from afar or if they were banging, but he was pretty crushed over her death. More than he let on. Was he responsible in any way? He was totally shocked, so I highly doubt it. And I imagine you should talk to her husband just to make sure.”

Given as many empaths as I knew, you’d think I would be used to dealing with them by now. The information was useful. Worth the “price of admission”? Maybe. If it weren’t Stefan. And our past was not our past.

“What about the video surveillance he was talking about?” Stefan asked. “Even if they didn’t catch the act on camera, wouldn’t you notice someone who wasn’t supposed to be there?”

You’d think so. Unless they were a shapeshifting sex demon. Or unless they came through an astral door….

I picked up my pace. “We’re through here. I’ve really gotta get back—”

“Hey! Hardcore Vic!”

—right after I pretended to make a social call with Richie.

Chapter 21

Richie had recovered surprisingly well from his stint as Jennifer Chance’s overcoat. Then again, he’d probably eaten more vegetables in that stretch of time than he had in the entirety of his life. His clothes were rumpled, but new. He’d grown a bushy, reddish beard in the couple months since I’d last seen him. It really needed a trim. And if he seemed a little young to be sharing digs with a bunch of octogenarians? Well…he was. He and I were actually the same age.

“Did you come to see my new place?” he asked me eagerly.

“Uh…yeah.”

“Cool! And who’s—?” It was like the subconscious part of his brain clicked in a half-second before the thinking part. His face fell. His mouth worked. He hung there for a moment, dismayed. It looked like someone had pulled out his batteries and the thought would go unfinished. But eventually his mouth caught up with his mind, and he said in disgust, “Stefan.” He looked from Stefan to me and back again with his whole upper body, and then asked very loudly, “Are you guys having sex? I’m totally gonna tell Agent Marks.”

“One,” I said, “that’s none of your business. And two, no.”

“Oh, good. Agent Marks is pretty boring but I like him a lot better. Come take a look at my new TV. Laura sent me it. She sends me a fruit basket every week, too. When you see her, tell her they make baskets with good stuff like brownies and cookies. She probably doesn’t know.” He led us to another ponderous, wood-paneled room where several elderly folks were parked in front of a Green Acres rerun on a jumbotron that took up the entire wall. “It didn’t fit in my room so Laura had it put in here. But it’s totally my TV.” He said this loud enough to ensure everyone in the room heard it. “I’m sharing it because I want to.”

“Okay,” I said. “Looks like everything’s going good on your end. So I’ll just…uh….”

“Funny,” Stefan cut in. “How obsessed you are with television.”

“Who isn’t?” Richie countered…way too defensively.

Stefan smiled with the satisfaction of a phlebotomist hitting a deep vein on the very first jab. “Given your history with TVs, I’d think you’d be a little more cautious. Some people might even give it up altogether and take up something exotic, like reading.”

“Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” Stefan’s eyes twinkled with delight. “I thought the TV was how Mr. Purdy got hold of you.”

“Screw you!” Richie turned to flounce dramatically away, but thanks to his shitty peripheral vision, ended up careening off a marble-topped table. That was definitely gonna leave a mark. He stumbled, recovered, and took off. I considered going after him, but Jacob needed me back at the FPMP. Besides, I’d only be torturing him by forcing him to keep socializing.

As we both headed out, I asked, “Who’s Mr. Purdy?”

“Richie’s imaginary childhood friend.”

“And you knew about this, how?”

“Read his file at Camp Hell when Director Sanchez left me alone in his office to go take a dump.” And I’ll bet the urgent need to evacuate his bowels just so happened to come upon him with no help at all from Stefan. “You’d think the head of the program would be more careful with his things.” Stefan smiled to himself. “But no. It was just laying there on top of a pile of receipts and unopened mail.”

I couldn’t have resisted looking, either. But that was beside the point. “So you knew about the fetal alcohol syndrome and you never mentioned it to me.”

“Pretty sure I told you. Guess who really is as dumb as he acts? Ring any bells?”

No. In fact, it only made me wonder how it was that he could remember a conversation he’d had more than a decade ago with less effort than it took me to recall what I’d said last week.

Stefan said, “Richie claimed this Mr. Purdy spoke to him through the TV set. Of course, that was just about the time the Poltergeist movie came out, so he adopted that story to try and get attention. My guess? His family wanted to make him someone else’s problem, so when Heliotrope Station came recruiting, they backed up his story, grabbed that brass ring, and held on for dear life.”

We stepped out onto the street. The winter wind pelleted the side of my face with snow. I watched the traffic lurch by without really seeing it. And when I failed to agree with him, Stefan added, “If you want to feel bad for Richie Duff, that’s up to you. But believe me, if you had any sense of what he’s like inside—an obnoxious, entitled brat—you wouldn’t waste your sympathy.”

The black town car that had been waiting down the block pulled up, Stefan climbed in, and the vehicle slipped into traffic and disappeared. As I turned toward my car, my anger ebbed, and that old pang welled up inside me again.

Funny how much better I liked him when he wasn’t there.

* * *

The last word I’d use to describe Jacob is boring. I suppose that’s because he mashed his tongue down my throat within thirty seconds of making my acquaintance. Shenanigans like that are bound to leave an impression. I found him in his office, looming over his research like a master strategist bent on finding the flaw in the enemy’s army that would carry our side to victory. He glanced up and swung that laser focus, momentarily, to me.

I almost said, I wouldn’t finger Garcia for this…then, of course, Stefan’s I’d do him comment sprang to mind. So I scrambled for a moment, then came up with, “I don’t think Garcia’s our guy.” Which sounded like we’d been scoping him out for a threesome but opted to go home alone.

Leave it to Stefan to discombobulate me without even being present.

Thankfully, Jacob didn’t notice any awkwardness on my part, either that or he was gracious enough to ignore it. “We got the same feeling from Agent Lipton. So now I need to figure out, who else would have the motive, the opportunity, and the access?”

“Between the chips in our guns, the GPS on our phones, the cameras at every turn, can’t you just feed the time and location into the computer and figure out who was in the stairwell with Colleen Frank?”

“You’d think so,” he said. “But the building is huge. Not every last inch of it is monitored, only critical access points. Most agents—the techs and the admins—don’t carry unless they’re in the field. Pulling the GPS will take some time….”

“We’re a building full of spies—how can we not know who was in the stairwell?”

“I pulled a log of the keycard use. But human nature being what it is, people hold open doors for each other all the time. Especially if it’s a fellow FPMP agent.”

“An inside job for sure.” My stomach felt queasy. “And if it was the same killer who lost their bullet in Andy Parsons, maybe they’re getting more careful about the evidence they’re leaving around.” We both stared down at the personnel lists and timetables on Jacob’s desk. “They’re connected, right? A bizarre manifesto comes out of a printer, two of the people with access to the machine turn up dead. Colleen didn’t know anything about it—she told me so after she died—but maybe that didn’t matter. All she’d have to do is walk in on someone with the wrong piece of paper in their hand, and that could make her a target. And as much as I hate to admit it since I couldn’t stand the guy, the same thing can be said for Andy.”

“Either Garcia or Lipton could have pulled it off,” Jacob said. “The logs show they were somewhere in the building when Frank was killed. Garcia knows enough about surveillance to dodge all the right cameras, and Lipton is a pro at blending in and deflecting attention.”

“And yet they each put on a convincing show of a grief-stricken coworker in front of a high-level empath, so that puts us back at square one.”

Jacob nodded. “The question is, if they didn’t do it, what if they’re targets too? Should we have someone on them?”

How weird would it be to have all the FPMP babysitters reassigned to monitoring each other? If ever a conversation with Lisa would come in handy…now there was a depressing thought.

I glanced back at the logs and wondered if it showed where Carl had hurried off to just before Agent Frank had her fateful meeting with the stairwell railing, but I quashed the thought before I said something damning I could never take back. Of course, it couldn’t have been Carl. He was…Carl. If he was capable of murder, he’d have strangled Richie long ago. I opted to keep my concerns to myself for the time being. Even a casual question as to his whereabouts could very easily send Jacob down a path we’d all end up regretting. “Anything else you need from me?”

“Not until I figure out our next move.” Jacob brushed the side of my hand with his knuckle. Not a secret signal. Just a touch. “But thanks.”

I headed for the lunchroom to grab a quick bite before anything else vied for my attention. Back at the Fifth Precinct, it was always Zigler who made sure we ate. Here, the food was tempting enough to make even me prioritize mealtime. So I hadn’t thought much further than the chicken Florentine when I hit the staff dining room. And I was surprised to see Patrick waving vigorously at me from the corner.

“Cashing in my rain check!”

Huh. I didn’t think people actually did that. Maybe “rain check” wasn’t actually shorthand for “I prefer not to spend any time with you, ever.”

I sat. Spread my cloth napkin on my lap. Ate. And beside me, Patrick fidgeted with the urge to chat. “What?” I finally asked, between bites.

He leaned in close and said confidentially, “I saw the report on Colleen Frank. You seriously spoke with her after she fell?”

I wanted to deny it, but the guy had access to Laura’s files. Hell, he also knew how many tabs of Auracel I could crank through in a month. “There was contact,” I said vaguely.

“What did she say? Anything more about the leak?”

“She wasn’t exactly in a position to assist with the investigation. What with her brains on the railing.”

“That’s so intense. I mean, that’s like horror movie stuff. Right?”

Evidently he hadn’t yet read about the flailing autopsied body under the plastic. Then again, those of us who’d been there were all as dry and clinical as humanly possible in our report so as not to paint too lurid a picture. “Not really.” I shrugged. “You see enough of something, you get used to it.”

“And could you make out what happened?”

“Everything I got from Agent Frank is in the report.”

“So she didn’t know who pushed her? How is that possible? Wouldn’t you think that once you die, your mind opens up to the intelligence of the universe?”

Only if you were special, like Miss Mattie. “Not necessarily.”

“It’s all so intense.” He looked a little queasy. “You talked to someone who died. I mean, wow. She was dead. Like…dead.”

This reaction must’ve been the reason I didn’t normally fill people in on my talent. Most folks aren’t going to respond like Jacob, with enthusiasm and a hard-on. I figured I’d better downplay it before I gave the guy nightmares. “Yeah, it’s a real treat. So how was your day, lock anyone out of anything important?”

“I’m getting better. There’s just so much to learn, it’s a little overwhelming. Plus I need to go practice at the range—care to join me after work?”

Wait, had he seen my marksmanship needed to improve…or was he coming on to me? I sized him up as I napkinned some spinach off the side of my mouth. He didn’t seem to be flirting. I might not generally be all that quick on the uptake, but once I ask myself the question, Does that guy want to touch my dick? I can usually tell. I didn’t get a gay vibe from Patrick. He and I just had a new-guy bond. And I would probably benefit from making friends, especially one with access to all of Laura’s stuff. Unfortunately….

“Sorry. Working double-duty until I get a break in either one of my assignments.”

His shoulders slumped. Why were friendship waters so freaking difficult to navigate? No wonder I was such a lone wolf. I didn’t know how to act. We sat there awkwardly for a moment, and then, belatedly, I offered, “Rain check?”

Patrick smiled. “Definitely.”

Chapter 22

I spent the rest of the afternoon combing through keycard timetables with Jacob. But when someone walks up behind you, it’s common courtesy to hold open the door for them. I’d wager that half the people in the stairwell weren’t on that list.

You know Jacob is exhausted when he leaves dinner to me. Had I known ahead of time, I would’ve called for delivery on our way home, but by the time I figured out what was what, it was way too late. I nuked us some frozen chicken breasts, but not only were they bland, they were tougher than shoe leather all around the edges, and we ended up throwing most of the meat away. At least running the garbage disposal gave us a chance to really talk.

“These past few years,” I said, “I always figured the Fifth Precinct was holding me back. All the shit I put up with from the meatheads on the force, all the bureaucracy from above, everything seemed like a series of ridiculous barriers stopping me from making a difference. At the FPMP, some small part of me was starting to think that maybe I could do some actual good.”

“You can.”

“Really? That’s not how it looks from my end. Because not only do I have zero clue how to score a medium’s ability, but now my colleagues are being picked off right under my nose.”

“Yours and everyone else’s. You’re not the only one assigned to this case.”

“But…I’m different. I’ve got an edge no one else has. And I should be able to figure out what’s going on.” I turned off the empty garbage disposal before it burned itself out, and it rattled to a stop. “Never mind. Let’s go to bed.”

I always claim I don’t have a very sound or restful sleep, but wake me up at two a.m. and I discover that’s patently untrue. I was so far gone that when Jacob’s phone started blaring, I lurched out of sleep with a startled, sickening confusion and a half-remembered slip of a dream that disintegrated when I tried to put words to it. Even in my sorry state, I was quicker than Jacob. I grabbed the phone from his nightstand, glanced at Laura Kim’s number on the screen, picked up and said, “Bayne.”

“I need you and Jacob at Agent Lipton’s house right now. There’s been a break-in. And for heaven’s sake, turn on your ringer.”

We staggered into our clothes half-asleep and made it to the fake schoolteacher’s Lincoln Park brownstone in fifteen minutes flat. Veronica Lipton was about Jacob’s age. She had a well-kept house with a ubiquitous Lexus in the garage. I thought of her as a professional, a federal agent in a suit, with no-nonsense brown hair and sensible shoes. At home, though, she looked more like a regular person. She was in a robe, though it kept sliding off the silky nightgown beneath, and she was constantly pulling it back into place and attempting to re-anchor it by cinching the belt tighter. And when her nightgown slipped, the faded edge of an old tattoo showed just above her breast. A dragonfly wing, or maybe a fairy.

Her house looked like a regular house. Behind the nearest closed door, a cat yowled to get out. Possibly more than one. She had a truly impressive collection of takeout menus stuck on her refrigerator door with magnets shaped like various swear words. The “fuck” magnet was holding up a snapshot of her snuggling a squirming longhaired cat. Her kitchen table was clear of everything but a salt shaker, a few pieces of junk mail, and a Beretta 9mm.

Police presence was sparse. One beat cop was being talked to by a guy in a suit—probably being informed that the feds had this, thanks very much. “Can I make us some coffee?” Veronica asked.

Jacob shook his head. “Better play it safe and treat the whole thing as a crime scene, just in case.”

“The guy forced open the back door and didn’t get any farther than the edge of the cabinets. So the coffee pot should be fine to use. It’s all the way across the room.”

“You’d destroy evidence for a cup of coffee?”

She crossed her arms. “Well, when you put it that way…but sometimes a cup of joe is the only thing standing between me and a bottle of Jack.”

“Look,” I said, “just give us your statement and you can go grab yourself the biggest coffee the minimart carries. You need two hands just to pick that thing up.”

“Fine. I was asleep and the cats woke me up. They were bouncing off the walls. Figured it was just one of those random cat freakouts. They do that once in a while, the tails get big, eyes go black, and boom, they’re off. It’s usually funny.” She eyed the back door warily. “Anyway, I heard noise downstairs and came down to find some guy prying the door open. I fired three rounds. He ran.”

“Any blood?” I asked.

She shook her head. “A team is scouring the deck, but given that one round is obviously buried in the wall over by the light switch, I wouldn’t be so shocked if the other two missed him too.”

Shitty of me to gloat, but my seventy percent wasn’t looking so bad after all. Then again, I’d been shooting on a well lit range at a stationary paper target.

“Anyway,” she said, “from what I could see, he was under six feet tall. Average frame. But it was dark, and he was wearing a hoodie with the opening tied so tight the only part of his face showing was his eyes and nose. Hard to even guess his age based on that, or his hair, or much of anything. He moved pretty well—so was he young and fit, or just in good shape? I can’t even tell you what race he was. All I can say for sure is that going by his silhouette, the way he moved and his low center of gravity, he was male.”

What a shame. All I could say was that she and Agent Garcia had better take to sleeping with the lights on.

* * *

It would take the FPMP forensics crew some time to comb through Veronica’s property and give us a definitive answer, but their initial findings weren’t particularly encouraging. No obvious blood. No usable footprints. And I’d be shocked if there were any fingerprints waiting to be lifted, though that didn’t stop them from trying.

The sun had grudgingly risen by the time they found enough of nothing to tell us about it. I scowled open my phone and tried calling Laura, but ended up getting Patrick instead. Dreyfuss used to divert his calls too, and I hadn’t minded then. But Laura was different. I liked Laura. And her not being available for me would take some getting used to.

“Any luck?” Patrick asked me.

“If by luck, you mean nobody seeing squat….”

“Tough break. Look, I’m here for you guys. Anything you need, let me know. I might be the newbie, but Laura left extensive notes on where to get stuff and who to call. And I’ve just about mastered the internal phone system.”

“That makes one of us who understands phones.”

“Listen, speaking of phones, have you checked out that productivity app I showed you? Because I’d hate for you to get so bogged down prioritizing the urgent quadrant that you fail at the main thing Director Kim wants from you.”

Maybe Laura was the one who needed to look at her priorities. I’d have to talk some sense into her. After all, the more of her live agents who got killed, the more potential ghosts she’d end up with. “Is she there? I just wanted to touch base.”

“Sorry, she’s booked solid. But let me get you on the calendar now, and if anything opens up, I can move you forward.” He typed for a few seconds, then said, “She’s got a spot next Tuesday at three.”

“I guess,” I said listlessly. That was nearly a week away. By then, either we’d figure out who was killing FPMP agents, or everyone would be dead.

I hung up with Patrick and took one last look around the scene. No ghosts. And even if there were, talking to them might not give me anything I could use. So I put on my homicide investigator hat and took a closer look.

Still nothing.

I glanced up and saw Jacob at the perimeter of the snowy lawn, getting a debriefing from the techs. His posture was straight, his gaze was focused and intelligent, and he commanded the same respect he always did. But by the look on his face—something that would unlock my new smartphone—I could tell he wasn’t too keen on what the techs had to say.

Since I’d started my official stint at the FPMP, I’d been leery of working with Jacob. Worried he’d ride me too hard, or that I’d turn out to be a liability. But catching sight of him now, embroiled in a case with lethal ramifications and nothing to go on, I realized what I was really scared of. Me, caring too much. Because when I worked homicide, I didn’t hold back. When a ghost came crying to me, I’d give a hundred percent. Now, though, with Jacob involved? Seeing how pained he was over failing a victim he felt it was his duty to protect? I felt compelled to give even more, whether or not there was anything left in my reserve.

Jacob caught my eye and nodded for me to join him out in the alley, where old Christmas decorations poked out from frozen gray snowbanks. Ice crunched beneath our feet. “I’m hiding Lipton and Garcia until this blows over.”

“Safe houses? Good idea. Patrick can probably help you with that.”

Jacob shook his head. “The fewer people who know any details, the better. There could be a telepath involved. I’ll make all the arrangements myself.”

While Jacob went off to hide two undercover agents—from a killer, or from each other—I grudgingly headed back to the office I’d been avoiding. My office.

After so many years of being on plain view in a precinct that either hated or feared me, you’d think I would relish having an office of my own. But I didn’t. Not because I was sharing it with my new assistant and my old frienemy from Camp Hell.

Because I felt like I didn’t deserve it.

I stood there in the center of the plant-filled room, stared at my useless computer, and scrabbled for a next move. Any move. And while I flailed uselessly, Darla showed up with a couple of big guys and even bigger boxes in tow. “You’re early,” she said.

I grunted.

She strode over to her standing desk, planted her hands on her hips, and assessed the room. She pointed to an open area and said, “Put it right here, it’ll get the most midday sun.”

The big guys wheeled over their big boxes.

“I hate to ask,” I said.

“Treadmill desk. I haven’t even been in Chicago a week and I’ve already gained three pounds. And who knows how long I’m stuck here. I’ve still got hundreds of NPs to analyze. On a test that might prove exactly nothing.”

Carl came in at nine on the dot, and without preamble, said to me, “I heard you were at Agent Lipton’s last night. What happened?”

“Attempted break-in. Shots fired.”

“Is she okay?”

Was he asking because he was worried about her? Or just trying to see what I knew? “Nobody’s hurt,” I told him.

“I can’t get hold of her.”

“She went dark, for her own protection.”

“Where is she?”

“I’m not privy to the details,” I said, and when he saw I wasn’t going to give him anything, he turned around and stomped right back out.

I should probably tell Jacob. What, exactly? That Carl seemed upset about Agent Lipton’s break-in? That didn’t mean a thing…other than the realization that I’d never fully appreciated how harrowing it must’ve been for him to find out Laura Kim fired the shot that ended Roger Burke.

Even when Jacob slapped the waterlogged gun on the table, I’d had a hard time believing it was her. And I had just as hard a time imagining Carl putting someone through a mulcher. I wandered over to the window and stared out at the highway. Morning rush was in full force. Traffic crawled. But they were making a hell of a lot more progress than I was.

Maybe I could kill two birds with one round. As if I was innocently brainstorming aloud, I said to Darla, “According to Carl’s badge, he’s NP. Maybe we could test out some alternative medium-finding methods on him.”

Darla left off watching the burly guys wrestling with the treadmill, joined me at the window and mirrored my stance, feet planted, arms crossed. “Like what?”

“Have him handle some of the typical props. Incense, Florida Water. See how he reacts.”

“What would that tell us? You and I handle that stuff plenty, and it never made either of us burst into flames.”

But what if we’d been possessed at the time? That might make a difference, though I wasn’t about to volunteer my body to see if the theory held water.

“If testing mediums was as easy as sprinkling them with salt,” Darla said, “don’t you think they would’ve figured it out at Camp Hell?” As critical as she’d been acting, this time she wasn’t challenging my suggestion. More like thinking out loud. “I remember my test. I was twenty. Community college dropout. Still living at home. I’d answered some ad I’d seen on TV. A plain black car picked me up and took me to an active crime scene. The cops, they were having conniptions about letting some random person into their crime scene, but someone talked to them, and they let us in. And there was this group of creepy old fogies in overcoats standing to the side. Just watching me…while the victim cried about her boyfriend unloading an entire clip into her for saying she didn’t want to see him anymore.” She suppressed a shudder. “I got an invitation to Heliotrope Station for training, all expenses paid, by the end of the day. Via messenger. My family was so poor, we’d never actually seen a messenger before. Dumb detail to remember, right?”

“Guess it’s hard to forget your first time.”

“We spent how long together at Camp Hell, and you never really told me about your first time. What’s your story?”

“Sometimes it feels like my life began in the psych ward.” I admitted. “Before that, everything’s kind of a blur.”

“Seriously?” She swung around to face me. “How could you possibly forget your first encounter with the dead?”

“It’s not so much specifically that one incident that’s hazy…more like the majority of my childhood.”

Her reaction was so cold, I could practically feel the temperature in the room drop. “After all the personal stuff I’ve just laid on the line, you don’t want to tell me? Fine. Be that way.”

“It’s not a matter of what I want. I don’t remember. It must’ve been the drugs. Too much Thorazine, too few shits to give.”

Disgusted, she let the matter drop, though it was obvious she didn’t believe me.

To be fair, neither did I.

Chapter 23

Maybe finding mediums was more important than elbowing in on an investigation where I wasn’t actually helping, but Jacob was way more sympathetic to me than Darla was. I found him in his private office with a gargantuan cup of coffee and a pile of trashed burner phones. “I’ve got the safe houses all figured out,” he said. “Veronica Lipton’s already on her way to hers. Garcia…he’ll be here any minute. What’s up with you?”

“Just…thinking.” I rubbed the back of my neck and peered out the window. Jacob had the best view yet: a stand of winter-blighted weed trees tangled with decaying plastic bags. “No one remembers their twelfth birthday, right?”

After a pause, Jacob said, “Uncle Leon took me fishing on the Mississippi and I caught a catfish too big to fit in my bucket. When he told me to cut it in half, I started crying, and we ended up letting it go.”

“Well yeah, but…that’s you. You did things worth remembering. I’m me. I’m lucky if I got a cheap birthday card and some half-off Valentine’s Day candy. It’s totally normal that I don’t have extensive memories of my childhood, right? Just because I couldn’t tell you what my favorite toy might’ve been or what I wore to school on the first day of kindergarten doesn’t mean I’m repressing everything because I was abused.”

I’d been aiming for an over-the-top delivery to express how ludicrous I found the whole concept.

Neither one of us bought it.

There was a rap on Jacob’s door, and he said, “We’ll pick this up again later.”

We found Agent Garcia dressed for another day as an unremarkable maintenance man in jeans, steel-toed work boots, tool belt, and a Lakewood Manor polo. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you find out anything new about Colleen?”

Jacob closed the door and said, “Maybe you should sit.”

Garcia was too much of a tough guy to oblige. “Whatever you’ve got to tell me, just say it.”

“Veronica Lipton’s house was broken into last night,” Jacob told him. “She’s fine. But we’re going under the assumption that both of you are targets, and you’ll each be relocated to a safe house until the investigation is concluded.”

Upon hearing that, Garcia dropped the machismo and slumped into the nearest chair. “Oh my God. This could be days…weeks….” That was optimistic. Realistically, he’d be lucky if he got back to his old life anytime soon. “My nephew’s a standup comedian. Got his first real gig coming up this weekend. Not just an open mike—his name on the lineup. Small, but it’s still there. After he worked at it so long. And now I gotta….” He sighed and shook his head. “I got no business complaining.” He indicated the office with a sweep of his arm. “This is the life we all chose. Right?”

Was it? I didn’t remember being presented with any viable options to pick from.

I left the two of them to work out the details of Garcia’s relocation in private so I didn’t need to worry about being a liability to any telepaths, but my own buried secrets were still nagging at me. My personal stuff didn’t matter—I’d put money on it that my twelfth birthday had been utterly forgettable. But my first ghost? That felt so slippery around the edges, I’d never buy that I just so happened to forget.

Would Laura grant me access to my permanent record? Maybe. If I ever got enough time alone with her to plead my case. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only high-clearance employee with whom I shared a pretty good rapport.

I found Patrick squinting hard at the phone as he keyed in a long string of digits. It beeped. He looked up and shot me a rueful smile. “I think it’s forwarded to my bluetooth. At least, I hope so.”

“I can call you and check.”

“That would be great. You’re a lifesaver.”

I could hardly put calling a phone number on the same level as keeping people from ending up dead, but if it earned me a little quid pro quo, I wasn’t about to point out that distinction. We did our test. It seemed Patrick really was beginning to master the world’s most Byzantine phone system, and while I couldn’t take much credit for helping, it didn’t stop me from trying. “Uh, say, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing me a little favor in return.”

“Shoot.”

“I wanted to take a look at my FPMP record.”

“Sure. But I can’t change your firearms score.” We shared a lackluster chuckle as he keyed in a series of passwords, and then my name. “Here it is. Any particular part?”

“Older stuff. Just curious what kind of history’s been following me around.”

He scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled some more. “Wow. I wonder if everyone’s files are this…thorough. I started around the same time as you, let’s see….” He opened a second window and typed in his own name. His info only required one scroll to hit the bottom. “Guess not.”

We stared together, uncomfortably, at the screen. Too late to pretend I was just indulging in random curiosity, but way too late to turn back. Eventually, I said, “How far back does mine go?”

He scrolled some more. “Pretty damn far. So…I’m not actually sure we should be doing this.”

But we’re so close. I didn’t say it. Not only was he right, but I suspected there were multiple cameras trained on us. So even though I wanted to encourage him to keep going, in all good conscience, I knew I shouldn’t. His finger rested on the scroll wheel, paused…then flicked one more time.

The document that rolled up was so old, it looked more like a physical copy than a computer document, with yellowed, dog-eared edges.

“Whoa,” Patrick said. “Pre-digital. That’s…wow.”

Don’t stop.

He was as curious as I was. One more flick. Another scanned document. But this one was full of fat black marks.

My history went back pretty damn far, all right.

Too bad a good hunk of it was redacted.

* * *

Can we ever really anticipate how we’ll react when push comes to shove?

Deep down inside, I must’ve believed I was a fragile flower that couldn’t handle the truth. Why else would my memory have more holes than my rattiest pair of boxers? And yet, faced with incontrovertible evidence that big brother existed—and he’d been the source of every last swirly, wedgie and Indian burn that plagued me—I felt surprisingly calm about the whole thing. Hell, maybe even vindicated.

“Don’t print it out,” I said. “Apparently that would leave some kind of trail. But what about my phone—if I take a picture, does it stay with me, or is it free game?”

Patrick considered. “Most phones need to be plugged in to update, but hell, I don’t know. They’re made to send and receive. Even if you shut off bluetooth and wifi, it’s probably safer to presume nothing’s private.”

“So other than memorizing this really fast….” I sighed. “Never mind. Not your problem.”

“I’m really sorry, but if I get caught doing this….”

“I hear you. Back away—save yourself. I’m sure it’ll keep.” Unless it was deleted by an “accidental” electrical glitch. “Can you get my appointment with Laura moved up?”

“No luck yet. But I’ll keep trying.”

“Let her know it’s important.”

“You got it.”

I strode back to my office with great purpose, and found Darla with her high heels off, marching on the treadmill barefoot, while the walk-back-and-forth channel played on the bigscreen and Carl scanned a dusty old book.

“We need to figure this out,” I announced.

Both of my officemates gave me a look that said, No shit, Sherlock.

“We do,” I insisted. Because if I was going to go to Laura Kim and demand a copy of my permanent record, I’d better have some way to diagnose a medium.

Darla stopped the motor and stepped off. “The echoes we’re using now just aren’t enough. And we both know that even killing someone wouldn’t produce a reliable spirit to test with. The woman in the stairwell was gone within minutes. I don’t know of anyplace with a reliable ghost. Do you?”

We might be able to find Jackie prowling around my old apartment, though I doubted she’d take kindly to being my guinea pig. If not her, then what about the creeper by Jim’s Original, the guy who was always looking to joyride in unsuspecting U of I students? I hadn’t yet managed to send him packing. Oh, I’d given it a good try, all right. Several, in fact. But he was too strong for salt and Florida water. Like a belligerent drunk at last call, he needed someone to force him toward the exit. And giving him a personal escort to the veil felt too damn risky without dangerous psyactives in my veins and a GhosTV cranking in the background. Bringing potential mediums out to meet him would be the equivalent of leaving your car running with the keys in the ignition…then sticking a TAKE ME sign on the windshield. “There’s this one jagoff…but I’d rather not expose anyone to him who’s not trained yet.”

Darla shuddered. “We’d need someone safe. You know what I mean? A sweet little old lady who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Just because someone’s old doesn’t make them ethical. You never know how someone will react to the smallest taste of power. And then there’s the logistics, even with all our FPMP connections. Taking the staff to sit a bedside vigil, I can’t imagine we could do groups any bigger than four or five, plus one of us there to evaluate…that could take months.”

On the big screen, the agent, a broad-shouldered guy in a black suit, reached Con’s old desk, turned, and walked back. And then Carl surprised me by asking a question. “How have you been choosing the agents you’re testing?”

“They’re all NPs,” I said.

“I know that. But how are you prioritizing them?”

Did alphabetically count? “I’m…not. I’ve been going down the list.” Suddenly that felt phenomenally inefficient. “Did you have some other way in mind?”

“You mentioned talking to the TV,” he said to Darla. “And so did Richie.”

“I was just excited to show off my Cantonese. But that reminds me of something else—I got my hearing tested multiple times because I heard whispers so much, my pediatrician thought I had tinnitus.”

“Lucky for you it wasn’t schizophrenia,” I said. Out loud. Before I could check myself.

Darla said, “Oh,” and looked away.

Carl didn’t acknowledge it. I had a feeling he didn’t really do big emotional displays. Briskly, he went on. “So you talk to other mediums, figure out what you’ve got in common. Narrow the testing down to some likely candidates. Then talk to them and see what you think. Maybe they’ll see whatever it is you see in Constantine’s old office. Or maybe there’s some other way you’ll know. But you’ll find what you’re looking for a lot sooner without having to watch eight hundred and forty-six NPs walking back and forth all day.”

So did he want me to solve the whole medium dilemma, or was he a possessed medium trying to misdirect me? Because that plan sounded awfully simple.

But apparently, where mediums were involved, even the simplest of plans was unworkable. Darla said, “There are no other mediums to talk to. The only other medium I’ve spoken to since training is Vic.” She said my name as if it left a bad taste in her mouth.

I felt somewhat smug when I said, “I can get ahold of Faun Windsong.”

“Oh, great,” Darla replied. “Faun and her purported ancestors. She was worse than Richie, because she at least had the intellectual capacity to spin a convincing lie. Here’s my take on Faun Windsong: mediumship was all wishful thinking on her part and she didn’t actually sense a damn thing.”

A memory of her scrawling messages on the floor with a burning lump of charcoal made me shudder. “Don’t be so sure.”

Chapter 24

Even though she was the director of PsyTrain, the biggest psychic training facility on the West Coast, maybe even the country, because we were old friends, Faun Windsong made the time to take my call. “I think it’s commendable that you’re putting together some new resource material,” she said. “Everything out there is completely outdated. There was that big rush of exploration in the seventies and eighties when Marie St. Savon was all over the news, but then nothing. Even once the official reports came out.”

I wasn’t necessarily sure mediums were as few and far between as they seemed to be. Mediumship encompasses a lot more than just talking to dead people. Maybe it was just difficult to tell if your subtle bodies were sliding around. “Anything you could tell us about your early experiences would be great,” I said.

Faun gave a wistful sigh through the speakerphone. “Things were so different back then, weren’t they? Only three channels on TV, cable if you were lucky, and the whole family shared the same phone. Maybe that’s why we all played with Ouija boards.”

I never had, but even with my faulty memory, I recalled that my general selection of toys was so poor that I could attribute it to a lack of funds rather than anything more foreboding.

“Obviously,” she said, “the pointer isn’t going to move across the board of its own accord unless you’re a telekinetic.”

An image of Movie Mike sprang to mind. Young and cocky, making tiny origami cranes skitter across a tabletop…before the bad drugs put him in diapers and a wheelchair. Psyactives? Probably. As if I needed any more reason to avoid drugs.

“But back when we were kids,” she went on, “there were no levels and talents. I don’t think we even considered whether or not we might be psychic. We attributed all the power to the board. The spirit. I played with my best friends in the world, two girls and a boy. We all lived on the same street, and had gone to the same school from kindergarten on. Inseparable. The four musketeers. We were still in grammar school when I got the board and we started engaging with it, and at first, it was fun.”

Her voice went a little wistful. “Do you think we’re all tapped in to a greater intelligence? I like to think so, but the questions a ten-year-old would think to ask aren’t exactly earth-shattering. Questions about who we were going to marry and how many children we’ll have. Not Dave, he wanted to know if he’d ever play for the Bears. But the rest of us, all we really aspired to was settling down and making a home.”

Which, it turned out, she never had. Unless you counted PsyTrain, but that really wasn’t the same.

“As far as I know, none of those predictions came true. I’ve never seen precognitive ability go hand in hand with Lightworking. Maybe they’re mutually exclusive. Anyhow, it was when we started asking for advice and not predictions that the board’s answers started changing.

“It was Dave who did the asking. Courtney was writing down the letters, and Mercedes and I were working the board. I remember Dave was smiling when he said, ‘What’s it gonna take for me to get an A in English?’ The B in that class irked him to no end. It was the only non-A on his whole report card.

“We all figured the answer would be obvious, like study harder. But the pointer started zipping across the board, letter after letter. I lost track, but I figured Mercedes must have had a funny reply in mind, so I just went along with it.

“As the answer kept spilling out, I realized Mercedes wasn’t looking at the board. She was looking at me. And the letters kept coming.”

Was I the only one in the room who found that phenomenally creepy? Hard to tell. Carl’s expression was neutral and Darla’s was stony.

“The response was so long, initially we figured it was nothing. Randomness. Except Dave pointed out that the letter string didn’t look random. The patterns of consonants and vowels made sense, and there were no weird letters like Q, X and Z.

“I wish we’d kept that message. After we figured out the words, we were so spooked that we tore it up and threw it away. The gist of it was that Dave wouldn’t get a better grade without switching schools. I remember the phrase rampant racism, though, because we had so much trouble figuring it out. Ram pant? Ramp ant? Finally, Courtney looked it up in a Scrabble dictionary and told us rampant was a real word.”

“You lost me,” I said.

“Dave was African American. And the class was reading comprehension with essay answers, not a subject like math, where the answers were empirically right or wrong. So consciously or not, our teacher was approaching all of Dave’s answers with the presumption that he wasn’t capable of understanding the material, and the best he could hope for was a B.

“I’m not really sure who was communicating with us. Those mass-produced Ouija boards had the words good bye printed across the bottom—whenever we tried to get a name, the pointer would park down there and the session would be over.”

Gee, that wasn’t creepy at all.

“The answers we got weren’t precognizant. Nothing out of the realm of ordinary knowing. More like an adult willing to give a bunch of children a frank assessment of a situation. The board never shed light on any unsolved crimes or led us to buried treasure, so maybe that’s why my friends got tired of it.” She paused to consider. “Or maybe it was jealousy. Because it only gave us those long, detailed answers when I was working the pointer.

“Once I called out Mercedes for trying to imitate the ‘real’ voice, our little group fell apart. She was the first one to stop coming over. Then Courtney—Mercedes convinced her I was ‘conceited.’ And there would’ve been too many salacious implications if Dave and I spent too much time alone together.”

“Then what happened?” I asked. “Did you keep going yourself?”

“I tried, but it just didn’t feel right. Sad. I guess I lost more than three friends that year.”

“But that was what put you on the path to Camp Hell? A Ouija board?”

She laughed easily. “I always forget how attached you are to that funny old name for Heliotrope Station! No, that wasn’t how I found it. I was at a workshop about the four sacred medicines, and afterward, the shaman mentioned the screenings to the class. I think he meant to discourage us, actually. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I made some phone calls, and eventually talked to Director Sanchez.”

“And you got in, based on what?”

“The interview.”

“I mean, which part?”

She laughed again like there was something sailing over my head, and she thought my obliviousness was cute. “The whole thing.”

I didn’t have time to count to ten to keep myself from snapping at her, so I just forced my voice to be level. It came out a little strained. “What did you talk about during the interview?”

“My meditation practice. Communing with the ancestors. What I thought about the afterlife. My sense of identity and inner knowing.”

Fantastic. She’d been able to have that conversation in her twenties. I’d strike out if I attempted to put words to all of that today. Once I wrapped things up with Faun, I racked my brain as to what to do about my medium problem while Darla looked to me none too patiently for answers. “What the hell is Lightworking?” she asked in disgust.

My thoughts exactly. “So…Ouija boards?” I had an image of a ghost hand sliding into mine to spell out the messages. “It doesn’t seem safe to mess with that all for the sake of a test.”

“Oh, grow up,” Darla said. “It’s a subconscious ideomotor response. There’s no ghost moving the planchette.”

Maybe not. Except…when there was. “It’s confusing enough trying to figure this stuff out, and your attitude’s not helping.”

She gave me a sweetly venomous smile and said, “Then work harder, and we’ll both get what we want. You’ll be rid of me, and I’ll get to leave this pretentious craphole. Win-win.”

Chapter 25

Time flies when you’re having fun, and apparently it goes even faster when you’re pursuing a bunch of dead ends. When Jacob showed up at my office, I realized it was dark out and I was hungry enough to eat one of Darla’s houseplants.

Carl let Jacob in, and Darla perked right up. When someone who’s never met Jacob before gets a load of him, I’ll sometimes have a little flashback myself of what it was like to encounter him for the very first time. His presence was like a car alarm—when he walked into a room, everyone noticed, whether they tried to play it cool or not. “Darla, this is Jacob Marks. We live together.” There. Now she knew.

“Darla Daniels,” she supplied, in a tone of voice laden with, How the hell’d you manage that, Vic?

“Good to meet you,” Jacob said, with more eye contact than I would have managed, given the mental energy he was pumping into his current investigation. Then he turned to me and asked, “Are you ready to go home, or do you need to stay?”

It wasn’t as if I was doing much good where I was, and yet I didn’t want to give Darla any more reason to be snippy with me by clocking out after a mere ten hours. Thankfully, Carl was happy to shut down his computer and say, “Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to sleep on it.”

We pulled out onto Grand and headed home, both of us quiet. Caught up in our problems, or unsure whether the Crown Vic was bugged? A little of each. I had a document littered with broad black marks dancing in my head, and I was bursting with the desire to unload my anxiety about my permanent record on Jacob. But by the time we got to the cannery, I wondered if it was really such a good idea. Because what could he do about it, other than give me a few shitty platitudes and then start worrying about it himself?

He parked in our conveniently “haunted” spot. As we made our way up the front walk, the wind picked up, howling around us, and I realized it was the perfect opportunity to tell Jacob, without any electronic busybodies finding out I was on to them, that huge hunks of my past were redacted. But before I could figure out the least loaded way to tell him, he turned to me and said, “Okay, there’s no good way of saying this and you’re not gonna be happy about it. But I did what I had to do.”

“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

His expression was grim. “You’ll see.”

While he unlocked the door and forged in, I said, “Jacob? Hey. You can’t just drop a non-explanation like that on my head and—” In the cavernous darkness beyond the entryway, something skittered.

My hand flew to my sidearm, but before it even cleared the holster, Jacob barked out in his bossiest cop-voice, “Stand down!” Not at whatever was rustling around in the dark, but at me. He startled me so badly, he was lucky I didn’t drop the gun and shoot out our new light fixture.

He turned it on and the room lit up.

Throw pillows were scattered across the floor, one of them torn open with its stuffing hanging out like a spill of intestines in a zombie flick. Ransacked. Not by robbers, but some secret branch of the FPMP, whoever beat up Con Dreyfuss and stole the GhosTVs. And now they were targeting us.

Jacob crossed the room to the basement door, which was open about three, four inches. “Wait,” I croaked out. Because…fuck, the basement door was open and the lights downstairs were on.

He was Jacob. So he ignored me. He yanked the door the rest of the way open and thrust his head in. I half-expected something to rip it off and lob it at me. But instead, a small bundle of gray fur slipped past him and barreled into the kitchen, claws scraping frantically on worn hardwood.

When my brain re-engaged from its freakout loop, I said, “You got a cat?”

He sighed. “It’s Veronica’s. All three of them. I have no idea how they managed to open the basement door.”

I looked back at the living room. There was a yellow puddle beside the disemboweled throw pillow.

“There was no time to get someone to take them,” he said. “It was a security risk to start calling around. It’s not ideal, I know.”

In my relief, my neurochemicals did a lurch so sickening I thought I might vomit. Belatedly, I broke into a sweat. I hung up my suit jacket to save it a trip to the dry cleaner’s and said, “It’s fine.” My voice didn’t jibe, so I repeated it to try and force it to be true. “It’s fine.”

Showering presented me with a great opportunity to calm the hell down and sort myself out. A cat? Three cats? Fine, make it a dozen, who cared? Cats might be unfamiliar, but at least they were something normal. In the face of the fear that someone had broken into our house and was waiting in the basement with a canister of tear gas—or, worse, a buddy of the sex demon that exploded in Jacob’s old condo had come back for revenge—I was thrilled to find out we were babysitting Veronica’s cats.

A few weeks before, at a trip to the home center on a hunt for weather stripping, I’d found a showerhead that concentrated our so-so water pressure into something more satisfying. I planted myself under the blast face-on. It couldn’t really slough off everything I was trying to forget. But it did help me feel at least a little bit human.

Jacob had the mess cleaned up and dinner on the table by the time I dried off. The same batch of frozen chicken breasts we’d attempted to eat before? Impossible. These could actually be cut. I was chasing some couscous around the plate when Jacob said, “It’s only temporary.”

Unless Veronica ended up dead…which I chose not to point out. “We’ve got a ton of space. It’ll be fine.”

It turned out, my assessment of the situation was uncharacteristically optimistic. Initially, the cats were scared of us and kept themselves hidden. But one by one, they sized up the situation and, when they realized we lived there and they’d be stuck with us, decided they wanted to interact.

“What’s it doing?” I said. This cat was white with a single black ear, and it had parked itself in one of the dining room chairs, with nothing showing above the tabletop but its face. Its tiny, big-eyed face. “Why is it staring at me like that?”

“It’s begging. Veronica told me not to give them people food. Specifically.”

I ate a few green beans. The cat watched. “I’m sure it doesn’t like vegetables. Does it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a cat person.”

“A little bit wouldn’t hurt.”

“You don’t want to encourage the habit.”

I ate a few more bites. Did my best not to look. But eventually found myself drawn back to that unnerving feline gaze. “Did you feed it?”

“It has a huge bowl full of food downstairs. It’s not starving.”

“Sure looks that way to me.”

Jacob stood. “Okay, pal, you’ve worn out your welcome. Into the basement with you.” He made a grab, but the cat was too quick for him. With a thump, it landed on the floor and darted upstairs toward our bedroom. Jacob shook his head, sat back down and finished eating.

I was almost done when I got that feeling you get when a ghost full of tire tracks is staring at you from the nearest intersection, and when I looked up, I saw it. A tiny white face with big green eyes and a single black ear, poking out from around the banister, gazing at me like I was the biggest jerk in the world for not sharing.

“Sorry,” I told it.

It turned disdainfully and ran back upstairs.

As much as I hoped nothing of mine ended up shredded or peed on, I supposed I was glad for the distraction. Having that little bit of distance helped me decide to wait until I had a concrete piece of evidence in hand to bring up my redacted records with Jacob. Something that gave us a better idea of what, exactly, had been blacked out.

I went downstairs to verify that the cats did, indeed, have a big bowl of food (yes, I even braved the basement after 9 p.m. on their behalf) and found that Jacob was not exaggerating. The bowl was huge, though the multicolored kibble in it didn’t strike me as particularly appetizing. There was also a litter box and a carpet-covered piece of cat furniture as high as my shoulder. The whole setup was in the finished half of the basement, where interlocking rubber gym tiles covered the floor and bright lighting kept all the shadows at bay. But cats have a feral bent to their feline brains, and I suspected they were drawn to the basement’s other half—the creepy half, where century-old machinery that was too heavy to dispose of lurked, draped with cobwebs, within the crumbling brick. “If you want to earn your keep,” I announced to the room at large, “feel free to catch a few spiders. Shouldn’t be any mice since we filled all the gaps with spray-foam, but if you were to prove me wrong, I’d definitely express my gratitude by slipping you some people food on the down-low.”

Movement flickered among the shadowed remains of the once-great machines. Not a ghost. Just a gray and white tabby.

Maybe temporary cat ownership wouldn’t be so bad. The box of poop they came with wasn’t ideal, but at least they didn’t require walking. They had each other, so they didn’t need attention from us. And their propensity to shred things might actually encourage Jacob to start picking up after himself.

When I climbed into bed, Jacob put away his book and rolled on top of me, hoping for a little action. We kissed, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to close my eyes. Does a person kiss differently with their eyes open? They must, because pretty soon Jacob opened his eyes too, and said, “What?”

“Can’t shake the feeling that they’re watching.”

Jacob levered himself off me and looked around. “I don’t see any of them.”

“Like that means anything.”

“We do this all the time under surveillance.”

“Not really….” Other than the chips in our phones and our guns, we’d never proven we were being actively spied on. He was Internal Affairs. He should know.

“And you’re worried about an animal seeing you naked?” he teased.

“No….” But knowing another living creature would be staring at me while I got nailed was seriously cramping my style. The sounds. The smells. The sight of my awkward body. My o-face. Way too vulnerable all around.

We tried closing the door, but the room felt stuffy and claustrophobic. Plus I wasn’t entirely convinced we didn’t have a stowaway behind the furniture. Eventually, Jacob talked me into a furtive handjob beneath the covers. But me, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Once I swabbed his jiz off my thigh with an old sock I rummaged out from beneath the bed, I brushed his hand away, rolled over and turned out the light. “I’ll take a raincheck.”

With a disappointed huff, Jacob settled against my back and slung a heavy arm around me, and in less than a minute, started to snore.

Chapter 26

Apparently, I don’t normally sleep with my mouth wide open. I realized as much only because I woke to a crusty, dry tongue from nearly six hours of mouth-breathing, and a cat spooned around my head like a sideways mohawk. The tabby. I sat up, and it turned a few circles, picking at my pillow, then settled in and got comfy in the dent my head left behind.

I knuckled sleep out of my eyes. It felt good. So, groggy and disoriented, I went at it a little harder. But then I realized it felt a little too good. And when I stopped rubbing, it burned.

Just what I needed. Pinkeye.

I was sipping coffee with a warm compress on my eye socket when Jacob slogged it downstairs. “I’m coming down with something,” I told him. “Got anything I can take in your battery of vitamins that’ll knock it out?”

“Let me see.” He took my chin in his hand and scrutinized my eyes. “You must be allergic.”

And I find out now? “Hooray.”

“Stop rubbing them,” he said. If I wasn’t supposed to rub my eyes, it shouldn’t feel so damn good. But given that relief never followed, I’d have to figure out a way to abstain. “We’ll pick up some antihistamines on the way to the office.”

It would take him another half an hour to get out the door, and I figured it was in my best interest to stop breathing cat. “Actually, the range is open now, so I think I’ll swing by there first and see if there’s anything more they can tell me about Andy’s bullet.”

I found Agent Watts taking inventory in the armory. “Well, if it isn’t Fifth Precinct,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve decided to be proactive about your re-testing.”

“Actually, I just wanted to find out how much a bullet could tell us.”

“Sure. I’ll help you with that. Just as soon as we do some kneeling drills.”

I had no desire to scuff up the knees of my new black slacks for the sake of appeasing her, but since I could tell she wasn’t gonna take no for an answer—and since I had no desire to surrender my service weapon in thirty days—I forced my way through the training.

My performance was so mediocre, Watts didn’t even need to come up with an insult for me to feel bad about it. And the info she could give me about the bullet wasn’t much help, either. According to ballistics, it was .35 caliber and fired from a Beretta. According to Watts, it was one of ours. Unfortunately, that wasn’t terribly helpful, since it could’ve come from about two-thirds of the agents’ service weapons.

“So what you’re telling me is that we monitor what everyone has for breakfast, but we give out ammo like it’s candy.”

“If you had a casing for me, I might have more to go on. But a bullet? I’d have to shoot some test rounds from the weapon it came from and compare the rifling.”

The casing is the part that flies out when you fire and hopefully doesn’t hit you in the eye—it holds in all the explosive stuff that propels the shot. If this piece of evidence was anywhere, it would be at the crime scene…if the killer didn’t pick it up and put it in his pocket.

I’d really been hoping to give Jacob something more substantial.

I made my way to my car, dispirited and lost in an allergic fog. I was so distracted it took me a few seconds to register that someone had called my name, more than once. This morning, Jack Bly wore a black knit hat against the brutal January cold, but I knew him well enough by now to spot him even without the shaved head. “You’re here early,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m hoping the nickname Fifth Precinct doesn’t stick.”

He shook his head in commiseration. “PsyCops aren’t recruited for their marksmanship, that’s for sure.” He gazed out over the sea of Lexuses in the range’s parking lot. “I get that we’re training our muscle memory here, but there’s something about shooting at a target that just isn’t the same. Not that I want to fire at another human being. But it makes a big difference when I feel it in the target—” he thumped his sternum. “That cold, ugly spike of hatred. When I know someone would snuff me out without a single regret….”

“You shot a guy?”

“Didn’t have to, thank God. My Stiff subdued him. I think about it, though. A split second later and the perp would’ve had three rounds to the chest. Even though he was a scumbag, how would I sleep at night if I ended up pulling that trigger?”

I could only imagine. Between my Seconal embargo and my newfound cat allergies, I had enough trouble making it through dawn. No comfort for me between the sheets, and none in my new office, for that matter. With a building full of people who weren’t creeped out by psychic ability, fitting in at the FPMP had seemed like it would be easy. How wrong I was.

“Say,” I asked him, “when you met Darla, did you tweak something in her head?”

Bly narrowed his eyes. “Ethical considerations aside—people I deal with on a regular basis, any influence I exert on them will only come back and bite me in the ass. Learned that the hard way. Why do you ask?”

“She was just so nice to you.”

He shrugged. “Lots of women are nice to me nowadays.”

“That’s not what I meant. She’s one of the most intense, vindictive people I’ve ever met. But you shrugged off her interest and she didn’t even bat an eyelash.”

“Ah,” he said knowingly. I might’ve felt myself blush. “Now it makes more sense.”

“What does?”

“The discomfort between the two of you.”

“So she’s pissed off I wasn’t into her, there’s no reason for her to take it so personally. Wrong gender. End of story.”

“Can’t say whether or not that was at the root of the issue, but that’s definitely not what I’m getting now. She’s hurting. Humiliated. People feel like that—they get defensive. If I were you, I’d figure out how to make it up to her. All that damage isn’t gonna go away by itself.”

Was it easier to handle relationships, I wondered, empathically sensing exactly how the people around you felt? Or was it more like hitting those damn targets? You know how to fire a gun, and you know where you want the bullet to go…but thanks to that pesky detail known as “aim,” regardless of all your good intentions, you end up wounding the people you care about most?

When all was said and done, I guess it didn’t really matter, since Jacob was empath kryptonite, and that was the relationship I really cared about screwing up. “All the insight you get from your talent—is it a help or a hindrance? Are you better at knowing what makes people tick, or when you run across a real Stiff, does it throw you for a loop?”

“I guess it levels the playing field. But I suppose it only makes sense.”

I waited for him to elaborate. And when he didn’t, I said, “What does?”

“Laura hiring a Stiff as her point of contact. What better way to make sure she’s impartial with all her agents?”

“Patrick? Huh.” His promotion from The Clinic made a lot more sense now. And while I had no intention of letting down my guard with him to the point where I really bared my soul, it was encouraging to know that if I ever did, the secrets that might slip out wouldn’t be fair game for one of the numerous FPMP mind-readers.

* * *

Keeping Patrick on my good side was only part of my plan. If I was going to be successful at the FPMP, I needed Darla’s help. No two ways about it. Not only was she a legit medium, she was smart, focused, and a hell of a hard worker. And if she over-accessorized the room, so what? I could ditch all that stuff once she went back home.

I was supposed to be tracking down information on shamans. Hopefully they would either be mediums themselves, or if not, they might’ve worked with some potential mediums in their tribe. However, it was phenomenally difficult to stay on task. If anyone understands what it’s like to feel humiliated, it should be me. But how had I humiliated Darla? Especially since that was the last thing I’d been trying to do. In fact, it was the opposite. I’d been trying to spare her feelings.

I should probably just apologize and get it over with. And yet, I worried about making it worse. Because all I needed was for her to say, what are you sorry for? to totally derail my efforts.

I sat back, rubbed my eyes—dammit—and said, “I really need to give Laura something concrete.”

“First name basis with the director?” Darla sneered.

Yeah, vague apologies would definitely not fly. “I’m trying, here.”

“Well, try harder. I had a weekend getaway booked that I’ll have to cancel because of this wild goose chase.”

“You’ve got a life, I get it. We all do. But the director is right, if a segment of our agents is susceptible to possession, we need to figure out how to get ahead of it.”

“We have five first-person case studies to start with,” she said. “At least, we would, if you’d stop being so weird about telling us what you know.”

“I’m not being weird. Carl? Back me up here.”

He gave us a brief look, and said nothing.

“Well, what about Jacob?” Darla asked me.

“What about him?”

“I didn’t get a chance to look at his ID….”

Because she was busy checking out his other assets. “Yeah, he has that effect on people.”

“Better put a ring on him before he comes to his senses.” She thought for a moment. “So, what’s his talent?”

“NP,” I lied. Only because Jacob’s abilities were off the books. Not because I was being weird about what I knew.

“So let’s say you really can’t remember. If NPs are potential targets, particularly the ones who work here, you’ve got good reason to figure this out, for his sake. There are ways to dredge up things you’ve forgotten, y’know. Go back to the neighborhood where you grew up. Check out your schools, playgrounds, arcades. See if any of your old friends are still around.”

I knuckled my eye again. Damn it. Did I need to handcuff myself to the freaking desk? “Y’know, just because you had two parents and a normal childhood full of normal memories doesn’t mean everybody else did too.”

She whipped around to face me. “Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Oh my God, you’re…. Since when are you so hypersensitive?”

“I have allergies.”

With thinly disguised impatience, Carl interjected, “And while you two are busy arguing, agents are getting themselves killed. Figure this out so Director Kim can put her focus where it matters.”

“Whatever,” Darla said. “So far we’ve got three solid origin stories: the Skype shaman seeing a dead relative, Faun Windsong getting a little too good with the Ouija board, and me learning Cantonese. Since Richie is Richie and he’ll say anything to get attention, I’m not sure I buy the haunted TV set, but I’ll chalk that up as a ‘maybe.’ Even so, that’s hardly enough to form a cohesive picture. We need more than just three reliable mediums.”

We pondered that for a moment, then Carl said, “What about the person who trained you both at Heliotrope Station?”

Darla and I both looked at each other. “I didn’t even think of talking to Miss Maxwell,” she said.

“Me neither. So it’s just a matter of tracking her down.”

* * *

I found Patrick at his desk, reading something in a three-ring binder. Without even seeing the words, I could tell it was bone dry and phenomenally tedious. “So I was wondering if you could help me locate a Psych,” I said.

“Sure. And not that I mind the company, but you could’ve saved yourself a trip and sent an email.”

“I forgot my password.” That sounded less incompetent than I have no idea how to use my computer.

“Your email login? Or…?”

“All of them.”

“Let’s see if I’ve got the clearance to look them up.”

“You can do that? I thought email was encrypted.”

He flipped back a few pages in his reading material. “Generally speaking, but with the right clearance…just don’t forward any off-color jokes and you’ll be fine.” He moused and clicked and keyed stuff in, and finally pulled up some sort of record. “I’m in. And…it looks like you never set it up. Here.” My phone chirped. “I sent you a temporary login code for your email.”

“Cool. Thanks.” I had no great love of email. Mainly I was thanking him for not calling my bluff.

He jotted down something else on a slip of paper. “And here’s the weekly login for your station. It’s emailed every Friday afternoon. Memorize it for the following week.”

Given my memory, fat chance of that happening. “So can you get me some contact info from old Heliotrope Station? Not that new place that assumed the name, but the old training facility on the southwest side.”

“I can try. Who’re you looking for?”

“Maxwell.” And…damn. Pretty safe to say, her first name wasn’t Miss. “Female. Caucasian. She was there about fifteen years ago. Approximate age? Try fifty to sixty. And if it helps, she was a medium.”

“You think she’s connected to the leak?”

“No, the mediumship project.”

“I’ll bet Laura will be really excited if you can make headway with that. It makes more sense to play to your strengths anyway. But Agent Lipton, Agent Garcia…what’s next for them?”

“They’re fine, they’re safe. Agent Marks has it handled.”

“Great! So, listen, I was thinking, if you can make the time, maybe we can hit the range before work tomorrow morning, together. I’d kinda like having the emotional support. I know it’s paranoid, but I feel like every time someone hands me a box of ammunition, they want to roll their eyes and tell me to aim at the target, not the wall.”

I dunno, that’s what I always figured they were thinking about me. “Sure, yeah. I’ll meet you there by seven.”

I went back to my office and logged in to my desktop, then found my FPMP email and opened it. When I saw 186 unread emails in the inbox—about half of them from Jodie Watts, trying to get me to come in and aim at said targets, but nothing from Laura—I closed it again, realized I’d been rubbing my eyes, and pointedly sat on my hands. Allergies…or an incorporeal blob tethered to my eyeball, forcing my hand? Goddammit, why’d I have to go and think of Dreyfuss and his fingernail demons? Now I wanted to rub even harder.

“So have you ever seen anything that was like a ghost,” I asked tentatively, “that wasn’t really ever…human. But kind of, uh, ghost-like?”

Darla considered answering me for a long while. I was worried she was just trying to come up with the most scathing retort she could think of when she finally said, “Some things don’t sound right to me.”

“Or people?”

She nodded slowly, not meeting my eyes. “Yeah. Sometimes it’s a person with that certain frequency, that strange hum around them. The non-people ones, how do they look to you?”

“Blobs.” I shrugged. “Shapes. Masses. Energy, I guess.”

I hated trying to explain those things. None of the words I put to them ever felt quite right. But Darla, she understood. We shared the moment, but before I could ask if she heard any sound-blobs vibrating around my eyeballs, she ruined it all by saying, “See? You do remember things. Maybe you’re not so useless after all.”

Chapter 27

I was halfway to Sticks and Stones when I realized it was no longer there. While I’m no fan of texting and driving, just try pulling off to the side in Wicker Park and see if you’ll ever manage to merge back into the stream of traffic again. Instead, I clutched my phone in frustration, aggravated that there was no raised keypad to press and could no longer rely on my pre-programmed memory-dials. “I just want to call Crash,” I complained to the world at large.

“Calling Crash,” my phone said.

Whoa. Be careful what you wish for.

Crash greeted me with, “And to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Where are you?”

“No foreplay,” he sighed, “straight into the action. How typically you. If you must know, we’re at Still Goods straightening up after our lunchtime meditation. You should stop by and try it sometime. Might help you to deal with that pesky abruptness of yours.”

The whole “we” and “our” business was still jarring. I course-corrected and headed toward Irving. Since it was officially business hours, the other parts of the store were open, not just Curious Curios. There was a woman at the cash register chatting with a customer, neither of them making any pretense of any type of financial transaction. A teenage girl who probably should’ve been in school was scoping out vintage jewelry. And judging by the old-school punk playing somewhere deep within the building, Crash and Red had settled in happily to their new digs. I followed the sound of a slightly out-of-tune guitar track and found the two of them staple-gunning a hunk of colorful brocade to the far wall. “Just in time,” Crash said. “Hold up that end of the fabric, wouldja? We’ve only got so many hands.”

Well, at least I was good for something. I held up my end of the material while Red crowded up to the wall near me and used the staple gun to show it who was boss. Snap-snap-snap. Close enough to me that I could smell him…and he smelled really good, like fresh incense, before it burns and goes all sooty. Hard to say why I found him so profoundly intimidating. Hot, sure. Confident, definitely. But it was the self-contained gravity to his expression that really made me squirm.

“If I had to look at that awful seventies paneling one more minute…” he murmured, and it was some relief, then, to know that even right up against him, I was hardly even a blip on the guy’s radar. Of course, just as I thought that, he turned the full brunt of his dark gaze to me and said, “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

I swallowed hard. “You’re an empath too?”

He non-answered with the shadow of a smile.

“There’s always something wrong with Vic,” Crash chimed in. Except he was watching me hard now too, assessing my level of anxiety and teasing me only for form’s sake. “Why else would he grace me with his presence?”

“Curtis,” Red chided gently. “Be nice.”

Crash gave me a sizzling look and scraped his tongue stud along the ridge of his lower teeth.

Red looped his arm through mine and settled me in a squeaky wooden chair. The lumpy seat was stuffed with springs and horsehair, or maybe old auto parts. He pulled up an ottoman and folded himself onto it, cross-legged, and lavished the discomfort of his full and utter attention on me. “Tell us about it. Talking about your problems can help clarify how you really feel.”

I hesitated, and Crash turned up the mix tape. A repetitive three-chord anthem blared. “Don’t worry. Your secrets are safe here.”

“Fine.” I looked up at the ceiling and said, “So I’m at the FPMP and it should be easy, or at least doable, but the job’s not what I was told and turns out I suck, people are getting killed. Agents. Half my permanent record’s blacked out but I’m in no position to ask my boss why, and now someone I trained with is back and she hates me, and maybe if I could fucking remember something that no normal person would ever forget, I could tell her and set everything right.”

I paused, gulped some air, and Crash said, “Does that about cover it?”

“I guess.”

He asked Red, “You ever work with recovered memories?”

“Some. Although it’s worth considering whether it’s best to leave the past in the past.”

“Normally,” Crash said thoughtfully, “I’d concur. But the ex-PsyCop here has seen so much wrongness, it begs the question: what if his imagination is worse than what actually went down?”

“It’s up to you, Victor,” Red told me.

“Recovering memories. What would it…entail?”

“Just talk to me. That’s all.”

“There’s nothing to say. I don’t remember.”

Red shrugged easily. “No pressure. Just start with something you do know.”

I don’t know squat, I thought, but then the song changed to one of those ubiquitous punk songs that every bratty punk band covers, badly, and if I closed my eyes, I could picture a basement rec room with paneling exactly like the one we were just covering up, and a similar boombox too, with the same song cranking in the background. Three other kids were there. Friends, I guess, kids to swap albums with or share homework. All boys. Straight, and that was fine. I knew where to go to scratch that itch outside our normal stomping grounds, so I wouldn’t end up getting the snot kicked out of me at school.

“I was fifteen.” Which would’ve made my friends thirteen, given the two grades I’d repeated. I conveniently omitted that detail. And the fact that I was still in middle school. “We came up with the great idea to pool our money to buy a pack of cigarettes. Not sure if I was tall enough to actually pass for eighteen or the convenience store clerk just didn’t care enough to check.”

I remembered us all pooling our cash on the rec room floor. It was linoleum, the color of putty, with gray and black flecks. Damn. If I could dredge up that level of detail, maybe my memory wasn’t as atrocious as I’d always thought.

I’d gone into the store alone, I did remember that, because we decided it would look suspicious if I was surrounded by a group of kids less than five feet tall. I asked for a pack of Marlboros, because back then Marlboro could still advertise on anything that stayed still long enough to slap a logo on it. “Reds?” the guy asked. I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded anyway. Money changed hands, mostly quarters. And as I walked out of the store with that pack of Marlboro Reds in my hand, I felt, for the first time, like I’d accomplished something significant with my life.

My eighth grade buddies were pretty damn impressed, too.

Chicago neighborhoods vary so widely, it seems like at least a dozen different cities are contained in its borders. Where I’d grown up, dour clusters of small single-family homes in various shades of brown brick squatted, punctuated by strip malls and vast, overgrown stretches of fallow land surrounded by dead steel mills. It wasn’t just easy to sneak off and get up to no good—we were so isolated, it was a damn wonder we ever made it back without being slaughtered for our fresh young kidneys.

We’d trooped out behind the cover of an abandoned outbuilding made of corrugated metal, dented like someone had used it to stop an oncoming pickup truck, and found a spot to divvy up our cigarettes.

“We went over by the railroad tracks to smoke, because everything else was so overgrown, you couldn’t see the rats coming. The tracks were clear. They were still used for freight. I ended up wandering away from my friends because I was too cool to let them see I didn’t actually inhale, and walking from tie to tie, pretty soon I was a few hundred feet away from them. I said to myself, Oh, there’s a shoe….”

Crash nudged Red aside with his butt, and squeezed onto the ottoman beside him.

“A man’s shoe,” I said.

They both leaned forward expectantly.

And then what? No idea. “That’s all.”

Red looked at Crash, then back at me. “Do you remember going back home after you were out smoking? Maybe you got caught. Or maybe you got away with it.”

No memory whatsoever. I shrugged.

“How about supper? Were both your parents there?”

“No parents,” I said blankly. Because I couldn’t really recall specifically who was there. But obviously, I wasn’t a fifteen-year-old eighth grader living alone. “I was with a foster family. I’ve had more than one.”

“How many?” Red asked.

I shrugged. “Several.”

“Are you being vague because you don’t want to tell me, or because you can’t?”

“I really don’t see what this has to do with….” I trailed off as discomfort churned in my gut. “I’m not sure.”

“What do you think happened?”

I rubbed my eye. “Stands to reason I found a body.”

“Are you sure?” Red asked. “Just because you saw a shoe? Could be you found a homeless man. Or someone sleeping off a bender. Or even a bag of trash split open.”

“You see what I’ve seen, all these years, makes it hard to keep an open mind. A woman’s all beat up? It’s her man. Someone disappears? They’re dead. I block out a memory of a shoe on the railroad tracks…it’s more than just footwear.”

“Do you want to know what really happened with that shoe?” Red asked.

I didn’t. Which struck me as awfully damn suspicious. “How?”

“Tell me again about the moment you saw it.” He stood and placed his hands on the creaky chair’s armrests and stared right in my face. It should’ve felt invasive having him that up-close and personal, but his eyes were so riveting, I managed to sidestep my discomfort and focus. “You saw a shoe, and then?”

I put myself on those railroad tracks. I’ve got a cigarette in my hand. I have no idea how to even hold it, and goddamn it, after all the trouble we went through to get them, they taste foul and I can’t believe I blew all my money and I could’ve had peanut butter cups instead. Now I’m stuck with five cigarettes I’ve got no desire to smoke. Maybe I could sell the remaining four to one of the other kids. I’d have to be clever about it. Make some excuse about needing the money.

Would they go for it, or would I be blowing whatever coolness points I’d scored when I bought the pack? Maybe it would just be easier to throw the rest in the weeds and say I’d smoked them. I was glancing down at the overgrown grass when I saw the shoe. A beige platform oxford. With a spongy bottom and a cracked seam behind the toe where the fake leather was giving way. And when I step off the tracks to get a better look at it—

Nothing.

“I spot a shoe and that’s all. I don’t remember.”

“Did you tell your friends?”

I must have. But when I tried to remember, each of their faces grew indistinct and their names slipped away. If I’d even recalled them to begin with.

When I didn’t answer, Red suggested, “Pretend I’m there. And you’re telling me about the shoe.”

“Okay. Right. So I was on the railroad tracks and I saw this shoe and—” I shook my head. “And then there’s nothing.”

Or so I’d told myself, except the look in Red’s eyes said different. Not an empath, then. A telepath or clairvoyant. He stood up straight and took a deep, cleansing breath.

“Everything okay?” Crash asked.

Red said, “There was a woman.”

“It was definitely a man’s shoe,” I said. “That’s probably the only thing I know for sure.”

“Afterward,” Red clarified. He closed his eyes and thought. “A white woman. Hair slicked back tight, thick glasses. Turtleneck.”

A flicker. Maybe. And then it was gone. “What about her?” I asked cautiously.

“She’s saying…you won’t remember.”

Chapter 28

I sat in my car breathing heavily. The windows fogged. While part of me had known that something in my life had been fishy all along, evidently I’d still been clinging to the optimistic notion that it was just shitty memory and a harmless bit of paranoia.

I should’ve known better.

I pulled out my phone and said, “Do I even have Stefan’s phone number?”

“Steven Russel,” my phone said. “Is this the contact you’re looking for?”

“Uh…yeah.”

“Would you like to call him?”

“Can I just…send him a text?”

A text box popped up. Any other time, I would’ve marveled at the technology. But I was too busy keeping an internal meltdown at bay. My thumbs were all over the screen and yet, thanks to autocorrect, my message came out just like it was in my head. I have a repressed memory or maybe it’s deliberate, I think I was hypnotized, need to see you ASAP. It even capitalized that last word for me.

I hit send, then sat and stared at the screen. Nothing happened. “He’ll probably blow me off,” I told the phone. “Things are too weird between us.”

The phone didn’t have any sage advice to offer. Maybe it would add that feature in a future software upgrade. As I made to put it away, an answer appeared with a gentle whoosh of arrival. Pick me up at Circle Campus in half an hour and I’ll see what I can do.

I arrived at U of I with five minutes to spare, pulled up in a bus zone by Behavioral Sciences, and texted Stefan my location. I was ruminating over how I should feel about needing a favor from him, when a guy from campus security strode up, all gym rat physique and minimum-wage self-importance. I showed him my ID and he wisely backed away. The laminated card didn’t have the same heft as a metal police badge, but the big federal seal on it did the job just fine.

I spotted Stefan from a long way off, striding across a stretch of snow-flanked sidewalk, great black coat flapping ostentatiously behind him. I felt drab in comparison. Then again, I doubted I could deal with the amount of attention having a signature look would entail. Not anymore.

He climbed in, did a great deal of fastidiously arranging himself, then slammed the door. He glanced at me dismissively, then did a double-take. “Are you crying?”

“I have allergies,” I snapped.

“Hmph.” He must’ve probed me with his talent and realized it was true, because he let the matter drop. “I’m presuming the only reason you want to see me is that our hypnosis sessions have been freakishly effective. It’ll be a nightmare to park near my office this time of day. So where do you want to do this? Keep in mind, I have no intention of spending the next few hours in your car. My sciatica is acting up.”

I didn’t want him in my house. And evidently he had no desire for me to see his, either. “I know a place,” I told him, and began wending my way through a cluster of city buses.

Traffic was a good excuse to refrain from talking, but stoplights made the silence in the car awkward. As did the fact that he was reading my awkwardness. Unlike Crash’s telepathic boyfriend, Stefan didn’t need to stare at you and concentrate to get a reading. “So,” I ventured. “College. Teaching? Or…?”

“Good lord, no. Could you imagine dealing with all those insufferable, privileged millennial brats for hours on end? I’m getting my Ph.D.”

“Oh.” I’d figured he already had one. But since I’d never aspired to anything beyond surviving the police academy with my general equivalency diploma in hand, my knowledge of the educational system was as hole-riddled as my memory.

“I’m weary of clinical work,” he said. “Exhausted. And my partner Lorraine has been making noises about retiring, which got me to wondering if it might be a good time for a change. Go into research instead.”

Good luck with that, I thought. Heck, my own frustrating mediumship research made target practice look appealing. Then again, maybe research would end up being a better fit for such a misanthrope…which was how I’d always pigeonholed Darla, too. Except judging by the way she acted around everyone but me, I now realized, her loathing was far less generalized than Stefan’s.

“Can you think of any reason Dead Darla would feel…humiliated?”

“Her triple-chin?”

“Uh, no. Actually, she’s in pretty good shape nowadays. I mean, anything I did specifically to humiliate her.”

Stefan gave it some serious consideration. “I imagine she was pissed off at you for leading her on.”

“I did no such thing.”

He waved my protest away. “No need to be defensive about it. It’s not your fault she couldn’t take a hint. People need to grow up and stop romanticizing unrequited love. If someone’s into you, it doesn’t take much to get down their pants. And if not, move on. It’s not worth the drama, and someone else will come along soon enough.”

Spoken like a fifth-level empath…but I wasn’t in the mood to argue. We pulled up in front of the gin mill and I cut the engine.

Although smoking indoors had been illegal since I couldn’t remember when, the place smelled like an old ashtray. And not just because there was an old ashtray beside the front door, but because a half century of tar and nicotine had sunk into the pores of the building. It was dark and dingy, with a low drop ceiling and a tube TV playing the afternoon traffic report.

“Charming,” Stefan murmured.

It had been several weeks since I’d last been there, but nothing had changed. It was practically deserted, with only a few day-drinkers propping up the far end of the bar, and the out of order sign was still on the ladies’ room. Even the antisocial bartender was the same. When I approached the bar, he cut his eyes to the booth where my dealer usually held court and said, “He’s not here.” But if I came back another time, he might be. How comforting to know my Seconal habit would welcome me back with open arms should I ever decide I wanted to patch things over.

The mere thought of an addiction-blob feeding off my energy made me knuckle my eyes.

I ordered a regular Coke, and Stefan requested a diet. Then he squinted at the menu and ordered a pepperoni-sausage pizza. “How big are they?” he asked. The bartender pulled a prepackaged nine-inch disc out of the fridge and showed it to him. “Better make it two.”

We found a shadowy booth far away from both the barflies and the door, and slid in. Stefan gave the table a shove and it scraped a few inches toward me. He settled himself, took a long drink of his Diet Coke, then said, “Let me preface this, as always, by reminding you that the human mind is complex. I can’t simply push a button and command the memory you’re hoping for to magically appear.”

“Maybe we don’t even need to do a regression to figure out why I can’t remember my first ghost,” I said. “Maybe you know about someone erasing my memories. Maybe you’ve even done it yourself.”

He laughed humorlessly, plucked a napkin out of the dispenser, and wiped some ancient crumbs off the tabletop. “Need I remind you that we’re the same age, and I didn’t study hypnosis until I was almost thirty? Plus, I never laid eyes on you until I met you by the soda machine.” When Stefan lied, it was by omission. In all likelihood, since he made the claim, I could presume it was true. “Tell me what insight you’re hoping to gain.”

“One minute I’m fifteen and goofing off by the railroad tracks, next minute, nothing. My next memory is knocking over a sawhorse in driver’s ed class. Nearly two years later.”

“Two years seems a long stretch of time, but people do vary on how much they can recall of their childhood. Try to think of milestones. Birthdays, maybe. Your favorite movies. Boys who gave you a hard-on.”

I picked at a leathery drop of old ketchup that had bonded with the formica. “Nothing. Not even the family I’d been living with. And…if it was anyone but you, I might not even be able to say this. But you were there at Camp Hell. You know how it was. The mind-games. The experiments. There was a woman who told me to forget. A telepath caught a glimpse of her and…well, like I said. You know how it was.”

Stefan stroked his graying soul patch and considered me, while I squirmed and did my best to look anywhere but at him. And eventually he said, “If it turns out that, yes, someone encouraged you to forget things under hypnotic suggestion, what then?”

“No clue. But dammit, I need to know.”

“Very well,” he intoned. And the very sound of his voice dropping into the register he used for hypnosis practically sent me sprawling. “Sit back. Take a deep breath. Let it out slowly, and as you do, begin to count back….”

I knuckled my eyes.

Reminded myself I’d only be making things worse.

And gave them a final hard rub for good measure. Because fucking hell, crying in front of anybody, especially in front of him, seriously eroded the Sid Vicious image I aspired to. I went through a lot of trouble putting my hair up. I’d be damned if I sat there crying my eyes out like a big, dumb loser.

I opened my eyes and glared at him. Not Stefan…not unless he’d turned into a sixtyish black guy while I was trying to hide my frustrated tears.

Harold Albert was a strict man, at least on paper. He enforced curfews, rode me about my grades, and insisted I address him as Sir. He and Mamma Brill had raised over fifteen foster kids, plus four sons of their own, into reasonably upstanding adults. All except that dickhead Charles, who took up carjacking and ended up doing time downstate. But still, their success rate was pretty high.

Strict, yes. But heart-wrenchingly gentle when the situation called for it. “Are you ready to tell me your side of the story?” he said patiently. We faced each other across a yellow laminate Burger Barn tabletop, where we each lingered over a sweating Coke that was mostly ice.

“You won’t believe me,” I said. “No one does.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re being truthful, and I will.”

My God, I’d never appreciated how earnest he was. No, I was too full of self-righteous tween indignation. “I’m not lying,” I shouted. “There was a guy looking through the window over by the blackboard. I saw him. I did. He had long headbanger hair and a Blackhawks jersey and the whole side of his face was covered in blood. He had his hands cupped around his eyes and he was looking through the window.”

“But the teacher didn’t see him. And the courtyard was locked.”

“So?” I threw up my arms in frustration. “Maybe he picked the lock. Maybe the gate wasn’t shut right. How the f—heck should I know?”

Harold considered my outburst, then said, “If you need to talk to Dr. Kleinman again, I’ll make you an appointment.”

The thing about seeing a shrink was that I could wow all my middle-school cohorts by telling them I was crazy, even though I knew my diagnosis was nothing more glamorous or threatening than generalized anxiety. She wasn’t a psychiatrist—I never came away with any pills—though I did show some aspirin to my gullible friends and claim I needed them to keep the voices at bay. Despite the lack of interesting meds, my sessions with Kleinman really did chill me out.

Funny thing was, if I wanted to see Kleinman, the visit had to stay between Harold and me. Even though, between the two of them, Mama Brill was the permissive parent, the therapist had somehow rubbed her wrong from the get-go. On this particular matter, Mama wouldn’t budge. Luckily, since Mama was busy cashiering at the auto parts store, Harold would be calling the shots solo.

And my occasional weird outbursts really worried him.

While I was fully aware that I was currently a middle-aged guy in a Ravenswood gin mill and not a fourteen-year-old leaving a south side Burger Barn, the experience was way more immersive than any TV show or video game. Some part of me still was that confused kid. The one who saw nonphysical things and was made to think he hadn’t, and then convinced that he’d been faking it all for attention.

Maybe I should’ve felt proud of being worthy of such an elaborate mindfuck.

I’m no expert on kids, but I suspect they all think the world revolves around them. I know I didn’t find it unusual that Dr. Kleinman was able to drop everything and see me the moment Harold called. Apparently my memory wasn’t so inept after all—the details of her office were incredibly vivid. The popcorn ceilings. Whitewashed wood. The oversized floral prints in shades of dusty, muted pastel. Harold parked himself uncomfortably in the waiting room and spread a People Magazine in his lap. Who knows if he even read them. From my current middle-aged perspective, I could see he was beside himself with worry. Back then, he just seemed a little stiff.

The inner door opened, and my head shrinker greeted me. She was a Caucasian woman roughly my present age, in thick glasses, with her hair pulled back in a heavy tortoiseshell barrette. “Come on in, Vic, and have a seat. Let’s rap.”

My heart sped, current day, wondering what she was hiding, but my younger self was perfectly at ease with her stilted camaraderie. I sprawled on the couch and put my ratty Converse up on her coffee table. Holy hell, I was such a little twerp.

“So, according to Harold, you claim to have seen someone in your school courtyard.”

“I didn’t claim to see it, I did see it. A guy. With long hair and a hockey jersey. Covered in blood.”

“And yet, with hundreds of other people around, no one else saw a thing. Now, we both know people don’t just disappear—so, let’s explore the idea that maybe the sight of the bloodied man was actually your subconscious mind trying to tell you something. Can you think of any associations this man might have?”

“Not really.”

“You say he was wearing a hockey jersey. What does hockey mean to you?”

“Nothing,” I said automatically. But, even as I said it, I questioned whether that was really true. A few years back, I played in a peewee league. Harold and Mama Brill had really sacrificed to get me that used equipment. And then I tossed it all aside once my real reason for playing was gone. Our goalie, all cocky smile and feathered hair, had moved away after my first season. And without him, once I outgrew my skates, I figured I’d outgrown the sport, too.

I couldn’t meet Kleinman’s eyes. We never discussed my sexuality. Did she know, or had I managed to keep this private part of me private? I suspected it wouldn’t stay hidden forever. My friends were beginning to notice boobs. The fact that they were all two years younger had served me well, but pretty soon they’d catch up to me hormonally. And then what?

Mama Brill might be cool with it once she had some time to wrap her head around the idea, but then there was Harold. I doubted he would go so far as to throw me out on the street if he knew. Not like you hear about from those homeless kids turning tricks behind the gas station. But once he found out, whatever little affection he did show, I was sure I could kiss it goodbye.

“It’s fine if you’re not ready to talk about it,” Kleinman said…referring to the guy I’d seen. Not my secret urges. “Just think. The meaning of hockey. This feeling of isolation. And the element of danger. Is this making any sense to you?”

Well, when she put it that way, how could it not? I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

“The subconscious is rich with symbolism. Sometimes the associations are literal, sometimes they’re not. But the thing to remember is that when something doesn’t make logical sense, there’s always a good explanation for what you’re thinking. It doesn’t make you crazy.”

I shrugged again.

“On a scale of one to ten, how anxious are you feeling right now?”

A lot. But mostly because I was trying to figure out how to keep the whole gay thing from blowing up in my face. I treated her to another move from my repertoire of sullen shrugs.

“If you’re still feeling uneasy, let’s try some guided imagery to help you relax. Just like I showed you before. Get comfortable. Tighten your fingers, your toes, and then release. Take a deep breath, and let’s start counting down together. Ten….”

I came back to myself with a loud gasp, clutching the sticky table. Stefan was there across from me, watching me intently, with two empty cardboard circles dotted with grease and crumbs in front of him.

“Welcome back,” he said. “I didn’t even get a chance to finish counting you up. That’s unusual.”

“I saw her. The woman. The hypnotist. Fuck, you’re not my first.” While I scrambled to make sense of it all, Stefan tucked his chin and raised an eyebrow, but thankfully resisted making reference to the stolen KY. “Someone’s been poking through my mind ever since I was a goddamn kid.”

Chapter 29

Don’t freak out.

Don’t freak out.

Do. Not. Freak. Out.

Luckily Stefan was more than happy to find his own way home. Bad enough feeling like my whole world was a carefully constructed piece of set design that was now collapsing all around me. I didn’t want anyone else privy to my inner devastation. Especially not him.

It was well into the evening by the time I pulled up in front of the cannery with my knuckles white on the wheel and my jaw on fire from grinding my molars together. Jacob was on the couch, going through the mail with his cheaters on, and I strode to the center of the living room and stood there like a big tangle of nerves, bursting with the urge to release my pent-up anger and frustration and not a damn place to channel it.

He slipped off the cheap glasses and crossed the room in a few strides, stopping just before me, as if an electrified force field was dancing between us and he was leery of getting zapped. “What’s wrong?”

Bad enough trying to find the words—now I was worried God-knows-who might be listening in. I turned on my heel and stomped to the kitchen, Jacob following, and grabbed a colander and a skillet out of the drying rack. I started banging them together like I was auditioning for a noise band, and the white cat with the black ear shot out from behind the fridge and blasted across the floor like he’d been rocket launched, then slipped down the basement stairs. “When was the FPMP founded?” I banged the skillet harder. “Because I just recovered a memory of someone erasing my fucking brain at least ten years before the news broke about the Ganzfeld Experiments.”

Jacob took my wrists and forced me to stop punishing our kitchenware. He set aside the pans, pressed his mouth to my ear and said, “Tell me what happened. From the beginning.”

Somehow, in whispers, I managed—even though reliving those damn memories was bad enough the first time around. “And the worst part is, the shrink visit after the hockey ghost wasn’t the first one. At that point, I already knew Kleinman. Who knows how many ghost sightings she’d wiped out by then?”

Jacob was kneading my hands in his so hard I was worried he’d rip a tendon, but I didn’t tell him to stop. At least the pain reassured me that I wasn’t crumbling, right along with all the disintegrating props I’d taken for real all this time.

“Listen,” Jacob said. “I’m not trying to minimize or negate a single word you’ve just told me, and remember that I am on your side, but what if there are aspects of the situation we don’t understand?”

“Aren’t there always?” I said bitterly.

“What if your childhood therapy was just therapy, and what if this Kleinman woman didn’t have any ulterior motive in her hypnosis? What if she saw you as a kid with an overactive imagination, a kid in distress, and was only trying to calm you down?”

And what if I’d just defaulted to the most nefarious explanation possible for my missing memories?

One thing I did know for sure…the reason my gut had been telling me Carl Hinds couldn’t have possibly had anything to do with our agents getting killed had nothing to do with anything I’d learned in homicide. It was the fact that he reminded me so much of Harold.

Jacob nearly laughed when I told him to double-check Carl’s whereabouts and start digging up his phone records, but one look at my face sobered him up soon enough. “I don’t know what his motive would be,” I said quickly, “and I hope to hell I’m wrong. But he’s always ducking out and acting cagey. I can’t vouch for his whereabouts when Agent Frank was murdered. And he seemed awfully keen on finding out what we knew about the incident at Veronica Lipton’s house.”

“Don’t worry,” he told me. “If Carl’s not our guy, that’s exactly what the evidence will prove.”

Not necessarily. After all, the evidence against Laura had been airtight. But the Carl matter was in Jacob’s hands now, and no amount of worrying on my part would do a damn bit of good.

I turned my attention back to the therapist. Had Kleinman been in cahoots with some top secret government agency, or as Jacob suggested, was she just a social worker trying to help a troubled kid? I considered each possibility as I went through the motions of my nighttime routine, eating and showering and refilling the giant bowl of kibble. Psych hadn’t been officially recognized yet, so as far as anyone knew I was either stunningly imaginative, or downright psychotic.

As I swept great drifts of scattered cat litter into the dustpan, I dredged up as many memories of Harold and Mama Brill as I could. Did I remember every moment of my life with them? No. But that didn’t seem terribly unusual, and the more I thought about them, the more detail emerged. Harold lecturing me about my grades…I was such a rotten student, even before the ghosts, his constant pressure might’ve been the only thing that kept me in school. And Mama Brill, a chunky Irish ex-hippie, pale and freckled, with a long reddish braid gone white at the temples hanging halfway down her back, gloriously weird in her thrift store muumuus. She’d drift into my room and perch on my bed as I struggled to study, and tell me to just chill and go with the flow, and everything would eventually work out.

I was the last foster in a long line of kids who’d benefitted from Mama’s easygoing nature and Harold’s tough love. They were old enough to be my grandparents, and they occasionally talked about downsizing once I was out on my own, maybe buying an RV and seeing the country—though their dumpy brick bungalow held so many memories, I doubted they’d ever give it up.

By the time I climbed into bed with Jacob, I was heartsick and exhausted. I pulled up the covers and he curled against my back, stroking my hair. You’d think Mama would’ve been the one to do that when I was sick, sit on my bed and comfort me, but no, it was Harold. Jacob allowed me to sort and sift the memories, mostly good, in silence. But I returned to those sessions with Dr. Kleinman just as surely as I kept digging at my itchy eyes.

The hockey jersey ghost was seventh grade, and the shoe by the railroad tracks was eighth. Placing those two sightings in time felt accurate, because my disappointment in the cigarettes wasn’t the only reason I forged off on my own. I had no desire to take part in a conversation about whether or not girls would be “easy” in high school.

I didn’t dwell on the shoe, even though I would’ve bet money that it was nothing so benign as a discarded piece of trash. I skirted around that incident. Around the session with Kleinman that helped me bury its memory, too, and I skipped ahead.

I couldn’t recall the shoe session itself, but I did remember what happened next. In the lobby where Harold should’ve been waiting for me with his unread magazine, I found a couple of beefy guys in dark suits instead. Social Services, they said.

Yeah. Right.

They put me in a dark sedan and drove me out to a place by O’Hare, a big seventies split-level on a lot and a half where I finished out the summer in a basement bedroom with vinyl wallpaper and shag carpet that smelled like mildew. New house. New family. And when the school year started, I was just another new freshman—a six-foot tall, nearly-sixteen freshman. I never saw Harold or Mama Brill again.

Jacob pressed his lips to my shoulder, then whispered, “Are you crying?”

“Allergies,” I lied.

When the gray tabby leapt onto the bed and started picking at the pillow beside my head, Jacob made to get up and shoo it away. “No, leave it,” I said. “If we shut it out in the hall, it’ll just scratch up the door.” And despite my heavy heart, eventually I drifted off to the feel of warm fur against my cheek, and the rattly sound of purring.

* * *

If I didn’t know Jacob better, I might presume that with his single-mindedness and lofty ideals, he’d encourage me to buck up and finish out my open investigations—keep the FPMP Regional Director happy, and make sure “Andy’s” coworkers didn’t end up dead. After all, it had been more than twenty years since I’d seen my beloved foster parents. What was a few more days?

He didn’t. When I woke up and told him I wasn’t doing squat until I figured out what had become of my family, he handed me a cool compress for my swollen eyes, and said, “You go do what you need to do. I’ll say you’re checking out a lead for me.”

I began my search online. Elaine Kleinman didn’t exist, big shock there—but I was really hoping to find my foster parents. Instead, I found obituaries. Some while back, Mama Brill—Brilliance Maguire Albert—died peacefully in her sleep after a long battle with cancer, at the age of seventy-eight. Harold Albert succumbed to a heart attack just over a year ago.

Losing both of them again so soon after I remembered them was bad enough. But the fact that Harold had died so recently felt like a heartbreaking near-miss. If only I’d had the backbone to face up to my past sooner.

If only.

Off the top of my head, I didn’t remember my old address, but my new phone led me to the middle school where other kids talked about girls while I kept my mouth shut about cruising teenage boys in the park. It looked smaller than I pictured it. From there, I backtracked along my school bus route. I had to retrace a few corners more than once, but in general I was surprised how minimally things had changed. The storefronts were different now, with so many cut-rate cell phone carriers between school and home that I lost count, but other than new signage and awnings, the sturdy brick buildings were the same.

It took three passes for me to recognize my old home, but I did find it. The door had been painted a boring gray, the front lawn had a cheesy plastic swing set poking up from a hardened snow drift, and a sign in the window read, Little Wonder Daycare - Openings Available.

When I rang the doorbell, I briefly considered flashing my badge and demanding entry. That laminated card had worked well on the campus pseudocop, after all. But did I really need to cause that much fuss? I briefly considered acting like I was checking out the place for my child, but decided I was probably too old—or just too weird—to act convincingly like a guy with a preschooler.

In the end, when the frazzled-looking thirtyish Caucasian woman with the squalling kid on her hip answered the door, I told her the truth.

“So, I hope this isn’t too strange of me to ask, but I grew up in this house and was wondering if I could look around.”

She narrowed her eyes and said, “You’re from Child and Family Services, aren’t you?”

“No. Like I said, I grew up here.”

She cocked her head and invited me into the mudroom, not because she was being friendly, but because it was better than letting all the heat out. I stomped off my shoes and came inside.

The arched entryway to the living room was just like I remembered, but the space looked different with a puffy beige sectional dominating the room. Plus all the bright plastic toys. So many toys.

The woman planted herself in front of me. “You want to inspect me? Fine. Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

I wiped my feet on a damp doormat crusted in sidewalk salt. “I’m not with DCFS, so this isn’t an inspection. I was just hoping to take a quick look around.”

“Absolutely,” she said defensively. “Be my guest.”

Well…whatever got me into the house. I pulled out my fancy phone and keyed in absolutely nothing, and she shrank back to give me some space. The little kids ignored me. They were focused on dry cereal and cartoons.

The old formal dining room now held a second TV with another drippy kids’ show on it, and colorful vinyl playpens took up half the room’s real estate. The kitchen had been repainted a sedate yellow. Mama Brill’s hand-painted sunflower border was gone, along with her tie-dyed curtains, but the cabinets were the same. I paused in the doorway and pictured Harold sipping his coffee at the kitchen table while Mama tried to figure out where she’d left her keys, and I caught myself rubbing my eyes.

I went through, room by room, jarred by the sight of dated 90’s furniture where the dated 70’s furniture used to be. Plus all those damn toys. Three bedrooms, familiar from the hall, but strange once I got inside. Different paint, different furniture…different occupants. I was halfway down the basement stairs, with the woman yelling after me that I had no right to inspect it since it was not part of her square footage requirement, when I paused in surprise. No basement willies. None at all.

Yes, there was different junk down there, but more than any other room, it was the space that felt most like it had two and a half decades ago. The woodgrain paneling looked older and dingier than it had in my youth. But I’d loved that basement. It was my haven. Not that there were any other kids to get away from once Charles moved out, but I’d trash-picked enough furniture odds and ends to make it a rec room that was the envy of all my friends. There was the corner where I drew misshapen superhero comics on a wobbly old kitchen table. There was the spot where my beanbag chair burst into a drift of staticky white BBs. And there was the wall where an old turntable on a stack of milk crates played Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys and Ramones albums.

I skimmed my fingertips across the paneling and felt the texture of an ancient anarchy symbol I’d carved with a dull butterfly knife. There were no spirits waiting in this house for me, just the ghost of my own past. And now that I really had a good look at it, I’d have to concede my home life was nowhere near as horrifying as I’d feared it might be.

Chapter 30

I made my way back to headquarters with a heavy heart, dismayed by everything I’d managed to block out all these years. Now that the clog holding back my memories had been cleared, they continued to trickle through. Mama’s weird attempts at vegetarian cooking. (No one ate the lima bean casserole. Not even her.) Harold giving me a stilted talk about the birds and bees, a least two years too late. Charles and me playing “why are you hitting yourself?” Okay, Charles playing and me trying not to cry. He might still be around—in fact, he shouldn’t be too hard to find—but he was probably still a dick.

Dr. Kleinman was the key. I was sure of it. I was no closer to finding the next medium, but damn it, I had to see Laura. Whether it put me on her shit list or not. “Call Laura Kim,” I told my phone, and the line rang. And as I did my best to figure out how to throw myself upon Laura Kim’s mercy, a distinctly non-Laura voice answered. Patrick. “Hey, Vic. How can I help?”

“Oh. Uh, hey. I was looking for Laura.”

“Everything’s routed through me. Sorry. I’ll buzz her for you.”

“Okay. Thanks. So, should I wait? Or…?”

“Yep,” he said, “just hold a sec.” I stood there awkwardly to the distant sound of many buttons being pressed in an elaborate sequence. “Can I let her know what this is in regard to?”

“The investigation.” When I’d started knuckling my eye, I didn’t know. I forced my free hand into my pocket. It brushed my holster through my jacket, and when it did, I realized that while I was out bothering the new resident of my old house, I’d been scheduled to visit the range. With Patrick. “Sonofa…. This morning—cripes—something came up and I totally spaced.”

“No biggie,” he said, but clearly there was something weird between us now.

“Really. I…it was…I was looking forward to it, y’know? I’ve just got a lot going on.”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine. I can imagine how crazy it must be with so much on your plate. But Agent Watts isn’t too thrilled with you, if you know what I mean.”

“Great. Like she needs another reason to think I’m lame.”

On his end, more buttons clicked. “Sorry,” he said eventually. “I can’t do any better for you with Laura than next week’s meeting, the one that’s already on the books. But I’m sure I’ll talk with her before the end of the day. I can put in a good word for you. What did you need?”

I hesitated briefly. Airing my ugly past felt too intimate, like being naked. Something I’d only do either with someone I trusted with my life, or a total stranger. Anything in between was just too damn awkward. But Patrick was the one with the access. So I asked.

“There’s a therapist I saw when I was a kid, Elaine Kleinman. Current contact info. If not that, anything you can find out about her, especially in the eighties, nineties. Where she worked. Who else she was seeing. What her practice entailed. And good luck—I don’t know if that’s even her real name.”

“Kleinman. Got it. I’ll see what I can find. In the meanwhile, if you can put me in touch with Agents Garcia and Lipton, that’d be great. They’ll want to get started on their expense reports sooner rather than later.”

“Okay. I’ll let Jacob know.”

“Oh! Never mind, I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble.” Heck, it was the least I could do after standing him up at the range.

* * *

“Text Jacob that Patrick needs contact info on Lipton and Garcia.”

“Patrick needs Con tagged info on Lip Tonne and Gar. See ya. Send?”

“Sure.” I paused at the door to my office and checked the screen. “Uh…crap, wait, no.”

The whoosh sounded.

“Can I take it back?”

“Sorry, I’m not familiar with that. Should I check the App Store?”

“I think you’ve done enough already.”

First thing I noticed when I stepped into my office was that when Carl was peering through his reading glasses with his head canted a certain way, he looked an awful lot like Harold. The second was that the wall opposite the window—the perfectly good white wall—was now covered in corkboard. And little slips and scraps of paper were scattered across the board. It wasn’t like one of those big, impressive planning walls you see on television crime dramas. There weren’t maps or bits of string linking pieces of info. But it had the potential to turn into something like that once Darla had more time to stick things to the wall.

“Really?” I said. “You can’t do this on the jumbotron?”

Darla paused at her treadmill desk and gave me a look. But before she could make a remark about how it really shouldn’t matter since I was never there, and besides, someone’s got to make headway in Project Medium, the massive monitor lit up with Laura Kim’s face. It towered down over us as if we were a colony of single-celled organisms that lived in her watch. “Good, you’re all there. We’ve recovered Andy Parsons’ vehicle. I’m sending you the location. I want all three of you over there ASAP to see if you can find…him.”

The thought that he might have left a ghost behind freaked her out. And yet…maybe she was starting to see that it would be awfully convenient if that ghost could tell us what we needed to know.

Carl grabbed a plain black briefcase that I suspected held something a lot more arcane than file folders, and the three of us headed for my car. Carl climbed into the backseat with his exorcism kit and Darla rode shotgun. As she sat, she picked a candy wrapper off the seat with no little disgust. “How old are you, five?”

“That’s not mine.”

She flattened the wrapper across her knee. Black licorice. As if anyone under ninety-nine actually enjoys that.

“They had this in the candy machine at Camp Hell. The only one who ever bought it was….” She gasped. “Are you still with Stefan?”

I nearly sideswiped a dump truck.

“I’m not with him.”

Darla turned to me in dismay, at least as far as her seatbelt would allow. “And your car smells like patchouli. Holy shit, you are.”

“I saw him yesterday. But it’s not like that.”

Behind us, Carl pointedly cleared his throat.

Darla ignored both our discomfort and plowed on. “Are you insane—seriously insane? You’ve got this amazing boyfriend and you go sneaking around with a creep like Stefan?”

“It’s not like that.”

We pulled up to the vehicle, in a parking lot behind an industrial warehouse where an abandoned car could easily go unnoticed for ages. The hubcaps had been pried off. The hood ornament, too. The FPMP was treating it like a crime scene. A ring of Lexuses surrounded the area, and men in black overcoats and dark sunglasses stood guard. But cops in their bulletproof vests and checkerboard hats were conspicuously absent. The FPMP’s jurisdiction ran deep.

The lot hadn’t been plowed, but it was open enough that snow had drifted, and the wind left behind organic trails that were easy to navigate. I pulled up my dented blue Ford behind the herd of dark Lexuses and began walking toward Andy’s car. Darla struggled along behind me in her heels. After that last remark of hers, I felt zero sympathy.

An agent came forward and introduced himself—apparently they’d been expecting me. “Unfortunately,” he said, “there was no way of identifying the vehicle without checking the VIN.” The snow in front was bumper-high. The prints around it were fresh. “Not only are the plates missing, but the locator chip was dug out.”

“Show me,” I said.

As we trudged around to the passenger side, I sucked down white light, and took in the scene with all my senses. I couldn’t quell the sinking feeling that there wouldn’t be anything nonphysical to find. Because if Andy’s ghost was there, it would have accosted me well before the agent who was showing me where the tracker should have been. Passenger side heating vent. I made a mental note to check mine later.

“If there’s anything you need,” the agent said, “let me know. Otherwise, we’ll give you space to do your investigation.”

It was a far cry from the cops all blanching and staring and making snotty remarks when I showed up. That’s for sure.

The black-suited agents made for the perimeter. Darla took a cursory look around the vehicle, then said, “Stefan can’t work his spell on you from a distance, y’know. Just say no.”

“Why does everyone presume I have no will of my own?” I snapped.

Darla made an oh, please face.

“I’m not into him. Hell, I’m frankly a little bit scared of him.”

“And you should be.”

“When we were together, though, it was because that’s what I wanted. Because we were a couple of angry kids with something to prove, and each of us saw something in the other. That’s it. No one was working ‘a spell.’ No psychic abilities needed. But that was ages ago, practically half a lifetime. The only reason I have anything to do with him now is because he’s the only one—”

I turned away.

“The only one, what?” Darla said carefully.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Are you so sure about that?”

“Yeah. I am. Because you called bullshit when I said I couldn’t remember my first ghost. And I can’t—because the memories were pulled out of my fucking head by some goddamn hypnotist. But you think I’m just being an asshole. You, of all people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked in a small voice.

“You know what they did to us. You were there too.”

She turned away. In the tinted Lexus window, I saw her face twist like she was struggling to keep from crying. “I know. I thought I was the one who had it bad. Those orderlies—any reason they could find to brush up against my tits or ass….” She shuddered. “But one day they were dragging me to the lab and I passed you in the hall. You were strapped to a gurney. Shaking all over. Like Movie Mike, before the wheelchair.”

My vision tunneled a little. “Psyactives.”

“You know the really messed up part? Ninety-nine percent of me was relieved it was you and not me. But some small part of me…it was jealous. You never guessed anything right—you never even tried. I was the one with the most hits. So why were they all so fascinated with you?”

I sagged against the vehicle. Contaminated the scene. But my breathing had gone shallow and rapid and I couldn’t find it within myself to care. “Believe me. You were better off.”

She took a breath, dabbed the corner of each eye with a fingertip, turned back toward me and squared her shoulders. “How long ago were you hypnotized?”

“Twenty-five years. Give or take.”

Carl said, “The FPMP didn’t exist. It was founded just after the Ganzfeld Experiment went public.”

“It happened,” I insisted.

He held up one hand in placation. “And I believe you. I’m just saying, it wasn’t the Program. The timing’s all wrong.”

“Maybe in name.” And maybe he had some ulterior motive for wanting me to think so. “But they have access to my records. For all I know, it’s the same folks running the show with new titles—or new names. They’re always so goddamn keen on renaming people. Darla, I’ve got to know what happened to me, and I’m getting nowhere fast on my own. If anyone can help me, it’s you. You’re brilliant and creative, and that’s rare enough. But more important than that—even though we got off on the wrong foot and never saw eye to eye, I trust you.”

“You do?” She seemed genuinely puzzled. “Then why didn’t you just tell me you were gay?” Crap, I hadn’t realized we’d be digging all the way down to pick at the original scab. “I mean, you should’ve known I’d be cool about it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m pan, but I’ve dated a few women, too.”

My mouth worked a few times, but no decent excuse came to mind.

Thankfully, she was willing to answer her own question. “I guess times were different then.”

I said, “It’s never easy to know how anyone will react.” Which was technically true. No need to get into the fact that I was positive any rejection from me would definitely not have been well-received. “But I can’t tell you what a huge relief it is to know we’re good with each other now.”

And that…was the truth.

“Darla, we need to figure out who got to Andy. I’m persona non grata with Laura Kim and I’ve got to get back in her good graces if I ever want to figure out what kind of buried secrets the Program’s been keeping from me.”

She assessed the abandoned coupe, stepping carefully in the bald areas left by the drifting snow. “Fine. So why don’t you just ask your victim?”

My hackles rose as if she was baiting me, mocking my mediumship, the single thing I was actually any good at. But I had nothing to be defensive about. Darla’s talent worked differently from mine—she didn’t get visuals. She really was just wondering. “He’s not here. I’d need to find him first.”

She turned to me and looked me up and down. “I didn’t mean to ask him directly—not like the agent in the stairwell. I’m talking about long-distance.” She must’ve been able to read the ‘huh?’ on my face, because she added, “You’ve never…? Wow.”

“You can actually do that? Talk to them after they’ve moved on?”

“How is it that you can’t, yet you’re so strong you can actually see them when they’re earthbound? Our focus must be phenomenally different. Takes all kinds, I guess. So let’s use it to our advantage…but not here. I’m freezing my ass off.” She glanced around and scoped out our surroundings. Beyond the abandoned parking lot was a stand of weed trees and a few dilapidated postwar homes. On the street corner, a shabby steeple rose above the naked trees. Darla pointed to the old church, and said, “Perfect.”

Chapter 31

Back in Camp Hell, there was a room set aside for use as a chapel. I wasn’t a total stranger to church, I realized, though I hadn’t seen a mass since I walked through Mama Brill’s door with a battered gym bag and a bad attitude. She was convinced organized religion was crooked, and said we should each get in touch with spirituality in our own unique way.

Still, I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with all the trappings of Catholicism: stained glass and wooden pews and the fancy cupboard where the chalice goes. The chapel at Camp Hell had none of these things. It wasn’t entirely nondenominational—there was a plain cross on the far wall—but it was so bland and empty, it looked like it had been cleared to replace the carpet and had never quite got its furniture back, other than a few stacking conference chairs and a sideboard with a box of tissues and a vase of fake flowers.

We four mediums endured periodic visits to the chapel, though Miss Maxwell had never gone so far as to suggest we pray. Religion wasn’t exactly encouraged at Camp Hell. “Sit quietly,” she told us. “In this day and age, there’s so much stimulus, it’s important to take the time in the silence, without video games and television and everything else we use to distract ourselves.”

“How long do we have to sit here?” Richie whined.

“It’s not the length that counts,” Maxwell said. “It’s the quality.”

Darla stage-whispered, “Sure, that’s what all the boys say.”

Faun Windsong was too high and mighty for such juvenile humor, and the joke flew right over Richie’s head.

But me? Oh, man.

If there’s anywhere a fit of the giggles will earn you the nastiest of looks, it’s church. The generic chapel was no exception. I snorfed out a laugh, buried it, and almost had it quelled. But then Darla snickered. Which set me off again. While Faun looked on with a disdainful superiority and Richie tried to figure out what was so funny, we passed this laughter back and forth like a hot potato for the next half an hour. And when we were finally allowed to file out for lunch, Maxwell held Darla back.

Because I couldn’t resist eavesdropping, I lingered just outside the door.

“This is all a big joke to you,” Maxwell said, “but you’d better believe me when I say that your gift of being able to pierce the veil between life and death is a serious responsibility. You should be ashamed of the way you squander your time here.”

“So I can learn what? How to sit in a chair, in a room? Boy, that’s some specialized skill right there.”

“Your bad attitude will cost you. In more ways than you realize.”

Darla flounced out of the room and clucked her tongue as she swept past me. “I get in trouble while you go scot-free. Typical.”

Thinking back on it now, she was absolutely right. My attitude was no better than hers. In fact, if anything, we were frighteningly alike. But I never got dressed down for my dicking around. Not like she did.

Unfortunately, I doubted my ability to skate through my responsibilities would help me in this day and age.

The black-suited agents had made some calls and got the church unlocked for us. The place smelled disconcertingly like Still Goods—old wood and rosin with a hint of faded frankincense. Dust motes danced in the light streaming through the stained glass. It was cold and drafty and eerily empty, but it was still an active church. Announcements for prayer circles, soup suppers and a catechism class dotted the bulletin board, and a bank of lit prayer candles flickered gently beside the distant altar.

Darla took in the vestibule and said, “This’ll be fine. Carl, can you make sure no one interrupts us?” Carl set the black case he’d been carrying on a bench, nodded, and went to stand vigil by the front doors. “And turn off your ringer,” she told me. “Channeling can be tricky and I really need to focus.”

I pulled out my phone and looked at it stupidly.

“What?” she said.

“Uh…new upgrade. Can’t tell whether it’s off or on.”

She rolled her eyes and showed me how to switch on the Do Not Disturb. “Sometimes I wonder if I would’ve tested higher at Camp Hell if we had a teacher who wasn’t so churchy.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “Or even just someone who didn’t rub you so wrong.”

“True. The Nun really was uptight.”

“Think about it this way. Maybe you dodged a bullet.”

She arched a carefully penciled eyebrow at me. “How so?”

“They experimented on me, Dar.”

My voice had been level. Mostly. But she had to drop my gaze. “Sorry. I was thinking about the early days. Before Krimski took over and fired Maxwell and all the other instructors, and locked us all in our rooms. After that I was just focused on getting out of there. Anytime I wasn’t filling out standardized tests, I was cranking out job applications.”

“How? Where?”

“I dunno,” she said, “the job office. The career placement guy.”

I remembered no such guy. Then again, I trusted Darla’s memory of certain years much more than I did my own.

She dropped the matter, turned toward the black case, and popped it open. I must’ve been expecting Richie’s prayer mat and white candles, because I was surprised to see a colorful spread of crystal hunks instead. Each stone was about the size of a fist, nestled in a foam compartment. Darla lifted out the tray, and beneath that were a dozen vials in their own cushy cubbies, winking like the jewels in one of her elaborate necklaces.

She motioned to the array of glittery objects and asked, “Do you have a preference?”

“I, uh, never really had much luck with crystals.”

“Maybe you haven’t found the right one yet.” She turned back to her array and held out her hand above them, focused, like she was testing the vibrations they emitted. And maybe she was. She picked out a craggy hunk of amethyst and anointed it with one of the bottles. “Gem elixirs.”

I nodded as if I knew what that meant.

“Do you hear them?” she asked.

“No.”

“No, I didn’t think so. Even though you can talk to the dead, you seem mostly visual.”

“You can hear them? The crystals?”

“I can, when I shift my attention there. They’re kind of like background noise. The quartz on my nightstand lulls me to sleep. And the stones with veins of impurities have all kinds of funky texture to their voices.”

“Are they…alive?” When she looked at me sharply, I added, “Dumb question.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t think they’re technically alive, or sentient.” She hefted the amethyst and stared into it. “How can I put it so it makes sense to you? If they were visual, they’d be more like a series of mirrors catching a ray from the sun and bouncing it into a dark corner.”

White light. Energy.

The connection sparked between two of my most stubborn neurons, and suddenly I understood the gemstone concept neither Crash nor Miss Mattie had been able to push through my thick skull.

“I think the crystalline structure of salt does the same,” she added.

If she kept going, my brain was going to get too big for my head. It would crack open and puff out like those cans of refrigerator rolls Jacob pretends he doesn’t like. “Pretty cool.”

“Yeah, well.” She cracked a grin. “Can’t say it doesn’t feel good to have someone treat me like I know what I’m doing for a change.”

She held up her amethyst hunk and gazed into it. If I were on psyactives or within the vicinity of a GhosTV, I’d know for sure if she was filling with white light. Even without seeing it, though, I strongly suspected she was. I triggered my own download mechanism, breathed deep, stilled myself, and pictured the beam of pure positive energy pouring in through the big target on my forehead.

Once I was topped off, I took a look around me. No ghosts. No mysterious not-quite-alive critters, either—at least, not that I could sense. Hallowed ground? I wasn’t sure whether the belief of generations of parishioners built up like a dozen coats of paint on a stuck window jamb, or if the only thing that really mattered was what went on inside my own head.

“Now tell me about the guy you want to reach,” Darla said.

“Andy Parsons. An FPMP spy who tailed me at the Fifth Precinct. Turned up in an industrial wood chipper with an agency bullet lodged in his spine.”

“Gotta hand it to Chicago. They never fail to outdo themselves in the gruesome murder department.” She sat on the bench beside her case of rocks, cradled the amethyst in her cupped hands, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Andy, Andy,” she muttered. “What can you tell us about your murder? Andy, Andy, Andy…I’ll bet you’re pretty pissed off about it. Andy, Andy…you gonna let somebody get away with that?

I wasn’t exactly skeptical—hell, I knew that Darla could hear ghosts—but I also knew Andy’s spirit wasn’t in proximity. I also knew that when I dealt with that esoteric membrane that separated life from death, my subtle bodies slipped apart and left my physical shell with the lights out and nobody home. So if Darla was actually able to speak, I wasn’t quite convinced of the accuracy of any messages she might receive. As if she somehow knew I was entertaining doubts, her eyes snapped open.

Milky white cataracts covered her iris and pupil. Startled, I staggered back a few steps.

Darla exhaled.

In the beam of stained light eking through the windows, her breath curled like cigarette smoke with cold.

“Nobody realizes who’s pulling the strings,” she said. In her own voice. Well, of course it was her own voice, it was coming from her vocal cords, her mouth. But still…I was never entirely sure, when push came to shove, how far the metaphysical could hijack everything we know to be true. “Laura Kim thinks she understands, but she doesn’t know the half of it.”

“FPMP national?”

When I spoke aloud, Darla’s head swiveled, and her cloudy eyes set me in their sights. “No, worse. Someone who’s not accountable to anyone because they wipe out every last trace of their activities. Before the FPMP, there was a group. I ran across them when I was studying for my assignment at the Chicago PD. No clue who they are.” Darla smiled grimly. It looked nothing like her usual impish smirk. “But they were all over you, Victor Bayne.”

My heart started pounding so hard, I could barely hear myself speak. “Why? What did they want?”

“Let me go,” Andy said. “It hurts.”

“Not until you help us. You got yourself killed and I’m trying to figure out how—you could at least do your part.”

Darla twitched as if Andy was struggling against her, but she was too strong for him, and eventually he settled down. “Fine. I figured I should know how dangerous you were if I was supposed to be shadowing you. Digital records were crap, so I took a trip to archives and went through the paper. Your files go way back. And not everything made it through the scanner.”

“What did you find?”

“You had your share of ghostly sightings. They started when you were twelve.”

That early? Damn.

“Funny thing was, the detailed records started even earlier than that.” Andy’s words curled from Darla’s lips on tendrils of frost. “The other psychs I tracked had nothing but a history of immunizations and hospital stays before the Ganzfeld research went public. You? Since you could talk, they ran you under the microscope every single year—as if they were looking for something specific. I wonder why.”

“You don’t know?”

“Dreyfuss told me to leave it alone. And after that, your physical paperwork mysteriously disappeared.”

Fucking Dreyfuss. “You said they had me tested. Who are they?”

“According to your records, Social Services.”

I recalled the suited guy in my headshrinker’s waiting room, and my heart tripped over itself.

“Yeah,” Andy said through Darla’s mouth. “I don’t buy it either. In my experience, the real Social Services has more important things to deal with.” The sentence ended in a weird chatter, and I realized Darla’s teeth were clicking together and her nose was red. I felt an unexpected pang of non-psychic empathy for her. The bone-chilling effects of goopy ectoplasm-hand were bad enough. I couldn’t imagine holding that death chill inside me.

As much as I wanted to know every last detail of what Andy had on me, it was obvious Darla wasn’t physically up for an extended interrogation. I cut to the chase. “So, you were the one sending accusations to the press.”

“And look where it got me. Someone had a plant with the news outlet—FPMP national? Or the group who’s been keeping an eye on you all these years?” Darla shrugged stiffly. “Even though it was anonymous, somehow they figured out it was me.”

Did they really? Or did they just know whose printer it came from? “Did you see who shot you?”

Darla jerked her head from side to side. “It was dark.” Of course it was. “But I’d bet my Sammy Sosa home run ball it was the Assassin.”

A chill raced down my spine. It had nothing to do with the deathfrost coming from Darla, and everything to do with the memory of Roger Burke planting the fear of the Assassin in my brain. Once I convinced myself Laura Kim was not the Assassin’s secret identity, I’d chalked the whole thing up to a tall tale from Burke.

And now Andy was telling me the mythical Assassin was real.

Not only that, but their bullet could’ve come from the FPMP armory.

Darla’s head started to tic, and clear snot drooled from her nose. Beneath her lip gloss, her lips had taken on a bluish tinge.

“Tell me something that’ll help me ID your killer,” I demanded. “Anything at all.”

“It was dark,” he repeated, and Darla’s voice had gone funny, clipped, like she couldn’t hold on to him much longer. “But the last thing I did was answer a summons from—”

Darla sucked in a rattling breath, then started to twitch.

“Who?” I shouted in her face. “Who?”

She spasmed a few more times, then shuddered. And when I figured it was all my own fault for questioning Andy about my own records instead of his stupid murder, Darla wheezed out the words, “Laura Kim.”

Darla seized up and went stiff, and emptied her lungs in one great, frosty gasp. And then the shivering began in earnest. “Get out of here, Andy,” I shouted. “Go.”

But her eyes were already clearing.

She sucked air, then started panting as if she’d just sprinted to the corner and back. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth to try and get the shaking under control. I was right there beside her. I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her frigid face to my chest, and tried to will my body warmth into her. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

She grumbled a little. But she didn’t pull away.

“That was amazing,” I told her. “You did great.”

“So now you’ve got your shooter?”

The diplomatic reply I was searching for was too long in coming.

She shoved off me, and snapped, “He didn’t know, did he? Damn it. Does anyone have a tissue?”

Carl edged out of the shadows, not with a gun in his hand…but a handkerchief. He was trying to play it cool, but his eyes were showing white all around. Not like he was scared of being caught—more like he was scared of the freaking dead guy talking through his office mate. His whole arm was shaking when he handed Darla the hankie. Once she took it, he abandoned all semblance of casual acceptance, and crossed himself.

I had to admit, although Darla’s performance had left me feeling somewhat inadequate, it was a big relief for someone else to be the scariest member of the team for a change.

Chapter 32

If there’s one thing Jacob approaches with extreme caution nowadays, it’s tracking the whereabouts of Laura Kim. It didn’t matter that he was absolutely correct when he pegged her for Roger Burke’s shooting. He couldn’t afford to ever get it wrong when it came to pointing the finger at the director.

Three of us were crowded behind the desk. Jacob scrolled through a bunch of files on his monitor. Beside him, Darla cradled a cup of jasmine tea to her chest while I hovered over his shoulder. “Here we go,” he said, “parking garage footage.” On camera, Laura strode to the best parking spot in the garage and climbed into her gleaming Lexus. There was a timestamp in the corner. “Andy left just after noon, but Laura was here for another six hours. Even if she didn’t go straight home, according to the lab, he was already dead by then.

Darla said, “And do we know where Director Kim was when Colleen Frank took a dive?”

Jacob pulled up a shot of Laura eating lunch.

It was pretty telling that he happened to have it at the ready.

“Just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate,” I said, “we’d need to consider the fact that if Laura wanted to get rid of someone—I seriously can’t even believe I’m entertaining this—she probably wouldn’t pull the trigger herself. She’s the director. She’s got agents for that.”

Darla’s wheels were turning. “You could pull all her correspondence…if you made it look like we thought she was the one at risk.”

“Or…” Jacob looked at me thoughtfully. “You could see what your new pal knows.”

I drew a blank.

Jacob said, “Isn’t that the whole reason you’ve been cozying up to Patrick Barley? To get an in with Laura?”

“If this is what an in looks like, I’d hate to be on the outs.”

Jacob warmed to his idea. “He’s got access to all of Laura’s calls, hasn’t he?”

“He’s got access to lots of things,” I agreed. Trying to question him without it coming off as an interrogation would be a challenge, but I did owe him a trip to the shooting range. It occurred to me as I texted Patrick that I was using him. I felt kind of bad about that…but not bad enough to refuse to do it.

We met up at the range after work. Patrick greeted me with, “Ready to make some paper targets feel sorry they were ever born?”

As we checked in, I was surprised to find Agent Watts was still there, looking no-nonsense and grim. In the field or on an investigation, sure, we clocked in some crazy long hours. But Watts started her day at the range well before the crack of dawn. Her job fell into the “important but not urgent” category. I couldn’t fathom why she was putting in twelve-plus hour shifts. Maybe she worked a split shift. Or maybe she was saving for a new Beretta.

“If it’s not the Fifth Precinct,” she said coolly. Probably annoyed that I hadn’t returned a single one of her emails. Or even opened them, for that matter.

“You said I needed to practice. So here I am.” I grabbed the sign-in sheet. “Which shooting stall?”

“Gallery’s full,” she said. “But I’ve got an opening in our precision analysis suite.”

Gee, that didn’t sound intimidating at all.

She led Patrick and me to the part of the building where all the expensive tech lived, the specialized gear that really separated our agency from the boys in blue. The soundproofing must’ve been phenomenally thick, but even so, distant sounds of detonations carried through to the hallway. Sometimes in my old apartment, I heard my downstairs neighbor watching movies as I made my way up the stairs. He had a thing for those old war flicks. Creepy how much the real guns sounded like something as innocuous as a TV set.

Watts led us into a long, narrow room with electronics hanging all around the single shooting stall. “This firing system will analyze your stance, and automatically suggest better foot placement. Tonight we’re working on multiple rounds. We’re not conserving ammo, here. In a life and death situation, you fire as many as it takes. Aim for the chest and keep shooting until the threat is removed.”

Patrick took in the room, and said, “The targets seem a lot closer than they do in the regular stalls.”

“Stance and accuracy go hand in hand,” Watts told him. She handed two full magazines to each of us. “This should be enough for our analysis. Just follow the automated cues.”

With that, she left the room.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” Patrick said. “I thought we’d each be in our own stalls. Now you get to see my crappy aim up close.”

“I’m the last one to throw stones.” I checked my magazine—still full—then snapped it back into place. “You want to go first, or should I?”

“You go. Maybe I can pick up some pointers.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

Patrick took off his glasses and gave them a quick polish before putting his safety glasses over them. When Jacob’s cheaters were sitting on the coffee table, I noticed they distorted the objects behind them. Patrick’s didn’t. Must’ve been a different sort of prescription.

Once our hearing protection was in place too, I stepped up to the stall. As I positioned myself, I reflected that maybe the shooting range wasn’t the best spot to pick Patrick’s brain, seeing as how conversation was pretty much impossible. Instructions flashed on a readout, and I followed them. Weaver Stance, Power Point, Kneel. Multiple shots. Reload, and repeat. All around me, mechanical eyes recorded and the brains behind them quantified the precise level of shittiness in my technique.

I emptied the second magazine, same as the first, seventeen rounds, three new positions. When that was done, the instructions went dead.

I stood from the kneel I’d been instructed to assume, and jostled against Patrick. I’d been so focused, I’d forgotten he was even there. And even so, the target at the far end of the gallery didn’t look particularly impressive. I’d hit the body mass, but my precision was pretty sad. In most shooting situations, you don’t get thirty-four chances to stop your target.

I slipped off my headphones and said, “I think after all this scrutiny we deserve to treat ourselves. Did you have dinner plans?”

Patrick cocked his head like he was surprised I’d initiated off-duty contact, then shrugged and said, “I do now.”

I honestly wasn’t trying to stare, but it only took a couple seconds for me to reload, and then there was nothing else to look at but the poor target who got inadvertently kneecapped, twice, before Patrick’s wild shots finally put the paper guy out of its misery.

Afterward, I suggested deep dish pizza. Not only was it a great opportunity to indulge, since Jacob frowns on me consuming so much cholesterol in one sitting, but those things take a good forty-five minutes or more to get to the table. That would give me plenty of time to see what he knew about Laura.

“I wasn’t so sure how I felt about two sessions in one day,” Patrick said, “but I think it reinforced some of the pointers Agent Watts gave me this morning.”

Had it really been less than a day since I’d blown him off? I jammed a breadstick in my mouth to save myself from asking it out loud.

“I think I see some improvement already,” he added.

I highly doubted it. The targets in the analysis room were just closer. “How’s your other training going? Hang up on anyone lately?”

“Not today—knock on wood.” Patrick rapped on the tabletop, which I suspected was actually a plastic laminate. “But everyone’s used to doing things at the speed of Laura. It’s going to take some time before all those codes and sequences just flow out my fingers like touch-typing. Or like you pulling the trigger of your Glock. That three-shot sequence you did at the range…wow. Bang-bang-bang.”

I pushed aside a vision of Triple-Shot doing his eternal pirouette and said, “Can’t take that much credit—it’s a semi-automatic. So how is it, working with Laura?”

“Given that she sometimes needs to explain things more than once, I think she’s pretty patient.”

I might have thought so too, once. But lately it seemed like a single strike landed me on her no-call list. “Funny how busy she always seems. Back when Dreyfuss was in charge, he had all kinds of time to make my life miserable.”

“I didn’t know the guy. But I’m sure once Laura establishes herself, things will settle down.”

In fact, for someone with the highest clearance in the agency, Patrick didn’t know all that much. Too busy trying to figure out how to keep the hamster wheels running smoothly. He entertained me (marginally) with stories about his mistakes and near-misses while we waited for our pizza, and I found myself wondering how I could get him to start focusing on juicier inside information…without seeming too obvious about it.

Finally our food arrived, all gooey and cheesy, with a buttery crust and delectable puddles of cheese-grease pooling on top. My mouth was watering already. But you had to let a good deep dish settle. Otherwise the filling would just slide right out. While we were both focused on the pie, Patrick said, “I was worried.”

Didn’t sound like he was talking about the pizza. “About what?” I asked casually.

“That the only reason you cashed in our rain check was to pump me for information.” Fuck. What was my face doing? I clamped down on my expression, hard. “But the night’s half over and you didn’t so much as hint at what I thought you were going to ask. Not even close.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s okay,” he said. “After everything you’ve been through, I can’t blame you for being curious about Elaine Kleinman.”

* * *

I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles went white.

“Your therapist wasn’t named,” Patrick said. “Or, more accurately, the name was there, but blacked out. The thing is, I think there might have been more than one. The earliest reference I found, you were five. Your kindergarten teacher wanted to hold you back, said you couldn’t grasp numbers. Said they should’ve waited until your next birthday to enroll you in school. I guess that wasn’t uncommon in households with multiple foster kids to start early. Made sense to get you in school as soon as possible and get you out of the house.

“The school figured you would catch up. They checked in on you at the end of every academic year to see how you were doing—and eventually the whole number issue did hold you back—but as far as I can tell, they didn’t start really scrutinizing you until you were older.”

My God, what if the pattern Andy saw in my records was nothing more than my shitty aptitude at math? It was so tempting to think I’d freaked out over nothing.

But then I remembered the hockey ghost. And I was forced to admit that in all likelihood, my past was just as messed up as I suspected.

“So over the years, you’ve had more than one therapist,” Patrick said. “If you were ten years younger, maybe things would’ve been handled differently. By then, they knew about mediums. They wouldn’t have been so quick to label you as schizophrenic.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. He nodded gravely and said, “I’m really sorry.”

“Yeah. Seems like I always manage to take the roundabout route.”

Patrick finessed a hefty slice out of the pizza—it’s no mean feat with all those tethers of melted cheese—and almost managed to land it unscathed. But at the last minute, the pizza’s traction gave way and the piece nearly slid off his plate. He course corrected, but not before a spattering of chunky tomato sauce inaugurated his bare hand.

“Agh, jeez, it’s like lava.”

I tipped some ice water onto my napkin and handed it over.

“Good thing it’s not my shooting hand,” he joked.

“So these annual psychiatric visits, they didn’t get more frequent ’til I was, what, twelve?”

“Something like that.”

The timing jibed with everything Andy posthumously told me. Only the motivation was different. In one scenario, a gaggle of proto-FPMP researchers was waiting to see when my dubious gifts would manifest. In the other, I was just a problem child who couldn’t keep his numbers straight.

I’d buy either story…which meant the veracity hinged on the storytellers. The way Andy Parsons always stared at me got under my skin, but now that I knew what it was about me that spooked him, I was more apt to forgive his scrutiny. Hard to say if my kinship with Patrick was based entirely on the new-guy bond, or if there really was something about him that I could identify with. Or maybe it was just refreshing to not be the first one to spill dinner on myself.

Patrick snagged our waiter and asked for more napkins, then turned back to the table and considered me. He said, “I can’t imagine it was easy having these supposed authority figures telling you who you were. Even though it turned out they were completely wrong, given the power differential, the deck couldn’t have been stacked against you more.”

“Enough about me,” I said, before the conversation left me feeling sorrier for myself than I already did. “I’m not the only one who has trouble with fractions. What about you?”

I’d been hoping to turn the conversation back toward his job, to get some sense of whether Laura really was as busy as she claimed, or if she was being distant and weird. But apparently Patrick thought we were still sharing horror stories about our early therapy experiences. “Me? Well…my family over-intellectualized everything. A normal parent would’ve just taken away my Nintendo. But no. Instead of punishing me for acting up at school, they shuffled me off to a series of analysts. If I hear ‘how does that make you feel?’ one more time, I’ll lose it for sure.”

I suspect a high proportion of mental health professionals are empaths or telepaths, even if they don’t have a government certificate proclaiming their talent and level. I was just about to ask him if he thought those headshrinkers found his True Stiffness confusing, but stopped myself when I realized he’d never confided in me about his talent. It wasn’t worth letting on everything I knew about the subject for the sake of keeping the conversation flowing, even if that observation pointed to the fact that Patrick and I had a hell of a lot in common, two psychs who grew up groping their way through a world that didn’t understand them.

I said, “At least at the FPMP, we know everyone else is being put through the same psychiatric grind. Although it’s hard to imagine anyone dumb enough to screw up the mental health questions on the intake forms.”

“I know we’re not supposed to discuss it…” Patrick leaned in conspiratorially. “But, seriously, no one with half a brain would answer, Sure! It’s totally appropriate to shoot an unarmed civilian.”

“Or, Bribe? How much are we talking?”

We smiled at our own wit as we got busy with the pizza, which was now at that perfect temperature. Still oozy melted, but no longer molten enough to take the skin off the roof of your mouth. Once our smiles faded and we had some food in us, I admitted, “Frankly, I am a little worried that I won’t be able to deliver whatever it is that Laura’s expecting of me.”

“What she’s really concerned about are those Agents, Lipton and Garcia. You’re sure they’re safe?”

“I haven’t heard otherwise.”

“How is it that Agent Marks managed to hide them at such short notice?”

“He has his ways. I don’t ask—the less I know, the less likely some nosy telepath can pick it out of my head.”

“My offer still stands,” Patrick reassured me. “Anything I can do to help, just let me know.”

Chapter 33

It was late by the time I got home, but the downstairs lights were still on. When I’m the only one home, that doesn’t mean much. But, come bedtime, Jacob is compelled to rid the house of artificial light. I guess it makes all the crap he’s left on the floor easier to trip over. I stomped off my shoes, locked the door behind me, and called out, “I’m not so convinced good ol’ Andy knew what he was talking about after all.”

When Jacob didn’t reply, I figured he was either sequestered in the basement gym or tucked away upstairs in his office, but when I rounded the living room I found him on the couch with his finger pressed to his lips. I’d need to give Agent Garcia a good talking to and figure out if the cannery was bugged, once and for all. But then I saw the ball of gray fur nestled in Jacob’s lap, and realized the gag-order had nothing to do with listening devices.

Not gonna lie. Seeing Jacob in his sweatpants and reading glasses, unwilling to disturb a stranger’s cat…it was disconcertingly cute. I loosened my tie and slipped onto the couch beside them, carefully, so as not to bother our guest.

Jacob had half a ream of paper printed with something that looked like random alphanumeric garbage. “Andy’s email records—the source code. It was the best I could do without anyone knowing specifically what I’m looking for. I’m sure the agents in Data Analysis could tell me exactly which part of the transcript correlates to the email I want. But I can’t risk it.”

I picked up a sheet from his discard pile. Just looking at it made my brain hurt.

Jacob took off his glasses and set them aside. “Learn anything from Patrick?”

“Only that Andy might’ve been dead wrong about my permanent record—the part where I’m under someone’s microscope from the get-go.” I laughed bitterly. “Newsflash: turns out I suck at math.”

The gray cat, annoyed by our talking, leapt to the floor with a thump. It stretched one leg behind it, then the other, then arched its back dramatically toward the ceiling, flicked its tail, and strode off.

Jacob’s empty lap looked like it had been hit by a fur bomb. “I think you need to lose the sweatpants,” I said sagely. “Seeing as how I’m allergic.”

My opportunities to initiate sex with Jacob are few and far between, mainly because every time we stumble across a spare minute, he’s already floated the invitation. We stole off to the bedroom, stripped down, climbed under the comforter, and rolled to face each other. Jacob regarded me with such seriousness, it was hard to endure the scrutiny. “Are you okay, really? All this stuff from your childhood being dredged up, if you need to talk about it….”

I didn’t. Hell, wallowing in my past was the last thing I wanted. I trailed my fingers down his stomach and slipped them between his thighs, where his skin was hot, and my touch made his breath catch.

We kissed. Our tongues reacquainted themselves with each other while our bodies fit their planes and valleys together. My skin must’ve been cold against his—my car heater won’t win any awards for keeping the winter chill at bay—but we reached an equilibrium soon enough. It was as if the physicality of our bodies was always striving for balance…when it wasn’t straining for release. I eased a fingertip down his ass crack and felt his cock thicken against my thigh. Our kisses grew more insistent.

I pressed lower. As much as Jacob revels in topping, he gets a charge out of being poked and prodded, too. He groaned into my mouth, grasped our stiffening cocks together. I had a bellyful of grease and mozzarella, but if he wanted me to do him, I supposed I’d manage. But when he slid his mouth from mine, instead of telling me to fuck him, what he said was, “I just want to make sure you’re all right. Between all that redacted information and the memories you dredged up with Stefan, it must be a hell of a lot to process.”

I shoved a couple of fingers into his mouth to shut him up. He gave a grunt and started sucking, and jacked us both harder. This old dance of ours might only be a distraction, but was it really such a bad way to avoid myself? When my fingers were wet, I squeezed the hand between his thighs and started petting his hole.

“Damn, that’s hot,” Jacob said.

I guess when you really want to change the subject, you’ve gotta be assertive.

We did a quick scramble, him for lube, me for an old T-shirt to slip under his rump to minimize the potential wet spot. He bent his knees and canted his ass toward me. I led in with just a finger to prime the pump, then assumed the position, mostly under the comforter. But plenty of light leaked in around our heads that I could see Jacob staring up at me, watching intently while I sank in.

Normally, I secretly dug it when he murmured those embarrassing come-ons about how much he wanted it. But tonight, I was hoping to skip the commentary and get right to the part where the pursuit of an orgasm blotted out everything. I pressed my mouth to his while I bore down inside him, and something shifted. It was like I’d fumbled through a password a bunch of times and finally keyed it in right. I felt Jacob surrender beneath me. And the power was intoxicating.

I may never fully shed the anxiety that I’m probably doing something wrong, but I knew Jacob well enough to know when he’s enjoying himself and not just stroking my ego. Or maybe I’d been nailed so many times myself, I couldn’t help but pick up a few pointers. I angled myself to make sure I was hitting that sweet spot and got busy. It took a fair amount of concentration to move past the so tight—so good stage and make sure we were both getting what we wanted out of the deal. But once I found the angle and the rhythm, I could plow ahead and lose myself.

It’s frighteningly easy to lose myself in him.

He gazed up at me, all big, dark eyes and killer cheekbones. And those lips. I’ve seen pre-facial-hair photos—I know his mouth is so sensuous, no one would take him seriously if he didn’t camouflage it with is goatee. His lips were especially flushed now from kissing, gently parted. I stared at that hot mouth of his while we fucked, because it turned me on, and because it was easier than looking him in the eyes. And whenever it seemed like he might kill the moment by saying something, I treated him to a deliberate grind that chased the intrusive words away.

What would it take, I wondered, for moments like this to actually be our lives? To come home to a house that wasn’t potentially bugged, from jobs where the worst thing we had to worry about was meeting a sales quota? To befriend people only because you enjoyed their company? To bury yourself inside each other for the simple reason that you wanted to come?

Jacob tangled his fingers in my hair and arched against me. Sure, in bed he was a hot bod and a pretty face—but, honestly, without the mind behind the man-candy, I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to sacrifice my independence and settle down with him for the long haul.

For now, though, as he angled his hips up to meet me thrust for thrust, he was doing a damn fine job. When it was clear I’d finish without him if I kept hurtling down the path I was taking, I wedged a hand between us to start beating him off. I was worried for a minute there that he’d bring up the conflicting revelations about my past and kill the mood—it would take some serious flexibility to fuck, jack and kiss him at the same time, so I had to settle for two out of three—but when he spoke, it was nothing more earth-shattering than a heartfelt, “God, yeah….”

He started his climb for real. I could tell by the way he was clawing at the sheets, by the feel of his whole body tensing, yes, even his ass. As if it wasn’t gloriously hot and slick and tight already. When he was so taut he started to quiver, I knew I was safe enough to let loose and pound away. I came inside him, hard, hammering him for all I was worth, lost for that one moment of sheer pleasure, the half-second where I shed the knowledge of my own inadequacy just long enough to bust a nut. It was a lot to ask for such a short span of time. But that single moment of anonymity and weightlessness was worth it. Always.

Chapter 34

Note to self: if you’re gonna be banging it out with such wild abandon, set an alarm.

I never oversleep. But when I do, it’s because I’m glued to the sheets with a smile on my face. The first clue that I should’ve been awake long ago was that I sensed the room lightening through my closed lids. My eyes were so crusty, my eyelashes were cemented shut, but I could pry them open just enough to see by the wan daylight that our three furry houseguests had wedged themselves between Jacob and me. When I rolled over, the black and white one stood and stretched while the other two repositioned themselves in the warm spot I’d left behind.

The digital clock beside Jacob’s head was a blur. As I scraped the gunk from my eyes, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and said, “What time is it?”

The phone ignored me. And then it didn’t acknowledge my morning scowl, either. I supposed I should be grateful it had lasted as long as it did without me charging it even once. I rounded the bed, picked up Jacob’s alarm clock and squinted hard through my firewall of crust. “Fuck, it’s after seven. Hey.” I jostled Jacob. I might as well have been plumping up the pillows. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty, get up. It’s way late.”

Once he muttered something marginally word-like, he was on his own. I grabbed a clean suit and shirt, and charged downstairs to the shower. The tabby did its best to trip me on my way down, but I managed to swerve around it.

I could’ve stood under that showerhead all morning, but there just wasn’t time. I hopped out, threw on my clothes, blasted my hair with a blow-dryer, and lamented the fact that my coffee hadn’t managed to make itself.

Jacob hustled past me as I knotted my tie. Not very well, but it would have to do. “Listen to this,” he said, and stuck his phone in my hand. Director Kim, according to the screen, and the time of the message was just after 5 a.m.

“Agent Marks, I need you to report in as early as possible and wrap up as much of your investigation as you can. I got a tip that FPMP National is going to step in. Today? Next week? I’m not sure. But their M.O. has always been to cover things up and make them disappear. Two of our agents were killed, in our house. We need to find out what happened before the entire investigation goes away.

“And what the heck is up with Vic? He’s not returning any of my calls.”

I groaned. “Where’s your charger?”

“Kitchen counter. But it’s a different model from yours.”

I had extra batteries somewhere, didn’t I? I thought back to the last time I’d seen them. Back at HQ.

“I’m heading in,” I told Jacob.

He nodded and hopped into the still-dripping shower.

I was halfway to the office, marveling at the fact that traffic was nonexistent, when I realized it was Saturday. Was Laura Kim at the office, or was she set up to work from home? I tried to buzz her on my phone, realized it was still dead (likely because I still hadn’t charged it) and ended up going to my own office to try my luck with the landline.

To my surprise, Darla was there.

No Saturday casual for her. She wore a sleek black pantsuit with a dark blue blouse, and a sparkly pin casting tiny rainbows over her lapel. Her hair was swept up in a twist and her makeup was pristine. The only element of her wardrobe that wasn’t full-on professional business was her footwear: black trainers. And she’d only conceded to wear them because she was walking on her treadmill. “I wasn’t sure you came in on the weekends,” she said.

“The murders can’t wait till Monday.”

“I tried calling you, but it went right to voicemail. Some chick was looking for you. A chick with combat boots and no sense of humor whatsoever.”

“Battery’s drained.” I held up the phone as if that would prove something. “I think I’ve got a charger here somewhere.” I set the phone on my desk—the one I hardly ever used—and began rifling through the drawer for the accessories Patrick had given me. I only found a car charger, which wouldn’t do me any good unless Darla’s treadmill had a port for a cigarette lighter, but I stuck it in my pocket anyway.

“Anyhow,” Darla said, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe your Andy guy couldn’t tell you who shot him, but I’m guessing he could at least say where it happened. There’s bound to be some kind of evidence we could use if we could at least find the scene. Right?”

Damn, she really was smart. I wanted to tell her so. And to express concern about the toll it took on her body to reach past the veil for the sake of playing messenger. And to let her know that I totally valued the skills she brought to the table. But I’d caught a glimpse of something on the floor that completely hijacked my brain.

It was a shoe.

I deal with my fair share of floor shoes—I live with Jacob, after all. It wasn’t the shoe itself that sent me into flashback mode. It was the angle, and the way I was seeing it through the spiky leaves of one of the many dozens of plants that crowded the office. The leaves were roughly the same shape as the overgrown, grassy weeds by the railroad tracks. And the shoe lay on its side just so….

Daylight. Wind nipping at my bare neck. Me swiping at my runny nose and chafing my peach fuzz mustache. Four new cigarettes falling to the ground with a gentle patter with me frozen in shock. Not from the shoe I was seeing, but the flicker of motion above it.

In comic books, artists drew motion lines to indicate when something was traveling through space. I’d never expected to see anything like that in real life, any more than I thought random punctuation symbols could tumble out of someone’s mouth when they swore.

I figured it for nothing. The flutter of a plastic bag. A shifting shadow. But as I stood there staring at the spot trying to figure out what the hell I’d just seen, it happened again.

The shoe. Arcing toward the spot where it landed. Like a shadow, if a shadow were in color, and kind of transparent. I couldn’t blame the nicotine—I hadn’t inhaled—so I was sure that whatever trick of the light was messing with me, no way would it happen a third time.

And then, it did.

I crept forward and tried to touch the thing I’d seen, but of course it was empty air. When it happened again, it startled me so badly I twisted an ankle, went down hard, and landed on my ass in the rocky strip beside the railroad track. It hurt—seriously hurt—but the pain was obliterated by the sight of a man tumbling through the air, soundless and transparent. One of his shoes flew off and pinwheeled toward the spot I’d just been attempting to touch. The rest of him somersaulted off into the tall grass without disturbing a single blade. Rocky gravel sprayed as I scrabbled backward on my elbows and heels, but there was nothing for me to flee. Nothing physical, at any rate.

I sprawled there with rocks digging into my palms and ass, and I gawked while my heart pounded so hard my pulse whooshed in my ears. And when I finally convinced myself it was all a trick of my eyes, it happened again.

Shaking so hard it was a wonder I could even walk, I crept toward the spot where the semi-transparent man who’d been catapulted from the railroad tracks had landed.

I found the other shoe.

If it had been warmer out, if I’d been downwind—or if the body had been fresher—the smell of decomp would have prepped me for what I was about to see. But the particulars were just right. I didn’t know I was looking at my first corpse until I put together that the jagged, pale stick protruding from the other shoe was somebody’s leg bone.

My friends found me screaming and pointing. They handled it pretty well. They might’ve been two years younger, but my reaction must’ve alerted them to what they were about to see, whereas I’d been totally blindsided. One of them went into a spiel about nobody touching anything because it might be a murder scene—he never missed an episode of Law & Order—and the group of us hightailed it out of there to go tell our folks.

I’d found Harold at home, scrubbing a gang tag off the fence. He took one look at me, and before I even got a word out, he knew something was seriously wrong. He grabbed me by both shoulders, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “What is it, Victor? Did it happen again?”

My conscious mind was thinking, “Did what happen again?” But that wasn’t my answer. Instead, what I told him was, “Yes.”

I looked up from Darla’s shoe, dazed. She was still talking, but I wasn’t hearing. I was too busy wishing I’d said something, done something different. Anything that didn’t lead me to the session with Dr. Kleinman that ended with me going home to a completely new family and a life I never wanted.

“What’s with that look?” Darla asked.

I shook my head. “One of my earliest ghosts—it was a repeater. Probably would have chalked it up to a trick of the light, if it weren’t for the decomposed body a few feet away.”

“Interesting. I wonder how many other FPMP agents just so happened to stumble across a dead person when they were young?” One good thing about talking ghost with another medium. They didn’t bother coddling you. “So we’ll add that to our checklist, but what about Andy Parsons?”

“Sorry…what were we talking about?”

She straddled her treadmill belt, turned off the machine and stepped down. “We could try again. Sometimes I can manage a second channeling, but it’s not easy. The dead hate it. Once they know how it feels, they get better at slipping my connection. He’ll try to dodge me, and I might not be able to snag him. I’ve most definitely never managed a third try, so this is our last shot. Anything you need to ask him, figure it out before I go looking.”

I was leery of bringing Jacob in on the channeling session. Maybe he got off on watching me do my thing, but Darla’s talent was a much weirder ball of wax. Seeing her in action might taint his second-favorite pastime, but since I was well aware of how it felt when he made important decisions without me, I invited him to join us. He was relieved to get a break from frantically combing through Andy’s emails. Together, the three of us decided that the murder location and exact time of death were the most valuable pieces of information. With those, we could survey the area, uncover new witnesses, and if we were lucky, catch our killer on camera.

While I would have preferred bright lights and an empty office to work in, I wasn’t the talent, for once. Darla shut the blinds, turned off the overhead lights, and set the jumbotron to play a colorful, abstract screen saver. She sat back in her plush leather chair, selected a crystal from her massive assortment, and gazed into it. Jacob was watching her as intently as she was watching the crystal. Me? I was watching him.

“Okay, Andy,” Darla said. Her gaze went soft and vacant as she searched for the headspace she needed. “I know it sucks, but I’ve got to ask. Andy Parsons. C’mon, guy, you want justice, don’t you? Andy, Andy. I’ll make it quick, I promise. Andy, Andy, Andy. Where…were…you…?”

Darla’s voice slowed to a crawl, and as it did, her irises and pupils filmed over. She stilled. Went quiet. And then stiffened all over as she sucked in a great gasp.

The temperature in the room plummeted. Jacob clutched my arm hard enough to leave a mark.

Darla blinked, then turned toward me with those unseeing white eyes, and smiled. It looked a heck of a lot like her trademark Dead Darla evil grin…except I knew damn well that Darla wasn’t home.

“Detective Bayne,” she purred. “What a pleasant surprise.” Gooseflesh raced down my arms. It might have sounded like my old frienemy Darla, but it couldn’t have been anyone other than Jennifer Chance.

Chapter 35

Jacob was on his feet with his gun out before I even registered what he was doing.

“Stand down,” I barked. “You’re not shooting Darla.”

Besides the fact that the target was incorporeal, the stopping power was unnecessary. While Darla was channeling, it seemed, she couldn’t really move around. Just her head. Chance turned Darla’s milky eyes toward Jacob, and her wicked smile got even broader. “I wouldn’t put physical violence past Detective Marks…he’s no stranger to manhandling a woman.”

Like Jacob needed yet another reminder of how it felt to wrestle her over to the other side. Darla’s breath came out in visible puffs of vapor, but the whole room had gone so cold, and so did Jacob’s and mine. Just like the morgue. Fuck. “You’re not wanted here,” I told Chance. “Get the hell out.”

“Or what? You’ll pull the trigger? I didn’t think so. Now, take me to my tuner.”

“The one Dreyfuss had hidden? It’s gone, thanks to you. Grabbed up by FPMP National.”

“Perfect! Then show me the headlines. I need to see.”

“What headlines?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Detective.” The words were harsh on puffs of frozen vapor. “My tuner is the biggest thing in Psych since the Ganzfeld experiments. Now show me the headlines.”

“There are none. The goons you called in confiscated your damn equipment. It’s gone, totally dismantled, or buried deep in some federal bunker. Happy?”

“Well…at least Dr. K never got the chance to take credit for—”

“Vic?”

I swung around to the flatscreen and found Patrick’s face filling the massive monitor. He squinted as if he was trying to figure out the controls. I wasn’t sure exactly how much the executive staff could see of me when they videoed in to my office, but I presumed the camera was somewhere above the monitor, like an oversized webcam.

Instinctively, I stood and blocked his view of Darla. Nothing personal. I was just unaccustomed to letting my talent hang loose, and felt the same protective instinct for my old cohort. “Now’s not really a good time.”

“Oh…sorry…it’s just you haven’t answered my texts and my calls are going to voicemail.”

“Phone’s dead.”

“So you haven’t seen my email either?”

“Seriously, I’m right in the middle of something, I’ll catch you soon as I’m done.”

“Okay, great—but don’t forget. I dug up some special info you asked about.”

“Yep, just as soon as I finish up here.”

Patrick gave a stilted wave, and the jumbotron went blue.

“What’s Patrick Barley doing at the FPMP?” Jennifer Chance said.

I whirled around to face her and was startled anew by Darla’s white eyes. And now her lips were turning blue and her teeth were beginning to chatter.

It took me a second to figure out how she knew him, but then I realized the two of them had worked together at The Clinic for quite a while. “It’s no big secret,” I said. “Admin is admin.”

“Well, sure. If you’re just talking about some secretary from your local temp agency. Seems a little slapdash, even for Dreyfuss, giving such high access clearance to a psychopath.”

“Who, Patrick?”

Most folks, when they call someone a psychopath, mean that person is violent and out of control. Chance was a medical doctor, though. And if she was using the word in the clinical sense, the diagnostic sense, the evidence would be a lot more subtle. True psychopaths aren’t typically axe murderers, but they do have a big bunch of nothing where their feelings are supposed to be. Yet they’re really good at mimicking human emotion.

I can’t imagine it was easy having these supposed authority figures telling you who you were.

Was Patrick a psychopath?

Or had his earliest clinicians just assumed so, if they were undiagnosed empaths who couldn’t get an emotional read on him because he was a Stiff? Maybe. Or maybe he wasn’t a Stiff at all, and Bly had just attributed his emotional blankness to a psychic cause.

I wasn’t sure if Chance could actually see me though Darla’s physical eyes, but she sure seemed to be enjoying my confusion. She smiled wider. Darla’s lower lip cracked, and a bead of blood welled up.

“Look what this is doing to Darla,” Jacob said. “Get rid of Chance. Get her out of here.”

“You can try.” Chance closed her eyes and rolled her neck, and it gave off a sound like bubble wrap. “But I’ve been in this body before. It’s a very good fit, and I’ve got urgent business. I certainly don’t trust you to have followed up on my tuner—you were always too self-involved to see the big picture.”

I cast around for something to use—salt, Florida water, even one of Richie’s blessed candles—but Darla had well and truly taken over the office, and there was nothing at hand but her crystals. I grabbed a craggy hunk of quartz and tried to suck white light into it, but I might as well have been attempting to get a cat to speak Mandarin. The rock wasn’t attuned to me. And in my hands, it was nothing more than a paperweight.

I lunged for the supply cabinet beside Carl’s desk—I’d catch hell for that come Monday—and yanked open the doors one after the other. File folders, scotch tape…and holy water. I yanked out the bottle, threw the cap on the floor, and flung the water at Darla. Belatedly, I hoped it didn’t scald her like battery acid. But all it did was wet her blouse.

Darla ignored it. Her eyes closed and her brows drew down in concentration.

Her fingers twitched. Chance’s physical control was spreading.

“Do something,” Jacob begged. But this was so far out of my league, I had no idea what else to try.

I reached into my pocket, which held nothing more than a dead cell phone, and came up with a handful of invisible fairy dust. With panic heightening my emotions, the mojo was strong. To my inner eye, it glowed. “You’re dead,” I shouted at Jennifer Chance as I flung the psychic dust. “Stay that way.”

Darla’s eyes shot open. Milky clouds roiled around inside the iris for a moment. They cleared—but only briefly. And then solidified into that hideous, blank white. “Nice try, Detective. But I’m vibrating on an entirely different frequency. Neither your psychic talent nor the hunk of metal in your holster can stop me.”

Darla’s eyelashes were white with rime now, and her teeth chattered continuously. The skin on her lips furled as it started to peel off, and the snot that ran from her nose solidified and frosted over. Her fingers flexed, stronger, more sure. Not by her own volition.

Jacob might have been haunted by memories of Chance’s half-frozen corpse thrashing under the plastic, but he wasn’t about to leave Darla to the same fate. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, and each shake was punctuated by a word. “Get—out—now!”

Darla’s body slackened, briefly. Went limp.

And then her milky eyes found Jacob’s, and she laughed.

He dropped her into the chair and backed away to regroup. Which left the next move up to me.

Vibration—that was key. Chance wasn’t inside Darla with an etheric ghost body, not like she had been with all the other mediums on the physical plane. Chance’s spirit was beyond the veil, and the connection was broadcasting on some other station, a wavelength that Darla had been tapping into for years, but one that was entirely foreign to both Jacob and me.

“I wish this was the medium I’d tested my tuners on, not you. I would have given her the star treatment she deserved. Oh, the grand things we could have accomplished together!”

“You won’t accomplish squat by killing Darla now,” I said. “Let her go.”

She flexed Darla’s fingers once more, then very deliberately, made a fist. She smiled wider. Blood oozed from Darla’s shredded lips and froze on her chin. “Or what, Detective?”

“Or I’ll…take the final GhosTV, and I’ll….”

Darla’s frosted eyebrows screwed up quizzically.

“I’ll give it to Dr. K. All your research, all your hard work, I’ll make sure he takes sole credit for it. Every last bit.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“The hell I am. Dreyfuss left a tuner with me. I’m more than happy to ditch that creepy hunk of junk, and if I screw over your dead ass in the process, all the better.”

Her bloodied mouth worked as she struggled to convince herself I was making it all up.

“Big wooden console, heavier than a weight bench, and duct tape holding the special guts inside. I’ve got it, all right. And I’ve been waiting for a good excuse to get rid of it.”

Chance huffed out a breath. It was expelled from Darla in a billow of frost. “You are your own worst enemy. You’d do something so stupid out of petulant spite? If you actually harnessed the power of my tuner, you could have the world at your feet. Money and power—yes, of course—but even more important, knowledge. A smart man would leverage those secrets to ensure his continued success. You, though? Even you should be tempted by an unlimited stream of information…something so detailed, you could mete out all the punishment you could hope for, enough to satisfy even your overdeveloped sense of justice.”

“All the evidence in the world wouldn’t stop my perps from walking. The problem’s not lack of evidence—it’s the public’s suspicion of Psych. Leave Darla now, or I’m calling Dr. K.” I slimed the handset on my desk with my ectoplasm hand, and hoped Chance didn’t realize I had no idea whatsoever how the FPMP phone system worked. One thing I knew about lying—you can’t oversell it. I could have counted down, given her one last chance to relent, but instead I calmly hit the 0-key and hoped it pulled up a staff directory.

Because I realized I wasn’t bluffing. I could dump that damn GhosTV on Dr. K without a backward glance. Part of me might always wonder what it would be like to wield Marie St. Savon-level talent. But mostly, I’d be thrilled to bid that monstrosity adieu.

If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now, the phone told me, and I inwardly cursed the fact that I’d grown so accustomed to letting Laura do everything for me, back when she was the Operations Coordinator and I was a lowly contractor.

But I must have hidden my chagrin well. Chance said, “All right, I’ll go,” through Darla’s chattering teeth. “But this interaction has given me plenty of food for thought. I hadn’t realized it was possible to come back…until today.”

The vibrational field might not have been the same one I was used to working with, but even so, I felt Jennifer Chance leave the room, like a change in pressure and an unpleasant wave of static. Darla’s back arched as if she’d been zapped by an electrical current. And just as suddenly, she slumped. Jacob caught her before she spilled onto the floor. Her blood smeared his collar, and her face left a trail of snot and deadfrost across the front of his jacket.

“Is Chance gone?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah. And as long as Darla doesn’t go looking for her, hopefully she’ll stay gone.”

At the sound of her name, Darla came around, pushed herself off Jacob and gave a long, wet snuffle. “What the hell?” she said woozily. “What happened?”

“You’re okay,” Jacob said in his best control-the-situation cop-voice. “Everything’s okay—”

“Bullshit it’s okay…is this blood? Damn it!” She shoved out of her chair, smeared the thawing goo off her face with the back of her hand, and staggered toward the door.

“Darla,” I said, “wait.”

She shrugged me off as she gained momentum. “Chill out, Vic, I’m just going to the bathroom.”

The general-use unisex FPMP restrooms are nowhere near as fancy as the john in Dreyfuss’ old office, but they’re reasonably nice. I’d like them even better if there was less wood and more clean, white tile, but they looked more like domestic powder rooms than institutional public toilets. Jacob hung back in the hall, but I crowded in with Darla while she got a look at herself. She was no longer turning blue, but the shredded skin hanging from her lips was enough to shock anyone.

Darla leaned across the sink, peered at her reflection, and said, “Well, that’s scary. How did it look—full-on Linda Blair?”

“Everything but the pea soup.” Though between the snot and the ectoplasm, the two of us gave The Exorist’s effects crew a run for its money.

“I hardly ever go that deep.” Darla ran a paper towel under cool water, wrung it out, and began carefully blotting her mouth. It looked swollen and tender, but now that she’d stopped breathing out ice crystals, not too much worse than a really fierce case of chapped lips. “Did your guy at least give you something useful?”

“Unfortunately, an old nemesis of mine butted in before you found him. She died in the building—hell, the lab might even have tissue samples squirreled away—so I’m declaring the FPMP headquarters a no-channel zone from here on out.”

If I were Darla, I would’ve been majorly freaking out. But I guess she didn’t find the thought of a ghost using her as a mouthpiece as disturbing as I did. “Sucks to be us. What now?”

“I think you should see a doctor.”

While Darla started to insist that she’d be fine, Jacob shouldered in and said to me, “Can I talk to you in the hall?”

Darla made a shooing motion. “Go. I don’t need you to help me blow my nose.”

I stepped into the hall, and Jacob took me by the arm and said low in my ear, “How is it possible for Chance to do that?”

“Guess Darla’s reception is different from mine.”

Understatement of the year.

Jacob paused with his hand on my forearm, then instead of releasing it, pulled me into a fierce and impulsive kiss, right there in the hallway of the FPMP. Yeah, it was Saturday…but still. He followed up the lip-lock by gliding his forefinger across my lower lip. “Promise me you’ll never do that. I couldn’t deal with knowing something dead was speaking through this mouth.”

“You and me both, Mister. You and me both.”

Darla came out of the bathroom with her makeup scrubbed off, carefully dabbing lip balm on her peeling lips. She said, “The more convoluted this gets, and the worse I strike out, the more I feel the need to prove myself. But I’m gonna have to call it a day. I’m wiped out.”

But who knew when FPMP National would show up? I might be on Laura’s shit list, but frankly, I was scared for her. “Are you sure there’s no way we can pool our resources?” I asked.

Darla said, “Isn’t that what we’re already doing?”

I turned back toward the office and motioned for her and Jacob to follow as an idea formed in my mind. We might not have solved the whole medium problem yet, but those interviews I’d done gave me an idea. “Maybe, between the two of us, there’s a way to reach Andy without letting him take over your whole consciousness.” I opened Carl’s supply cabinet, moved a few liturgical candles out of the way, then started shoving things around in earnest.

“What?” Darla said. “Like a psychic splicer cable?”

“Kind of.” Censer, charcoal, prayer mat. Damn it. “But I doubt I’ll find what I’m looking for in Carl’s box of tricks.” I turned to Jacob and said, “Where can we get a Ouija board?”

Chapter 36

“Seriously?” Darla rolled her eyes. “A Ouija board? You know they churn those things out of the same factories that make Battleship and Monopoly.”

“Maybe so,” I said, “but it’s just a tool, a way to focus our talent, together. I’ve exorcised ghosts with cinnamon sugar sprinkles. Even if the Ouija board rolled off the same line as Cards Against Humanity, Andy wouldn’t be any the wiser.”

Darla gave a pish-posh flip of the hand. “What I’m saying is, we don’t need to waste time tracking down a board. We can draw our own.”

“That can’t be safe,” Jacob said.

“Not here,” Darla agreed. Sort of. While contradicting him. “We can do it at my hotel. Your stowaway won’t be looking for us there.”

Metaphysically speaking, we were so far out of my league, I couldn’t say if that made sense or not. So I filled a case with frankincense, blessed salt and candles just in case.

We piled into Jacob’s car and I plugged in my phone to charge, but on a Saturday, traffic was sparse enough to land us at Darla’s place before the screen even woke up.

FPMP Regional had put up Darla in a hell of a hotel. No crystal chandeliers and flocked wallpaper like you’d find in the heart of the Loop. This one was all polished concrete, oversized rivets and exposed beams, with artwork that looked like the painter had wandered away before they got a chance to finish their canvas. It was the way the cannery would look, if we had the sensibility, money and desire to make our industrial-functional look industrial-chic. I was glad we didn’t. Otherwise, it would be too pretentious for me to live there.

Darla’s room was gigantic, with ceilings even higher than ours at home. The room dwarfed the furniture, which was all chrome and leather and distressed wood. Unceremoniously, she cleared a stack of books and papers off a broad wooden table made from a reclaimed industrial door. She grabbed a short tumbler from the modern kitchenette and set it face-down on the tabletop. “Now all we need is an alphabet.”

“Actually,” I said, “we could probably get away with two words: yes and no.”

Darla pulled a glittery eyeliner from her purse and scrawled each word on the table’s surface. “Makes sense to me. We can always add more later.”

“I don’t like this,” Jacob said. “Vic, after what you just saw, how could this possibly seem like a good idea?”

“It’s different,” I said. “We’ll be doing it together. And you’re here.”

Darla quirked an eyebrow at that reasoning.

“I’m a little more than an NP,” Jacob told her. “I have a resistance. But even so, I don’t want to be rash.”

I barked out a tiny laugh. “And since when has that become a concern for you?”

“Since I realized we weren’t rid of a certain someone after all.”

I highly doubted that Jennifer Chance could hear us talking about her from beyond the veil, but I had to admit, Jacob wasn’t the only one who was concerned. I’d hate to draw her back into my life just because I was looking for Andy. Darla was fine with it, though. Considering that she’d been the one on the receiving end of a spectral chemical peel, she was taking it all in stride. “Look, don’t believe everything you see about Ouija boards in the movies. If demons really used them to possess little kids, in our line of work, we’d hear about it. Vic and I will stay in waking consciousness the entire time. And if it gets weird, we stop. Easy as that.”

Jacob locked eyes with me, then looked at Darla. I surreptitiously chafed some goosebumps off my forearm and said, “So…just to make sure everyone’s who they say they are, can you tell me something that only Darla would know?”

“Seriously?” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Fine. You used to think hamburgers were made of ham—and Richie was the one who corrected you. Happy now?”

“You could’ve picked something a little less embarrassing.” Then again, the fact that she hadn’t was probably an even better indication that we were really dealing with Darla and not Jennifer Chance.

Jacob didn’t find it funny. In fact, he had that look about him I knew all too well. “Think for a second, Vic. The potential benefits can’t possibly outweigh the risks. You’re both opening yourselves up to God-knows-what, not just to earthbound spirits, but anything dead or undead. And for what? I’d sleep a lot better at night knowing who killed our agents and why—but not if it meant I gave up you to do it.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know my limits, and you know me. I’m hardly the overachiever of the year. If I feel it going south, I’ll pull out. I promise.”

“But the risk—”

“It’s just a matter of me letting go of the glass.” His worrying made me uncomfortable. Not because I thought it was unreasonable, but because I hated the idea of what would become of him if anything ever did happen to me. I was used to him being blasé—and I could just be annoyed with him about it and move on. But this new, post-morgue, zombie-tackling Jacob who actually realized exactly how vulnerable we were made it hard to be cavalier. “Look, we need your head in the game. So set aside what you saw in the office and start filling up with white light. And whatever you do, make sure you don’t steal either of ours.”

“Should I even ask?” Darla said. “Anyway, like I said. It’s no big deal. We’ll each do our own ritual, and calm ourselves down into an alpha state. It’s no worse than watching TV.”

She paused. Wondering if maybe Richie’s origin story actually did contain a grain of truth? Maybe. I know I was.

While she stared into one of her crystals, I sucked down white light. My hand still felt clammy from the invisible salt I’d conjured back in the office, but a body’s only capable of so much high alert, and my state of heightened reaction had faded to a queasy nervousness. Holding onto the light feels precarious, like walking up the stairs with a too-full cup of coffee you’re trying really hard not to spill. But it’s a good feeling too. Centered. Powerful.

We lit a few candles and seated ourselves at the table, with Jacob off to one side holding a pen and notepad at the ready. I positioned myself so that I couldn’t see him scowling his disapproval at me and focused on Darla instead.

“We got this,” Darla told me. She placed her fingertips on the base of the upturned glass. “No problem.”

I almost asked her which hand I should use, but then realized how silly that would’ve been. The clammy one, obviously. I mirrored her gesture, and we looked at each other, and waited. And within seconds, I felt profoundly silly. Because nothing happened.

“I think you’ve gotta ask something.” Darla shut her eyes. “Jacob? Whenever you’re ready.”

Solemnly, he said, “We need to speak to Andy Parsons. Andy, can you hear us?”

The situation was serious. There was a lot on the line. Jacob was sick with worry over me and I’d just had a chat with Jennifer Chance. There was absolutely nothing funny about what we were doing.

Except the fact that the whole situation was completely absurd.

I swallowed down a laugh. Rocked with the effort to keep it in. And felt like I was a knuckleheaded twenty-something in the chapel with Darla again. My face twisted with the effort to keep that laughter from escaping—because Jacob might forgive plenty of trespasses, but humiliating him would not be one of them.

“Andy,” he said, “if you’re here, give us a sign.”

Damn it, did he have to sound so ridiculous? I screwed up my whole, entire face and squinched up my eyes. And just when I thought, forget it, there’s no way I can possibly take this thing seriously….

The glass slid toward me.

My eyes shot open.

The glass stopped. I pulled my hand away and said to Darla, “You pushed it.”

“We both did. It’s the ideomotor response I told you about, remember? But you need to chill out and let it happen.”

Creepy—but at least it quelled that annoying urge to laugh. I sighed and re-settled myself in my chair, put my fingers on the glass, and said, “Okay, take two. Calling Andy Parsons.”

White light. White light. White light. I did my best to hold an image of Andy’s annoying face in my mind’s eye while picturing the light pouring in through my crown chakra, and my subtle bodies getting all charged up and glowy. And when the glass moved again, I did my best not to guide it, to just let the gentle weight of my fingertips go along for the ride. It moved toward me, arced, and traveled back toward Darla. Looping and returning.

“Andy,” Jacob said. “Are you here?”

The glass finished the arc it was tracing, and stopped beside the word YES.

“Do you promise on your immortal soul that you are Andy Parsons?”

The glass jerked a few inches, then picked up another one of those loopy, swirly paths. Back, forth, around…and settled again on the YES.

“Andy, we need to find out where you were killed. Was it nearby?”

The drinking glass started looping again. It was a weird sensation, the feeling of it tracing these gentle curves. My arm felt slightly numb while it was happening. Not like anything paranormal was going on. More like trying to grab something under the table and realizing you have no real sense of where your body is in space. It looped, circled, and settled on the YES.

“Were you killed inside FPMP headquarters?”

The glass moved again, faster this time. Looping. Looping. It skidded to a stop on NO.

Did it feel the same to Darla, I wondered—a weird arm, a movement that was obviously ours, yet vaguely involuntary? I’d had non-corporeal entities inside me before, and I knew damn well what it felt like: nothing. When Lisa reached out from the astral and wrote on the wall in my blood, I’d stood there having an entirely different conversation while it happened, none the wiser. And when the Criss Cross Killer gouged up Jacob with my hands, I had no idea.

Jacob named all the nearby landmarks he could think of, and each one was a NO. I strained with the effort to relax and go with the flow, but part of me wondered if maybe my ideomotor was stalled, and I kept pulling the glass toward the NO because I was scared to find out what had really happened to Andy, in case Laura was somehow behind it all. Laura had no reason to want Andy dead, right? There were other ways to shut him up. I couldn’t think of any that were quite as foolproof, but Laura was a lot better at fixing things than me.

“Grand Avenue?” NO. “Halsted?” NO.

No, I couldn’t see any reason Laura would want to protect anyone outside the official FPMP. But if it wasn’t her, then who was it?

“Canal Street?”

The glass skidded to a halt in the center of the table. I met Darla’s eyes and raised my eyebrows. She did the same and shrugged.

“Canal Street,” Jacob repeated. The glass swept through a figure eight and parked itself in the center of the table.

“Is it in a building?” he asked. NO. “Is it in an alley?” NO. “Is it in a vehicle?” NO. “But it is on Canal Street.” The glass swept across the table and parked itself in the center.

“Still thinking you don’t need an alphabet?” Darla said.

“Okay,” Jacob told her. “Go ahead.”

Darla penned the letters, large and clear, in her silver eyeliner. As she paused to re-sharpen, I thought about Andy. Interested enough in me to do extra research—digging around in something that ended up getting him killed. Maybe the information wasn’t inherently dangerous. If he’d just left everything alone like Dreyfuss said instead of running to the press, he wouldn’t have been mulched.

Or maybe that’s just what I was telling myself. Because whatever it is he’d seen in my records, I couldn’t rest without knowing.

While I chewed on the implications of Andy’s death, Darla finished off the alphabet and capped her eyeliner. “Okay, Hardcore Vic. Let’s do this.”

I centered myself, did my best to push my worries about my own issues aside, and focused on Andy.

“Andy Parsons,” Jacob said, “are you still here?”

The glass began its slow, lazy loop, and settled on the YES.

“Tell us where you were shot.”

Circles. And more circles. Occasionally veering into S-curves and strange loops. “Is he trying to write with it?” I asked—which didn’t seem to cause the glass to slow down in the slightest. “Andy, spell with the letters. We don’t know what you mean.”

My shoulder felt stiff and my fingertips were numb. A new pattern emerged. Jerky. Like someone trying to draw a starburst. Careful not to touch us, Jacob hovered over and began recording letters. But I could tell by his scowl it was a no-go. That, and the fact that the glass landed on the Z more than once…and I doubted anyone was trying to spell pizazz.

“Focus,” Jacob told me. The contrarian in me wanted to say, Maybe you should focus. But I couldn’t deny that I’d been thinking about Laura and my permanent record and the word pizazz. I visualized white light streaming down through the high ceiling, past the exposed ductwork and faux-industrial lights, and streaming through my thick skull via my forehead. I rallied myself with the directive, We need to figure this out before it all goes to shit. And I rested my fingertips on the glass.

Darla shook out her hands, skimmed her fingers over her quartz necklace, took a deep, centering breath, and placed her fingers beside mine.

The glass did a slow loop, then settled on NO.

“Maybe he can’t spell,” Darla said. The glass zipped over to YES. “I wasn’t being serious.”

“Even so,” I said, “the alphabet looks all messed up when you’re astral projecting. Letters and numbers are just a bunch of weird squiggles. The concepts of yes and no are pretty tangible, but the alphabet? Maybe Faun Windsong’s Ouija spirit was still on this plane. But Andy? Think how far his signal has to carry. Through the veil, through us…and maybe the act of spelling is just one filter too many.”

The glass circled, then stopped beside YES.

“The murder took place on multiple streets?” Jacob guessed. “In a parking lot? At a crossroad?”

His guesses were all met with NO, and I wondered how long we could keep going. My neck was stiff and my head was starting to hurt. And after her encounter with Dr. Chance, Darla had to be in worse shape than me. “Hold on,” I told Jacob. “Let’s regroup, top ourselves off, and give this thing one final big push.”

White, white light. I looked into the flame of the blessed candle and thought hard about how much power flowed through me. A lot. I knew it did. Enough to see and hear ghosts. Enough to sense repeaters. Enough to summon those weird invisible granules and a handful of slime. Was that enough, or did I need more? Maybe we should have taken Darla back to our place and hauled out the GhosTV. But we were so confident of our own abilities, we’d ended up here. And if we blew it now, we’d be too fatigued to try again, at which point it might be entirely too late….

“Vic.” Darla clasped my hand. I flinched, thinking all that light I was trying to gather would jump to her like it always tried to with Jacob. But it didn’t. Because Darla and me—we were the same. Both our psychic reservoirs were full, and both of our left hands were icy cold. And the mojo had no reason to try to level out between us. She gave my hand a squeeze. “We got this.”

“Then…let’s do it.”

Chapter 37

I’m not scared of the veil. Not…exactly. Back when I wrapped one of my subtle bodies around Jennifer Chance’s ghost and forced it to the other side, the veil put out a tangible pull, but that pull wasn’t for me. I might have ended up as collateral damage, but I didn’t. I made it back just fine, with all my nonphysical parts intact.

Still, every now and then, when the sunlight bounces off a bit of chrome just right and momentarily blinds me, it takes me back to the time I touched the veil. That feeling of absolute rightness floods the shady corners of my mind…and I worry. Because when I think about it, I realize how tempting that destination actually is. So when I catch myself remembering, I stop.

No doubt there’s a therapist out there who could help me bury that memory so deep there was no chance of me tripping over it. Dr. Kleinman hadn’t been all that old. Maybe she was still alive. Hell, maybe she was even still in practice….

The glass began to move. Not the looping circles it had been doing before, and not the lopsided star pattern, either.

Jacob hovered to one side, watching intently. “Where were you killed, Andy? We can’t find the scene. Where is it, Andy? Where?”

White light. I dragged it down from the ethers for all I was worth, while Darla worked the talent however she did. The glass slid one way, then the other, back and forth, back and forth, like we were a pair of lumberjacks sawing through a tree trunk.

My breathing deepened, as if I was exerting myself. Darla huffed. It escaped her in a cloud of frost. Come on, Andy, goddamn it, don’t be an asshole. And don’t let this sorry life of yours be for nothing. Deadfrost sprang from beneath our fingertips. It poured down the sides of the tumbler and left a silvery cascade of jagged stars behind. Where is it, damn it? Where the hell did you…?

The glass cracked with a sound like the chime of a tiny, distant bell.

The trembling note hung on the air as if it was frozen. I wondered if it was possible to freeze sound. Maybe. Since the frost wasn’t a physical frost.

I wondered what it really meant to be dead. If death was really as important as we all made it out to be. And if my years of work as a homicide investigator meant anything in the grand scheme of existence.

I pondered the meaning of life itself.

“Vic?” Darla sounded worried.

I realized I’d been seeing white. But only as color slowly bled back into my field of vision.

“Is he…can you touch him?” Jacob was worried too.

Me? Mostly, I felt numb.

Darla stood up, got behind me, and took me by the shoulders. “Hey. Come back, you big goofus. Come on back.”

I exhaled frost.

My hand throbbed.

Cold.

Sharp.

I stared down at the table and it took me an extra heartbeat to figure out what I was seeing. Blood and broken glass, but I attached no significance to them. I released the heavy shard I was holding. A cut on the palm—that was gonna sting. But the main thing was the series of lines carved into the tabletop.

Good thing I was coming down off a white light high. Otherwise, the similarity to the Criss Cross Killer using me as a stylus would’ve freaked me out for sure.

Since I’m out of my head when it happens, I don’t actually know what my body does when I’m transmitting. But I imagine the movements being stiff and jerky, all from the shoulder and only straight lines.

My latest masterpiece was a pair of long parallel slashes with five perpendicular spindles between them. I considered it, and said, “If this is supposed to be a word, the penmanship leaves a lot to be desired.”

Darla peered down at the marks. “It wouldn’t be a word. Not if the alphabet is too abstract to channel. But an idea? A picture? This could be a building, or a fence, or—”

“Railroad tracks,” Jacob said. “And a bunch of them run right under Canal Street.”

Chapter 38

The cold outside felt different from the ghostly chill that came down when we channeled. More physical, somehow. Or maybe just more natural. We ditched the car in a tow zone as close as we could get to the rail yard, then power-walked the rest of the way. And with every step, I tried to suck down more white light.

Portions of the massive rail yard were at street level, but great spans of track stretched under the city streets. Snow was coming down in tight pellets, and the train track sound of metal wailing against metal filled the air. Even though we were still within visual range of our normal haunts, being one story down shifted my entire perspective. It always surprised me to glimpse the vast underpinnings of Chicago and see the cogs in motion that ran the great machine.

With each stride, my hand throbbed, but nothing I couldn’t ignore. It was an awkward cut, but not deep enough for stitches, not if I managed to keep from flexing my fingers every time it started to clot. We’d wrapped it tight enough to hopefully remind me to stop clenching my fist. Though given my level of frustration, I’d probably end up doing it anyway.

I strode up to the edge of the first track, then stopped to get my bearings. Jacob caught up to me, then Darla. She said, “It’s a heck of a lot bigger than I thought it would be.” She closed her eyes and held out her arms, in that way she does when she’s trying to pick up a ghost signal. After a moment, she said, “Loud, too. Like, really loud.”

Her ghost hearing didn’t operate through her physical ears. Even so, the ambient noise was bound to be confusing, in the same way that glares and shadows made it harder for my psychic sense to see.

White light. Maybe I could only hold so much, and the extra just spilled over the top. But that didn’t stop me from trying to cram in just a little bit more. I drew it down and scanned the area, but it felt too bright, too big. Darla was searching too, but she wasn’t doing any better than me. Too loud. We stood there a long moment, both of us desperately searching and neither of us finding. And then Jacob posed the question, “If I were to lure a federal agent out here to shoot him, where’s my best chance of not being caught?”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw a busy parking garage in direct line of sight. “Not here. Too exposed.” I set aside my psychic ability and thought with my common sense. “But those viaducts, under there? Perfect spot.”

I jogged toward the overpass, pumped up on white light and anxiety and that special kind of elation that comes from understanding precisely how somebody died. Right off the bat, I could see it was one of those blind niches where people could duck away from the prying eyes of society and get up to no good. The concrete walls were thick with graffiti and the ground crunched with discarded crack vials. Trash had drifted up against the far wall—fast food wrappers and broken bottles and half a naked plastic doll. There’d been a light in the ceiling, once. But it had been shot out long ago.

I closed my eyes and drank in white light. Beside me, Darla did something similar. I opened my eyes. Without psyactives, without a GhosTV, I couldn’t sense the nonphysical to the point where I saw Jacob’s talent manifest as a webwork of red veins, but I knew the look on his face when he was doing his thing well enough to recognize it by now.

All three of us were charged up and searching. But it took a passing freight car blocking the sun for me to catch a glimpse of what I’d come there to see: that ugly pirouette of death.

“There.” I pointed. The train car rolled away as the switchers did their work, and I lost it. “We need to block the light.”

Jacob made a call to try and arrange something a bit more permanent. I found myself wishing Laura Kim was still at her post as The Fixer, but at least Patrick was overachieving enough to be at the office on a weekend. Good thing. I’d have no idea who to contact, but hopefully he’d be able to figure out how to get the railroad cars moved. Darla called him to make the arrangements, and while we waited for that to happen, Jacob attempted to block the light with his overcoat while Darla and I focused all our attention on the spot I’d seen the repeater.

“There’s so much interference,” she said.

And she had to be running on fumes. I didn’t say as much, but every time I caught a look at her peeling lips, I couldn’t help but feel vicariously exhausted. “Let me see your hand,” I told her.

She pulled off her glove and held it out, palm up.

Tentatively, I placed my fingertips in the center of her palm. If it were Jacob and me, brimming with mojo and adrenaline, there would’ve been a spark big enough to practically spill into the physical. But me and Darla? Nothing. “Jacob?” I said. “C’mere a sec. See if you can push some light.”

Jacob does a lot of prep to work with psychic energies. I’m not sure he technically needs to—I’ve seen how fast he can block a speeding ghost—but if he had too much time to consider how to go about it, he was sure to overthink everything. He shook out his hands and planted his feet as if he was going to attempt an overhead press. I yanked off my other glove with my teeth, held it there, and grabbed him with my free hand before he had a chance to convince himself he didn’t know what he was doing.

It was like a power surge. A minor one. The type where your lights brighten for a moment, just before they flicker, and then all your electronics start blinking twelve. It wasn’t quite as showy as a lot of the psychic connections we’ve shared—but the amazing part was that Darla felt it too, through me. She gasped, looked at Jacob with new admiration and grabbed his other hand.

It felt like she’d completed a circuit. It wasn’t power that welled through us, so much as a sense of stability. The physical world still looked like it always did, though when Darla turned her head to seek out the place of Andy’s death, her physical body left a faint tracer behind. “I hear the gunshot,” she said.

And me? When I looked very hard, I saw the briefest flicker of Andy taking that bullet.

It was only a repeater. It couldn’t tell us any more about the incident than the unhelpful long-distance ghost of Andy already had. But it did give us a good idea of where the shooter was standing.

There was no shell casing. I’d be surprised if there had been, given the effort the shooter went through to retrieve the slug. Unless we were in the market for used condoms and dirty needles, there really wasn’t anything to be found on the ground. Nothing that we’d spot without a bank of lights and a forensics team, at least.

I’d been so sure the murder scene would give us something we could use. Damn it. I dropped everyone’s hands and put my gloves back on. “Anything?” Jacob asked me.

“Nothing we don’t already know.”

He pulled out his penlight and scoured the area. “There’s snow on the ground. Maybe we can find boot tracks, tire tracks….”

Given the popularity of the hidey-hole with the local crackhead population, I wouldn’t bank on it.

“Guys,” Darla called over the noise of the rail yard, “I’m freezing and I need to sit down.”

She looked like she’d been through the wringer—not just her physical body, I suspected, but her subtle bodies, too. “Go. Warm up.” Jacob handed her his keys. “Vic and I will do a quick sweep, then get you back to your room.”

Darla crunched off through the crusty refrozen snow toward the car. “Anything in particular you want me to look for?” I asked.

“How is it we can’t figure this out?” he said between the squeals of switching train cars.

“We’ve got a location,” I said. “That’s got to be worth something. There’ll be security footage…somewhere.” Though, again, given the vigorous drug trade, nowhere that close.

Jacob made a looping motion with his hand. “Once around, then we go look for video.”

We split up. He headed off toward the switching station while I went the opposite direction. My light level was still high, but not high enough to see glowing blood spatter. Maybe with a generator and the GhosTV, I could figure out how the shooter managed to drag away Andy’s body and feed it through the mulcher. Unfortunately, given the number of spent hypodermics on the ground, Andy probably wasn’t the only one who’d bled in that sorry little alcove. My talent was wasted, but I still had to try.

Even though I was pretty sure there was nothing for me to find, I did a final sweep of the scene, placing my feet carefully so as not to step on any potential evidence. Other than Andy’s repeater, there was nothing noncorporeal…hopefully.

Unless this was the sort of place habit-demons spawned.

I sucked down more white light.

My phone couldn’t have picked up much charge in the brief time it was in the car, but maybe there’d be enough juice to snap a few pictures to look at later, while I wasn’t freezing my ass off and worrying about blobs attaching themselves to my person. I scowled the lockscreen open…and, wow, I hadn’t realized messages would accumulate like that on the home page. And also that I didn’t quite catch how Darla had toggled off the ringer. Darla and Jodi had all been vying for my scattered attention since the last time I’d checked. But the most recent message was from Patrick, just a few minutes old, and the caption beside it read URGENT.

I swiped the message to read it. I was given the choice to archive or delete, and then it disappeared. “Damn it,” I snapped. “What did Patrick want?”

“Calling Patrick,” my phone said.

I knew damn well that any issues I had with the phone were caused by operator error. Even so, it was still annoying that it managed to understand me well enough over the squeal and screech of the train cars, but couldn’t figure out that I might want to actually see the urgent message before it recycled the pixels. And it wouldn’t do me any good to call Patrick, either. Not unless I found someplace to talk where we could hear each other.

I was attempting to hang up without leaving a cryptic voicemail—fat chance—when, through a gap in the rail yard noise, I heard a ringtone. Just a couple of notes, and then something very big and very hydraulic let out an industrial gasp that buried the rest. I might not be able to name that tune, but I did get a sense of where it was coming from. Less than a dozen yards away, a rusted out boxcar stood with its door jimmied open. A guy was looking at me from the gap. Patrick. We locked eyes and he brightened, and motioned for me to join him.

O…kay.

I crunched across the ground at a light jog, as I wondered how moronic I’d look if I asked him how to hang up. But, hey, if you can’t be inept around your friends, what good are they? I heaved myself up into the car with him, and blinked away the cold winter glare while I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. The outside noise receded. “What possessed you to come down here in person?” I asked. “It’s got to be a heck of a lot easier to run the show from the command center. Did you lock yourself out of something important?”

“Didn’t you get my text?” he said.

“I, uh…no.”

“Found what you were looking for.” He held up a few stapled sheets of paper. “Your old teacher—Jane Maxwell.”

“Oh. Great.” I tried to sound enthused, but sadly, my internal task prioritizer was fixated on a more important and urgent matter. “Thanks—I owe you a drink.”

I made a grab for the papers, and he yoinked them away.

“Not a good time to dick around,” I said. “We’ve got to track down Andy’s killer before FPMP National steps in.”

“So you seriously haven’t checked your messages?”

I rolled my eyes. “I let the battery run down and then things got crazy.”

“Then you’re in for a pleasant surprise. You’re a lot closer to cracking this thing than you think.”

“Oh, really? How would you…know…?”

It dawned on me that the awkwardness I’d been feeling around Patrick all this time hadn’t actually originated in me, but in him. And that being a True Stiff didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t a psychopath.

And that his job at The Clinic would be the perfect place for him to keep tabs on every powerful psychic in the city. So he could remove them from the game board if need be.

And that he’d positioned himself between me and the only exit.

And that he was holding a Beretta.

Probably a much better shot than he’d let on, back at the range. But even if he wasn’t, at a dozen paces, there was no possible way he’d miss.

Chapter 39

“You’re not gonna believe what I found out,” Patrick said. “That was it. My message. Total clickbait, right? You’re not gonna believe what I found out.”

You’d think that waiting for the low rumbles and metallic shrieks to give me a space to talk would buy me some time, but no. I supposed it didn’t really matter. There was no chance of me playing dumb, not facing down a loaded gun.

Uselessly, I realized that back at Con’s old office, Triple-Shot was likely to have been taken down by law enforcement. Multiple shots to the body mass. Bang-bang-bang. Andy Parsons, on the other hand, had been killed by a single bullet, aimed with stunning accuracy, right through the heart. The type of thing fired by a sniper. Or an assassin.

Outside in the rail yard, something large and heavy ground to a stop, leaving an expectant gap of silence. Stiltedly, I said, “So, what did you find?”

“I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Then I can totally deal with not knowing.”

“Kidding, I’m kidding! You should see the look on your face. It’s priceless.” Patrick motioned with the gun, and herded me deeper into the boxcar. It smelled of old piss and older metal, and the flaking walls were layered with a decade of graffiti.

“Y’know,” he said, “I didn’t think I’d warm up to you. Back at Mid North Medical, you treated me like I was invisible. That’s a good thing while you’re trying to lie low, but still, not exactly endearing. Here, though? I’m really good at reading people, and even though no one was actually rolling their eyes or complaining, I could tell I wasn’t exactly popular. All the established agents treated me like an unwelcome lackey. They didn’t want Laura manning the helm and me as their go-to guy—they liked it better when she was The Fixer, catering to all their petty demands. You, though? You were actually pretty decent to me. Sure, you were basically using me to crack into the system without getting caught. But hey, at least you had the decency to take me out to dinner before you screwed me.”

“You’re grossly underestimating my lack of computer skills. I wasn’t setting you up to take a fall—I really did have zero chance of finding that stuff myself.”

“Maybe so. Honestly, there was such a wealth of information waiting to be uncovered, I can hardly blame you for getting greedy. And I’ve got to commend you for not spreading yourself too thin by trying to play the hacker. Sure, you could take a few tech classes, get up to speed…but my philosophy is that we should stick to what we’re good at and outsource the rest. And according to everything I’ve read, you, Agent Bayne, are one hell of a homicide investigator. It was only a matter of time before you tied Andy Parsons to me. So, tell me, did you ever definitively link anyone to that messy editorial?”

“The…what?”

“Those wild allegations that almost made it to the press. Genetic manipulation. Human experimentation.”

“Allegations—you’re saying it didn’t happen?”

“How uncharacteristically optimistic of you to think so. No, I’m pretty sure it did. But the FPMP wasn’t at the heart of it. The creative eugenics was old news, way before our time, back when this agency didn’t even exist. But the folks behind it all—the ones who sign my paycheck? They had to make this go away before Director Kim was forced to address the charges in a public forum. Because once it came out that the FPMP had nothing to do with it, people would want to know who did.”

Why was I not surprised that I bit into an apple expecting to find a rotten core, and discovered not only a big fat worm, but a razor blade too?

“I can take orders as well as the next guy,” Patrick said, “but when you set me to researching and I saw your old tutor was tangled up in this mess forty years ago, I couldn’t help but do a little digging to satisfy my own curiosity. It was vague. Back in those days, the Catholic Church was a power to be reckoned with.”

“So the Church is behind all this?”

“Oh no, they were too busy trying to salvage the downward spiral of their waning relevancy and shrinking population, but they made convenient pawns. My employer has no particular religious affiliation. Just the desire to make sure the best and brightest psychics don’t start plying their talents for North Korea or the Kremlin.”

I wasn’t exactly surprised that at the heart of it, everything came down to politics. “Look, Patrick, I don’t give a rat’s ass about exposing anybody—I frankly can’t see what good it would do at this point, and the court of public opinion is so willfully ignorant, it wouldn’t matter. So I’ll bet the two of us can figure out some kind of win-win.” I cut my eyes to the paperwork in his non-gun hand. “’Cos any information relating to my past is worth a hell of a lot more to me than trying to make the world right. Justice? I learned a long time ago…ain’t gonna happen.”

“Well, I suppose it would be a real shame to take out my lunch buddy. So how about this? I give you what I’ve got and let you walk out of here, and you tell me where Agent Marks has Lipton and Garcia stashed.”

“Andy’s coworkers? They didn’t have anything to do with it. Andy was the one who pieced together the redacted files. Not them.”

“Really? There was no mention of that in Jacob’s latest reports to Director Kim.”

How naive to think I was jaded enough to cut a deal with a freaking assassin. Even if I did make it out of that freight car alive, no doubt a bullet with Jacob’s name on it would be lurking somewhere in our future.

Before I talked myself out of what had to be done, I shifted into survival mode. It wasn’t often I needed to go there, not these days, when a flash of my badge was enough to buy me a way out of pretty much any situation. But I stepped into the well-worn role just as easily as I’d shove my feet into my rattiest pair of Chucks. The lies flowed effortlessly, threaded through with just enough truth to make them believable, and shrouded with the perfect amount nonchalance to convey I didn’t care whether he bought the bullshit or not. “There hasn’t been time to report back to Laura. We only just figured out what was what when I talked to Andy’s ghost at the scene. Here, I’ll play you the recording.”

Maybe my shoulder holster was outdated, but one advantage it had over a regular belt holster—it allowed me to make like I was reaching for the phone in my breast pocket. I angled toward the shadow and drew in one easy sweep. Three shots to the body mass.

The sound was covered by the squeal of rails and the mechanical pounding of the switchers, so it took me an extra moment to register that my bang-bang-bang was more like bang-click-click, and I hadn’t been pelted by a single flying casing.

When the train noise ebbed, Patrick said, “And here I thought I was being overly cautious back at the range when I handed you a magazine full of blanks. Out here in the field, your form’s pretty good and I can’t find fault with your aim.” He stepped forward, backlit by the sliver of winter light stabbing through the only exit, and aimed his barrel directly between my eyes. “Was Andy the leak or not?”

“It was him. Definitely. No one else.”

“Excellent.” Vaguely, I saw him smile. “FYI, your pupils dilate when you lie—but with enough practice, you’d be able to get a handle on all those pesky physical tells, and even pass your annual polygraph with flying colors. Google is your friend. Just don’t do your research on the company phone.” He dropped the papers he was holding, took off his glasses—which served a purpose that had nothing to do with his eyesight—and tucked them into his pocket. Without them, he looked like a different person. “As to your marksmanship performance, my guess is that you need that hit of adrenaline to really focus. Do a few squats before your next assessment, get that heart rate going, and see if it doesn’t help your score.”

With the gun still pointed at my head, he pulled up the hood on his jacket and cinched the drawstring tight. It hid enough of his face to make an ID unlikely at best. All the while, the gun was pointed at my forehead. And yet, if he was planning on pulling the trigger…. “Why are you telling me all this?”

“Hoping things end between us on a less negative note. I’m just doing my job here, and I’m not a violent man.”

I scoffed. Maybe he was onto something when he said I should work on quelling my natural responses.

In the closed-down circle of the hoodie, I saw Patrick smile. “Okay, you got me. It would feel so damn good to pull this trigger, I get chills all down my spine just thinking about it. But I can’t.”

“Why? Who’s pulling the strings?”

“As if I’d tell you something that would lead you right back to my doorstep. I’m guessing you’ll find out soon enough—they’re not keeping you alive just to enjoy your sullen charm.”

“You tell your handlers, if someone wants something from me, get in touch and make an offer. I was a stubborn kid at Camp Hell, but now I get how the world works. Everyone’s got their price. Even me. All I want, for once in my life, is for someone to tell it like it is.”

“Is that so?” he said. Luckily, he wasn’t a telepath, otherwise he’d know I’d just as soon lie down on the railroad tracks as climb into bed with the brains behind Camp Hell. “The truth is out there. Consider this intriguing fact I discovered while I was indulging your personal agenda and rifling through your old schoolmarm’s records. Jane Maxwell was shipped off to that convent when she was just a teenager, and four months later, little Richard Duff is put up for adoption.” He sidled toward the boxcar door, then got in his dramatic parting line. “Coincidence? I think not.”

Whoa. No wonder Miss Maxwell had an endless font of patience for Richie. I blinked at the painfully bright rectangle of daylight where Patrick Barley had slipped away. His exit line might be over the top, but in terms of undercover work, he could give the FPMP field agents a run for their money. I’d never seen anyone hide in plain sight as long, or as believably, as him.

At least, I hoped not.

I was staring numbly in the direction of the mid-afternoon sunset, where the sky was pinking between the silhouettes of the craggy trees interspersed with spindly buildings and a water tower when Jacob finished his loop of the rail yard and caught up with me. He paused beside me and matched his line of sight with mine, decided I wasn’t staring at anything in the physical plane, and then noted I was holding a very manhandled sheaf of papers, and a gun. His hand eased over to his holster. “What’s that?”

I glanced down. “Good question. Most of it’s redacted.”

“Andy Parsons?”

I sighed and tucked my gun away, folded the papers into my pocket and swept my gaze over the cold, ugly, and distractingly loud rail yard. And I realized that whatever I had to say to Jacob, now was the time.

“Patrick killed him. Patrick was the Assassin.”

Jacob almost laughed. But by now he can tell when I’m kidding, and his expression immediately sobered. “Is Laura behind all this?”

I scoffed. “Laura sends people fruit baskets, not bullets. Especially not her own people. And Carl? Just as soon as I can think straight again, I’ll be phenomenally relieved he had nothing to do with any of this.” I headed for the car, where Darla waited. My nose was running and the aftermath of my adrenaline spike made me queasy. Jacob fell into step beside me, a little too close, but I felt reassured by his solid presence.

A freight train rolled in, and the ambient noise drowned out conversation for a few minutes. When it was low enough to talk over, Jacob asked, “Is he going after Lipton and Garcia now?”

“I told him Andy was acting alone. If my word carries any weight, they’re safe.”

“This is like Roger Burke all over again,” he said. “How does Patrick end up as Laura’s second in command if he’s a double agent?”

“By riding the prescription window at The Clinic for half a dozen years, until Andy Parsons stumbled across something he shouldn’t, and needed someone to shut him up. Whoever put Patrick in that job, they’re playing the long game. So you and me, we’ve got to stay vigilant, and we’ve got to be smart.”

“And we’ve got to stick together.”

“That goes without saying.” I bumped him with my shoulder. “Always.”

Chapter 40

Laura Kim was livid. I’d offered to be the one to debrief her on the Patrick situation, since she and I were the ones with the “rapport,” but it still wasn’t an easy conversation. She didn’t rant or rave or dress me down, but I could tell by the amount of control she was exerting that it was taking all her effort to keep her voice down. “You honestly thought I was ignoring all your calls and emails? We’ve known each other how long, and just because Patrick said so…?”

It was hard to avoid her glare in her office, small as it was, and so plain there was nowhere to plausibly feign interest. “In my defense, I wasn’t the only one who figured he was just the harmless guy from The Clinic.”

Laura dropped into her chair and massaged the back of her neck. She’d run out the door that morning in glasses, sweats and a ponytail. This version of her, I could imagine sitting across the breakfast table from Dreyfuss. It made me nostalgic for the days when everyone fit into a neat and predictable role.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Not only did he ace the background check and the polygraph, but he passed a telepathic screening. Now I can’t trust Dr. Santiago either?”

Santiago scared the crap out of me, but even so, I jumped to her defense. “Don’t blame her. Patrick’s a True Stiff. The only thoughts she’d be able to lift off him were the ones he wanted her to see.”

I elaborated on the evidence I’d found long ago in a crappy degraded photocopy. Under normal circumstances, Laura probably would’ve enjoyed my explanation of the nameless talent I’d unearthed in my study of psychic mismanagement. Now, she processed the information with a grim weariness. Given the situation, I guess the exhausted headshake it earned me was the most I could expect.

I asked, “What are you going to do about the stories Andy Parsons was trying to blow the whistle on? I’m guessing he’d still be around if his accusations didn’t strike a nerve.”

Laura considered my question, belatedly realized she was gnawing on her pen, and dropped it to her blotter in disgust. “I can’t speak for the entire FPMP, but as the Midwest Regional Director, I can speak for my team. We’re here to keep tabs on things and make sure psychics don’t suffer just because of the abilities they possess. Yes, this information of Andy’s got him killed, but it’s nearly half a century old. My resources are stretched thin enough focusing on today. If we discovered it was still happening, that would be a different matter, but according to Andy’s information, the lab was shut down. Does knowing the historical evidence affect psychic job discrimination or school bullying in the present? No. I hate to say it, but if it’s not current and it’s not actionable, we let sleeping dogs lie.”

Was any quadrant of the to-do list suited for, “shed light on human experimentation”? I’d have to ask my phone before I decided whether it was worth going against a deliberate decision from my new boss. I was in the agent gig for the long haul, so I could afford to wait for a more opportune time to put my foot down. Besides, I was worried that if I goaded Laura into picking a fight, our regional branch of the FPMP just might lose.

I left Laura’s office before I said anything I’d regret—and also to go off somewhere beyond the FPMP cameras and get a better look at the soggy paperwork burning a hole in my pocket. Sure, most of it was redacted. But I was dying to try and piece together the parts that had escaped the thick black marks.

It was because my mind was on the papers that I strode right past Agent Watts without realizing I knew her. “Vic? Vic! It’s Jodie.”

To my credit, I didn’t say, “Who?” She looked really different in a puffy winter parka, and not her usual black tactical gear.

“Are you okay?” Watts caught up with me and grabbed me by the arm as if to prove to herself I hadn’t ended up as a real-life marksmanship target. “I can’t believe Patrick Barley got to you before I did. I tried to warn you, I really did, but I didn’t know where you lived. I couldn’t get to Director Kim—and heck, with his clearance, he must’ve been intercepting my messages to you, too.”

I opted to let Patrick take the fall for my failure to charge my own phone. It was the least he could do for me.

Chapter 41

If anyone deserved some TLC, it was Darla. The dead didn’t bother her—she’d been conversing with them all her life. But the thought that an assassin had been among us seriously freaked her out, so Jacob and I figured there was plenty of room in the cannery for a guest, especially since the cats were on their way out. Darla declared it was much cooler than “that douchey hotel room,” a.k.a. the suite that probably cost the FPMP a cool grand a week, if not more. But I had to admit, swaddled on the couch in Jacob’s robe, with her makeup smeared off and a gray cat stretched across her thighs, she did seem like she belonged.

These days, now that Crash has a car, he has a tendency to stop by on the spur of the moment. When I called him to see if he knew of any natural remedies for Darla’s peeling, bleeding lips, he offered to bring something over. And even with his inscrutable boyfriend along, there was still plenty of elbow room for everyone. Even when Lipton and Garcia dropped by, too, and decided to linger. Because surveillance specialist Garcia swore up and down that the cannery was not bugged, and he and his cat-loving colleague were dying to gossip about their time living in safe houses. Which were basically cheesy motels paid in cash, but as the two of them were still alive, they’d evidently done their job.

As Jacob ordered a mess of Chinese takeout, Red hunkered down in the corner for a deep discussion with Agent Lipton, and Darla unabashedly checked out Crash’s butt, it occurred to me that I couldn’t have imagined a weirder intersection of people at the cannery’s first impromptu party. But the FPMP agents were cool with my past and present friends, everyone was fully aware that Jacob was my boyfriend and I saw dead people…and no one was giving me the stink-eye.

Maybe I actually belonged, too.

The doorbell blared and everybody flinched—Agent Lipton actually went for her sidearm—and we all shared a nervous chuckle as Jacob expounded on the cannery’s industrial history. Give him half a beer and he’d probably start bragging about the ghost who sold it to us. And why not? This crowd could handle the truth.

I headed for the door with a few twenties I’d scraped up, and was surprised to find Bob Zigler on my doorstep. Not because we were out of touch—I’d just texted him a few hours ago on my somewhat recharged phone—but since he’d always been so uneasy around me, it was a surprise to find him seeking me out in person. We stared at each other for a moment, as if neither of us knew what to say if we didn’t have anything rehearsed. Then he noticed the cash and said dryly, “What, you think I’m taking bribes now?”

I cocked my head toward the hall and said, “C’mon in, Zig, we’re not heating the whole neighborhood.”

He stomped off his shoes, stepped out of the bitter wind, and closed the door behind him. “This shooting you had me look up…just wanted to make sure it was actually you.”

“How’s that? You got any other ex-partners snooping through police business?”

“Maybe not. But since when are you a perfect speller?”

“That would be my new auto-correct.” How do people deal with noticing so many mundane details? Not only had my old partner deduced my writing was different, he’d come to check on me in person and make sure I was okay. He’d probably already eaten—he and his wife were sticklers about mealtime—but I invited him to join us anyway. “Why don’t you take off your coat and stay a while? There’s Kung Pao Chicken on the way.”

For a moment, it seemed like he might take me up on the offer, but the spark of interest quickly snuffed itself. “Comfortable” was never a term I’d use to describe Bob Zigler, but he’d been on edge ever since the basement full of twitching corpses. The human body can only stay at high alert for so long—I should know—and Zig’s level of anxiety had burned through all his reserves. The poor guy was graying faster than a white tube sock in a load of black T-shirts. And while I’d claim no responsibility for the zombie debacle, part of me couldn’t help but acknowledge that if he’d never partnered up with me, he wouldn’t have had to endure it.

He slipped an envelope out of his pocket and handed it over. It felt substantial. I thumbed it open and pulled out several printouts. Police report. News clippings.

Triple-Shot’s shooting hadn’t been covered up by the FPMP, because it had taken place before the organization even existed. Not because there was genetic manipulation and human experimentation going on, either. The building’s prior occupant was in the publishing industry, magazines and the like, with the location picked for its proximity to the Tribune and easy access to railway distribution. Back when I was still in high school and too self-centered to care about the news, one of their employees got himself fired by skimming a few Jacksons out of petty cash. Took umbrage. Walked back in with a snub-nosed revolver, marched up to corporate, and took aim at the CEO. Unfortunately for Triple-Shot, security was right on his tail.

Ex-cop.

Bang-bang-bang.

The thing about lethal force is that we’re trained to dish it out, but not to pick up the pieces afterward. The guy who pulled the trigger was doing the job he’d been hired to do, and in fact might’ve saved more than one life that day, if Triple-Shot’s grudge went beyond a single target. But the guard was so dismayed by what he’d done, before the officers on duty could take his statement, he put his gun to his temple and used it one more time.

Where? In the basement boardroom.

“Damn, Zig. You just shed light on two of my biggest problems. I should double what I’m paying you.”

“Sure. I’ll add a few more zeros to the check. So, anyways…I should get going.”

“Hold on,” I said, and he paused, but avoided my eyes. “Are you okay? Really okay?”

He might’ve wanted to simply agree. But after he sorted through a few responses, eventually he settled on, “I’ll get by.”

As I stood on the stoop and tracked his receding tail lights to the end of the block, it occurred to me that I’d feel better having Zigler somewhere I could keep an eye on him. Okay, and probably I was just worried about being saddled with yet another co-worker who had a scary secret agenda. But I really did think his talent was going to waste. I said to my phone, “Text Laura…uh, Director Kim…and tell her Bob Zigler should be the new Patrick.”

“And direct or come on teller Bob Zigler Shimby the new cat sick,” the phone replied cheerfully. “Ready to send?”

“Wait, what?”

“I’ll send it.”

The phone made a sendy sound, and I sighed. Note to self: no voice-to-text outside in the wind. Luckily Laura was smart. She’d figure it out.

The food showed up, and I lugged it back in and rejoined the party. The white cat with the black ear—the one who’d been staring at me all week? I saw Agent Lipton slipping him a pinch of rice. I would’ve thought a cat would prefer chicken, or maybe shrimp, but what did I know? A single week as a cat owner hardly made me an expert, though I did figure out the turds were easier to scoop if you let them firm up before you started digging around the litter.

I meant to rib her about the food thing, so it surprised me that when I did finally corner her alone, what I ended up saying was, “My partner Carl seemed pretty worried about you.”

“My God, I need to call him and tell him I’m okay. And my sister. And my annoying trainer.”

“So…Carl. You and him…?”

The suggestion struck her as funny. “Carl? God no, he’s my sponsor.”

It took me a few seconds to realize she was talking about Alcoholics Anonymous. Just goes to show how much I still had to learn about the world of sobriety. Whatever she got from those meetings, they must’ve been working for her. When Jacob cracked open his secret Wisconsin twelve-pack stash of Spotted Cow, she opted for coffee.

By the time we cleared the plates and rounded up the cats into their carriers, Darla had passed out on the recliner, and Crash declared that he and Red had “eight million” things to do at Curious Curios and they’d better get going. Given that he wasn’t the sort to indulge in a white lie to spare my feelings and take a polite leave, I suspected they really were swamped…except they didn’t look stressed out about their new business venture. All around, in fact, there was an ease about them I couldn’t help but envy. Especially the way they seemed to communicate with nothing more than a few lingering glances and the shadow of a secret smile.

We’re all creatures of habit, I suppose. I left the bedroom door ajar to keep the cats from pestering us, even though I’d just helped load the carriers into Veronica’s car. And I held my tongue even though, before he headed back home, Garcia reassured us that no one was listening in.

I shrugged out of my holster, and Jacob took my bandaged hand in his. Blood had seeped through the gauze. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to urgent care?”

I gave my hand an experimental squeeze. “No, it’s clotting.” I’d be fine, so long as I didn’t need to shoot at anyone else that night. I couldn’t claim to be well-versed in all the mechanics that made a gun fire, but I suspected my sidearm wouldn’t be much use until I had Agent Watts give it a good once-over, anyhow.

Jacob didn’t release my hand immediately. He considered it a long moment, then slowly, reverently, lifted it to his lips, which he skimmed across my fingertips. Then he furled my fingers gently, and pressed the knuckles to his cheek. “I used to think you were pretty cavalier about ghosts. And then I met Darla.”

A sick chill ran through me. “Let’s hope I’m never blasé about anyone using me as their hand puppet.”

Jacob stared at my bandaged palm for a while, then said, “I thought Jennifer Chance was gone.”

That made two of us. I shook my head.

“Death should be final,” he insisted.

“I gave up a long time ago yearning for the way things should be.”

“But if Chance is still out there, she could be anywhere, right? Watching. Listening. Waiting….” He cut his eyes to the door, then nudged it closed with his foot. “It’s like those cats. We’d be so careful about every last thing we did around them, but the second we let our guard down, they’d be on the countertop scarfing the leftovers.”

Here I thought he’d draw an analogy to the hole they’d clawed into the back of the sofa. I toed off my shoes, eased Jacob back onto the bed so we were facing each other. Softly, I traced the stubble on his jawline while I searched his dark eyes. “Look,” I told him, “I won’t blow smoke. I respect you too much to feed you a line just to make you feel better. Someday I might get a better handle on this whole mediumship thing, but for right now, all I can do is go with my gut. And my gut’s telling me Jennifer Chance isn’t lurking around like a determined cat outside the bedroom door. The veil between life and death has held up since people crawled out of the primordial soup. It must be pretty sturdy.”

Before he could ruminate any more on his worries, I pressed my mouth to his and parted his lips with my tongue. Not to shut him up, not exactly. But to stop him from rehashing things we had no control of and even less understanding. Chance hadn’t come charging out of the afterlife to haunt us out of nowhere. We’d been groping around in the dark, Darla and me, and our blundering had given her the opportunity to grope back.

I rolled onto him and forced my knee between his legs, pinning his hands to the bed as I did. He grunted his approval into my mouth. I realized I was relieved. Don’t get me wrong, I was glad he comprehended how serious this whole ghost business was. I’d think Jacob had issues if he was still as gung-ho about ghosts as he used to be. After a certain point, though, even the most ardent Psych groupie’s gotta know when to say when. But I was glad the ghosts didn’t continue to haunt him long after they’d retreated past the veil. Compared to Zigler, he was fine. At least if there wasn’t any rustling plastic to contend with.

“We’re fine,” I told him, and kissed him again, harder. Difficult to say who I was trying to reassure: him, or me. I sucked down a fresh batch of white light and bathed the two of us in its radiant power. It wasn’t strong enough to make us spark where we rubbed together, but there was an extra kick to the tingle we shared.

We wrestled our way out of our pants. Somehow it seemed too vulnerable to strip all the way down with a guest right downstairs, even if she was dead to the world beneath an afghan covered in cat fur. I only had one functional hand, and it was currently being used to hold me up. But Jacob was eager enough to take care of both our dicks. He lined them up together, one in each fist, and everything went silent but the breathing as we humped ourselves into a satisfying rhythm. I lost myself, not only the tightness of his grasp, but the look in his eyes, sublimely intelligent, adorably serious, and deeply aroused.

If I was concerned it took a ghost sighting to get a rise out of Jacob, I needn’t have worried. The promise of taking a load to the belly—or anywhere else, for that matter—was enough to keep him interested. “So,” I ventured, between the huffing and puffing, “think you’d still be hot for me if I stopped letting ghosts commandeer my writing hand?” Most likely I just meant to think that question, but the discerning part of my brain was busy trying to get my balls to brush against his fingers.

“Don’t underestimate the power of your bad-boy scowl to hijack my attention.” Jacob shifted his grasp, and oh yeah, there it was. The brink. Beckoning surely enough to excuse me from the obligatory eye-roll I’d normally need to reply with. I fucked his fist harder, watched him watching me while I peaked. So focused. So serious. So vulnerable and open.

I spilled, and Jacob’s breath caught. His mouth froze half open, eyes locked on mine. He went rigid all over and rode his peak just a few seconds more. Connected. Not through our subtle bodies, and not entirely through our physical shells either, but through our minds, and our hearts.

Chapter 42

Oddly enough, after all the excitement, Jacob and I did enjoy some semblance of a weekend. It was maybe two hours long, once I got done debriefing Laura Kim, filling out an interminable amount of paperwork, and strategizing with Darla, but at least I didn’t need to wear a tie. Despite the paltriness of my break, when Monday morning rolled around, I left Jacob struggling toward wakefulness in bed and Darla fixing her hair in the downstairs bathroom, and headed in early to swing by the armory.

As much as I hated Agent Watts referring to me as “Fifth Precinct,” the fact that she’d nicknamed me at all made it somewhat easier to hand over my sidearm and ask her to unjam it. Surprisingly enough, she didn’t razz me mercilessly for not taking the gun apart and fixing it myself. In fact, she handled it very gingerly as she locked it in a case. “The thing with blanks is that the casing doesn’t eject like it would with a real bullet. You could do it manually, but if Barley modified those rounds himself…well, best not take any chances. I’ll have my tech clear it, and get you a loaner for the day.”

I was about to insist that the likelihood of me needing to shoot anyone was pretty much nil, but as she started wading through the red tape involved in handing me another weapon, I reconsidered. Given my track record, I might very well find myself in a situation that required lethal force. And evidently, if the situation warranted, I had no compunctions about taking aim and pulling the trigger.

What did it say about me, that in the moment I fired at the last guy I’d taken out to dinner, I felt nothing but a cold sense of resignation? The ex-cop who’d gunned down Triple-Shot took it so hard he couldn’t bear to keep going, but me? Hard to say for sure, since I didn’t actually connect with my target. Maybe if I’d seen him slump to the ground with three red holes in his chest, I would’ve felt different. Maybe if I saw the light flee from his eyes, that image would be hard to forget.

Or maybe not. Because if I ever did take a person’s life, in all likelihood, I’d be stuck dealing with their pissed off ghost.

I was ruminating on whether or not my disregard for human life made me a shitty person when I realized Watts was no longer talking guns and ammo. “…so if you could put in a good word for me with Director Kim,” she was saying, “I’d appreciate it.”

Crap. I’d figured it would be safe to tune out for another five, ten minutes. “Because, why?”

“I want the credit I deserve—we hatched this whole thing together.”

“Which…thing?”

“The slug.” I must’ve been looking at her like she was talking about gardening. “The hunk of lead I needed for comparison. Hold on, are you saying you didn’t read my emails? Any of them?”

“Who knows the full extent of what Patrick managed to block?”

Watts shook her head in disbelief. “So you just randomly happened to bring this guy back to the range to shoot twice in the same day?”

Why, no, it wasn’t random at all. I was pumping him for information about my own screwed-up past. “Well, something was obviously up with him,” I said in an attempt to sound at least marginally competent. “But tell me this: if most of the agents carry a Beretta, how’d you narrow it down to him?”

“Process of elimination. Once the lab figured out which batch the bullet was from, I matched it to the agents who were given that particular ammo, then started looking at the newest hires first.”

Good thing I hadn’t managed to strategize with her, since my best idea involved plowing through lists alphabetically.

“Plus,” she said, “no one shoots that badly.” She gave me a look like she wanted to add, Not unless they’re ex-cops, but the dig was way too easy.

“Listen, you were on to him before anyone. Of course I’ll mention it to Laura.”

“Okay, good.” She gave a single nod. “You’re all right, Fifth Precinct.”

Actually, it was the least I could do. Watts had done her due diligence by trying to contact me directly. Relentlessly. Even so, I considered adding the condition that she ditch the nickname, but decided there’s a difference between playful ribbing and malice. Besides, some small part of me was just relieved I’d finally shed Spook Squad.

I headed over to headquarters and got a text from Laura asking me to stop by her office first thing. At least, I was fairly sure it was from Laura. The thought of Jennifer Chance forcing her way back through the veil did have me rounding the corners with extra caution.

Laura greeted me with, “I’m thinking I should move Agent Davis to the Chicago office.”

“But Darla would, uh…. You really don’t need to. I’ve got this covered.”

“It has nothing to do with my confidence in your ability. This proposal the two of you sent me last night shows serious forward thinking.”

I didn’t really think our plan was all that inspired, just an idea born out of a desire to stop watching the world’s most boring TV show. We took the origin stories of all the mediums and sketched out a questionnaire that would screen for similar early supernatural experiences. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure who’d suggested it. Given what we knew, it seemed like common sense.

But Laura was terrified of ghosts—even more so, now that Jennifer Chance had reprised her role. I’d been as clinical as possible in our report, left out the crazy eyes and the chilling cat-and-mouse smile, but even as dull as I could make it sound, it still had Laura itching to circle the wagons.

She said, “The two of you are strongest as a team. Once we’ve got a better handle on identifying the potential mediums, I’d consider letting her go back—”

“Wait. Hold on. If you order Darla to leave her home and her family—”

“Obviously, I’d make provisions for them to join her.”

“You’re not hearing me. If you force Darla, you’ll only make her miserable. Sure, she kicks ass. But she’s got a life, and so does her husband, and she’s been counting down the minutes until she can head back. It’s not as if we lose her expertise. We’ve got phones and video. And if we really need her, she’s not all that far away.”

Laura frowned in thought. “I suppose it wouldn’t be any more trouble to install a helipad on the roof than to relocate a family. Plus it would come in handy.”

I kept my mouth shut while she convinced herself, so as not to jinx my future chances of scoring a helicopter ride.

“Fine,” Laura decided, “we’ll shelve the relocation discussion, for the moment. Anything else?”

“Actually…it pains me to admit this, but after the unanticipated spirit activity this weekend, the building needs a good sweep, and I’d rather not do it alone. Darla’s talents fall more in the receptive category, but there’s a medium down in Florida who’s got a knack for exorcisms and protections.”

“Say no more. Send me his details and I’ll take care of it.”

When she said that with such decisiveness and confidence, she sounded just like the old Laura. Which, unfortunately, wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run. “There’s only so many hours in a day,” I told her. “And being Regional Director of the Midwest is more than a full-time job in itself. You can’t be your own assistant.”

She stiffened, and I thought for a moment that I might’ve overstepped the bounds of our supposed rapport. But then she gave her head a rueful shake and said, “No kidding. Getting burned by someone so close, it sucks. Now it’s hard to know who to trust.”

I opted not to mention it was her workplace that put fake cops like Officer “Andy” on my tail. “I really can vouch for Bob Zigler.”

“He had a glowing recommendation from Constantine too, but when I offered him a field agent position, he turned it down. Maybe Operations Coordinator would be a better fit.”

No clue if Zig would even want a desk job in the Program, but hey, it never hurt to have options. When she turned back to her computer, I figured I’d been dismissed, and turned to leave—on a fairly high note, too, for all that I’d admitted culpability in conjuring up Jennifer Chance after she should have been dead and gone.

I’d nearly made my escape when Laura called out, “And, Vic?” I turned back, figuring I wouldn’t get away without being chastised about my ghostly exploits after all. But the only thing she added was, “Thanks.”

I headed back toward the office I’d shortly have to myself again, mostly, if you didn’t count Carl and several dozen houseplants, but found myself so turned around, I realized I was practically on Jacob’s Internal Affairs doorstep. I detoured for a quick pitstop, figuring he’d want to know the vocabulary he’d helped me finesse to make my report sound as non-horrifying as possible seemed to have done its job, and was surprised to find him chatting with Agent Garcia.

Today the surveillance specialist had on the standard black suit and boring tie the rest of us were wearing. Guess he was working from HQ today. That, or he was going undercover as a bouncer at a high-priced strip club. He turned to me and said, “I heard you didn’t give up the safe houses, even at gunpoint.”

“Kind of a no-brainer. Jacob didn’t tell me where you guys were.”

Garcia looked at the two of us with admiration. “I always figured it would be hard to separate work from home life, and couples had to tell each other everything.”

Simultaneously, Jacob and I warded each other off…probably more theatrically than we needed to. I said, “I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying about his problems on top of my own.” Maybe I was exaggerating a little. But I figured it couldn’t hurt our reputation to play it up.

Garcia gestured for me to join them at Jacob’s desk. “I was just going over some policies and specs with your guy here that you’ll probably want to know about.” He pointed at a report that meant nothing to me. “Your house is clean. No cameras, no bugs.”

“Sure,” I replied.

“I’m telling you, private residences are off-limits without the consent of whoever lives there. Only exception would be if they were a danger to someone.”

Of course there were exceptions. And it would be no problem to pay some crooked professional to sign off on them. My expression must’ve said as much, because Garcia got more insistent. “I combed through all the records, twice. The FPMP is not monitoring your building now, and they never have.”

My eyes flicked up to meet Jacob’s. I could tell by the mulish set of his jaw, he wasn’t buying it either. He said, “And our vehicles? What about them?”

“Company cars have a tracker in the dash.” Okay. That jibed with what we knew of Andy’s Lexus. “Same as your company-issued firearm.”

I’d never bothered with an off-duty weapon. Now I knew what Jacob could get me for my birthday. Not that I trusted him to remember the actual date, but since the big 4-0 was coming, maybe it was on his mind.

“Our phones?” I asked. “How private are they?”

“The calls themselves aren’t recorded or monitored, but definitely be smart about what you do on your phone. GPS, emails, photos, browsing history. All of that’s fair game. Not just the FPMP’s phone, but any smartphone. You were a cop—you should know all about the kind of evidence you can pull from the history.”

I gestured at my head. “My expertise was in a different kind of data.” Back at the Fifth Precinct, I never would have made such a bold statement. But at the FPMP, folks were used to dealing with extrasensory abilities, and they knew I wasn’t bragging. My talent was a simple matter of fact. I scowled the lockscreen open and handed it to him. “Since my phone is fair game, maybe you can take a look and see why Laura can’t get hold of me.”

In all of two seconds, Garcia figured out my problem. “Her number’s blocked. Cell, landline, even her home number. And they’re set up to forward to Patrick if you call them.”

I answered with a long-suffering sigh. He set about undoing the damage. “You’ll want to look through all your settings and get a basic idea of what each of them does. Not just the menus, but the submenus, too. Look them up online if you don’t know what they are, you’ll find plenty of explanation. In terms of navigation, I’d recommend turning off your location and using a dedicated GPS if you want to minimize your electronic trail….”

Was it too late to get back my flip phone? Probably. The litany of things I shouldn’t do on my new smartphone stretched on, but I’d glazed over the moment he got all technical about settings and apps. He paused, and the pause extended long enough that I figured he was through. Except, it didn’t really seem like he was. There was a weird energy hanging there, like maybe he’d stopped mid-sentence.

“You were saying?” Jacob prompted.

He ignored Jacob, cocked his head, and approached the window—the one with the haggard trees outside—reached into the blinds, and plucked a small piece of plastic off the inner frame of the windowsill. He turned the device around a few more times, then held it up to the light and squinted at it. A couple of tiny wires protruded from the bottom. Before either of us could verify that the mysterious object was exactly what we dreaded, Garcia looked up at us and said, “This isn’t one of ours.”

Chapter 43

When life hands you lemons, they say, make lemonade. Or margaritas, as the case may be. While our latest high-powered blender churned a cupful of ice into a pale, green-tinted slush, I smoothed out some papers on the countertop and considered the information about Miss Maxwell that Patrick had left me.

Recommendation to reassign [redacted name] to the Cleveland Sisters of Faith inpatient facility for further observation and counseling. [Redacted] continues to request the rite of exorcism despite the refusal of the Bishop Mann. Initial diagnosis by [redacted] of paranoid schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations and perceptual disturbances has been challenged by [also redacted] as an acute, stress-related episode.

“I blew it,” I told Jacob. “Maybe, on paper, I was technically an adult, but I was so immature it wasn’t even funny. Here was this woman whose history was a lot like mine, but she’d come through it intact. She could’ve helped me in so many ways, but I saw myself as an ‘anarchist’ and her as an authority figure. I did everything I could to evade and ignore her, and look where it got me.”

Jacob scanned the papers fanned out, with their creases and water stains and thick black marks. “I don’t see a death certificate,” he said.

Maybe not. And even if he did, there’d still be a way to get in touch. Although given her animosity toward our old teacher, I couldn’t imagine Darla would be too keen on playing interdimensional intercom.

Jacob eased himself up against my back, slid his arms around my waist, and pressed a cold kiss to the back of my neck. Not deadfrost…just margarita. I shivered and tried not to smile, since I was doing my best to feel guilty and inadequate. But I couldn’t quite manage. Not with Jacob squeezing up against me like that.

“You’re okay with me seeing this?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be? You’ve seen a hell of a lot worse…like that freaky ingrown hair on my back.”

“It’s hard to tell whether you’re trying to shield me from something, or you honestly don’t know.”

“You know I trust you,” I told him. “With my life.” I craned my neck to kiss him…and for all that I thought tequila smelled like an old rubber inner tube, combined with the margarita mix and his tantalizingly cool tongue, suddenly I found it a lot more enticing. I explored that taste in more depth, and the kissing started to feel more like foreplay…until we were interrupted by a whiff of burnt electronics. Jacob stopped tonguing me and turned off the blender.

I pressed my mouth to his ear. “I might have been a little leery at first,” I told him. “But I think the two of us make a pretty good team.”

He grabbed the blender, handed me his half-full glass and an empty one for me, and headed up toward the bedroom, where he filled them both. Drinking ensued. Not much—I’m a cheap date—followed by a pounding that was deliberately loud enough to give anyone listening in something to blush about.

We’d presumed Patrick was the one who’d bugged Jacob’s office, and he’d never been to the cannery…as far as we knew. But why take chances? We were so accustomed to treating our home like it was bugged, it was easier to keep up our noise camouflage than to accept anyone’s reassurance that the place was clean.

Frankly, I found myself wishing the FPMP’s reach went deeper than it did. If we’d caught Patrick on-camera chipping Andy, Agent Frank would still be alive. Too bad the chances of me exploiting high tech surveillance were pretty slim. Hell, I could barely operate my phone.

Not only did I have a lot to learn, but a lot to remember. How I could’ve possibly forgotten Harold and Mama Brill was beyond me. I planned to hang on to those new memories tenaciously, and hopefully, uncover more. There was bound to be someone at the FPMP who could help me. ’Cos the less I had to deal with Stefan, the better.

All in all, I felt pretty okay about my decision to jump ship at the Chicago PD and throw in with F-pimp. I might never fit very comfortably anywhere.

But like my closetful of new black suits, the fit was close enough.

-end-

About this Story

Usually when I write, I think I know what the theme of a given story is going to be when I sit down to write it. And usually, I’m dead wrong.

I knew Vic’s early days at the FPMP would have to entail the job being a lot more convoluted than he ever realized. Although I miss Con Dreyfuss terribly, it’s useful to have him gone and Laura in his place, because she doesn’t have to honor any of his promises, and she needs Vic a lot more than Dreyfuss ever did.

Working with Jacob is something that’s only gone semi-smoothly for Vic in the past. They do complement each other, but Jacob can be a bull in a china shop when it comes to getting what he wants. One thing about Vic, though, is that he’s always seen this aspect of Jacob clearly and, although there are some disadvantages to being with someone so single-minded, Vic prefers him that way.

So if I didn’t want the driving conflict to happen between Vic and Jacob, then what could it be? As I spooled out the story, I realized how rough it was for Vic to be out of his element, and to have to admit that he actually fit in the role of homicide investigator he’d been balking at all these years.

A lot of writing communities and podcasts have been talking about impostor syndrome lately. It’s the feeling that you don’t deserve your success and that everything’s going to come crashing down when people see you for what you actually are. Although I have a pretty stern internal task-master, it’s not overly critical, so I thankfully don’t grapple with impostor syndrome myself. Vic, though? I hadn’t realized how much he struggled. And, really, this issue went all the way back to Among the Living, when he couldn’t hear the murder victims because their souls had been consumed.

Darla had no such worries. She’s completely confident in her own abilities, but she’s accustomed to being overlooked and having all her achievements minimized…and frankly, she’s pretty pissed off about it.

I very nearly brought in Darla as the murder victim, but because I loved the way Gomez Pugh voiced her in the audios, I decided I wanted to keep her character in play, and I killed “Andy” instead. I couldn’t be happier with that choice! Darla was an absolute joy to write and I love the way she and Vic play off one another. Vic usually censors what he says aloud, but he and Darla talk to each other with the frankness that comes with knowing someone really, really well. The hardest part was keeping her angry with him. They had to be at odds for the majority of the book for their team-up at the end to really resonate. So I kept having to remind myself that she wasn’t ready to forgive the old hurts just yet.

I’ll be eager to see more of Darla in the future. Good thing Indianapolis is just an hour away from Chicago by helicopter!

About The Author

Jordan Castillo Price has never taken a polygraph test, though if she ever did, she’d surely overthink it. Thankfully, she is a much better cook than Vic, especially now that she’s figured out how to use a broiler. She tries her best not to feed her cat people-food.

Connect with Jordan at the following places:

Facebook

Twitter

Jordan’s blog

Witness Sample

FROM PSYCOP BRIEFS: VOL 1

Have you read PsyCop Briefs, Volume 1? The novel-length collection contains 20 PsyCop shorts—most rare or exclusive, and four brand new. Here’s a sample from the novelette Witness, which takes place between PsyCop 9 and 10.

I

I’ll say one thing for the Fifth Precinct: at least I knew where everything was in relationship to everything else. No matter how many times I tried to get the lay of the land at my new job, I always managed to take an unscheduled detour and show up five minutes late. Laura Kim looked up from her desk and greeted me with, “Oh good, you’re here.” She’d ensconced herself in an office as far away from the FPMP’s resident repeaters as she could possibly get, and I wondered if she’d also had some kind of aversion whammy placed on the door. Because I always found myself checking out the records room or the cafeteria in response to one of her summonings.

Apparently that Friday afternoon I wasn’t the only one at the Federal Psychic Monitoring Program who’d been summoned. Super-buff empath agent Jack Bly stood at the window, hands in pockets, daylight gleaming over his severe buzz cut as he gazed out over the railyard. And the Super Stiff who’d shamelessly bribed me into eating quinoa for dinner last night by shoving his hand down my pants? He was ever so casually checking out Laura’s bookshelf, doing his best not to look smug, and failing miserably.

Laura stood, planted her hands on her desk, and said, “Since Agent Bly has wrapped up his current investigation and Agent Marks has completed his verbal de-escalation course, you’re all available to take part in a technical workshop this weekend.”

What? Now that I’d graduated from the Chicago PD I was supposed to have weekends off. I’d been building up my Netflix queue all week, and a new pizza place down the block just slipped a drool-worthy menu through our mail slot. I was about to say thanks, but no thanks when a quick look from Jacob informed me that Laura wasn’t asking me to give up my weekend, she was telling me. And any protest on my part would just make me look like the dumb FPMP rookie I was.

Fine. I didn’t complain. But I might have sighed. Quietly. To myself.

Laura fanned three sheets of paper across the desk and said, “Due to the particular nature of this training, we’ll require a signature on this waiver form.” Each of us picked up a form and read. Or at least tried to, in my case. The legalese was so thick, they’d lost me after Waiver Release and Assumption of Risk. My eyes defocused as I thought about the Carnivore Special. Ground beef, Italian sausage, Buffalo chicken…was that it?

“Question about item four,” Bly said. “Is it absolutely necessary?”

Four, that’s right. Four toppings. And what was that fourth topping?

Laura said, “Think about it. You’ll get more out of the training.”

Bacon. Yes. I might as well run the pizza through a blender and inject it directly into my arteries—and I could barely wait. Between the quinoa and the working weekend, Jacob totally owed me whatever indulgence I could possibly dream up. Sunday night would be greasy food, TV, sweatpants, and—

“Drugs?” Jacob said. “It’s a lot to ask.”

Wait, when did we start talking drugs? Because scoring random pills from the friend of a friend in a shadowy gin mill was one thing. Having a governmental agency medicate me? That was a flat-out no.

I scanned the consent form in a panic. Four, four…where the hell was four? Bad enough I couldn’t find section four, I started doubting I even remembered what the number itself looked like. I was too busy imagining a bunch of musclebound apes strapping me down to a gurney while someone shoved an IV into my arm….

“There.” Bly reached across and pointed out a paragraph. The paper was trembling. I took a deep breath and somehow managed to quell the impending freakout. Barely. I found number four on my consent form and read it more closely. I understand there are general risks with any medication, including: sedation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting…fucking hell, was it too late to go crawling back to Sergeant Warwick with my tail between my legs? Cold hands and feet, suicidal thoughts and behavior, memory loss and death.

I’d never had any illusions my stint as a federal agent would be a walk in the park. But death? I preferred the threat of dying to come from the barrel of a gun or a few decades of questionable diet, not some dangerous and untested drug that had no business coursing through my system. I was just about to slap my consent form down and make a big stink when I saw a word I knew all too well: Auracel. One tab, twice daily.

Well, fuck. I could do that standing on my head. In fact, when I went grocery shopping, I’d take that dose anyway to spare myself the sight of the intersection repeaters.

Bly penned his signature. Jacob was watching me. I gave in with a shrug, and the two of us signed away our weekend. Laura co-signed the forms, tucked them away in a locked drawer, then pulled out bottled waters and dosage cups, each cup containing a single pill. As I scowled down at the Auracel, I realized I wasn’t the only one who’d hesitated. The other two official psychs were eyeballing their pills with dread.

“Wait a minute,” I said to Jacob. “You’ll be sick as a dog if you swallow that.”

“It’s Neurozamine,” Laura said calmly. Neurozamine was Auracel’s wimpy cousin—and it didn’t do squat for me. “You’re the only one cleared for Auracel.”

Jacob said, “If one psych is forced to take a stronger medication, it invalidates the entire experiment.”

Laura assured us, “That might be a consideration, if this were an experiment. However, it is not.”

“But you are sending us off with our talents compromised,” Jacob insisted.

“It’s a training exercise in witness interview techniques.”

A single Auracel—essentially, no big deal. It might be strong enough to knock most psychs on their ass, but I’d built up so much resistance I could stomach three or four. A normal dose wouldn’t even leave me with its signature behind-the-eyeball headache hangover. Did I trust Laura Kim? As much as I trusted anyone, I supposed. And in law enforcement, training was as ubiquitous as paperwork.

I did my very best to staunch the Camp Hell panic as I tipped back the pill—what if it only looked like Auracel, but was something worse, a new psyactive, maybe. Or a tracking chip disguised to look like a pill. But my tongue recognized its old frienemy immediately, the shape of it, the smooth coating—and as I paused just a moment too long before I swallowed, the pervasive, eye watering bitterness.

I swallowed. And if Bly felt me panicking, he wouldn’t get to revel in that sensation much longer. He and Jacob both downed their pills too.

“Agent Powell will see you to your transport,” Laura pressed a button on her phone and a forgettable Caucasian guy in a black suit opened the door, then stood beside it, hands folded, waiting blandly. But as I turned to follow Jacob and Bly, she added, “Agent Bayne, a quick word?”

Now what?

Once we were alone, she said, “Obviously I’m not sending you into a haunted training facility.”

“Okay.”

“But it would look bad if I made an exception for you. Understand?”

“Sure.”

“Even though there wouldn’t be any natural reason to compete among you—I mean, your talents are so completely different that they complement each other—I think that an ability as strong as yours is bound to spur some rivalry. And what I want you to focus on here is gleaning as much as you can from the workshop. So, the Auracel.”

“Right. Got it.”

“Good.”

As I rejoined Jacob and Bly, I puzzled over the fact that Laura was attempting to mitigate jealousy. Over my mediumship. Laura Kim might be one of the smartest people I’d ever met, and I had no problem taking an Auracel for the sake of humoring her. But this idea that anyone found me threatening was patently lame. After the horrific exorcism the three of us had done together—formaldehyde, plastic sheeting and a thrashing corpse—I’d bet money that neither of my colleagues envied my abilities. Plus, it didn’t sound like we’d be training our psychic abilities this weekend, only our mundane skills. And no fellow officer has ever found me threatening.

Creepy? Sure. But never a threat.

Find PsyCop Briefs at your favorite online bookstore in ebook, paperback and audio!

The PsyCop Series

Among the Living - PsyCop 1

Thaw - PsyCop Short

Criss Cross - PsyCop 2

Many Happy Returns - PsyCop Short

Striking Sparks - PsyCop Short

Body & Soul - PsyCop 3

Secrets - PsyCop 4

Camp Hell - PsyCop 5

GhosTV - PsyCop 6

Spook Squad - PsyCop 7

Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8

Agent Bayne - PsyCop 9

Murder House - PsyCop 10 (coming late 2018)

PsyCop Briefs - Collection

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Beautiful • Mysterious • Bizarre
fiction by Jordan Castillo Price

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