I had myself positioned in the trees with a clear line of sight to all the action, close enough to watch, but far enough away to keep from tripping up the folks who actually knew what they were doing. No cheesy emblazoned sweatsuits here. Lots and lots of hardcore weatherproof and waterproof gear covered in reflective strips, lots of equipment, and lots of radio buzz going back and forth as they did their thing.
The clearing looked very different by daylight, and while the ice still gave an occasional moan, the workers didn’t seem overly concerned. They drilled down with augurs, made some calculations, and marked off the safe zones with bright orange spray paint. I hadn’t been in imminent danger of drowning during my ghost sighting after all. The part I’d wandered onto was able to hold three guys at least as heavy as me and a bunch of gear besides.
Bly looked a lot more like his usual self when he came out to join me in his overcoat and suit, and Jacob looked like his work self. They took position on either side of me and gazed out at the proceedings with looks of vague professional interest. I asked no one in particular, “Where are all the other INVESTIGATORS?”
“Relocated to the local community college,” Jacob said.
Bly added, “And they’re going nuts trying to figure out what happened here. I guess simulated crime just doesn’t put you in the zone like the real thing.”
“Oh, there was a zone all right,” I said, “a pissing-contest zone.” I dug the crime scene trading cards out of my pocket and picked through them. A perp with depression stabbed a victim with a hunting knife, left a blood trail and a set of partial prints, but there was an alibi. Maybe the final reveal was that evidence was botched or one of the witnesses was lying. I guessed we’d never know. And I supposed it didn’t matter.
“Wait a minute.” Jacob pulled his cards out of his overcoat pocket, and it struck me as funny that he’d bothered to keep them even though there was no chance of winning the game anymore. “How many do you have?”
I thumbed through and counted. “Seven.”
“Me too,” Bly said. Hilarious, he’d kept his too. He pulled them out and fanned them wide. “Seven.”
And then the three of us went quiet while the recovery team broke out the power tools and sawed a triangular opening into the frozen crust. I was glad the WITNESSES had been relocated along with everyone else. Not because it meant someone other than me would break the news to Allison about her sister—that would be the real investigators’ duty once positive ID was made—but because the sight of the divers dragging a decomposed body out from under the ice would give any civilian nightmares, whether or not it did turn out to be a missing relative.
From the glimpses I got—of the heart-shaped keychain, and of the repeater—I was pretty sure Allison’s family would find out soon enough what had become of Sarah. And while it would close the door on the hope that she might someday turn up on their doorstep apologizing for making a really bad decision and running off with an indie hipster vegan polygamous folk band, hopefully knowing what had happened was better than not-knowing, and eventually it would bring them some peace.
When the chug of the generators died down, Bly said, “It was a smart thing to ditch the meds.” I thought he’d aimed that at Jacob, wondered how he’d figured it out, and then realized he was talking to me. And also that none of us had been given our antipsyactives that morning. Crap. Hopefully he wasn’t reading anything from me other than startlement. “Talking to the witnesses psychically blindfolded, it definitely taught me something…but I’m not really sure what.” He shuddered. “It was unsettling. Yeah, they were actors. But without empathy, it felt more like they weren’t even people.”
Of course he thought I was the one who hadn’t gone along with the program. I’d seen a ghost, after all, so surely that meant I wasn’t on the mega-powerful antipsyactive, Auracel. Not to mention the fact that my permanent record was the one covered in black marks for bucking authority. I wondered if Laura would call me on it. I should probably have an excuse ready if she did, though hopefully she’d pick her battles too and let it slide. And if I did need to bend the truth, I’d just need to do it without any other psychs lingering around who could read my heart or mind. Laura had been pretty dismayed that I’d pegged her for a low-level medium, but that discovery actually worked to my advantage—it guaranteed she wasn’t a goddamn telepath staring right into my very thoughts.
I’m sure there was a time and place to shut off my extrasensory abilities, like wading through the same old intersection repeaters that I didn’t have the privacy to salt. In general, though, I had to admit that knowing truly was better than not-knowing…even if it was distracting, and even if it did put me at risk of wandering into something ugly because I was more focused on my third eye than my physical sight. But it was also a relief that I was such a practiced liar, and that the man I was most inclined to share my secrets with was impervious to psychic probing. No one should have a say in what I was seeing or not-seeing besides me.
Maybe I did learn something during this training exercise after all. Bly had drunk the Kool-Aid, Jacob held out, both of them had put forth actual effort while I did the bare minimum, and in the end, our score was the same. It’s not exactly that training, effort and talent don’t matter—obviously psychic abilities give us a major advantage. But life has never been fair, and chance tends to play a much bigger role than it should.
Eventually Bly’s unaccustomed lack of body fat drove him back indoors, leaving Jacob and me alone to see the diver surface with a waterlogged hiking boot. I sighed.
“I know this is important to you,” Jacob said. “If anyone understands what it’s like to put your life on the line for strangers, it’s me.”
But…? I heard the disapproval in his tone, and if he wasn’t going to finish the thought, I might as well. “But I was risking my neck, and she was already dead. Yeah, I know. It wasn’t the repeater I was worried about, it was the family. Her disappearance put all of them in a downward spiral.”
Out on the ice, the guy manning the winch must’ve had some signal from a diver, because he set the gears in motion and started hauling up something a lot bigger than a shoe. Generators chugged, and voices grew animated—edgy and loud—as the team scrambled to deal with whatever would emerge from beneath the surface.
Jacob stepped up beside me and his arm brushed mine. In the pale morning light, the worry line between his brows was chiseled deep. “Your family matters too,” he said, just below the hum of the winch.
Even I wasn’t blockheaded enough to shoot back, What family? Because families run deeper than blood. Connections are forged with things like affection and trust. Tolerance, too, since everyone’s insufferable once in a while. Understanding and intimacy. Love. Obviously, love.
In every way that mattered, we were a family. Jacob, and me.
About the Author
Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price is originally from Buffalo, New York, though she’s been a Midwesterner long enough that she can pass as a born and bred Wisconsinite. Over the years, she’s tried her hand at all sorts of creative endeavors, from wildly impractical to surprisingly useful—including art, music and design—but has found fiction writing flows the most freely and connects her with the greatest number of people.
In her spare time she spoils her cat, leads water aerobics, stuffs people full of cake, and daydreams about interesting ways in which society might collapse.
If you enjoyed the book, please leave a review. Even a brief review is beneficial to the author.
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Find Jordan in the following places:
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PsyCop Briefs: Volume 1 Page 21