Skin After Skin - PsyCop 8

by Jordan Castillo Price

  Lisa’s eyelids fluttered closed, and her eyes tracked beneath them like she was dreaming. Did Red need to be holding eye contact to share that dream? I didn’t know. And hopefully no one at some scary government agency did, either.

  Lisa’s brow furrowed in thought. Whether or not Red was putting his hocus pocus on her, at least he’d stemmed the weeping. Her pause was long enough to make me wonder if she would even answer, but then, hesitantly, she said, “I remember…Vera Wang. All these…dresses.”

  A wordsmith, she was not. But Red had no need for words.

  “Simple,” she said. “You know? Straight lines. White, off-white. Totally…plain.” She laughed self-consciously. “I guess it was tasteful, after the giant hair and big, poofy dresses from the eighties. But I thought those new styles were ugly. For my wedding, I wanted ruffles and lace. I wanted to look fancy. Pretty.”

  She blushed, and opened her eyes. Red told her, “You are, Lisa. You’re beautiful.” And as schmaltzy as it would’ve sounded coming from anyone else, from him, it was God’s honest truth.

  Across the room, Con glanced up at Lisa and gave her a private wink. I probably wouldn’t have caught it, if I hadn’t felt the currents of Vibing that ran between the two of them like laser surveillance beams.

  Whatever Red saw when she told her unadorned story must’ve been enough. He pulled out his trusty pocket notebook and sketched out a stunning updo—classy, fresh, and a hell of a lot more complicated than it looked. He flashed it at me and said, “What do you think?”

  Way beyond my skill set. But I supposed that between the two of us, we could handle it.

  Over the next couple of hours, we proceeded to tease, curl, tuck, and pin our little hearts out. To be honest, Red did most of the work, while I served as the extra pair of hands and distracting banter. Lisa’s big sister continued to whisk in and out of our makeshift bridal suite with the unlikeliest of things, from makeup to duct tape to a flouncy white salsa dress that thankfully looked more retro than dated. And yes, the handkerchief hem featured plenty of lace.

  I heard the buzz of people from the adjacent private dining room a few minutes after I felt their budding anticipation. Vic blundered in as we were finishing Lisa’s hair, and despite the fact that he was no big fan of her fiancee, he seemed calmer than I’d seen him in quite some while. But it wasn’t until I caught sight of Jacob that I realized he and Vic had accessorized from the same hard-knocks catalog as Con. Vic had a raw scuff on one cheek, and Jacob had a reddish ding on his temple that would grow up to be a bruise come morning.

  Jacob was by the bar, talking low to another gym rat in a suit. Jacob is striking enough on his own. With his carbon copy, he looked like he should be talking into an earpiece and escorting a high profile rock star to their limo.

  So this is how it works, I thought. Have the bad judgement to rub elbows with a cop, and next thing you know, the place is crawling with FPMP. When Jacob spotted me giving him the side-eye from the other end of the bar, he abruptly cut off their conversation to hurry over. But not until it clicked with me that I’d seen his pal before.

  “Thank God you’re okay,” Jacob said.

  Which I ignored. “Did you know that when your buddy isn’t out spying on psychics, he’s proctoring exams?”

  “What?”

  The guy ignored us both and signaled the bartender for another round. I turned back to Jacob. “The world’s most expensive quiz—in which I was purportedly the weakest link. Hard to forget such striking eyes. He was at my Psych screening. Doing what—making sure I failed?”

  “I have no idea. Back then I was still with the police department.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Can we not argue? Just this once? I’ve had a hell of a day—and without Jack’s help, it would’ve been a lot worse.”

  “You’ve had a hell of a day?” When Jacob closed his eyes and shook his head in resignation, I pressed him on it. “No, please, do tell. Did you lose your home? Your livelihood? Your every last possession?”

  Jacob stared into his beer for a moment, then said, “If you really want to know—I held down a dead body that was flailing around. Not recently deceased, either. Autopsied, frozen, and thawed. And when Vic finally forced the ghost to the other side where it belonged, I think I…I felt something. A chill. Like…the grave.” He drained his glass. “I touched death.”

  Leave it to Jacob to one-up me when my freaking house burns down. With the wind knocked out of my indignation, I said, “You okay?”

  He considered his answer a long while, then said, “I don’t know.”

  I sat with him in silence while we both considered the import of this thing he’d just shared. This was the type of stuff he’d held back, when we were dating…okay, maybe nothing quite so weird, but other stuff I might’ve been able to help him through, if only he’d been secure enough in our connection to confide in me. Now I could tell by a dozen visual clues that he was hurting—his expression, his rigidity, the set of his shoulders—but I still couldn’t feel it. He was blocking me. Even now.

  “C’mere, Big Guy,” I said. “Bring it on in.” I didn’t embrace him with the intention of breaking down any barriers. A hug is a normal human response when someone you care about is hurting. But I couldn’t help but notice that even after the hug, he was still as open to me as a window with its sash painted shut. If there was any lingering doubt as to our incompatibility, I’d just erased it.

  Friends. Had to hand it to ’em. The ones I gravitated toward were never boring.

  Take BornSkeptic. Most people would’ve cut someone a little slack on their wedding day. But given that it might be the last chance I had, I couldn’t stop myself. I cornered Con out by the coat check and said, “So that blue-eyed bald guy drinking for all he’s worth at the far side of the bar…he a friend of yours?”

  “Now that I’m no longer his boss, I suppose he is.”

  “I’ve seen him before. In fact, back at my psychic screening, he was all over me. What gives?”

  “Empaths. Takes one to know one.”

  “And he told you I was a shitty level one?”

  Con snagged me by the sleeve before I could go knock the guy off his barstool. “Chill, AshMan, he vouched for you. But my telepath didn’t think you were cut out for government work—and I’m not talking about snapping ugly photos at the DMV. You get involved in something dangerous, things heat up and you have to disappear, take off to some far-flung city with a fresh haircut and a new name, what happens to your mother?”

  First thought was that I’d take her with me. Her dog too. But honestly, Dumpling would probably do better in witness protection than Maxine.

  Once that consideration sunk in, Con said, “A piece of feedback about your screening that you might find useful: a good empath can move energy both ways. You weren’t bad in receiving mode, but you didn’t even attempt to transmit.”

  I thought back to the baffling room dividers. “But no one told me…oh, for fuck’s sake.” The guy in the bathroom who needed to calm down. The one I’d left flapping in the wind. “The random word spewing wasn’t even the test, it was everything in between.”

  “Sadly so. But isn’t life basically one big test?”

  “Now you sound like the armchair philosophers at Rainbow Dharma.” I tried to pick up on what he was feeling, given that he’d admitted I was actually empathic to some extent, but there was too much interference in the air. Excitement and fear, eagerness and dread, and the tweaky anxiety that comes with playing a high stakes game with everything to lose. I supposed if I couldn’t read Con, I’d have to settle for asking. “Tell me something. You and me. Was any of our camaraderie real, or were you just keeping track of some stupid empath who didn’t know his own strength and making sure he stayed out of trouble?”

  “Let me put it this way. There’s three things I’d never dream of doing. One, I won’t pee into a bottle I had any chance of accidentally drinking from later. Two, I don’t go around imagi
ning telepaths naked. And three—I’d never ask someone to do my getaway makeover if I didn’t consider him to be a true friend.”

  Chapter 55

  As weddings went, the ceremony was pretty simple, with textbook vows and a justice of the peace. But the emotions behind it were exquisitely heightened. And there I was in the midst of it, empathic enough that the FPMP had chosen to squelch my rankings, soaking up all the emotional intensity.

  Although the bartender shook a tasty Limoncello Collins, I cut myself off after two drinks. Scary to think I was high on life. But despite everything I’d lost, marinating all afternoon in my friends’ happiness and knowing I’d fall into bed with Red that night, that’s exactly how I felt.

  It had been a marathon of a day. My third wind had just about blown itself out and Red had slipped off to grab the car when a familiar too-tall figure joined me in the vestibule. I’d been acquainted with Vic long enough to know he must have something to say, otherwise he would’ve invented urgent business that caused him to veer off in the opposite direction, whether or not the ruse landed him out behind the dumpsters.

  While his anxiety spiked, he teetered on the verge of saying nothing, but ended up blurting out, “I’m really sorry about how things…turned out.”

  “Yeah, well. All the Buddhism must be doing its trick. I’m not as dismayed by the impermanence of everything as I might’ve been, once upon a time.”

  Vic shuffled his feet. “If there’s anything I can do….”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what he was offering: money, a place to crash, or a shoulder to cry on. Unlike Jacob, Vic didn’t communicate with hugs…not unless that communique was, Can I let go now?

  So I settled for a companionable shoulder-bump instead, and told him, “Cool, thanks.” Anything more would’ve just made his energy curdle. And I was feeling particularly merciful.

  Red brought the car around and I climbed in. There was a moment of disorientation when we didn’t head back toward Wicker Park, but only a moment. I hadn’t been exaggerating about my propensity to accept change. And flexibility is never a bad thing.

  An incoming text interrupted my contemplation of Red’s profile, and I saw my inbox had actually been stacking up while Lisa and Con were getting hitched. News of the fire had spread as quickly as the fire itself, and lots of my old customers, some from as far back as the soirees, wanted to make sure I was alive.

  I’d sent a dozen reassurances by the time I scrolled down far enough to see a huge block of messages were from Drunk Tony—one voicemail and multiple texts.

  Call me

  Call me

  CALL ME

  I’m no precog, but even I knew it couldn’t be good. Maybe he had nowhere to sleep, maybe he needed some cash. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Half-glimpses of ideas ranging from bad to worse, devolving in the four rings it took for him to answer his phone.

  And immediately start blubbering.

  I put on my best calm-voice and said, “Tony, take a breath.”

  “I’m—so—sorry,” he gasped out. “I don’t know how I…I don’t know.”

  “Seriously, dude, just breathe.”

  “It was, like, eight o’clock in the morning—I wasn’t drunk.”

  “Okay. I believe you.”

  “I swear to God I heard her. Swear to God.”

  A chill raced down my spine. Red sensed something was up, and he pulled over and put his hand on my knee. I hardly felt it.

  “Tony, what’s going on?”

  “Clear as day, I heard her, swear to God. I wasn’t drunk. She was hollering at the cops, telling them it wasn’t arson. And swearing, and calling ’em pigs. But mostly making sure they knew it was an accident.”

  There was only one person aside from me who’d say all that to a cop’s face. By the time I was able to say her name, my whole body had gone numb. Anger. Dread. And the creeping realization that the reason Tony drank had nothing to do with him enjoying the taste of beer.

  Red squeezed my knee and said, “What is it?”

  My voice sounded hollow when, numbly, I answered.

  “Lydia’s dead.”

  Chapter 56

  Tony was all done swearing to God—done talking at all. But his gut-wrenching sobs were all the confirmation I needed. I hung up and stared hard at the dash.

  “Curtis?” Red asked gently. He squeezed my knee again and I pushed his hand away.

  “Don’t get too attached,” I snapped. “Everything I do turns to shit. My career, my store, everything I fucking care about. Something’s got it in for me. God? Karma? Who the fuck knows. Maybe you should get away now while the getting’s good.”

  If ever I expected someone to lecture me, that person would be Red. But he didn’t. He waited to see if I had anything more to say, and when I didn’t, he pulled back into traffic and headed toward the apartment.

  We drove in silence. When we parked and cut the engine, I demanded, “Aren’t you going to tell me that suffering is a choice? That there’s no permanence in this world, and grasping for things to stay the same is a surefire path to misery?”

  “You lost your friend. Of course you’re hurting.”

  We went inside, where the apartment greeted us in all its stark emptiness. The notion that we could live on a box of noodles, a futon, and bunch of good intentions felt profoundly naive.

  Red closed the door behind us, then came up beside me and took my hand in his. I didn’t pull away, not because I found his touch comforting, but because I was so numb, I hardly felt it. “All this time,” I said, “I’ve been hung up on the fact that everyone and their brother has a certificate on the wall proving they’ve got talent. Everyone but me. And when I find out my score was rigged and these signals I’ve been tuned in to are real—not some cocktail of wishful thinking and coincidence—the one person I want to share my news with is dead. I’m tired, Red. Bone tired. And I don’t see the point anymore. Why be psychic? What good is it to be a precog if it doesn’t save you from a fire? And why be an empath, either? Just give it long enough, everything eventually turns out to be pointless.”

  Red walked me to the futon, sat me down, slipped an arm around me and pressed his temple to my shoulder. “Life is so fragile. It seems like too big a lesson to ever forget, and yet somehow, I always do, at least until I get a painful reminder. Say whatever you need to say, if you find comfort in the words. I can take it. And I’m not going anywhere. I don’t make empty promises. I said I wasn’t looking for a one-night stand, and I meant it. Relationships need to weather good times and bad. And I’m here to get you through this storm.”

  Red might’ve been willing to listen to me vent, but there was nothing more to be said. I slept in his embrace, enveloped by his concern, and I dreamed about sharing a smoke with Lydia. Hanging curtains in her waiting room. Drinking our disgusting cake flavored vodka. If my subconscious was trying to make me feel better by reminiscing, it failed horribly. Because those memories only made my waking moment twice as painful, when the present came rushing back and I remembered she was dead, and then felt her loss all over again.

  Despite the pathological lack of clutter in the apartment, I felt cooped up and restless. As Red sat for his morning meditation, I paced back and forth, back and forth. Caged and useless. Nothing to do and nowhere to go. Eventually, Red opened his eyes and said, “If you need to see the place, I’ll take you there.”

  And so we went.

  The dreams I’d woken from so cruelly felt more real than my present reality. I thought I’d been prepared for the burnt husk I found where my home once stood, but I’d been wrong. The building looked the same, from a distance. Its shell was intact. But the closer we got, the more details came into view: the blackened scorch around the windows, the broken glass and wood. The police tape. I scoped out what was left of the building from as close as I was willing to get. Red kept an eye on me as I played chicken with the adjacent lane of traffic. But he didn’t try to stop me.

  Eventually, one of those cars came to a ful
l stop, then flipped on its flashers. I only recognized that I’d ridden in it mere days before when its owner got out and joined me, and it occurred to me that Victor Bayne hadn’t been talking about Sticks and Stones when, back at the restaurant, he told me he was sorry.

  “Can you give her a message?” I asked.

  Vic trapped a piece of broken glass beneath his shoe, then dragged it back and forth on the sidewalk. “It doesn’t…work that way.”

  All the hurt and rage and despair trapped inside me ruptured, and came pouring out before I could make sense of it. “I put up with your conspiracy theories and your psychic emergencies, I give you my advice and my expertise, and you’re not even willing to—”

  “I would if I could,” he said hastily. “But I can’t. She’s gone.”

  Before I could mention it was awfully convenient his psychic powers didn’t work the minute I needed them most, he craned his neck to see what he could of the hall, where a pile of phone books had blackened under a wall of dented, collapsing mailboxes. “Lydia, I mean. Yesterday, right after the fire, she was here. Really pissed off about it, too. I talked her down, let her know….” his pale eyes shifted into that faraway look they get when he goes internal. “I mean, it wasn’t creepy or anything. Y’know? I told her she was dead and she was pretty cool about the whole thing. Even tried to summon a pack of smokes.”

  While I might have called Vic a charlatan any number of times, I always suspected he truly had some kind of ability. But the way he was describing Lydia, it fit her so perfectly that any lingering shreds of doubt disappeared. At the thought of her trying to call up spiritual cigarettes, I actually laughed. Okay, maybe a tear or two escaped, but mostly I was laughing.