Probably.
And yet, I wouldn’t rest easy until I knew for sure. But before I could get to the front seat, the ringing stopped. Since I hadn’t set up voicemail on the burner phone, I supposed I’d never know exactly what flavor of telemarketing I’d almost been subjected to.
And then it started ringing again.
Which has never before happened to me with a robo-call.
I sucked down a fresh dose of white light—a reflex action, because obviously it wasn’t as if a ghost was calling me. Then again, ghosts were always figuring out new and horrifying ways to be scary. I was just beating myself up for my lack of long-distance reception, but you know what they say: be careful what you wish for.
I grabbed the phone that was lit up and checked the readout to see if I recognized the caller. A random jumble of numbers showed that wasn’t even the right amount for a phone number. Now I had to know. Heart hammering, I jabbed the talk-button and cautiously said, “Hello?”
“Vic—what a relief! The sí-no wasn’t sure if you’d pick up or not.”
Relief flooded me so fast it left me giddy. Relief, and surprise that she’d thought to sí-no the number to my burner phone. And longing. Because I really thought I’d get to see her. “Lisa. Damn. I miss you like crazy.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t safe for me to come.” It wasn’t worth asking why. If telekinetics were unicorns, Lisa was a flying unicorn on steroids. No doubt plenty of unsavory folks were eager to recruit her talent…or silence it. Or at least cut her open to see if they could figure out how she ticked. “I really wanted to be there.”
“At least now I know Crash can relay my messages.”
“No, he can’t.”
“Nice try—but you weren’t just sitting around sí-no-ing when I’m about to get married. Uh…were you?”
“Of course not. And I would never put Crash in danger like that—especially not after Constantine went through so much effort to keep him undocumented.”
“Well then how—?”
“Your boss told me.”
Well, shit. “How is that safe? Don’t the feds have Laura right in their crosshairs?”
“Only as a regional director they can bully. They don’t know they’re dealing with The Fixer. Laura is sharp and resourceful, and people underestimate that because she’s a woman. Even her own people.”
The appeal of flying under the radar was not lost on me. Given how FPMP National reacted to Con Dreyfuss’s show of competence, it would be stupid to do otherwise. And Laura Kim was most definitely not stupid.
Nearby, another familiar voice joined Lisa’s—one I would have been just as happy to never hear again. But given that Lisa married Dreyfuss with the blessing of the sí-no, I doubted they’d be in divorce court anytime soon. “Three minutes till the next satellite sweep.”
“We don’t have much time,” Lisa told me. “So if you had anything to ask the sí-no, ask it now.”
Was this a special dispensation for my wedding day, or was she giving out sí-nos again? I didn’t bother asking. Lisa’s existential struggles resulted in all kinds of mental gymnastics, and a sí today might very well be a no tomorrow. So instead I blurted out, “Is Jacob telekinetic?”
Silence.
“Lisa?”
“I’m here. I’m just confused.”
“As to where I’d come up with such a crazy idea?”
“No…it’s an interesting question, but it seems like I could answer either way.”
“So he’s kind of a TK.”
“That’s one way of putting it. Or maybe he’s something more. Like Constantine. Con is clairvoyant, obviously. But his talent reaches a lot farther than it should. And it keys in on people he’s never met.”
And his eyeballs left tracers behind when I saw them near an active GhosTV, which made me think his subtle bodies might be as loosely connected as mine.
She said, “The six-talent, seven-level system works, more or less. Psychs tend to fall into certain categories, and some have more talent than others. But at the same time, it’s really limiting. Like at PsyTrain, the Light Workers each seemed to have totally different abilities, you know? Like super-different, from spirit walking to lucid dreaming to astral projection. It would make sense that other talents might fall between the cracks.”
“So that’s what Jacob has ? A seventh talent?”
Lisa sighed. “No.”
“Two minutes,” Con piped in.
Lisa said, “Maybe it can’t be a seventh talent if the six talents are basically bogus.”
I knew someone who could probably spin out a pretty good theory as to what it all meant. But unfortunately, I doubted Dr. Kamal would be joining the call. “Listen, if we can’t figure out what Jacob is, maybe we can make it so that I can do it myself.”
“How?”
“I need to be able to talk to the dead.”
“But you already can.”
“Not like I do now, when a spirit is still hanging around. I need distance. Like Con. I need a line to the other side.”
“No. This isn’t something you could do.”
“Not now, not at my current capacity. But if I could figure out how to tap into that superconscious state—if I had a decent psyactive, or a GhosTV, or—”
“Vic, no. It wouldn’t matter.”
“Are you sure? There’s gotta be some way I can power up. What if I did yoga?”
“You’re at the top of your game. I’m sorry.”
I had to admit, the fatigue of being continually “on” was something I’d really been grappling with lately.
Ego is a funny thing, though. If you’d asked me two minutes ago, I would have said I didn’t even possess an ego. But hearing Lisa tell me—definitively—that there was nowhere for me to go but down?
She must be mistaken.
“One more minute,” Con informed us.
“I can’t be maxed out, Lisa. You’ve seen me on psyactives—”
“I’ve seen you faint from chasing an astral body around a nursing home.”
“I didn’t faint.” More like blacked out. Which is totally different…or at least less wussy.
In the background, Dreyfuss said, “Is he seriously using his last thirty seconds to argue with you?”
“Okay, okay. Lisa, can anyone among the living definitively tell me what Jacob is?”
“No.”
“And does F-Pimp National have any idea what he can do?”
“Not really.” She mumbled to herself in Spanish. “They just think he’s a really good Stiff.”
But how could that be, when Kamal was part of F-Pimp, at least for a while, and Jacob’s initials were in Kamal’s notebook? “The list Jacob is on—no time to explain—were those the subjects, or the control group?”
“They weren’t the subjects.”
Which meant that when his grandmother said Fred was the one she’d offered up to the study, she’d been telling the truth.
I was relieved for all of half a second, until I thought of Barbara being absent from that list. And the husband she’d met at Sacred Heart. And the way he kept up their sham of a marriage only long enough to procreate.
I was about to ask about Clayton’s father when the sound of phone-fumbling filled my ear. Dreyfuss took the phone from Lisa and said, “And that brings today’s visit to a close. Congratulations, mazel tov, and don’t go swallowing any questionable pills. And one last thing—my very talented spouse and I trust Laura with our lives. Things might be easier for you and yours if you did the same.”
40
WAS I DISAPPOINTED that, according to Lisa, I’d maxed out my abilities? Somewhat. But was the sí-no entirely accurate? One hundred percent of the time? Or might I achieve the same goal by working more creatively with what I already had?
And I wasn’t entirely convinced about the whole telekinetic thing either. Flickering lights, carnival games and cornhole. I was turning them all around in my mind when Shirley cornered me very purposefully ove
r by the bar.
She put on her sternest face (which wasn’t very stern at all) and said, “Now, I know this isn’t the type of thing you’ll want to discuss with your mother-in-law, but it needs to be said.” Uh oh. “It’s your wedding night. And Jerry and I wouldn’t feel right if the two of you didn’t get some time to yourselves.”
To do the nasty. She was right—I was entirely mortified to think what she might be picturing.
“We’ve booked that bed and breakfast we told you about. Not for you, since you were so against the whole idea—but for us. You’ll have the run of the house. And it’s getting late…so no one would think twice about it if you wanted to get going.”
“Please never advise me on my love life again. And…thanks.”
“You betcha.”
Jacob seemed keen enough to call it a night, so I was able to convince him to forego the pleasantries and slip away without any lengthy goodbyes. But as we headed out to the parking lot, we blundered into another guest who’d had the same idea.
Laura Kim. Who neither of us had said two words to all night.
“It’s getting late,” she said awkwardly, and Jacob, usually the smooth one, didn’t seem to know how to answer that.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance to—”
“It’s not as if we won’t see each other at work.”
“Yeah, but still. At work, we talk about work. You made the trip up here and all…so how about breakfast?”
Jacob tensed.
So did she. “I’m sure the two of you will be really busy.”
“There’s a local joint that does some really amazing hash browns,” I insisted.
She knew something was up. But she also trusted me. “That sounds…great. Send me the time and place and I’ll see you both there.”
It occurred to me that when I had access to the sí-no, I should have asked if there were any surveillance devices in the car, but it was too late for that now. It had been a good day, a memorable day—but an incredibly long and stressful day, too. Jacob and I rode back to the house in silence that was more weary than companionable, but it was punctuated by the brush of our pinkies across the bench seat, and somehow even that tiny bit of contact was reassuring.
The night was cool, but we headed for the backyard anyhow. We dragged a couple of patio chairs well away from the house and planted ourselves at the far edge of the lawn. The obnoxiously bright motion sensor light by the garage kicked in, but by the time we were settled, it winked out and plunged us into darkness. And as my eyes adjusted, the night sky blossomed with stars.
I told Jacob everything. The conversation with his uncle. The phone call with Lisa—the parts related specifically to him, at least. And the fact that I didn’t think we were going to get a better answer than the one we already had.
“Telekinetic?” he scoffed.
“Sort of telekinetic.” I could see he wasn’t buying it. Frankly, neither had I, but I thought we could at least give Lisa the benefit of the doubt. “Listen, we know you’ve got something way more than just a non-ability.”
He made a grudging sound of agreement.
“Have you ever tried to move something with your mind?”
“I’m doing it right now.” He gestured at a stray flower petal on the grass. “And nothing’s happening.”
“It’ll probably take time and practice.”
“Will it? Did you practice getting a visual on ghosts—or did you happen across the site of a car crash and see it plain as day?”
He did have me there. I said, “You’re not starting from zero. You can sense the veil.”
“Forgive me if I don’t find that very exciting.”
“It’s not nothing. When you forced Kamal to the other side, it was a hell of a lot more.” I thought back to our last encounter at The Clinic’s pharmacy. The GhosTV was playing, and I had a front row seat of Jacob bursting with red energy. But the GhosTV didn’t really do much for any other psychs, not unless it was tuned to the channel that sent everyone on an astral jaunt at bedtime. The technology had been designed to augment psychic mediums.
But it had a pretty big effect on Jacob, too.
Under the TV’s lambent glow, not only had he blasted Kamal’s ghost right through the veil, he’d pulled a habit demon off my neck and torn it in half. And all the while, the lights were flickering and the electronics were going berserk. He was on Kick at the time—so it could have been the drug.
And yet there’d been other times he’d really outdone himself with nothing more than the TV. Like when Richie was possessed and he’d stopped Jennifer Chance’s ghost from sliding out from under Riche’s skin…or in the FPMP morgue, when he held her ghost inside her semi-frozen cadaver. “Jacob…what if you never knew you were telekinetic because you couldn’t see what you were moving?”
“I don’t follow.”
“We already know you’re kinesthetic and not visual. But what if there’s more? What if your talent isn’t focused on the physical…but on the etheric?”
“What are you saying—I’m some type of medium? And that’s how I ended up in Kamal’s notebook with Sergeant Warwick’s nephew?”
“That connection seems thin, at best. We know Kamal had his fingers in way too many psychic pies. So forget his damn notebook for a second and think about what we actually know first-hand. Think about us. Sometimes it seems like my subtle bodies are just rattling around inside, threatening to fall out. But yours are fused solid, locked in tight. Where I’m vulnerable, you’re strong.” I took his hand in mine and smoothed my thumb across his wedding band. “Cliché as it sounds, maybe opposites really do attract.”
We sat with that idea for a while, until finally he said, “This is all incredibly theoretical.”
It was. And if anyone knew how hard it was to test something non-physical, it was me. “Maybe theoretical is for the best. That way, the powers-that-be don’t need to know about your talent until you’re ready to tell them. If ever.”
“If that’s how you feel…then why did you invite Laura to breakfast?”
“Look, mister, you were the one who joined the FPMP, I just tagged along when I saw which way the wind was blowing. And as much as I balk at authority, I don’t feel right sneaking around behind Laura’s back. I like Laura—and I think she’d be more willing to help us if you’d stop being so weird around her.”
“I’m not being weird—”
“You totally are. You can’t keep blaming Laura for being possessed. She wasn’t the only one Jennifer Chance used as a hand puppet. Richie and Darla, too—and those are just the ones we know of.”
“I don’t blame Laura. If anything, I feel sorry for her. I can’t imagine how hard it must be, knowing that her finger pulled the trigger when Roger Burke was killed…that her body was nothing more than a weapon.” Huh. Maybe he did get it after all. “I just feel bad for how hard I went at her. Even though I was right.”
Jacob wouldn’t be Jacob unless he pointed out that he was right. “I trust Laura,” I told him, “and not just because Con and Lisa vouch for her, either. I think you’d feel a lot better if you started trusting her again, too.”
“Are you saying you want me to hand over Kamal’s notebook?”
“And endanger your whole family by putting them under the microscope? No. I do trust Laura. But once we open up that particular can of worms, there’ll be no stuffing them back inside.”
Would there be more to glean from the notebook? Maybe. Maybe not.
Under the peaceful chill of the starry night sky, we agonized over our next decision—and came to the conclusion that in the scope of what we’d figured out, any additional insight we might gain from the notebook was just too risky to justify holding onto it any longer.
Good thing Jacob’s parents had decided to afford us some privacy, though we didn’t end up using it in quite the way they might have imagined. Instead, we dragged our lawn chairs over to the brick fire pit in the center of the yard, an
d with a squirt of lighter fluid and a handful of kindling, made sure that Kamal’s notebook would never fall into the wrong hands.
41
BREAKFAST WITH LAURA the next morning was only somewhat awkward. I managed to draw her out by prompting stories from her tenure as The Fixer. The hash browns were particularly crispy and good. And I believed her when she reassured us that F-Pimp hadn’t planted any surveillance devices in our car.
Our stuff was packed and we’d already said our goodbyes to the family, and the only thing left to do was drive back to Chicago. Jacob double-checked a traffic app before we hit the road. I figured he was just mentally navigating around some construction, so I was surprised when he looked up from the map and said, “We could hit the library on our way home.”
“Your stack of unread paperbacks is so tall it’s threatening to bury you in your sleep,” I said, though we both knew he wasn’t hoping to discover his new favorite author.
He wanted to revisit that ghost.
Whatever etheric capabilities a True Stiff might have, they’d be just as hard to test and train for as mediumship talent. Precogs can predict the flip of a card, and telepaths can glean thoughts from helpful volunteers. But if there were any benign etheric entities floating around that we could safely practice on, I’d never encountered any.
Ghosts were as different from one another as the people they’d once been. Occasionally, I come across one who doesn’t inspire me to start chugging white light—but those enlightened spirits are few and far between. The dead librarian wasn’t in the same category as, say, Miss Mattie. But she had helped us locate the hospital, and she didn’t feel aggressive. She’d be a good candidate for test-driving Jacob’s talent.
And yet…the thought of doing that to Frieda just didn’t sit right. “Jacob…I get that you want to open up your talent and see what you can do. Like you pointed out back at the library, she’s sentient. Neither of us appreciated being used as a lab rat. Is it really fair to do the same thing to a ghost who’s not an active threat?”
“What about Father Paul, then?”
“He’s a crossover ghost. They only leave when they’re good and ready.”
Other Half (PsyCop book 12) Page 25