PsyCop: GhosTV Part 35

He'd been scrutinizing the contents of the medicine cabinet. He shot me a dubious look over his shoulder with his lighthouse eyes, then turned back to take stock of the contents. His eyes left tracers when he turned his head, kind of like Faun Windsong's body had. He peeked inside a bottle of vitamins as if he'd hoped to find something illicit hidden there, and was disappointed to find only One-a-Days. "I haven't had a good night's sleep in fifteen years. Why should it be any different here?"

And just like that, he knocked me off-balance again. Constantine Dreyfuss, vulnerable? Or maybe just misdirecting me. Because I'd d.a.m.n well caught him with pillow marks on his cheek in the middle of the day, though who's to say he knew I'd noticed them? My chewed-up hand started to itch-not with ectoplasm, I saw. And hopefully not with a newly-developed latex allergy. I chalked it up to the healing process, and pressed my fingernails into the b.u.mpy texture of my skin to seek a little relief without actually dislodging any of the scabs. "You're always bragging about being able to score me Valium, or something even better," I said in an attempt to keep him on the tightrope between truth and defensiveness. "Maybe you should skim a few for yourself."

I leaned against the white-tiled wall and watched his profile to see if he'd try to tell me his sleeplessness had something to do with guilt- which, I gathered from our astral chat, he didn't actually feel, not over having Dr. Chance executed sniper-style. Or if he'd try to feed me some line about having to stay clean, especially after I'd seen he liked his ganja well enough to have it inked into his own hide. But instead he just shuffled a container of skin cream aside with the end of his pen, and said, "Women. How many kinds of moisturizer do they ne...?"

He turned and caught my eye-heck, maybe he was even gonna wink at me again-but his face went still. Hard to totally read his expression, what with the way his eyeb.a.l.l.s were lit up like the Terminator.

But something was definitely wrong. "What?" I said.

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He pitched his voice low. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," I said automatically. But even with his glowy eyes, I could tell he wasn't looking at me. He was looking past me at the wall beside the sink.

I turned and took a look for myself.

NOT.

VIML.

ISA.

There it was, scrawled on the white tile wall in ten-inch red letters, just above the towel rack. If there was any doubt in my mind that I'd just written it in my own blood, the knuckle of my forefinger throbbed where I'd torn it open, and the d.a.m.n letters started to give off a gentle glow. I blinked a few times, and then I saw the message plain as you please.

NoTV.I'mLisa.

Of course, it occurred to me that if Karen Frugali wanted me to pull the plug on the GhosTV so I couldn't find her, the smartest thing she could do was tell me that Lisa wanted me to shut it off. But what if I was wrong to second-guess myself, and what I really needed to do was take that writing at face value, because it really was Lisa, and she'd been telling me all along to turn the d.a.m.n thing off?

"Tell me this," I said to Dreyfuss, as he and Jacob and I all stood around the snowy-screened GhosTV and tried to determine if we should put an end to prime time. "If that was really Lisa, why would she be able to move my arm? She's not a telekinetic. She's not an astral traveler." And she wasn't a ghost-at least that was a huge consolation-because if she'd been a spirit, I would have seen the rest of her.

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Jacob planted his hands on his hips like he was eager to hear the answer to that one, too.

Dreyfuss considered the question, then said, "Because with the power of si-no and nothing but time on her hands, if Lisa needed to make something happen, she'd figure out a way to do it."

"Maybe we're looking at the wrong angle," Jacob said. He turned to me. "You can sense astral activity if you've had a couple of drinks, right?"

He knew d.a.m.n well I could see travelers after I'd knocked a few back, but I gave him credit for not airing every last detail of my secrets in front of Dreyfuss.

"Maybe we turn off the set and try alcohol instead." Jacob looked sideways at the TV, as if he didn't want it to know he'd been talking about it. "We can always turn it back on later." Whatever the GhosTV actually did-and given the crazy spectrum of effects it was broadcasting, I couldn't have pinpointed what, exactly, that thing was-it wasn't only doing it to me. Those waves were hitting the whole building and sinking into all the Psychs in range.

Maybe it did make sense to draw on a resource that affected just me.

"I guess a couple of drinks wouldn't hurt."

"You do know that booze actually decreases psychic ability," Dreyfuss said. "Don't you?"

I'd heard as much, yeah. But I wasn't in the habit of letting the facts get in my way.

Dreyfuss dug in his pocket and came out with a pillbox like you'd find at the corner drug store, a cheap plastic affair with Monday through Friday compartments. It rattled as he opened it. "Let's see." The lid popped, and my eyes went right to the long red pills smack-dab in the middle. Seconal-my one true love...aside from Jacob. And phenomenally difficult to find. Right beside it was that Valium I'd 319.

suspected he was carrying too, but Valium's everywhere. In contrast, Reds had been shuffled from manufacturer to manufacturer and gone in and out of vogue. Or maybe they'd gone out of vogue at the end of disco and pretty much stayed that way. There had to be almost a dozen pills in there; the compartments were deep. Simply seeing that telltale flash of red set my whole body on high alert, and actually had me swallowing back a surge of antic.i.p.atory saliva.

Talk about a big pretzel. With frosting, coconut flakes, sprinkles and all.

He didn't wave it under my nose. In fact, he didn't even linger with the lid open very long. He picked out a bullet-shaped capsule that was half green and half white, closed the pillbox and stuck it back in his pocket. "This is the latest and greatest in psyactives. Nothing like those old vasopressin uptake inhibitors from back in the day-those things'll f.u.c.k you up for good."

That tingle on the back of my tongue, the one that made me long to swallow a pill, drained away at the memory of Movie Mike twitching in his wheelchair.

"What does it do?" Jacob demanded.

"It pumps up the ligands that bind with your sigma receptors."

"In English."

"If you're not a Psych, it does nothing worthwhile. But if you are...it makes you better."

Jacob narrowed his eyes, which he couldn't tear away from the green and white pill. For someone willing to pay twice as much for a carton of hormone-free coffee creamer, he seemed strangely keen on attaining better living via pharmaceuticals. And if he liked me as a level-five (or probably six) medium, chances were he'd really like me as a seven.

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I was so ready to hear him encouraging me to take one that it took me a second to process what he really said, which was, "If Vic takes it, then so do I."

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Chapter 36.

"So much better than partying alone," Dreyfuss said. He pulled his pillbox back out, retrieved not just one more green and white pill, but two-and he swallowed one himself, then handed one to Jacob and one to me. "This works a lot faster than an uptake inhibitor, but it's not immediate. We're talking maybe half an hour instead of a few weeks."

Since I was none too proud of my gullible tendency to take candy from strangers, what with the whole Roger Burke "muscle relaxant" fiasco, it did set my mind at ease to see Dreyfuss go first. Yes, it was entirely possible that he'd planted a placebo for himself to take while he dosed Jacob and me with something we'd both regret, but somehow, I didn't think so. He'd held all three pills in his hand at the same time, and he hadn't even looked to see which one he was popping.

Even more interesting: since Jacob's mysterious talent wasn't common knowledge, and Dreyfuss' mysterious talent wasn't either, joining me in a psyactive c.o.c.ktail struck me as a major act of trust. On the parts of both of them.

I dry-swallowed my magic bullet. Jacob went into the bathroom and washed his down with some water. Amateur.

Dreyfuss eyed the GhosTV. "If you leave that on...well, I dunno what'll happen, but it'll probably be pretty intense." He didn't specify if that was intense-good or intense-bad, I noted. But since I'd made up my mind that the writing on the wall really was a 322.

message from Lisa, I switched off the set and pulled the plug out of the wall. The eerie psychic light in Dreyfuss' eyes dimmed, then died.

California time, my time, whichever time I framed it by-it was really late. Or really early. People inside the PsyTrain building were beginning to wake up as we headed once again toward Lisa's suite. Mundane TV sets played the morning news, and the sounds of generic co-anchor banter carried through closed doors and into the hallway. I kept my eyes peeled for ghosts-there were none-and for glowing clues. None of those, either. I could cut myself and bleed on something and see if that lit up, but I'd already left more blood smeared around PsyTrain than I was comfortable with. We piled into the elevator and I checked the mirrors. No one veiny, no one glowing. Con Dreyfuss caught me looking at him and winked.

At least that was out of the way.

The kitchen staff was reporting for duty as we emerged on the first floor. They weren't glowing, either. And none of them were ghosts. As I pondered that, I wondered what good a psyactive would actually do for me if there were no ghosts around, and began to worry that the answer to that question might be nothing at all.

What good was talent if I couldn't tell whether it was working or not?

And if it was actually working, how could it be of any use if I couldn't figure out what to do with it?

"Faun's necklace," I said, just before we turned to head toward Lisa's suite. Jacob and Dreyfuss both hung on whatever I was going to say next, and which, of course, I hadn't particularly thought through.

What could I say-that it had red energy when the psychic channel was playing? That it sparkled in the astral? "I want to take a look at it. D'you think she's still wearing it?"

Dreyfuss said, "I've never seen her without it," and he turned down the hall that led to the Quiet Room.

Faun Windsong had the afghan bunched around her middle, with 323.

her head and feet sticking out either end. She must have woken up at some point between my last astral projection and now. There was a tissue box on the floor beside her, with a handful of used tissues scattered beside it. Since she wasn't in motion, I couldn't tell if she was leaving tracers behind her when she moved, like when I'd viewed her with the ghost channel playing. Her necklace just looked like a weird tangle of rocks and twine, so I was guessing the psyactive hadn't kicked in yet, was all.

I got down on one knee beside her and patted her arm awkwardly.

"Hey."

"Lyle? You found more Xanax?"

No wonder she was still too doped up to project. "It's me, Faun. Vic." Her eyes opened and she squinted a bit with her gla.s.ses missing- and I wondered if her astral gla.s.ses were broken too. "It's funny," she said, "how everyone calls me Katrina but you."

"Habit. Sorry."

"It's okay. I don't mind." She gave me a smile that was wistful, and mostly sad, but not entirely. "I feel young again when I hear it. I remember what it was like when life seemed so full of possibility." I suppressed a shudder. If I thought about what "feeling young" meant to me, I came up with cold sweats and a bunch of memories I'd just as soon forget. "So, this necklace of yours...." She covered it with her gauzed hand as if she'd meant to stroke it and had forgotten about her second-degree burns. "Isn't it wonder-ful? Bert made it for me."

Gee, what couldn't that guy do? It made sense that he'd craft a functional amulet-he was the guy who'd sent the Criss Cross Killer's spirit packing. The guy whose room I'd needed an astral axe to break 324.

into...the room I'd then left with a big ol' hole in its protection to let Karen Frugali come rushing in.

Faun struggled to half-sit and remove whatever was holding her necklace on so I could take a better look at it. I drew a breath to tell her to stop, but then the charley horse that had originated in Chicago several days ago came roaring back-and it brought its friend, the sciatic nerve pain, with it. I didn't know whether to stand, sit, or just keel over, howling. I brought my second knee down to the floor and curled in on myself in a sort of kneeling fetal position-which helped the pain in my a.s.s but not the cramp in my calf, which hurt so suddenly, and so bad, it left me gasping.

"Vic?" Faun sounded dreamily concerned. All that Valium. I really should have kept one for myself-because now I had no choice but to score some from Dreyfuss. Who knew what strings would be attached? Though I was in so much pain, I couldn't really say I cared.

What was worse, I realized I hadn't summoned that astral axe. I hadn't even been thinking of an axe. Karen Frugali had put it in my hand to break through Chekotah's astral barriers. Jesus.

I drew breath to say something, and that hurt, too. Bad. Like I'd just done way too many whippits and there'd be h.e.l.l to pay, just as soon as I could breathe again. I hoped Jacob knew a Vulcan nerve-pinch that would allow me to breathe again, but when I turned to ask him, I saw he was gripping the back of his own neck with a grimace of pain on his face.

Dreyfuss was doing a triceps stretch with one elbow in the air. He looked none too comfortable himself. "Muscle rigidity...temporary." Now he tells us.

"Vic?" Faun was too doped up to notice her three visitors were moaning and groaning like they'd just completed a triathlon. She shoved the necklace at me. "See the turquoise? That's an heirloom. It was blessed by three generations of tribal elders. And the wool came from 325.

a damaged prayer mat of an 18th-century shaman that was unraveled and spun back into-"

"Wait," I said, but she was on a roll-and since when had the loco-motive of her conversation ever stopped for me once she'd started talking about herself? Maybe Faun Windsong had worn that necklace every day because her prettyboy shaman had told her he'd made it especially for her-but even if she didn't see it was more than just an ugly piece of folk art, Chekotah knew. He knew he'd tomcatted one woman too many, and he knew that woman was mind-blowingly talented. He'd protected his room, his "sacred s.p.a.ce"-he'd even tried laying down some hocus-pocus in the rooms of his other mistresses- but he'd put the Real Deal Necklace around Faun Windsong's neck.

Did he perceive her to be in more danger from astral Karen than he was? Or did he think the necklace made up for the way he betrayed Faun's trust by slipping it to every other woman who would let him?

I might never know. All I knew was that he had a good idea of what kind of power was in that necklace, and he'd given it to her.

And now she was giving it to me. Just to show me. Or rather, to show it off-once a showoff, always a showoff. "...and only four skeins of the yarn exist..."

"Wait." I spread my hands wide to make it obvious I did not want her to give it to me-but she'd convinced herself that my life would be incomplete if I didn't see this marvel of Native American craft. When I didn't take it from her, she just shoved harder, slotted it into the gap between my chest and thighs, and let go. "Faun, no." Despite the fact that I now had cramps in both legs, really brutal cramps, and my arms too, for that matter, I uncurled myself and tried to give the necklace back. Only when I moved my arm, a jarring sensation swept through me-the feeling that I was somehow not in synch. It was as if I felt one thing and experienced another. My arm should have been straight out, touching her, in fact. Only it wasn't.

At least, I didn't think it was. When I looked at it, I saw three arms...

326.

no, wait, multiple arms...each of them occupying a different place in the trajectory of the movement I thought I'd made. And then, I felt a snap, and all of my arms lined up.

That tracer-thing I'd seen happening to Faun Windsong, back when I'd viewed her with the psychic channel playing? I was doing it. Big time.

And I felt every last incongruity of it.

"f.u.c.k." That was about the most succinct way I could express my frustration. I dropped the necklace, because I couldn't tell where my hand really was as opposed to where it felt like it was-and on top of that, where it looked like it was to me, and whether or not I'd moved my fingers, or just thought I had.

"Are you okay?" Jacob was down beside me so quick I heard his knees crack against the tile floor.

"I...." I wasn't. But I couldn't just say that, not to him. He must've had his own psyactive trip to deal with. And besides, what could he do about it? A crash behind me. I turned, felt the queasiness of multiple, unsynchronized turns snapping into alignment at the end of the motion, and saw Con Dreyfuss with his hands out, eyes unfocused, and an uncomfortable-looking b.u.t.terfly chair on its side in front of him.

"Just a little disoriented. I'm cool."

He then tripped over the chair and went sprawling. And I probably shouldn't have felt glad about it, but at least, I reasoned, I could be fairly sure he'd swallowed the same green and white pill that was currently coursing through my veins. "I'm okay," he insisted.

Jacob pressed his mouth to my ear and said, "What's with him?"

"His eyes are messed up. What about you-are you okay? Do you feel anything?"

"Muscle cramps."

"Hold onto my arm," I told him. "It doesn't feel...right."

327.

He grabbed hold of my arm, no questions asked.

"What're you doing?" Faun sounded bemused.

I ignored her and told Jacob, "Okay, now move it around." He pumped my arm up and down a couple of times. No tracers. Not on that arm, anyway. The opposite side of my body felt like it was fanning out from the anchor point of his grasp. I couldn't see his red shield, not like I could under the influence of the GhosTV, but it seemed to be there anyway. Would he understand what I meant if I asked him to hold my subtle bodies in, if I told him I felt like they had all come loose? I wouldn't know unless I tried. "Hey, I need you to-" I saw movement on the wall behind Faun Windsong's couch. Light. A finger of light snaking upwards, as if the wall was splitting open and a bare 1000-watt lightbulb was shining behind it. The crack was slow at first, and small, but then it shot up toward the ceiling, took a right turn and shot across, parallel to the corner where the wall met the ceiling.

"Do you see that?" I whispered.

"What?"