PsyCop: GhosTV Part 38

Lisa shook her head. "Not me, I didn't do it. The angels did. When I saw that no matter how strong I got, Karen would always be stronger, the si-no told me to pray to them. So I did, and they sent you the message."

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While I pondered who the purported "angels" could be, and what they might look like through my jaded eyes, the captain sent a message of his own over the speaker system-one that I didn't understand any better than the automatic writing. A stewardess did a pantomime of what we should do if an airmask dropped down from a compartment over the ceiling. It was nearly impossible to focus on the instructions, but I figured if it came to the point where the airmasks unfurled and I needed to use my seat as a floatation device, I was screwed anyway.

"Did the si-no tell you falling for Chekotah was a good idea, too?" Lisa glared at me, said, "Oh, you've never done something you wish you didn't do, even though you knew better," then turned and faced the underside of her tray table.

Smooth move on my part. I sighed. "Yeah," I allowed, "he was good-looking enough, but PsyTrain was full of guys. Wouldn't you have been better off going for one that was single?" And not cheating on his girlfriend with your roommate?

The loudspeakers mentioned something about emergency doors- whatever-while Lisa turned back to me and said, "You wouldn't get it." And I must have looked sufficiently sorry for the tone I'd taken with her, because her lips moved as if she decided to ask the si-no whether or not I'd understand...and was told that I would. In a small, small voice that I needed to strain to hear over the whoosh of the powered-up engines, she said, "He made me feel pretty." She looked at the aisle while I found something absolutely fascinating out on the tarmac. I doubted it would help any if I told her she was pretty, at least she was to me-especially since I knew she saw herself as a hard, mannish beat cop. And especially since I really could relate, with my wimptastic physique. I patted her on the knee a couple of times, then sighed again and looked up at the modern-day hieroglyphics on the panel above my head.

While they explained what the no-smoking sign meant, I pondered 352.

whether or not I'd actually accomplished anything at PsyTrain. It sounded as if Lisa had been working on her equivalent of sucking white light, and that she'd nearly had enough to break free. But then, thanks to me, the GhosTV came along, and it got Karen so pumped up she was not only able to hold onto Lisa, but to make off with Debbie, too.

If I'd never come charging out to California, once Lisa was full to the brim with white light, she probably would've popped out of one of the PsyTrain walls, naked and slimy, but unharmed. Debbie, Chekotah and Faun Windsong would have been spared the sensation of being stretched into the astral. Karen Frugali would have managed to get away, any way you slice it-'cos who'd be able to go after her? Not me. I liked my subtle bodies right where they were, so no one else could hijack the c.o.c.kpit while I was having some cheese fries in the Captain's Lounge.

Also, I wasn't necessarily sure I saw Karen as the villain in the whole debacle. Bert Chekotah-he was lucky I'd bargained to save his sorry a.s.s from finishing out his life as an astral prisoner. Maybe that was the one thing I'd actually achieved. Go figure. The only ones who'd seen me do it were him, and Karen, and me.

353.

Chapter 40.

By the time we touched down at O'Hare, I'd convinced Lisa she needed to forget about grabbing a motel room and stay with Jacob and me-just for the time being, while she figured out what her next move was. Even though Five Faith hadn't been responsible for the disappearing Psychs at PsyTrain, we now had a better appreciation of how vulnerable Psychs actually were to the superst.i.tious nutjobs who perceived us as serious threats.

It'd been a long flight, so Lisa and I both hit the airport restrooms while Jacob waited with our luggage. I must've been walking fast, and thanks to my good seat, I'd been one of the first ones off the plane.

While I was in the stall wishing I'd gone easier on the pancakes, the ambient sound of the restroom changed as other people from my flight crowded in, dragging suitcases, flushing urinals and toilets, running the taps and working the hot air driers. When I stepped out of the stall, the previously empty room was now crowded with exhausted and stressed-out travelers jostling for s.p.a.ce.

I waited for a sink to become available, then stepped up to wash my hands. A quick look in the mirror gave me pause. After all I'd been through, my hair still looked good.

Then a spot at the sink next to mine opened up and Con Dreyfuss slotted himself in, met my eyes in the mirror, and smiled. Thankfully, he didn't wink.

"You did some good work back there," he said.

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I was pretty sure that wherever his compliment would eventually lead, I didn't want to hear it. I said, "Thanks," in a way that indicated I saw it as the end of the exchange, and I shook the water off my hands and headed toward the towel dispenser. It was empty. I went for the air drier instead. Once the air stopped running, I wiped my still-damp hands on my pant legs and turned...and almost tripped over Dreyfuss.

"Ever wonder what it would be like to be able to work like that all the time-to really pull out all the stops and just let 'er rip? No endless paperwork and reports and procedures. No meathead patrol officers swaggering around your desk. No ridiculous liability training."

"Oh, that's right, you spy on me at work, too. Thanks for the reminder." I moved to step around him, but he sidestepped and easily blocked me. "Okay, I rub you the wrong way. Point taken. Look, the fact is, I've been trying to keep you on your toes-on purpose." I attempted to step around him but there were too many guys with rollerbags rushing toward the urinals for me to dodge him.

"Some people can afford to get complacent," he said, "but not you." I saw a gap in the crowd and I went for it, but d.a.m.n it all, Dreyfuss was just as fast. He trapped me between the empty towel dispenser and a trash can and stretched on his tiptoes to look me square in the eye. The only way I could get away from him then would be to physically knock him down-and with a wall at my back, I didn't think I even had the leverage for that. Although, maybe if I made a fulcrum out of my foot...nah. It would only create a scene.

"You're not replaceable," he told me. "Get it?" I forced myself to stop trying to figure out how to slip away and tried instead to determine what his angle was. Probably some ulterior motive. I narrowed my eyes at him.

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He leaned in and dropped his voice so that only I could hear it. "You know you're a seven."

Dreyfuss had never struck me as someone who was any more interested in levels than the folks at PsyTrain who wanted to ensure that everyone got sufficient ego-stroking for their tuition money. h.e.l.l, look how happy he always was with Richie-and Richie was a strong two.

"Using you to solve a domestic is like swatting a fly with an Uzi."

"Karen Frugali's more talented than I am," I said-which was a weird thing to say, because you'd think I might want to revel in getting credit for being good at something for a change. But Karen was scary-good. She could turn the physical into astral. And once she saw beyond her own hurt feelings, she'd figure out that she could practically teleport. And kidnap. And then hide out in the astral where no one could ever find her. Holy h.e.l.l. "She's definitely better."

"Not better. Different. And way too unstable to withstand the pressure of being a government agent. The minute the going gets tough, she loses it. Not you, though. You bend instead of breaking." Either his description was an incredibly poor choice of words, or an incredibly perceptive one, because it convinced my PTSD that I was about to be tortured. Sweat p.r.i.c.kled at my low back and a wave of p.r.o.nounced nausea washed over me. Dreyfuss must not have meant to yank my chain quite so hard, because he took half a step back and looked me up and down. Then he shrugged and pulled a Tic Tac dispenser out of his pocket. Only those weren't cinnamon Tic Tacs inside...those were Reds. Thirty pills. Forty. At least. He flipped the rattling plastic case in the air, and I caught it and stuffed it into my pocket.

"You want to waste your time working with a bunch of Neanderthals...

why? What's in it for you?" He gave me a sidelong smirk and pretended he was weighing out an option in either hand. "Tedious paperwork...or chasing astral kidnappers." He looked at each hand as if 356.

he couldn't determine which side carried more weight, then spread his hands wide as if both pretend options had just turned to astral sparkles. "Do you seriously see yourself as being so mediocre that staying with the police department is even an option?" While my knee-jerk reaction was to defend the Fifth Precinct, the memory of all those cops standing around and smirking at me like a bunch of a.s.sholes while Sando made me practice about ten thousand wristlocks on him was still fresh in my mind. Not every case was a painfully obvious domestic; I got my fair share of spirit action as a PsyCop...but other than Zigler, and to a lesser extent Warwick, I wouldn't say I gave a rat's a.s.s about anyone there.

And so I opted to not answer Dreyfuss. I just stared.

Dreyfuss held my gaze for a long moment, and then turned away and headed toward the exit. "You decide you want to hook up," he said breezily over his shoulder, "gimme a call. Your man's got my number."

I'm not sure how long I stood there with travelers streaming around me, going in and out of the restroom. Probably not quite as long as it felt. Eventually, I pulled myself together, took a step toward the door-then thought better of it and took a little detour to the water fountain to make sure the red Tic Tac didn't stick in my throat.

It had been almost four days since I'd last seen the cannery. It felt different. Not like someone had snuck in and moved the furniture around or anything. More like I was the one who was different, and the way I fit into the s.p.a.ce had changed. It was nearly midnight when I turned the key in the lock and eased the door open with my hip. I didn't remember the ride home-I'd fallen asleep the minute I slid into Jacob's pa.s.senger seat, and now I felt wobbly and disoriented, though thanks to the Seconal, I wasn't terribly concerned 357.

about the notion of falling down. The small mountain of unread mail beneath the mail slot turned into an avalanche as the door tipped it over. I stepped on a slick piece of advertis.e.m.e.nt and skated halfway across the vestibule in it, then let my rollerbag tip over sideways, and sagged against the wall.

Luckily, everyone else thought I was just exhausted.

Lisa took my arm, draped it over her shoulder, led me into the living room and said, "C'mon, sit down."

"I got him," Jacob said. He transferred my arm to his shoulder and half-dragged me upstairs. Which was good, because if I sat down in the living room, chances were I'd never make it to bed. Jacob must have taken care of locking down the fortress for the night and helping Lisa get situated. My thoughts ran somewhere along the lines of, There'smylightfixture.h.e.l.lo,lamp.

When the mattress sagged beneath his weight, I was drifting on the hazy cusp of sleep. My battered body wanted to keep going, but some part of me realized that although we'd been together this whole time, we hadn't really had a chance to talk since the astral door opened in the Quiet Room and all h.e.l.l broke loose. Not alone.

I rolled against him and threw an arm over his chest. Did he pause for a fraction of a second before he hugged my arm to him? He had.

He'd paused. My exhaustion cried out for me to ignore it and just go to sleep. But I couldn't.

I steeled myself and forced my protesting body to wake up. "What's wrong?" I said. I'd pretty much guessed the answer-he knew I was high. But f.u.c.k it. After everything I'd seen back there, the goop and the blood and the stretched heads, I didn't give a s.h.i.t.

He sighed. "It's fine. Go to sleep."

I sighed louder, propped myself up on one elbow, and turned on 358.

the reading light clamped to the headboard. "Obviously it's not fine.

What?"

Jacob rolled onto his side, reached up and turned the light back off, but then he put his arm around me and pulled me against him. Our chests pressed together and my face settled into the crook of his neck. "I don't think I realized...seeing the...I don't know what to call it. What happened to Katrina."

Stretched head? His moodiness wasn't even about me. What a relief.

"We probably saw two different things." That would be an apt metaphor for my whole entire life, but I set the notion aside and added, "You only saw the special effects. I had a peek at the behind-the-scenes production footage." Not that seeing crazy-eyed Karen pulling the strings was any less scary...but knowing often felt preferable to not knowing. It provided the illusion of control.

"I saw enough," he said. "I almost bailed."

So...that was the real problem. The Man of Steel noticed a spot of tarnish. "But you didn't bail. Jacob, cripes, who else would've thrown themselves on Faun Windsong and kept her from getting slurped into Bizarro World? Yeah, you had second thoughts. Only an idiot wouldn't."

"I used to think I understood. Maybe I didn't see things like you saw them. But I could watch you and gauge your reaction. You could tell me there was a guy in a tux or a woman in chains on fire, and I could imagine what it would look like. And I could tell how bad it was, whatever you were seeing, by the look in your eyes. At most, I might see a candle snuff itself out. But to actually see the phenomenon, really see it myself...." He paused, and it seemed like he might just trail off there. But then he finished his thought. "I almost couldn't handle it."

"But you did. You handled it great."

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It would've been nice to pile on some more rea.s.surances, but they would've only been repeats of what I already said. Besides, Jacob must've been as bone-tired as me. Although he didn't have Seconal luring him into sleep's sweet embrace, he'd gotten even less shut-eye than me over the last few days. Still, as I slipped away, I heard him whisper, "I never really understood how brave you are." I didn't have the energy to force myself into wakefulness enough to respond to him-but if I had, I would have brushed it off. Because bravery had nothing to do with it. It wasn't like I had any choice. I saw what I saw and that was that.

A special delivery woke me up-woke all of us up-bright and early. I staggered to the door in bare feet, sweatpants, and a t-shirt I'd used for dusting off the bedroom electronics. A guy in a stiff-looking navy uniform stood on the front stoop with a clipboard in his hand. He didn't seem any more thrilled to find me at home than I was to find him on my doorstep. "Yeah," I said with zero enthusiasm.

"I have a shipment for a V. Bayne." He seemed hopeful that maybe a few numbers on the packing slip had been transposed, and he could leave the heavy lifting to someone else. But I nodded, so he said, "I'll need to verify your I.D."

I dragged out my unflattering drivers' license. He checked it, then schlepped back to his delivery van and started strapping the big plastic crate to his heaviest hand truck while I gathered up all the junk mail to ensure he didn't fall and break his neck on it. He seemed reluctant to bring the ma.s.sive crate any farther than my front hall, but I told him there was twenty bucks in it for him if he hauled it down to the bas.e.m.e.nt for me, and he grudgingly acquiesced. The noise of it thumping down the stairs one tread at a time was enough to finally roust Jacob, who managed to get the guy to help him uncrate the d.a.m.n thing on charm alone. It occurred to me as the console 360.

emerged that Jacob and I probably came off as a couple of nelly antique collectors...but I'd rather have a deliveryman think that about me than know the truth-that I was a prime target for Five Faith, or any other nutjob flavor of the day, if they ever figured out who I was and what I could do-so I could live with the queer stereotype just fine.

And there it was: the GhosTV. In my house. Or the bas.e.m.e.nt of my house, to be more specific; I try to pretend the bas.e.m.e.nt doesn't exist. I'd always thought owning a GhosTV of my very own would be awesome-that I'd be in control of what I saw, or didn't see, and with that kind of power, I wouldn't be anybody's b.i.t.c.h ever again. But instead it just reminded me of stretched heads and slime coatings. The bas.e.m.e.nt where I never went was the best place I could think of for it...at least until I figured out if I could even handle cranking my talent up higher than seven, or not.

Lisa and I stared at it in silence for a good few minutes, and then finally she said, "Maybe you can use it for something positive. Like making sure there aren't any really old spirits here."

"There aren't," I said quickly. The ghost who'd sold me the cannery told me so. And if she'd been wrong about that, and I'd been living among repeaters all these months...well, I didn't want to burst my own bubble. Lisa glanced at me to see if I was okay, then dropped her gaze to the stack of junk mail I suddenly realized I'd been holding in front of my chest the whole time like a shield.

"What's that?"

"Nothing."

As Jacob jogged back down the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, she pulled an envelope out of the stack and said, "This doesn't look like nothing." She checked the address, then handed it to Jacob. Red lettering on the envelope caught my eye. It had been stamped, Important:DoNot 361.

Discard. "It's from your gym," she said. "Thick paper, too. Really official. Did you let your membership lapse?"

Heaven forbid. "How do you know what his gym's logo looks like?" I asked her.

"He brought me there on a guest pa.s.s last time I was in town. Cute trainers. Too bad they all like boys."

Jacob opened his letter and read. His eyes skimmed side to side at first, but then the telltale vertical furrow appeared between his eyebrows. Lisa and I both caught on that maybe it actually was important. We watched him intently, and finally, once the tension was thicker than the fancy envelope, he started to read aloud.

"We regret to inform you that our confidential customer email list has been breeched. The unfortunate incident occurred last weekend, when a new hire who pa.s.sed all of our background checks copied the database and forwarded the information to a group that claims to promote the 'sanct.i.ty of marriage.' We at Halsted Fitness Club appreciate the business of all our clientele, and we would not be the top-rated fitness center on the north side four years in a row without the support of the LGBT community. Halsted Fitness Club intends to pursue damages to the fullest extent of the law. Also, please be a.s.sured, your credit card information was not accessible to this individual at any time."

So Jacob's email hadn't been bibled by Five Faith because he was psychic. His whole gym had been targeted-gay and straight alike-by a bunch of anti-gay creeps. Even Lisa, who'd only been there once. I supposed it was a relief. Maybe.

"They're giving me a free month," he said.

"I guess that's better than nothing."

362.

Chapter 41.

Jacob folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket, then planted his hands on his hips and scowled at the GhosTV. Did he want it upstairs...or did he want it gone? I couldn't tell. "Maybe we should put it on a pallet," he said. "What if the bas.e.m.e.nt floods?" Just as I was thinking we probably would have noticed in April or May if the bas.e.m.e.nt took on water, Lisa said, "No." We both looked at her.

"It won't," she said. "It's safe here."

Okay, then.

As we headed toward the stairs, I wondered if maybe I'd gotten off easy in regards to the si-no up until now, at first because Lisa was hiding it, and then later because she was unsure of the moral ramifications of using it. Her time in the astral had changed her. I might not know exactly how p.r.o.nounced that change was until we were able to spend more time together, but I had the sneaking suspicion that her days of being able to fake normalcy were over.

The land line started ringing when we were halfway up, and by the time we got upstairs, the machine caught it. "It's me." A woman's voice. Barbara. "Listen, I know it's last-minute, but if you and Vic can make it, Clayton's team has a tournament in Beliot at one." Beloit was the approximate halfway mark between our place and theirs...or maybe it was just the point at which I always had to stop and take a 363.

leak when we were on our way to visit. Jacob paused with his hand hovering above the handset, and looked to me. I wasn't especially interested in soccer, particularly children's soccer, but I realized I wouldn't mind seeing Jacob's mom and dad, and his Uncle Leon.

Especially now that the "Level-Five PsyCop Medium from Chicago" was just "Jacob's boyfriend," and Leon's ghost arm didn't make such a spectacle out of itself for me anymore. It would be a normal thing to do. Like normal people. It might even be...dare I say it? Fun.

"...he could have mentioned it sooner," Barbara yammered on, "he always pulls this..."

"We should go," I told Jacob.

"Really?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Let's go."

He picked up the phone. "Hey, Barb...."

If we wanted to make it, though, we'd need to get our a.s.ses in gear.

The poor performance of the water heater actually got us all showered in record time, since with Lisa there we only had about three and a half minutes of water apiece instead of our usual five. I made sure I wasn't being stingy with the sunscreen. I even scrubbed it into my scalp along the part in my hair.