PsyCop 6: GhosTV (40 page)

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 cockpit 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 ass 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.

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 superstitious 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 space.

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.

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 damn 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.

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. Hell, 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 hell. “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 prickled at my low back and a wave of pronounced 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 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 assholes 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 ass 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 space 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 passenger seat, and now I felt wobbly and disoriented, though thanks to the Seconal, I wasn’t terribly concerned 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 advertisement 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’s my light fixture. Hello, 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 hell 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 fuck it. After everything I’d seen back there, the goop and the blood and the stretched heads, I didn’t give a shit.

He sighed. “It’s fine. Go to sleep.”

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

It would’ve been nice to pile on some more reassurances, 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 massive 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 basement 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 damn thing on charm alone. It occurred to me as the console 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 basement of my house, to be more specific; I try to pretend the basement 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 bitch ever again. But instead it just reminded me of stretched heads and slime coatings. The basement 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.”