For that one moment, I was light. I would have thought it would be scary, the lack of me-ness. But instead of being scared, I felt elated.
By the time I regained some sense of myself, Jacob had stilled, clasped against my back. This time, when I moved to turn toward him, he actually yielded enough to let me do it. “How could I ever be bored when—”
Jacob was in the decoy bed. Asleep.
But he was in bed with me—kind of hard to miss it seeing as how he’d just fucked my brains out.
It was like one of those trick drawings that can either look like two faces or a wine glass, depending on how you shift your own perspective. Yes, Jacob was in that other bed. And, yes, Jacob was in bed with me. Which Jacob felt more real depended on how I focused on him.
Once I wrapped my head around that idea, I started picking up his silver cord in my field of vision…only it wasn’t silver. It was red. And it was a huge, badass, ropy-looking thing right out of a sci-fi movie.
What about me? Most people, seeing their man in two places at once with a magic umbilical cord between them, could safely assume they themselves were on a big head-trip, too. But me? I could very well be awake. I touched the bed. My fingers made a depression in the bedspread. Still, that didn’t mean anything. It could be an astral representation of the bedspread I was moving. When I tried to shove my hand through it, though, and didn’t get that familiar passing-through-the-ball-pit sensation, I began to entertain the possibility that I was actually awake.
Maybe that was why I was able to turn over. Jacob’s astral body could block my astral body, but not my physical body, and after I’d had my spiritgasm, I woke up and snapped fully into the physical. I looked behind me, figuring he’d snap back into himself. Nope. Still there.
And down by the foot of my bed, the GhosTV was on, flickering, tuned in to a non-channel.
So that amazing pounding I’d just had…did it even happen? I was still dressed. And no squishy surprise packages in my underwear, either.
The memory was still there, though, bright and clear.
It seemed to me someone at Camp Hell had not only thought we could do each other in the astral, but that the astral plane itself was one big orgy. Maybe Dead Darla…and maybe our teacher, being an ex-nun, changed the subject whenever Darla brought it up. Or maybe I was reconstructing Camp Hell to fit my current experiences since my memory of those years is so iffy.
That creepy Barnhardt guy at the old folks’ home had seemed to enjoy sowing his astral oats. So, yeah, I could probably conclude whatever had just happened was…real. It just wasn’t physical.
Shit. Figuring out one level of reality was hard enough. Now I had to deal with two. Although, to be honest, I’d been dealing with two realities ever since I hit puberty. Not dealing particularly well, either.
I inched toward the wall, and naked astral-Jacob rolled onto his stomach. Leave it to him to figure out a way to take up all the space on
both
beds. Since I figured he’d be game to do some experimenting with me—and since he deserved it for turning on the GhosTV before he went to bed—I poked him in the astral shoulder to see if he’d feel it.
My hand passed through him. Neither Jacob stirred.
“If your astral body is here,” I murmured, “then where’s mine?” Since I was conscious, it would have to be inside of me, wouldn’t it? Inside, and aligned with my physical. But if that were the case, then when I poked Jacob’s astral body, it should have felt solid like it had when we were doing the astral nasty.
When I thought that, my perspective shifted. I poked him in the shoulder again, and this time, it felt…not quite solid. But substantial.
Jacob’s astral body grumbled in its sleep.
“Why’re you wasting your astral time sleeping?” I asked him. “You should be so jazzed about this you’d practically wet yourself.” Unless he didn’t know. That was probable. And unless he wasn’t going to remember…now, that was just sad. But if Faun Windsong (who’d always thought she was the world’s most sparkly light worker) had trouble remembering her astral projections, did Jacob even stand a chance?
I shifted so I was face to face with Jacob’s astral body and I sucked some white light. What I really concentrated on was maintaining that mental shift of mine—the faces instead of the wine glass—and I ran my fingers down his bare arm. “Hey, you really need to remember this.”
Jacob made an exhausted, “leave me alone, I just shot my wad” noise.
“You’re gonna be really pissed off if you don’t.” I got my face right up to his. The hair on his astral head was shorter, like it had been when I first met him. I think he looked a few years younger, too…though I’d never be brutally honest enough to tell him so. I sucked a little more white light, until the hairs on my forearms felt tingly with static, and tried to visualize my astral body inside my physical body touching Jacob while I pressed my mouth to his.
It felt like a ghost-kiss. Only not scary. Not at all.
Jacob’s astral eyes opened, and he looked at me all lovey-dovey.
“Hey,” I told him. “You’re having an OBE.” And then, duh, I realized the acronym probably wouldn’t translate well. “You’re astral. You need to remember it, okay?”
“You
are
looking at me that way. It’s not fake. Not at all.” Jacob Marks—psychic putty in my hands. Did our astral bodies have different personalities…or maybe, more accurately, did they showcase different facets of our existing personalities? It definitely wasn’t the Jacob I usually lived with who needed this level of reassurance.
Physical Jacob would’ve been all about the Psych, not the mushy stuff. “Seriously. You’ve got to remember.”
He slung an arm around me and tried to pull me toward him. I didn’t budge, so he rammed himself up against me. It was freaky, the way I could half-feel him pressing me against the wall. “I know you think I’m only attracted to your talent, but that’s not…” he tried to find my mouth and lose himself in more kisses, but I had a hard time keeping that duality of astral and physical aligned. “You being a PsyCop, like me. You get it. You get me.”
And here I’d thought Jacob was uninhibited about discussing his feelings in the physical. I should have realized something was up sooner, given the extent of our conversational skills while he was reaming my ass. That, and the way we magically hadn’t needed any lube.
“I get that you’ll be totally pissed off if you forget your projection.
Tell me you understand. You’re astral. And when you wake up, you’re gonna remember.”
He ran his hand down my back, but jerked it away when my concentration slipped from arguing with him and he found himself inside me—and not in a good way. “What’s happening?” he demanded.
“I told you. You are astral. Get it? Astral. You’re astral and you need to remember.”
He waved his hand as if he was trying to shake something gross off of it. “I think my hand just went through you. It’s got something to do the GhosTV, doesn’t it?”
How frustrating, that he was so close to understanding what was going on…and yet, so far. “That’s about the size of it. You fell asleep watching the astral channel and here you are. Astral projecting.” On the other side of the wall, I heard a door open and shut. It made me realize how spoiled I’d become living in my very own building—a building with industrially-thick walls that blocked out the outside world so effectively it was just Jacob, and just me. I lowered my voice.
“Hey. Can you say it? Tell me you’re astral and I’ll stop harping on it.” There was a knock on our bathroom door, and Jacob’s astral body snapped back into his physical so quick it looked like the subway speeding by. He sat up, squinting, mostly awake in no time flat. I climbed out of bed, impressed that he’d cleared enough space in the room that I could actually call what I was doing
walking
. I turned off the GhosTV, and went to get rid of Dreyfuss before Jacob completely forgot his bodiless jaunt.
When I opened the door, I only did it far enough to see one of Dreyfuss’ eyes, and I said, “Now is not a good—”
“We cracked Professor March’s email.”
Visions of gospels and testaments danced in my head. I steeled myself to hear that Debbie March’s email was full of the bible, just like Lisa’s, just like Jacob’s. And I started spinning out a theory that maybe Jacob hadn’t been nabbed yet because he was a Stiff, which wasn’t a very good name for his red, ropy power, but it was all I had.
Or maybe the holy roller who was supposed to grab him got a load of his scowl, and his Glock, and his six-foot-three of hard-pumped muscle.
And maybe they went back for reinforcements.
My mouth had gone dry and my throat felt fluttery when Dreyfuss interrupted my impending panic attack by saying, “No weird emails.
Well…plenty of weird emails. She’s got friends into some kinky co-splay stuff. But no weird bible emails.”
“What are you saying? There’s nothing suspicious going on?” I checked my watch. “It’s the middle of the night and she’s nowhere.”
“I didn’t say there was nothing suspicious—I just said her email’s clean…er, clean-ish, anyway.”
“But she’s still missing.”
He turned his hands palm-up and gave a shrug that was way too flip-pant for the situation.
“You think this is funny?”
He actually considered his answer before he gave it. “I can’t even recall the last time I found something funny, Detective.” He turned back toward the bathroom door to retreat to his room, but before he closed it, he added, “A detail that might or might not matter—it wasn’t a Q-mail account. She had her own domain, and her email went through that—so someone could’ve tried to bible her and got caught in a filter. We won’t know ’til we subpoena her webhost.” Some filter.
Once Dreyfuss was gone, I turned around to face Jacob. He gestured toward the decoy bed and said, “I slept over here because you looked so beat, I wanted to make sure you got some rest.” I laughed. So help me. His so-called “consideration” had just side-swiped a reaction out of me.
“That’s funny?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe it’s just ironic. Maybe Dreyfuss is right, and nothing’s actually funny, and laughter’s just a way to keep our heads from blowing up.” I maneuvered around the console, sat down hard on the bed where the dirty astral deed was done, and said, “You left the GhosTV on all night and you projected, but you snapped back to your body when he knocked on the door.”
Jacob planted his hands on his hips like he wanted to challenge me.
“When? Just now?”
“Just now.”
“And you saw it.”
“Saw it, felt it, took the tour and bought the postcard.” I decided to drop the smartass act, since he looked so profoundly bewildered, and instead I patted the bed and invited him to sit down beside me. He sat. The bed dipped. I took his hand between mine and said, “I was trying to make sure you’d remember. I guess I didn’t hammer home my point forcefully enough.”
“Was I doing anything, or was I just…I dunno…floating around?”
“Oh, you were doing something, all right,” I said. He looked at me sideways as if to see if I meant what it sounded like I meant, and I added, “Horndog.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Really?” He sat with his amazement for a few seconds, and then said, “Was I any good?”
I could have kept teasing him, but I decided that, thanks to all his secrets that came to light during the astral honesty session, I’d feel like a grade-A jerk if I smart-alecked my way out of this one. I slipped my ectoplasm hand around the back of his neck, drew his face toward me so our foreheads clonked together, and said, “The aftershocks rocked the astral plane.” He looked pleased. “I just wish you could remember.”
“I’m trying. I don’t know. It feels like it does when you know you just had a dream, but you can’t grasp it, not at all, even a single detail.” I kissed the corner of his mouth. “There. Does that bring anything back?”
He licked his lips and considered. “I think I need another reminder.” I kissed him again, fit my lips against his more squarely, and lingered over his lush mouth for a few seconds so I could really appreciate the contours, and the texture, and the taste. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me. I looked back…and I wondered what it would take for me to look at him “that way,” like he wanted me to so badly. I wasn’t sure. I spent most of my time trying to be totally devoid of expression, to not let anyone, living or dead, sneak past my own personal brand of shield. Quite possibly, I wouldn’t know how to really look at anybody “that way” even if I tried.
If I couldn’t figure out how to make my face convey my feelings, I suppose I’d need to settle for words. “You know how much I love you, right? I don’t say it enough, I know. It’s…I…” I sighed. “I do. And I’ve never felt like this before. About anyone. Only you.” While my face was the white noise of the facial expression continu-um, Jacob’s was more like a symphony. His eyes softened and went all smitten, and he grabbed me by the shoulders, pulled me against him and stopped just short of kissing me hard, and instead, brought our lips together soft as a whisper while his whole body trembled with tension.
I could take a lesson from him. Really. Literally. Get him to feel an emotion and watch what it did to his face—then turn to a mirror and try to see what it might feel like to look the same way. If I really wanted to try it, he’d do it for me. He’d probably do just about anything for me. Somehow, though, I couldn’t see myself actually asking him.
Because that would be weird.
• • •
“I think it’d be okay if you let me out of your sight,” Jacob said. “So some religious freak spammed my inbox. I can defend myself. I’m armed—Lisa wasn’t.”
No disrespect to Lisa, but if she wasn’t flashing a badge and a gun, I’d have to agree, she was nowhere near as imposing as Jacob. Even so.
“Maybe, if I knew I was leaving you where a bunch of people could see you. Dreyfuss to watch your back. And then maybe Chekotah to keep an eye on Dreyfuss. Maybe then. But we’re only working this one angle before breakfast, so it’s not like you need to be somewhere else. There’s no reason for us to split up now.” I stopped in front of the door number Lyle had given me, and raised a hand to knock.